podcast friday

Mar. 6th, 2026 07:18 am
sabotabby: gritty with the text sometimes monstrous always antifascist (gritty)
[personal profile] sabotabby
 Events, dear friends, have been piling up faster than I can write about them—personal tragedies, global horrors, and work conspiring to keep me at a pace where I have not yet emerged from under the weight of one massive project before I'm saddled with the next. Needless to say things are happening but I get approximately 15 minutes of laptop time a day if the subway cooperates and it's largely spent answering emails.

Anyway, on with the podcasts. This week's episode is from a new-to-me podcast, A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein. I heard him on Bad Hasbara and he was very funny and insightful, and his actual podcast doesn't disappoint. My favourite episode so far has been "She Had Elon's Baby. Then, Leopards Ate Her Face," featuring Ashley St. Clair and Juniper.

I didn't know the name off the top of my head but Ashley was one of those far-right grifters/pick-me girls who is very traditionally pretty and thus assumed that there was no need for feminism. She wrote an extremely transphobic children's book that I had actually heard of because it was on one of Queen Coke Francis's video essays*. The title of the episode is not precisely accurate, in that the leopards in question started gnawing Ashley's face before she gave birth, as she had started to turn away from her transphobic stance when she was pregnant with her second child.

You have questions. I also had questions. One of the reasons this particular episode is so good is that Matt handles everything as responsibly as anyone can. He has Juniper (the trans podcaster/editor who, among other accomplishments, popularized "goblin mode"), who was the one who engaged with Ashley as she made her turn away from the dark side. Neither one of them softball the conversation, laying the harms that Ashley did out very clearly, and questioning whether she has actually changed or whether this is another grift (for the record, neither of them conclude that it's a grift).

It's a hard listen because obviously it is. Trans people are being targeted for genocide around the world and especially in the US, and Ashley was one of its instigators. It asks hard questions: Can people change? Is the community that they harmed obligated to believe and accept those changes? What does it mean to make amends and reparations, or to build trust? What can we do to deradicalize people (note: Ashley's redemption arc seems to have started with queer and trans folks engaging her online, which I'm legitimately surprised at)? 

Anyway it brought me a little bit of desperately needed hope so maybe it will help you too.


* Check her out if you do YouTube video essays. She's a drag queen who mainly covers culture war stuff and she's hilarious.
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
Time of the Cat

3/5. Sci-fantasy time travel about the future scholars paired with talking cats to romp through history.

Connie Willis, but make it way zanier. I picked this up the day our cat went into the kitty ER (he’s fine, he ate approximately four feet of ribbon but they got it back out without surgery). It was good for that day spent waiting, but after that exhausted/worried interval there was still more book, and it went weirder and more spaghetti splat than I wanted. Like there was so much happening in this book simultaneously, and all of it – the zany talking cat parts and the far future parts and the multiple factions parts and the romance parts and the trying-to-be-serious memory loss parts – were all treated with the same cheerful rush, which left me unsatisfied.

A good head empty no thoughts day book, but otherwise, kind of a frenetic mess. Also, I genuinely don't know why the protag was still into the love interest by the end, she did not sell me on that in the slightest.

Content notes: Memory manipulation.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Is human redemption beyond even a nigh-godlike superhuman?

The Paradox Men by Charles L. Harness

Bundle of Holding: Ninja Crusade

Mar. 4th, 2026 01:59 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


This new Ninja Crusade Bundle presents The Ninja Crusade, the tabletop fantasy roleplaying game from Third Eye Games of ninja, conspiracies, and martial arts.

Bundle of Holding: Ninja Crusade

What month is it, anyway?

Mar. 4th, 2026 10:37 am
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Apologies for the long silence.

I've mostly just been keeping on keeping on, as they say. I'm still regularly going to my mutual aid place, the Food Communists. Their work continues apace, although Monday was fairly quiet, as such things go. By yesterday, the pace had picked back up, but they're closing today and tomorrow due to renovations at the church they work out of. So I have two days completely off! What will I even do with all that time? She asks, looking around at housework she's ignored for almost two months.

I'm still doing the school patrol (M-W) and mosque watching too. Although, at the mosque we have switched to evenings (and every day of the week) during Ramadan at the request of the imam. I have not been standing outside every single night of the week, however. I signed up to be the point person on Fridays and Saturdays, but am otherwise trying to let other people fill the slots. We are getting some help from neighborhoods outside of our own, so it's looking a little less sparse than the last time I reported, by all accounts. 

I'm noticing some cautious hope during the school patrol, too. More moms are willing to bring their very little (pre-school aged) ones with them when they come to meet elder siblings at the bus stop. Very heartening. It does feel like the cloud is lifting finally.

I'm starting to be able to write a little bit again, which is lovely. [personal profile] naomikritzer and I started working on something together that has lit a fire under me. We'll see what, if anything comes of that, but it's been nice to feel inspired again. Hopefully, that will bleed into the Boy. net sequel (and it should. I tend to be like that. Writing anywhere seems to mean writing everywhere. I am, apparently, polyamorous in my wirting style--I have more to give than to just one project!)

We woke up today to dense fog. Shawn was actually telling me that she hoped it would last all day, because she really wants to go for a walk in it s she can pretend we live on heather-strewn moors.

How've you been?

I guess it is Wednesday? I have nothing of note to mention in terms of things I've read. I've been listening to an extremely boring podcast about the Roman Empire--it's exactly my speed right now, but it's run by a university and I have notice a distinct lack of salacious factoids about what the Romans got up to... ah, well. It helps me get to sleep and that's really what I am using it for.

What about you? Listening to or reading anything fun?

Reading Wednesday

Mar. 4th, 2026 07:08 am
sabotabby: (books!)
[personal profile] sabotabby
 It feels very strange and unpleasant to be making my regular book post under the circumstances. Nevertheless.

Just finished: A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. This was so much fun, and I'm hooked on the series. It's mostly a lighthearted absolutely nightmare fuel cosmic horror murder mystery, but as the afterword says, it's also kind of a commentary on fantasy's obsession with kings and nobles and what this means for our present political circumstances. Which is to say. Kings. Not a great idea. I disagree with Bennett re: what ASOIaF was trying to do but the book is a great example of how you can smuggle interesting politics in a rip-roaring narrative.

Currently reading: Lullabies For Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill. I love everything she writes and meant to read her most well-known work ages ago but it ended up near the bottom of my physical TBR stack and I'm only now getting to it. This is the story of Baby, a little girl in Montreal whose father is a possibly-schizophrenic heroin addict. Does that sound depressing? Because it is. It's also very much a dark comedy, like it's genuinely fucking hilarious the more searingly awful Baby's life gets. Sometimes I just want fiction to fuck me up, and this does.

How odd

Mar. 3rd, 2026 11:02 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
It seems comments of mine quoted on Wikipedia has angered someone.


This bit caught my eye: " I only paid attention to this page after looking up those for several authors whose works I'd enjoyed, only to be surprised by how Nicoll's opinions had been added to criticisms of their works. Looking at the edit history, it showed they had all been added by the same person - Nicoll."

Except I didn't and looking at the Simmons entry, which I did suspect is what set this off, I don't see why anyone would think I had.

It could be worse

Mar. 3rd, 2026 02:45 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Benford and Bear in the Epstein files



As far as I can tell, they weren't involved in Epstein's sex trafficking. Just there as big name authors. Bear at least is reported as unimpressed.

Oddly, the third Killer B doesn't seem to have been invited.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Stories about nuclear war don't usually feature popular, pre-existing characters...

Four Times Familiar Characters Faced Nuclear Armageddon
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A rescue places two space miners in the cross-hairs of a ruthless corporation.

Heavy Time (Devil to the Belt, volume 1) by C J Cherryh

Bundle of Holding: Campaign Starters

Mar. 2nd, 2026 02:12 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Interactive .PDF maps and floorplans for ready-made tabletop roleplaying campaigns from 0one Games.

Bundle of Holding: Campaign Starters

Aurora Awards are now open

Mar. 2nd, 2026 12:36 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
The nomination period for the 2026 Aurora Awards is officially open! All CSFFA members can log into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association website at and submit up to five works in each our ten categories. Please only nominate what you're familiar with. Nominations close 11:59pm EST on April 4th, 2026.

Nominate here

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Mar. 1st, 2026 02:42 pm
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
What Moves the Dead

3/5. Historical fantasy horror novella about a nonbinary former soldier going to the literally moldering home of old friends, and getting caught up in a whole fungus horror situation. (This is the Fall of the House of Usher one, if unclear).

We all know I am somewhat dead inside, so perhaps it is not surprising that I found this only mildly creepy, after having been told it is absolutely terrifying. Take that as you will. I enjoyed this, but it’s not really my sort of thing and I feel no need to carry on with the series. I do wonder whose decision it was to use “they” on the jacket copy re our protagonist rather than the textual neopronoun used in the book. I say ‘hmm’ about that. The background to the whole pronoun situation, and the historical context in this fictional tiny European country, is kind of great, though.

Content notes: Fungus horror, dead bodies moving horror, body horror, animals being creepy.

March 2026 Patreon Boost

Mar. 1st, 2026 11:29 am
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


You too can fund James Nicoll Reviews, a never-dimming beacon of joyful optimism in a burning dumpster world!

March 2026 Patreon Boost

May 2009

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