(no subject)

Sep. 1st, 2025 09:42 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] philomytha!

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Clarke Award Finalists 2012

Aug. 31st, 2025 09:05 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
I will be too busy to post tomorrow.

2012: O2 offers free wifi to multitudes, which I only now realize may be have been referenced in Kingsman, researchers determine that despite a century having passed, the Titanic remains at the bottom of the Atlantic, and in a glorious celebration of the effectiveness of the modern British educational system, doctors warn Britons not to drink liquid nitrogen.

Poll #33559 Clarke Award Finalists 2012
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 24


Which 2012 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
0 (0.0%)

Embassytown by China Miéville
12 (50.0%)

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
4 (16.7%)

Rule 34 by Charles Stross
15 (62.5%)

The Postmortal by Drew Magary
0 (0.0%)

The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper
5 (20.8%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.


Which 2012 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
Embassytown by China Miéville
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
Rule 34 by Charles Stross

The Postmortal by Drew Magary
The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Culinary

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:54 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

This week's bread: loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, strong brown flour, possibly rather too many in the way of pinenuts.

Today's lunch: halibut fillets, panfried (the packet possible exaggerated cooking time), served with samphire sauce; with La Ratte potatoes roasted in goose fat, baked San Marzano tomatoes, and Boston beans roasted in pumpkin seed oil with fennel seeds and splashed with gooseberry vinegar (a bit too al dente, not sure if this was innate or due to inadequate cooking time/temperature).

August 2025 in Review

Aug. 31st, 2025 09:31 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


I didn't win any awards in August but I did review 22 more works. James Nicoll Reviews is now 34 reviews away from its 3000th review.

August 2025 in Review
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Marooned on a backwater planet, a down-on-his-luck actor sets out to transform his new home. Will he survive success?

Always the Black Knight by Lee Hoffman

Making Money

Aug. 30th, 2025 07:20 pm
ksmith: (Default)
[personal profile] ksmith
I started my reread of Making Money only to realize after a chapter or two that I didn't recall any of it. At least one scene usually sticks in my mind*, and there are so many of Lord Vetinari being Lord Vetinari that I definitely should have remembered. Adora Belle Dearheart is one of my favorite minor characters, so I'd have at least recalled her.

And Mr. Fusspot. I would've remembered the dog, if only for one of the funniest scenes I have ever read in any Discworld book:

Watching a dog try to chew a large piece of toffee is a pastime fit for gods. Mr. Fusspot's mixed ancestry had given him a dexterity of jaw that was truly awesome. He somersaulted happily around the floor, making faces like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine.

Maybe you have to have had a dog, idk.

Anyway, I think this is the first time I've read it. am enjoying it. Moist von Lipwig is such a conflicted, seat-of-the-pants sort of person.




*except for Night Watch, which failed to make an impression. I recalled that there was a rebellion at some point, but that was it.

Greenwood sidey-O

Aug. 30th, 2025 02:25 pm
nineweaving: (Default)
[personal profile] nineweaving
Just back from folkie camp (TradMad week at Pinewoods). Idyllic setting (woods, lakes); gorgeous weather (but for one terrific thunderbolt that struck the water); a lovely community; glorious music. Oh, and three good square home-cooked meals a day, all locally sourced, with proper pots of tea. One fortunate evening we happened to have five vegans at our table, so us three omnivores got all the chicken pot pie, green beans, salad, new bread, and vanilla ice cream with caramel sauce we could hold.

The camp provided free tests, and all of us (130+) turned in negatives three days running (first of all to gain entrance and twice after). Cons should be this sensible.

It’s all very leftie and queer-celebratory. Everyone makes others garlands of green leaves to wear. It’s the kind of place where a couple of women in their 70s are talking mycology (“... it looked like an amanita, so I crawled under the dance pavilion to have a look ...”), while a boy in his 20s is singing a German social democratic anthem to the Celtic harp.

My old hero Martin Carthy was there with his daughter Eliza. Hearing Martin for the first time back in 1979 was transformative. He sang “Willie’s Lady” (Child 6) and that was that: my secondary world was made of ballads. Now it grieves me terribly to see him growing frail and forgetful; but still he kindles, still he glows. He seems to draw his memory from his guitar. A tune emerged; he stopped and sang the opening of “Willie’s Lady” a capella. He talked about the making of his version of it, how his friend Ray Fisher (Archie’s sister) had found the Breton tune for it. In his telling, the lady (cursed by her mother-in-law to labor endlessly and never to give birth) is not a mere sufferer, but a rival witch, an incomer from across the sea with a foreign magic of her own.

The Appalachian ballad traditions session was taken by a stunning singer and storyteller, unknown to most of us. Sarah Burkey’s come from some hard hard places, dirt poor in Kentucky, then devastated by Helene in western North Carolina; yet is grounded and joyful. An inspired benefactor at the camp gave her Jean Ritchie’s old handcarved dulcimer (a lovely thing), and to see Sarah touch it, listen to it, was heart-stoppingly beautiful. It played “Amazing Grace” first of all. And then she sang “Wayfaring Stranger” in English and Cherokee. Sarah, who teaches Native American children, had those words from tribal elders, and they are not translated from the Christian song, but prayers from the Trail of Tears.

Daringly, I took a class in song performance. I am utterly terrified of singing solo (above all in the company of gifted singers), so I dared myself to do it. I thought hard about what I would give them and realized that trying for prettiness or pathos only sends me horribly offkey, so I went for raunch and attitude, and gave ‘em “My Husband’s Got No Courage In Him.” I am told it was one hell of a performance. All I remember is glimpsing the tutor bent double, scarlet in the face with stifled laughter.

This year I didn’t see the Pleiades reflected in the still clear water, but you can’t have everything. Maybe next year.

Nine


Peeple B weerd

Aug. 30th, 2025 04:25 pm
oursin: Animate icon of hedgehog and rubber tortoise and words 'O Tempora O Mores' (o tempora o mores)
[personal profile] oursin

Casn't seem to locate link to the article but apparently taking your dog to the movies is a thing these days? YOY? - and apparently one reason is so as not to have to get in a dogsitter for pooch while out at the pictures. What happened, we asked, to leaving one's faithful canine to guard the house during one's absence? O tempora, o mores, etc.

Presumably contra-indicated viewing would be Old Yeller....

***

Also in modern-day weirdness, another thing that is apparently A Thing is doing Extreme Days Out, which involves jetting off at the crack of dawn to some touristic spot, doing The Sights (at presumably a brisk pace) and then jetting home again, no doubt to soak in a recuperative hot bath.

Aside from the horrid environmental impact going on with this, how far can anyone be enjoying Tourist Spot if they're going at high-speed clip to fit everything in? It sounds like hell. No time to stop and stare and appreciate. Point thahr, misst.

I was therefore delighted to come across this in Lucy Mangan's column:

[O]ver breakfast I read about the great sunflower fields at Westgate Farm near Walsingham, Norfolk, which for the two weeks that the mighty blooms are in mighty bloom across its 16 acres invites people to come and pick their own for a small fee. Have you ever heard of anything better? Desire – no, need – filled me.
I demanded my husband – the driver of the family, for Walsingham is a short car trip away – abandon his desk, crowbarred my son out of bed and by 10am we were looking out over acres of sunflowers under an azure sky, and do you know what? It was even better than I had imagined. It’s just sunflowers, you see. Sunflowers almost literally as far as the eye can see. All facing the same way, because they are – get this – flowers that follow the sun.
We followed the little dusty tracks that led through the fields and wind about so that eventually you are facing the flowers and they are facing you, and the effect is so joyful and uplifting that even your family hostages begin to break into smiles.
We picked our allowance of five each and were home by lunchtime. They are now in a massive vase I was once mocked for buying but which I must have known somewhere deep in my soul was meant for this, and life is good.

Even if I was then depressed by her mention of the high levels of Ye Clappe in North London, sigh.

Cats

Aug. 30th, 2025 09:39 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Poll #33552 I knew I forgot something
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 70


Cats?

View Answers

Cats!
49 (70.0%)

Cats!
42 (60.0%)

Cats!
51 (72.9%)

Cats!
49 (70.0%)

Cats!
51 (72.9%)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Six works new to me. Three fantasy, three SF, four are series (at least in a sense) and the other two appear to be stand-alone. Lots of TTRPG material.

Books Received, August 23 — August 30

Poll #33551 Books Received, August 23 — August 30
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Victoriana by Alex Cahill et al (Q1 2026)
6 (20.7%)

Victoriana Menagerie by Alex Cahill et al (Q1 2026)
5 (17.2%)

The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (April 2026)
21 (72.4%)

Ship of Spells by H. Leighton Dickson (November 2025)
9 (31.0%)

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum, Voll Adventures by Lisa Farrell et al (Q1, 2026)
2 (6.9%)

Coriolis: The Great Dark by Kosta Kostulas et al (August 2025)
13 (44.8%)

(no subject)

Aug. 30th, 2025 12:42 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] antisoppist, [personal profile] castiron and [personal profile] mirlacca!
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
If you missed the live recording of the Murderbot interview episode at WorldCon, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24

This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.


***


I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.

Wheeeee!!!

Aug. 29th, 2025 04:45 pm
oursin: Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing in his new coat (Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing)
[personal profile] oursin

Had the news today that I have been awarded a Non-Stipendiary Fellowship at [Esteemed Research Institution in My Discipline]! For next academic year at least. Yay me!!!

***

Dept of, gosh, some people have a very weird notion of Effix, wot: I can't link to this because it was all in screenshots on FB, but anyway -

Person posts in a romantasy forum that they reviewed book by A Well-Known Author asserting that it had been written by AI, on the grounds that it used a number of bog-standard cliche phrases that (we suspect) hurried and harried writers in a popular field in which you are expected to keep on churning out the product are wont to resort. (In fact I suspect that they crop up to a significant extent in your average romance novel and that many authors' fingers type them quite automatically.)

Well-Known Author intends to sue for libel.

Person who posted review, and claims to be an impoverished grad student (we ask ourselves in what possible field, seriously hoping not law, philosophy, or literature), is all wo wo wringing hands about this, and wonders if it is a plea in mitigation that they did not actually purchase work in question but obtained it 'by other means'.

I depose that if you are going to pirate a work and not pay the author, you are in no position to whinge that They Did Not Write It or indeed, complain at all. If you take a free book from a box that somebody has left on the wall outside their house for passersby to help themselves, you do not then go and knock on the door because somebody has scribbled on the pages and it is by no means a pristine copy.

Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei

Aug. 29th, 2025 08:56 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Two sisters quest up a climate-change-and-blight ravaged coast and across the seas to find their missing sister.


Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei

(no subject)

Aug. 29th, 2025 09:46 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] lilysea!

We are pleas'd to announce

Aug. 29th, 2025 08:51 am
the_comfortable_courtesan: image of a fan c. 1810 (Default)
[personal profile] the_comfortable_courtesan

The publickation in elecktronickal form and as a pretty bound volume, Clorinda Cathcart's Circle #24, Connexions: Widening Circles:

Several problems persist in troubling the circle around Clorinda, Dowager Marchioness of Bexbury. It is feared that there may be further adverse repercussions from the Hackwold Incident, while Baron Fendersham continues to linger in Town although Lady Wauderkell has taken retreat in a convent. New acquaintances are drawn into the circle, and new contacts flourish. Certain difficulties are unexpectedly resolved, while unanticipated trials arise.

As usual, there is also what is hop'd is a usefull guide to references and allusions in the text.

Pray enjoy, and do you so, go recommend about your acquaintance.

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