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A few days ago I impulse purchased the XTEink x4. For those who don't know, the x4 is a tiny ereader that is smaller than most phones, and is in fact advertised as being able to stick to the back of your phone with a magnet, though because most people conceptualize it as an anti-scroll device I don't think most people use it this way. Anyway, a main reason I got it was because my current ereader is a Kobo Libra Color which, while very nice, is also a larger model and pretty frequently I find that it's too large to throw in a pocket or fanny pack. So enter the XTEink x4:

Me holding the XTEink x4 with the sleep screen on

Me holding the XTEink x4 with the sleep screen on

As you can see, very tiny. Also I went ahead and immediately flashed it with the CrossPoint firmware which I heard was better than the original, which is super limited. But the device is limited anyway. It is not a touch screen device which is rare nowadays, and doesn't read PDFs at all (which would be super difficult, given the size and again no touch screen). Unlike most ereaders in my experience, you can't just plug it in and access the file system. You either need to take out the SD card and plug that into a reader and into a computer, or you can send things through the local network, either over a browser or there are multiple apps to do that. The CrossPoint-compatible apps have a nice feature that lets you clip articles from your browser and queue them up to download onto your device when your device joins the network.

Before I realized this, I was trying to get my raspberry pi to work as an ebook server. I set up calibre, set up a news source out of my Instapaper feed and managed to push it to my device, though I was looking at how to automate the process to trigger whenever it found my ereader on the network, which might be a big ask. My instapaper feed is mostly articles that I find and want to read later, and I put them in instapaper because that means they go to my kobo, but I never get around to reading them. So I thought that I would finally get around to reading them if I put them on the smaller, more portable device! And I started reading them! and after a few articles... I realized the reason why I had been putting them off was because they were a bunch of downers!

Anyway. I've been experimenting with putting things on the device. Sometimes the CrossPoint web clipper works better than others, so I need to figure out the conditions under which it works well. There is apparently a way to sync up an XTEink x4 with crosspoint with a kobo through KOReader and calibre but I'm not sure I want to fuss with that because I don't use KOReader and am not sure I want to start. So I think I may just end up using both devices separately.

It's a little early to make any grand proclamations about this device but it is seriously stripped down to the basics and one thing I do miss is a backlight, because it does feel like a perfect device to read on right before bed. I do have a book light that I'm hoping I will be able to clip onto the case when the case arrives, or, failing that, the company does sell a magnetic book light for the x4. There's talk of a new XTEink device coming out soon that may be upgraded but I went ahead and purchased the x4 now because the new device looks to be android based and I preferred something without android.

Anyway, it's interesting. I'm hoping that it will get me to read more.

Current Music: "Sinner's Prayer," Lady Gaga

lannamichaels

2011; 2012; 2013; 2014; 2015; 2016; 2017; 2018; 2019; 2020; 2021; 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025

Once again I used

flamebyrd's bookmarklet to download all pages of the works list and then shoved them together using the command prompt, with the wonderful (?) experience this year of ao3 putting me in Bot Time Out around page 45ish of just opening them in tabs a few at a time, downloading, opening a few more...

Oh well. ( Read more... )

sabotabby

This, for many of us, is a season of sacrifice. Whether we sacrifice terrible wine to the memory of slaughtered Egyptian infants and our regular bowel movements to the strange dictates of Bronze Age rabbis, or we honour the brief death and subsequent resurrection of a basically chill guy with a terrible fanbase, we swap temporary comfort for the greater good of the community. It is in this spirit that I bring to you the ultimate sacrifice, which is that I watched the Melania movie so that you don’t have to.

You’re welcome. Can atheist Jews be given sainthood? Because I would like some prayer candles with pictures of me in a blinged up goth outfit for what I have just endured.

A warning upfront: There is no way I can talk about this ahem-film without going into the sexual abuse of children, genocide, and the litany of grotesque crimes committed by the Trump regime and circle of ghouls around Jeffrey Epstein. It’s not funny but I’m going to make dark jokes about it because that’s how I cope with trauma. And dear readers, I have suffered trauma. I also cannot talk about this film without making some comments about people’s appearances, which I know is a sensitive point for many of us. If that kind of thing is triggering, might I suggest one of my reviews of slightly better movies like Left Behind or Atlas Shrugged?

( Here we go again. )

Next time, if you're real good, you get to see a Dracula cape.

siderea

Polka-dotted extraterrestrials with prehensile toes and monster groove have come to save humankind with virtuoso looped microtonal rock in compound time signatures.

Look, based on that description, I wouldn't have given this the time of day myself either, but there's a reason these maniacs have become an absolute phenomenon.

Gentle readers, Angine de Poitrine.

Absolutely read the comments. As much of a treat as the band.

Watch on YouTube

Like a lot of things that have arrived from space, their initial point of impact on this planet was Québec. Some clever person noticed that their track titles are phonetic spellings of Québécois slang (Joual).

ETA: 2026 Apr 4: David Bruce Composer [YT]: "Angine de Poitrine's Math Rhythms Explained". 2026 Mar 21: David Bennett [YT]: "How Angine de Poitrine use Microtonality ". 2026 Feb 18: Stephen Weigel [YT]: "Sarniezz (Angine de Poitrine) transcription".

kaberett

Reading. She's A Beast archives, forever and always (by which I mean that I am now up to October 2023).

Another few pages of my Wicked Problems (Max Gladstone) reread.

Also an absolutely baffling academic paper that is technically relevant to my academic interests but which... doesn't really explain why what it's doing is better than state-of-the-art, sure as hell doesn't demonstrate it adequately with an appropriate range of reference materials, and cites only my reference materials paper and not my one on actual real life rocks, which it absolutely should, especially as it is citing [redacted for professionalism] like it's a solid contribution to the field.

Writing. Manuscript is over 10k words???

Listening. Hidden Almanac continues; presently we are relistening to another chunk I've theoretically heard once already but actually slept through. Knitting during it continues a good way of preventing myself from falling asleep. I continue to enjoy myself. (Eminent Domain and Tapping Of Ley Lines is the chunk we're currently in.)

Playing. Games various with... nieces and nephews??? plus A's other relatives, particularly Boggle, Shithead (to which I have been newly introduced), and Five Crowns.

Cooking. ... I made a big batch of chilli? I made a big batch of chilli.

Eating. Many and various exciting cheeses. Some excellent potato dauphinoise that I didn't have to cook.

Exploring. North Leigh Roman villa, Chedworth Roman villa, some surrounding woodlands, and Davis's Copse near Curbridge (BLUEBELLS).

Making & mending. A's glove progresses, by which I mean I've stalled a little over the past few days because I foolishly decided I didn't need to bring my circs with me and therefore I am knitting flat on DPNs and it is Suboptimal. But. Nearly ready to turn around for the other side of the flap. Nearly.

Growing. Lemongrass much cheerfuller for having been put back into the warm box. No evidence of aubergine yet (yes I know I'm late). Broad beans now actually properly coming up!!! Oca doing nothing. Cherry finally just about ready to start blossoming as of Wednesday; josta definitively blossoming and really quite green; project Build Up Spinach Seed Stash progressing nicely.

Observing. Pheasants! BLUEBELLS, both as a sea in woodland and on banks with primroses. Cowslips. So many excellent spring flowers. Pheasants; COOT EGGS; Egyptian goslings; and I have spent the past couple of days being Menaced by a Canada goose that is OUTRAGED whenever anybody... passes it... on a tarmac drive... even if they're doing so in a motor vehicle. All extremely satisfactory.

duskpeterson

ONLINE E-BOOK (html, epub, mobi, pdf, and xhtml)

Free at my website.

The Motley Crew (The Thousand Nations). When a young man named Dolan flees from the north, he faces danger on all sides. The Northern Army wants him back. The Empire of Emor wants him dead. His native homeland of Koretia may not want him at all. And his only protection is a man with motives that are mysterious and possibly deadly.

New installment:

Side story | Dangerous Games. Dangerous games benefit dangerous men . . . unless those games are played with leaders of dangerous men.

REISSUE

Already available free at my website, this omnibus is now also available at AO3, SqWA, Ream, and online bookstores.

Blood Vow (The Three Lands). He has taken a blood vow to the Jackal God to bring freedom to his land by killing Koretia's greatest enemy. But what will he do when the enemy becomes his friend?

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

New installments:

History of the Chara's palace.

The Chara's court.

Enthronement of the Chara.

REVIEWS OF MY FICTION

Speculative fiction writer Jennifer R. Povey posted reviews of all six of my Three Lands novels in the space of less than three weeks. Occasional spoilers.

UPCOMING FICTION

Some of you may have noticed that I updated my website early this time. That was because I was uncertain when I would regain the ability to upload web pages, after my transfer to a new webhost. Thankfully, the transfer went smoothly, with no downtime for my website.

Also, I'm posting this update a day early because I'll be watching Artemis II tomorrow afternoon. :)

My next release will be the final part of the novel The Motley Crew: "Apprehended Ambassador."

My fiction announcements are also available by e-mail and feeds.

lannamichaels

A fic I'm subscribed to updated for the first time in a over a year. I read the update. I notice there is no lengthly author's note explaining the absense. The person posts another chapter. No note.

I discover, to my surprise, a deep feeling of relief. How nice, how truly refreshing, not to have this. To just treat it normally and update the fic.

Especially because a lot of times I'll read a fic and there will be all these notes apologizing for not updating "on time" (no schedule has ever been mentioned), or being "late" (ditto). And long apologies for plenty of things. And I'm reading the fic after it was finished, all in one go. These notes are not relevant anymore.

And all sites have their own customs regarding author's notes, and ao3 gets to have its own because of its own dedicated author's notes section, which unlike ffn, is a seperate part of the page. So ao3 notes tend to get long. And that is the custom of the website.

So to see someone not engage in that, and just post the fic and not flagellate to the audience. That was nice. I was very glad to see that. It felt restful.

Then I catch up on the newly posted chapters, and behold, there is the lengthly explanation of why there was no update for a year, and then in another chapter is an argument about people saying things in the comments (and I feel like some of the people the author is annoyed with are spambots), and you know at least in ffn, when you wanted to respond to commenters you did it by name. Was that better? No it was not. But if you want to respond to commenters, you can just respond to them. Most people reading a fic do not dip into reading other people's commenters. So you're just highlighting something people would not otherwise see.

But ugh. It really was so nice not to have an author feel they need to apologize to me for posting fanfiction, in a timeline of their own choosing, which is their hobby. You don't owe me an apology! You don't owe me an explanation! It's your fic, not your job.

malurette

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twistedchick

( behind cut )

twistedchick

There is a secret reference desk in Google that gets past the AI crap. The article linked here talks about it and how to use it.

conuly

Curtains forcing their will
against the wind,
children sleep,
exchanging dreams with
seraphim. The city
drags itself awake on
subway straps; and
I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.

*****************

Link

conuly

Neighbors fretted that the garden was a security issue: “I am worried about normalizing the presence of many different people in front yards during potentially all hours of the day without any kind of restrictions put on access.”

Oh, the horrors, people in front yards!

This isn't quite as absurd as the time an entire LJ comm told me that they'd be "scared" if they got a piece of mail in their mailboxes that hadn't been postmarked (I suggested hand-delivering a late-sent birthday invitation to the home rather than risking it not arriving at the house until after the party date, apparently this was very frightening), but it's more absurd than the time a whole community of people joined in to tell somebody with a stalking history that rubber duckies showing up at her daughter's college dorm were something to be alarmed over rather than reassuring her that it was probably just her friends playing a prank. (The latter was my suggestion, and I was right. I really chewed them out over that one too, pointing out that they had regular monthly freakouts over "somebody is parked in front of my house and I'm scared" or "somebody turned up my driveway and then backed out and drove off and I'm scared" and yet, nothing bad ever happened to anybody!)

This sort of nonsense is what gets people shot in America. Well, that and access to guns, but people buy guns because they are quite irrationally scared of their neighbors. Your neighbors aren't gonna kill you in your own home! If anybody kills you, it'll be a family member or maybe yourself. The worst thing that will happen if your neighbors have a vegetable garden is that they'll dump a load of zucchini on your porch. Believe me, you'd rather they give it away to people who want it!

troisoiseaux

Saw Suzy Eddie Izzard's one-woman Hamlet at the STC (hosting the DC stop on her international tour), which really was a remarkable piece of theater— just watching anyone recite the entirety of Hamlet basically without pausing for breath would be impressive in itself, but this was, in fact, genuinely a really good performance of Hamlet. Given her comedy background, it's unsurprising she killed it at the more comedic parts— Polonius, the gravediggers, Hamlet's mad scenes; for 90% of the characters, she literally moved from place to place around the stage to embody each different role, but Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were mimed as hand puppets, which got a big laugh every time— but as she explained in a pre-show introduction, as Shakespeare progressed from comedy to tragedy through his career, so has she (and "if you're expecting a comedy version of Hamlet, you are going to be sorely disappointed"), and her dramatic turns were equally compelling. This production (understandably!) trimmed the script a little, but did keep in the entirety of the Norway subplot, which is usually the first thing to get cut, so that was an interesting touch. The set was, basically, a white box— a sort of stage-within-the-stage, she mostly performed within the box but stepped out/in front of it, to the "real" stage, to deliver soliloquies* directly to the audience**— and there were no props, only the occasional miming of interacting with things: there was scattered laughter the first time, when her Hamlet mimed pulling his sword for Horatio to swear on, but let me tell you, you know that an audience has been enraptured when when miming Hamlet licking Polonius' blood off of his hands elicits a collective gasp.

* Hamlet's, obviously, but also as Ophelia and Gertrude, which I don't think I've seen other productions emphasize as such?

** In a fun fourth-wall-breaking moment, Hamlet addressed the audience as if they were the players in Act 2, Scene 2— I've seen another production use that scene to break the fourth wall by having Hamlet direct his "keep an eye on the king" instructions to the audience instead of to Horatio, so I thought that was a fun touch.

jazzfish

So, this last few months I've been thinking about my own moral/ethical foundation. I can't claim any great insights, but at least I have a process that's a step or two beyond "what someone else told me to think."

1) I want some conscious moral/ethical guidelines to tell me what to do. That way I'm not acting on instinct and old programming, which ends with me doing or supporting things that it turns out I don't like very much.

2) The world is a complicated place requiring a great many judgement calls. I can't possibly lay down rules for every situation. Besides which: having inflexible rules may get me in less trouble than having no rules at all, but much of the trouble it gets me in will have been entirely avoidable.

3) Therefore, I need some simple principles that I can generally stick to, that can inform those judgement calls.

I've ended up at a handful of things that sound like truisms because they've been through the cultural wash so many times.

The big one is "choose to be kind when possible." This runs back to the golden rule, though I'm fond of Hillel's "that which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow; this is the whole of the Law, all else is commentary." I'm not as good at this as I'd like. I'm still prone to letting old fears and old damage override my better nature. I try to do better, and to be kind to myself when I can't.

Related to that is "none of us without all of us," which is even more often honoured in the breach but provides guidance nonetheless.

And there's "intent isn't magic." It's not that only actions matter, especially in interpersonal relationships, but actions for sure matter a heck of a lot more than words or intent. I come to this from "the purpose of a system is what it does," which is kind of the long way round. Then again I have a long-standing tendency to take systems and authorities at their word, so maybe that was the best way for me to get there. (I also like the related "a system is not defined by rules but by how they are enforced," but that's less personally actionable.)

I don't have an unanswerable argument for any of these. I'm okay with that too. I'm not trying to convince anyone else, just myself.

In the course of writing this I realised it's only part of the story. The next bit will, I guess, be about acting on those judgement calls.

jazzfish

I've been reading the news for at least a year with an escalatingly frantic mental response of "what the fuck is wrong with you people?" to just about every item. I guess I have an answer.

A couple days ago I read an article on tech jackass Marc Andreessen and his claim to not engage in introspection. Now, tech jackasses can do what they want with their unexamined-and-not-worth-living lives, that's no skin off my back (until it is, I guess). But this bit from the article got me thinking:

When you examine your own motivations, desires, and inner life, neuroscientists have discovered, you are using the same parts of the brain that allow you to understand the motivations, desires, and inner lives of others. This means in turn that when you wall off access to your own inner life you also impair your capacity to imaginatively inhabit the experience of other people. Zero introspection is not just a personal quirk or a supposed productivity hack. It's a permission slip for zero accountability [emphasis mine].

That, to me, sounds exactly like folks who get their morality from authority: from a book, from a religion, from what other people tell them. There's no questioning and no impulse towards questioning, there's only "this is what I was told so it's right."

I've known for awhile that those are people whose empathy is severely lacking. That's an obvious correlation. It's a lot harder to keep believing that it's okay for awful things to be done to people if you don't really view them as people. I'd never thought to look for a causative link, though. It had literally never occurred to me that empathy is something that can be learned or activated, beyond 'teaching kids how to share and to get along.' Or that it can be actively discouraged in ways more subtle than 'those aren't real people.'

For much of this year I've been sporadically chewing over my own ethical/moral framework. I guess the above is sort of a lead-in to that, but I feel like it deserves its own separate post. Or posts.

rekishi

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james_davis_nicoll

An assortment of science fiction stories set on Earth.

Earth Is Room Enough by Isaac Asimov

gingicat

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probablynotbees

Brief side note following on from my discussion of misgendering beyond the binary in Translation State by Ann Leckie:

The way Qven, an individual from a genderless culture, seeks to "have gender" after talking to individuals from a gendered culture also demonstrates cultural exchange in a way I wish more sci fi and fantasy played with.

When cultures come into contact with each other, they naturally influence each other and share ideas, including ideas about gender. In our world, our global history of colonization and the violent imposition of European cisnormativity have complicated and often sabotaged any idea of open, equal cultural exchange around gender.

But in SFF, this doesn't have to be the case, and it can be interesting to explore how a culture with different gender norms (often with no concept of gender at all) reacts to encountering a society with gender norms closer to what's familiar to the reader and writer. ( Read more... )

muladhara

Brain is not in a good place atm - nothing to worry about, just shit brain being shit brain, and I am improving (faster than I expected, so that's good!)

Anyway, here's a nice thing! The other day, it was the anniversary for Johnny Chiodini's youtube channel, and I was at home and wanted to watch live, so I did. And I posted a comment in the chat (I don't generally because my tablet is slow/the lag is a thing that exists), and Johnny read it out! Here's the timestamped link - if you have the live chat up, my message (from rootsandbonesart) should be at the bottom, and this is just before they read it.

I nearly didn't send it, and I didn't think they'd see it, so imagine how surprised I was when I heard the username and I was like, "Wait, what? THAT'S ME!!"

So that was a good thing, and I wanted to share.

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Page Summary

grayestofghosts - XTEInk x4 Initial Thoughts
lannamichaels - 2026 April AO3 Hits Meme
sabotabby - Melania, Part 1
siderea - 🔺 [music]
kaberett - vital functions
duskpeterson - UPDATE: Dangerous Games (The Thousand Nations)
lannamichaels - fic authors, stop telling me things, I don't want to know them. apparently.
malurette - [livre] Le soleil de minuit ~Pierre Benoit
twistedchick - It's been a week.
twistedchick - Researchers take note
conuly - Awaking in New York by Maya Angelou
conuly - I swear, there is something about living in suburbs that rots people's brains and risk assessment
troisoiseaux - Recent theater
jazzfish - towards a personal ethical framework, 1/n
jazzfish - "He thinks morals are paintings on walls and scruples are money in Russia."
rekishi - (no subject)
james_davis_nicoll - Earth Is Room Enough by Isaac Asimov
gingicat - REMINDER: Minoanmiss' online memorial
probablynotbees - Gender & cultural exchange in sci fi
muladhara - (no subject)

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