As promised, here are a few things that I'd put to good use if you aren't using them:

• Muffin tin(s)
• Mixing bowl
• Small plates (bread/side plate sized)
• Saucepan (small or medium)
• Pitcher (1.5 L or so)
• Chef's knife
• Comforter for queen-sized bed

Please don't go to too much trouble — these are less-urgent things that I'll get if they aren't floating around my local friends, but I'm hoping I can help you clear things out and round out the house for the kids and me!

The Dark Touch by Beth Ross was excellent! In the United Republic of Britain, Nova finds out that witches are not extinct and that she is one of them.

This contemporary novel mixes an alternate history, urban fantasy and some elements of activism (women's rights, including abortion, and queer rights). A large tapestry of characters are introduced little by little, making it relatively easy to learn who's who. There's no cliffhanger, but I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Nova has a bi awakening at 23 (same!), there are sapphic characters of various orientations and there's major f/f. Abigail is on the autism spectrum.

 They are going to beat you, and eventually kill you, regardless of whether your protest is violent or non-violent.

 I dunno, what do you guys want me to rant about? The Freedom Flotilla? LA vs. ICE? The fact that my government is planning more pipelines while sending in the army to deal with out-of-control wildfires? Or, closer to home, Bill 5 or the Toronto bubble zone law, or...?

This is why people curl up and retreat into fiction.

I mean, yeah, okay, fuck it, I'm in.

let's see if I can make it more than a couple of weeks before being eaten by startup life, yeah?

Movies: None.

Television/Streaming: Started watching Farscape again; first time for me, but one of my husband's favorite shows. We had started watching it on his DVD set a while ago, and I don't recall why we stopped, but we only got a few episodes in. This week, we started with episode 5 (if you go by the DVD order; I guess the airing order on Sci-Fi/SyFy was different), "Back and Back and Back to the Future." Also watched the first two episodes of Buffy (which I guess aired as one long pilot originally). OMG high school flashbacks. Xander is annoying, haha.

Books: I finished Pathogenesis and in the end, I still found it really interesting, but as I said in my previous Media Post, I wish they would not have given it a different subtitle in the US. It does the book a disservice, in my opinion.

Currently reading Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton. This was my pick for our DEI Book Club I started at work. I wonder how my colleagues will feel about this one! I was intrigued by the sample and I had wanted to choose a trans author as we are reading this during Pride month, but there is a lot more mysticism and witchiness than I was expecting from the blub, heh. I'M enjoying it immensely, which seems weird to say because it is very emotional and heart-stomping, but I think it is really good.

Gala, a young trans woman living in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, is obsessed with a 1960s band called the Get Happies (which are thinly veiled Beach Boys). Their record, Summer Fun, was never released; why? The novel is written in an epistolary format, where Gala writes letters to the lead singer, B., retelling his life story.

Gaming: I've been using Pikmin Bloom to try to get some walks in during the week. That's about it from the video game side.

I remain once again mostly behind on podcasts, but maybe have a listen to It Could Happen Here's "Governing Fertility: How Pronatalist Policies Kill." (Trigger warning: It contains fairly graphic descriptions of what happened in Romania under Ceaușescu, which legit gave me nightmares as a kid. 

One of the particular hallmarks of both Trump 2.0, his ex-BFF Elon (who is responsible for approximately 30,000 child deaths in his short tenure as Grima Wormtongue), and far-right populist/techbro movements around the world, is an obsession with forced pregnancy, insemination, and reproduction. Obviously this is viscerally upsetting to everyone who's read or seen Handmaid's Tale, and given that the actual supposed problems with a declining birth date are mostly solved by immigration, which they want to decrease, bears some further examination. They don't just want to ban abortion, but pursue incentives for large families headed by heterosexual married couples, punish the childless, and create eugenics programs. The one thing that they don't want to do is care for whatever children are born, or create social conditions where families can live in financial and physical stability, because then the money would be sad.

The gang looks at a number of movements, including Spain and Japan, but Romania is actually the closest parallel to Trump's plans, and it's important to confront that horror straight in the face so they you know exactly what they want for American families and children. Although, you know, eventually the Ceaușescus got shot in a basement and dragged through the streets so at least there's that to look forward to.

lydamorehouse presents the 2025 Pride Bundle in this post.

I've already read several of these books and recommend them all:
- Point of Dreams by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
- Fairs' Point by Melissa Scott
- A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert
- Reforged by Seth Haddon
- Welcome to Boy.Net by Lyda Morehouse
- Power to Yield by Bogi Takács

Part of the proceeds go to Rainbow Railroad, an NGO that helps LGBTQ+ people escape state-sponsored persecution and violence worldwide (same as the DuckPrintsPress bundles I posted about here).

I'm writing this from the kitchen table in my new place — I am in the process of moving out from the home I shared with Elizabeth since 2008. We got to a place where we had a big gulf between what each of us thought our relationship should be and I decided I needed some space and concordance between what our relationship had become and what the infrastructure looked like. So here I am, a kilometer and a half away in a little 1940s house with a bedroom for me and each kid, a woodstove (landlords promise to inspect and clean it before it gets cold) and a certain amount of distance. The kids seem pretty positive and practical about moving in; they'll be in on a supply run on the weekend to kit out their rooms while Elizabeth and Doug go to Toronto for a gig. Unless things go terribly, they'll have their first night here then, and then I'll get Vivien to the bus really early for her school trip to Quebec City.

What this all looks like emotionally going forward... is still up in the air. I was pretty unhappy with where things were going. Elizabeth seems to want to go straight to friends and I'm feeling more like getting the practicalities of co-parenting down, being fair while standing up for myself, setting some clear boundaries. I'm lucky to have a broad circle of support and some really good people close to me. Andrea says I'm brave, and has been there for me all through this. My parents are understanding. My peer group is proud I'm taking concrete action. Lots of people are offering help, even the kids (I'll make sure they get some choices about their space and also carry some boxes). It feels weird but maybe I do need to assemble some kind of separation registry and insist that people only contribute things they have doubles of or don't use -- partly to help get over the hump of expenses (and in to paying rents of the current era and child support) and partly so I don't just say "come to the housewarming" when they ask what they can do.

The novella Praxis by David Gerrold (The Man Who Folded Himself) was interesting. In order to escape being sentenced to the Labor Corps, James and José opt to emigrate to Praxis, a colony world with only men, and get fake-married to improve their chances.

Let's talk about wrong expectations. None of the story actually takes place on Praxis, only in the training camp, though the camp is also men-only.

The story isn't exactly m/m, it's more of a queerplatonic relationship at this point, though they talk about maybe having sex in the future.

Just finished: real ones, Katherena Vermette. This one ruled. I don't have a lot to add to what I said last week except that I really enjoyed it. If you want a good pairing (or you're not super familiar with the context of the Canadian arts scene), Jesse Wente's Unreconciled provides a great non-fiction one. But yeah, I loved the characters, I loved the poetic, Impressionist writing style, it was emotionally affecting without high stakes or pacing, which is something that genre writers could learn a lot from (more on that later). Vermette seems to be putting out great books with impressive frequency but this is the one I've enjoyed most so far.

The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was imperfect and ambitious, but I'll take that over boring any day. It's a master class in how to do some interesting worldbuilding; there's a lot going on in the background, and you get it only as a sketch. Oh yeah, there are lizard guns. Why are the guns lizards? Eh, don't worry about it, keep up. It's pretty New Weird in the tradition of Miéville and Tchaikovsky (positive) so I liked that quite a bit.

I have two big critiques, one big and one small. First, the small. This is critically acclaimed, nominated for a bunch of awards, and put out by a real press. And yet. And yet. Alefret, the main character, has one leg. This is clearly established in the opening line. His leg is slowly growing back thanks to an experimental serum that's delivered via wasp sting (again, cool) but it's slow and he's on crutches for the entire book, something that is done very well and really gives a good sense of the character's physicality. And then there is a scene where he is having dinner with two elderly sisters who have a cat. Under the table, the cat brushes up against his ankles and he holds his legs very still. WTF? Which editor let that through?

My bigger complaint is that I don't think she quite lands the ending. As I've said, it's ambitious, a story about whether pacifism can survive a horrific war.
( spoilers )

Cottagers and Indians by Drew Hayden Taylor. This is a one-act play based on the true story of Anishinaabe people trying to re-seed lakes with wild rice, over the objection of white cottagers. And it's amazing, obviously. Everything he writes is great and this is particularly affecting. It's a dance between two difficult, complicated characters, and while the white cottager character could easily be a hideous caricature, Hayden Taylor is too much of a humanist to take the easy road out. There's also a great afterword by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, because of course there is.

Currently reading: Dakwäkãda Warriors by Cole Pauls. This is a bilingual (!!!) Indigenous futurist comic about two defenders of the earth, beautifully illustrated in a Formline style. If you want to learn Tahltan, I can't think of a cuter way. There's a lot of pew pew pew and it's very fun.

Here's the new Korean practice post! I've switched to a post EVERY OTHER MONTH, as everybody is pretty busy. As usual now, it's an open chat.

You can write about whatever you want. If you're uninspired, tell us the story of what you're currently watching/reading/playing...
You can talk to one another.
You can also correct one another. Or just indicate "No corrections, please" in your comment if you prefer.

화이팅! <3

Duck Prints Press, an indie publisher of queer books, has 3 bundles for Pride Month!

I've bought Pride Bundle 2025: General Imprint Short Stories via itch.io.

If you don't know itch.io yet:
- it lets you buy e-books without DRM
- it lets you tip the authors
- there are often bundles (organised by the authors and/or publishers) where you can buy plenty of books for a low price

Movies: None.

Television/Streaming: This past week's Taskmaster episode was really great. The whole group just seem to get along really well together and I love it. Jason is an absolute chaos gremlin and I'm here for it. The most recent Um, Actually was themed to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which (bad nerd, no cred) I have never seen. So might start watching that.

Books: I haven't finished any this week. I'm currently reading Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy. This isn't quite what I was expecting given the subtitle, as it sounds like it would be about specific plagues; in looking this up I see that the UK subtitle is "How Germs Made History," which is MUCH more in line with the book's premise. Anyway, it is quite interesting and I enjoy the interdisciplinary approach. This is for the nerd book club for June.

Music: Continuing with the Rolling Stone albums project, I listened to two more of the albums, #496 and #495.

Number 496 is ¿Dónde Están los Ladrones? by Shakira. This was not on the 2012 list. Rolling Stone blurb:

Long before she went blond and took her never-lying hips to the top of the American pop charts, Shakira was a raven-haired guitar rocker who’d hit peak superstardom in the Spanish-speaking world with her 1995 LP, Pies Descalzos. To keep up the momentum, Shakira enlisted Emilio Estefan to help produce her next LP, this stellar globetrotting dance-rock set, which blends sounds from Colombia, Mexico, and her father’s native Lebanon.

I really liked this one a lot! I listened to it a bunch last week (which is probably why I only got through one other album, haha). But it's very enjoyable; there are some dancey numbers, some 90s rock, a ballad or two, and some Arabic pop influences. Some fave tracks: "No Creo," "Inevitable," "Que Vuelvas," and "Ojos Así," which is the final track and I dare you not to dance to it, haha.

Number 495 is II by Boys II Men. This was also not on the 2012 list. Rolling Stone sez:

With their innocent romanticism and meticulous vocal arrangements, Boyz II Men became the most commercially successful R&B vocal group of all time. II includes two mammoth hits, courtesy of Babyface: “I’ll Make Love to You” and the audaciously baroque “Water Runs Dry.” But the group’s own Nathan Morris and Shawn Stockman composed II‘s most poignant moment, “Khalil’s Interlude,” a soft onslaught that’ll leave you sobbing in the fetal position: “I need shelter from the rain/To ease the pain of changing from boys to men.”

Of course, I like this one, too. Some of these tracks were constantly on the radio during my early years of high school and I still love them today. "I'll Make Love to You," "On Bended Knee," and "Water Runs Dry" are all on this album; maybe cheesey, but as I've said before, I make no apologies anymore for what music I like, even if it isn't "cool." In addition, "Vibin'" and "I Sit Away" (which was written by Tony Rich of the Tony Rich Project; remember "Nobody Knows?") are also really good songs on this album.

 When someone tells you that something is "inevitable" or "here to stay," you shouldn't believe them. You should, in fact, do something between vicious mockery and other, more high-level spells on them. They are lying to you and they want you to suffer.

In the past, massive political and socioeconomic changes were enforced through violence. Before Margaret Thatcher could have people believing that There Is No Alternative, she had to crush the miner's unions. Before neoliberal structural adjustment policies were enforced on the Global South, governments and corporations had to rig elections, murder Indigenous people, and starve their populations. 

So why are we accepting this massive change—the enshittification of all things from labour to education to the arts—that no one asked for and no one wants? Because we are a very passive, bovine population that has been conditioned for decades to accept anything that Big Tech tells us that we want. Which is why I get daily emails from companies and my employer giving me best practices for incorporating plagiarism into my pedagogical practice, etc.

The handful of independent tech reporters who still have brains, like Ed Zitron and in this case, Paris Marx, put the lie to that. Tech Won't Save Us has a great episode, "Generative AI is Not Inevitable with Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender" that discusses how obvious it is that gen AI has not lived up to the hype, that it's an industry propped up by wishes and VC capital rather than an actual market, and that we can actually nip this in the bud. It's very empowering and I'm definitely going to check out the book that the two guests wrote.

Reclaimed by Seth Haddon was amazing, as usual! The scholar Saba Vasili, a refugee from Kerinsk who now lives in Zvensia, is accused of inventing a machine that opened the astral sea and killed hundreds of people. He must prove his innocence with the help of Ambassador Luan Zek of the Rezwyn Empire.

This is the third book in the World of Reforged series, but they can be read more or less independently. Here, we get to learn even more about this original magic system.

Saba Vasili is a trans man with anxiety. I thought his dysmorphia was very well-written, without being too depressing. Luan Zek has an old leg injury and uses a cane. There's major m/m, as well as some f/f.

Just finished: Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I really enjoyed this one, with the caveat that it was hyped to me as the most disturbing thing, read it before giving it to a student, etc., and it was a very different (if very good) kind of book. Though possibly my calibration for disturbing is way off. I did find it a very strong story about family and community vs. extractive industries and the MMIWG epidemic, and one of the best use of dreams in fiction I've seen since we all decided that kind of thing was gauche.

What Feasts At Night by T. Kingfisher. I enjoyed this one too. After barely surviving the events of the first book, our lead and ka (?) companions return to their home (fictional) country, where the caretaker of the estate has suddenly died. The villagers won't go near the place and claim that it's haunted by a creature that sits on your chest and sucks out your breath. So, they have to fight it, all while dealing with PTSD from the war. Fun stuff.

Two things I particularly liked about this: 1) it actually was disturbing as shit, especially the scene with the horses. 2) this is kind of the reverse of what I complained about with Someone You Can Build a Nest In in terms of queernormative fantasy settings. The imaginary country is integrated into the Serbo-Bulgarian War, but it is clearly a country with different norms, myths, and traditions. The novella has a nonbinary lead, and this identity is important and plays a role in their backstory, but it also has a different meaning and definition that in would have in our world (it's important to note that this is queernormative and Alex doesn't appear to be discriminated against in their society, but there are still gendered expectations and roles). It contributes to the worldbuilding as well, so there are different pronouns for both God and priests, and that adds interest rather than erases difference. Anyway, it is pretty cool.

Currently reading: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was also really hyped up and I can see why. There's a longstanding war between two empires: Varkal (which is kind of industrial-age but uses genetically altered animals as its technology) and Med’ariz (which has floating cities and more technologically based weapons). The causes and parameters of this war are deliberately fuzzy to the POV characters, but Med'ariz seems to be winning. Alefrat, the leader of the pacifist resistance in Varkal, is blown up, kidnapped, and imprisoned by his government, and let out on the condition that he travel to the Med'ariz front line, infiltrate them, and create the same kind of grassroots uprising that he did in Varkal. He's accompanied by Qhudur, a brutal soldier/prison guard. 

This is very good so far; it pulls no punches either in its depiction of war or its depiction of disability (Alefrat's leg was blown off before the story begins, and there's a bizarro doctor who had started to regrow it with wasps, and the entire thing is very nasty). It's definitely problematizing pacifism and its role in defanging political movements, though I am not sure where the author/narrative is ultimately going to fall on this. It feels like a slog, and this is intentional; every inch of the characters' journey is painstakingly fought for, and you feel it.