tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
2025/169: Careless People — Sarah Wynn-Williams
...the board gets into a conversation about what other companies or industries have navigated similar challenges, where they have to change a narrative that says that they’re a danger to society, extracting large profits, pushing all the negative externalities onto society and not giving back. ... Elliot finally says out loud the one I think everyone’s already thinking about (but not saying): tobacco. That shuts down the conversation. [loc. 3242]

The subtitle is 'A Story of Where I Used to Work', but it's being sold under the strapline 'The explosive memoir that Meta doesn't want you to read' -- with good reason, as this article indicates: "Meta has served a gagging order on Sarah and is attempting to fine her $50,000 for every breach of that order.". I quit Facebook a while back (though I did miss it in the first year of the pandemic, when so much of everyone's social life was online) but if I hadn't, I would have deleted my account well before I'd finished reading this book.

Read more... )

Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
“—- This is all very civilized and delightful,” Mrs. Etaris burst in, rushing back at us like a dark blue sheepdog herding her flock, “but I’m afraid we really should be going inside if we don’t want our friends and neighbours to be sacrificed to the Dark Kings." [p. 345]

First in the Greenwing and Dart series: reread, to remind myself just how miserable, unwell and generally detached Jemis was when he first returned to Ragnor Bella (the dullest town in Northwest Oriole) after the debacle of his final term at Morrowlea. Original review here... 

This time around I appreciate Mrs Etaris much more (and wonder whatever became of her previous assistant, 'a quite lovely young man'). I'm also fascinated by the offhand mentions of life before the Fall. ('Whistle a few notes and anyone could call light into a dark room, mage or no, before the Empire fell' (p. 144)).

Anyway! A fish pie (and the Honourable Rag eating herring eyes); aphrodisiacs and a Decadent dinner party; the mysterious Miss 'Redshank'; Jemis as apprentice bookseller; and all manner of delicious references to life in Ragnor Bella.

I may now need to read another one...

tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
He sent his life forth as the crippled tree
puts forth white flowers in April every year
upon the dying branch. He knew the way.[loc. 93]

A birthday gift from a dear friend: it comprises Le Guin's 1982 'The Art of Bunditsu' (a “tabbist” meditation on the arranging of cats, with Le Guin's sketches of her cat Lorenzo); two sets of poems, some of which brought tears to my eyes as they dealt with the deaths of beloved cats; and various cat-letters, anecdotes and blog posts. Even in these small pieces her prose is perfect and precise: I share her love of cats and her preference for treating them as individuals. Beautiful.

tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
The rusted robots in the story were a metaphor for wisdom, patina, acceptance, embracing that which was you, scars, pain, malfunctions, needed replacements, mistakes. What you were given. The finite. Rusted robots did not die in the way that humans did, but they celebrated mortality. [loc. 989]

Nigerian-American Zelu, at the start of the novel, is thirty two years old, paraplegic after falling out of a tree twenty years ago, a creative writing tutor, a novelist, and single At her sister's destination wedding, the last three of these change: she loses her job, her latest litfic novel is rejected, and she hooks up with Msizi. And, sitting on the beach in tears, smoking weed, she decides to write a novel about 'a world that she’d like to play in when things got to be too much, but which didn’t exist yet'. This novel -- extracts from which are intercut with the Zelu-focussed narrative -- is called Rusted Robots: it's a story of AIs ('NoBodies') and humanoid robots ('Humes') in Nigeria after the extinction of humanity, and it is wildly successful.

Read more... )
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
The heart of culture is taking the time to do the unnecessary in the most picturesque manner possible. [p. 204]

Reread, after reading Olive and the Dragon... my original review from the 2023 Nine Worlds rabbithole is here. This is a delightful novel with mystical bees, a baking competition, and a dragon (which may or may not be the same dragon met by Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive). There is also an inheritance, an Imperial Duke, and Jemis beginning to relax.

After this I obviously needed to reread the first in the series, Stargazy Pie... especially as there is a new Greenwing and Dart novel, Bubble and Squeak, coming in the next few months! (Also, these cosy fantasy mysteries are perfect for autumn... though they always make me want to eat cake.)

tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
The point is there are no villains in this story, or maybe there are no heroes. [p. 11]

Concluding the trilogy which began with The Atlas Six (which I liked a lot) and continued with The Atlas Paradox (which I liked less). Sadly the trend has continued. Read more... )

tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
“But also,” said Barbara, “if he hadn’t disappeared.” She did not finish the sentence.
“Then what?” said Tracy.
“Then I wouldn’t have been born,” said Barbara. “That would have been better, I think.” [loc. 4153]

Told from multiple viewpoints in two timelines, this is the story of the Van Laar family and their children: Bear, who goes missing aged eight in 1961, and Barbara, who goes missing aged thirteen in 1975. Are the disappearances linked? Were the children abducted? Murdered? Did they run away? One could make a good case for the latter: the family, though extremely wealthy (they own the woods, and the neighbouring campsite from which Barbara vanishes) is riddled with secrets and dysfunction. Barbara has been 'acting up', using makeup and painting a wild mural on her bedroom wall: her mother Alice is addicted to Valium and alcohol, and still doesn't quite believe that her son Bear is dead. Peter, father to Barbara and Bear, has high standards and little time for his wife.

This is a complex thriller, with themes of misogyny, class and scapegoating. I liked female cop Judyta (who's very much belittled because of being a woman, but who is key to solving the mystery) and TJ, who runs the summer camp and is distinctly queer-coded. Louise, the counselor who first notices Barbara's absence, is a working-class girl with a rich fiance and a history of abuse. Tracy, who's 12, is befriended by Barbara and asked to keep her secrets... Each of these women, as well as Alice, and Maryanne Stoddard whose husband died of a heart attack during the search for Bear and was subsequently blamed for the boy's disappearance, has to deal with sexism, powerlessness and injustice.

It's also a very interesting comparison of parenting values: between the 1960s and the 1970s, as well as between working class and upper class families. (There's a really chilling line in Alice's narrative about 'part of a mother’s duty was to be her daughter’s first, best critic'. This resonates...)

Ultimately, while I was caught up in the story and its complex relationships, I didn't find the resolution wholly satisfactory. Barbara's conclusion just wasn't credible, even for 1975. But the ways in which blame is apportioned and withheld, the ways in which gossip and bias affect everyone in the story, were very well done: and the multitude of narrators, in two different timeframes and out of sequence, maintained their individual voices and never became confusing.

I'm still thinking of the title, The God of the Woods, which refers to Pan and thus to panic. Though there are scenes of panic, it's not a defining characteristic of the novel. But a lot of people do lose their way, mostly metaphorically: and not all of them find the right path again.

tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
2025/162: Magic Lessons — Alice Hoffman
A streak of independence and a curious mind meant trouble. In Martha’s opinion, a woman who spent her time reading was no better than a witch. [loc. 3165]

Prequel to Practical Magic (which I haven't read since the last millennium), The Rules of Magic and The Book of Magic (which I don't think I've read at all), this novel explores the roots of the curse on the Owens women.

The novel begins in Essex, England ('Essex County', hmm) in 1664. Maria is found as a baby, abandoned in the snow, with a crow keeping her company. She's taken in by spinster and wisewoman Hannah Owens, who teaches her the 'Unnamed Arts' -- herbalism, midwifery, and the importance of loving someone who will love you back. These are troubled times, though, and solitary women are suspect: Read more... )

May 2016

S M T W T F S
1234 567
891011121314
15 1617 18192021
22232425262728
293031    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Oct. 31st, 2025 01:52 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios