james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-24 01:59 pm
Entry tags:

Bundle of Holding: Cornucopia 2025



Bundle of Holding's 13th annual feast of top-quality tabletop roleplaying game ebooks.

Bundle of Holding: Cornucopia 2025
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-24 09:19 am
Entry tags:

Clarke Award Finalists 2023

2023: King Charles III is the most unpopular British King in the last 60-odd years, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Cabinet Secretary Simon Case’s comic routine is poorly received, and Sunak’s government ushers in a golden age of soaring STD rates.

Poll #33874 Clarke Award Finalists 2023
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11


Which 2023 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
3 (27.3%)

Metronome by Tom Watson
0 (0.0%)

Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick
1 (9.1%)

The Anomaly (translation of L'anomalie) by Hervé Le Tellier
0 (0.0%)

The Coral Bones by E. J. Swift
0 (0.0%)

The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard
9 (81.8%)



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

Which 2023 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
Metronome by Tom Watson
Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick
The Anomaly (translation of L'anomalie) by Hervé Le Tellier
The Coral Bones by E. J. Swift
The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-24 08:51 am
Entry tags:

The Coming Golden Age of Used Books



Just as the Great Fire of Rome was a boon for the building trade, so too will a modern catastrophe be a boon for used book stores.

The Coming Golden Age of Used Books
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-23 09:19 am

Benefits by Zoë Fairbairns



Mother's Benefits become the means by which British governments provide British women with the same benevolent management Britain once provided to India, Ireland, and Africa.

Benefits by Zoë Fairbairns
siderea: (Default)
Siderea ([personal profile] siderea) wrote2025-11-23 05:16 am
Entry tags:

This is a real place [geog, surrealism]

Saw this, blew my mind, thought I'd share. Behold, Lençóis Maranhenses:



2025 Oct 28: PBS Terra [pbsterra on YT]: It Looks Like a Desert. But It Has Thousands of Lakes

When I heard in the video how big it was, I turned on satellite view in Google Maps and popped "Lençóis Maranhenses" into the search bar:

Image below cut. Content advisory: trypophobes avoid )
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-22 09:13 am

Books Received, November 15 to November 21, 2025



Three books new to me. All are fantasies, two are series.

Books Received, November 15 to November 21, 2025

Poll #33866 Books Received, November 15 to November 21, 2025
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44


Which of these upcoming books look interesting?

View Answers

Mother of Death and Dawn by Carissa Broadbent (March 2026)
4 (9.1%)

Tides of Fortune by Lauryn Hamilton Murray (June 2026)
1 (2.3%)

Everybody’s Perfect by Jo Walton (June 2026)
33 (75.0%)

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

Cats!
31 (70.5%)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-21 10:56 pm

If I ever found myself in possession of a vast fortune

I would definitely found an SF magazine.

Most mags struggle with handling submissions but I had a moment of insight: all I need to do is tell writers to send me _good_ stories. Their crap, they can submit elsewhere. Bang! Workload down by 99%.
brickhousewench: (Subaru)
brickhousewench ([personal profile] brickhousewench) wrote2025-11-21 02:59 pm
Entry tags:

Flat tire this morning.

I started up the car this morning, pulled down to the end of the driveway, and as I was pulling out onto route 113 thought, "This doesn't feel right." I immediately pulled into the next driveway, got out and checked the car. Yep, flat tire on the right front/passenger side. I got back in the car and drove back home, backing into the parking space to make it easier to get to the tire when I call AAA. I checked it, and there's a nice big screw poking out of it. Grrrrr.

I was about to call and cancel my massage appointment when I remembered, "Hey, I still have another car!" I went back into the house to get the keys for the Honda, since I just put a new battery in it this week (and air in the tires) so that I could move it to my new assigned parking space. Someone in our building needed a handicap parking spot, so I had to shift down one space. * le sigh* I'm a little bit less mad about the new battery now that the Honda let me make my appointment today. Still need to dig out the title so that I can donate it to charity.

Sunset is at 4:20, and it's already cloudy and grey. I don't really want to be messing around with changing a tire after dark, and it gets dark early now. Besides, I've got to work today, so AAA will have to be first thing in the morning.
vvalkyri: (Default)
vvalkyri ([personal profile] vvalkyri) wrote2025-11-21 12:39 pm

(no subject)

I keep meaning to write about a play I went to last Saturday. November 4. It's about the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by Settler Yigal Amir 30 years ago, and it's a musical. It's not a particularly good musical but it is a very worthwhile production, and I spent at least the last 10 minutes in tears.

Because Yigal Amir's one action, thinking he was a hero... is the turn point for everything since, and honestly including our current national nightmare and how increasingly unsafe it is for Jews around the world *and here.* One person did so much damage.

There's showtimes through December 7th. Thursday through Sunday. Different talks after each; ours was Combatants For Peace. It's at a church on 16th near U and only like $25, and it is worth going to.

I should sort of scan the program but I also need to start getting moving towards Pittsburgh.

Sometime other than now, I might write about yesterday's blood libel at Union Station, and how that means I'm leaving earlier for Pitt Stop.

What also sucks is there's chats I'd love to mention this in but it would likely result in accusations of WrongThink.

https://www.voicesfestivalproductions.com/nov4-themusical
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-21 09:10 am

The Door on the Sea (The Raven and the Eagle, volume 1) by Caskey Russell



A young scholar and his diverse companions are dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission deep into enemy territory.

The Door on the Sea (The Raven and the Eagle, volume 1) by Caskey Russell
siderea: (Default)
Siderea ([personal profile] siderea) wrote2025-11-21 03:09 am
Entry tags:

Getting a head of things [gastronomy]

The Bostoniensis household's last grocery order included some cucumbers but the delivery service mystifyingly substituted for them a head of cabbage. They were very apologetic when Mr B called to complain, and refunded us the price of the cabbage, so now it's a free cabbage. But it's still here taking up a remarkably large volume of space in our fridge, what with the spherical thing, and it's a week before Thanksgiving.

Cooking a cabbage was not on our plans for this week. But throwing out a perfectly good cabbage seems sad. And I have been complaining about not getting enough veggies to eat. So.

Anybody have a very delicious recipe for cabbage that conforms to the following parameters?:

• Cooked. No raw cabbage.

• Really, really low effort. I am resigned to having to chop the cabbage itself, but maybe minimal other chopping of other veggies or meats. Something where the actual cooking isn't too fussy.

• Not haluski. We love haluski. We have most of the ingredients for haluski. We do not have the time or energy for taking on a project like haluski.

• Not stuffed cabbage. The kind with ground beef and tomato sauce. Neither of us likes it. Possibly because we don't like the taste of cabbage in tomato sauce.

• Not corned beef and cabbage. We love corned beef and cabbage but omg have you seen the price of brisket.

• Relately, maybe no stewing or slow cooking? The smell of slow cooking the corned beef and cabbage is dire, and we don't want to have to flush air we paid to heat. Maybe it would be okay if more heavily seasoned.

• Gotta mostly be cabbage. We have a lot of cabbage to get through.

We like spicy, though it's not required; no cilantro, and probably no coconut. Main dish or side, with meat or without.

Edit: Okay, maybe we'll just buy more cabbages. I am very excited by this harvest of recipes.
brickhousewench: (Oscar the Grouch)
brickhousewench ([personal profile] brickhousewench) wrote2025-11-20 11:42 am
Entry tags:

FML and F AI.

I am so tired of running into some roadblock at work and having someone pipe up with, "Have you tried AI?" like I'm just some kind of dinosaur for not realizing that our robot overlords can do my work quicker, faster, and cheaper.

AI is starting to feel like snake oil to me, the universal cure all for everything that ails you at work. And I trust it just about as much as I trust snake oil. But that doesn't mean I'm not willing to at least try the snake oil, even if I don't believe it will work (some of those health tonics actually did work, just very, very few of them).

I wrote about my never ending Release Notes saga the other day. And I swear, I had more people pipe up with "Did you try AI?" about it. YES, YES I DID TRY AI, AND IT FAILED TO HELP. Jesus Fucking Christ, trust me, I did not want do to a bunch of ugly manual copy/pasting. Of course I tried to get the bot to do the work for me. What the hell kind of fool do you think I am?

GRRRRRRR.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-11-20 09:09 am
Entry tags:

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay



A park guide's life is upended by a pandemic and her charming, idiot son.

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay