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

This is pretty cool. Not often somebody gets to announce the discovery of a whole new branch of life. The cells contain mitochondria unlike any known before. Features support the #endosymbiont theory of #mitochondria origins, that they were originally separate animals but one got swallowed by so…

Newly Discovered Organism Could Represent a Whole New Branch in The Tree of Life
It's not every day that biologists announce an entirely new branch of life, and this one has been hiding under their noses for years.

2/2 Reflection on #citizenship:
I do not treat the concept of “#democracy" lightly. I was born into the aftermath of centuries of totalitarian oppression that ended suddenly, leaving the nascent Ukrainian state of the late 90s and early 2000s floundering in the turbulent whirlpool of hopes and fears felt by millions of people who were finally allowed to ponder: how to build a free democratic state in the place of Soviet and imperial ruins?
I was taught the words "democracy", "citizen", "freedom", "voting", “liberty" (and more) by people who, less than two decades prior, weren't allowed to leave the borders of their country. I was told about self-determination by people whose political choices were ridiculed, punished, and eviscerated form most of their lives. The duty of governing ourselves felt to us ephemeral - a nice fantasy, akin to a fairytale or a utopia from fictional works.
And then I saw those same people fight with their bodies and souls once the previously unfathomable democracy was threatened. Protests in 2004, then again in 2014, then the unthinkable war against foreign invasion in 2022. Democracy no longer felt abstract or silly. It became as tangible as saying "I love you".
I write of Ukraine as I reflect on becoming a citizen of another country because the history and values of my adopted United States feel as real as the skin on my legs, the significance of its legacy lays as heavy as the weight of my waist-long hair, and the desire to uphold the freedoms of its Constitution burns my throat as harshly as dehydration after a long day in the sun.
People have asked me why I even want to join this country, when the present moment is shrouded in impenetrable darkness. And I answer: because I've felt the warmth of a newly lit fire of freedom breaking through shadows that for centuries looked like solid walls. I have seen kindness, and solidarity heal the fear and hate of oppression. I've seen liberty emerge from nothing but the human soul.
I am not a religious person, but I have faith. Faith in the ideals at the foundation of the American project. Faint but powerful recognition that "we the people" now includes me.
I love #America. And I hope to keep loving my home for the rest of my life.

Puget Sound marine layer with an extremely well defined edge. Maybe a hundred feet high, and in about the same horizontal distance you go from pea soup to a bright sunny day with clear blue skies

"""
[…] Paradoxically, the more a population grew, the more precious it became, as it offered a supply of cheap labour, and by lowering costs allowed a greater expansion of production and trade. In this infinitely open labour market, the ‘fundamental price’, which for Turgot meant a subsistence level for workers, and the price determined by supply and demand ended up as the same thing. A country was all the more commercially competitive for having at its disposal the virtual wealth that a large population represented.
Confinement was therefore a clumsy error, and an economic one at that: there was no sense in trying to suppress poverty by taking it out of the economic circuit and providing for a poor population by charitable means. To do that was merely to hide poverty, and suppress an important section of the population, which was always a given wealth. Rather than helping the poor escape their provisionally indigent situation, charity condemned them to it, and dangerously so, by putting a brake on the labour market in a period of crisis. What was required was to palliate the high cost of products with cheaper labour, and to make up for their scarcity by a new industrial and agricultural effort. The only reasonable remedy was to reinsert the population in the circuit of production, being sure to place labour in areas where manpower was most scarce. The use of paupers, vagabonds, exiles and émigrés of any description was one of the secrets of wealth in the competition between nations. […]
Confinement was to be criticised because of the effects it had on the labour market, but also because like all other traditional forms of charity, it constituted a dangerous form of finance. As had been the case in the Middle Ages, the classical era had constantly attempted to look after the needs of the poor by a system of foundations. This implied that a section of the land capital and revenues were out of circulation. In a definitive manner too, as the concern was to avoid the commercialisation of assistance to the poor, so judicial measures had been taken to ensure that this wealth never went back into circulation. But as time passed, their usefulness diminished: the economic situation changed, and so did the nature of poverty.
«Society does not always have the same needs. The nature and distribution of property, the divisions between the different orders of the people, opinions, customs, the occupations of the majority of the population, the climate itself, diseases and all the other accidents of human life are in constant change. New needs come into being, and old ones disappear.» [Turgot, Encyclopédie]
The definitive character of a foundation was in contradiction with the variable and changing nature of the accidental needs to which it was designed to respond. The wealth that it immobilised was never put back into circulation, but more wealth was to be created as new needs appeared. The result was that the proportion of funds and revenues removed from circulation constantly increased, while that of production fell in consequence. The only possible result was increased poverty, and a need for more foundations. The process could continue indefinitely, and the fear was that one day ‘the ever increasing number of foundations might absorb all private funds and all private property’. When closely examined, classical forms of assistance were a cause of poverty, bringing a progressive immobilisation that was like the slow death of productive wealth:
«If all the men who have ever lived had been given a tomb, sooner or later some of those sterile monuments would have been dug up in order to find land to cultivate, and it would have become necessary to stir the ashes of the dead in order to feed the living.» [Turgot, Lettre Š Trudaine sur le Limousin]
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

I was shot point-blank.
At sixteen years old, I chased down and tackled a man who had stolen a woman’s purse.
In the struggle, the thief shot me at point-blank range.
The bullet tore through my gut, lodging in my liver.
Doctors weren’t sure I would survive.
Hi, it’s Tony Box,
candidate for Texas Attorney General to replace Ken Paxton.
That day, I got a second chance at life.
I vowed to dedicate the time God had given me to the servi…

Tony Box for Texas Attorney General
Tony Box is running for Attorney General because it’s time Texans had an Attorney General who works for them.

A great 'thought for today' from A Word A Day https://wordsmith.org/awad -

Life is mostly froth and bubble, / Two things stand like stone, / Kindness in another’s trouble, / Courage in your own. - Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet (19 Oct 1833-1870)

Imagine a world that we all control together, not controlled by oligarch or dictators, even indirectly. Imagine something truly collaborative. That world would be very different from our own. In some ways many of us could have a lot more opportunity. But in others, we would be restricted.
In such a world, we couldn't really have elite luxuries. Having such luxuries is only valuable so long as others do not.
> Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one.
- The Social Ideology of the Motorcar
Imagine a world in which we think about luxury in a radically different way, not as something that only has value via exclusivity but something that enriches the lives of the owners more as more people have them.
What would living in such a world be like? Can you describe a day in your life?
#SolarPunkPrompts #Writing #Prompts

a human: "I want to put a cat that is physically able to kill me in approximately ten milliseconds in my home and share my life with it"
(One day passes)
same human: "I am going to annoy the animal that can split my spinal cord in two on purpose because I am bored"
never gets old https://www.youtube.com/sh…

Finished “We Begin at the End” by Chris Whitaker. A bit whodunit, a bit about coping with tragedy, and a bit about holding onto a past that can never be again.
Duchess Day Radley is a young girl who had to grow up fast. She raises her young brother while her mom suffers with substance abuse and a violent man. A self proclaimed outlaw, Duchess lashes out at the world rebelliously. But when tragedy strikes, so too does trouble.
4/5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

We Begin at the End
Right. Wrong. Life is lived somewhere in between. Duch…

This week's #climate solutions digest 💖 I send this email out every Thursday to my (literal) 3 subscribers! It is truly a labor of love.
If you have been wanting some positivity in your life, I am here for you. 🌈🌞🌊
https://www…

Weekly Climate Solutions Digest
Welcome Late October light sits lower on the day, turning sidewalks to amber and orchard leaves to copper. Across marshes, geese draw their careful V, a moving stitch that makes the sky feel hand sewn. This week carries the same feeling of stitching things together. Power systems link up across

Day 22: Yuki Urushibara
I've got a few more mangaka left on my short list, and might very well get to at least one more, but Urushibara is the author of Mushishi and anyone who knows either the manga or anime understands immediately why she appears here.
Mushishi is a "seinen" anime, which means it's written for adults, not children or teenagers (although it's very accessible for all ages). It deals with a vast array of life's circumstances through the lens of a traveling mushi expert and the various whimsical supernatural creatures he is called on to deal with. He's not an exorcist though, instead understanding that humans must live in harmony with the mushi, and working like an ecologist to sort things out. As is probably obvious, Urushibara is an incredible world-builder; she's also a top-notch artist and above all, her stories are overflowing with kindness, humanity, and respect for the natural world.
Besides Mushishi, I've read "Suiiki", and it's one of the few manga I stumbled through in the original Japanese, which says a lot given my limited reading vocabulary (and the fact that it doesn't include rubi). It weaves the supernatural into a story of childhood innocence and curiosity in a lovely way.
Much like Shirahama who I mentioned earlier, Urushibara's stories are full of gentle wisdom for all ages, but Urushibara's work is quieter and less dramatic, with an adult main character confident in his expertise instead of a young-and-learning protagonist.
#30AuthorsNoMen

For more than three years, I’ve lived with long COVID.
The dizziness never leaves.
I can’t drive more than half an hour without starting to get nauseous.
Any strenuous activity — mental or physical — leaves me with post-exertional malaise that feels like a hangover the next day.
I’ve learned to adapt and find gratitude for many things, but life remains an exhausting calculus of rationing energy across work, chores, and my kids.
I am only one of over an estimated …

I Am One of 20 Million in US With Long COVID. RFK Pulled the Rug From Under Us.
RFK Jr. has shut down the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice, gutted funding, and derailed trials and studies.

I spoke with both Aseel (the aunt who runs this account), who is outside Gaza, and her niece (also Aseel, the adorable child in the third photo) and her siblings who are in Gaza on Signal the other day (via a three-way group chat).
Their fundraiser isn’t seeing any support and they need your help to evacuate.
I wish we could have included them in the emergency appeal last week if there had been time.
Please help them if you can and share this so others might also.
Tha…

The new best team in the NFL, plus sorting through the college football mess https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6853727/2025/12/02/patriots-giants-nfl-power-rankings-the-pulse/

#jukeboxfridaynight
#MusicWithImpact
After a 2nd cup of coffee, my choice this week has to be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. My 1st album bought with my own money when I was 12 years old. I survived...
A Day In The Life - The Beatles
https://youtu.be/UYeV7jLBXvA?si=7w-gjN4Ue4AVaTTT

Adobe partners with YouTube to launch a dedicated content creation space for YouTube Shorts creators within its Premiere mobile app for iOS (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/08/adobe-launches-content-…

Adobe launches content creation hub in Premiere mobile for YouTube Shorts creators | TechCrunch
The company says the space is designed to give creators everything they need to produce viral videos, grow their audience, and tap into trends, whether it's creating day-in-the-life vlogs, travel videos, or behind-the-scenes clips.

Challenge: "Name 20 female authors you admire, 1 per day"
Day 17: Vicki Jarrett
So far she's published a couple of really good novels and a collection of short stories. She strikes me as the type of author who aims for quality, not quantity.
I adored her first novel "Nothing is Heavy", based on real life experiences in Edinburgh. Her other novel, "Always North" is an eco-thriller set in Svalbard, a Norwegian arctic island.
Both great…

Life hack*: Put dentist or scary doctor's appointments on the same day as important and also scary work commitments (talks, deadlines) - then the stress at work won't leave time to worry about the other thing 🙃
* In a few weeks I'll report back whether this works or was just a colossally stupid idea leading to failure in both work and life appointment 🙈

We decided it was night again, so we camped for twenty minutes and drank
another six beers at a Young Life campsite. O.C. got into the supervisory
adult's sleeping bag and ran around in it. "This is the judgment day and I'm
a terrifying apparition," he screamed. Then the heat made O.C. ralph in the
bag.
-- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
National Lampoon, October 1982

We've done the science—let's get on with climate action #climate

We've done the science—let's get on with climate action
For three decades now, I have watched Earth warm—not through headlines or politics, but in my own data. Every year, the evidence has become clearer. My colleagues have measured rising CO₂ levels in Antarctic ice cores. We have seen ice caps retreat, permafrost melt, ecosystems shift, and species vanish. Every single working day of my life has been a front-row seat to a planet in rapid transformation.

It's a pretty big day in cybersecurity news, so don't miss today's Metacurity for the critical developments you should know, including
--Korean cops raid Coupang HQ looking for security lapses, breach perpetrator clues,
--Compromise NDAA bill is chock full of cyber provisions,
--FTC rejects petition from spyware company founder,
--Commonwealth Bank of Australia fined A$702k for breaching data rules,
--FBI warns of fake proof of life photos,
--Oz…

Korean cops raid Coupang HQ looking for security lapses, breach perpetrator clues
Compromise NDAA bill is chock full of cyber provisions, FTC rejects petition from spyware company founder, Commonwealth Bank of Australia fined A$702k for breaching data rules, FBI warns of fake proof of life photos, Oz teen social media limits go live tomorrow, much more

Today was #satisfying:
- arranged a unique & "life changing" experience for someone
- watched someone vely change attitude toward me
- was in a meeting w awesome people
- saw someone one whose sight always makes me happy
All in, feels like the day was worth living for, whatever tomorrow brings. 🙇‍♂️

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music
Wes Montgomery:
🎵 A Day In The Life
#WesMontgomery
https://open.spotify.com/track/5FBf12F4ry9TXoZAvISu6F

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#CarolsAcrossTheCountryASeasonalJourney
- Live from the Peak District in Staffordshire
Mark Forrest starts the day at Peak Wildlife Park in Staffordshire. With live music, sounds of the natural world and the voices of people bringing the area's rich history to life.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002mk1k

Door Dasher Life Fun Facts: This might be useful to think of when you're rating your Dasher.... Who's at fault in this situation?
Let's say I accept an offer for McDonalds.
I head straight there... pull up to the store, and as I walk in the app buzzes again with a 2nd order for the same McDs.
Naturally, I accept. (not accepting reduces my Acceptance rate and potentially my ability to get new offers).
Now I have two orders at the same place! Great! Efficient!
The first order comes up quickly, I put it in my bag, 'pick it up' in the app, and wait for the 2nd order.
Now the fun begins. The restaurant says the 2nd order will be 10 minutes beyond the pickup time. I notify the app, and both customers of the wait... and I wait... and wait... if I remove the 2nd order from my app it affects my completion rate *and* means the customer has to wait for another dasher to come along.
Eventually the 2nd order is ready and I head out to make the deliveries. Both of course now late.. the first potentially cold (even in an insulated bag) *and* late.
In addition, sometimes, often a day or two later, the dasher will receive a “Contract Violation” for the lateness. 3 Contract Violations in a short period and you can be deactivated.
So... there ya go. It happens. I'm never sure what the best course of action is... unless both orders are immediately ready, which you can never predict, someone will end up losing; the store, customer, dasher, or a mix of all three.
#DasherLife #GigWork #DoorDash #Uber
P.S. It's worth noting that Door Dash is the only service I know of that is this strict. Uber Eats does not have mechanisms like this (at least in my experience). Never used Skip, so can't say on that.

@… My family is from Poland, but I grew up in Denmark, so I’ve been through, but never really to, Rostock ~4 times a year for the first 20 years of my life.
Maybe one day I will actually make the trip to see the city itself 🤔

Beyond the Pocket: A Large-Scale International Study on User Preferences on Bodily Placements of Commercial Wearables
Joanna Sorysz, Lars Krupp, Dominique Nshimyimana, Meagan B. Loerakker, Bo Zhou, Paul Lukowicz, Jakob Karolus
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25383

Beyond the Pocket: A Large-Scale International Study on User Preferences on Bodily Placements of Commercial Wearables
As wearable technologies continue to evolve-becoming smaller, more powerful, and more deeply embedded in daily life-their integration into diverse user contexts raises critical design challenges. There remains a notable gap in large-scale empirical data on where users actually wear or carry these devices throughout the day, systematically examining user preferences for wearable placement across varied contexts and routines. In this work, we conducted a questionnaire in several countries aimed a…

This is true. Especially good wool socks for anyone living climates with cold winters. https://mastodon.green/@juliette/115635128700362435

I just watched a tiktok video that started "A day in the life of a homeless guy who sleeps in his private plane". 🤨

With 50 years in the professional realm, I've learned every day holds potential to turn challenges into stepping stones. From historical fiction to new ventures, remember growth starts with knowledge. What book transformed your life? 📚✨ #Entrepreneurship #BookLovers

UK train travel is so stupid now.
A simple return journey (out one day, back the next) from Feltham to Birmingham New Street via London Euston: £137.
Use an app for split ticketing*: £84, a 39% reduction.
The app uses tons of dark UI patterns to pre-check info-sharing options & tries to tempt you at every stage to share on social media and has ads for gambling in it, it made me feel dirty using it. But that's life now.
* see reply for explanation if fortunate …

Rainy first day so we toured underground at the Churchill War Rooms. Which was quite interesting, particularly for its reconstruction of everyday life living in a bunker. Paring back the wartime government to the forty essential personnel. (Including Churchill's wife, "for moral support".)

In my latest podcast episode, I ask: once the programme is over, how do you keep focused on your development?
How do you avoid letting your new knowledge and skills wither on the vine? How do you prevent your new perspectives and concepts staying in notebooks and folders, rather than being brought to life in your day to day behaviour?
Ep 195 of My Pocket Psych is available where you get your podcasts. Or you can stream it from

'It's God's day': Jaguars WR Travis Hunter takes part in life-changing event before Seahawks matchup https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46576018/travis-hunter-jacksonville-jagaurs-baptized-seahawks-matchup

Some of the nation’s top health officials and Donald Trump have cast doubt on a vaccine that doctors call lifesaving.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly questioned whether babies should continue to receive the vaccine on their first day of life,
arguing that the disease is mainly transmitted through sexual contact and sharing needles.
But the virus can also pass from mother to child at birth.
In September, Mr. Trump said that he thought children …

Hepatitis B Vaccine, Once a Public Health Win, Is Under Threat From RFK Jr.
Rates of the disease have fallen since 1991, when all newborns began receiving the shot. An influential panel is scheduled to vote Thursday on eligibility for the vaccine.

Good Morning #Canada
I finished my breakfast this morning only to discover that it's National Maple Syrup Day. A missed opportunity but at least I can share some important facts about Canada's sweet and sticky sauce.
- Indigenous People taught early Canadians how to harvest maple sap and boil it down into a sugary liquid.
- A maple tree can yield sap for up to 100 years, but the trees must be roughly 45 years old before it’s first tapped for syrup making.
- It takes roughly 40 gallons (150 litres) of tree sap to produce 1 gallon (3.8 litres) of syrup.
- Quebec produces 72% of the world’s maple syrup. In 2021, that equaled 133M lbs from Quebec.
- The big bottle of Costco Maple Syrup is from Quebec.
- Maple Syrup only has 1 ingredient. Sap.
- Maple Syrup has an indefinite shelf life but should be frozen if storing for more than 2 years.
And regarding the great Maple Syrup heist, this is still the best report on that famous crime.
#CanadaIsAwesome #MmmmSyrup #MapleSyrup
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/maple-syrup-heist?srsltid=AfmBOoq7fMx3GguT20T9cNrpZgrtVue4leiYZpZibZT_7S9WHWDfI0Ln

Question of the day: Should I just sell/give away/get rid of most of my stuff, retire, and move to South America or something? Maybe there I could make myself a life worth living, instead of focusing on just surviving from one day to the next, in a place where the cost of living is quickly becoming unbearable.

"Paris' Louvre Museum door remains shut a day after heist"
Most people plan 2-3 days #Paris visit, spend 1000s, and maybe visit just once in their life. It sucks not to be able to visit the #Louvre then. 🥺
#heist #tourism #travel #France

In my latest podcast episode, I ask: once the programme is over, how do you keep focused on your development?
How do you avoid letting your new knowledge and skills wither on the vine? How do you prevent your new perspectives and concepts staying in notebooks and folders, rather than being brought to life in your day to day behaviour?
Ep 195 of My Pocket Psych is available where you get your podcasts. Or you can stream it from https://www.worklifepsych.com/podcast/195
As ever, thanks for listening!

Replying to someone to check if a term in their message was just a typo, and spelling the word typo as "type", then correcting that typo to "typ0", and so on. 🤦‍♂️
Anyway, how's your day going?
#life #irony #typos #greetings