Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
[syndicated profile] stross_feed

Posted by Charlie Stross

(This is an old/paused blog entry I planned to release in April while I was at Eastercon, but forgot about. Here it is, late and a bit tired as real world events appear to be out-stripping it ...)

(With my eyesight/cognitive issues I can't watch movies or TV made this century.)

But in light of current events, my Muse is screaming at me to sit down and write my script for an updated re-make of Doctor Strangelove:

POTUS GOLDPANTS, in middling dementia, decides to evade the 25th amendment by barricading himself in the Oval Office and launching stealth bombers at Latveria. Etc.

The USAF has a problem finding Latveria on a map (because Doctor Doom infiltrated the Defense Mapping Agency) so they end up targeting the Duchy of Grand Fenwick by mistake, which is in Transnistria ... which they are also having problems finding on Google Maps, because it has the string "trans" in its name.

While the USAF is trying to bomb Grand Fenwick (in Transnistria), Russian tanks are commencing a special military operation in Moldova ... of which Transnistria is a breakaway autonomous region.

Russia is unaware that Grand Fenwick has the Q-bomb (because they haven't told the UN yet). Meanwhile, the USAF bombers blundering overhead have stealth coatings bought from a President Goldfarts crony that even antiquated Russian radar can spot.

And it's up to one trepidatious officer to stop them ...

self-censorship

Jun. 27th, 2025 02:02 pm
rivkat: Rivka as Wonder Woman (Default)
[personal profile] rivkat

no good, very bad thing: for the first time ever, I carefully concealed my Star of David scrunchie to do an interview in case it became a distraction. I try hard not to self-censor, but ...


Widdershins - June 25th, 2025

Jun. 25th, 2025 05:14 pm
[syndicated profile] widdershins_comic_feed

New comic!

Today's News:

Hey folks, you might notice the site's looking a little cleaner- that's cus this week, I moved Widdershins off Hiveworks. We're now fully-independent again, which is pretty cool if you hate to see ads all over the shop. It does, however, mean I'm losing out on ad revenue and will have to pay monthly for our lovely comments system. It won't sink me- nothing will at this point, I am very committed to finishing Widdershins and keeping it free online, for you, forever- but it does sting a little.

so hey, if you're feeling flush and in the right sorta mood, please do feel free to support the comic by browsing the Widdershins shop for print or PDF books and pins, or throwing a few quid my way monthly via Patreon, or even buying (and reading!) my silly novel that's advertised below. Or hey, just tell a friend about the comic! That one's free! 

I've left exactly one banner ad on the site now, which I get full control of, and will only run ads from the fine folks at ComicAd.net, so if you want to check out whichever comic is running their ad there, please do- or even consider advertising your own project on Widdershins, if you like!


That's all for now- onward, to our finale.



A Silly Joke

Jun. 25th, 2025 01:34 am
[syndicated profile] smallpeculiar_feed

Posted by eyeteeth

Got to go, folks, I’m in Vancouver waiting to board a plane. So you see today’s comic is not late, merely western Canadian.

Nonfiction

Jun. 23rd, 2025 01:08 pm
rivkat: Rivka as Wonder Woman (Default)
[personal profile] rivkat
Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945: China fought imperial/Axis Japan, mostly alone (though far from unified), for a long time. A useful reminder that the US saw things through its own lens and that its positive and negative beliefs about Chiang Kai-Shek, in particular, were based on American perspectives distant from actual events.

Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia: Interesting story of imperialist ambition and forced labor in a place marked by previous American intervention; a little too focused on reminding the reader that the author knows that the views he’s explaining/quoting are super racist, but still informative.

Alexandra Edwards, Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom: fun read )

Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins: Wide-ranging argument that claims about prehistory are always distorted and distorting mirrors of the present, shaped by current obsessions. (Obligatory Beforeigners prompt: that show does a great job of sending up our expectations about people from the past.) This includes considering some groups more “primitive” than others, and seeing migrants as a “flood” of undifferentiated humanity. One really interesting example: Depictions of Neandertals used to show them as both brown and expressionless; then they got expressions at the same time they got whiteness, and their disappearance became warnings about white genocide from another set of African invaders.

J.C. Sharman, Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World: Challenges the common narratives of European military superiority in the early modern world (as opposed to by the 19th century, where there really was an advantage)—guns weren’t very good and the Europeans didn’t bring very many to their fights outside of Europe. Likewise, the supposed advantages of military drill were largely not present in the Europeans who did go outside Europe, often as privately funded ventures. Europeans dominated the seas, but Asian and African empires were powerful on land and basically didn’t care very much; Europeans often retreated or relied on allies who exploited them right back. An interesting read. More generally, argues that it’s often hard-to-impossible for leaders to figure out “what worked” in the context of state action; many states that lose wars and are otherwise dysfunctional nevertheless survive a really long time (see, e.g., the current US), while “good” choices are no guarantee of success. In Africa, many people believed in “bulletproofing” spells through the 20th century; when such spells failed, it was because (they said) of failures by the user, like inchastity, or the stronger magic of opponents. And our own beliefs about the sources of success are just as motivated.

Emily Tamkin, Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities: There are a lot of ways to be an American Jew. That’s really the book.

Roland Barthes, Mythologies (tr. Annette Lavers & Richard Howard): A bunch of close readings of various French cultural objects, from wrestling to a controversy over whether a young girl really wrote a book of poetry. Now the method is commonplace, but Barthes was a major reason why.

Robert Gerwarth, November 1918: The German Revolution: Mostly we think about how the Weimar Republic ended, but this book is about how it began and why leftists/democratic Germans thought there was some hope. Also a nice reminder that thinking about Germans as “rule-followers” is not all that helpful in explaining large historical events, since they did overthrow their governments and also engaged in plenty of extralegal violence.

Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York: Mostly about La Guardia, whose progressive commitments made him a Republican in the Tammany Hall era, and who allied with FDR to promote progressivism around the country. He led a NYC that generated a huge percentage of the country’s wealth but also had a solid middle class, and during the Great Depression used government funds to do big things (and small ones) in a way we haven’t really seen since.

Charan Ranganath, Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters: Accessible overview of what we know about memory, including the power of place, chunking information, and music and other mnemonics. Also, testing yourself is better than just rereading information—learning through mistakes is a more durable way of learning.

Cynthia Enloe, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War: War does things specifically to women, including the added unpaid labor to keep the home fires burning, while “even patriotic men won’t fight for nothing.” Women farmers who lack formal title to land are especially vulnerable. Women are often told that their concerns need to wait to defeat the bad guys—for example, Algerian women insurgents “internalized three mutually reinforcing gendered beliefs handed down by the male leaders: first, the solidarity that was necessary to defeat the French required unbroken discipline; second, protesting any intra-movement gender unfairness only bolstered the colonial oppressors and thus was a betrayal of the liberationist cause; third, women who willingly fulfilled their feminized assigned wartime gendered roles were laying the foundation for a post-colonial nation that would be authentically Algerian.” And, surprise, things didn’t get better in the post-colonial nation. Quoting Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas: “Defending women’s rights ‘now’ – this now being any historical moment – is always a betrayal of the people, of the revolution, of Islam, of national identity, of cultural roots . . .”

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: American history retold from a Native perspective, where interactions with/fears of Indians led to many of the most consequential decisions, and Native lands were used to solve (and create) conflicts among white settlers.

Sophie Gilbert, Girl on Girl : How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves: Read more... )

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message: Short but not very worthwhile book about Coates navel-gazing and then traveling to Israel and seeing that Palestinians are subject to apartheid.

Thomas Hager, Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia: While he was being a Nazi, Ford was also trying to take over Muscle Shoals for a dam that would make electricity for another huge factory/town. This is the story of how he failed because a Senator didn’t want to privatize this public resource.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World: What is the role of records in imperialism? Under what circumstances do imperialists rely on records that purport to be about the colonized people, versus not needing to do so? Often their choices were based on inter-imperialist conflicts—sometimes the East India Company benefited from saying it was relying on Indian laws, and sometimes London wanted different things.

Thomas C. Schelling The Strategy of Conflict: Sometimes when you read a classic, it doesn’t offer much because its insights have been the building blocks for what came after. So too here—if you know any game theory, then very little here will be new (and there’s a lot of math) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t vital. Also notable: we’ve come around again to deterring (or not) the Russians.

Fiction

Jun. 20th, 2025 05:48 pm
rivkat: Rivka as Wonder Woman (Default)
[personal profile] rivkat
Sarah Langan, Pam Kowolski Is a Monster!: self-obsessed in the apocalypse )

Stephen King, Never Flinch:Holly Gibney )

Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: piracy and magic )

Olivie Blake, Gifted and Talented: for fans of Succession )

Ai Jiang, A Palace Near the Wind: Natural Engines: marriage and conquest )

John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye: moon made of cheese )

M. L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven: white women's guilt )

Emily Tesh, The Incandescent: magic school administrator!  )

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