jamoche

Audiobook narrated by James Anderson Foster

Media tie-in of one of my favourite TV series, Firefly, masterminded by Joss Whedon. Captain Mal Reynolds is kidnapped from a rough bar on Persephone and spirited away to a kangaroo court of Browncoats who’ve been told he’s a traitor. The crew, Zoe, Wash, Book, Jane, Simon and River scurry about trying to find a clue as to where he’s gone, while on board Serenity, five crates of dangerously volatile mining explosives are heating up towards a big bang. James Anderson Foster narrates the story well.

Audiobook narrated by Kaylin Heath

Fairy-tale-ish story about Rhea, a low-born miller’s daughter, who is engaged to be married to sorcerer Lord Crevan against her wishes. When he demands she come to his strange house in the woods she discovers he already has six wives, only one of which is dead. Befriended by the wife-cook who used to be a witch, Rhea discovers that Crevan takes something from each wife, witchy power from the cook, sight from one of the others. He’s planning to take Rhea’s youth just as soon as they are married. However she can put off the awful day if she completes each of the strange tasks he gives her. This strains Rhea’s resourcefulness to the limits as, aided by a clever hedgehog, she completes task by task – until there’s one she will not complete and the wedding looms. Rhea has to rally the remaining wives and visit the Clock Wife in order to defeat Crevan. Kaylin Heath does a good job on the narration.

 
Image: A loon made of many eyes stabbing a fish labled ICE with the words: Gone ICE Fishing (by Fayrn Hughes)

No laser eyes, but, yes, loons STAB fish with their insanely sharp beaks. There is video. It is wild.

So, I know there is some concern about whether or not I should keep these posts public, but I would like to. I am very careful not to name names (especially after the whole Capclave misadventure), and, I guess, I would be surprised if ICE infiltrated Dreamwidth to track me (or any of the rest of you) down. Obviously, we would be vulnerable to a Google Alert, but I can't imagine what the Feds would search on. ICE in Minnesota is going to get a tremendous number of Google Alerts at the moment. I'm sorry if that cools anyone's enthusiasm to join the conversation. However, I do think it is worth keeping things open so that folks who might not otherwise see this news, will. And my Food Communists have actively been asking people to push out calls for monetary assistance on social media. So, like, going public is one of the ways we are fighting in this resistance. 

Without further ado, here's what's been happening in my life.

Let's see. So, last Friday I was chatting with neighbors, as you do, when we were standing outside of our local mosque. A woman there asked if anyone would be willing to join a group that is trying to keep eyes on school pick-ups and drop-offs. I thought I might be able to help out, so I exchanged the proper Signal information, got on the right groups, and then attended an in-person meeting last Sunday.  This group is not in my immediate neighborhood, so I travelled to a DIFFERENT Lutheran Church to sit with a bunch of folks and talk about what's going on. This was their usual neighborhood gathering and I was only there to get connected into the Rapid Response team. But, it was generally very fascinating.

Without going into technical details (and I really couldn't even if I wanted to because I am no one's idea of a tech head), I can say that there are neighborhoods in Saint Paul that are already planning for what happens if/when the government shuts down Signal or the Internet in order to stop our efforts to track them. Friends? We are living in the solar punk future and it gives me such hope, I can not even. 

As it happens, however, the Rapid Response team did not meet until the very end when I needed to run off, but I happened to sit in a pew next to one of the "guys in the chair," (a volunteer dispatcher), who showed me all the how-tos before I had to run.

Monday was my first patrol and... it was a bit of a technical nightmare at first, but I got connected to the live call eventually... and, I am happy to report, all my students got off their buses safely. There was a tense moment when Saint Paul police happened to be doing parking enforcement at the same time. They aren't SUPPOSED to be aiding ICE, but I did let dispatch know of their presence and that everything seemed legit (and, in fact, was.)  That was, as others have probably talked about when they go "commuting," both an extremely tense half hour of my life, and also an extremely boring half hour of my life.

My patrol does cut into the amount time I'm able to spend vounteering with the Food Communists, but Mason has been going with me and picking up my slack. I'm also not planning to do the patrol every day of school. I could? And they absolutely do need people at my particular corner, but, I don't think it would be good for my ability to endure.

I am trying to strike a balance to make sure I stay committed to the things that I started with, like the Food Communists. There are a lot of us in this fight? But there are still plenty of roles to be filled! When I filled out my volunteer shifts for the bus patrol, there were more blank spaces than filled.

I worry that people are getting exhausted. I worry that Americans have already moved on to the next thing.

I do believe many of us will keep up this fight no matter what. We were here before Renee Good was murdered and we'll be here long after the last of the news cameras moves on to the next horror. 

dysgeusia (dis-GYOO-zhuh, dis-GYOO-zhee-uh) - n., an impairment of the sense of taste.


Or as some dictionaries put it, a distortion of the sense of taste. Contrast with ageusia, the complete lack of taste, and hypogeusia, a decrease in taste sensitivity. Can be caused by e.g. chemotherapy, and I'm pretty sure the metallic taste that paxlovid causes also counts. Coined from Ancient Greek dys-, bad/abnormal + geûsis, taste.

---L.

1. Coffee and Tea Intake, Dementia Risk, and Cognitive Function

(tags:caffeine coffee tea dementia viaKenny )

2. Stop Meeting Students Where They Are

(tags:reading academia students )

3. Your phone edits all your photos with AI - is it changing your view of reality?

(tags:ai phones photography )

4. Women's Institute branches shutting themselves down rather than enforce bigotry against trans women

(tags:LGBT women bigotry transgender UK OhForFucksSake )

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

The Winter Olympics are underway in Italy.

Alongside the usual magnificent achievements, there was also controversy caused by Gus Kenworthy, a British skiier, though one who was raised in America and had competed for the USA in the past, leaving a less than subtle message about his about American current affairs. Aside from everything else, I admire his calligraphy in a challenging medium.

The Superbowl happened, but being neither American nor a sportsperson, I can't get worked up about the game and can only point you to the half time show with Bad Bunny (Which annoyed all the right people, especially when you read the disaster which was the "alternate" half time show with Kid Rock), and the movie trailers)

The Madalorian and Grogu got one which was more... vibes than anything else, though the voiceover did seem like it was about to recommend some sort of old fashioned farm product, possibly cheese or cured meats.

Supergirl featured an adorable cameo by everyone's favourite superdog as a puppy. As an aside DC are also sponsoring puppies for training as guide and service dogs, always a worthy cause IMHO, and the first puppies are appropriately named: Krypto, Clark, Kara, Lois and umm... Lobo?

"Star Trek: Starfleet Academy" told a story about what did, or did not, happen to Benjamin Sisko, in a sort of love letter to DS9 as SAM the photonic life form tried to find out more. The pacing and some of the story choices felt weird to me, even whilst acknowledging I am probably not a target demographic anymore. However, for a couple of the surprises we got, I'll forgive it a lot.

And in slightly on topic news, Jay and Miles of the long running XplaintheXmen podcast have announced the series will end at some point during this coming year. They will cover the Grant Morrison as their finale. As a longtime fan and commentator there, I will miss them, but am glad they are going out on their own terms, and on a run I've been looking forward to them covering (though I will miss them covering the Chuck Austen run, which I suspect would have been... entertaining)

Also, for those who are interested, they have provided some basic resources for those looking to get more involved in local activism (directly, or supporting) in their most recent post.

And adding in Sir Ian McKellen's magnificent recitation of lines attributed to Shakespeare from "Sir Thomas More", on the subject of the treatment of immigrants, which shows that some things never change.

 

Well, the New York Times did it again by dropping a controversial publishing article on Sunday morning. This time it was “The New Fabio is Claude,” a frankly blathering article about how generative AI is allegedly going to push human writers out of the creative writing business by flooding the market with sexy self-published romance books. Featured is South African author “Coral Hart,” who of course is only using a now-retired pen name in the article.[i]

 

(note: I am using endnotes rather than in-essay cites because I want to cite as many of these sources as I can without readers needing to click away.)

 

“Hart” claims a six-figure income from “more than 200 romances” that all in all “sold around 50,000 copies.” Impressive?

 

Weelll, maybe. My calculator shows that this averages around 250 copies sold per title, possibly less because I used the figures of 200 books and 50,000 copies. Hardly outstanding even for selfpub work, and the gloss on the actual numbers makes me raise a brow or two.

 

And the “six figures” she cites is…well, using the numbers of $100,000 and 200 titles, that’s an average of $500 per book. Of course, we aren’t told whether these numbers are net income or gross income, much less how much was spent on advertising, production, and so on. Meanwhile, Ms. Hart is selling a proprietary AI program that costs $80 to $250 a month. Additionally, the article goes on to mention her “Write Dirty With Me” AI writing course, with “around 20” attendees at—according to her website, a cost of $100 USD. That’s…$2000, for one class, and she had listed several options.[ii]

 

Methinks I smell a rat here.

 

An overreaction on my part? Perhaps. But I have been around the self-publishing world since 2011, and I’ve seen this sort of thing happening far too often. If anything, Ms. Hart is a latecomer to this particular scene, because two years ago I was seeing a class promoter (who shall remain nameless) pushing a “write with AI” class at $1000 per person. Doesn’t take many subscribers at that rate to make a decent profit.

 

Of course, we have Ms. Hart’s inflammatory comment of “If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?”

 

Needless to say, outstanding authors in the romance field such as Courtney Milan took to social media to deflate that particular comment. Chuck Wendig also took aim at that comment. [iii], so I figure it’s been hammered upon sufficiently by multiple people.

 

That said, this is a mentality I saw reflected far too many times by the mindset exhibited by the late 20Booksto50k writing crowd, where rapid release and fast money from writing novels was considered to be more important than writing quality. Again, I’ve been in the self-publishing ecosystem since 2011, and I’ve seen these notions of gaming the system come and go. Many of them are centered around a particular publishing outlet, Kindle Unlimited (hereafter KU), which allows readers to read as many ebooks as possible. The catch is that these ebooks (unless traditionally published) are only available on Kindle Unlimited/Kindle Direct Publishing. Self-published authors in the KU program are paid per pages read in KU, and from books sold on Amazon. They cannot publish the ebook anyplace else, for a minimum of 90 days.

 

Needless to say, the schemes to game that KU algorithm have been rife from the beginning. I can’t even begin to name them all because, as I discovered early in my career, I don’t write in the subgenres which are popular on KU, so I didn’t pay attention to them. But there’s been everything from redirects at the beginning of the book that take you to the back—therefore generating artificial page reads—to stuffing the book with random stuff (that’s an oldie and my old brain can’t quite remember the mechanics of that one). Let’s just say that the current AI novel-writing craze is just the latest version of gaming the KU algorithm.

 

Which…another interesting newsletter hit my inbox this morning. Romancing the Data put out a summary of romance best-seller trends, and a couple of statistics jumped out at me.

 

First, there was a rise in Big Five romance best sellers in the Kindle Store Monthly Top 100 Best Sellers in Romance (Paid) in 2025 (31%, up from 9% in January). There was a drop in self-published books, from 71% to 44%[iv] More than that, Kindle Unlimited books dropped from 91% in April to 74% in December.

 

Hmm. Granted, that’s based on the last few months of data, BUT…that suggests to me that despite some of the claims in the NYT article from those promoting the use of AI, readers are catching on to the problems with AI slop and, as a result, backing away from programs like KU that become loaded with it.

 

Meanwhile, those of us who are self-published and don’t use AI in any form struggle to be seen. My big experiment in 2026 is going to be focusing on developing more artisanal products, starting with my new release coming out on February 24^th, Vision of Alliance. Besides a hand-drawn map allegedly from one of the characters (who is apparently known for his lack of drawing ability—cough cough Your Humble Author resembles that person), I’m going to try to create some glossary terms and etc—after all, it is a fantasy novel. I’m also planning to release a hardcover edition as well as a paperback version.

 

As a parting thought, I’m going to leave you with this quote from a recent newsletter by Baldur Bjarnason (author of The Intelligence Illusion), Out of the Software Crisis: Have I Hardened Against LLMs?:

 

“The more I wrote about generative models, the more appalled I became at the response from the industry, to both my writing and that of others actively highlighting the risks. Few people who have any influence in tech and software seem to care about the harms, the political manipulation, the outright sabotage of education, the association with extremism, or the literal child abuse.”

 

You have to subscribe to Bjarnason’s newsletter to read the whole thing, but he raises a point few others have, about the tendency of generative AI models to skew toward, as he puts it “a piece of technology that obviously and seemingly deliberately played into and supported some of the worst elements of the human psyche.”

 

I hadn’t thought about those aspects in those particular terms.

 

Now, I do.

 

No generative AI in my books, please. I plan to hold to this stance as best as I can.

 

#

 

Meanwhile, want to support my writing endeavors? My books are easily found on my new website, https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com. Or you can drop a coin or two into my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward

 

I wanted a Vietnamese coffee and I didn't want to go out to get it so I ordered in through Skip the Dishes, my old standby from lockdown. Skip has a peculiar web interface that lags when you try to login and then suddenly decides yeah ok we do know you after all. I think they want you to use their even buggier app which no I won't. But this time they were giving my address as 518 for some reason, so I corrected that to 543 and ordered my chicken and vermicelli and coffee. Of course I really  wanted a banh mi after reading all those Dr. Siri books where he sits eating his banh mi by the side of the Mekong looking over at Thailand. But you know, bread, so no. And I watched on the map as the little car icon come up Christie and turned and I went to the door to wait for the guy, and the guy didn't come and my phone said Your order has been delivered! with a photo of an unfamiliar porch. So I text the guy, I'm here at 543 waiting, and he texts back that of course he left it at 518. Thus I had to go out anyway and yes, wrestle the walker through the snow berms again, because 518 is south of me and on the other side. This isn't the first time Skip has altered my address off its own bat-- they had me at 552 for the longest time-- so I think that's it for me and Skip. I like that they give you tracking on your order, which Uber doesn't-- Uber comes when it comes and doesn'teven knock-- but I can't be having with their webpage's dementia.

heddle [hed-l]

noun

one of the sets of parallel cords or wires that with their mounting compose the harness used to guide warp threads in a loom

examples
1. Dr. H. G. Harrison by no means overstates the case when he says that the development of the heddle is the most important step in the evolution of the loom (Harniman Museum Handbooks, No. 10, pp. 47-49). Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms, 1890

2. Holding a heddle rod to separate the warp threads, she draws the continuous horizontal weft thread in and out of one or more warp threads. 1 Oct 2022. Scientific American. "Viking Textiles Show Women Had Tremendous Power."

origin
probably alteration of Middle English helde, from Old English hefeld; akin to Old Norse hafald heddle, Old English hebban to lift

Just tried a pack of Oreo Creme Egg biscuits (limited edition) Martin brought home last week. Not great. Any Creme Egg flavour is pretty wiped out by the strong-tasting chocolate biscuit parts. And so it’s surprisingly bland. But maybe huge Oreo fans would enjoy.

so my grave cleric Tali got laid in our Vecna: Eve of Ruin game this last Friday, and I apparently got possessed by the spirit of pornography because I wrote roughly 6k of Tali getting his groove back with a friendly paladin NPC. I'm posting it on AO3 and linking it here with the understanding that nobody is under any obligation to actually READ the totally shameless PWP: bedroom hymns.

Registrations opened tonight for Tolkien Society's Oxonmoot in Oxford, which since 2020 has offered online as an option. I've attended online ever since, getting to watch an amazing range and quantity of Tolkien-related talks, and for months after on catch up.

It's not the same as being there in person, but the Tolkien Society offering online as an option for Oxonmoot has let me watch and enjoy a huge number of talks in the previous 6 years, and feel like an active member of the society more than I ever have in decades before, too ill to attend in person.

Ramadhan starts in about 1 week for me.

How's everyone doing?

The graphic novel pile is still going strong! (I did start watching a mini drama but I’m going to wait until I finish it to include it in one of these round ups)

In other media related news I have figured out that I can read comics from Hoopla on a tablet and that’s been nicer on my hands than reading at my normal computer set up. I’ve also gotten a new timer and have been doing better at taking hand breaks so I’ve been watch more Crush of Music

Lumberjanes, Vol. 1-2 by N.D. Stevenson et al.—There’s a Lumberjanes/Gotham academy crossover that I want to check out, but it's been ages since I read any Lumberjanes so I thought I’d re-read them. Another series about girls who are friends with each other! Friendship is so great! This is definitely an advantage of reading a lot of YA and MG things, though it still would like more female friendships in media for adults. Anyway, these comics are very fun! I have requested several more volumes form the library

The Space Cat: A Graphic Novel written by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford— I was very excited when I learned that Nnedi Okorafor had written a graphic novel about a cat! It turns out this is based on her real life cat. It is extremely cute and very charming! The art was perfect for the story.

Teen Titans: Raven, Teen Titans: Beast Boy, Teen Titans: Beast Boy Loves Raven, Teen Titans: Robin, and Teen Titans: Robin Teen Titans: Starfire written by Kami Garcia, art by Gabriel Picolo—These are like YA graphic novels adaptations of the Teen Titans – that is this own version and not as far as I can tell part of larger continuity, but clearly based on the earlier versions. I’m not super familiar with most of these characters or the earlier version of the Teen Titans but I liked these as their own thing.

I did break my no YA with dead moms rule, as the first book opens with Raven’s mom dying in a car crash. The characters are fun, and I liked seeing their friends and family. The romances do feel really fast and underdeveloped though. But seeing the team form is a lot of fun! The art is good too!

There’s supposed to be one more of these published later this year so I’m going to have to keep an eye out for it so I can read the ending!

Taproot by Keezy Young—A lovely graphic novel about a gardener who can see ghosts. I loved all the lush plants! I would have liked just a little bit more detail about how the magic worked though. The whole book was really sweet.(CW: several of the ghosts are kids)

The Changeling King by Ethan M. Aldridge—Sequel to Estranged, I liked how this dealt with the consequences of the events of the first book. And the art remains excellent!

The Return of the King— Watched with R and the Kid. This one felt the darkest of the three, also the one with the most changes from the book. We took more breaks this time so I felt less over-stimulated by the end, which was good.

All the cool characters and interesting plots of the decades-long Transformers mythos exist for one reason alone.

And boy, does this issue succeed on that level. A Dan Mora design certainly doesn't hurt. Me want!

( Read more... )

How does a freelance peacekeeping agent function in a post-future world without an economy? Well...

( Read more... )

We're still experiencing Arctic cold here, though tomorrow it's supposed to get up to 38F, a regular heat wave. The consequence of the cold has been deepening Seasonal Affective Disorder for me. Yes, I have a special lamp; no, I haven't been using it. *rolls eyes at self* I am pleased to report that unlike in previous years, this year I've avoided overeating and overspending to counteract my grim mood.

So far, anyway, I've stuck to my exercise and eating plans, and I'm proud of myself for that. Have you had a health- and/or fitness-related experience lately of which you're proud? I've learned over the years that it's important to take joy in even the smallest positive changes, and I hope you'll share one of those little happy moments with us all.

( My Week in Review )

May the week ahead bring sunshine and blue skies, if those are conditions you'd enjoy.

minarchism (min-ar-KIZ-uhm) - n., a belief in the desirability and practicality of minimum government.


Coined in 1971 by libertarian writer Samuel Konkin, to describe what philosopher Robert Nozick proposed -- Konkin perferred what he called agorism, involving just a pure free market without any state. A minarchy is sometimes called a night-watchman state, typically described as having a military, a police, and courts, but few other functions. The coinage is from min(imal) + -archy in the sense of type of government.

---L.

1. Jurassic Tank Top: The Uncanny Valley of Agency

(tags:scarlettjohansson patriarchy movies JurassicPark )

2. Etymology of "Foo"

(tags:language history swearing )

3. World's first mass-production sodium-ion battery keeps 90% capacity even at -40c

(tags:batteries temperature )

4. Blood omega-3 is inversely related to risk of early-onset dementia (incidence drops from 0.19% to 0.11%)

(tags:omega3 )

5. I was totally blown away by this beatboxing. Just totally unbelievable. (Wing: Dopamine)

(tags:music video voice impressive )

6. Substack's "Nazi problem" won't go away

(tags:Nazis blogs )

7. The time of day when you eat could be key to success for intermittent fasting

(tags:food time diet health )

8. Last week the Prime Minister lost control of how documents should be reviewed for security reasons.

(tags:security politics uk constitution )