Books, 4 of them this time

Friday, 29 August 2025 06:16 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
I read books 1-4 of C S Poe's Memento Mori series. A while ago when I was still trying to find books by browsing Amazon (this is a terrible way to find books these days, but the reccing ecosystems I was in were worse) I kept staring at these covers and considering. They seemed relevant to my interests, but also I got burned on a lot of random buys. Also, it seemed like the more a book looked like it was maybe catering to me that it would be borderline unreadable, or actually unreadable.

I liked them and they are very well written. However, they are tricky reccs. It's about a pair of detectives dealing with series killers in NYC and has an actually good sense of NYC crime history. A lot of this is rooted in good research. However, the darkness, the various content warnings and a few other things are going to turn off a lot of readers.

So I was going to make really tortured metaphors about how, even putting all that aside, the books have a very specific vibe that I don't think most people would like. However, what tipped the scale and made me finally take a chance was a fan artist I follow doing an unofficial alt cover for it. Also, the books seem popular on the MM books subreddit and in some of the fan spaces I'm in right now.

It's going to be a 5 book series and book 4 just came out. There is a lot of interconnected stuff between the books so I am glad I read them in order. I'll need to do a canon review before the final one comes out. Definitely a series where you might want to look up warnings and tropes beforehand.
jesse_the_k: Scrabble triple-value badge reading "triple nerd score" (word nerd)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

@etymologynerd on TikTok[youtube.com profile] etymology_nerd on YouTube (note underscore)

My first fandom is language. Let me enthuse about the Etymology Nerd Adam Aleksic. He's a short-form video presenter, essayist, and recently-published author. He started on Reddit, but attained fame on TikTok, and his YouTube is 90% shorts (but not every TikTok has made it to YouTube). It's important that his videos are accurately captioned, cause he speaks faster than an auctioneer on meth. No video description and his hand-held camera means flashing and shaking images. The videos reward multiple views.

six links to short videos, accurately captioned without video description )

Three Essays to Read

If you prefer prose, his Substack newsletter offers RSS at https://etymology.substack.com/feed or luck into one of his maybe-monthly essays here via [syndicated profile] etymologynerd_feed (DW feeds only go back two weeks).

Want more? My first internet #lingcomm crush interviewed Aleksic on Lingthusiasm podcast 105—both audio and transcript there, with insights into best practices in vertical video and why it feels different than old-style horizontals.

Any linguistic communicators making you happy?

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

(no subject)

Sunday, 24 August 2025 07:08 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
Queer bookswap at Victoria Bar:




General bookswap at Threshold Brewing:



And what I came back with:


The quality of the books at the Queer bookswap was really high. The one at Threshold was cute, had vendors and flash tattooing, and Threshold is one of my favorite breweries... but some of the books on the table were like outdated guides to GUI. I picked through for a bit before nabbing book 1 of Mazalan. I got the V E Schwab book at the queer one.

📝 weeknotes (aug 17-23, 2025)

Sunday, 24 August 2025 02:50 pm
tozka: Donna from Doctor Who with a purple wrap (doctor who donna purple)
[personal profile] tozka

Life Updates

Overall I feel really good! There’s the creeping sense of dread re: finances which pops up every month or so, but otherwise I’m excited for the next few months of travel/catsitting.

I think it’s helped that I’ve been regularly going outside and walking for ~45 minutes every day. I’m really bad about doing that normally, but this neighborhood is good for walking and has enough interesting things to look at that I don’t feel bored. My Health app even says my step count is about double what it was last month!

I’ve also been venturing into some of Ann Arbor’s nature preserves, which are much hillier than I expected. Very beautiful trees, though! And usually not too crowded, so it’s peaceful.

Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

I failed to catch the reference

Saturday, 23 August 2025 10:33 am
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
Field Day is a reference to the pairing in the book The Pairing by Casey McQuistion, which I haven't read. I was considering trying to read is before Comic Con, but I know that a lot of people into Red, White and Royal Blue were sharply disappointed in her other books. I don't know if the critiques are valid or just people really hoping for another RWRB and reading something very different.

When I was there I was like 'I am not sure I get the store's concept. Was the concept really thought through?' Yeah, I was just not catching the reference. Anyway, it's very cute and earnest and probably not a mafia front, so I hope they do well.

Field Day

Friday, 22 August 2025 07:34 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
So in less shit news, I went out in the heat wave to check out a new book and bottle shop called Field Day. It was cute. It's been open about two weeks and they are still setting things up. You know how cafes and cozy spaces try to have that electric 'random spare chairs' sort of a look? I am pretty sure that the table, chair and couch were literally just what they could get for free. Some of the chairs would have been miserable to sit and work in for a while. I hope that place does well, even if it's a bit rough at the moment.



It's a store based around book and beer pairings:



They are trying for cozy, queer, sporty, flowery etc... But they really, really need a water station in there since it's bread and butter will be serving drinks. I asked for water and the guy wasn't even sure what to do with that request for a second. (Not to sound like my mother but) It was 100 degrees today, it's basically a bar, and the guy what to figure out how to handle 'hey can I get some water?'

The storefront is super cute and due to the location I could maybe make that a regular writing spot but, hopefully next week they will have more stuff figured out. Like their current payment system doesn't allow for tips and there was no tip jar either. I could actually make a list of stuff the place was missing, but hopefully they'll sort that all soon. (I really want to love this place, but right now it's a bit of a mess and also not great at communicating what it is, and I found it using an approximate location because they don't have a google maps listing yet and what google did spit out was wrong. Unless this a a money laundering front, they've got some work to do)

2 more pics )
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
In response to Bluesky talking about becoming unavailable in Mississippi due to their new state law to 'protect kids':

"rahaeli
[bsky.social profile] rahaeli
I expect to see a lot more social media sites blocking MS in the weeks to come -- we're probably going to have to as well :/" link

The 'we' in this case are the owners of this site.

🔗 planner pages, river circus, portland punk

Friday, 22 August 2025 12:34 pm
tozka: title character sitting with a friend (lady lovely locks & friends)
[personal profile] tozka

Happy Friday! I recently found out the homeowners’ sink does sparkling water using the nubbin on the other side of the faucet from the regular water handle. I coulda been having fizzy water this whole time!

On Dreamwidth

[personal profile] dolorosa_12 shares a warning about AI scambots from AO3 infiltrating Dreamwidth.

[personal profile] beepbird has written a book about plurality/multiplicty titled “For the Many,” and it’s available for free download (EPUB/PDF) at the post, or on their website here.

Summary:

Plurality is the experience of having more than one self in the same body. There are few guides written for those who don’t fit into “one person per body”, and it can be hard to figure out how to live a life where you’re never alone, especially if you struggle with internal conflicts or trust issues. For the Many offers over 100 pages of guides on self-discovery, communication, and developing an internal community.

(via [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith)

[personal profile] matsushima at [community profile] longreads posted a selection of interesting articles and podcasts, including quite a few grouped under “AI is Bullshit.”

Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

tozka: (movies tozka)
[personal profile] tozka

🎬 Who Done It: The Clue Documentary: Directed by Jeff C. Smith. With Colleen Camp, Tim Curry, Syd Dutton, Jane Jenkins. Clue (1985) has become a cult classic film and is loved by multiple generations. Yet there has never been a documentary created to tell the behind the scenes stories…until now. 🔗

A cute fan documentary about the making of Clue (1985), with interviews from some cast and crew members, including the writer/director, and otherwise clips from conventions, TV interviews, and so on.

Audio levels are a bit off on the older recorded bits (the director started in 2017) but overall still watchable. Very interesting learning about the history of the movie’s development, and how they got the cast together.

I thought it was funny that Clue is so popular on social media (especially Tumblr) but the director of the documentary didn’t know any other fans IRL and even the cast/crew didn’t know people loved it. Hopefully they do now, of course!

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

tozka: Georgette Heyer quote: I remember only what interests me. (heyer remember interests)
[personal profile] tozka

Happy Monday! I forgot I had this drafted for a week or so…whoops…

Crafts & Hobbies

Marshall Dry Goods was recommended as a potential replacement to JOANN for a fabric source.

I don’t know how this got into my tabs but it’s an English transcription (with screenshots) of a German documentary about traditional linen weaving in the town of Dickenshied in 1978/1979.

Axxuy shared some typewriter resources for people interested in getting one and/or joining the typewriter-user community.

Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

(no subject)

Sunday, 17 August 2025 02:04 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
* My Rose City Comic Con badge has arrived! No waiting in line for me this year. Last year that was miserable and I got sunburned. This year, no wait and also I reg'd in time to get a free Trimet pass for the weekend.

They have some amazing authors this year like Charlie Jane Anders, T Kingfisher, Casey McQuiston... I don't typically do panels or signings at RCCC, but I want to do author panels this year and I might go pick up a physical copy of Red, White and Royal Blue to get signed. Con is so close I don't know if I can get any other Casey McQuiston books read

* I went to the Jade District Night Market last night. 'Jade District' is a fairly recently named part of Portland. Basically, due to low rents around part of 82nd (an infamously run down part of the city) a large shopping center opened with Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean and other stores. With the rising interest in things like authentic bubble tea, Vietnamese food, etc, it become a big draw and the area has become an official neighborhood with events, designs, etc. I remember people mocking the idea of calling it the Jade District to try to make that a thing, but it fucking worked.

A large chunk of the market was food carts and even outside the food cart area a chunk of the vendors were food vendors. For people without annoying allergies, like me, I assume that event is heaven. Lots of vendors, and like very market I've attended this year it's was amazingly crowded. I'm glad I went. Dunno if I'd hit it up again.

But as someone who has lived in this city a long-ass time and originally lived on 82nd, it's amazing to see.

weeknotes (august 10-16, 2025)

Sunday, 17 August 2025 11:57 am
tozka: title character sitting with a friend (lady lovely locks & friends)
[personal profile] tozka

Life Updates

I’ve been so enjoying my time in Ann Arbor– or at least in this part of A2 in particular.

Every morning I wake up around 6, make a cup of coffee and go out to sit in the garden for an hour or two. Then, after feeding the cats, I go walk around the neighborhood for as long as I want, usually 40 minutes, come back and shower and then get to work! I sit at a high desk and watch the garden out the window, and I see all sorts of animals: groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels (three kinds), chipmunks, stray cats, and once even a deer!

The week has fairly raced by! I did make it into town once this week, to check out the farmer’s market and a few shops. I stopped at a used bookstore called Digger’s, where you literally dig around for media (books, DVDs, games, CDs), and managed to find four books for $0.75/each. Now I’m REALLY in trouble, between those and the ones I got from the Little Free Libraries earlier– and did I mention I found an UNLICENSED LFL on a walk the other day? Of course I got a book from there, so now I’m up to (I think) 10 books still waiting to be read.

Read the rest of this entry » )

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

📸 photo: oak tree

Sunday, 17 August 2025 11:21 am
tozka: A bit of green landscape against a riotous blue cloud-filled sky (van gogh landscape)
[personal profile] tozka
Looking upwards from the ground into the branches of a very large tree. The branches spread across the screen in a curve and are filled with leaves. The sun is shining through the leaves and highlighting those while the rest are a darker green in shadow.

This is (I think) a burr oak tree! Which is the “arbor” part of Ann Arbor (the other being the names of the two founders’ wives, who were both called Ann).

Crossposted from Pixietails Club Blog.

It has begun...

Saturday, 16 August 2025 09:49 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
Halloween is coming:

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