@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
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-11-26 01:26:09
Sources: a new network of super PACs plans to raise ~$50M to counter the Leading the Future super PAC and back candidates who prioritize AI regulations (Theodore Schleifer/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/us/politics/ai-super-pac-anthropic.html
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-26 15:55:28
𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴.
He posted on Twitter last night
begging MAGA to go vote in our TN-07 special election
-- because he knows what it would mean if we won the last House race of 2025:
Voters are rejecting MAGA extremism across the country.
We can rewrite the playbook for what’s possible for Democrats in the Deep South.
We’ll be heading into 2026 one seat closer to retaking the House
and putting a check on this administration.
No wonde…
@wraithe@mastodon.social2025-11-25 16:13:42
@… so it looks like Spring has finally bought the Big One? Or is it just me?
(I was amazed it’s worked on Twitter THIS long 😂)
Also as a complete aside, I’d love (once you’re done with the update to Mona) to see either BlueSky support or a version for BlueSky.
I’m getting ready to install SkyBridge just so I can use Mona to access my BS account 😂…
@StephenRees@mas.to2025-10-25 05:10:14
"Mrs Warren's Profession" is now on screen at theatres via National Theatre Live. Worth checking your vicinity to see if it is available. Imelda Staunton makes a fine Mrs Warren.
https://mrswarrensprofession.ntlive.com/gallery/
I had not seen any other perfor…
@mino@blorbo.social2025-12-25 15:31:03
bruh I tried migrating my bsky account to my own PDS but for some reason bsky app won't load my profile no matter what even tho querying the profile record directly using goat indicates that my profile still exists in my PDS, why is it not resolving correctly in the endpoint that bsky app view uses??? it's so baffling to me
in any case this is my current account for now https://bsky.app/profile/minot.dev since twatter decided to go straight to hell just when I wanted to be more active again
@wraithe@mastodon.social2025-11-26 19:19:29
Still worth logging into CounterSocial (CoSo) on occasion 😂
https://counter.social/@th3j35t3r/115614283221031202
@skaverat@skaverat.net2025-11-23 23:39:54
@jacobgudiol@mastodonsweden.se2025-10-22 13:08:22
Funktionsmedicinare varnar för sötningsmedel med dåliga argument https://traningslara.se/funktionsmedicinare-varnar-for-sotningsmedel-med-daliga-argument/