James Nicoll Reviews saw its 3000th review on the 17th.
23 works reviewed. 12.5 by women (54%), 10 by men (43%), 0.5 by non-binary authors (2%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 10.5 by POC (46%).
More stats and a big chart here.
James Nicoll Reviews saw its 3000th review on the 17th.
23 works reviewed. 12.5 by women (54%), 10 by men (43%), 0.5 by non-binary authors (2%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 10.5 by POC (46%).
More stats and a big chart here.
It seems fitting for Halloween that the traditional fifth-Friday New Worlds Patreon theory post should focus on weird critters -- but in this case, real ones! Let's talk about drawing inspiration for science fictional and fantasy species from the aliens we share a planet with: comment over there . . .
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/HJO91g)
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/HJO91g)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Nobody's getting food stamps next month, and I'm doing something about it! Maybe I could do something... FOR YOU!
See, I've discovered that I'm a really good courier when it comes to getting stuff into free boxes! I've also discovered that I'm good at helping people clean out their kitchens (and other rooms, but right now, food is the important thing). I've helped people do this and can give references!
So: is your kitchen full of herbs, spices, teas, drinks, or food that you are never going to get to? (Teas and herbs/spices are SO useful to people, and so often forgotten!) Does looking into your cabinets stress you out? I can help with that! I can help clean out your kitchen, disappear the bad stuff into the compost, and transport the good stuff to local free pantries so that hungry people can eat it! You get cupboard space, your neighbors get fed, I get to prove to myself the government can't break my spirit, and everyone wins!
This is an open offer for the general Boston area, but because I am a pedestrian and stuff like canned goods are heavy, I'm most useful in the Arlington, Cambridge, Medford, and Somerville areas. I will be limited in how much I can carry, but I have two VERY sturdy 20 liter backpacks, a tote bag, and a heart filled with determination and spite.
Help us feed our neighbors! Spread the word to anyone around who might find this useful!
(I don't require payment for this. I am MAD.)
See, I've discovered that I'm a really good courier when it comes to getting stuff into free boxes! I've also discovered that I'm good at helping people clean out their kitchens (and other rooms, but right now, food is the important thing). I've helped people do this and can give references!
So: is your kitchen full of herbs, spices, teas, drinks, or food that you are never going to get to? (Teas and herbs/spices are SO useful to people, and so often forgotten!) Does looking into your cabinets stress you out? I can help with that! I can help clean out your kitchen, disappear the bad stuff into the compost, and transport the good stuff to local free pantries so that hungry people can eat it! You get cupboard space, your neighbors get fed, I get to prove to myself the government can't break my spirit, and everyone wins!
This is an open offer for the general Boston area, but because I am a pedestrian and stuff like canned goods are heavy, I'm most useful in the Arlington, Cambridge, Medford, and Somerville areas. I will be limited in how much I can carry, but I have two VERY sturdy 20 liter backpacks, a tote bag, and a heart filled with determination and spite.
Help us feed our neighbors! Spread the word to anyone around who might find this useful!
(I don't require payment for this. I am MAD.)
I had to call the management company about the heat again today. I and I think at least one other neighbor called in a problem Monday, and they sent someone who made a fix that he said might be temporary, but also said he had ordered parts for a longer-term solution. Tuesday was OK, but by the time I got up this morning [Thursday] the heat clearly wasn't working again.
The management company sent someone over fairly quickly. He first knocked to let me know they were here and thank me for reporting the problem, then came back to tell me they had to look at a sensor in Adrian’s room. So she hurriedly put on her bathrobe, the three of us masked, and I invited them in, with a warning about not letting the cats in. They looked at it, and came back a while later to replace it—apparently there was something wrong with the thermostat, and they replaced the sensors in each apartment, because they couldn’t be sure of which one was the problem. The heat came back on within the hour, and we’re OK for now.
Adrian and Cattitude both thanked me for being Speaker to Landlord on this one.
The management company sent someone over fairly quickly. He first knocked to let me know they were here and thank me for reporting the problem, then came back to tell me they had to look at a sensor in Adrian’s room. So she hurriedly put on her bathrobe, the three of us masked, and I invited them in, with a warning about not letting the cats in. They looked at it, and came back a while later to replace it—apparently there was something wrong with the thermostat, and they replaced the sensors in each apartment, because they couldn’t be sure of which one was the problem. The heat came back on within the hour, and we’re OK for now.
Adrian and Cattitude both thanked me for being Speaker to Landlord on this one.
and omg those cultists are so needy. They can't feed themselves, so you're constantly trying to keep them in berries and fish, and they complain about everything!
"There's no place to poop, build an outhouse!" (You're an animal, poop on the ground!)
"I want to eat a poop sandwich!" (Uh, okay, but why do I have to make it!?)
"Oh, that grass gruel made me sick!" (Get back to work!)
"I'm sick of your lies!" (Welp, time to perform anotherhuman sapient sacrifice of a, uh, willing victim!)
Seriously, who's running this cult, you or them?
*****************************
( Read more... )
"There's no place to poop, build an outhouse!" (You're an animal, poop on the ground!)
"I want to eat a poop sandwich!" (Uh, okay, but why do I have to make it!?)
"Oh, that grass gruel made me sick!" (Get back to work!)
"I'm sick of your lies!" (Welp, time to perform another
Seriously, who's running this cult, you or them?
( Read more... )
...and now back to the subjects no one cares about (but me.)
I've spent the last couple of days preparing for my D&D group. One of our players has to have gallbadder surgery the day before our planned game and since his character is critical to that plot (we're rescuing his sister, who he also plays,) I'm running a micro-campaign, something to be one and done in three hours. The basic set-up is that in some time between adventures (we skipped a level between our first campaign and our second, so it's probably going to take place in those years? months?) Because many of my players read this blog, I won't tell you anything about it other than to say that I'd (long ago) bought a module with this adventure in it, so whole plot has been laid out for me, along with treasures and stats and such. This has not stopped me from spending an inordinate amount of time creating my own twists and flavors to things as well as inventing a reason for my players to have all gathered in this town--and a whole-ass town (not to mention designing a whole new part of my world, complete with mythology.)
Meanwhile, I have stopped prepping for my Tuesday night Thirsty Sword Lesbians game.
Other than keeping track of the story so far (and having all of the locales and NPCs in my large, sprawling document--much of which I randomly work on when I'm feeling in a cyberpunk mood,) I just show up and start playing pretend with my players. I think in the last session, we maybe rolled the dice four times, tops. That group is just generally great fun. I off-handedly had them run into a pair of stoner boys in a stairwell the session before last and these two dudes invited the lesbians to "Bob's Party." An event I literally pulled out of my brain. Sure enough, my players remembered Bob's party and now we have a whole subplot involving Bob and the things we learned at that party.
And it's all just rolling out of my head in real-time.
Tons of fun.
But so is the game I prepare DAYS in ADVANCE. I think the reason RPGs are so popular is because they're almost always a surprise. Players and GMs can try to plan ahead, but dice rolls and improv are what ultimately shape the game. I just find it kind of funny that I'm both kinds of GMs. I over prepare and I'm also 100% winging it. I mean, that's probably true for a lot of GMs?
I've spent the last couple of days preparing for my D&D group. One of our players has to have gallbadder surgery the day before our planned game and since his character is critical to that plot (we're rescuing his sister, who he also plays,) I'm running a micro-campaign, something to be one and done in three hours. The basic set-up is that in some time between adventures (we skipped a level between our first campaign and our second, so it's probably going to take place in those years? months?) Because many of my players read this blog, I won't tell you anything about it other than to say that I'd (long ago) bought a module with this adventure in it, so whole plot has been laid out for me, along with treasures and stats and such. This has not stopped me from spending an inordinate amount of time creating my own twists and flavors to things as well as inventing a reason for my players to have all gathered in this town--and a whole-ass town (not to mention designing a whole new part of my world, complete with mythology.)
Meanwhile, I have stopped prepping for my Tuesday night Thirsty Sword Lesbians game.
Other than keeping track of the story so far (and having all of the locales and NPCs in my large, sprawling document--much of which I randomly work on when I'm feeling in a cyberpunk mood,) I just show up and start playing pretend with my players. I think in the last session, we maybe rolled the dice four times, tops. That group is just generally great fun. I off-handedly had them run into a pair of stoner boys in a stairwell the session before last and these two dudes invited the lesbians to "Bob's Party." An event I literally pulled out of my brain. Sure enough, my players remembered Bob's party and now we have a whole subplot involving Bob and the things we learned at that party.
And it's all just rolling out of my head in real-time.
Tons of fun.
But so is the game I prepare DAYS in ADVANCE. I think the reason RPGs are so popular is because they're almost always a surprise. Players and GMs can try to plan ahead, but dice rolls and improv are what ultimately shape the game. I just find it kind of funny that I'm both kinds of GMs. I over prepare and I'm also 100% winging it. I mean, that's probably true for a lot of GMs?
A joy of commuting by train is seeing the Scottish Gaelic station names. My journey is from
Sràid na Banrighinnto
Waverley Dhùn Èideannand, along the way, highlights include that Falkirk High becomes
Bràighe na h-Eaglaise Brice. Otherwise, I am also exposed to Gaelic via BBC Alba which often makes for a pleasantly relaxing way to kill a bit of time, they have low-budget cookery shows and the like, with subtitling in English.
I've been working through Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series, actually available from Glasgow libraries. Next, I thought I'd try a bit of Bujold, starting out the Vorkosigan saga with Shards of Honor or Cordelia's Honor seemed a good idea. No luck, though, neither Glasgow nor Edinburgh has either! Well, at least Edinburgh finally laid their hands on Melvyn Bragg's Credo so I'll give that a try, though I fear it might be a bit bulky for comfort in commuting.
Yeah, the White House probably does need more event space. But if Biden or Obama's approach to that problem was to bypass all process and demolish an entire wing during a government shutdown as quickly as possible so as to present it as a fait accompli? The Republican reaction to that would definitely not be calm. And it's incredibly naive to think either the ballroom will be paid for entirely by donations or that the all donations nominally for the ballroom will go to that project, given the history of how responsibly Trump-affiliated nonprofits manage their donations.
Trump is also trying to get the DOJ to pay him $230M in recompense for prosecuting him for his obvious and egregious crimes. This includes asking for actual damages for legal fees he never paid and punitive damages which the law bars paying. The decisions on all of this will be made by people who were Trump's personal lawyers, including those defending him in these specific cases. This by itself seems a wild scandal, but it's just another day in (what's left of) the Trump White House.
There's also been talk about the supposed necessity of a third Trump term, term limits be damned. Of course this is trolling, but this is an administration that governs through trolling, stupidity of the plan (as after the 2020 election) is no barrier to the existence or seriousness of the attempt. Personally, I'll bite the bullet on the (admittedly still too contingent) prediction: If Trump isn't dead or something, they'll try the straightforward plan of just running and winning the Republican primary. And in that case, I think SCOTUS would say on 1st Amendment grounds, political parties can put forward the candidates they want, however foolishly (after all, eligibility rules theoretically could be changed, no matter how much a constitutional amendment is definitely not actually happening). And if he wins, will they want to rule in a way that amounts to "the Republican can't win"? I'd guess it would come down to some combination of "whether he's 'obviously ineligible' is a non-justiciable political question", "that's the responsibility of the Electoral College", and "the mechanism is impeachment". Of course, that would also require Trump to actually win, or for one of his alternative slate of plans to actually succeed.
Trump's also ordered the military to restart nuclear weapons testing. Don't know where to begin with that. Seems insane.
Trump is also trying to get the DOJ to pay him $230M in recompense for prosecuting him for his obvious and egregious crimes. This includes asking for actual damages for legal fees he never paid and punitive damages which the law bars paying. The decisions on all of this will be made by people who were Trump's personal lawyers, including those defending him in these specific cases. This by itself seems a wild scandal, but it's just another day in (what's left of) the Trump White House.
There's also been talk about the supposed necessity of a third Trump term, term limits be damned. Of course this is trolling, but this is an administration that governs through trolling, stupidity of the plan (as after the 2020 election) is no barrier to the existence or seriousness of the attempt. Personally, I'll bite the bullet on the (admittedly still too contingent) prediction: If Trump isn't dead or something, they'll try the straightforward plan of just running and winning the Republican primary. And in that case, I think SCOTUS would say on 1st Amendment grounds, political parties can put forward the candidates they want, however foolishly (after all, eligibility rules theoretically could be changed, no matter how much a constitutional amendment is definitely not actually happening). And if he wins, will they want to rule in a way that amounts to "the Republican can't win"? I'd guess it would come down to some combination of "whether he's 'obviously ineligible' is a non-justiciable political question", "that's the responsibility of the Electoral College", and "the mechanism is impeachment". Of course, that would also require Trump to actually win, or for one of his alternative slate of plans to actually succeed.
Trump's also ordered the military to restart nuclear weapons testing. Don't know where to begin with that. Seems insane.
A fairy's efforts to recover stolen arcane tools via illicit means produce spectacular calamity.
The Fairy of Ku-She by M. Lucie Chin
The seventh all-new library of Sanity-shattering tabletop roleplaying ebooks inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.
Bundle of Holding: Tentacles 7
I like the book meme that is going around - I saw it first on ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naraht's journal, but it seems to be spreading vigorously!
Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
I don't think there's anything at the moment, but I first read Flying Dutch by Tom Holt because of the Josh Kirby cover! Does that count?
Pride, challenging books I've finished:
Speaking purely personally, finishing Arcadia by Iain Pears was a real achievement, although I've no idea why I found it so impossible a read. I've read some books that would probably fall under the popular definition, but I feel like it doesn't count if I was reading them for fun! Maybe St Augustine's City of God; that did feel like a real achievement to get through, it's so enormous.
Gluttony, books I've read more than once:
I mean. Even these days roughly 40% of my reading is re-reading, and growing up it was a lot higher than that! I don't understand people who never re-read. Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons can stand for the vast number.
Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
lol where to start. I acquired Consilience by Edward O Wilson in 2009, I think that may be the oldest physically sitting on my to-read shelves.
Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan - I have a Penguin Classics copy, a giant hardback edition with illustrations that looks rather William-Blake-esque, and a tiny pocket hardback that used to live permanently in my rucksack pocket. Oh, and an ebook from Project Gutenberg.
I also have a few dozen audiobooks that duplicate paper or ebooks I already had, and an increasing number of ebooks duplicating paper I already had. Mostly I get one format or the other, but I've picked up quite a few cheap ebooks of favourites where I don't want to get rid of the original, or where I have the whole series in paper and don't want to give away the one or two I have in ebook, etc... I suspect I will gradually prune things down over time.
Notably I'm up to nearly 50 Chalet School ebooks now! But I have spent nearly forty years accumulating my paper set, and it's going to take a while before I'm ready to give them up. Greed indeed.
Oh, and five? six? Bibles? One in German. Plus a couple of New Testaments including one in Greek (I don't even read Greek, it was just so beautiful!).
Wrath, books I despised:
I'm sure there are a ton of better choices that will come to me after I post this, but such is life. I looked through my "Product of its Time" booklog awards and found some promising candidates, but then I remembered Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning, which left me with the sort of loathing that feels appropriate for this category. It's not that it was rubbish, because those mostly aren't worth despising really, it's that it was just persistently unpleasant in a gloating kind of way that left me wanting a shower. Ugh.
Envy, books I want to live in:
Relatively few, without a guarantee of being one of the lucky ones! Graydon Saunders' Commonweal books are pretty invested in everyone getting an equal chance, more or less, so that might not be too bad as long as I could be sure of being in the Commonweal and not one of Reems' slaves or something.
Otherwise mostly looking at positive high-tech futures, to be sure of having access to medication and/or medical treatment for my numerous chronic health conditions! Maybe Bujold's Vorkosigan saga? I'd like Beta, I think. But again, I could end up on Jackson's Whole, and that would not end well for me. Maybe a Star Trek novel, that universe is probably as safe as anywhere I can find.
naraht's journal, but it seems to be spreading vigorously!Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
I don't think there's anything at the moment, but I first read Flying Dutch by Tom Holt because of the Josh Kirby cover! Does that count?
Pride, challenging books I've finished:
Speaking purely personally, finishing Arcadia by Iain Pears was a real achievement, although I've no idea why I found it so impossible a read. I've read some books that would probably fall under the popular definition, but I feel like it doesn't count if I was reading them for fun! Maybe St Augustine's City of God; that did feel like a real achievement to get through, it's so enormous.
Gluttony, books I've read more than once:
I mean. Even these days roughly 40% of my reading is re-reading, and growing up it was a lot higher than that! I don't understand people who never re-read. Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons can stand for the vast number.
Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
lol where to start. I acquired Consilience by Edward O Wilson in 2009, I think that may be the oldest physically sitting on my to-read shelves.
Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan - I have a Penguin Classics copy, a giant hardback edition with illustrations that looks rather William-Blake-esque, and a tiny pocket hardback that used to live permanently in my rucksack pocket. Oh, and an ebook from Project Gutenberg.
I also have a few dozen audiobooks that duplicate paper or ebooks I already had, and an increasing number of ebooks duplicating paper I already had. Mostly I get one format or the other, but I've picked up quite a few cheap ebooks of favourites where I don't want to get rid of the original, or where I have the whole series in paper and don't want to give away the one or two I have in ebook, etc... I suspect I will gradually prune things down over time.
Notably I'm up to nearly 50 Chalet School ebooks now! But I have spent nearly forty years accumulating my paper set, and it's going to take a while before I'm ready to give them up. Greed indeed.
Oh, and five? six? Bibles? One in German. Plus a couple of New Testaments including one in Greek (I don't even read Greek, it was just so beautiful!).
Wrath, books I despised:
I'm sure there are a ton of better choices that will come to me after I post this, but such is life. I looked through my "Product of its Time" booklog awards and found some promising candidates, but then I remembered Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning, which left me with the sort of loathing that feels appropriate for this category. It's not that it was rubbish, because those mostly aren't worth despising really, it's that it was just persistently unpleasant in a gloating kind of way that left me wanting a shower. Ugh.
Envy, books I want to live in:
Relatively few, without a guarantee of being one of the lucky ones! Graydon Saunders' Commonweal books are pretty invested in everyone getting an equal chance, more or less, so that might not be too bad as long as I could be sure of being in the Commonweal and not one of Reems' slaves or something.
Otherwise mostly looking at positive high-tech futures, to be sure of having access to medication and/or medical treatment for my numerous chronic health conditions! Maybe Bujold's Vorkosigan saga? I'd like Beta, I think. But again, I could end up on Jackson's Whole, and that would not end well for me. Maybe a Star Trek novel, that universe is probably as safe as anywhere I can find.
What dark purpose compels a girl and her android companion to wander post-apocalyptic Japan?
Touring After the Apocalypse, volume 6 by Sakae Saito
15 or so years ago I began hearing more about how people have increasing difficulty talking to their parents or other relatives who listened to faux news and thus inhabited increasingly divergent media universes than they did. I never had that problem – my parents (and now just my mom) are basic centrist liberals who have never watched (and would never) watch faux and enjoy the Daily Show. We didn’t always agree on politics (me being a democratic socialist), but we very much lived in the same media universe, and our facts were mostly the same.
Now I have a similar problem, because my mom watches NBC, ABC news, or CNN and reads the Washington Post, and I don’t and instead get my news from Bluesky, What the Fuck Just Happened Today? (which is awesome), Daily Kos, and similar lefty sources. Recently I discovered my mom hadn’t heart of the costumed protests (starting with frog guy) in Portland, hadn’t heard of any but the largest No Kings protests, and most concerningly had no idea who JB Pritzker (the governor of Illinois, and by far the most credible 2028 presidential candidate on our side) was or how he'd been standing up to 47, and she also hadn’t heard or seen anything about 47’s increasingly obvious mental decline (like the recent video of the Japanese PM leading him around, which reminded me astonishingly much of how my mom used to lead my dad around while he was still mobile (he died of Alzheimer’s). OTOH, she has heard of Gavin Newsom and has also heard news reports that he is (gag) the only possible Democratic candidate in 2028). That’s what you get when billionaires own all large-scale media in the US, because billionaires almost universally support authoritarians.
Now I have a similar problem, because my mom watches NBC, ABC news, or CNN and reads the Washington Post, and I don’t and instead get my news from Bluesky, What the Fuck Just Happened Today? (which is awesome), Daily Kos, and similar lefty sources. Recently I discovered my mom hadn’t heart of the costumed protests (starting with frog guy) in Portland, hadn’t heard of any but the largest No Kings protests, and most concerningly had no idea who JB Pritzker (the governor of Illinois, and by far the most credible 2028 presidential candidate on our side) was or how he'd been standing up to 47, and she also hadn’t heard or seen anything about 47’s increasingly obvious mental decline (like the recent video of the Japanese PM leading him around, which reminded me astonishingly much of how my mom used to lead my dad around while he was still mobile (he died of Alzheimer’s). OTOH, she has heard of Gavin Newsom and has also heard news reports that he is (gag) the only possible Democratic candidate in 2028). That’s what you get when billionaires own all large-scale media in the US, because billionaires almost universally support authoritarians.
