kaberett | Reading

Last week and into this one, I read Lyorn and Tsalmoth, which catches me up on the main sequence of the Dragaera series.

I started in on it a few years ago, meaning to read the books in internal chronological order. Which I've mostly managed, although there are a couple books which have different sections happening at significantly different times, and Tsalmoth takes place relatively early on but was only published in 2024.

I got interested in Dragaera after coming across references to how the big threat of the series is alien creatures, and the whole setting with gods and demons and magic might actually be science fiction underneath. From that perspective, going in chronological order was not the best choice since most of the early books (in both publishing and internal order) don't touch on that at all. If that's what interests you, I'd say start with Taltos, which is a great entry point in any case, and then you can skip forward to Issola without missing much.

Reading the whole series, though, I've been able to appreciate how Brust has improved as a writer over time. It was about at Orca in particular that I stopped and thought, this is really way better than the first couple books. And so most of the books dealing with the big ongoing potentially sfnal stuff are at the better end of the series, so there's that.

I took detours into a few of the books outside the main sequence. The Paarfi of Roundwood books are definitely not for me; no matter how much Brust has improved, I feel he still isn't quite as funny as he thinks he is. Brokedown Palace, though, might be the best Dragaera book of all. It's about the Old giving way to the New, but with sympathy and understanding for those who support the Old; and there's some action and fighting (including the banishing of a god) but overall it's the story of resolving an argument between close family members.

Of the main sequence, my favorite hands down is Vallista, partly because I like stories about the structure of time and space going wrong, partly for the look at the customs of the different houses in one section, and partly for the moment when one of the chief schemers of the series suddenly realizes that their scheme may have already succeeded some time ago.

There are two more books planned in the series, Chreotha and then The Last Contract. Reportedly Brust finished the first draft of The Last Contract a year ago, so we at least will be able to find out how he intended for the story to end somehow. But I hope he's around long enough to get both of them finished.

cosmolinguist

V has the conviction that chronic illness should prevent prevent you from ordinary illnesses -- allergies or colds or whatever -- I would like to offer my own observation:

I have somehow acquired a blister on my foot at rhe same time as my eczema, which is also on my feet, is flaring.

This feels excessively unfair. (Especially because the blister is in a spot on my heel that there's no point putting a bandaid on because it'll immediately fall off due to how skin moves.)

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/29/view-from-a-hotel-window-5-29-26-pittsburgh/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60884

Does the photo have a parking lot? Yes. And as a bonus: a CVS! This one’s a classic of the form.

Reminder that I’m in town for tomorrow’s PGH Book Fest, and my event, with Isabel J. Kim is a 1pm, with a signing to follow. Come see us and/or get books signed by us!

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/29/view-from-a-hotel-window-5-29-26-pittsburgh/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60884

thebloggess_feed

Posted by thebloggess

https://thebloggess.com/2026/05/29/lets-hang-out-tonight-together-in-bed-your-bed-but-ill-just-be-there-electronically-this-sounds-weird-hold-on-let-me-explain/

https://thebloggess.com/?p=44700

So! Lots to share because I am forever behind but first, tonight I’m doing a free zoom book tour stop through Nowhere where I’ll be reading HOW TO BE OKAY WHEN NOTHING IS OKAY and we ran out spots a few days ago but we’ve expanded that now so if you couldn’t rsvp before justContinue reading

https://thebloggess.com/2026/05/29/lets-hang-out-tonight-together-in-bed-your-bed-but-ill-just-be-there-electronically-this-sounds-weird-hold-on-let-me-explain/

https://thebloggess.com/?p=44700

roadrunnertwice

Oh, and also I just picked up Ginga Force and Natsuki Chronicles on playstation because for some random-ass reason they were TWO DOLLARS (/paperboy-from-better-off-dead-voice) for a couple of days, which is ludicrous. Those are the two most recent games by Qute (who made Eschatos and Judgment Silversword); they're very cool, and I was planning to eventually just pay full price for em.

I haven't fired up Natsuki yet (though I previously watched some footage), but Ginga Force is so wild and inspiring. The core of it is a story mode where you attack the levels one-by-one and accumulate a bunch of alternate loadout options, which is very anti-arcade design. (JSS and Eschatos both might as well have been arcade games.) The levels themselves are entirely designed around their bosses, which I find exhilarating — you're constantly interacting with (and shit-talking at) the boss throughout the stage, and can occasionally take a chip off em in between dealing with all the popcorn enemies and obstacles they're throwing at you. Structuring the level as a multi-stage chase scene makes for an incredibly grounded sense of place and context, which is exactly the kind of evolution I should have expected after Eschatos.

That's not really the first place I've seen some of those ideas; in Blue Revolver Val and Dee come to fuck with you mid-stage a couple times (and according to lore each level boss is directly remote-controlling their entire fleet), and a bunch of Touhou bosses fill in as their own midboss. But taking boss-based levels this far gives another effect entirely, and I absolutely love it.

Well, it's arriving at a good time for thinking about this stuff: I'm getting closer to a point where I need to buckle down on level and boss design for Ultra Badger Coyote (working title), so questions of how to build narrative and direction via action and space in a shmup have been on my mind. I think the best examples I've seen prior to this have been ZeroRanger, Eschatos, Radiant Silvergun, and oddly enough Ketsui.

Most Cave games are just structured as "here's a cool new space you ended up in somehow, here's some enemies that might be in that place, here's a boss" — it works fine, but it's not narrative drive! Ketsui, on the other hand, makes it very clear that you're wading inch-by-inch through the nation-scale defenses in front of a single bastardly target with a known fixed location, and the difference is palpable.
In ZeroRanger, of course, you're carving through the invasion fleet to get to Green Orange — over the city, through the excavation, up the space elevator, across the solar system, into the battlestation. It all serves the directional momentum (well, the excavation detour is weird if you sit and think too long, but w/e, it works), and the environments are all extremely structured, with memorable landmarks and wholly unique enemy formations.
Eschatos is almost the same as ZeroRanger (which makes sense, they say it was their biggest direct influence) — over the city, over the country, through the atmosphere, TO THE MOON. It's not split up into levels in the conventional "take a break and show the score summary" way, so it all feels like a continuous and spatially-grounded journey. (Actually, Ketsui benefits from that too because of the transition areas they keep displaying during the stage breaks! Hmm.)
Silvergun is too complicated to get into, but your objectives and destinations keep changing as guided by the narrative, and the big bad keeps showing up to fuck with you, so you're staying connected to your motivation to knock over the final boss.

oursin

France overturns law classing people as property – 178 years after it abolished slavery

Have been for some considerable time casting sceptical glances at the whole liberte egalite fraternite thing, because that third element did seem rather to circumscribe the application....

(And also the historical tendency to consider that o-la-la, they were far more sorted in matters erotique - a good deal of this was surely the perception of gents Britannique en vacances, surely.)

I was a bit stunned by this: Argentina’s ‘European’ self-image under renewed scrutiny after racist incidents in Brazil, but agreeably surprised to find that Brazil (which was very late to abolish slavery) has a law of 'racial insult'. Although it has significant racial problems.

strange_maps_feed

Posted by Frank Jacobs

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/millionaire-migration/

Since 2018, around 102,600 millionaires have left California. In the same period, 61,400 Americans with at least seven figures to their name have packed up and left New York state. Where have they gone? According to the Wealth Exodus dashboard, Florida has added 133,000 millionaires over those years, and Texas has added 61,400.

Using data compiled from the IRS, the Federal Reserve, and state tax records, this dashboard visualizes the migration of American millionaires between states.

Politically explosive numbers

The numbers are politically explosive because they are neither random nor subtle. The map shows the moneyed classes moving from predominantly Democratic-run states to Republican ones. Put another way: from states with typically higher taxes and more regulations to states with generally lower taxes and fewer regulations.

It’s not a trivial trickle. From 2020 to 2024, Americans collectively worth around $500 billion changed their state of residence. The top three states they moved from were California, New York, and Illinois. The largest inflows went to Florida, Texas, and Nevada.

Aerial view of a cityscape featuring a mix of low-rise commercial and office buildings surrounded by trees under a partly cloudy sky. — Drone view of downtown Ocala, Florida. According to the Census Bureau, Ocala was the fastest-growing metro area in the country last year. Its population grew by 3.4% year on year to reach 442,700 by July 1st, 2025. The growth was driven mainly by positive net domestic migration. (Credit: Michael Warren, via Getty Images)

Zoom out, and a nationwide pattern of millionaire migration becomes apparent. Rich people are leaving the Midwest and Northeast (except Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine), the Pacific coast (minus Washington), the Mississippi basin (i.e., Louisiana and Mississippi), the non-contiguous states (Alaska and Hawaii), and New Mexico.

Wealthy folks are not just flocking to Florida. Pretty much every other state has seen an increase in the number of millionaires since 2018 (even if it’s as few as 500 in Nebraska). Three states are breaking even, millionaire-wise: Kansas, Missouri, and North Dakota.

A marginal tax rate of around 50%

Why is California in particular bleeding millionaires? Well, it does have the nation’s highest marginal income tax rate, at 13.3%. California has lower rates on lower income brackets, but that is the rate you pay on the state’s highest income bracket, which starts at $1 million (for single filers). Hawaii has the nation’s second-highest marginal income tax rate (11%) on income above $325,000 (single filers). New York, the state with the third-highest marginal income tax, charges 10.9% on any earnings above $25 million.

Combined with other state and federal taxes, California’s marginal tax rate is around 50%. As rich people are (obviously) more mobile than poorer ones, many have chosen to avoid these high taxes by moving to states with lower rates.

That is fiscally counterproductive for California: According to IRS data, high-earning households leaving the state took more than $16 billion in annual income with them in 2022 alone. Over the five-year period ending in 2022, that out-migration of high-earning individuals cost an estimated $5.3 billion in personal income tax, and the trend persists. At least some of that money would have stayed in California if those high earners had been taxed at lower rates or differently.

But how low is low enough? If Florida is the most popular destination, it’s not just because of the weather. The Sunshine State is one of nine without a state income tax. (If you’re curious, the others are Alaska, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming). Those states typically make up for it by charging higher sales or property taxes. Still, zero income tax makes quite a difference if you’re a high earner.

Say you’re a successful entrepreneur earning $5 million a year. Simply by moving from California to Florida, you save around $665,000 per year in state income taxes. That increases to approximately $740,000 if you move down from New York City, which, in addition to state and federal income taxes, also charges hefty city income taxes.

U.S. map showing state-by-state population migration, with Florida and Texas in red as top gainers and California in dark green as largest loser, based on all-time data. — A map is not just about the data it presents, but also about story it chooses to tell. Perhaps this map is not so much about millionaire migration as about the widening political and cultural rift within the U.S. (Credit: CitizenX)

Simple logic suggests this is an inherently unstable situation. With disparities this large, there will be a race to the bottom or, rather, two races: one of millionaires moving to lower-tax states and another of states lowering taxes to retain and, if possible, attract enough wealthy citizens to keep their coffers filled, if not by charging (increasingly lower) income taxes, then by a value-added tax (VAT) and other non-income-related taxes.

An ongoing referendum on taxation

If you get the sense that this map is approaching the income tax issue in a rather one-sided way, you are on to something. As with any map, it’s worth considering who made this one, and why. In this case, it’s CitizenX, a Switzerland-based company that specializes in procuring foreign citizenship by investment.

From its perspective, high-net-worth individuals who “vote with their feet” are not an indication of a broken system but of a healthy impulse; wealth is something to be admired as a measure of success, not taxed and shared with society at large.

Within that political narrative, fiscally motivated migration is simply an ongoing referendum on taxation. In the three decades since 1990, about 13 million Americans moved out of California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. A similar amount moved into Arizona, Florida, Nevada, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

And it’s not just a vote of no confidence at the national level. CitizenX’s target audience consists of wealthy individuals who can afford its services to obtain citizenship in another country and keep their tax bills as low as possible.

Potential destinations are several Caribbean nations (Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts & Nevis, and Saint Lucia), two Pacific ones (Nauru and Vanuatu), and a few others (El Salvador, São Tomé & Príncipe, and Turkey). These countries offer citizenship-by-investment through donations to the government or the purchase of real estate. Until 2025, Malta also offered a so-called “Golden Passport,” but that popular shortcut into the EU was closed after the European Court of Justice ruled against the sale of citizenship. Several EU countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Greece) do, however, still offer residency-by-investment (Golden Visas), with full naturalization still requiring a longer, non-transactional pathway.

However, while the map visualizes a real phenomenon — wealthy people are moving from high-tax to low-tax states in significant numbers — it does not tell the entire story. It does not show the social capital those high-tax states have created: the schools and hospitals, the academic and cultural institutions, which, to a certain extent, explain why all that wealth was created there in the first place.

What is most interesting about a map is not the data it presents, but the story it chooses to tell. Perhaps what the Wealth Exodus map illustrates is not so much the blight of high taxation and the benefit of its opposite, as the widening rift in the U.S. — a sorting of the country by political and cultural values. In the end, what this map reveals above all else is the mapmaker’s political convictions. And, perhaps, those of the map reader, too.

Strange Maps #1292

Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.

Follow Strange Maps on X and Facebook.

This article Follow the money: Mapping millionaire migration across America is featured on Big Think.

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/millionaire-migration/

nanila

In an average week, how many nights do you eat home-cooked dinners?

7 out of 7, unless I’m on travel. We rarely eat in restaurants, not least because it’s fiendishly expensive for four people compared to preparing our own food.
Do you plan your meals out in advance, or just wing it?

Usually there is a loose plan at the start of the week, because we have to plan for nights the children have activities (most weeknights) and / or when one of the adults will not be there.
How many nights per week do you eat out or order food delivered?

If you average it over a month, 0.25 nights per week for eating out, 0 nights per week for food delivery. We live in a rural area so very few places deliver to us. Also, only one of our children likes Indian or Chinese takeaway; the other one won’t touch it, so it feels pretty pointless when you’re still going to end up preparing at least one meal.
Do you keep a stock of nonperishable foods from which you could whip up a meal or two if you needed to?

Oh yes. We have all the pasta shapes and all the tinned goods.
Have you ever tried preparing meals for the week all at once, say, on the weekend?

See the pinned post at the top of my journal. I don’t do this every week, but when I know the bloke is going to be away, all the meals get slow-cooked the weekend prior.

My slow cooker is hands-down my favourite electrically powered kitchen device*, followed closely by the KitchenAid stand mixer and now the Ninja Creami.

* Kettle, toaster and microwave excluded from this hierarchy as their presence is not contingent upon whether or not I like them.

[I have not been around here much. I apologise. I have been disinclined to write since Comet's death, but I'm starting to come out the other side of that period of silent grieving now.]

ukfountainpens_feed

Posted by Bryan

https://ukfountainpens.com/2026/05/29/barans-pens-sleeve/

https://ukfountainpens.com/?p=108252

Pens are a great deal of fun but bringing them around can be a bit stressful, especially if you’re afraid of them getting scratches or dropping them. I’ve been using a fair amount of pen sleeves and rolls, and want to showcase one in particular today. I’ve known Baran who runs Baran’s Pens since joining… Continue reading

The post Baran’s Pens Sleeve appeared first on UK FOUNTAIN PENS.

https://ukfountainpens.com/2026/05/29/barans-pens-sleeve/

https://ukfountainpens.com/?p=108252

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

kareila

I went with the family to see The Mandalorian & Grogu after being reassured by a friend who saw it opening night that I didn't need to be familiar with the show to enjoy it. She was right, although now I kind of want to watch the show too.

Will I find the time? Who knows! But if I don't, it probably won't be because I'm watching the Red Sox - at least, not the way they've been playing lately.

Current Mood: busy

roadrunnertwice

Unrelatedly, I'm starting to close in on a Maniac 1cc of Mushihimesama (using S-type shot) which is probably going to be my first clear of a Cave game. It's gonna be a bit, still; I'm missing some answers for the stage 4 boss, the stage 5 boss, and the section around 3/4 through stage 5 where it just goes absolutely apeshit on you.

I checked out Kiwi's survival strats video, but I can't use his approaches directly because he's using the supershot exploit, and I've committed to avoiding that for this 1cc. (Short story: there's a programming oversight that lets you do way more damage and counter-gain by setting autofire up in a particular way. Most players consider it legitimate in score play, but I want to see if I can clear the game the way the developers thought they were balancing it. Kiwi's video shows that there are several boss patterns you can just not deal with because the supershot damage lets you skip to the next phase too quick, so I'm definitely causing problems for myself on purpose here.)

soc_puppet posting in

queerly_beloved

Sneaking in a little early this week, it's Thursday Recs!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

roadrunnertwice

qntm — Fine Structure

Feb 4

This novel covers some of the same ground as Ra, but I didn't like it as much — it didn't feel as coherent and directed, which drained some of the impact of the big gonzo ideas. Anyway, read Ra! I can't yet speak to There Is No Antimemetics Division, but I'll probably get to it at some point. (Actually, that's what I meant to read this time, but the hold line at the library was pretty saturated, so I diverted.)

John Scalzi — When the Moon Hits Your Eye

May 15

Kind of high-concept — the setup is that, in a miraculous occurrence that cannot be explained or comprehended, the moon turns to an equivalent mass of cheese, and then we spend 28 chapters flitting from character to character (only rarely making repeat visits to someone) to show a world Staying Entirely On Its Bullshit Despite It All.

Well-written and fun, but I think it ultimately felt a bit slight? Well... hmm. It's possible the ending will stick with me.

I found the end annoying — everything goes back to the way it was, as randomly as it began, and then a hundred years later it's fully accepted that it was all a globally-coordinated "megahoax." Kind of the whole thesis of the book is "what we do in the face of the senseless," and I feel like that ending is an especially grim final answer that I don't really have a response for.

Andrea K Höst — the Touchstone series (re-reads)

Jan 26, Jan 26, Jan 27, Jan 29

I was just in a mood to re-read some junkfood.

Andrea K Höst — In Arcadia

Feb 3

Oh yeah, so I noticed a couple years back that Höst had done another sequel to the Touchstone series, and this one was a romance novel about Cass's mom. Okay! Sure!

I liked this. Yeah, okay, it's very hetero, as is the original series, and I could name some ways to improve that. But it's doing some interesting and satisfying stuff against the standard grain of the portal fantasy format, which was also something I liked about the other, prior epilogue — it's really committing to exploring the consequences of deciding to stay in the portal world, whereas usually the decision to stay (or return) is the end of the story.

At the end of said prior epilogue, a significant chunk of Cass's old life decided to pick up stakes and hop through the gate the next time its rotation came around, including her mom, her brother, one of her aunts, two of her friends, and a friend's dying sibling. But then what? Laura's suddenly a dependent of her adult child, her other kid is on the struggle bus, and everyone's finding it a bit oppressive to be under global tabloid scrutiny every time they stick their nose outside their guarded compound. She's trying to restart her art career from scratch and there's still feelings from her divorce that she never finished unpacking. It's messy! I liked that.

Graydon Saunders — A Succession of Bad Days, Safely You Deliver, Under One Banner (re-reads)

Mar 19 – Mar 26, or thereabouts

Yep.

Martha Wells — Platform Decay (Murderbot... 7?)

May 25

It's Murderbot, I liked it.

I'm looking forward to some more exploration of Murderbot's burgeoning artistic/documentarian career, but this isn't that; it's a real fucked up extraction mission in a much bigger and more chaotic environment than our protagonist is used to dealing with. Also, it has started reluctantly going to therapy, and seems to be benefiting from that a bit.

There was something I mentioned in an old review of one of the other novellas in the series: something where the answer to an ongoing mystery turned out to be much less complicated than it looked, but then also paradoxically more complicated because of the way it didn't weave into the rest of the backstory in a tidy and contained way. A deliberately ragged edge that smudges the boundary between the small and comprehensible plot and the big incomprehensible world that surrounds it.

Anyway, this has that going on.

denise posting in

dw_maintenance

It's been a while since we've done a full code push rather than just hotfixes for bugs, so we are well overdue! Depending on availability, we're aiming to do one sometime soon; we'll let you know specifics once we've worked out good timing for everyone who needs to be available.

However! The reason it's been so long is we kept trying to get some of the stuff that's pending to "really finished" instead of just "mostly finished", and then we once again looked around and went "oh no, this is a really big code push with a lot of changes". Those make us nervous, because while we do a lot of testing ourselves, y'all are really creative in how you use the site and we inevitably find a bunch of edge cases when we let you loose on new code with your real-world data!

So, if folks have some spare time in the next few days, it would be a huge help if you could spend half an hour or so using the site the same way you normally do but with the "Site-Wide Canary" beta features flag turned on. Canary mode is a sort of "live testing" mode: it's your real data, but running the most up-to-date code.

Canary mode always does have a few glitches -- there may be missing text strings or errors about missing database properties, which is a limitation of how we run it. We don't need to know about those, but anything else weird that you run into, leave a comment with what you were trying to do and the error message you got.

I'll repeat that the "here be dragons" caution that's on the beta features page: some things may be broken, so don't use it for when you're doing something important. But a few more eyeballs on it before the push will help the push go more smoothly for everyone.

For folks who want to concentrate on what's changing, we haven't finished the second code tour of what's going to be in this push, but the ffirst one has a good chunk of what's going to be going live. (We'll get the second half done ASAP!)

watersword

To my genuine astonishment, the Tatler Fairyland story got a pretty positive response in crit group, and I have a great direction to go for revisions. ?!?!

Meeting the person who successfully got the other pollinator garden approved got me a couple of potentially very useful contacts and a copy of their application, which I am shamelessly copying. Cross your fingers that my various ideas, especially for watering, work out, because that is probably the main blocker. (And me being willing to talk to vendors for price quotes, ugh.)

cosmolinguist

The disabled loo at Leeds train station was out of order, so I had to use the cis abled men's room.

Now, I will preface this by saying that I have also been in horrifying women's rooms, and cleanliness and class solidarity with janitors is not limited by gender.

But, after I'd concluded my business in there as quickly as possible (not helped by the nearest soap dispenser being out of soap...) this was the kind of smelly, dirty, faulty public bathroom that provides me with the only, the single solitary, time I wonder if transition was worth it.

oursin

Or, doing those things I ought to have done/been doing already, maybe.

Well, not quite that, but it was one of those days when after several days of flopping around feeling that not much was getting done and general apathy not entirely attributable to the weather I actually -

Rang the dental practice to reschedule my hygienist appointment because now Condoms Are Go it's less convenient than it was.

Okay, this only came up yesterday anyway: a younger scholar got in touch (prompted by former colleague) over thing they are doing and hoping for input if not actual collaboration from me, and I am not sure about collaboration but feel I could advise, and maybe, blurb or something?

Also, is yonks since was in contact with former colleague so emailed them.

While I was on email roll contacted person i/c archive I did research in some while ago and am contemplating doing a piece on fruits of my research about any constraints on quoting the material.

Sat down to beginning writing what I am intending saying about the Powerpoint slides for Condom Talk.

Did some updates for website.

Had some technical communications re talk.

Phew.

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

Spotted our first ducklings of the year!

( Read more... )

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

Dried fruit.
Blue cheese that's spreadable if kept at room temperature. Good bread.
Compression gloves to go with the socks. Be nice if I'd remember to wear them at night, which is what I got them for.
Exercise putty. Which is also an excellent fidget. Fidget gadgets in general.
NSAIDs.

NO thanks for chronic pain and depression-or-whatever-the-frack-this-is.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

aslobcomesclean_feed

Posted by Dana White

https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2026/05/22785/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=22785

https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/?p=22785

As always, I’m taking time off during the summer. We’re sharing the audio of previous live Q&As that I did on YouTube. If you only listen to the podcast, this will be all new to you! We’ll be back to our regular format mid-August. This episode includes my answers to questions about decluttering journals, clothes […]

The post 512: Decluttering Journals, Clothes Between Sizes, and Take It There Now with Limited Energy appeared first on Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean.

https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2026/05/22785/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=22785

https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/?p=22785

oursin

Happy birthday,

genarti and

green_knight!

nanila posting in

awesomeers

redbird

I tried a new ice cream place this afternoon, on my way home from the dentist. The bus driver pulled over because he realized that the air conditioning wasn't working, fortuitously in front of an ice cream and frozen yogurt shop with a sign in the window that said "saffron rose." So, instead of getting on the next bus, I went into the store and got a dish of soft-serve saffron rose ice cream, which was very good. I had vaguely noticed the shop in passing, but been unimpressed, because the place is named "tutti fruitti" [sic]. While eating my ice cream, I mentioned to the bus driver that I'd been going to get ice cream in Harvard Square. He asked for the location, and said that his favorite ice cream is sold at a bowling alley in Hyde Park.

The dental visit itself went fine. He placed my new permanent crown, to replace the temporary one I got three weeks ago.

I noticed again that my risk of catching covid (or any other respiratory infection) there is very low: the dentist and his assistant were masked, and there was nobody in the waiting room when I arrived, and one person when I was done. The dentist mostly works out of a different office, and I don't know know the economics of keeping this office open one day a week work, but I'm glad they do.

petrea_mitchell

The annual reminders about staying healthy at big cons.

cosmolinguist

My big achievement of today was fixing a problem I found out about yesterday: a meeting I was very excited to get invited to next Tuesday turned out to be an in-person thing in London.

Which wouldn't be a big deal except I already have to be in London on Thursday.

Tuesday is the most inconvenient day to add to this! I've done two and even three days of London events in a row, but I didn't want to have to impose on a friend to stay with for that long or stay in a budget hotel on my own for that long or make day trips to and from London on two out of three days.

I cannot move or get out of Thursday (it's going to be an absolutely ghastly event; I'm on a panel), and Tuesday is a big win to get involved with an organization we haven't before and that it'd be really useful to be involved with, and again it has to be me.

But since it's some new people, they had offered to have a chat with me to talk about how they could ensure the meeting will be accessible to me. And that meeting happened to be arranged for this afternoon. My only idea was to ask them if I could join on Teams.

So when it came around, I mentioned this, and these two nice guys said "Well it's funny you mention that actually because there's going to be tube strikes which will make it difficult for a lot of people to get to our office. So we might move it anyway, but yeah if we don't we have the AV stuff in the office for the meeting to be hybrid."

I was so relieved! It was difficult not to let it show too obviously on my face.

So yeah, now I don't even know if this meeting I care about will happen next week, but either way I can do it on Teams instead of going to London!

It's nice when things work out in my favor.

i_like_the_stars posting in

common_nature

Went on a hike Monday with my friends. This was our last stop, a graffiti bridge with a nice view.

( One more under cut )

oursin

What I read

Dorothy Richardson, Interim (Pilgrimage, #5) (1919) for online reading group. Less dentistry in this one, but Canadian doctors.

Vonda McIntyre, The Curve of the World - which, well, my bar for her is set high, and one does wonder if maybe she would have worked more on this had she had the time, but it was still pretty good, even if there was a bit of an air of thought-experiment about the possibilities of cultural exchanges at the period. Points for having ageing (textually indicated to be menopausing) protag, and the seafaring party includes a pregnant woman.

Mick Herron, Nobody Walks (2015), thriller set in the Slough House universe and with various known characters mentioned but a stand-alone about unrelated characters. Not bad.

On the go

Still Persuasion, but very nearly there.

Still dipping in to Violet Hunt's Tales of the Uneasy - possibly her strength lay in the creepiness lurking within human relations, because I'm not sure she's really up there with her horror contemporaries?

Up next

There's a new Slightly Foxed.

rmc28

... a new railway station in Cambridge!

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/next-stop-cambridge-south-new-stations-opening-date-revealed

And it's now on the journey planners. The first train to stop there is definitely Too Early for me, but I'm absolutely going to catch a train there at some point on my birthday.

skygiants

I was sold on E.Y. Zhao's Underspin by this post via

sleepnoises -- I also love books with Big Hole in the middle that do interesting things with POV! I also love a book that tells you at the beginning that the protagonist is already dead and then lets you sit with that tension for the next however many hundred pages. Pre-haunted by the protag, if you will.

I didn't quite love Underspin, as it turned out, but I do think it's really interesting as a structural project. We start at the funeral of almost-great table tennis prodigy Ryan Lo, his parents waiting for his coach to show up, which he doesn't. Then we go back in time and begin tracking Ryan's career through the eyes of various people who intersect with him over the course of his twenty-five years -- some who spend years with him on major life and career-altering enterprises, and others who cross his path for a day, a weekend, a single table tennis tutoring session at the local club. (My favorite POV character is the very elderly woman whose daughter is forcing her and her husband to take table tennis As A Retirement Activity despite their absolute lack of interest.)

Each of these chapters essentially functions as a little short story about a person who is at least tangentially involved with table tennis. They're all caught up in their own lives and problems, and also Ryan is also there, visible and attention-grabbing, handsome and talented and apparently destined for success, a perfect lightning rod for whatever insecurities the POV character happens to be feeling at that time. Through the structural distortion effect, though, it increasingly becomes clear that there's something wrong about Ryan's relationship with his coach, and the unease of that runs through the book, which began at Ryan's funeral.

I did kind of want more of a structural distortion effect ... from the description I was expecting a series of first-person narratives, The Moonstone-like, but on a prose level most of the book is actually written in more or less the same third-person MFA short story style, with a couple of exceptions. I didn't really click with it and it did detract a bit from the tension for me; I wanted a little more psychological horror, a little less wistful melancholy. But I think that's mostly an expectation-reality mismatch. I did like that there's never really a 'gotcha' moment, that by the time some truths are revealed you are not surprised by them, and that everything stays deeply ambiguous, deeply ambivalent, through the end. Also, there's no question that the book absolutely understands The World of Table Tennis.

oursin

Happy birthday,

redroanchronicles!

cosmolinguist

My (work) laptop is so slow today. Maybe it's too hot (it's over 90°F today, which I'm lucky to find manageable with no air conditioning, but it makes myself known). Maybe it's also struggling after the long weekend we both had.

nanila posting in

awesomeers

petrea_mitchell

I think I last checked in on this after reading Gate of Ivrel, which I thought was a pretty average planetary romance. After that:

Well of Shiuan: Now this is something special. Suddenly we're talking about deep time, insane aristocrats, and a doomed planet that cannot be saved by some last-minute feat of technological magic. It's very much more Tolkien than Burroughs. Possibly the best middle book of a trilogy I've ever read.

Fires of Azeroth: Sort of Tolkien-like again, with the qhal sort of playing the part of wood elves. A decent conclusion to the series, but badly overshadowed by the prologue, which is a parting shot from Shiuan and just served as a reminder of how good book 2 was.

Wave Without a Shore: And then into one of the more obscure corners of the Alliance-Union continuity, in fact so obscure that you can't really tell that it is part of the Alliance-Union continuity. This takes place on a planet where everyone is ranked by brainpower and the protagonist is the smartest man on the planet, competing with the other elites to impose his own version of reality on the rest of society until events intervene.

For a while this felt like it could have been an attempt to write like Ursula K. Le Guin, until about halfway through when it suddenly turns into a standard Cherryh story of a man who goes among aliens, absorbs their mindset, and becomes a mediator between societies. Le Guin would have found time to deconstruct the whole alleged meritocracy, but Cherryh's hero remains objectively ranked #1, he's just found a new use for his talents.

Also, I've commented before that human women tend to be unlucky or incompetent in Cherryh stories where there are aliens, and this is the most extreme example yet. There are three named women in this book, and two of them exist solely to draw a contrast with the protagonist's utter brilliance, and get killed off as soon as their part in the story is done.

What I should be doing at this point is checking out Exile's Gate, but when I was looking up information about the Morgaine books, I learned about a book previously unknown to me called Witchfires of Leth, and that diverted me onto a new reading project...

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/26/a-yearish-with-the-eames-chair/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60847

Roughly a year ago (actually closer to thirteen months), a chair arrived at the house: an Eames Lounge Chair, that classic piece of midcentury furniture, beloved of tweedy intellectuals and pretentious jazz aficionados everywhere. I had wanted one for years but couldn’t rationalize buying the thing, because they were (and are) stupidly expensive; I could and have furnished two entire rooms with couches and televisions for what this one chair costs. I finally rationalized purchasing one because it was on sale, I had come into some unexpected money, and the world was on fire, so might as well be comfortable amidst the flames. It arrived and has been ensconced in the corner of my office since then. I sit my ass into it on a daily basis when I am home.

Some thoughts on the Eames chair, a year on:

1. I spent extra to have the chair made bespoke, with an oiled santos palisander shell and prone leather in “vine” (aka a deep, slate-y green), but I also have cats who honed in on the chair like the furry clawed missiles they are. So, basically, from the first day the chair arrived it’s been covered in plush blankets, both the chair and included ottoman. This has not detracted from the comfort of the chair (and indeed may have added to it), but I suppose there is something undignified in having a piece of celebrated modern industrial art draped in a fuzzy Ohio State poly-blend throw, with a “tortilla” blanket of the same material on hand to drape over me when I sit in it. Sorry, Eames chair. You deserve better. But, cats.

(edit to add: the “honed in” was a pun that some overenthusiastic grammar correctors missed and tried to correct in the comments. Cats, claws, etc.)

2. Because I didn’t regularly sit in the previous chair that was in the spot the Eames chair now occupies, it actually took me a few months to use it on a frequent basis. Which is not to say the Eames did not get use; the aforementioned cats took to it immediately. It was not unusual to have one cat in the Eames and another in the cat tree next to it, and after a couple of hours they’d swap positions. At some point I decided that if I had spent that much damn money on the thing, I was going to use it, so I basically trained myself to get into the chair. After a certain point the training took.

3. One big reason the training took: Oh my God, this thing really is as comfortable as advertised. It is not overly soft, like so many recliners are; you don’t feel like your ass is sinking into marshmallow or anything like that. It’s soft enough, but it’s also supportive. I don’t get an ache in my lower back when I sit in it for extended periods of time. The ottoman is (naturally) the perfect height for your legs when you’re sitting in the chair. It just. Feels. Good.

Is it several thousand dollars worth of feeling good? That’s going to be a judgment call. I suspect there are many less expensive chairs (including some Eames knockoffs, probably) that are as supportive and good feeling. But I don’t have those chairs in my house, I have this one. And this one is pretty great.

4. Here is what I think is the real acid test for me, regarding the comfort of this chair: I fall asleep in it pretty much every day, a nice 15-minute nap or whatever, usually in the mid-to-late afternoon. And you say, big ideal, lots of people fall asleep in chairs, old man. And you’re not wrong, except for this: I don’t fall asleep in any other chairs, in our house or out of it. I’m not a chair sleeper and never have been. Sleeping sitting up is just not a thing I do.

Except in this chair. This chair knocks me right the fuck out. That’s gotta mean something.

5. Now my daily schedule is something like this: Morning and early afternoon, I’m at my desk, using the full-size keyboard and monitor (I have an ergonomic chair there, never you worry). Sometime between 3 and 4, I’ll go that’s enough of that and I’ll get up, walk six feet and plop my ass into the Eames chair. I’ll place a can of soda on the handy window sill, crack open my MacBook Air, fire up a 15-to-20-minute YouTube video, conk out to (usually) someone talking about food or environmental tech, wake up when the video is done and then answer email or fart about on social media or (like right now) write on the blog. I don’t do a lot of long-form writing in the chair because laptops are not ergonomic wonders, especially when, as I so often do, I have a cat colonizing my lower half. But for short stuff it’s fine.

Sometimes I’ll take video calls from my chair since my desktop computer doesn’t have a webcam, but my laptop does. If I’m watching something longer than a YouTube video, I might hook up my AR glasses to my Air and project the thing to a virtual 120-inch screen that goes wherever my head goes, thus avoiding the dreaded laptop neck crick. Yes, I look like a dork. But no one else is usually in my office for this indignity, and anyway, I’m comfortable. All told, my Eames chair time is pretty good.

6. Do I have complaints about the Eames chair? A couple. Like a sports car, it’s a little low, so there’s a some maneuvering to get in and out of it, including negotiating the ottoman. If you want to have your Eames chair have a different angle of recline, you’re out of luck (although I know at least one knock-off version offers that). And in my case, I have to constantly reposition the blankets as they tend to bunch up when I’m sitting in the chair.

Also, shit, it’s a lot of money for a damn chair. One of the nice things about these chairs is that they retain their value extremely well; it’s entirely possible one day I (or more likely Athena) can sell the chair for more than what I paid for it. eBay currently has vintage Eames chairs going for ten to fifteen thousand dollars, which is an argument for me keeping the blankets on this thing. Design Within Reach, the store I bought this chair from, keeps sending me emails with other really expensive furniture on offer, on the idea that if I bought one ridiculously expensive piece of furniture, I might buy others, too. Sorry, guys. One’s enough. Our other furniture isn’t cheap. But it’s not this expensive.

7. The Eames chair is expensive as hell, but a year in I think I’ve been getting value out of it, and am likely to continue to get value out of it for a good long time. On balance it’s been worth the initial sticker shock, and will become even more so as we go along. I don’t think a chair like this is necessary, or even advisable, for most folks. You can buy a lot of other really excellent chairs for a hell of a lot cheaper than this, and probably should.

But you know what? If you can splurge, there are a bunch of worse things you could blow this sort of money on. If you take care of this chair, it is likely to outlive you, and while you live, you will be extremely comfortable in it. I’m glad I bought one. I’m not going to get two.

Watch on YouTube

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/26/a-yearish-with-the-eames-chair/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60847

embracingcalm posting in

common_nature

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/26/new-cover-high-fidelity/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60841

Watch on YouTube

It was a holiday weekend and when I wasn’t de-skunkifying a dog, I had some free time, so I went ahead and did another cover song, this one from Alisa Xayalith, who is probably best known as the lead singer of The Naked and Famous, but who has put out a solo album while that band as been on a break. This song was one she put out in the run-up to that album. It’s simple but lovely.

My version probably isn’t quite as lovely as hers (she has a rather better voice, for one thing), but it was fun to do and my falsetto got a bit of a workout, so there is that. Enjoy.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/26/new-cover-high-fidelity/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60841

oursin

It is torrid today in London, my dearios.

And I have booked myself to go to an in-person seminar at the Institution With Which I Have The Honour to Be Associated later this afternoon, o joy.

Somebody is presenting on a couple of fairly obscure early C20th progressives/sexologists whom I have also done a spot of work on, so feel a bit obliged to turn up.

Also, it is the time for applying for renewal of fellowship, so showing one's face about the place may be A Good Idea.

In other news I have actually managed to acquire an in-person GP appointment apropos of the knee issue for next week at a reasonable sort of time of day, after only a day and a bit of keeping going back to the practice site....

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/26/the-big-idea-t-k-rex/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60836

In science fiction, everything can be rethought — including one of the most foundational aspects of human civilization, agriculture. T.K. Rex gives it a go in The Wildcraft Drones, with an exciting take on the future of food production… and how we all might live because of it.

T.K. REX:

The world of The Wildcraft Drones began on a train. I’d just finished my first ecology class, I was watching endless farms go by, and it was 2015, so drones were new and mostly in the news as war machines. I knew that industrial agriculture caused major problems for watersheds and biodiversity, and I knew that forests were being planted for carbon sequestration. All these ingredients simmered on that quiet, two-day ride, and over Amtrak coffee and hot dogs, I came up with an idea.

What if forests could replace farms?

Lots of trees make food. But I wasn’t thinking about orchards. I was thinking about biodiverse, multi-story forests where herbs grew in the underbrush and birds nested in ancient oaks. The kind of forests I grew up in, back in Northern California, but carefully managed with food plants, so they could be as bountiful as a field of corn, but also sequester carbon and restore wildlife populations. Was it possible?

Not with tractors, I realized. Industrial agriculture relies on big machines with big wheels, so every farm is half road. Even human harvesters need ground between rows. The harvesting itself requires wasted soil. What if we could harvest from the air? What if a forest was actually a better use of the same space, once drone technology became advanced enough to harvest hundreds of different species?

The ideas rapidly built on each other. The drones could have little lasers to zap pests — no chemicals needed. Encouraging biodiversity would generate natural fertilizer.

Humans would have to be kept out, of course. In this future, we would all live in walled cities, probably, while the drones managed the forest to supply us with food.

I wrote a vignette, and sent it to the only science fiction writer I knew back then: my mom, who had a couple stories published and edited an academic journal. She said something along the lines of, “I love the idea of forests replacing farms, but forcing people out breaks my heart. We loved living in the redwoods. And What about the Native people?”

This is why I love her so much.

Her words hit me hard — we both grew up next to reservations — but I couldn’t let the concept go. Industrial agriculture had to change if we were going to address the climate crisis, and the only tool I had to do anything bigger than recycling, I thought, was the craft of storytelling. So I made a point of learning everything I could about food forests, and how rewilding our farms might work in Northern California. If I was going to write a book, I’d have to get specific, so I researched native edible plants that were already adapted to the climate here, and that led me to one of the most profound mind-shifts of my life.

I was a huge technology enthusiast in my twenties, and I’d imagined this futuristic techno-super-forest would be better, somehow, than what nature could do. That changed when I read about the actual history of Northern California’s native edible plants.

The historical accounts from Spanish colonizers describe hillsides so dense with flowers (all, in fact, native food plants) they were like a sea of color, and flocks of tule geese that darkened the skies. The intricacy of indigenous ecosystem management is well documented by both anthropologists and Native people themselves, and I found details of precisely how they managed thousands of species, not just for food but for all of the materials that made their homes, tools, clothes, and devices used for trapping, childcare, strategic fire, textiles, and everything else they needed. Every inch of the forests I grew up in had been tended meticulously for fourteen thousand years, up until the century before I was born. “Hunter-gatherer” was a bullshit term, and the distinctions between nature, humanity and technology were specious.

(If you care to research indigenous land management in California yourself, I have to include a trigger warning: it wasn’t just the Spanish, it was the Spanish Inquisition. However bad you think colonialism might have been here, slather that with a nauseating amount of nightmare fuel. The tortures were so horrific even other Spanish missionaries were upset by it. I have to take a deep breath here before going back to my story.)

*deep breath*

Okay. So yeah. Researching this book taught me that pre-colonial California was actually already a highly-advanced, hyper-productive food forest, way beyond what I had imagined for my silly futuristic utopia. The scale of what racism, colonialism and greed have cost us is incalculable.

And that sparked the soul of this book. It became not so much a utopia, but a conversation. There will be technology and displacement in the climate crisis — there already is. But how can we be human about it? How can we move forward knowing just how bad it’s going to get, without throwing the most vulnerable under the bus? And if we do rewild everything outside the cities, there will be people who refuse to leave. Should anyone be forced to move? What about children who would grow up without roads, schools and hospitals? And what if there was an entity with no stake in human politics or property values, whose only allegiance was the health of the ecosystem? Would it truly want humans out, given the many-thousand-year history of humans who already did that work? Might it understand our potential better than governments and corporations do? Might it see how much we love the work, when we’re given the chance to do it ourselves?

Eleven years after that train ride, the popular perception of intelligent machines has changed so much more than I could possibly have imagined — they will likely be just as destructive in the hands of capitalists as in the hands of militaries. In The Wildcraft Drones, they answer to neither.

If there’s another way for them, maybe there’s another way for us.

The Wildcraft Drones: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author Socials: Web site|Bluesky|Instagram

Read an excerpt.

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/05/26/the-big-idea-t-k-rex/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60836

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

only by balancing move

Politically explosive numbers

A marginal tax rate of around 50%

An ongoing referendum on taxation

qntm — Fine Structure

John Scalzi — When the Moon Hits Your Eye

Andrea K Höst — the Touchstone series (re-reads)

Andrea K Höst — In Arcadia

Graydon Saunders — A Succession of Bad Days, Safely You Deliver, Under One Banner (re-reads)

Martha Wells — Platform Decay (Murderbot... 7?)

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