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

Elizabeth Warren here — Lt. Gov Peggy Flanagan told me I could reach out, because this is important. 
Peggy is the partner I need to get things done in the Senate,
that’s why I have officially endorsed her campaign.
I know she will be a champion for Minnesotans in Congress. 
Can you please pitch in $5 or anything you can to help power her campaign?
I’ll explain more below about why this is such a critical race.

Peggy Flanagan for Minnesota | Democrat for U.S. Senate
Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan's ready to take our Minnesota values to D.C. — to fight to rebuild the middle class, protect our rights, and hold the extremist billionaires trying to run off with our country accountable. If elected, she’ll be the first Native American woman to ever serve in the U.S. Senate. Will you join us in this Minnesotan-powered campaign?

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…

Channeling Revenant Feelings (Eagle Creek, Oregon, 2017)
(Hoping my friends in the US are doing everything in their power to help protect these sacred wilderness places from the onslaught of out of control greed...)
#FootpathFriday #ForestFriday

An excellent summary here via @… about how the structures of our civil society have failed to stop ICE from becoming Trump’s Brownshirts.
The one thing the piece omits: someone •is• stopping ICE. It’s the citizens filling the streets, honking and shouting and filming and generally harassing ICE, doing the work our government has failed to do. If it were not for that response being so widespread, sustained, and forceful, we’d be in far worse place right now. https://mastodon.social/@AnnaAnthro/115616389777857234

@… following up on our chat at #SDSL2025, I finally found some time to see how a #QGIS Processing Algorithm Provider plugin can be unit tested. Here's what I've …

trajectools/tests/test_run_algs.py at main
trajectools - Trajectools - trajectory data analysis tools for the QGIS Processing toolbox | Previous home: https://github.com/movingpandas/qgis-trajectools

I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Jane Doe
- an Epstein survivor
- just sued the Bank of New York Mellon
for funding Epstein and failing to file a Suspicious Activity Report
A Mellon heir is the one who gave $130M to pay the troops.
Seems bribey to me.
https://bsky.app/pro…

Mueller, She Wrote (@muellershewrote.com)
I haven’t seen anyone talk about how Jane Doe - an Epstein survivor - just sued the Bank of New York Mellon for funding Epstein and failing to file a Suspicious Activity Report. A Mellon heir is the one who gave $130M to pay the troops. Seems bribey to me.

so what you're telling me is that a member of hawkwind beat the dead to the pyramids by 9 months? and the deadheadiest member of #hawkwind, too, by a few accounts. have to squint, but here's nik turner flying an ice cream kid shirt in '76. https://…

One of the biggest political scandals in the #Philippines 🇵🇭 in 2024 was the accusation that Alice Guo, the elected town mayor of Bamban was not actually a Filipino citizen and instead was a Chinese spy that engaged in trafficking of Chinese nationals for illegal online gambling operations.
Following her recent conviction of human trafficking last November 20,