Murderbot being relatable feels like a diagnostic note. You don't have to be an autistic person in the service industry to relate but it helps.

Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch (1/3) Auction item 'Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch (1/3)' hosted online at 32auctions.

I’m offering up 3 signed copies of Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch (co-written with @gabriellekent.bsky.social) in an auction raising money for trans rights in the UK and SA. You can bid for them here.
www.32auctions.com/organization...

My translation of a viral Japanese meme summarizing decades of U.S. complaints about Japan not buying enough American cars (while not making the kind of cars Japanese consumers actually want):

Overconfident humans who don’t listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me.

I have had a mild knee injury bothering me for the last week - on the mend. Extra grateful for my ebike - in the top power assist level it's quite manageable for me to get where I need to

#Checkmate

Libraries buy books; authors receive royalties every time a book is sold. Authors aren't missing out on compensation. Libraries don't cheat authors. I'm an author. Libraries carry my books. I love libraries.

Screenshot from a scan of page 289 of an 1863 English translation of Don Quixote. The text is set in two columns. In the left column, we read in part “thou hast hit the point, Sancho, which can alone shake my resolution”, and on the right “thy share of the booty would would have been at least the emperor’s crown of gold”; by coincidence, these align so that the phrase “shake my booty” can be read across the columns.

Books designed to be read only by human eyes are different from books designed to be read by machines, which is why Google will tell you that the phrase “shake my booty” can be found in an 1863 English translation of Don Quixote.

At first glance, this reads like a series of conspiracy theories, until you realize every single one of these things is actually happening & this batshit insanity is reality. For YEARS, we librarians have been gaslit & told, “bans aren’t bans if you can still buy it on Amazon”. Well, guess what.

Me being a broken record on this: Don't trust consumer-facing "AI" for anything.

Me: Please tell me a little about five characters from the John Scalzi novel The Kaiju Preservation Society. Gemini: Jamie Gray: The narrator of the story. Jamie is a likable, relatable, and funny character who takes the reader along on this adventure. Jamie is working as a food delivery driver at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when they get an offer to join the KPS. Aparna: A brilliant biologist and one of Jamie's closest friends in the KPS. She is incredibly intelligent and passionate about her work. Kahurangi: A chemist and another member of Jamie's team. Kahurangi is very smart and has a dry sense of humor. Niamh: An astrophysicist who studies the kaiju. Niamh is a very strong-willed and independent character. Dr. Vivienne "Vivi" Tanaka: The head of the KPS. She is a brilliant scientist and a strong leader.

Here's an example of the sort of tests I run with "AI" to see if they're still on their bullshit. One of these listed characters doesn't exist in the book. Gemini just plain made them up. Again: what does it get wrong about the things I *don't* know about?

The Real Stonewall Monument The correct and original content for the Stonewall National Monument website that the National Park Service doesn't want you to see.

The National Park Service is misremembering #Stonewall. We're here to help correct their mistakes! All of the original content for the Stonewall National Monument has been republished at realstonewall.com

#trans #queer #LGBWithTheT #translivesmatter

Embrace graphic novels
1/ ?

We literally have science fiction on why this is a bad idea.

Finally reading Ink & Sigil, and I must give a shout out to @kevinhearne.bsky.social for this extremely spot-on snippet about billionaires.

my favorite people are the ones who are drunk on learning, who check more books from the library than they have time to read, who stay up all night on wiki rabbit trails, who need to know everything about stardust or the sea or Icelandic sagas and just. never. stop.

You know what EVs have, just like conventional cars?

Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday Federal agencies moved to satisfy Trump’s orders to remove topics like diversity initiatives and “gender ideology.”

More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down since Friday afternoon, a NYT analysis found.

The purges have removed info about vaccines, veterans' care, hate crimes, and scientific research, among many other topics. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/u...

"'I doubt that most library users of Hoopla are aware that some titles may be AI generated or unedited and of dubious quality,' Blackwell said. 'They may assume that if the library is offering the information, it can be trusted. That is a problem.'"

This list includes "female" and "women" but not "male" or "men."

list of banned keywords

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

ACLU sues on behalf of librarian fired after opposing book censorship effort Patty Hector lost job after being targeted by campaign urging restriction of books with race and LGBTQ+ themes

The fash have been emboldened by demagogues and a misplaced sense of invincibility but we will win this war if we stand together!

I just want to beat the drum again that no other public institution grants civic respect and standing to kids quite like the public library, and that eroding or destroying it is a direct attack on a democratic ideal according to which even the powerless and voiceless have a place among us. 📚

"Adults Only" Room, 140 Banned Books, & New Restrictions on Children's Access Come to an Idaho Public Library System Kootenai County libraries will create an "adults only" room, revoke library access to minors, and seek to ban purchases of a wide swath of book topics for anyone under 18.

Kootenai County libraries will create an "adults only" room, revoke library access to minors, and seek to ban purchases of a wide swath of book topics for anyone under 18.

bookriot.com/community-li...

COMMON GROUND BEAUMONT TO DETROIT: 1943 Looky here, America What you done done— Let things drift Until the riots come. Cause everything that hitler And mussolini do Negroes get the same Treatment from you. Now your policemen Let the mobs run free. I reckon you don't care Nothing about me. You tell me that hitler Is a mighty bad man. I guess he took lessons From the ku klux klan. You jim crowed me Before hitler rose to power— And you're sTiLL jim crowing me Right now, this very hour. Yet you say we're fighting For democracy. Then why don't democracy Include me? You tell me mussolini's Got an evil heart. Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont That he had his start— I ask you this question Cause I want to know How long I got to fight BOTH HITLER-AND JIM CROW. -Langston Hughes, syndicated by the Associated Negro Press, in New York People's Voice and other papers, July 3.

I can’t find any archival evidence that that the Langston Hughes poem circulating here today is authentic so here is a sourced Hughes poem, Beaumont to Detroit, 1943, published that year in the magazine Common Ground, in which he compares Hitler and Mussolini to American Jim Crow and the KKK

Discworld QOTD, from The Wee Free Men

"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."

If you're wondering if you've seen me before, it's probably this one:

Why multinational takeovers of indie publishers are 'bad for readers' Small presses have dominated literary prizes in recent years, and larger publishers are buying them out. What do these acquisitions mean for the local publishing industry?

With several of the larger independent publishers in Australia now part of the major international publishing houses...will others be able to step up and take the risks that independent publishing can?