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

A profile of Mubi, as it deals with backlash including employee dissent and subscriber and partnership cancellations over its investor Sequoia's ties to Israel (Will Tavlin/Vulture)
https://www.vulture.com/article/mubi-art-house-movies-streamer-distributor…

Who Is Mubi For?
Who is Mubi for? The art-house movie streamer had a cultlike following, writes Will Tavlin. Then it started to expand.

Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality. All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests. It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse. The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view,…

What if dinner was public infrastructure - again?
"food charity Nourish Scotland are pushing for the reintroduction of public diners to Scotland: diners subsidised by the state to provide affordable, nutritious, and filling meals that are accessible to everyone regardless of their financial status.
“There's an element of universality, dignity, and quality that comes with something being a public institution or a part of public infrastructure,” said Anna Chworow"

What if dinner was public infrastructure?
A Scottish charity wants to reintroduce state-subsidised diners for all—a potentially a big ask in the current political climate.

In a world overflowing with misery and terror, it is difficult to hear of things getting even worse.
Each day is a new descent into deeper levels of shame, disappointment, and anger, at being an American, at living amongst so many greedy, selfish, and hopelessly ignorant and cruel humanzees.
But nothing I am feeling can compare with the despair and terror of Ukraine, as Trump withdraws all support for Ukraine, and helps Putin with his fiendish agenda.
US media will not repo…

Not Only Russia Hits Ukraine
Live from Ukraine 🇺🇦

I’ve spoken with my boss (he’s a bit of a dickhead but his heart’s in the right place) and confirmed that I won’t be getting fired for opposing Israel’s ongoing genocide and supporting the human rights of the Palestinian people to live with freedom and dignity like the rest of us but not everyone is as lucky.

Pro-Palestinian influencer Dr. Nahla Al-Sarraj fired following Zionist smear campaign
Dr. Nahla Al-Sarraj gained hundreds of thousands of social media followers by discussing the Gaza genocide. She was fired after a pressure campaign from Israel lobby groups that she believes aimed to silence her. Despite this, she remains unbowed.

Angor is a crowdfunding protocol for nostr and bitcoin.
Dan here is building it. Kickstarter without middle men.
Accountability is key. What stops the fund raiser just fleeing with the coin?
Funds are programmed to be released in stages, time locked in a multisig.
So if they aren't meeting milestones, investors can withdraw. If the founders are buying lambos instead of building, just cash out at that point.
Permissionless and decentralised, no servers except nostr relays and bitcoin nodes. No third party's claiming 30 percent fees. The system is a nostr client scanning relays for investment object types. Allowing investment into the funding contracts and subscription to updates.
#nostr #nostrshire #angor

In a groundhog day loop of explaining why this hierarchical model cannot effectively be represented in the unified flat format they're trying to push. You can absolutely represent it in a flattened way, but it requires breaking out the child components into their own collection.
We end, once again, with the telling pause of disinterest and multitasking, followed by a distracted "mmm hmm" and promises to circle back on it later.

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading