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

Oracle stock fell 30% this quarter, its steepest drop since Q3 2001, when it slid ~34%, amid skepticism about its ability to open more data centers for OpenAI (Jordan Novet/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/26/oracle-stock-on-pace-for-worst…

Oracle shares on pace for worst quarter since 2001 as new CEOs face concerns about AI build-out
Investors want to know if Oracle, under new CEOs Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia, can pay for and deliver data centers packed with Nvidia chips for OpenAI.

Claude 4.5 Opus seems to have finally done it, made ChatGPT essentially irrelevant to my purposes. Claude is a far superior writer and much, much smarter. Less prone to hallucinations. It's coding ability is wild.

https://c.org/kQMQkzQBGt
change.org
A petition to stop Iranians that are part of the current junta from coming to Canada disguised as refugees
Their promotion is designed to work with Facebook and Twitter rather than a well designed system like Mastodon

Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?
Canada! Ban Entry of All Islamic Republic Affiliates Into Canada

I’ve had this contingent of the language police show up in my replies a few times now over the word “cosplay,” and look…
OK, I get it, I get the instinct to say “Don’t drag me into this!” and I applaud the effort to push fascists out of communities, yes to all that…
…and also we need to recognize that what ICE is doing absolutely •is• cosplay. The word means “costume play.” It refers to assembling and wearing costumes that are not necessarily functional, but show affinity for a particular subculture by reproducing characters from that subculture’s popular narratives.
ICE are cosplaying Call of Duty. That is an accurate description of what’s happening. (Listen to “Gear.”)
I make software and I make music. I don’t think either one of those things •should• be about violence. I don’t •want• them to be about violence. But both are used in the service of violence, like it or not. I shout the violence out whenever it shows up. But would be ridiculous for me to point at what Palantir does and say “That’s not software!” Unfortunately, it •is• software. To deny that would be beyond self-defeating; it would be irresponsible.
ICE •is• doing cosplay, and we hate it. It’s an insult to the cosplay subculture. It is an insult to the whole of humanity. Fascism creeps into all of our spheres, into every beloved craft and community, and the response is never to pretend it’s not there. The response is to drive it out.
@…
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@wildrikku/115956545807535535

I'd be interested find out if AI providers are considered responsible for any defamation their equipment generates and publishes. How much of the law assumes an intent that can't be applied to AI?
Is mens rea something that can be tested in LLM? Is that even a meaningful question? Is it all just libel through negligence?

AI-generated content wrongly accuses fiddler Ashley MacIsaac of being sex offender
HALIFAX - Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac says he may have been defamed by Google after it recently produced an AI-generated summary falsely identifying him as a sex offender.

Tech-Milliardär Ellison garantiert Teil des Warner-Gebots
Das Hollywood-Urgestein Warner Brothers ließ die Familie des Tech-Milliardärs Larry Ellison mit einem Übernahmeangebot abblitzen. Ellison bessert nun nach.

Is “Resonant Computing” malleable software with a positive ideology applied?
I still haven’t found an umbrella term that captures Causal Islands, Ink & Switch, and similar vibes.
Shades of DWeb principles too.
I’ll keep hosting events that point us in this direction.
Mike Masnick https://

Migrating a large accretion of complex blog post content between platforms is a draining & thoroughly demoralising experience. It turns out that we, as web developers, are capable of creating byzantine platforms which give diligent blog writers the ability to create hours and hours of unrewarding work that is so cryptically & diversely broken that no script can be written to make sense of the mess.
Enjoy your holidays if you're in a cultural context where that sort of thin…