@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-10-13 06:16:23
Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading
@arXiv_csDS_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-14 09:30:48
Combinatorial Philosopher Inequalities
Enze Sun, Zhihao Gavin Tang, Yifan Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10039 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.10039
@tiotasram@kolektiva.social2025-10-10 13:21:09
Finished "Lobizona" by Romina Garber. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It's a powerful depiction of the fear of living as an undocumented child/teen and it has interesting things to say about rejection, belonging, and the choice between seeking to be recognized for who you are and wanting you blend in enough to be accepted as normal. However, it's also an explicit homage to Harry Potter, and while it doesn't include antisemitic tropes or glorify slavery or even have any anti-trans sentiments I can detect, to me the magical school setup felt forced and I thought it would have been a better book had it not tried to fit that mould. Also, it would have been a super interesting situation to explore trans issues, and while it's definitely fine for it not to do that, the author's praise of Rowling's work has me wondering...
There's a sequel that I think could in theory be amazing, but given the execution of the first book, I think I'll wait a bit before checking it out. By putting her main character in opposition to both ICE in the human world and the magical authorities in the other world, Garber explicitly sets the stage for a revolution standing between her protagonist and any kind of lasting peace. But I'm not confident she's capable of writing that story without relying on some kind of supernatural deus ex machina, which would be disappointing to me, since "a better world if only possible through divine intervention" is an inherently regressive message.
Overall, #OwnVoices fantasy centering an undocumented immigrant is an excellent thing, and I've certainly got a lot of privilege that surely influences my criticism. However, #OwnVoices stuff has a range of levels of craft and political stances, and it can be excellent for some reasons and mediocre for others.
On that point, if anyone reading this has suggestions for fiction books grappling with borders and the carceral state, Is be happy to hear them.
#AmReading
@arXiv_physicsgeoph_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-15 08:17:52
Quantifying the form-flow-saltation dynamics of aeolian sand ripples
J. M. Nield, M. C. Baddock, G. F. S. Wiggs, J. Best, K. T. Christensen, P. Delorme, A. Valdez, N. R. Bristow, M. H. T. Hipondoka, D. P. Goss, N. S. Wallum, P. Claudin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11876
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-07 05:38:37
If you know something about Basic Income, you may be aware that
👉one of the first proposals for a Basic Income came from Thomas Paine, hero of the American and French revolutions.
In 1797, after a stint in a French prison, Paine wrote the pamphlet
"Agrarian Justice",
⭐️which sets out an argument for taxing land and distributing the proceeds among the population at large as compensation for landlessness.
Paine’s proposal to tax land and distribute the …
@ruari@velocipederider.com2025-10-07 07:45:43
Yes it is a funky little dial. I don't have enough characters to fully explain it here without starting a thread, so I cheated and shoved it all in the alt text. 🤷
#WristCheck (but not really, since it is a pocket watch).
![A pocket watch held in hand, behind which is an unfocussed room. The watch has twelve Shíchen (double hour) markers represented by the Earthly Branches, as also used in the "Chinese zodiac". Inside those markers it has two sets of twelve Roman Numerals to show the twenty-four "normal" hours of a day [the watch has a twenty-four hour movement, so the hour hand only completes one revolution per day]. Around the very outer edge are eight Kè references to represent the total per Shíchen and so impl…](https://cdn.masto.host/velocipederidercom/media_attachments/files/115/331/667/178/522/273/original/e5eb7f5874ecd6fc.jpg)
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-12-01 11:09:47
Taking notes from the successes and failures of the Russian revolution, a group of anarchists (including Nestor Makhno, a Ukrainian anarchist militant who was critical in defeating the Tzar's army and who later also fought the Red Army) wrote a document titled the "Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists." This document came to be known as "The Platform." It remains one of the most important first-hand revolutionary documents, outlining a clear revolutionary plan.
I've taken this, the Viable System Model from cybernetics, and my own organizing experience, to describe an organization to confront the current set of crises.
This continues to build on the stuff I have been writing, but it's a lot less high level theory and a lot more specific.
https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/a-solarpunk-fractal-microservices
As always, editing notes (typos, grammar, spelling, etc) are always welcome, as are any questions. My ADHD brain tends to go a lot faster than anything else, so I have a tendency to drop words and have a lot of trouble catching them later. Between my ADHD and mild dyslexia, it can be pretty hard for me to catch when autocorrect gives me the wrong word.
A lot of folks have already been super helpful in offering their editing support, and I'm really grateful. Writing this has felt collaborative, and it should. On the one hand this comes from my own experience and research, but on the other I'm also voicing things that have come from conversations here. This has all been a bit of my voice and a bit of the federated world, and I'm really appreciating that.
@bici@mastodon.social2025-12-07 17:39:35
"Here’s a problem that’s highly likely going to get much worse, people [are] outsourcing their thinking to AI. “Many people are becoming reliant on AI to navigate some of the most basic aspects of daily life. A colleague suggested that we might even call the most extreme users “LLeMmings”"
Brilliant. From the Crank.
Read it Now
@metacurity@infosec.exchange2025-10-16 10:19:57
So one of the authors of the Le Monde story about the secretive US unit called Group 78 contacted me to tell me I had misinterpreted the story published by his outlet and Die Zeit.
I explain everything in this thread on BlueSky (it's hard to thread things here).
Take a look:
https://bsky.app/pro…
@samvarma@fosstodon.org2025-11-22 20:43:50
The office last night.
The casino's extremely particular about who can run their digital mixer, and they deleted the scene we had saved last time, so we had to rebuild everything from scratch, which we were not able to do in time. So for half of the first set all I could hear was the click in my ears. Electronic drum kit, no amps. I eventually got my hands on an iPad to set up a mix for myself, and then it was actually fine but I've never had to deal with that my career thus f…
