Joanna (J.F.) Penn

Author of thrillers, dark fantasy, crime, horror, memoir, and self-help. Podcaster. INFJ. Cat lover.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

I love that little robot! Very much enjoying the robot olympics videos.

[clankr @clankrmedia]

Big fails at standing jump competition.

Btw, robots crushed the human record again!

Robot record 4.83m, human record 3.73m

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Yes! More books 📚 please. Write them. Read them. Give them. Love them. 💙

[Quite Interesting @qikipedia]

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. CARL SAGAN

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Maybe authors need to start measuring how long it takes to write books by cups of coffee … ☕️ ✍️ 💙

[Quite Interesting @qikipedia]

In Tibet, distances were traditionally measured by the number of cups of tea needed for each journey.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Fascinating, and such an interesting story starter … ☔️ ✍️

[Augustus Doricko @ADoricko]

Rainmaker just produced ~19M gallons of water in Alaska via next-gen cloud seeding over 3 hours of operations.

We are the first company to provably produce precipitation in Alaska. As promised, we’ve linked our white paper and relevant data.

In the future, Rainmaker will protect and restore glaciers with man-made snowfall.

Immediately, this demonstration shows how Rainmaker will add new water to the Colorado River and Great Salt Lake in the coming months.

We turned around this analysis and white paper just a couple days after operating. There are many data sources I want to deepen our understanding of the atmosphere and increase our provable production; we’re building the instruments to collect that data in subsequent operations. But at Rainmaker, we won’t tout LOIs, simulations, or lab tests. What matters is physically measuring that you’ve affected the atmosphere; proving that we’ve produced water. We prefer sharing only the tech that has proven to make more water for farms, industries, and ecosystems in need.

Expect a regular cadence of these from us as we build the best atmospheric science lab in the world. Feedback is welcome in the interim.

Rainmaker Century.

https://t.co/QZikxP1KyH

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

A lot of us do this every day! (As well as read ebooks and listen to audio!) 📚 💙

[G. F. Allen @AuthorGFAllen]

Who still sits down and reads an actual physical book?

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

This really is a sci-fi story starter!

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

On August 17, 2026, Singapore officially unveiled the world’s first independently managed biological data center prototype, integrating 16 million living human neurons with traditional silicon hardware.

The project, hosted at the National University of Singapore Medicine, is a strategic collaboration between the university, digital infrastructure developer DayOne Data Centers, and bio-computing startup Cortical Labs. This infrastructure marks a shift from purely digital architecture to wetware, combining synthetic biology with computational processing power.

The system departs completely from traditional server farms based solely on microchips. The prototype is housed in a single standard rack that contains 20 CL1 biological computing units. Each unit holds approximately 800,000 neurons cultivated in a laboratory from human stem cells. These living neurons sit on silicon chips equipped with electrodes, where electrical impulses from the digital system stimulate the cells, causing them to alter their synaptic connections.

The neural activity is then transmitted back and translated into computational data by a proprietary operating system named biOS. Because these are living cells, the servers require a literal life-support system, which is why technicians feed the neurons every three days with a cocktail of sugars, micronutrients, and pH buffers, while specialized mixers regulate oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide levels.

The transition toward biological processing aims to solve two of the biggest challenges in the artificial intelligence era, which are energy consumption and learning efficiency. A single CL1 biological unit consumes about 25 to 30 watts, compared to the hundreds of watts required by a conventional silicon data center chip. Consequently, the entire biological rack demands only between 800 and 1,000 total watts, whereas traditional infrastructures consume tens of kilowatts for AI workloads.

Furthermore, the technology offers high data flexibility, delivering strong efficiency with small datasets and unpredictable scenarios without needing the massive data volumes required to train traditional models. This approach drastically lowers environmental impact and intense cooling requirements, aligning with Singapore’s Green Data Center Roadmap.

The prototype does not aim to replace the entire global cloud infrastructure immediately, but focuses instead on specific tasks where biology outperforms current computer architecture. A primary field is advanced biomedical modeling, which uses the neurons to better understand the development of neurodegenerative diseases directly on the integrated hardware-software platform.

Another application involves accelerating pharmaceutical research to test the efficacy of new drugs and molecules, which drastically cuts laboratory testing timelines. Finally, the technology enables the development of predictive AI algorithms that leverage the natural ability of the human brain to adapt to contextual changes without requiring massive computational recycling. This initiative is part of DayOne’s long-term plan to expand next-generation computing capabilities across Asia and Europe, while construction of their first local AI-ready traditional data center, named SG1, is set for completion in early 2027.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

There’ll be a lot of us. We are authors. We are readers. We are bibliophiles. 📚 💙

[Paul Graham @paulg]

There may not be many people left in 10 years who can write, or want to read, things longer than a page or two. But there will be at least a few of us, and we'll be a powerful club.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@mcahogarth I think it might be us! I have to wear earplugs a lot.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@quibbleUK I think some of the Covid signs should be kept as historical artefacts to remind us of that time and how it made us feel. Don’t get rid of them all.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Lots of interesting views in the comments. But of course, it depends on what a ‘living’ means, and whether that’s every year or just one year, and what genre you write, and how you want to spend your time in terms of marketing, and market conditions now and into the future. My recommendation has always been to create what you love and have multiple streams of income so you are never dependent on one thing regardless. (And yes, I write novels as J.F. Penn)

[Charlotte Goodwin 🇬🇧📚🪖 @AuthorGoodwin]

How many novels, on average, do you think you need to write before you can make a living as an author?

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Awesome memento mori! 💀

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

2,400 year-old skeleton mosaic discovered in Turkey with the caption: “Be cheerful, enjoy your life”

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Really enjoying Scythe by @NealShusterman A fitting read while I write my dissertation for my Masters in Death, Religion and Culture! ☠️

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@neilpatel Or It might accelerate adoption as people get used to it much faster.
The EU cookie banners we all have to click means that we just ignore all of them.
Interesting times.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@quibbleUK So glad you included parking apps. What a ridiculous situation where there are so many! And yes, cookie banners! Thank you.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@mbcollings I hope the job is going well! Fascinating times indeed!

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

Amazon ads. Email list cleaning. Book sales data analysis. Invoices and financial month end. Rewriting sales descriptions. Updating pricing and discounts. I am handing over so much business stuff so I can do the creative work I love. ✍️ 📖 📚

[Julie Zhuo @joulee]

What's something (work or personal) that you hated doing that now AI does for you?

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@mcahogarth That is exactly what I have been thinking about! Thanks for sharing!

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@__mharrison__ Just ask Claude or Chat how they can help! I use Claude Code but Codex/Work is also very good now.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@__mharrison__ All of it. Targeting. Analysis. Monitoring. Adjusting etc.

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@greenwoodtales I mainly do my AI stuff in my Patreon. But there are much better people to ask about ads in general. I only do the basics, or at least Claude does for me!

[Joanna (J.F.) Penn @thecreativepenn]

@mcahogarth I was thinking about that use case actually. Are you blending email list with that?