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?

From Translink
The Pattullo Bridge will be closed southbound into Surrey for three nights, because of ongoing construction work for the Pattullo Bridge Replacement Project. The directional closures will take place overnight on the following dates:
Thursday, November 27 (9 p.m. to 5 a.m.)
Friday, November 28 (9 p.m. to 5 a.m.)
Sunday, November 30 (9 p.m. to 5 a.m.)

The bridge will also remain closed southbound for pedestrians and cyclists

How a focus on video helped News UK's Talksport transform from a radio station to a multi-platform sports brand, with 35M to 45M YouTube views per month (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/

How Youtube revenue is fuelling Talksport's transformation into video brand
News UK's director of digital for broadcasting shared how Talksport's new studio has helped it progress in becoming a more video-based brand.

The experience @… describes here is deeply familiar to me: advertisers keep shoving in front of me ads in which I have •negative• interest.
Does the massive adtech surveillance apparatus actually work on someone out there? Because it’s sure failing to target me. https://wandering.shop/@Violinknitter/115624133826239199

I don't think I'm ever going to enjoy gifts.
I can get why people would give them to children. After all, children don't have their own budget. However, I'm talking about occasional gifts, not a new toy every second week, because "we must outcompete the other grandparents". But to adults?
Once I've heard that you should gift people with what they won't buy themselves. Well, that's won't work for me. I'm a minimalist. If I don't need something, I don't want to have it. Unnecessary junk is only emotional burden to me.
I can get why you'd enjoy something handmade. But something people bought? If I need something, I can buy it myself, when I need it. And I definitely don't need people to prove to me that they never cared to learn who I am, and just buy whatever they like or whatever is "fashionable"; which usually means exactly the opposite of what I'd prefer (i.e. something minimalistic). Or even worse, I don't need people manipulating me through gifts.
Sweets? Besides my diabetes, I don't really enjoy expensive shit that people generally buy because it's what's advertised. For the money they waste on it, I'd buy three times as much sweets I'd actually enjoy.
Gift cards? Oh yes, "you aren't supposed to give money, so let's just give the equivalent of money that's actually worth less than money". Actual money? And here we reach the true nonsense; we exchange the same amount of money, so it's just pointless gesture. Unless one of us gives less money…
What I'd really like, as a gift? Maybe that people would finally bother accepting me as who I am. The absolute minimum of caring that I hate consumerism, and not fueling it "for me".
#AntiCapitalism #minimalism #ActuallyAutistic

TIL: the #39c3 DECT network also covers at least part of the Radisson hotel. I was just woken up by a call from someone to my DECT.
Have to switch it off next night.
Well, not much harm done, my alarm would have woken me up soon anyway for my Angel shift at 04:00 in the Cloakroom Lost and Found.

I grew up with a lot of male cousins who loved watching sports. I understand that some people enjoy gambling for emotions, but I don't.
That's why I like books. Instead of gambling for feelings, a book takes my emotions on a journey, rips them to shreds in the middle in an unpredictable way, then grinds my feelings into a fine paste that they feed to their goat, which is sacrificed in a bloody feral ceremony whose carnage further defiles said emotional residue
Or you can …

Niet te geloven dit, voor een flink bedrag in Rusland tegen een balletje gaan slaan terwijl datzelfde land nu burgers en kinderen in Oekraïne vermoordt.
Griekspoor doet mee aan toernooi in Rusland, minister Van Weel adviseert: 'Doe het niet' - https://nos.nl/l/2592260

Griekspoor doet mee aan toernooi in Rusland, minister Van Weel adviseert: 'Doe het niet'
Tallon Griekspoor doet dit weekend samen met zijn vriendin Anastasia Potapova mee aan een Russisch demonstratietoernooi.

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