Tootfinder

Day 18: Mark Oshiro
Having just learned that Oshiro is nonbinary, they're an instant include on this list. In veering extremely heavily towards YA, and losing a spot that would have gone to an absolutely legendary mangaka, anime writer, or feminist philosopher, but "Anger is A Gift" and "Each of us a Desert" are just that good, and I'm trying to steer a bit towards towards lesser-known authors I respect.
I already mentioned "Anger is a Gift" above, but to recap, it's a painful, vivid, and beautifully honest story of queer love, loss, and protest against an oppressive system. CW for racist police murder, intergenerational trauma, and police brutality against highschool students. It's a book a lot of Americans could benefit from reading right now, and while it's fiction, it's not fantasy or sci-fi. Besides the themes and politics, the writing is just really solid, with delicate characterization and tight-plotted developments that are beautifully paced.
To me "Each of us a Desert" is maybe even more beautiful, and Oshiro leaps into a magnificent fantasy world that's richly original in its desolation, dark history, lonely characters, and mythical magic. Particularly the clearly-not-just-superscription but ambiguously-important/powerful magical elements of Oshiro's worldbuilding are a rare contrast to the usual magic-is-real-here's-how-it-works fare, and pulling that off a all as they do is a testament to their craft. The prose is wonderful, probably especially so if you speak Spanish, but I enjoyed it immensely despite only knowing a few words here and there. The rich interiority of the characters, their conflicts both with each other and within themselves, and the juxtaposition of all that against origins in cult-like ignorance allows for the delivery of a lot of wisdom and complex truths.
Between these two books, so different and yet each so powerful, Oshiro has demonstrated incredible craft and also a wide range of styles, so I'm definitely excited to read more of their work and to recommend them to others.
I'm also glad to have finally put a nonbinary author on this list; the others I had in mind won't make it at this point because there's too much genre overlap, although I'll include them in my didn't-make-it list at the end. I've now got just 2 slots left and have counted up 14 more authors that absolutely need to be mentioned, so we'll see what happens.
#20AuthorsNoMen

#monsterdon "figure it out on the computer"
oh sure. chatgpt will have all of the answers

It pairs well with something that I think it was @… said at one point "the job of the senior engineer is to bring clarity"
So often in tech work we end up in a field of ambiguous possibilities, and people usually default to throwing habits and opinions out.
But it turns out, in a great many cases, _we can actually check what the right answer is_, and we should generally do that.

Join us for the 6th Annual 'Rethinking Thanksgiving' webinar!
Date: Sunday, Nov 23 at 4pm ET / 1pm PT
Theme: "Colonialism is the Problem, Solidarity is the Answer"
Register: tinyurl.com/2025rethinking
ASL, Spanish Interpretation and live captions in English.
This is a free event. It is a fundraiser and donations will be accepted. The event will be recorded, so if you cannot attend live, register and the recording will be sent to you.
Join us to challenge the legacy of the ‘thanksgiving’ holiday. We will discuss how to collectively work together to confront colonialism and defend Mother Earth.
¡Únase a nosotros en el Sexto Webinario Anual ‘Repensando el Día de Acción de Gracias’!
Fecha: domingo, 23 de noviembre, a las 4 pm ET / 1 pm PT.
Tema: “El Colonialismo es el Problema, la Solidaridad es la Respuesta”.
Inscríbase: tinyurl.com/2025rethinking.
Interpretación en lengua de señas americana (ASL) y español, y subtítulos en vivo en inglés.
Este es un evento gratuito. Se trata de una recaudación de fondos y se aceptaršn donaciones. El evento se grabarš, por lo que si no puede asistir en directo, inscríbase y se le enviarš la grabación.
Únase a nosotros para cuestionar el legado de la festividad de “Acción de Gracias”. Dialogaremos de cómo trabajar juntos colectivamente para hacer frente al colonialismo y defender la Madre Tierra.
Sponsors/Patrocinadores: Tonatierra; Indigenous Solidarity Network; Catalyst Project; Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ); American Indian Law Alliance; Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) Action; Honor the Earth; 350.org; Spirit of Mandela, Christians for a Free Palestine; Sudan Solidarity Collective; Anticolonial Arrivants; Land Justice Futures; Westchester for Palestine.

I freelanced for @… for 10 years, writing 37 articles/features
They were an amazing team, interested in global #justice, #labor, &

As Equal Times closes, the work continues
This is it. Our final article. Equal Times, the global labour news platform, will cease to publish as of December 2025. The website – which was, for more than a decade, an invaluable resource on the realities of work, society, fundamental rights, and more: the victories secured, the innovations introduced, but also the many indignities, injustices and stubborn anachronisms endured – will remain online, but no new content will be added. We launched back in autumn 2012 with a simple mission …

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

The ideas that finally bubbled up to the surface in The Point of No Return last night have been festering in the back of my brain for months. Because, although it's a bit inchoate, it's only saying out loud what most of us already know.
The job now is no longer to turn the ship around. We don't have the wheel, and those who do will not listen.
The task now is to build lifeboats. To build resilient spaces in which fragments of humanity can survive.

The Point of No Return
I can't stop climate change by myself. I can't create a sustainable future for my village by myself. To do either of these things, everyone else needs to work together. But badgering people, being frustrated with people, being angry with people (and yes, I am angry — very angry — with people I know, and like, and respect, very much) doesn't motivate them to work together. My very frustration, my very sense of urgency, makes me a liability. I should stop.

📝 Join us for the 6th Annual 'Rethinking Thanksgiving' webinar!
Date: Sunday, Nov 23 at 4pm ET / 1pm PT
Theme: "Colonialism is the Problem, Solidarity is the Answer"
Register: tinyurl.com/2025rethinking
ASL, Spanish Interpretation and live captions in English.
This is a free event. It is a fundraiser and donations will be accepted. The event will be recorded, so if you cannot attend live, register and the recording will be sent to you.
Join us to challenge the legacy of the ‘thanksgiving’ holiday. We will discuss how to collectively work together to confront colonialism and defend Mother Earth.
¡Únase a nosotros en el Sexto Webinario Anual ‘Repensando el Día de Acción de Gracias’!
Fecha: domingo, 23 de noviembre, a las 4 pm ET / 1 pm PT.
Tema: “El Colonialismo es el Problema, la Solidaridad es la Respuesta”.
Inscríbase: tinyurl.com/2025rethinking.
Interpretación en lengua de señas americana (ASL) y español, y subtítulos en vivo en inglés.
Este es un evento gratuito. Se trata de una recaudación de fondos y se aceptaršn donaciones. El evento se grabarš, por lo que si no puede asistir en directo, inscríbase y se le enviarš la grabación.
Únase a nosotros para cuestionar el legado de la festividad de “Acción de Gracias”. Dialogaremos de cómo trabajar juntos colectivamente para hacer frente al colonialismo y defender la Madre Tierra.
Sponsors/Patrocinadores: Tonatierra; Indigenous Solidarity Network; Catalyst Project; Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ); American Indian Law Alliance; Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) Action; Honor the Earth; 350.org; Spirit of Mandela, Christians for a Free Palestine; Sudan Solidarity Collective; Anticolonial Arrivants; Land Justice Futures; Westchester for Palestine.
!rethinking thanksgiving flyer (https://cdn.some.pics/adjb/690fbe4acd06c.jpg)

This evening I have been listening to one of @… 's podcasts and thinking about my failure in trying to lead the village's planning working group, and about the cognitive dissonance underlying my Tricycle project. I suspect this essay will be a grim read; it's not well formed in my mind as I sit down to write.