spring run on the San Juan

Jun. 16th, 2025 06:32 pm
ilanarama: me in my raft (rafting)
[personal profile] ilanarama
Wow, has it really been almost a year since I've posted here? I swear I was going to write up our Vermont bike trip last September (there was a draft here - one whole paragraph) but I never got that round tuit, so...here I am. (If you want to see some random photos from Vermont, no names or captions [sorry], they are here in a Flickr album.)

Anyway! This is not going to be the full monty, just a few highlights. Britt and I ended up bailing on our usual White Rim bike trip because he was still recovering from having a knee replacement in mid-February, and I had been having back problems for some time which didn't play well with bumpy riding. Our friends who put this trip together each year also had a San Juan river trip planned at the end of May/beginning of June, but had only space on the permit for 5; at the last minute, they checked and found out there had been a cancellation and they could invite more people, so, whee, we got to go!

Photos and a little narrative ) In conclusion,

PXL_20250603_161507442

Bundle of Holding: Troika Warehouse

Jun. 16th, 2025 02:27 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Many supplements and adventures for Troika!, the acid-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game from Melsonian Arts Council.

Bundle of Holding: Troika Warehouse

Clarke Award Finalists 2001

Jun. 16th, 2025 09:48 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2001: Labour narrowly wins a second overwhelming victory, Simon Darcount finds his calling, and Jeffrey Archer distracts people from that time he was accused of stealing three suits.

Poll #33257 Clarke Award Finalists 2001
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46


Which 2001 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
28 (60.9%)

Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
20 (43.5%)

Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
14 (30.4%)

Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
21 (45.7%)

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
14 (30.4%)

Salt by Adam Roberts
4 (8.7%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2001 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle
Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Salt by Adam Roberts
siderea: (Default)
[personal profile] siderea
I have a question about eye safety, maybe someone here can advise me on.

Apropos of the protests going on, I've seen a lot of helpful pointers about preparing for getting tear gassed or pepper sprayed, such as not to wear contacts and to have tight-fitting chemists' goggles. But not wearing vision correction is not an option for those who need it, and the alternative to contacts is glasses, which are apparently incompatible with most eye protection from gas or particulates.

I am aware of the existence of some models of full-face gas mask that have internal mounting hardware for glasses, but in addition to being expensive themselves, they require getting lenses made and fitted to the gas mask (i.e. not compatible with regular glasses). I'm surmising the existence of these means that other, cheaper, spectacle-compatible eye protection doesn't really exist, but I thought I'd ask.

My personal interest in the topic is less about protecting myself from chemical ordnance at protests – I only wish I could attend protests (though if things got spicy in the right location I suppose I could collect my fair share of tear gas at home) – than from wildfire smoke. The conjunction of the No Kings protests and the local air quality alerts from fires in Canada reminded me I should really be doing some preparation in this space.

I'm allergic to smoke. (It turns out it wasn't con crud I kept getting at Pennsic.) My reactivity to smoke only seems to be gradually getting worse over time. So when I've heard reports or seen pictures from the left coast of the sorts of wildfire smog they have there, I'm like "...not enough steroids in the world." I mostly manage this threat by not crossing the Mississippi, but it could happen here. Or upwind of here. It has. If not quite so "blot out the sun" bad, certainly bad enough for me to feel it.

So I've been looking at half-face elastomeric respirators, but that leave eyes unprotected.

Any suggestions?

Edit: I'm getting a lot of suggestions that aren't really helpful because:

1) Most safety goggles are for protection against impact or splashes, and as such literally have vent holes that make them useless against gases and airborne particulates.

2) Involve buying a prescription eyepiece. The whole point of my question was looking for alternatives to buying additional prescription lenses. Like I said, I am already aware of options that entail ordering custom lenses, I am looking for alternatives that don't involve that and are compatible with regular glasses the wearer already has.

There may not be any*, which would be good to know, but that is the question.

Allow me to put a finer point on this. If there is no affordable, readily available option for eye protection against gas/powder attacks for people who are dependent on vision correction, then that implies something important about protest safety that is entirely missing from all of the discourse of the sort that recommends having a gas mask to go to a protest.

* Since posting, I learned the term PAPR, and am now wondering why they're so expensive and whether that's a technology ripe for DIY.

Books Received, June 7 to June 13

Jun. 14th, 2025 09:03 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Ten books new to me: 4.5 fantasy, 1 horror, 1 mystery, 3.5 science fiction, of which only two are identified as series.

Books Received, June 7 to June 13



Poll #33251 Books Received, June 7 to June 13
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (March 2026)
20 (39.2%)

The Swan’s Daughter: A Possibly Doomed Love Story by Roshani Chokshi (January 2026)
13 (25.5%)

Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology edited by Julie C. Day, Carina Bissett, and Craig Laurance Gidney (June 2025)
26 (51.0%)

The Storm by Rachel Hawkins (January2026)
4 (7.8%)

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (September 2025)
30 (58.8%)

Red Empire by Jonathan Maberry (March 2026)
3 (5.9%)

The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O’Keefe (June 2025)
14 (27.5%)

The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts by Vanessa Ricci-Thode (April 2024)
14 (27.5%)

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao (January 2026)
6 (11.8%)

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (June 2025)
25 (49.0%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
33 (64.7%)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The embittered Martian aerialist and the nonconformist live a thousand-plus years apart, in different solar systems. What, then, connects them?

A Rebel’s History of Mars by Nadia Afifi
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Very nice and punctual but they've basically learned nothing in the year they've worked at the theatre. Not where to stand, not which row is which, or the general location of a given seat. The last two really matter during reserved seating shows. Whatever side that usher is on is going to have lines, and people may end up in the wrong seats.

So I was discussing the situation with my boss and I said my current approach was that each shift would be to pick one thing that usher does not know, and do my best to ensure they know it by the end of the shift. Last shift was "where to stand", for example. My reward is, I think, that usher is now _my_ special project who I will be working with whenever I HM.

I did assure my boss I do remember a previous HM who grilled ushers on seat location and would ding them a quarter hour for minor uniform infractions and that I wasn't going to use them as a model. Well, I do, but only in the sense of asking myself if the way I want to handle something is how that person would, and if it is, I do something else.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


An artisanal cheesemaker's attempt to save her precious cheese cave lands her in the middle of an interplanetary crisis.

The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann LeBlanc
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Have never worked a show run by human golden retrievers...
cupcake_goth: (Default)
[personal profile] cupcake_goth
- My Chemical Romance released a remastered version of Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. I managed to resist the lure of the various editions of the vinyl, and only bought the CD and digital download. DAMN. The difference in the songs! Predictably I've listened to nothing but this since Saturday. 

- I booked a haircut! With this stylist! I'm excited and a little nervous, because I haven't had any sort of haircut since early 2020, and even then it was just trimming the split ends. This time I'm going to have my hair cut to bottom bra band length, and ask what they can do to enhance the waviness/curl my hair has developed. 

- The Wegovy is slowly working. I'm losing a pound a week without really changing anything other than eating smaller meals. The "Ooooh, snack! Let's have just a bit more of this because it's so tasty" noise in my head has stopped, which means I'm not constantly thinking about food. Another really odd side-effect (that lots of folks have discussed over on Reddit) is that the urge to impulse shop has stopped. I still windowshop a lot, but I don't buy anything. Weird, but I'm not complaining.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Tales of dissidents, dissenters, and iconoclasts taking on the status quo...

Five SFF Books About Oddballs Resisting Conformity

From This Day Forward by John Brunner

Jun. 10th, 2025 09:00 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The sudden, shocking, return of Shockwave Reader. Will the living envy the dead?

From This Day Forward by John Brunner

Bundle of Holding: Fantasy AGE 2E

Jun. 9th, 2025 02:01 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The 2023 Second Edition corebook, TECHNOFANTASY, and more

Bundle of Holding: Fantasy AGE 2E
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


No rules, no bureaucracy, just some randos messing around with the past, present, and future.

Five Stories About Time Travel on a Limited Scale

Clarke Award Finalists 2000

Jun. 9th, 2025 10:21 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2000: The theft of an Enigma Machine comes too late to play a significant role in World War Two, Sellafield highlight British dedication to nuclear saafety, and the Conservatives, informed polling has them 2% ahead of Labour, discover that they are actually trailing by 13%.

Poll #33234 Clarke Award Finalists 2000
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54


Which 2000 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Distraction by Bruce Sterling
11 (20.4%)

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
40 (74.1%)

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
42 (77.8%)

Silver Screen by Justina Robson
8 (14.8%)

The Bones of Time by Kathleen Ann Goonan
4 (7.4%)

Time by Stephen Baxter
11 (20.4%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2000 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Distraction by Bruce Sterling
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Silver Screen by Justina Robson
The Bones of Time by Kathleen Ann Goonan
Time by Stephen Baxter

Timing

Jun. 8th, 2025 07:06 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
I swung by Old Goat Books to pick up a book I ordered, which meant I was in the right place at the right time hear the confused customer next to me ask "What's speculative fiction?" Which, after I explained what it meant, was followed by the question. "Do you know anything about Andre Norton?"

It was only with great effort that I resisted shouting "BEHOLD! I AM Marshall McLuhan" before helping.

Human Words Project

Jun. 8th, 2025 03:51 pm
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

I learned today about Chris Osmond's "Human Words Project," a way for writers to indicate that their work is 100% human words, i.e. not generated by AI. Here's the logo for it, which you can add to your projects, if you want:

Human Words Project logo

ETA: Note that this is not the original logo. The website was moved after the original logo was created. I took the liberty of editing the logo to reflect the current URL, and at the same time changed the size of the logo, deleted a lot of white space around it, and changed the file type to JPG (thus making the file MUCH smaller).

Profile

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canyonwalker

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