Tootfinder

Study: among the top 100 Spotify podcasts in the US in 2024, 64% were hosted by men, 77% of hosts were white, and 62.6% of 4K episodes had no woman guests (Adam Chitwood/The Wrap)
https://www.thewrap.com/usc-study-podcast-hosts-diversity-men-women-race/

Podcasting's Diversity Problem: 64% of Hosts Are Male, 77% Are White, USC Study Finds
The hosts of the top 100 podcasts of 2024 were overwhelmingly white and male, a new comprehensive study from USC reveals.

🍫 Effects of Dark Chocolate on Physiological and Anaerobic Performance Among Healthy Female and Male Adults
#chocolate

Analysis: in 2025, only 17% of North America's top 100 highest-grossing films were directed by non-white filmmakers, down from 27% in 2021 and 24% in 2023 (Richard Rushfield/The Ankler)
https://theankler.com/p/hollywoods-backslide-into-white-male

Hollywood’s Backslide Into White Male Directors Becomes Undeniable
How to chase away our future, one complacent decision at a time

“Misogyny and transphobia doesn’t affect me as a white man”
https://www.propublica.org/article/veterans-affairs-male-breast-cancer-coverage-trump-executive-order

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

Fun (but wet) day of trick-or-treating around downtown and some neighborhoods.
Little one was Rapunzel (specifically the Disney Tangled version), wife was Mother Gothel...
... And I was Vladimir (who collects ceramic unicorns)

A not-so-boring talk on #ubuntu touch at #openalt

Imagine having the blind confidence of a white male conservative.
...this asshat really thinks he's there to do a tight 5min to US troops on how lousy cherished American traditions are.
▫️JD Vance: "How many of you really like turkey?"
<Many soldiers raise their hands>
▫️Vance: "You're all full of shit."
#jdvance

from my link log —
How UC Davis medical school became remarkably diverse.
https://www.statnews.com/2023/03/07/how-one-medical-school-became-remarkably-diverse-without-considering-race/
saved 2023-03-07

How one medical school became remarkably diverse — without considering race in admissions
The UC-Davis medical school's class of 1972 was mostly white and male. The class of 2026 is among the most diverse in the nation — without race-based admissions.

Online influencer Andrew Tate,
a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers,
was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries
when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States.
“The Tates will be free,
Trump is the president.
The good old days are back,”
Tate posted on X before the trip in February
— one of many times he has sung the president’s praises to his fans.
But…

The White House Intervened on Behalf of Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation
Federal authorities were chided for seizing electronic devices from Tate and his brother, and told to return them, records and interviews show. Experts said the intervention was highly inappropriate.

#openalt A great and inspiring talk about #deltachat and the history of messaging
#xmpp @…

Senior Microsoft Product Manager Wendy Breiding discusses in this recent post how you can now customize your IDE to include agentic AI to your project that is focused on tasks related to a specific language or UI stack, in this case: C# and WinForms. The results have been positive when comparing these agents to previous more general approaches.
"Introducing Custom Agents for .NET Developers: C# Expert & WinForms Expert"

Urban Adventure II 🏞️
城市探险 II 🏞️
📷Nikon FE
🎞️Fujifilm NEOPAN SS, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Day 3, practicing a bunch of stuff including musculoskeletal injuries.
I had a "broken arm" for this one.

How to play games on a very old hardware. #openalt @…

Metropolitana VII - FORM ⭕️
城 VII - 型 ⭕️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford Pan 100
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

A writer argues that since 2014, DEI practices led to discrimination against white male millennials for entry-level and mid-level roles in Hollywood and media (Jacob Savage/Compact)
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/

The Lost Generation
For fifteen years I’ve scalped tickets to pay the bills. But in January 2016 I almost managed a real career.