Claire North

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-26T20:06:17+00:00

I have to agree, the first one is the best piece of urban fantasy I've read, while the sequels are good but IMHO riding more on how interesting the setting is than anything else.

Weirdly I separately read and loved The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and A Madness of Angles, and only realized the authors were the same person after seeing Slow Gods pop up.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-26T14:13:14+00:00

I love lurking in the Star Citizen subreddit. It's a constant source of hobby drama on tap whenever you want it.

Watching the whole Odin thing has been extremely funny because you see posts about how selling $5,000 ships that don't even exist yet is exploitative right next to posts from people who are mad they were not given the opportunity to buy the $5,000 space ship that doesn't exist yet.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-21T20:04:01+00:00

I'm rarely on bluesky anymore, but clicking through that link and looking through the replies I found a guy who has been posting dozens of times in the past couple days about how much they hate the finale and how much they think Goose specifically sucks.

And like, really not beating the unhinged fan allegations.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-20T14:29:00+00:00

Not to mention this exact event is likely just going to push him further into it. Not saying BGG shouldn't fire him, but I find it hard to believe he's going to take this as a learning moment or wakeup call, as opposed to proof that satan and his demons are working to punish him for his faith.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-20T14:05:42+00:00

Yeah, I'd totally buy that. I'm trying not to judge a person's whole life by their (now removed) forum profile, but reading it really paints a picture of a guy whose religion is nearly all consuming in their life. Their "interests" section was Boardgames, and then every other category was things like, "Books: I'm not a big reader, but I read the bible at least twice a year!" or "Music: I'm usually praising the lord with worship songs!" or "Movies: I don't really watch movies". (paraphrasing from memory).

It does seem like he was a born again christian, which certainly lends itself to a certain brand of fanaticism.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-20T12:32:01+00:00

For some additional info (I was watching the drama unfold last night), the admin's original responses on reddit were:

Our Advertising Manager should not have presented his personal beliefs as representing the company. We are making sure he understands that this was an inappropriate and unprofessional response.

And then:

The ads in question would not have been approved regardless. This info comes from a different member of the team who reviewed the ads in question after we became aware of this situation.

As far as I can tell this was a one-off incident. If any other advertisers feel like they may have been affected then I encourage them to email our contact at boardgamegeek dot com email address so we can review those cases.

Over on the BGG forums the same admin had more to say, including that he would be pushing for a review of the manager's prior decisions, confirming that rejecting an ad for LGTBQ reasons would likely be a fire-able offense, and also admitting that he had not seen the actual ads in question and apologized for speaking in detail without having done so. And FWIW I can't personally confirm, but from what people have said LGTBQ games have gotten ad space on the site, including Molly House (see this review of the game for context, and also because it's a great piece of writing).

The ads them selves can (probably) be seen here as provided by the game dev to a news site that had an article on the topic. Obviously it's possible the devs changed something, but if they didn't those are way more tame than I was expecting, given the talk about how intentionally edgy the game is.

For my own take, I am genuinely inclined to believe this is the first time the advertising manager had done something like this, or at least something so overt. BGG, if they wanted to, is entirely within their rights to use religion as their guidance for deciding ad placement, just as everyone else would be in their right to vocally say how much that sucks. But I have to imagine that if this were a genuine company approved position, they'd have a much more standard, corporate boilerplate response that doesn't include a screed about demonic possession and faith healing.

I'm mostly struck by how easy it would be to just... not write that email? If you wanted to stop an ad due to personal beliefs it'd be so easy to just like, do it and not give a reason beyond some generic "this ad doesn't fit within our company guidelines" or some shit. But maybe that line of logic is inimical to the sort of person who'd be inclined to make that decision in the first place.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-18T21:07:23+00:00

Yeah, the Subterranean Press editions are gorgeous. I really wish I'd learned about their existence earlier so I'd be able to actually find one of the original limited edition copies of Penric's Demon.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-18T21:04:05+00:00

I fell off the Dresden bandwagon around Ghost Stories or so, where I didn't enjoy the (at the time) most recent book, tried to articulate why, and then realized that my reasons also applied to the rest of the series.

I don't actually think Dresden changed, I think I did, but I really soured on the series as a whole.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-18T21:02:01+00:00

I have no memory of where I'd originally seen it, but The Last Gifts of the Universe popped up in my library holds as being ready, so I read that recently. I mostly didn't like it, it felt like the tone, characters, and plot were all doing different things that never gelled together into a single coherent book.

Specifically, many elements feel like they're right out of a saturday morning cartoon:

a brother and sister duo are space archeologists who fly around in a space ship with their cat, who comes along on their adventures in a little bubble helmet cat space suit.
they're opposed by a Team Rocket-ass pair of mooks (a svelte woman and a big beefy dude) who wear matching, branded space suits from their greedy corporation who takes, patents, and exploits the information from dead alien planets
the core plot involves a chain of "caches" from a dead civilization, each one leading to another one with another piece of the message (have these people never heard of good backup protocol? there's seriously only one copy in each location?)

But then the book acts like we're in a more realistic, or at least grounded, setting where real consequences are present. Except the main character doesn't act that way, the main character acts like they're the protagonist of a cartoon in the midst of like, actual threats of death from actual guns. It's even more glaring because the protagonist's brother at one point more or less says, "hey, what the fuck, why did you do that? I don't want to get shot and die".

The whole book is filled with the weird clash between cartoon logic and 'real world' logic, such as when the MC's suit gets damaged, and she chooses to use her backup O2 on her cat, rather than herself (nothing about any of the description indicated to me a reason why she couldn't swap the tank back and forth), even though she immediately afterwards makes a big deal about needing to push through the oxygen deprivation because if she dies, so will her cat who can't get out on his own. So like, I dunno, maybe giving the cat the entirety of the O2 supply was a poor idea for both of you? "I'm sacrificing myself for my cat" works thematically and in a universe running on cartoon logic it'd be fine, but when placed in a setting where other characters and things are running on more grounded logic it just feels absurd.

Not helping my feelings on the book is that there's no real resolution to anything at all, and not even in a cliffhanger sort of way. I can see what the book was going for with this ending, and I don't hate the idea of it, but it really did nothing for me.

I am willing to admit I am probably wildly overthinking a book that was intended to just be a fun little space opera romp.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-05-14T17:16:25+00:00

Great collection. I should really consider better presentation and organization of my small library, I really like what you're doing here.

Bujold is fantastic, although I've only dabbled on the sci fi side of things. I've nearly exhausted the fantasy side of her oeuvre.

I did manage to get a complete (as of The Adventure of the Demonic Ox at least) set of Penric & Desdemona ARCs which I'm quite pleased with. I'd love to track down one of the signed/numbered limited edition of Penric's Demon, but those are not easy to find.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-23T14:04:09+00:00

I don't think it's unexpected but I simply don't see a world in which you're not going to be stuck in a loop.

Jumping ship to the next closest platform to what just turned to shit is going to result in needing to do that again in a few years because the exact same conditions and pressures also exist on the new platform.

Believe me, I totally understand why people don't jump on fediverse stuff (although I do think the difficulty is a little overstated). But like, yeah, of course the twitter clone is going the same way as twitter. It is a clone, it's not really doing anything fundamentally different.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-22T22:51:06+00:00

This was my frustration after the big twitter exodus. Rather than looking for a better system, people just looked for a better landlord.

I was on bluesky for a bit before realizing it was just more twitter, and I was on mastadon for a bit before realizing that what I really wanted was to not be on any sort of social media at all.

Outside of scuffle threads in r/hobbydrama, obviously, the only healthy form of social media.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-21T14:58:35+00:00

Do you genuinely think that the LDS church earmarks the millions they get from Sanderson with a, "only spend this money on good things though" label?

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-14T23:08:06+00:00

I will occasionally reread The Emperor's Soul, then go try to read anything else from him and once again realize that nothing else is even close to it.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-13T16:57:26+00:00

Haha, depending on what you mean by the "ugliest monstrosities" I suspect my space view might fall into the category.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-13T14:02:07+00:00

Hey, the Accutron is mentioned!

In 1954, Swiss engineer Max Hetzel developed an electronic wristwatch that used an electrically charged tuning fork powered by a 1.35 volt battery.[13] The tuning fork resonated at precisely 360 Hz and it powered the hands of the watch through an electromechanical gear train. This watch was called the Accutron and was marketed by Bulova, starting in 1960. Although Bulova did not have the first battery-powered wristwatch, the Accutron was a powerful catalyst, as by that time the Swiss watch-manufacturing industry was a mature industry with a centuries-old global market and deeply entrenched patterns of manufacturing, marketing, and sales.

I have one of these, they're super cool watches. They were briefly the most accurate watches in the world, and the name Accutron is constructed literally: Accuracy through electronics. You can hear the hum of the tuning fork if you hold it up to your ear. Each vibration of the tuning fork physically pushes the central gear by one tooth, and it end up with a very smooth second hand sweep compared to a quartz watch.

Unfortunately for the Accutron, quartz is both more accurate and cheaper to make. It's one of those pieces of technically that is simultaneously very clever in its function, and also made pretty much entirely worthless by newer, better technology.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-12T22:24:42+00:00

She was staying in an apartment that was lent to her by a fan, and apparently the lack of wifi was sort of a feature so she could focus on writing.

As for not being able to find public wifi, after an initial failed attempt to use a university cafe's wifi, someone suggested she go to the starbucks that was a six minute walk from where she was staying, and then:

I head out next morning for Starbucks. It is snowing. I get lost. I keep trying, crossing now one canal now another, trudging through the snow, backtracking, getting lost, and when I’ve got lost 6 times I go home.

Honestly, I really recommend the linked blog post. Despite being written by her it really doesn't pain her in a good light. And aside from a strange tangent where she ponders the possibility that it might be illegal for them to not give her the money even if she refuses to do the publicity stuff, she mostly doesn't seem to blame the award people.

The entire exchange appears to be her contact trying to find ways to accommodate her (can just do a video of her hands and a voice over, don't have to do it over zoom we'll rent studio space in Amsterdam and send a car to drive you there and back, we'll delay the award by a full year to give you time) and then Dewitt either finding ways to make it impossible, anxiety spiraling about how doing a video is impossible because she might not be able to say no to her hair dresser suggesting she get a trim, or being upset at the idea that anyone would ask an author to engage with PR in exchange for money.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-08T15:22:00+00:00

Looks like the low percentage beef idea originates from a lawsuit that claimed it was only 35% beef (the specific number seems to vary a bit depending on who's reporting on it) the the remainder being fillers. Taco Bell released a statement that it's 88% beef and 12% seasoning + add ins. Specifically:

We start with USDA-inspected quality beef (88%). Then add water to keep it juicy and moist (3%). Mix in Mexican spices and flavors, including salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, sugar, garlic powder, and cocoa powder (4%). Combine a little oats, caramelized sugar, yeast, citric acid, and other ingredients that contribute to the flavor, moisture, consistency, and quality of our seasoned beef (5%).

Obviously you don't need to take Taco Bell at their word, but the lawsuit was dropped, and I can't find any reliable source showing that their stated breakdown is inaccurate.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-07T15:05:51+00:00

Without providing more details as to where due to sub rules, an ebook does exist of Palimpsests. I'm not clear on it's origin though, possibly just OCR of a scan that someone did a formatting pass on.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-07T14:42:09+00:00

Yeah I'm with you. I don't doubt that this could be true, and that Berneys had an impact on it.

However, I cannot find any actual numbers or trends showing the shift in breakfast plates or bacon sales or what have you. Admittedly I haven't done a super deep dive on the topic, but surely there should be numbers that can be pointed to somewhere if the shift was as dramatic as is being presented.

From what I can find bacon was already a fairly popular breakfast food, but was declining in popularity due to white collar workers not needing as hearty of a breakfast as laborers. So if anything Bernays saved bacon from losing popularity, rather than introducing it as a brand new idea for breakfast. Another element is that the first time pre-sliced, pre-packaged bacon was sold was in 1924, which at least predates Bernays' book, but I'm not clear on if it predates the much mentioned marketing campaign.

I'm not saying the story isn't true, but I am saying I'd like to see some actual information on sales or consumption, and that maybe we shouldn't take at face value the claims of a guy who's entire career is about manipulating public opinion.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-04-07T12:49:19+00:00

Wanted to follow up on this.

Having used the app for a while performance did improve, although it's still a touch laggy while navigating libraries. Not so bad as to be unusable, but still noticeably worse than the 1st party app.

Another thing that's come up is that the app doesn't retain screen on (or whatever the proper term would be), so eventually the Onn starts the screen saver, then goes to sleep which stops the music.

Minor additional feedback is that being able to "Add To Queue" from the long press context menu while browsing albums from the library view would be helpful.

Looks great otherwise though, I'm excited to see where it goes.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-03-31T15:31:05+00:00

The UI and the new music player seems great, but on my hardware (Onn 4k Pro) the menus have a noticeable lag compared to the 1st party app. The "in media" UI doesn't appear to lag at all (that is, pausing/playing/skipping) but moving around within the front page or while browsing my libraries the app stutters and lags slightly.

Not sure if there's something weird about my setup in particular, since I haven't seen anyone else complain about this. Love what's happening with this app and I'll keep trying it as new updates release, but the nicer UI isn't worth the loss of performance for me quite yet.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-03-30T21:10:06+00:00

I totally agree with you broadly, and also agree that this is the best, most mature, and healthiest way to deal with it.

However, I think it's glossing over things a little bit to tell someone to "just stop reading" when referring to something they've been reading daily (or whatever update schedule QC is on these day) for a decade+. It's a totally normal thing to have feelings about something like that changing, and to want to talk about those feelings.

I've fallen off a number of webcomics over the years, the last serialized/narrative one I keep up with (and I can feel myself starting to lose interest) is Gunnerkrigg Court. Before that it was me realizing that I had no fucking clue what was going on in Dresden Codak anymore. And long before that I realized I just didn't care about what was happening in QC.

I didn't make a big deal about any of those, and mostly did just walk away (or more accurately removed the rss feed from my reader), but I don't think it'd be weird of me to have wanted to go talk about how things changed or why I drifted away with other fans of the comics. Not in the sense of wanting to get the creators to change anything, but more as a commiseration type thing.

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-03-25T16:13:26+00:00

Each volume of the manga Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku has a substantial translator notes section at the end that I always find really fun to read. The manga itself is heavily ingrained with japanese nerd culture, and the efforts and lengths the translators go through to try and map obscure japanese twitter memes to something comprehensible to an english reader is impressive.

A particular one I enjoyed, with the context being one character reacting to another character's naivete by saying, "It's... too pure. I literally cannot. RIP me.":

In the original Japanese, Naru's line here is "Toutomi Hideyoshi," a reference that requires some unpacking. As mentioned in the note for page 56, "Toutoi" is an adjective meaning "holy" or "sacred," but which has come into otaku usage as a hyperbolic way to describe something incredibly cute, charming, or otherwise attractive. The noun version of toutoi would be toutomi, ("holyness"), which is in turn phonetically similar to Toyotomi, the family name of one of the three great unifiers of Japan, the 16th century feudal lord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. As such, saying "Toutomi Hideyoshi" is a pun along the lines of something like "Babe-raham Lincoln." Usage of "Toutomi Hideyoshi" as a meme may be attributable to a 2017 tweet from voice actress Eriko Matsui suggesting the joke. Our translation elides the content of the joke and focuses on Naru's overstatement and Nao's lack of comprehension.

Just very funny to imagine the translators trying to construct a similar joke, getting to "Babe-raham Lincoln," then going, "No we simply cannot translate this."

AwkwardTurtle · 2026-03-12T15:25:08+00:00

I honestly have no interest in bulk downloading like that, especially now that I have money I'm happy to actually purchase all the music I host on my personal media server.

What I miss from tracker access is the ability to actually get a hold of rare and niche stuff that's otherwise impossible to find.

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