Bundle of Holding: Tunnels & Trolls (from 2018) The 2015 DELUXE rulebook plus many solitaire and gamemaster adventures. First of two T&T Bundles. bundleofholding.com/presents/Tun...

I worked out why the barbecue sauce keeps exploding but where's my parade?

Well, time to rename a popular food Trump Fries.

More stupid biology thoughts, re that 10,000 AD setting I mentioned a while back. I was thinking it would be amusing if some of the hints about the uncharted events between 2026 and 10,000 AD, the Antarcticans had traits not common in modern humans, like being able to go into torpor and (con't)

March 2026 in Review 22 works reviewed. 11.5 by women (52%), 10 by men (45%), 0.5 by non-binary authors (2%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 9 by POC (41%). jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/march-2...

Destiny’s Way (New Jedi Order, volume 14) by Walter Jon Williams A host of familiar faces from the Star Wars movies fend off extra-galactic occupiers. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/a-new...

Do we have any idea how therapsid sexes were determined? I assumed until just now it would have been more or less like mammals, because cynodonts were therapsids, we're descended from cynodonts and I assumed our method of sex determination was part of the therapsid package. Was it, though? (con't)

One grandmother was both too Canadian and also dead to vote in the 1980 election, not sure about her husband, but the other set of grandparents probably thought Carter was dangerously right-wing. #PinkDiaperGrandkid

Bundle of Holding: Magpie Apocalypse MEGA A new Magpie Games Apocalypse Megabundle presenting a diverse abundance of Powered by the Apocalypse tabletop roleplaying games from Magpie Games. bundleofholding.com/presents/Mag...

Seen thanks to a Gander thread. How appropriate. www.ctvnews.ca/kitchener/ar...

I need bouncy music to motive me today. (Binges Halsey)

BUT WAS THE RACCOON OK?

It's important if one wants to interact with other people to eschew uninvited nit-picking. On an unrelated note, I discovered a conversation about what to call romance oriented SF that conflates romance and sex. It's useful to treat those as overlapping but distinct phenomena. (hauls out graphs)

Am I missing a lot of contemporary SF?

My paternal grandmother decided she needed to stop driving when she started getting little blackouts. Very fortuitous, because she was strong-willed and I cannot imagine anyone convincing her to give up her keys if she did not want to.

I showed up prepared and technically awake for a morning shift yesterday for which it turned out I was not scheduled. But as another usher could not make it, my presence was very convenient.

I have no idea if Avi Lewis can salvage the NDP but at least his NDP does not seem likely to be the LPC-lite or the CPC's procedural hand-puppet.

Anyway, I don't know why people suspect the agenda of an author who, as I recall, was very proud to have invented the idea of a lady SF protagonist in 2016 or thereabouts.

Few things are as annoying as having to bite my tongue about a local am dram org's doom spiral for fear my snark will provide them both hints as to what they should be doing and spiteful motivation to do those things.

Readers interested in agenda-free SF may be interested in this list I put together during a previous iteration of the politics in SF argument: reactormag.com/classic-sf-w...

I dreamt I used someone else's ticket to attend a lecture about climate change. The person next to me was Taylor Swift! But what the dream really was about was an argument with the lecturer over whether climate change would impact the price of coffee and chocolate, and if so, by how much.

The Shiny Narrow Grin by Jane Gaskell Everything about the Boy excited Terry; the Boy's good looks, the Boy's appealingly mod fashion sense, and especially his pointy, pointy teeth. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/doll-...

Excluding road networks, are there are extremely large structures on Earth where different portions of the structure are owned and maintained by different authorities? (con't) (It's for a review)

Miss Havisham is to Bruce Wayne as Estella is to Dick Grayson? (which I guess makes Pip the Barbara Gordon analog)

What if it was possible to mitigate the alleged male loneliness plague simply by training males to eschew off-putting behaviour? Would the living envy the dead?

Last night, one of my contingency plans for low probability but incredibly inconvenient events was actually relevant.

Tremble before the fury of voters, the vast majority of whom won't bother to vote.

Flip by Ngozi Ukazu Two teens are forced to consider each other's point of view. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/turn-...

Not one theatre patron asked me about Anatolian tin mining.

It's a good thing the American South West doesn't have a history of thriving cultures collapsing due to drought or the snowpack news would be alarming.

How often do other people have to remove every item of clothing in the closet/dresser to properly organize things? It takes me about a year for clothes entropy to trigger my order compulsion.

In retrospect, I see I misunderstood what people meant by teaching kids cursive and will amend my vocabulary accordingly.

Five Stories About Surviving and Adapting on Mars Strategies range from paraterraforming to radical cybernetic transformation... reactormag.com/five-stories...

A reminder for anyone voting in the Aurora or Hugo Awards that not only am I eligible in my usual fan writer category, both of my 2025 Beaverton pieces are technically short fiction. (con't) www.thebeaverton.com/2025/05/chat...

The Silicon Man by Charles Platt An all-too diligent FBI agent must be silenced... but there's no reason he cannot serve SCIENCE! as well. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/his-r...

Parade by Hiromi Kawakami Tsukiko entertains her former high school teacher with an extraordinary tale. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/faery...

Classic Traveller adventure idea: In Traveller, player characters' pregame lives are generated in four year terms. The older a character is, the more skilled and richer they tend to be. To balance this, there's a small chance per term the PC will die. Anyone who played CT probably (con't)

It turns out young raptors should not select for their perch a tree filled with crows.

No doubt this is a fiscally prudent move in support of ever-greater goals, one that will immediately be rewarded. www.msn.com/en-us/news/t...

I bet I will be the only one who did the reading on the Bronze Age Collapse tomorrow. At work. At a show. That has nothing to with the Bronze Age Collapse. All I need is _one_ person to mention tin trading networks, and I am set.

Five Stories About the Dangerous Business of Truth-Telling Telling the truth can make you unpopular... or put you into real peril. reactormag.com/five-stories...

How to Build a Planet by Poul Anderson & Stephen L. Gillett A brief guide to creating plausible planets. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/let-t...

Although I am 65, I am completely and utterly convinced that a fight between me and a grizzly would end in a decisive victory.

Bundle of Holding: Scion Origin The 2024 Second Edition of Onyx Path Publishing's Scion, the tabletop roleplaying game about the children of gods discovering their birthright in the modern world. bundleofholding.com/presents/Sci...

YouTube fed me a few minutes of an angry mean guy fighting a desperate junky flaming guy and now I'm worried about the old lady and her chickens. Although I think she was going to eat those chickens so at worst the fight just accelerated things a bit. It did underline what a useless power fire is.

I had to deal with half a dozen excited small boys who wanted to run around despite there being a large spill creating a slipping hazard. Although I carefully explained what was required from them and why, they would only pause for a few seconds and then begin again. Is Powerpoint the answer?

Can any modern computer game match Rogue's high-grade graphics and nuanced story-line?

Future So Bright How awesome are ebooks? Let me list the ways! jamesdavisnicoll.com/post/future-...

The USA lacks its own personal cheeses?

Well, now my Achtung Cthulhu character knows trying to telepathically bargain with supernatural entities of PURE RAGE is a bad idea.