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

Watching #IdrisElba portray the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 prime minister and the United States 🇺🇸 president in two movies this year wasn’t in my bingo card. 😮 One movie is a fun watch and is very silly, while the other is sobering and really terrifying.
#films

'Eisige Zeiten' #FotoVorschlag 'icy times'
Oh I have a couple of frosty photos, but this might be one of my best. I spent quite a while there to capture the cold feeling.
Packed in multiple layers, I really spent quite a while around that spot in order to really see the right motives.
It just reminds me that I could post more of my winter photos! :)
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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

Wenn Du dieses "Hacker-Guy schleust kurz vor knapp entscheidendes Virus in Bad-Guy-Weltzerstörungscomputer"-Feeling hast, aber an der Packstation.
https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:oflombnj6v6xyohhatfkbzyd/po…

Tom Gauld (@tomgauld.bsky.social)
2/3 I have made three of my cartoons into new, limited edition prints. You can get them now at www.tomgauld.com/shop

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation plans to gradually cut 900 jobs to help it save $334M by 2029 as it faces a lower license fee and falling commercial revenues (SWI swissinfo.ch)
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/swiss-broadcasting-corpo…

Swiss Broadcasting Corporation confirms plan to cut 900 jobs by 2029
Under the ongoing restructuring process, 900 full-time equivalent job cuts are planned, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) confirmed.

Nice to see a UK party leader demonstrate some actual compassion and care this Christmas. I'm so fed up with politicians pedaling hate and division trying to pander to terrible racism and xenophobia, trying to pick up the votes of the hateful.
This is what political leadership really is. Not following the right wing media hatred but countering it.
Zack Polanski's Christmas message is less than five minutes.
#green #christmas

Today's adventure: the train departs, and a minute later I notice that the lamps outside are moving in the wrong direction. The following thoughts pass through my mind in express speed:
• Illusion? Nope, definitely going front from where I'm sitting.
• Did I confuse directions before taking the seat? Nope, we're definitely moving south.
• Did I really take the wrong train?! I think it departed at the right time, what's the likeliness…
Then I suddenly realize that it's apparently taking the roundabout route, through #Poznań Franowo rather than Poznań Wschód.
#rail

Graphene and thin graphite films for ultrafast optical Kerr gating at 1 GHz repetition rate under focused illumination
Amr Farrag, Assegid M. Flatae, Mario Agio
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17713 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.17713 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.17713
arXiv:2511.17713v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The ability to address sub-picosecond events of weak optical signals is essential for progress in quantum science, nonlinear optics, and ultrafast spectroscopy. While up-conversion and optical Kerr gating (OKG) offer femtosecond resolution, they are generally limited to ensemble measurements, making ultrafast detection in nano-optics challenging. OKG, with its broadband response and high throughput without phase-matching, is especially promising when used at high repetition rates under focused illumination.
Here, we demonstrate an ultrafast detection scheme using the third-order nonlinearity of graphene and thin graphite films, operating at 1 GHz with sub-nanojoule pulses and achieving 141 fs temporal resolution. Their exceptionally large nonlinear refractive index, orders of magnitude higher than conventional Kerr media, enhances detection efficiency at smaller thicknesses, enables sub-picosecond response, and supports broadband operation. Their atomic-scale thickness minimizes dispersion and simplifies integration with microscopy platforms, optical fibers, and nanophotonic circuits, making them a compact, practical material platform for nano-optical and on-chip ultrafast Kerr gating.
toXiv_bot_toot

It's Friday, and that means it's time for #LetterboxdFriday. Watched a bunch this week, but my #Last4Watched here is a mix.. free to watch on YouTube stuff - some short, some not - some strange 70s stuff, etc. Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds is super weird, man 😂 And finally, the making of Wil…