Oh no. I splurged and got takeout at our favorite greasy spoon Chinese place, and they’ve changed the recipes. I don’t know if anyone else could notice, but it doesn’t even taste like the same *dish* 😭

My honors program senior these was separate, and it was on the interaction between science fiction and technology. That was fun!

The average age of first marriages over time.

same :(

I miss Clutchy too

Very cool looking. Finally some future shit that isn't gross

I had such culture shock that the university honors program admin called my mother and told her to come get me. She refused, and I was under 18, so there was no recourse. It was bad.

It’s definitely true, though, that rural students have lower college completion rates than students from urban areas, and part of that is because they feel uncomfortable in the campus setting. There’s solid research on it.

Students like my children.

Trying to decide whether to take to my bed with this migraine. Only being able to see out of one eye is less inconvenient than you’d think.

At last I have got around to responding to Professor Dame Uta Frith's TES piece, in which she questions the autism spectrum

In a nutshell, I disagree...

"yes, autism is a broad and diverse category — that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the category itself"

medium.com/@suefletcher...

Agreed!

RCN Series by David Drake aka Lt. Leary series With the Lightnings (RCN, #1), Lt. Leary, Commanding (Lt. Leary, #2), The Far Side of the Stars (Lt. Leary, #3), The Way to Glory (L...

oh, sure, it's this!
www.goodreads.com/series/42435...

They entered through the gate with Hogg walking backward behind them to watch the street. Daniel said, “Is Kotzebue the only place like this? That's in this condition, I mean.” “No, it bloody isn’t,” Riely said bitterly. “It’s the whole planet, or it will be before long. And when it’s over, there won't be anybody outside the enclaves. The rice won't be planted because the farmers are dead, and the gangsters will have left because there’s nobody around to rob. And I guess I'll have gone. Or maybe I won't—I'll be dead too.” He took a deep breath. For a moment he looked ancient, a skull covered with parchment skin. He said, “You can wait here, Pensett. I don’t know how long it'll be before somebody contacts you. I just pass on messages. After that, it’s out of my hands.” Riely opened the steel door into his warehouse, then looked over his shoulder to meet Daniel's eyes. “It’s none of my business,” he said. “You do what you please. But what I advise you to do is get off this hellhole as quickly as you can. Because it’s only going to get worse.” Two pistol shots sounded, in the street but very close. Somebody screamed until a third shot silenced her. Rielv shut the door behind them

“I don’t care about what happens to Cinnabar or the Alliance, either one,” Freedom blurted. “If two gangs of exploiters want to bludgeon each other to death, let them. I care about the simple, decent farmers of Sunbright who were being crushed by injustice!” “Go on,” Daniel said. He nodded, his face expressionless. The peasants of Bantry weren't simple. They had different tastes in art from those of rich city folk, and they didn’t talk much about philosophy, but the years Daniel had spent in the closest contact with Hogg didn’t allow him to say that he understood his servant; just that he could often predict what Hogg would say or do. As for decent— He grinned broadly. For a moment he didn’t care what the rebel leader thought about his expression. —that was a matter of definition. But they'd back each other against outsiders and back the squire no matter how hard things got, and that was good enough for a Bantryman like Daniel Leary. Freedom was so lost in his own problems that Daniel might not have gotten a reaction if he'd stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers. “But it all went wrong,” the rebel said miserably. “We didn’t take Saal immediately as I'd hoped, but the rest went to plan. We took most of the planet like water soaking into a cloth. Blaskett couldn’t stop us, and Pleasaunce couldn't send him more troops in the middle of a war with Cinnabar.” He raised his hands, apparently gesturing to an unseen audience. “I thought it was just a matter of time before the Alliance evacuated Saal and the people of Sunbright could work out their own destiny!” “Instead Saal held out,” Daniel said. That was a foregone conclusion when disorganized militia faced regular troops in prepared positions. The first rush

“What about the fellow running things, Kiki?” Daniel asked. Hogg had edged away slightly, giving him and Lindstrom as much privacy as the cramped compartment allowed. “The one who calls himself Freedom.” He didn’t want to show too much knowledge, but it was reasonable that somebody being sent to Sunbright would have gotten a little information about the place. Besides, Lindstrom seemed to be looking for somebody to talk to. Lindstrom frowned as though she was really puzzling over the answer. She said, “He lit the fuse, but I guess he couldn't control it once it all started going. He’s there on Sunbright, he shows up here and there, but nobody knows where his base is.” She shrugged. “He can’t control it—there’s no ‘thing’ to control. Each gang does what it wants, takes what it wants. That's the truth of it. Nobody can stop it now, not even Freedom if he wanted to. It’s going to go on until every plantation on Sunbright’s been burned, and every adult outside the garrisoned cities is in a gang or’s been killed by somebody who is. There won't be any children. And I—" Lindstrom’s fingers were no longer kneading Daniel's shoulders; instead they were clamping hard. It cost him effort and the certainty of bruises not to break the spell by saying something. “—am making great pots of money by selling them the guns to kill themselves with. Bloody wonderful business, isn’t it?”

might have succeeded, but when it didn’t, the chances of a rebel military victory evaporated. “And the armed bands that you'd created found that it was easier to take the rice themselves rather than to fight Alliance soldiers in pillboxes. Before long, most of your forces were mercenaries or opportunists, I suspect.” “It was worse than that,” Freedom said. He was a healthy, well-fed young ‘man, but Daniel had seen prisoners in labor camps who looked less wretched. “And I didn’t set up all the bands, but I made them possible, yes. Don’t think I don’t know that.” He met Daniel's eyes. He said, “Brutes have become warlords, and the farmers are slaves. I wanted to get rid of Blaskett, but I've created a hundred Blasketts, and each one is worse than the one before. And there's nothing I can do!” Daniel considered the situation. Freedom's political naivety startled him, though not in itself: he had learned about practical politics in his cradle as the son of Speaker Leary, but he understood that most people didn't have such a background. The surprise was that this young innocent, Daniel would have said, had done such a brilliant job of setting off the rebellion. The fact that Freedom hadn't understood what he was doing didn’t detract from the skill with which he had done it. And even now, without Freedom's coordination, government forces should be able to recover Sunbright with the modest increase in forces which the Treaty of Amiens made possible.

Last summer I re-read a very queer mil hard SF written by a classics-trained lawyer who was also a Vietnam veteran. I was struck by book 9, which pointed out the real human cost of burning it all down.

Mmhmm!!

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

pope tweets good

Reupping my review of Alex Karp’s embarrassing pamphlet of a book.

Palantir is run by a nitwit.

Garlic cloves and bread from a fresco originally from Herculaneum and now at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN), Italy. Photo by Sophie Hay

Happy National Garlic 🧄 Day! Greeks & Romans loved garlic—but Mesopotamians loved it 1000s of years before them. The Greek ἄγλις (Latin alium) is an Akkadian loan word. At Pompeii, there was even a garlic seller (aliarii) workshop ( 📸 by @pompei79.bsky.social): pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpic...

The Lost Heroes of Old Appalachia: America’s Most Dangerous Woman Time has a funny way of playing tricks on you in these mountains, slipping by like a quick breeze on a cool night. What is young and…

Next up from The Vault...

Again, in honor of the anniversary of the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike...Here's my piece on the lady who was once considered "The Most Dangerous Woman In America", our beloved Mother Jones. Enjoy!

#Appalachia #History

medium.com/@kidether/th...

Yeah, it's a mystery bsky.app/profile/kent...

I tell people things for money. Today, I am saying:

1) Is it really, though?
2) But why?
3) Says who?

REN © (@rensworld) yes, i made the periodic table shirt, and yes, itis accurate to the number of elements X Yesterday at 9:00 PM a screenshot from the videogame with a periodic table of elements and a graphic saying "I WEAR THIS SHIRT PERIODICALLY" https://x.com/rensworId/status/2045306359680262598?s=20

LOLLL it was this that they forwarded to me that made me think they were really into it, enough to make it bribable:

bribing the children to clean the house with the tomodachi life game

(I have an extensive room-by-room cleaning checklist, because I have standards, and they must check off every item on the list. They're working for it.)

ouch 🤣

When you write off all West Virginians you are saying you don't support Becky Pepper Jackson. I am inspired by young people here all the time. Recently I talked to a teen who realized his school isn't teaching evolution, so he started distributing zines about it.

Young folks here are fighters!

Widow's Plans for Her Final Years Upended as Proposed Data Center Leads to 28 Evictions in One Neighborhood (Exclusive) Residents of Meadowland Village Mobile Home Park in Kentucky, many of them elderly, disabled, retired, or on fixed incomes, are opening up to PEOPLE about being told they had roughly 90 days to vacate...

"Rural Kentucky residents are unexpectedly facing homelessness and financial hardship after their mobile home park was sold for a proposed 2,000-acre data center."

A colleague of mine at expatalachians also named Nick wrote about the Pittsburgh section of this a few years back

black and white drawing of an underwater scene. a large bird sticking it's head into the water, surrounded by shocked fish

WHATS UP YOU WET MOTHERFUCKERS

Kuwait Is Stripping Its People of Citizenship at an Unprecedented Rate Behind the language of legality, the new emir has pushed a political project to narrow national identity and roll back decades of democratic reform

This is lowkey one of the most important things happening in the Middle East rn and very few people are paying attention to it

The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

You should read this in full, but in short, John Roberts and the other Koch plants on the Supreme Court blew up the Supreme Court to protect the fossil fuel industry from climate regulation.