Tootfinder

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

Trying to read a post claiming GitHub’s decision to purge toasts is *bad* for accessibility, even though it's on perennially inaccessible Medium.
And it’s behind an authwall.
Fine, I’ll sign in.
Oh, it’s actually behind a paywall.
Oh well. It’s not meant for me. Or anyone.

So @… makes these wonderful, personal videos highlighting individual people and families in Gaza with little glimpses into their lives, their struggles, and what help they need.
If you’re not following her, please do. She’s a gem and we’re very lucky to have her on the fediverse.
💕
PS. She’s also helping out with Gaza Verified (and I’ll extend a mo…

The Department of Homeland Security has ordered immigration officers to gather identifying information about anyone filming them and to “send that information to Intel who will do a ‘work-up’ on them,” a federal law enforcement official directly involved tells me.
“Meaning, trying to identify them via social media, running their license plates if available, and running a criminal history check,” the official explained.
The directive is part of a sweeping, nationwide effort by U.S…

ICE Making List of Anyone Who Films Them
“We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

A propos de Meta et la sécurité des utilisateurs, déclaration de Brian Boland, ancien vice-président des partenariats chez Meta :
« Mon sentiment Š l'époque, et mon sentiment aujourd'hui, c'est qu'ils ne se soucient pas vraiment de la sécurité des utilisateurs. Ce n'est pas quelque chose auquel ils consacrent beaucoup de temps. Ce n'est pas quelque chose auquel ils pensent. Et je pense vraiment qu'ils s'en moquent. »

Lee Miller took this on a holiday in Cornwall, where she had a fling with Paul (right). I love Leonora's wry smile to the camera.
It was 1937, and Leonora would soon have a nervous breakdown after Max was arrested as the war broke out. But this is a moment of bliss.
#photography #BlackAndWhite

Local Dallas radio host eviscerates CeeDee Lamb following Cowboys Week 12 win https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/onsi/news/local-dallas-radio-host-eviscerates-ceedee-lamb-following-cowboys-week-12-win

Pro-Russian hackers claim attack on French postal service operator https://therecord.media/pro-russia-hackers-claim-attack-la-poste

Today's the 2nd day I'm wearing my black-yellow Engelbert-Strauss e.s.motion 2020 to work - in an office.
It's also the 2nd day of people making derogatory comments like "Are you going to a construction site?" and "You can't go to a customer like this, they'll think you've come to fix your bath." and "At least noone will run you over, reflecting like that."
You already banned me from wearing my kilt in summer! They are comfort…

Writing unit tests for my random number generation library continues to be difficult. My tests are failing because the bias in the distribution exceeds my expectations, but I'm wondering whether I should just repeat the test more times and permit it to exceed expectations some of the time (as long as it does it symmetrically/rarely/etc. My gut tells me that second-order expectations aren't any better than first-order expectations, but another part of me disagrees.
Thinking more as I write this (writing is thinking): second-order tests can at least give me better info to work with towards fixing things I think! So maybe I'll invest in them.
#coding