Kelson Vibber

A Wizard of Earthsea - Review The Earthsea series is one of my regular re-reads. It starts here, with the tale of how a goatherd grew into a wizard in a world where magic is woven through everything from the poorest village to the...

New book review on my website!

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
★★★★★

hyperborea.org/reviews/book...

The Earthsea series is one of my regular re-reads. It starts here, with the tale of how a goatherd grew into a wizard in a world where magic is woven through everything …

LA: we will fight you. Chicago: we will fight you. PDX: we will make you endure week after week of of improv theater.

It’s the Portland way.

RFK fired the CDC official (w/decades of experience) leading the measles outbreak response. It's been decades since we've had such a large outbreak. And just to ensure they they can spread the measles outbreak even farther, they also fired the leadership for the center focused on immunization.

Unhide the Windows 10 ESU Offer Windows Update is a bit flaky about making the offer to enroll an Windows 10 system in an extra year of security updates. If it's not showing the offer, this can make it re-check whether your system qualifies:...

New tech tip on my website!

Windows Update is a bit flaky about making the offer to enroll an Windows 10 system in an extra year of security updates. If it's not showing the offer, this can make it re-check whether your system is eligible and show you the offer.

#windows #windows10eol

Downgrading a Microsoft Surface Device to Windows 10 You can reinstall Windows on a Surface tablet or laptop using a hardware-specific recovery image and a USB drive. Microsoft will want you to log in and provide the serial number of the device you want...

New tech tip on my website!

Downgrading a Microsoft Surface Device to Windows 10

#windows10 #windows10eol

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

Every few months now I re-read this "Who Goes Nazi?" piece from 1941 and am blown away by how it captures the people we are dealing with 80 years later.

harpers.org/archive/1941...

Fread (Mastodon/RSS/Bluesky App) Another Bluesky/Mastodon/RSS Combo app like OpenVibe, a bit less polished but considerably more useful. Handles multiple accounts per type, plus custom feeds.

New app review on my website!

Fread
★★★★☆

hyperborea.org/reviews/apps...

Another Bluesky/Mastodon/RSS Combo app like OpenVibe, a bit less polished but considerably more useful. Handles multiple accounts per type, plus custom feeds.

Automatic Noodle - Review A short but joyful tale of creating the future you want out of the present you've been stuck with, told by robots who would rather make noodles than war.

New book review on my website!

Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz
★★★★★

hyperborea.org/reviews/book...

A short but joyful tale of creating the future you want out of the present you've been stuck with, told by robots who would rather make noodles than war.

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?

It seems that the only trans person known to be in the orbit of this horrific Kirk assassination saga expressed shock and horror, and immediately cooperated fully with law enforcement.

Interference - Review An intriguing followup to Semiosis that weaves several drastically different sentient species (both plant and animal) into a story about factions, community, freedom, communication and war.

New book review on my website!

Interference, Sue Burke
★★★★☆

hyperborea.org/reviews/book...

An intriguing followup to Semiosis that weaves several drastically different sentient species (both plant and animal) into a story about factions, community, freedom, communication and war.

"I saw 150 of my past lives and they all died before age 9 of measles."

The MSNBC commentator saying that most political violence has historically come from the left just once again showed how we suffer from failing to learn history. Lynching, pogroms, race riots, the political violence that ended Reconstruction, and against the Civil Rights Movement. Come on.

I would like to take this opportunity to remember Melissa Hortman, a serving Democratic politician assasinated by a right-winger.

/6 Also: if a Left-wing activist even remotely as strident as Charlie Kirk had been assassinated, Charlie Kirk would have smirked and applauded, as would have many of the people who are going to be loudest about Charlie Kirk. Don’t buy the hypocrisy.

They've completely memory-holed the assassination and attempted assassination of two Dem legislators in Minnesota less than three months ago.

A variation of the "distracted boyfriend" meme. In this version, everyone is in wearing togas, and the boyfriend has been turned to stone as he looks back at a passing Medusa.

So help me, I laughed
#shitpost #meme #distractedBoyfriend

IIRC it's from the Dispossessed, when the main character meets the ambassador from Earth

How Are You Supposed To Get The COVID Vaccine Now? An Explainer | Defector As the muggy malaise of summer winds down, you might find yourself interested in taking advantage of one of several safe and proven vaccines to help protect you from the inevitable brumal surge of res...

We took the paywall down on this one. defector.com/how-the-fuck...

I prefer to save talking till I know what I’m talking about.

What Happens When an Entire Scientific Field Changes Its Mind Total reversals in scientific thinking are rare—but earth-shattering

My thanks to the generous people at Scientific American, who asked for a piece on the overturning of scientific paradigms and didn't blink when they got a piece about relativity, malaria, surveys of the Great Plains, mammograms, LLMs, climatology, COVID, Back to the Future, and some other stuff.

Occurs to me that Trump's entire regime consolidation strategy is to persuade everyone through displays of force that the regime is already consolidated and there's no point in resisting. Which I don't think will work, but also shows how important public acts of noncompliance are.

Image Toolbox - Review An extremely powerful image editor for Android. And not just the usual features like crop, adjust contrast or brightness, maybe apply a filter, but you can do batch edits, format conversion, scaling the...

New app review on my website!

Image Toolbox
★★★★☆

hyperborea.org/reviews/apps...

An extremely powerful image editor for Android. And not just the usual features like crop, adjust contrast or brightness, maybe apply a filter, but you can do batch edits, format conversion, scali…

One man cannot, overnight, change a fact as written in thousands of copies of hundreds of different books across the world's libraries.

But under pressure from the politicians or guided by his own depravity, he can rewrite history overnight by altering the output of the LLM he owns.

New book review on my website:

When The Moon Hits Your Eye, by John Scalzi

A fast, enjoyable read with a few gut punches hidden throughout. Not so much about the moon turning into cheese as how lots of different people *react* to the moon turning into cheese.

hyperborea.org/reviews/book...

So I wrote this as a reminder. Political appointees shouldn't be rewriting history. Intelligence shouldn't be politicized.

The 5-volume Senate Report - partly issued under the chairmanship of Sec State Marco Rubio! - stands as an authoritative read.

www.lawfaremedia.org/article/retc...

Retconning 'Russiagate' article by me. Subhed: The CIA director encourages the rewriting of history

🧵In 2018 the Senate Intelligence Committee asked me to field a team and analyze a data set that social media platforms had turned over: several hundred gigs of data chronicling a multi-year effort to divide American society *and* interfere in an American election
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/retc...

Aegis Authenticator - Review A well-designed 2FA app for Android that lets you organize accounts into groups, can use a password or fingerprint to add another layer of security to your codes, and can easily import from several apps...

New app review on my website!

Aegis Authenticator
★★★★★

hyperborea.org/reviews/apps...

A well-designed 2FA app for Android that lets you organize accounts into groups, can use a password or fingerprint to add another layer of security to your codes, and can easily import from …

This is not just revisionist history, it's ignorant of reality. Activists didn't leave Twitter because they "thought they would be more effective" somewhere else, they left because Elon made it clear that he would *deliberately undermine their influence."

Why make shit up?

Fedilab - Review A full-featured app for connecting to Mastodon and other Fediverse servers. Includes specific capabilities for Akkoma, Pixelfed, PeerTube and more, without getting too cluttered.

New app review on my website!

Fedilab
★★★★☆

hyperborea.org/reviews/apps...

A full-featured app for connecting to Mastodon and other Fediverse servers. Includes specific capabilities for Akkoma, Pixelfed, PeerTube and more, without getting too cluttered.