Ian Denning

@ian-denning.com

826 Followers 656 Following

Writer || NY Center for Fiction fellow || Retro games, beer, horror, sci-fi || Dog- and human-dad || NJ and PNW || He/him

Title screen for Scorched Earth
A boy in a green shirt and blue baseball hat playing a Street Fighter II pinball game
Fake poster from the show The Studio that reads "KOOL AID: A Martin Scorsese Picture"
The cancellations, which clawed back more than $100 million, or nearly half of the agent's annual budget, threw many organizations into upheaval, forcing some projects to shudder. Now, documents filed in two lawsuits against the agency and DOGE reveal new details about how the mass cancellations took shape, [HIGHLIGHTED NOW] with little input or pushback from the agency's leadership.
Random words and letters
Evangelion Unit-01 standing in front of Tokyo-3
A poster for a Ghibli/Evangelion concert in Rome
A bottle of Oban 12 Heart of the Harbour single malt scotch
The marquee of IFC Center in New York, featuring Obex
A first paperback of White Noise by Don DeLillo
A still from the movie Stalker—three men in a ruined room. The subtitle reads "Better to stay grunting in my stinking private villa."
Post from a local Facebook swap group for kegel exercise weights that reads "Free new-in-box. 1 missing. Decided not for me."
Many Nintendo and Super Nintendo games lined up in rows on a bookshelf
A toaster emblazoned with the brand name "Smeg"
Tweet from Andrej Karpathy: I'm starting to get into a habit of reading everything (blogs, articles, book chapters,...) with LLMs. Usually pass 1 is manual, then pass 2 "explain/summarize”, pass 3 Q&A. I usually end up with a better/deeper understanding than if I moved on. Growing to among top use cases. On the flip side, if you're a writer trying to explain/communicate something, we may increasingly see less of a mindset of “I'm writing this for another human" and more “I'm writing this for an LLM". Because once an LLM “gets it", it can then target, personalize and serve the idea to its user.
Headline: Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu says he’s “never used generative AI, and never will.” Hardship is what makes the creative process rewarding
Q: without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about? Erin Somers: Fucking and sucking in the Hudson Valley
Lincoln Center in New York
A blonde, professional-looking AI avatar reciting the end of Rudyard Kipling's poem "Boots," with audio from Taylor Holmes's 1915 recording.
43. Do I, on some level, want to be haunted by my own fiction—in a Rube Goldbergian method of self-destruction—somehow unconsciously craving the very anxiety my story generates in order to obliterate all potential forms of pleasure that writing my story confers?
"If you create things for the public, you will get yelled at by dumbasses. Indeed, this is the primary experience of being the sort of writer that I am. If you make a joke, they won’t get it. If you use sarcasm, they won’t detect it. If you exaggerate for effect, you will be taken literally, and if you try to be understated, you will be accused of a contemptible lack of urgency. If you make a reference, it will not be understood; if you choose one topic, they will wonder why you didn’t choose another; if you try to focus on one thing, they will ask why you didn’t focus on something else. Your high-minded arguments will be dismissed as inscrutable, your simple arguments will be dismissed as unsophisticated, and you, personally, will be dismissed as the sort of lightweight who should try getting a real job. Ever thought of that?"
A Princess Mononoke poster with a Japanese signature scribbled on it in Sharpie
A bottle of Rowan's Creek bourbon sitting on a liquor cart
"Trump, who said he was '98% involved' in picking the center's next slate of honorees, announced that the awards would be given to singer and songwriter. George strait; actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone; singer Gloria Gaynor; and the rock band KISS."
An internet user registration card from Lockwood Elementary for the 1996-97 school year
Legs standing in front of two Krustys with the caption "I'm seeing double here. Four Krustys."
Tacos Locos restaurant in West Orange, NJ
Pride paraders holding signs that read "Resist with pride" in front of Boston's Trinity church
Japanese anime is drowning in games-to the point where even the life and death of characters is treated as a game, and the creators have become gods and run into a dead end. It was inevitable that Nintendo's Family Computer would replace the anime boom. With real games, more people could participate in the stories and probably derive a little more satisfaction from them, too. In the United States, movie makers became sick of this loss of motivation, and hitched their wagons to Ronald Reagan. They had reached the end of the road in depicting nothing but Nazi bad guys, and had to resurrect Soviets and their guerrilla henchmen as bogeymen.
Screenshot of a subtitle from Lazarus: "Peter Luger Steak House"
An auction listing for a shop vac from the David Lynch collection
A black dog lying on a blue couch, looking with big dumb sweet eyes at the camera
Boss Baby tweet
Max prepares to drill into his head in Darren Aronofsky's film PI
A screenshot of Tidal streaming the new Andre 3000 album
Well, it's Galileo, explaining moon topography to some cardinals in red, one sitting at a telescope, who look pretty fucking skeptical.
Wildflowers on the High Line
NYT article: "Could this Secret, Decaying Railway Be New York's Next High Line?"
PEMCO billboard
Classic Torment Nexus tweet from Alex Blechman
Three stills with subtitles from PORCO ROSSO, culminating in "I'd rather be a pig than a fascist."
Blurry dogface biting at a ball
Vince McMahon meme about the GOG announcement
A big ol pile of books
A men's dress sneaker (horrible)
A can of Stoup's Disco Mullet, a Cascadian dark ale
The Guardian Nu telling Crono and friends "This is the truth! This is my belief! ...at least for now," before falling asleep
A can of Nazi Punks Fuck Off pilsner on a patio table
Gene Hackman preparing post-coital fondue in Night Moves.
Eighteen-year-old Ian Denning standing in the front row of an outdoor Guster show in Portland, OR in July, 2003.
Some kind of fucking revolver speed loader bottle cap ugh
Screenshot of Tidal's listing for "Maggot Brain" by funkadelic
Cover of REJECTION by Tony Tulathimutte
A door jamb strike plate, badly jerry-rigged and now failing.
(12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion (a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned. (b). Report Imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police. (c) Act stupid. (d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
A bottle of Lagavulin and a bottle of Sir Davis rye
A black dog standingl in the snow, with snow all over his nose