Been thinking about this line from Vietnam-era Cymoril:

"Melniboné has never stood for good or for evil, but for herself and the satisfaction of her desires."

I don't know much Warhammer but there's no way these aren't already space marine sub-chapters or something.

Probably my two Analog OCD-space-mechanic stories, 'Fixative' and 'Flag Lamp.' Some of my best work, despair of being that good again, sank with nary a plop.

a car is driving down a snowy road in the mountains Alt: A car drives on snowy prairie near forest and mountains

I get to go back to Alberta next month for a bit. Rockies, coulees, bison, big sky. Going to take every picture and write every scrap I have time for. Maybe some more Eraser Jane weird prairie noir or a megafauna paleofiction story, if I'm lucky.

The children warn me of United States General Money, who speaks in an exultant growl and is one hundred thousand times more than quintillion.

"As the astronauts deliver the SitReps... it is stark how rapidly they move away from technical description and fall back onto the language of poetics: colours, superlatives, adjectives, emotions."

"In this one sentence, they have changed the world."

Powerful piece on #ArtemisII

By far the best one I've come across is The Talk of the Saints, just be sure to go in cold.

The Conversation Us Inc - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica Since 2013, the IRS has released data culled from millions of nonprofit tax filings. Use this database to find organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as...

In 2024 The Conversation had 8.3M in revenue and 7.8M in expenses and paid $0 to writers. Is that really ok with you?

projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o...

"Something my father said. He was old, very old at the time. I went into his room, and he was sitting alone in the dark, crying. So I asked him what was wrong, and he said, 'My shoes are too tight. But, it doesn't matter, because I have forgotten how to dance.'"

Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026. They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day.

2025 Update The Widow’s Mite Report 2025 Year-end Update

The 2025 year-end estimate is ~$90B in operating assets (church buildings, welfare farms, BYU system, heritage lands) and ~$231B in investments so yep. thewidowsmite.org/2025update/

Reach out and touch fake

Sorry to hear it, Will, take care

I'm strongly reminded of noticing 'kind' and 'kindness' as marketing terms going hand in hand with tighter and tighter circles of unprovoked pure/impure, ingroup/outgroup judgment.

But what if we don't land, we just get obnoxiously close? Can't possibly go wrong.

a close up of a planet with a shadow of a plane on it . Alt: Europa Clipper, a small spacecraft with protruding solar panels, moves above Europa, a pale golden-brown moon with criscsrossing lines.

A few things to look forward to after Artemis II:

Artemis III lander test in orbit: currently '27
Artemis IV and V moon landings: currently '28

Spaceport Nova Scotia: '28

And maybe most exciting of the lot, Europa Clipper.
Dec '26: Earth flyby
Apr '30: Jupiter orbit
'31-'34: EUROPA!

Anytime, it's very much an interest of mine and will be for a long time to come.

Deseret Demographer

My feeling - not an original thought - that is the main driver's to hedge against stagnated active membership and increased rates of young people leaving. Their investment revenue's now comparable to tithing revenue, so the 'Kingdom of God' can continue 'business as usual' indefinitely. Appearances.

The Widow's Mite Report Research and analysis on the state of wealth in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

In the mid-1990s they adopted a policy of quietly investing any excess tithing revenue. (Tithing has been 5-7 billion/year.) Here's some reports that track how and why it's grown. thewidowsmite.org

LDS Church has Most Valuable Private Real Estate Portfolio in the US, Evidence Suggests An investigation by Truth & Transparency reveals that, in July 2020, the LDS Church owned 1,754,633 acres across the country with a minimum market value of $15.7 billion.

They're also an absolutely titanic real estate investor/landlord: www.truthandtransparency.org/news/2022/04...

It only came out a few years ago; was a bit of a scandal, SEC penalties etc. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensign_...

It's a pretty small sliver of their holdings, e.g. about another $300 M across the five biggest US defense corporations.

I don't work up this stuff for some kind of sneering har-har gotcha. It's because there's a short straight line between the decades of tithing that my family and I paid, and a Tomahawk missile hitting the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school for girls.

A line chart labelled LDS Church investments in Palantir Technologies, Feb 2022-Feb 2026, Sources: SEC Form 13-F quarterly reports, Ensign Peak Advisors. It shows an investment position of under two million, rising to around ten million in the second half of 2023, then rising rapidly after that as Palantir secured surveillance and military AI contracts.

In 2025, @thewidowsmite.bsky.social estimated the LDS Church's investments at $231 billion, bigger than the sovereign wealth fund of South Korea.

Around 0.1%, a paltry $230 million, rests with the Church's much-expanded and highly profitable holdings in a little outfit called Palantir.

And Evan Soloman can recommend a great piece of art for every living room

Ghost - It's A Sin (Official Audio) YouTube video by Ghost

Mood: youtu.be/XfMVF-o7g1o?...

a lion with a very long mane is laying down in the grass Alt: A lion licks its lips and yawns

One of the foster kittens bit my toe bloody while I was feeding her so it's basically The Ghost and the Darkness over here is what I'm saying. Reign of terror begins.

Reminded of—
share.google/pTOY0KCrmeJO...

THE CITY AND ALL HER UGLY FESTIVITIES Even outside the walls of warlike Teotihuacan can Lady Blood hear the sounds of festival. Even outside the great walls can the death goddess and her only companion, Old Spider Monkey, hear the nois…

Yooo I wrote another S&S story featuring my character Lady Blood, this Mayan goddess of death - and it was included in Apocalypse Confidential’s S-WORD special! Check out “The City and All Her Ugly Festivities” here: apocalypse-confidential.com/2025/03/28/t...

Soft power can be pretty conspicuous in its absence