@bencurthoys@mastodon.social2025-11-30 08:27:15
Once, at the National Student Drama Festival, where I was volunteering as a techie, there was a show that involved a butcher's knife, and they had decided to use a real one and "blunt" it by covering the edge in sellotape.
Turns out this was not a very effective way of rendering the knife safe.
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-10-27 03:00:46
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
@LillyHerself@Mastodon.social2025-12-27 21:54:12
[installation and photo, Jenny Holzer, Times Square Marquees (1993)]
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-12-20 06:30:59
Filings: Tether-owned Northern Data sold its bitcoin mining unit, Peak Mining, for up to $200M to a group including companies controlled by Tether executives (Nikou Asgari/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/352fc0e3-0f0d-4e72-abe6-dd992b040caa
@johl@mastodon.xyz2025-12-21 14:29:55
Am Tag drei beim #39C3 am Spätverkauf @… um 19 Uhr: Die @… machen Krach! Yeah!
@rasterweb@mastodon.social2025-10-06 01:38:42
My niece is in charge of props for a local theater group and asked if I could try to get these light sabers working.
I have never used one of these but when I finally got it powered on and it said "Powered up!" I nearly shit myself.
I did not expect it to talk.
I've seen every Star Wars film and they never talk!
I got one of them working fine, the other had a spicy pillow so I'll replace the battery and see if that gets it sorted.
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2025-10-19 03:33:18
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-12-15 14:45:57
Re: discourse about #FediSoWhite
I'm a white man. Was on Twitter throughout #BLM and gained an awful lot of free education from Black folks on there. That was the start of me consciously following diverse folks which is a strategy that's improved my life immensely.
Back on Twitter before the Muskening, there was a lot of diversity. Black Twitter was a thing, and not just first-world (anyone else remember "O jewa ke eng?"). When I went looking for people to follow to diversify my feed, I found them in abundance.
That's why it's so clearly false to me when people claim that the fediverse is secretly diverse, and why anyone making that claim sounds suspect to me. Sure there are a ton of great Black and other POC folks you can find on here, if you look hard. But it's nowhere near the levels of diversity and community that were on Twitter. Which you would know had you been following those people before, so now I have to assume you weren't, and wonder why you feel qualified to make statements about diversity even though you haven't made an effort to engage with diverse voices before?
Also, if you were actually following some of the excellent POC voices on here, you'd know that across different servers and interest groups, almost every group has had a discussion of #FediSoWhite at some point. If all the Black people you follow are independently talking about the lack of community and diversity here, you've either got to believe them or start putting on your clown makeup, and the later is absolutely a choice.
@markhburton@mstdn.social2025-12-14 11:18:33
"Bluesky is a for-profit group still in the venture-capital honeymoon phase where it doesn’t need major revenue."
A Mastodon Migration From Bluesky Would Be Different - Absolutely Maybe
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/10/…
@rasterweb@mastodon.social2025-10-06 01:38:42
My niece is in charge of props for a local theater group and asked if I could try to get these light sabers working.
I have never used one of these but when I finally got it powered on and it said "Powered up!" I nearly shit myself.
I did not expect it to talk.
I've seen every Star Wars film and they never talk!
I got one of them working fine, the other had a spicy pillow so I'll replace the battery and see if that gets it sorted.