You gotta read and watch some old books and films that arenāt 100% modern politically correct. Iām not saying you should agree with everything in them but you need to learn where genres came from to understand what those genres are doing today and where media deconstructing old tropes is coming from.
Also, more often than you might think, theyāre not actually promoting bigotry so much as ādidnāt consider all the implications of somethingā or just used words that were polite then but considered offensive now.
When we choose to avoid history because it's Problematic or Says Bad Things, we are choosing to divorce ourselves from understanding how we came from that time to this one, which makes it even more likely for the cycle to repeat, with no one but a few people with shelves of old books aware that it's happened before.
and this shit's important. Media from the past tells us how people from the past acted and thought and behaved.
Plus, a lot of these media pieces were socially acceptable and/or progressive for their time. For example, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, while it contains a lot of words and ideas that are offensive now, was very progressive for its time. The book is a statement piece for how a young man who's grown up in a racist environment, with no words to explain himself other than racist and bigoted ones, decides that the whole system is shit and he's not going to follow those rules any more. So not reading or engaging with it because it uses the n-word a lot really misses the point.
It's Juneteenth yall. And I'm not letting this day go unmarked.
Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.
Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.
Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us
One of the core things capitalism is interested in is making any labor performed invisible.
Capitalism does not want you to think about the people who designed your furniture. It does not want you to think about the people who sewed your clothes. It does not want you to think about the people who plant and harvest the food you are eating, or the people who work to keep your infrastructure running. Capitalism has a vested interest in you never thinking about the people taking away your trash, or the people who work in the warehouses from where you order. It has a vested interest even in you ignoring the work of the many invisible hands who might work on your entertainment - the caterers, set builders, gaffers, and so on.
Because as long as you are ignorant of the labor put into the things you consume, you will be fine with those laborers being treated like shit.
That is why you need to keep thinking of that labor. Look at the things in your room and keep the people who worked for it in mind. Look at your clothes, your furniture, your gadgets. Think of the sewers, the warehouse workers, the miners, the technicians. Think of the people capitalism wants you to forget.
The way that most of Conan Doyleās Sherlock Holmes storiesā most horrible villains are rich dudes that are abusive to women, in a time such as the 1880ās, compels me.
Yup, thereās a huge number of times where Sherlock Holmes is the ONLY person to take a young womanās complaint or worry seriously and finds out someone is up to some serious evil.Ā Holmes also shows a lot of compassion and empathy with the victims over and over again.Ā (This is why I find āSecretly a womanā or āTransā Holmes headcanons much more convincing than āsociopathā Holmes.)
I am never going to shut up about how much I specifically love The Adventure of The Copper Beeches because it is literally Sherlock Holmes listening to a young lady he does not know except as a potential client, agreeing with her that a potential job she has interviewed for that she thinks is SUPER SKETCHY is, indeed, sketchy as fuck and when she says sheās probably gonna take the job anyways because the money is good and she needs it going āOKAY I GUESS but for the love of god please write to us so we know youāre okay we will literally drop everything and jump on a train if you want us toā.
The job turns out to indeed be sketchy as fuck, she writes to them, Holmes and Watson drop everything and jump on a train when she asks them to. I read this story for the first time when I was twelve and it made a HUGE impression.
This is also the basis for a lot of speculation about Holmesā family life.Ā The idea that he has been a victim of abuse, or his mother was abused (or even murdered by his father.)Ā Thereās definitely SOMETHING that makes him very aware of how dangerous isolated families can be, and the dark things that can happen behind closed doors.Ā Plus, of course, the motivation to devote himself to stopping crime.Ā And yes, so much of it is of the personal type.Ā
dude see this is one aspect of the original books i NEVER understand why modern remakes (cough cough) donāt go all in on. Like, in the 21th c we HAVE all the dumb forensic shit that made Victorian Holmes stand out, but we STILL DONāT HAVE uhā¦.you know, compassion for women and minorities, or the willingness to believe them, adequate community support for domestic violence or hate crimes, etc. etc. which youād think is exactly where a renegade consulting detective would come in handy. A good modern day Sherlock Holmes remake, instead of trying to convince us that Holmes is some super genius for being better than fingerprint analysis or whatever, could have him just beā¦a good person who helps out people the police canāt and wonāt help. There you go. Thatās how to write a relevant modern Holmes.
One thing that annoys me is how much the BBC version of Sherlock (and the fandom around it) focus on police cases or cold cases.Ā In the stories, Holmesā bread and butter cases had fuck-all to do with the police and in a few stories, he actively works around/against them, or outright lies to them.Ā Of the many, many things I wish that show had done differently, this is one is particularly obnoxious since itās such a gimme.
There were very few actual murder cases in the Canon, and Holmes handled them either one of two ways:
Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)
Option two: The victim was murdered to protect someone that the victim was abusing, or for vengeance, see Boscombe Valley, Devilās Foot, Abbey Grange. Conclusion, Oops, I donāt know who the killer is, I am suddenly incompetent, oh look a pheasant.
#my favorite murder in holmes canon#is when they straight up witness a lady murder her blackmailer#do nothing except destroy his other blackmail material#and then straight up lie to lestrade about it#sherlock holmes#more of this in modern adaptations pls (via @cactusspatz )
Letās not forget the time Holmes helps a young woman whoās being catfished by her own stepfather to steal her inheritance, and when the villain sneers that the law canāt touch him, Holmes grabs a horsewhip out of sheerest chivalry.
I think itās also important to note, and complicates our ideas about what the highly patriarchal/misogynistic society of 19th century England looked like, that these stories SOLD
they were POPULAR
the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a womanās power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)
which is fascinating in light of. you know. [gestures broadly at all of Victorian gender dynamics, laws, etc.]
Iām seeing a bunch of posts that make me think most USAmericans donāt know about The No Surprises Act.
It was passed in 2021 (thank you Biden) and essentially states that if you donāt have insurance or your insurance doesnāt cover a service you need (or want) you are entitled to a Good Faith Estimate of the cost of care. (If your insurance does cover the service, you should be able to estimate the cost of care based on your deductible and co-pay.)
As a healthcare provider who does not accept any insurance, I am very careful to not violate The No Surprises Act. Why? Because for every penny more than $400 that the Good Faith Estimate was āoffā (or if it wasnāt provided), you are entitled to a refund for that amount.
Yāall. Ask for a Good Faith Estimate. Get it in writing. Compare it to what you are paying. If you are not provided an estimate or if itās wrong by more than $400, demand a refund.
Iām reforging this for the second time in five minutes because I needed to add that part of this is also about what your health insurance provider is required to do. Theyāre required to tell you what your out of pocket cost will be. If you contact them and they say actually they donāt know but your copay is X%, you can ask them to call the provider and get the codes they plan to use to bill for your services. If the provider is in network theyāll have negotiated rates in place so the insurer will know exactly how much you can be charged for that service and then they have to tell you. No surprise huge medical bills even if you are insured.
Adding onto this. If you have a surgical procedure that involves anesthesia, the No Surprises Act also accounts here. Most anesthesia companies/providers are OON (out of network) with most, if not all insurances. If your service is performed in an in-network facility, they are REQUIRED to bill as in-network due to this law.
Dammit, there are some definitions of "Science fiction is becoming reality!" that you DON'T want to see.
...So I'm breaking this oldish work of (screenplay) fiction out as a separate ebook. (And I may yet novelize it, as [apparently / seriously annoyingly] it seems its time has come.)
A pair of tourists from the US fly into to London for business and pleasure... and abruptly find themselves drawn into a battle for the freedom of human souls threatened by a new and terrible kind of slavery.Ā
Joy, chafing a little against the current boundaries of her marriage, strikes up an odd friendship with a young man staying in the little B&B that her husband's big company's yearly convention has forced them into. But the oddness of it all getsĀ seriously worse when she discovers that her handsome young friend, along with just about everybody else resident in the tiny hotel, is dead.Ā
Her investigation of the locally-cozy weirdness turns horrifically dark when Joy learns that her fellow hotel guests (and many other "unpassed-over" souls) are being stalked and kidnapped by minions of an amoral billionaire who sees them merely as an unexploited resource... one perfect for using to increase his already-obscene wealth.Ā
Now Joy has to choose a side. Does she want to go home while knowing she's left human souls to be sucked into eternal bondage? Or will she take a stand, even though doing so may destroy her comfortable life forever?
...So this work of fiction is now up at Ebooks Direct as a standalone. (The Midnight Snack collection, in which it previously appeared, has been withdrawn until I can subtract D&B from it.)
...I still can't believe I wrote this line so long ago. At the time it just seemed like unusually cruel humor. But now, even if only in the current, ugly "meta" sense...? (shudder)
ERICKSON [the local evil billionaire]
Why spend billions developing artificial intelligence when the real thing is free? It's been all around us for years, just waiting for someone smart enough to take it. I figured out how.
And since (in some other timeline) this could have been a film, here's its movie poster, for those of you who might have been wondering about what my Fantasy Casting thoughts were while I was working on this. ...I would have gladly lain me down in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and let any number of buses run over me to get this casting to happen.
(sigh) ...Anyway, here's the standalone script! Go get it. :)
Taking a moment to push this to the top of the queue again... as AI "creativity" is with us again this weekend. (When a whole lot of us have been filling our our Anthropic claim forms before the deadline...)
Being a crafty person and making a bunch of things often prompts people to ask "oh wow did you make that?" And like, the short answer is: yes I did, but the long answer is: well, no, the pattern isn't mine, but I did choose and buy the fabric/yarn and sewed it together/crocheted it/knitted it myself. I used a reference for that drawing/painting, I didn't come up with it myself. That ceramic piece was insired by a poem and a painting made by different people. What I'm trying to say is, everything I make requires other people to make their own thing first, and then I get inspired by them to do my own thing. So I can't really call anything truly mine, because really it's just a bunch of inspirations and experiences of others (and me) put together by my hands. Does that answer your question
This yarn came from sheep raised in New Zealand and was spun by a woman in Peru. The pattern was created by someone in Germany. My needles were made by a craftsman in China and my stitchmarkers came from the lady at the local fiber festival.
I may have knit this sweater but it contains the souls of people from around the world.
What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We're all finding out.
(This article is behind a paywall, so hit yon readmore for the full text)
January 13, 2026
The plan was never to become an ICE agent.
The plan, when I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Career Expo in Texas last August, was to learn what it was like toĀ applyĀ to be an ICE agent. Who wouldnāt be curious? The event promised on-the-spot hiring for would-be deportation officers: Walk in unemployed, walk out with a sweet $50k signing bonus, a retirement account, and a license to brutalize the countryās most vulnerable residents without consequenceāall while wrapped in the warm glow of patriotism.
The catch, however, is that thereās only one āLaura Jedeedā with an internet presence, and it takes about five seconds of Googling to figure out how I feel about ICE, the Trump administration, and the countryās general right-wing project. My social media pops up immediately, usually with a preview of my latest posts condemning Trumpās unconstitutional, authoritarian power grab. Scroll down and youāll find articles with titles like āWhat I Saw in LA Wasnāt an Insurrection; It Was a Police Riotā and āInside Mike Johnsonās Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution.ā Keep going for long enough and you might even find my dossier onĀ AntifaWatch, a right-wing website that lists alleged members of the supposed domestic terror organization. I am, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal recruit.
In short, I figuredāat least back thenāthat my military background would be enough to get me in the door for a good look around ICEās application process, and then even the most cursory background check would get me shown that same door with great haste.
The ICE expo in the Dallas area, where my application journey began, required attendees to register for a specific time slot, presumably to prevent throngs of eager patriots from flooding the event and overwhelming the recruiters. But when I showed up at 9 a.m., the flood was notably absent: there was no line to check in and no line to go through security. I walked down nearly empty hallways, past a nearly empty drug testing station, and into the event proper, where a man directed me to a line to wait in for an interview. I took my spot at the end; there were only six people ahead of me.
While I waited, I looked around the ESports Stadium Arlingtonāan enormous blacked-out event space optimized for video game tournaments that has a capacity of 2,500. During my visit, there couldnāt have been more than 150 people there.
Hopeful hires stood in tiny groups or found seats in the endless rows of cheap folding chairs that faced a stage ripped straight fromĀ Tron. Everything was bright-blue and lit-up and sci-fi-future angular. Above the monolithic platform hung three large monitors. The side monitors displayed static propaganda posters that urged the viewer to DEFEND THE HOMELAND and JOIN ICE TODAY, while the large central monitor played two short videos on loop: about 10 minutes of propaganda footage, again and again and again.
The expo event was part of ICEās massive recruitment campaign for the foot soldiers it needs to execute the administrationās dream of a deportation campaign large enough to shift Americaās demographic balance back whiteward. Youāve probably seen evidence of it yourself: ICEās āDefend the homelandā propaganda is ubiquitous enough to be the Uncle Sam āI Want Youā poster of our day, though somewhere in there our nation lost the plot about the correct posture toward Nazis.
When Donald Trump took office,Ā ICE numbered approximately 10,000. Despite this eventās lackluster attendance, their recruitment push is reportedly going well; the agency reported 12,000 new recruits in 2025, which means the agency has more new recruits than old hands. Thatās the kind of growth that changes the culture of an agency.
Many of ICEās critics worry that the agency is hoovering up pro-Trump thugsāJan. 6 insurrectionists, white nationalists, etc.āfor a domestic security force loyal to the president. The truth, my experience suggests, is perhaps even scarier: ICEās recruitment push is so sloppy that the administration effectively has no idea whoās joining the agencyās ranks. Weāre all, collectively, in the dark about whom the state is arming, tasking with the most sensitive of law enforcement work, and then sending into Americaās streets.
And we are all, collectively, discovering just how deadly of an arrangement that really is.
At the end of my brief interview, the recruiter mentioned I could talk to a current deportation officer about what the job would be like. There was no line to talk to a deportation officer (did I mention how empty the place was?) and so I walked up, introduced myself to one of them, and asked about day-to-day duties.
I shouldnāt expect to hit the streets right away, the agent told me. Odds were good Iād get a support position firstāsomething like the Criminal Alien Program office. āLetās say a local police officer arrests someone out in the field for a DUI. Extremely common. Or beating their wife or whateverāall the typical crimes they commit,ā he said. (The ātheyā here being āundocumented immigrants,ā and while itās extremely difficult to measure, evidence suggests that ātheyā actuallyĀ commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens.)
If the cops suspect theyāre dealing with an immigrant who doesnāt have permanent legal status, they alert ICE, whose agents conduct interviews and run record checks.
If this preliminary investigation suggests that status, the person ends up in the Criminal Alien Program office for processingāwhich is where I would come in. āWhat you see on TV, with us arresting people and doing all kinds of crazy things, thatās maybe 10 percent. The other 90 percent is essentially doing a bunch of paperwork,ā the agent said. āIt takes a lot to remove somebody from the United States. Some people are subject to due process.ā
The officer ran down other departments I might end up in: Prosecutions, Removal Coordination Unit, or Detention. The point being that I should not expect to be a badass street officer on Day 1. āI have so many guys that come over to me, theyāre like, āIām gonna put cuffs on somebody. Iām gonna arrest somebody.ā Well, you need to master this first and then weāll see about getting you on the field.ā
I told him that I was fine with office workāwith my analyst background, it seemed like a better fit for my skill set anyway. His attitude shift was subtle, but instant and unmistakable; this was the wrong attitude and the wrong answer. āJust to be upfront, the goal is to put as many guns and badges out in the field as possible,ā he said.
The agent then told me a bit about his own background. Like me, he enlisted straight out of high school, then got out and vowed to get as far away from the violence of the military as possible. Like a lot of veterans, he had trouble assimilating into the civilian world. āAfter about six months, I was like, āThese people arenāt like me. I want to be around like-minded people.ā ā He found his way into law enforcement. That was well over a decade agoāheās on his way to a very comfortable retirement, and he enjoys the work. āI like that instant gratification ofĀ Hey, that guy committed this crime, these X, Y, and Z, heās not even supposed to be here,ā he said.
I do not agree with his framing, but have no trouble understanding the appeal. Hell, itās why I enlisted in the first place. Thankfully, Afghanistan beat it out of me. If I believed what he believed, I would surely do the same thing heās doing.
I thanked him for the information and time, shook his hand, and took a seat on one of those uncomfortable folding chairs. I had a few hours before my flight back to New York City, and it made more sense to hang out than to flee the building and get good and airport drunk, regardless of how desperately I would have preferred the latter. Instead, I settled in to do what everyone does at the DMV: check my phone and people-watch. The aspiring officers fall broadly into three categories: thick-necked law enforcement types who look like they do steroids but donāt know how to work out, bearded spec-ops wannabes who look like they take steroids andĀ doĀ know how to work out, and dorks. Pencil-necked misfits. I couldnāt tell whether there were more white or Hispanic people waiting for their email, but it was close. A few Black applicants rounded out the overwhelmingly male group.
Iād been sitting around for about an hour when the video suddenly stopped and a bearded man in a black suit stepped onto the stage. He did not introduce himselfāwe were, I gathered, supposed to already know who he wasābut it became clear heās a senior agent of some sort. āI figured it would be best if I break up the same video youāve been watching for the last four hours,ā he said, and offered to answer any questions we might have.
One person asked about work/life balance, which the agent said is possible but not the route heās chosen. Someone else wanted to know about travel opportunities and he talked about the many places heās gone as part of the job.
Every other question during the 45 minutes the agent stood onstage pertained to the hiring process or what we could expect in training. Law enforcement types seemed especially concerned about the painful parts: Would they have to get pepper sprayed again? Would they have to get shot with a taser if theyād already qualified? Yes and probably not, respectively. The agent took the opportunity to gush about ICEās new state-of-the-art semi-automatic tasers and brand-new pepper-ball guns. āItās mostly very liberal citiesāSan Francisco, Los Angelesāwhere groups will come and try to stop ICE officers from arresting somebody. Theyāre like, āWeāre going to form a human wall against you,ā ā he said. āWhen they do that, you can just pop āem up. Let them disperse and cry about it.ā
When, during a moment of protracted silence, the agent threatened to put the video back on if no one had questions, I asked about harassment and doxing. āWe will prosecute people to the fullest extent of the law,ā he assured me, āand then people like myself will go on TV and publicly talk about how that person is now in prison to dissuade other people from doing it.ā
As empty as the place had been when Iād arrived, it was even emptier by the time the senior agent ended the Q&A. Somebody vastly overestimated the number of Americans willing to take a job brutalizing and disappearing hard-working men and womenāeven with a potential $50K bonus, even in this economy.
That may have something to do with what happened to me next.
I completely missed the email when it came. Iād kept an eye on my inbox for the next few days, but Iād grown lax when nothing came through. But then, on Sept. 3, it popped up.
āPlease note that this is a TENTATIVE offer only, therefore do not end your current employment,ā the email instructed me. It then listed a series of steps Iād need to quickly take. I had 48 hours to log onto USAJobs and fill out my Declaration for Federal Employment, then five additional days to return the forms attached to the email. Among these forms: driverās license information, an affidavit that Iāve never received a domestic violence conviction, and consent for a background check. And it said: āIf you are declining the position, it is not necessary to complete the action items listed below.ā
As I mentioned, Iād missed the email, so I did exactly none of these things.
And that might have been where this all endedāan unread message sinking to the bottom of my inboxāif not for an email LabCorp sent three weeks later. āThank you for confirming that you wish to continue with the hiring process,ā it read. (To be clear, I had confirmed no such thing.) āPlease complete your required pre-employment drug test.ā
The timing was unfortunate. Cannabis is legal in the state of New York, and I had partaken six days before my scheduled test. Then again, I hadnāt smoked much; perhaps with hydration I could get to the next stage. Worst-case scenario, Iād waste a small piece of ICEās gargantuan budget. I traveled to my local LabCorp, peed in a cup, and waited for a call telling me Iād failed.
Nine days later, impatience got the best of me. For the first time, I logged into USAJobs and checked my application to see if my drug test had come through. What I actually saw was so implausible, soĀ impossible, that at first I did not understand what I was looking at.
Somehow, despite never submitting any of the paperwork they sent meānot the background check or identification info, not the domestic violence affidavit,Ā none of itāICE had apparently offered me a job.
According to the application portal, my pre-employment activities remained pending. And yet, it also showed that I had accepted a final job offer and that my onboarding status was āEODāāEntered On Duty, the start of an enlistment period. I moused over the exclamation mark next to āOnboardingā and a helpful pop-up appeared. āYour EOD has occurred. Welcome to ICE!ā
I clicked through to my application tracking page. Theyād sent my final offer on Sept. 30, it said, and I had allegedly accepted. āWelcome to Ice. ā¦ Your duty location is New York, New York. Your EOD was on Tuesday, September 30th, 2025.ā
By all appearances, I was a deportation officer. Without a single signature on agency paperwork, ICE had officially hired me.
Perhaps, if Iād accepted, they would have demanded my pre-employment paperwork, done a basic screening, realized their mistake, and fired me immediately. And yet, the pending and upcoming tasks list suggested a very different outcome. My physical fitness test had been initiated on Oct. 6, it said: three days in the future. My medical check had apparently beenĀ completedĀ on Oct. 6.
The portal also listed my background check as completed on Oct. 6. Had I preemptively passed? Was ICE seriously going to let me start training without finding out the first thing about me? I reached out to ICE for an explanation, but never heard back.
The only thing left for me to do was press the green āAcceptā button on the home page. And maybe I should have. Maybe no one would have ever checked my name and I could have written the story of a lifetime. Or maybe the agency infamous for brutalizing and disappearing people with no regard for the law or basic human rights would have figured out exactly who I am while I was in one of their facilities with no way to escape. Iām not actually a domestic terrorist sent straight from Antifa headquarters, but to a paranoid fascist regime increasingly high on their own supply, I sure look like one on paper. Self-preservation won out.
I hit āDecline,ā closed my browser, and took a long, deep breath.
What are we to make ofĀ all this? To be clear, I barely applied to ICE. I skipped the steps of the application process that would have clued the agency in on my lack of fitness for the position. I made no effort to hide my public loathing of the agency, what it stands for, and the administration that runs it. And they offered me the job anyway.
Itās possible that Iām an aberrationāperhaps I experienced some kind of computer glitch that affected my application and no one elseās. But given all of the above, it seems far more likely that ICE is running an extremely leaky ship when it comes to recruitment.
With no oversight and with ICE concealing its agentsā identities, itāll be extremely difficult for us to know.
Thereās a temptation to take some comfort in ICEās sloppiness. Thereās a real argument here that an agency so inept in its recruitment will also be inept at training people and carrying out its mission. Weāre seeing some very sloppy police work from ICE, including an inability to do basic things likeĀ throw someone down and cuff them. On some level, all of this is a reminder that their takeover is neither total nor inevitable.
But if they missed the fact that I was an anti-ICE journalist who didnāt fill out her paperwork, what else might they be missing? How many convicted domestic abusers are being given guns and sent into other peopleās homes? How many people with ties to white supremacist organizations are indiscriminately targeting minorities on principle, regardless of immigration status? How many rapists and pedophiles are working in ICE detention centers with direct and unsupervised access to a population that will be neither believed nor missed? How are we to trust ICEās allegedly thorough investigations of the people they detain and deport when they canāt even keep their HR paperwork straight?
And if theyāre not going to screen me out, what hope is there of figuring out which recruit might one day turn into a trigger-happy agent who would forget that law enforcement officers are trained not to stand in front of vehicles, get jumpy, and shoot a 37-year-old woman to death on the streets of Minneapolis?
Thatās exactly what happened last week, and why Renee Good will never have a 38thĀ birthday, and why her children will never again be hugged by their mother.
By all appearances, the only thing ICE is screening for is a desire to work for ICE: a very specific kind of person perfectly suited for the kind of mission creep we are currently seeing. Goodās murder is not an isolated incident;Ā the American Civil Liberties UnionĀ reports a nationwide trend of ICE pointing guns at, brutalizing, and even detaining citizens who stop to film them. A Minneapolis pastor who protested ICE by chanting āWe are not afraidā wasĀ detained at gunpointĀ by an agent who reportedly asked him: āAre you afraid now?ā
Okay, enough of "what are the best/worst books you've read", I want to know what your favourite comfort books to reread are. What are the books you turn to and turn to again because they scratch a particular itch and make you feel a particular kind of joy? No justification required, no "I know it's bad but" or "I know the plot is stupid but", just the ones that you keep coming back to because they make you happy?
Wee Free Men, Foxglove Summer, Dealing with Dragons, Persuasion, Mirror Dance, Cetaganda, Sorcery and Cecelia, Murder Must Advertise, Going Postal, Fifth Elephant, Girl Genius, Mira's Last Dance, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Paladin of Souls, A Night in the Lonesome October.
Pretty much anything by Pratchett (satirical fantasy) or Bujold (sf/f). Oliver Sacks (neurobiology) when I'm feeling robust. Marian Keyes (irish soap opera chicklit) when I want real-world escapism.
I used to go back to Octavia Butler and Kim S Robinson more, until we started living in the dystopia ...
(And props to @bisonomy there for the GG mention, i second that emotion. Too many other comfort comics to list!)
Good Omens, Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis (which I see is also one @bisonomy lists!), and the Newford books by Charles de Lint. Plus a bunch of Good Omens fics.
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (both in print and in audio narrated by Kevin R. Free), Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, and Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn.
I agree with @tyrograph , though. My comfort re-reads have definitely changed given the state of everything.
As corporate media bows to Trump, public broadcasting has never been more important to our democracy. If radio stations and TV affiliates close, millions will lose access to critical news and education programs. It's up to us now to support our local public broadcasting stations. Trump is trying to control not just what we do, but what we know. Be warned. [Cartoon by Joe Wos]
Iāve decided to tell you guys a story about piracy.
I didnāt think I had much to add to the piracy commentary I made yesterday, but after seeing some of the replies to it, I decided itās time for this story.
Here are a few things we should get clear before I go on:
1) This is a U.S. centered discussion. Not because I value my non U.S. readers any less, but because I am published with a U.S. publisher first, who then sells my rights elsewhere. This means that the fate of my books, good or bad, is largely decided on U.S. turf, through U.S. sales to readers and libraries.
2) This is not a conversation about whether or not artists deserve to get money for art, or whether or not you think I in particular, as a flawed human, deserve money. It is only about how piracy affects a bookās fate at the publishing house.Ā
3) It is also not a conversation about book prices, or publishing costs, or what is a fair price for art, though it is worthwhile to remember that every copy of a blockbuster sold means that the publishing house can publish new and niche voices. Publishing canāt afford to publish the new and midlist voices without the James Pattersons selling well.Ā
It is only about two statements that I saw go by:Ā
1) piracy doesnāt hurt publishing.Ā
2) someone who pirates the book was never going to buy it anyway, so itās not a lost sale.
Now, with those statements in mind, hereās the story.
Itās the story of a novel called The Raven King, the fourth installment in a planned four book series. All three of its predecessors hit the bestseller list. Book three, however, faltered in strange ways. The print copies sold just as well as before, landing it on the list, but the e-copies dropped precipitously.Ā
Now, series are a strange and dangerous thing in publishing. Theyāre usually games of diminishing returns, for logical reasons: folks buy the first book, like it, maybe buy the second, lose interest. The number of folks who try the first will always be more than the number of folks who make it to the third or fourth. Sometimes this change in numbers is so extreme that publishers cancel the rest of the series, which you may have experienced as a reader ā beginning a series only to have the release date of the next book get pushed off and pushed off again before it merely dies quietly in a corner somewhere by the flies.
So I expected to see a sales drop in book three, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, but as my readers are historically evenly split across the formats, I expected it to see the cut balanced across both formats. This was absolutely not true. Where were all the e-readers going? Articles online had headlines like PEOPLE NO LONGER ENJOY READING EBOOKS IT SEEMS.
Really?
There was another new phenomenon with Blue Lily, Lily Blue, too ā one that started before it was published. Like many novels, it was available to early reviewers and booksellers in advanced form (ARCs: advanced reader copies). Traditionally these have been cheaply printed paperback versions of the book. Recently, e-ARCs have become common, available on locked sites from publishers.Ā
BLLBās e-arc escaped the site, made it to the internet, and began circulating busily among fans long before the book had even hit shelves. Piracy is a thing authors have been told to live with, itās not hurting you, itās like the mites in your pillow, and so I didnāt think too hard about it until I got that royalty statement with BLLBās e-sales cut in half.Ā
Strange, I thought. Particularly as it seemed on the internet and at my booming real-life book tours that interest in the Raven Cycle in general was growing, not shrinking. Meanwhile, floating about in the forums and on Tumblr as a creator, it was not difficult to see fans sharing the pdfs of the books back and forth. For awhile, I paid for a service that went through piracy sites and took down illegal pdfs, but it was pointless. There were too many. And as long as even one was left up, that was all that was needed for sharing.Ā
I asked my publisher to make sure there were no e-ARCs available of book four, the Raven King, explaining that I felt piracy was a real issue with this series in a way it hadnāt been for any of my others. They replied with the old adage that piracy didnāt really do anything, but yes, theyād make sure there was no e-ARCs if that made me happy.Ā
Then they told me that they were cutting the print run of The Raven King to less than half of the print run for Blue Lily, Lily Blue. No hard feelings, understand, they told me, itās just that the sales for Blue Lily didnāt justify printing any more copies. The series was in decline, they were so proud of me, it had 19 starred reviews from pro journals and was the most starred YA series ever written, but that just didnāt equal sales. They still loved me.
This, my friends, is a real world consequence.
This is also where people usually step in and say, but thatās not piracyās fault. You just said series naturally declined, and you just were a victim of bad marketing or bad covers or readers just actually donāt like you that much.
Hold that thought.Ā
I was intent on proving that piracy had affected the Raven Cycle, and so I began to work with one of my brothers on a plan. It was impossible to take down every illegal pdf; Iād already seen that. So we were going to do the opposite. We created a pdf of the Raven King. It was the same length as the real book, but it was just the first four chapters over and over again. At the end, my brother wrote a small note about the ways piracy hurt your favorite books. I knew we wouldnāt be able to hold the fort for long ā real versions would slowly get passed around by hand through forum messaging ā but I told my brother: I want to hold the fort for one week. Enough to prove that a point. Enough to show everyone that this is no longer 2004. This is the smart phone generation, and a pirated book sometimes is a lost sale.
Then, on midnight of my book release, my brother put it up everywhere on every pirate site. He uploaded dozens and dozens and dozens of these pdfs of The Raven King. You couldnāt throw a rock without hitting one of his pdfs. We sailed those epub seas with our own flag shredding the sky.
The effects were instant. The forums and sites exploded with bewildered activity. Fans asked if anyone had managed to find a link to a legit pdf. Dozens of posts appeared saying that since they hadnāt been able to find a pdf, theyād been forced to hit up Amazon and buy the book.
And we sold out of the first printing in two days.
Two days.
I was on tour for it, and the bookstores I went to didnāt have enough copies to sell to people coming, because online orders had emptied the warehouse. My publisher scrambled to print more, and then print more again. Print sales and e-sales became once more evenly matched.
Then the pdfs hit the forums and e-sales sagged and it was business as usual, but it didnāt matter: Iād proven the point. Piracy has consequences.
Thatās the end of the story, but thereās an epilogue. Iām now writing three more books set in that world, books that Iām absolutely delighted to be able to write. Theyāre an absolute blast. My publisher bought this trilogy because the numbers on the previous series supported them buying more books in that world.Ā But the numbers almost didnāt. Because even as I knew I had more readers than ever, on paper, the Raven Cycle was petering out.Ā
The Ronan trilogy nearly didnāt exist because of piracy. And already I can see in the tags how Tumblr users are talking about how they intend to pirate book one of the new trilogy for any number of reasons, because I am terrible or because they wouldĀ ārather die than pay for a bookā. As an author, I canāt stop that. But pirating book one means that publishing cancels book two. This aināt 2004 anymore. A pirated copy isnātĀ āgood advertisingā orĀ āgreat word of mouthā orĀ ānot really a lost sale.ā
I've just always held that fascism is bad and that all people deserve basic respect and human rights, along with food, healthcare, housing, and civil liberties.
And somewhere along the line, that became a radical opinion.
When I was little my momās meatloaf was my favorite food. But ONLY her meatloaf. I didnāt like anyone elseās, and she told me that she would teach me how to make it when I was older. And when I was like 19? She finally taught me, but she told me never to tell anyone else and I was like weird but okay
Anyway, she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay, so hereās the recipe
4-6 lbs of Hamburger/turkey burger
1 pk onion soup mix OR ranch mix
1 TBs ketchup
1 Tbs spicy brown mustard,
1 Tbs bbq sauce
1 Tbs steak sauce
1 egg
mix, shape into a loaf in a big pan, and bake at 350 for 2 hrs (maybe 2 and a half if youāre feeling dangerous)
You can get almost all of these ingredients at the dollar store, and have leftovers if itās just you. The leftovers make great tacos if (taco seasoning is also like a dollar). Enjoy your revenge loaf
hereās a mashed potato recipe from my homophobic mother that i swore to never share that would pair perfectly!
(6 servings)
-2lbs red potatoes
-1 cup butter (2 sticks)
-1 cup cream cheese (1 pack)
-Chives (optional)
-Salt & Pepper to taste
1. drop those bad boys (potatoes) in a big ol pot. U donāt even have to chop them just wash them
2. boil til soft!
3. Drain
4. Mash (usually theyāre small enough you can use a fork if u donāt have one of those squashers) until its a pretty chunky mix
5. add the other stuff. Keep mashing
I like my mashed potato consistancy more lumpy but its all up to you!! Peel the potatoes or keep them on, it literally makes the creamiest fluffiest mashed potatoes which she always served with the nastiest fuckin meatloaf
So after spending hours combing through the recipes in the comments of this post I have created a cookbook. Feel free to use it. The link should work for everyone, its the only file on the google drive! I have referenced all of the recipes I used, all of which are from this thread. I made it for myself, but figured after all that work I should probably share. Happy spite cooking!Ā
Cassandra: YOU ARE ALL GOING TO REGRET THIS SO MUCH YOU DONāT EVEN KNOW.Ā
Odysseus: Regret it why?
Cassandra: You wonāt believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.
Odysseus: ā¦ Iām Nobody. Fill me in.Ā
*A couple of months later*Ā
Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, sheās great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother whoās not going to treat you like shit.Ā
Penelope: ā¦ Iām going to need more details, but okay, sure.Ā
