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Posted by Mike Glyer

(1) BETSY WOLLHEIM Q&A. Darrell Schweitzer conducts “Daughter of DAW: An Interview with Publisher Betsy Wollheim, Part I” at Black Gate. Schweitzer’s questions are boldfaced, followed by Wollheim’s answers. We hear so much about the trials and tribulations of the … Continue reading
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Posted by Mike Glyer

Chris M. Barkley was one of the winners present at the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon who accepted the committee’s offer to ship his trophy to the United States. The awards were sent to Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty. However, as McCarty told Barkley … Continue reading

Bundle of Holding: Cthulhu Reborn

Oct. 27th, 2025 03:19 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Nearly two dozen Mythos investigations in many eras from the open-license Cthulhu Eternal tabletop roleplaying game line produced by Cthulhu Reborn.

Compatible with your favorite Lovecraftian percentile-based systems)

Bundle of Holding: Cthulhu Reborn

A Mini-Vacay In Columbus: Part 1

Oct. 27th, 2025 05:42 pm
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

I know I’ve been writing about Columbus a lot lately, but unlike me, some people who live in Ohio have never really explored it before. Such was the case for Bryant, so obviously we had to fix that and go to tons of awesome restaurants and cafes and do fun stuff! I know, my sacrifice is great, but I really felt a calling to take him to the city and expose him to some of the finer things Columbus has to offer.

The first thing we needed was a place to stay, as we needed at least a couple days to really get our fill of funtastic stuff in. We wanted to stay close to the Short North area of Columbus, which is one of my favorite areas, but hotels in the Short North are limited and quite expensive. Every hotel I was looking at started at over $200 a night for just a standard room, so we went the route of an Airbnb. We ended up finding the perfect little apartment just a five minute walk away from the main area of the Short North.

The apartment is industrial style, which is not exactly my usual flavor of interior design, but I actually liked the apartment pretty well. It was clean and comfortable and you really can’t beat the location for the price we paid, which was $115 a night, and we stayed for two nights. It served its purpose well and I have no complaints about it! It’s even pet-friendly, so that’s nice. Oh, and it comes with a parking spot. Very important.

We got into the city at around 4pm, and we had dinner reservations so we figured we’d just grab a coffee and settle in to the Airbnb. I was absolutely set on going to Qahwah House, a Yemeni coffee shop I had seen tons of videos about on Tik Tok. I didn’t realize until looking them up for this post, but they have over 25 locations. I had honestly thought that it was just in Columbus. Anyways, Qahwah House was really cool! It was very spacious and open, with tons of different Yemeni pastries that all looked great.

While I had initially really wanted to try their iced strawberry matcha, iced mango matcha, or iced lavender matcha, both Bryant and I ended up getting their iced pistachio latte:

Two 16oz iced coffees in plastic to-go cups. Both drinks are separated into two parts, with basically green milk (pistachio base and milk) on the bottom and the coffee and ice on top.

We also got their pistachio dream cake, which wasn’t actually like a cake, more like a fruit tart, but with a crunchy pistachio base and if the fruit was replaced with pistachios. I love pistachio so this was a great afternoon treat!

We got to the Airbnb and decided we actually had plenty of time before to dinner to walk along the Short North and check out some shops and whatnot. It was a Monday, so a lot of stuff was closed, but we ended up going to a jewelry shop called Red Giraffe Designs. I’m honestly pretty picky about jewelry but they had so many cute pieces. I got a gold rose ring for my pinky:

A shot of the ring on my pinky, the main focus is the rose but there's also some cute little leaves.

Bryant ended up liking mine so much that we went back a second time and he got a leaf ring for himself:

A gold ring that has eight leaves total.

I think he has pretty good taste!

Finally, we walked down the street to our dinner reservation. You might remember my post over FYR from January, where I talked about how yummy it was and how much I liked it. Well, I wanted Bryant’s first impression of fine dining in Columbus to be a good one, so I picked FYR for our first meal.

When we got there, it was actually completely dead, and stayed that way throughout our visit. I mean, I know it was a Monday, but I was very surprised just how wildly empty it stayed. Not that I’m complaining, of course. I prefer the quiet.

I was tempted to get exactly the same dishes that I had last time, as I had really enjoyed all of those so much that I didn’t want to deviate, but I also love trying new things so I made myself choose at least a couple different things. It helped that Bryant and I decided to share everything.

To start off, we both got one of their mocktails. Bryant got the Mexican-Americano, which is Mexican Coke, Martini & Rossi Vibrante (I had to look up what this was), and lime. I chose the Spritz Free, which is Giffard NA Aperitif, Leitz 0.0 Sparkling Wine, and Sicilian Lemonade.

Our two mocktails, one served in a Coke glass bottle with tajin around the rim and a lime wedge stuck in the top. The other drink is served in a big stemmed wine glass and is filled all the way up with pink-orange liquid and a large orange round in it.

I love that the Mexican-Americano drink is served in the actual glass Coke bottle, and comes with Tajin around the rim. I hated his drink and he hated mine, but thankfully we each really liked what we got for ourselves. My spirit-free spritz was light, refreshing, and made me think of the Aperol spritzes I had on the JoCo cruise.

For our appetizer we actually went with a side dish instead of a starter, and got the wood-oven roasted mushrooms:

A small cast iron dish full of portobella mushrooms and a plate of accompanying bread beside it.

Bryant and I are both big mushroom lovers, and these portobellas were packed full of flavor with a really yummy gremolata on top. Garlic, lemon, fresh herbs, what’s better than that. The toasted bread actually does not normally come with the mushrooms, but since we got it as an appetizer instead of a side, our waiter thought it would be a good idea to bring out something to serve as a vehicle for the mushrooms, which was much appreciated.

The waiter brought out an amuse bouche, which was this little fried potato in chili butter:

A little piece of potato with some sort of cream and a little microgreen on top.

This little bite had a lot of kick! That chili butter was no joke, it was actually quite spicy. I always appreciate an amuse bouche though, so I wasn’t about to complain, especially since I know my spice tolerance is weak.

Even though I said I’d try some new stuff, I of course had to get the porcini risotto and roasted heirloom carrots again. But this time I also ordered the salmon. Here’s how it all looked:

Three dishes, all laid out under the little table lamp so they have enough light on them to actually photograph them. The one in front is the risotto, served in a big, white, shallow bowl. On the left is the salmon, the filet propped up on a bed of hominy. On the right is the plate of roasted carrots topped with goat cheese and salsa verde.

Compared to last time, I think the risotto was presented even more nicely than the first time, and even looked like a bit bigger of a portion size. The carrots looked pretty much exactly the same, but they actually were more toothsome than last time, which is unfortunate because I much prefer a super soft, extra roasted carrot. They weren’t horribly undercooked or anything like that, just a little bit harder than the first time I had them.

As for the salmon, I thought it was absolutely awful. I took one small bite and it was the most fishy salmon I’ve ever had. I almost never send food back but it was honestly just inedible and it was $36. The waiter took it back and off the bill without any questions, which I appreciated because I was genuinely shocked how bad it was. Our waiter asked if we wanted to try something else instead, so we picked the roasted cauliflower.

A halved head of cauliflower, browned on the top and topped with almond slivers and herbs.

I know a lot of people don’t care for cauliflower, but I’m usually a pretty big fan of it. I think it’s over-hated. In the case of this roasted cauliflower, I thought it was fine. It was roasted well enough that it had my preferred softer texture, and I liked the almonds and breadcrumbs for some slight crunchy texture. It mostly just tasted like cauliflower, but at least it was a sizeable portion.

Slightly disappointed by dinner, I was looking more forward to dessert. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that FYR’s new dessert menu is entirely gluten-free except for one item, which was not at all the case when I came earlier in the year with my gluten-free friend. I was glad to see they made that change, and I ended up getting the “toasted coconut,” which was coconut mousse, dark chocolate, banana ice cream, and a pineapple rum compote:

The chocolate and coconut mousse are shaped like a coconut, broken in half to reveal the pineapple compote inside. The banana ice cream is served on the side and it all sits on a pile of toasted coconut shreds.

Look how flippin’ cute that is! It’s a coconut! I love it. This dessert was so up my alley as someone who adores coconut and loves pineapple. It was very delicious and full of coconutty flavor. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the banana ice cream, but it was incredible. It wasn’t artificial-banana-y at all, it actually tasted very mild and had a more delicate banana flavor while still being perfectly sweet and creamy. The pineapples were soft and sweet and the hardened chocolate coconut shell provided a fun contrast of texture. The toasted coconut shreds on the bottom of the bowl really tied it all together.

Bryant got the only non-GF dessert, the PB&C:

A thin slice of the layered dessert. It is varying shades of brown, with the darkest part (brownie) on the bottom and the lightest part (peanut nougat) on top.

Brownie, chocolate baked custard, peanut cremeux, caramel, and peanut nougat. Truly a Reese’s Cup lover’s fine dining dream. Definitely a must-try if you’re a serious chocolate fanatic, but I preferred my dessert because it was less heavy.

Once it was all said and done, the bill wasn’t as much as I had anticipated, partially due to the salmon being taken off, and partially due to the fact we got mocktails instead of alcohol. I actually ended up tipping as if the salmon had still been on the bill because I appreciated how well our waiter handled the situation, and it wasn’t his fault the salmon wasn’t good. Our server was honestly pretty great, he was very friendly and attentive and was a cool guy all around. I enjoyed our service this time more than the last time I went. Plus, he boxed up our food for us and I’m always a fan of that.

All in all, we had a good time at FYR, and for the most part really liked our food and drinks.

After that, it was back to the Airbnb, as Bryant was pretty tired since he usually has a 9pm bedtime due to his work. Our first day in Columbus was pretty short but well enjoyed!

Have you been to a Qahwah House before? Which ring is more your style, mine, or Bryant’s? Are you a coconut fan? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

oursin: A cloud of words from my LJ (word cloud)
[personal profile] oursin

But I am so, so fed up of people who use 'silver bullet' when they mean 'magic bullet'!

Silver bullets kill things, werewolves, mostly, right; or just generally Bad Guys when fired by the Lone Ranger.

Magic bullets Do Good - like curing sifilis, thank you Ehrlich and Hato, they are targeted remedies.

Also, however hyperliterate I am myself and have been from a young age, I don't think it's the panacea proposed here: There is a silver bullet for childhood happiness: a love of reading.

Just because she (and I and I daresay many of you who are reading this) found our happy place in reading, doesn't mean it's going to be that for all children.

I am entirely there for emphasising the role of pleasure in reading, for

meeting children where they are. It means allowing children to read books that might be perceived as too old and too young for them; it means relishing your child’s love for comics and heavily illustrated books

and not gatekeeping and niggling about what they are reading.

But I don't think this is For Everyone any more than Going Out and Playing In the Nice Fresh Air.

And on that, I really liked this: Children should have a right to play in the streets, alleys, pavements and car parks of their neighbourhoods. Refers to a letter about children playing in streets, etc, rather than in designated playgrounds and parks:

It assumes that children should be “taken” to designated play spaces, rather than allowing for the possibility that children should be able to access playable space without adults. And, finally, it fails to acknowledge that parks and other green spaces afford only certain kinds of play, and that children demand – and deserve – diverse spaces for diverse forms of play, not just ball games, swings and slides.

Update

Oct. 27th, 2025 05:00 pm
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Posted by Nicola Griffith

Weather and flowers

Bright blue autumn sky above pots of bright marigold, salvia, more salvia, and gerberas.
The back deck, early afternoon October 5, 2025.

The weather here has finally become a proper Seattle autumn. We were having an unusually fine, bright, and dry October—flowers still blooming, hummingbirds flitting about—but then we had three or four days of simply deafening bird congregations, all kinds of birds, all talking at once, and I knew that they knew it was time to head south.

And they did. And now the rain—the atmospheric river, and the wind. And our cherry tree—always the last in Seattle (or so it seems) to bloom—is finally showing tinges of orange at the tips of its branches. In the rest of the city (the bit that is not the ravine-and-Nickel-Crick1 microclimate that is our house) trees are already brilliant red, and gold, and russet.

The top picture is the back deck on the afternoon of October 5. This one is the kitchen deck on a misty morning of October 8.

Softened by mist, a big blue pot of jasmine, and smaller pots of geranium, fuchsia, begonia, million bells, and more
Front deck on a misty morning, October 8, 2025.

I’m guessing that by this time next month both images will show mostly sticks.

Beasties

The cats are going through their usual seasonal adjustments. Charlie is refusing to accept that the sun isn’t up at 6 am and consequently is getting grumpy that we won’t let him out in the crepuscular light to get munched up like a pop tart by a passing coyote. George is coming home half an hour after dark as usual only to be confused by our lack of preparation for bed and therefore our non-readiness to provide horizontal royal cushions for his sleeping comfort.

Here they are yesterday morning with us in the kitchen—you can see that Charlie’s fur is finally beginning to grow back in…

Foreground, a tabby cat sitting on a table—a huge patch of his shoulder shows fur just growing back—turned to look at another tabby cat asleep on a cat tree.
Trying to decide whether to roust his sleeping brother just for the hell of it…

Writing

This one is going to be a long (very long—the just-finished draft is about 5,000 words) post about what I am and am not working on right now, and, (mostly, and more to the point), why. I’ll post it first on Patreon, for both free and paying members. Yes, this is a deliberate attempt to get more people to sign up to Patreon. Patreon is designed to offer tangible support to creators whose work you enjoy. (If you’re curious about what I’m using that money for, specifically, you can read all about it here.) If you sign up you join a small, relatively private group of about 250 Patrons. Obviously, the money is important, but not far behind that is the attraction of a small, private audience: I find I’m willing to test things out there that I’m not ready to do before a wider public. Sometimes those are creative things but sometimes they’re personal. So, for example, the writing update post that will go up tomorrow will talk about some personal things that so far only close friends and family know. Yes, at some point I’ll be ready to tell the whole world, but it feels less vulnerable to start small.

Basically, then, if you want to know more, and know it earlier than most, become a Patron. You can join for free (you can stay a free member for years; there’s no nagging to up your support) and have access to the upcoming writing/personal update and many other posts. Many posts, of course, are reserved for those who agree to pay $3 or more per month because, after all, raising money is why I started the Patreon in the first place. (The smaller-audience benefits have only become apparent with time.)

I hope to see you over there…


  1. Long ago, Kelley and talked about setting up a small publishing company that we would call Nickel Ink. (Kelnic Inc. just doesn’t have the same…pizzaz.) And if we ever won the Mega Millions or Powerball we’d create a holding company called Team Nickel to run the various charitable foundations and initiatives we’d set up. So when, occasionally, during one of our periodic atmospheric rivers that dumps inches of rain in the space of 24 hours, a temporary creek forms across our back yard, we—naturally—call it Nickel Crick. ↩

Clarke Award Finalists 2020

Oct. 27th, 2025 09:09 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2020: Boris Johnson proposes an unbuildable bridge between Scotland and Ireland, Universal Credit successfully sends stress levels soaring, and the Tories handle Covid as skilfully as they did Brexit.

Poll #33767 Clarke Award Finalists 2020
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 39


Which 2020 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
1 (2.6%)

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
33 (84.6%)

Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky
4 (10.3%)

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
12 (30.8%)

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
1 (2.6%)

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
18 (46.2%)



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

Which 2020 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
The Last Astronaut by David Wellington
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

a mask

Oct. 27th, 2025 08:26 am
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Posted by Mike Glyer

Let’s celebrate The Universe Box‘s February 3rd release by Tachyon Press! I have opened the universe box that is my life, and will be sharing a piece of it every Monday. By Michael Swanwick: Decades ago I was reading the issue of … Continue reading

Wow! That's a lot of words!

Oct. 26th, 2025 10:04 pm
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

I stumbled on a list of word counts of famous novels and discovered that my longest piece of fanfic is approximately 16,000 words longer than Moby Dick!

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Posted by Mike Glyer

(1) UK COMIC CONS HIGHLIGHT BOOK AUTHORS. London MCM Expo Comic Con had over 70 guest authors this weekend — twice as many book guests as comic guests. YALC, the UK YA Lit Con at London Film and Comic Con, … Continue reading

2025 Pegasus Awards

Oct. 26th, 2025 11:33 pm
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Posted by Mike Glyer

The 2025 Pegasus Awards for excellence in filking were announced on October 26 at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF). Enjoy the sound clips of all the 2025 nominees here (where there are also links to the lyrics and information about the artists). BEST FILK … Continue reading
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Posted by Mike Glyer

The 67th issue of Uncanny Magazine, winner of eight Hugos, plus a British Fantasy Award, a Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, will be available on November 4 at uncannymagazine.com.  Hugo Award-winning Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Michael Damian Thomas is proud to present the 67th … Continue reading

Chainsaw Man Movie

Oct. 26th, 2025 04:29 pm
lydamorehouse: (nic & coffee)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 A friend of mine from my D&D group (Nick) suggested that we go see Chainsaw Man: The Reze Arc together.

After my experience with Psycho-Pass: Providence, I suggested we see the subtitled version even though that meant seeing it in IMAX and at 10:30 pm. The tl;dr of the link above is that, because I tend to watch my anime in Japanese with subtitles, I actually had a hard time telling who was speaking when I watched a dubbed movie of a franchise I am super familiar with. I was surprised how many scenes required me being able to know who was speaking---when a character was on the phone or had their back to the audience--and how similar English-speaking voice actors seem to be in terms of regional accent and vocal range. I feel like, even though my understanding of Japanese is minimal, I do subconsciously detect Kansai dialect when I hear it and so even when Japanese VAs vocal ranges are similar, I know who is who. Anyway, you can read my whole rant about it linked above, if you want. 

Back to last night's movie...

I am a moderate fan of Chainsaw Man. I reviewed the first couple of volumes of the manga in January of 2022 and found it decidedly OKAY. Denji's boob obsession kind of turned me off on the page. But, when it became super popular and the anime came out in December of 2022, I watched it and sort of understood the hype. Although I will say that Mason and I were also watching Jujutsu Kaisen at the same time as Chainsaw Man, only we had a break in between seasons of Jujutsu Kaisen because we were watching together and he had this pesky thing called a college education, and when we returned to Jujutsu Kaisen, I was often like, "Yuji? I thought his name was Denji."  (To be fair to me: both demon hunters who are aligned with demons themselves, both kind of stupid boys, both in funky little trio poly situations with a dark-hair dorm mom-boy.)  

Given my inability to distinguish between these two mega hits, I was grateful for the fact that the movie wouldn't be starting until late because that gave me a chance to rewatch a lot of the series. Crunchyroll has this condensed version you can watch which is good because it seemed clear to me from the trailer that I was going to be expected to remember who was who and what had happened previously. I actually got through most of it before Nick showed up. He showed up early, actually, so we sat and watched a half hour or so on the porch.The original anime doesn't exactly end on a cliffhanger, but I was glad we reviewed it because I'd forgotten about the shark demon, Beam. 

The movie was... FINE. I mean, I was telling Mason this morning when he asked about it, it didn't really feel like a continuation of the story in a if you don't watch this, you're missing something sort of way. He said, "So more of a character development piece?" I nodded, but added, "In so much as Denji has a personality beside boobs. This movie his character development can be summed up as: which is more important? The boobs I imprinted on, or NEW boobs? (And both sets of boobs want to kill him.)"

But it was fun to go out. The IMAX wasn't standing room only, but it was decently packed for a 10:30 pm movie. The crowd was all otaku, of course, and at least one person cosplayed Denji. (I mean, the nice thing about cosplaying any of the Public Safety Division is that they basically dress like salarymen so all you have to do is pull of anime hair.) It's been a while since I've been in a crowd that young. 

For reasons known only to AMC Roseville, there were a RIDICULOUS number of previews before the movie. Like a dozen? It was far more than what I've come to expect, and I LIKE movie previews!  Only a couple of them were for other anime movies, so think they were sort of scattershotting the crowd hoping to lure some of us back with something, ANYTHING. 

Nick is someone I've known since college. He used to be one of my best friends, but we grew apart benignly, unintentionally. We struggled a bit to land on any subject to explore deeply in part, I think, because Nick has latched on to the fact that we have anime in common. And, as discussed here previously, saying you have anime in common is a little like saying you have TV in common. Finding the places where the Venn Diagram overlaps can be difficult, even among very voracious fans. I'm a tough one to match up with, too, because I tend to read more manga than I watch anime and some of the stuff I loved as manga never had an anime made!  And these days, of course, a lot of anime are being made from light novels or are entirely studio produced. (To be fair, Psycho-Pass was entirely studio produced and that didn't stop me from loving it, but the number of people who have seen that is small and so the Venn Diagram doesn't often connect there.)

Nick is very self-consciously fond of magical girl series, too, which is not a genre I often connect with. I do... sometimes, but I'm more often knee deep in shounen (see above.) But, we had a nice time doing that thing that fans will sometimes resort to wherein, since we have only the meta-genre/format in common, he told me the plot summaries of his favorites and I did the same for him. 

A good night out, all and all.

Seven Deadly Sins of Reading

Oct. 26th, 2025 08:36 pm
naraht: Moonrise over Earth (Default)
[personal profile] naraht
Via [personal profile] foxmoth, this is a brilliant meme but also a challenging one! With a certain degree of "oh well, I guess that one does fit..."

Lust, books I want to read for their cover:
- Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere (OK I have read it but I would have picked it up just for the cover, UK edn)
- Andrew Porter, The Imagined Life
- Benjamin Wood, Seascraper

Pride, challenging books I've finished:
- Uwe Johnson, Anniversaries
- Laszlo Krasnahorkai, War and War
- JRR Tolkien, Hobbitinn (The Hobbit in Icelandic)

Gluttony, books I've read more than once:
- Alaistair Reynolds, Redemption Ark
- Sergei and Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra
- Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air (I like reading this on airplanes, God help me)

Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
- David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite
- Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars
- Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
- Mary Renault, Return to Night
- (...plus various books in multiple languages but I think that's the only one with multiple editions in English)

Wrath, books I despised:
- RF Huang, Babel
- Don DeLillo, Underworld (I want so much to like this but I don't)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

Envy, books I want to live in:
- My own

Culinary

Oct. 26th, 2025 06:51 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

I thought last week's bread was holding out pretty well until it suddenly sprouted mould - however there was still some cornbread left + rolls.

Having been out for lunch on Friday I was not feeling like anything much for supper but made partner a Spanish omelette with red bell pepper and had some fruit myself.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, strong white flour, turned out v nice.

Today's lunch: Crispy Baked Sesame Tofu - not sure whether there should not have been some actual sesame seeds somewhere in the mix? also thought maybe I was a bit cautious with the amount of tamari in the sauce - and didn't think this turned out particularly crispy....; served with sticky rice with lime leaves, baked San Marzano tomatoes and mangetout peas stirfried with star anise.

Some Big News With the Scalzi Family

Oct. 26th, 2025 05:18 pm
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Posted by John Scalzi

Athena has been looking for a place of her own for a while, and she wanted something here in Bradford, to be close to work and to us, both of which we were pleased about. We’d all been tracking properties here in town when they went up for sale, and even looked at one or two to see if they were a place Athena could see herself living in. Nothing quite gelled.

Then this Craftsman-style house came up on the market. We got a chance to go look at it and we all came away from it thinking, basically, wow, this is it. Lots of room, in great shape, amazing character, and, for Athena, walkably close to work. It’s kind of a dream house for what she needs and wants.

As a family we put in an offer and it was accepted, and pending inspections (which we expect will not offer any particular surprises) we close in a couple of weeks. I’m really happy for Athena, and also, happy for us. And while I’m at it, just a tiny bit wistful, as our kid is truly is, officially, moving out and on her own, and that’s a big moment for any parent.

Only a tiny bit wistful, though, since I plan to make her current bedroom my new music studio. That beats having to walk down two flights of stairs and into a cold basement to get to my current set-up. I’m pretty sure Athena will see this as a fair trade.

— JS

(no subject)

Oct. 26th, 2025 11:41 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] finisterre, [personal profile] rivka and [personal profile] taelle!
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Posted by Mike Glyer

Written by RL Thornton of Freakflag Once upon a time, the most important science fiction convention of 1971 (Noreascon I) considered an unlikely slate of candidates for the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo. For the first time, there were audio recordings in … Continue reading
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Posted by Mike Glyer

(1) SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA OPENS SUBSTACK BRANCH. As John Clute explains in “SFE on Substack” at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the Encyclopedia will remain free, the Substack posts beyond the first five will be for subscribers. …Most of what … Continue reading

Not the effort nor the failure tires

Oct. 25th, 2025 05:56 pm
oursin: A C19th illustration of a hedgehood, with a somewhat worried expression (mopey/worried hedgehog)
[personal profile] oursin

Just one of those weeks that felt like a strain - lower back flareups and insomnia and long-scheduled commitments that could not be deferred -

Though I did get a few small bits of life admin accomplished, like finally making an appointment for the first session of dental inlay work and chasing up whether journal reviews editor actually got my review.

But at the moment having the blahs.

Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
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

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Eight works new to me. Three fantasies, two horror, two SF, and one hard-to-classify RPG. One of the SF books is pretty horrory, so maybe that should be three fantasies, three horror, one SF, and one hard-to-classify RPG.

Books Received, October 18 — October 24

Poll #33761 Books Received, October 18 — October 24
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 48


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Abyss by Nicholas Binge (May 2026)
6 (12.5%)

Testimony of Mute Things by Lois McMaster Bujold (October 2025)
27 (56.2%)

Morsel by Carter Keane (April 2026)
4 (8.3%)

The Cove by Claire Rose (May 2026)
6 (12.5%)

Outgunned by Riccardo ​“Rico” Sirignano & Simone Formicola, with art by Daniela Giubellini (December 2024)
6 (12.5%)

And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer (May 2026)
16 (33.3%)

Lightning Runes by Harry Turtledove (March 2026)
8 (16.7%)

A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo (May 2026)
24 (50.0%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
37 (77.1%)

Death To You

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:22 am
[syndicated profile] file770_feed

Posted by Mike Glyer

By SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie: No Lesser-Spotted Thrill-Suckers here… This week has something a little special for those who have not yet enjoyed the adventures of Judge Dredd and the weekly British SF/F comic packed with Thrill-Power, 2000AD. Rebellion (who own 2000AD and its characters) has just released … Continue reading

(no subject)

Oct. 25th, 2025 12:30 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] aurumcalendula!

UK people: Scrap The Bathroom Ban

Oct. 25th, 2025 11:33 am
rydra_wong: Grasshopper mouse stands on its hind legs to howl. (turn venom into painkillers)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/scrap-the-bathroom-ban

From TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance. Produces a template letter to your MP which you can customize as much as you can or want to.

Article by Jane Fae of TransActual (who have been absolutely kicking ass):

https://www.scenemag.co.uk/jane-fae-a-director-of-transactual-writes-on-the-eve-of-launching-a-new-campaign-to-get-mps-to-reject-the-ehrcs-bathroom-ban/

There are now a bunch of Labour MPs who are worried and making noises at the government, even if it's only about the impact on businesses of rules which are possibly illegal and impossible to follow without getting sued:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/23/dozens-of-labour-mps-warn-of-chaos-for-firms-over-gender-recognition-advice

It's alleged that Bridget Phillipson was sitting on the guidance because she was worried it'd scupper her bid for the deputy leadership, whereas Powell is actively trans-friendly and has called for MPs to have a chance to debate and vote on the guidance.

The below may be an overly optimistic view but it seems clear there's tension and conflict between the EHRC and government:

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/frightened-and-desperate-ehrc-anti (warning for Substack, in case you are boycotting it)

So this is a moment when leverage is possible, and letters to your MP may actually do something.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Since I belong to a little bitty credit union, my branch is closed tomorrow and I have to go into the city to get a replacement and, while I'm there, have them fix my name - if they remove my middle initial from my card, my last name will fit properly, easy-peasy. Or I can wait until Monday, since I'm certain I lost it in the house, but it turns out there's another protest tomorrow so I may as well go in.

Anyway, speaking of protests and politics and food banks, [personal profile] petra is offering up fanworks:

If you donate at least $25 in cash or in-kind to a food bank at any point between now and the end of the Trump Administration, and you either share a fandom of mine and want a drabble or fannish poetry, or you want original poetry, drop me a comment, and I will write for you.

So, there you go, that's a win-win for everybody.

Edit: Well! As you might expect, as soon as I posted I happened to roll my chair over my card! It's fine, chair and card are both fine. I still need to make them fix my name, but it can wait.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
This is the last mending they'll take, and I'm not sure how long it'll hold. I've ordered a new pair, and on the one hand I know $100 is cheap - especially for my prescription! - but on the other hand, I didn't want to spend it. And I didn't exactly love my choice of frames, either, but they were inexpensive and fit my pupil distance, so I'll live with them.

(Though, looking on the website, it seems glow in the dark frames are an option!? I would never, sounds like a real visual annoyance, but man, so much respect for anybody who goes in that direction!)

*********************


Read more... )
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Posted by Mike Glyer

(1) YALOW IN CHENGDU FOR TIANWEN AWARDS AGAIN. On the afternoon of October 24th, the 2025 Chengdu Chinese Science Fiction Literature Contest Achievement Release Conference was held at the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum, where the full list of Tianwen Award … Continue reading
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Posted by Tristan Beiter

Psychopomp and Circumstance coverI love when a story is about itself, when every aspect of the tale is bound up with all the others, when everything about it is rooted in particulars. This doesn’t just go for speculative fiction (A. R. Gurney’s plays, for example are deeply rooted in the minutiae of the mid-century American upper-middle class), though I do think that the habits built by genre reading can help make those specifics easier to see as a motivator in SFF. After all, when the world of a story can’t be taken for granted because, to the reader, it is new in a way that contemporary fiction can never achieve, it can become easier to see the assumptions and connections that hold a narrative universe together.

Eden Royce’s Psychopomp & Circumstance is a profoundly particular novel in all the best ways. Set in a fantastical Reconstruction South Carolina where magic is commonplace, and centering on twenty-one-year-old free Black woman Phaedra (Phee) St. Margaret, it could not be set in any other time or place or about any other people. Out of these details emerges a compelling story of choices, selfhood, family, and grief that resonates in its specificity.

The immediate particularity of the novel is communicated right from the very first sentence: “Her final cotillion was in full swing and Phaedra St. Margaret was vex.” This opening not only provides important information about Phee’s age and class but also situates the voice of the novel in its Southern Black context. By aligning the language of the narration with the long history of Black American Englishes through language like that adjectival “vex,” Royce locates race and place not only in individual characters but in the fabric of the narrative itself. This is underscored by the skillful use of free indirect discourse throughout the text. The third-person narration stays close to Phee, sublimating her thoughts and feelings into the language of the story subtly and effectively. This, in turn, helps the people around her—her mother, her father, her smug and arrogant suitor Desmond, funeral director Prioleau Cross, even her deceased Aunt Cleo—render in vivid color, full of feeling and presence.

The narration also bolsters its representation of Phee through the absence of laborious explanation. Although the novel is full of description, it never halts itself to reveal features of its world to an uninitiated reader, especially not features that might correlate with real-world demographics. The speculative aspects of the setting emerge naturally and quickly—a comment about the ritual necessary for magic, the carriage drawn by hippocampi through the flooded streets of New Charleston. The cultural particularities are treated even more smoothly. Food is the most salient aspect of this book to this white northerner. Benne seeds (a sesame cultivar brought from West Africa and common in traditional food around Charleston); scuppernongs (a large muscadine grape found in the American South); and “a crispy-top sweet potato pone with dark crusty corners of crystallizing brown sugar and butter” (a distinctive style of baked or fried bread): all are among the new-to-me foods that make an appearance and that would be immediately recognizable to not only Phee but to large numbers of past and present Black and Southern Americans.

Food is, of course, not the only manifestation of this move. The evocative descriptions that nonetheless expect the reader either to know what is referred to or address that lack of knowledge on their own, without altering the novel or interrupting the narrative, help to bring its approach to cultural particularity to the fore. But the plot of the novel is also rooted in these particulars. In the second chapter, the story really gets going when a messenger arrives to announce the death of Phee’s Aunt Cleo and asks who will serve as her psychopomp, making sure that her spirit is sent on its way appropriately. Drawing again on the specifics of African-American culture [1], the “homegoing” that Phee needs to plan and execute will allow Cleo’s spirit to be at rest, fitting this distinctively Black Christian funerary tradition seamlessly into the magic of the setting.

Phee takes on this responsibility over the objections of her mother, who would rather Phee settle down with ambitious and well-to-do Desmond than attempt to make her own way and disrupt the plans her mother has for her. This is especially true given that Phee’s aunt and mother became estranged due to a necklace of their mother’s being found in Cleo’s bag at their own mother’s  homegoing service a number of years earlier. Although Phee’s mother doesn’t make an in-person appearance after Phee departs home to her aunt’s to manage the service, she haunts the narrative as much as the ghost of Cleo does, a constant presence reminding Phee that she lives in her particular nineteenth-century time and place, with all the expectations and opportunities that attended women in the period. Even the modes of independence that Phee does consider—Cleo’s life in her community, entering into business under her father, and the like—feel carefully selected to resonate with the setting, rather than having Phee experience too much that might be redolent of our contemporary world.

As the novel develops, so too does Phee herself. Early on, many of her choices feel reactive, merely a response to her mother or her situation: She decides to visit her aunt because some gossip reminds her that she hasn’t done so; she takes the position of psychopomp largely because her mother won’t; she requests the carriage go at a leisurely pace because it is what she is used to, even though it means her trip to her aunt’s home takes all day. Later in the novel, however, Phee has developed a much clearer sense of what exactly she is looking for in her quest, and she is able to make her own, more proactive, choices. By that point, she sees what will be able to make her happy and what sort of person she really wants to be, and in the process, she comes to better understand her family and her relationship to them—even as she thinks through what it might really be like to live her own life rather than the one her mother has laid out for her.

Part of doing so is dealing with grief. As Phee better understands Cleo’s life, and her own feelings about the loss of her aunt, this understanding translates into a clearer sense of herself, her goals, and the possible forms of life that are open to her beyond respectable marriage to a man handpicked by her mother for his social status and comfortable income. For Phee, grief for her aunt—and regret for her own failure to participate in the life Cleo built—become important tools in making sense of her own future and her own family. By the end of the novel, Phee is able to see not only the choices she can make but the whole complex matrix of choice that animates her family life, seeing how everyone’s choices impact the others around them and either open or constrain possibilities.

In this way, one of the core questions of the novel is choice. Not in the sense that Royce is providing her readers with instructions for what choices to make, but by means of exploring what it is even to have choices—and all the many ways that choices are constrained. The setting is never far from this idea. While it is clear that Phee’s family is an established free Black family, the way in which enslavement forecloses the ability to choose keeps coming back in inescapable ways. Most notable in this respect is a scene around two-thirds of the way through the book in which Phee meets a recently freed woman whom Cleo had been teaching to read—a fact Phee discovers when, without thinking about it, she asks the woman and her husband to help her find an address and hands them a business card, only then realizing that this young woman born into slavery would not have been permitted to learn to read.

This is not the only time that the novel uses its early Reconstruction setting to explore choice-making and the various kinds of limitations on their freedom to choose (in the broadest sense) that people experience. This combines with the particularities of Phee’s family to really show what is lost when genuine choice is not available—and what is gained when people are truly free in that way. Yet part of the novel’s approach to choice is also one of interconnectedness: That these reflections on choice are brought about by familial bonds, and a complex web of moral and personal obligations, is never forgotten. Freedom does not, in this novel, come from isolation but rather from the deliberate building of meaningful ties. Part of what Phee is empowered to do by choice is to better understand how she wants to exist in community with the people around her, how to build and maintain an interconnected network which supports all of their wellbeing and freedom.

Ultimately, Phee’s story is about exactly these sorts of personal and local matters—her family and friends, her life. Even when the story gestures at its biggest ideas, they are grounded in specific characters who live in a specific time and place. The story would be utterly different if any of these elements were changed: There are many stories about choices and grief and family, told from many times, places, and cultures; but what makes Psychopomp & Circumstance so successful is the way that it is exactly itself. Insofar as these questions are “universal,” they are universally particular. Choices are made in circumstances; grief is felt immediately and differs from loss to loss and mourner to mourner; families are composed of people with backgrounds and feelings and experiences. All of this is self-evident, but so often the discourse of universalism insists that only what is shared between different experiences is significant, flattening those particularities. In Psychopomp & Circumstance, however, Eden Royce refuses that hollowing effect to deliver a richly alive narrative that is able to think through its ideas because of its grounding. It draws the reader in by insisting on its details—and in so doing serves as a reminder of the power of the granular in choices, communities, and storytelling.

Endnotes

[1] Royce makes clear in her acknowledgements the source of this particular moment: She mentions planning her own grandmother’s homegoing, revealing the ongoing presence of this tradition in the present. [return]


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Posted by John Scalzi

Spoiler: Not really, they’re just playing around. But they sure do look fierce, don’t they. I think Smudge is actually happy to have a kitten to tussle with, since Sugar and Spice hate it when he tries to do that. Saja, on the other hand, is up for a wrassle any time.

— JS

Today I socialised

Oct. 24th, 2025 07:29 pm
oursin: The stylised map of the London Underground, overwritten with Tired of London? Tired of Life! (Tired of London? Tired of Life!)
[personal profile] oursin

Some while ago I was invited to A Do for the retiring secretary of An Organisation with which I had had to do for many years over their archives and in other capacities. And since it had been this longstanding relationship and relations with the person in question had always been amiable, I said yes, I would go.

It involved a smallish lunch party in a restaurant on Battersea Bridge Road, which I discovered is nowhere near Battersea Power Station Tube station, which would have made it an easy-peasy journey from my starting place, but (according to Tfl) can be reached by a journey involving at least 2 Tube lines and at least one bus journey.

Excelsior: I set out on the 2 tubes, bus from Victoria, which involved rather a lot of faffing around the vicinity of Victoria station to find the relevant stop, and it was a nice day, and the bus journey, while it does take in things like Victoria Coach Station of unblessed memory, passes by some very nice bits of Chelsea including the Embankment.

Faffed around a bit more, having got off at the designated stop, trying to find the restaurant, but arrived in fact a little early though at least one of the other guests was already there.

And it was an agreeable occasion even if these were people I have not seen for yonks and did not know all that well outside of specific context then, and some I did not know. The food was good, though perhaps not so amazing that I'm inclined to make the odyssey out to Battersea again.

And then repeated the journey in the opposite direction, in company with one of the other guests who was bound for Euston.

[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

I assert to you that my little town of Bradford, Ohio is in fact the literature capital of Darke County, the county in which I live, and also probably of Miami County, which I don’t live in, but which Bradford is also part (the county line runs right down the middle of Route 721, our main street).

A bold claim, I know! But hear me out! In this village of just 1,850 people:

1. Since the turn of the century, more than three dozen books written in Bradford, fiction and non-fiction alike, have been traditionally published and made available for sale all across this country!

2. Books written in Bradford have been translated into three dozen languages across the globe!

3. The number of New York Times bestselling books from Bradford reaches into the double digits!

4. Written works from Bradford have won prestigious literary prizes here and abroad!

5. Work written here in Bradford has been adapted into Emmy-winning television shows!

Which other cities, towns and villages in Darke County can make that claim? Greenville? Ansonia? North Star?!? I think not. Not even the bustling Miami Country metropolises of Troy and Piqua can match Bradford’s prodigious output!

And yes, there have been notable writers who have been from Darke County (Lowell Thomas comes to mind), but most of their work hasn’t been written in Darke County. And while bestselling works have been written about cities in Miami County (the Captain Underpants series, taking place in Piqua), again, they weren’t written in those cities. Once again, Bradford comes up on top. It is small but mighty!

Clearly the next step is to petition the village government of Bradford to have “Bradford: Literature Capital of Darke County” on all its official communication henceforth. I think it’s reasonable and accurate. I will get on it. I shall report back.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


High school student and semi-professional tarot card reader Danika Dizon assists her PI mother to look for a missing person... a teen who vanished after Danika gave her a tarot card reading.

Death in the Cards by Mia P. Manansala

Octocon 2025 Report by James Bacon

Oct. 24th, 2025 08:22 am
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Posted by Mike Glyer

Octocon 2025, held in-person on October 11 in Dublin, Ireland, and October 12 online. By James Bacon: My mom dropped me off at the Maldron Hotel, a quick 17 minute spin across the M50, but inside I was met with … Continue reading

(no subject)

Oct. 24th, 2025 09:13 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] innocentsmith and [personal profile] intothespin!
[syndicated profile] file770_feed

Posted by Mike Glyer

(1) WORTH WAITING FOR. Here’s something I never expected to find online. Well done, Fanac.org! Issues #2 and #3 of “Uncle Albert’s Electric Talking Fanzine” – which originated in 1981 on cassette tape. This pair features Larry Tucker, Tom Barber, … Continue reading

The Big Idea: J. R. Blanes

Oct. 23rd, 2025 08:39 pm
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Posted by Athena Scalzi

While some ideas get shelved entirely, some ideas are merely on the back burner for a while before becoming fully realized ideas and narratives. Such was the case for author J. R. Blanes, who kept returning to the idea that ended up becoming his newest novel, Portrait of Decay. Follow along to see how a friend inspired Blanes to have this idea in the first place.

J. R. BLANES:

A friend once asked me, “If you couldn’t create, what would you do?” Since I’ve been a creator all my life—writing stories, playing music, and any number of other creative endeavors—I’d never considered what would happen if that was taken from me. My entire identity, my life even, is intrinsically tied to my imagination. Without the ability to create, I wouldn’t be the same person. I don’t know who I would be. For all I know, I might not exist. 

Now, I think what my friend was really asking was what I’d do for a career if I couldn’t create, but that first interpretation of his question stuck in my head. I was struggling with my identity as a writer at the time. I’d spent years writing literary fiction with increasingly less satisfaction and very little success. Frustrated, I returned to my roots and my first love: horror. I’d grown up reading the likes of Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe before graduating to Stephen King and Clive Barker (my biggest influence). Even after I began writing horror again, I wasn’t sure what kind of horror writer I wanted to be. I wrote some short stories—a few published, many others thrown into the trunk to rot—and hoped that one day soon I’d find my voice. 

Portraits of Decay started as a short story about a young woman who travels to see a swamp witch to buy a poison that will trap her cheating boyfriend under her control. As far as story plots go, it was very thin, which was why I shelved it for a while for other projects. Yet I kept coming back to it, knowing there was something there. I just didn’t know what. I really wanted to write about New Orleans and the effect the city had on me during the years it was a home away from home while I worked for a private passenger train company out of Chicago. I yearned to invoke its culture, its traditions, and its folklore through the lens of my imagination. Still, all I had was a somewhat cliché revenge tale. I knew there needed to be more. 

My friend’s question sparked a conflagration: What if I explored what happened to an artist when he no longer had the ability to create—as he slowly lost his identity (or soul, if you will) while withering into nothing? I imagined what emotions I’d feel if I was trapped with the ideas, thoughts, and anxieties in my head. The dark path I might take with no outlet to express these pieces of myself. A path that would surely lead to depression, anger, and even madness. While contemplating such an existence, I endured extreme panic attacks and bouts of intense fear. It’s with these intense emotions that I painted the main character of Portraits of Decay, Jefferson Fontenot, as he suffers at the hands of his girlfriend Gemma Landry after she doses him with a concoction from swamp witch Mirlande St. Pierre.

To ground these themes of obsession and control, I turned to another form of art well-remembered from my time in New Orleans. I remembered checking out the galleries around Royal Street, the Bywater, and Faubourg Marigny: The art I witnessed captured the vibrant atmosphere, multiculturalism, and colorful landscape of NOLA. It also captured the dark lore that ran through its streets and floated along the swamps of the bayou. Writing from the artists’ point of view provided the narrative with a visual aspect to the loss of identity. My descriptions of the emotions and struggles my characters move through in the course of the novel are framed through the lens of art. To make this world as visceral and instinctive as brushstrokes on canvas, I spent many hours researching the art world—talking with artists, visiting galleries, and working with my editor who is a painter herself. 

What would I do if I couldn’t create? My novel Portraits of Decay is the closest I can come to an answer. In writing this book, I found my voice as a writer amidst the terror of its loss.

—- 

Portraits of Decay: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Apple Books|Kobo|Ruadán Books

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky

Additional links: Animated cover on Bluesky

oursin: Illustration from medieval manuscript of the female physician Trotula of Salerno holding up a urine flask (trotula)
[personal profile] oursin

(Yogi Tea Bag tags, bringing the woowoo by random bollox generation long before AI started getting in on the act.)

Anyway, are we at all surprised by Millions exploited by ‘menopause gold rush’ amid lack of reliable information.

(Query: how far is lack of reliable information due to its being overwhelmed by menopause quackery, murmurs historian of medicine.)

Millions of women are being exploited by a “menopause gold rush” as companies, celebrities and influencers take advantage of a “dearth” of reliable information on the issue, experts have said. Healthcare companies and content creators saw menopause as a “lucrative market” and were trying to profit from gaps in public knowledge, women’s health academics at University College London (UCL) said. Researchers called for the rollout of a national education programme after finding a significant number of women do not feel well-informed about menopause.

You know what? I think part of this can be put on to the decline in the good old trad women's magazines, which had a) health columns written by pseudonymised health professionals b) agony aunts prepared to Do The Research and having a stack of helpful leaflets written in conjunction with qualified experts.

Brought to you by someone who was devouring her mother's magazines pretty much from the time she became literate and therefore encountered the concept of menopause decades before it became of personal relevance.

And what still gets very little play is what Stella Duffy points out in this piece:

while everyone in my research talked about physiological and emotional difficulties in the transition, once they were out the other side – even while dealing with workplace discrimination and the caring demands of their loved ones – all of them also described postmenopause as time of thriving and growing. We’re not done yet.

Margaret Mead mentioned this, but I'm not sure the 70s feminist discourse around 'croning' did a lot of favours to the idea of what happened after the pause.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The August 2023 Nightmares Underneath Bundle featuring The Nightmares Underneath, the old-school horror-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game from Chthonstone Games.

Bundle of Holding: Nightmares Underneath (from 2023)

Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner

Oct. 23rd, 2025 08:51 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Faraday, Oregon, seems to have a missing persons problem. Its problem is much worse.

Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
[syndicated profile] file770_feed

Posted by Mike Glyer

This January, Avengers #34, part of superstar writer Jed MacKay and acclaimed artist Farid Karami’s current hit run, will mark the 800th issue of the Avengers ongoing series. To celebrate this milestone, the issue will be a giant-sized spectacular with special … Continue reading

(no subject)

Oct. 23rd, 2025 09:42 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] chalcedony_cat, [personal profile] diony and [personal profile] em_h!

Hark, a Signature

Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:12 pm
radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
Comics artist Kate Beaton's signature

Kate Beaton had a sore throat after hitting two major festivals before dropping into Munro's Books, but she was every bit as fierce and funny as you would expect, and more.

So glad I dragged my sorry carcass out of the house for this.

Surreally, I missed about 15 minutes of the Q&A because I felt a coughing fit coming on and went to have it out in the street. But it was still great. (Leftover hyper-reactive cough reflex, not continuing illness.)

§rf§
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
and since we have a ton of computer mice (mouses?) already I just swapped it out. But I still was bugged by the ton of crud that I know was embedded in my old mouse, so before I tossed it I took it apart to clean the scrollwheel.

So much cat hair, much of it felted, and I'm honestly surprised the scrollwheel was functioning at all. But it was so cheaply made that putting it back together would've been a hassle and a half, so I'm glad I had the sense to just replace it rather than depending on my own repair skills!

*****************************


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