Dorian Hart

Thank you so much! I have a kid who's going to love this.

Can you provide a link to where one goes to buy this? My Google-fu has utterly failed me. Thanks!

In the earliest days of the "67" phenomenon, I saw an explanation for it in two unconnected places. It was.. not a traditionally kid-friendly origin, one involving a nearby and more famously meme'd two-digit number.

But since it's hit the mainstream? Never heard that again. Am I imagining things?

Agreed! I am currently [checks actual spreadsheet] 34 books down, 2 in progress, and 9 remaining of his 45 "main" novels and novellas. And that's not including Children of Strife coming out in March. As you say, my goal to read his whole catalog is constantly thwarted by his prolific output!

If your brother is good with WoT-length fantasy epics, my favorite is Adrian Tchaikovsky's 10-book opus Shadows of the Apt. Book #1 is Empire in Black and Gold. The series features fantasy races based on bugs rather than elves/dwarves/goblins/etc. But it's not as creepy-crawly as it sounds!

Hard to know for sure, since 99% of our pizza boxes come from the same local place. But she seems pretty content with all of them. (Toppings don't seem to matter either, if that was your next question!)

And that's not even her original pizza box, which we still have! It's over 8 years old, and sometimes we leave it out for her, even though it's pancake-flat at this point.

Whitby, a fluffy gray cat, is curled up on an old pizza box atop a wooden table.

Whitby the Pizza Box Cat is here to help!

Balance it the same way you'd balance any other system that helps lots of deserving people while allowing a few bad actors to exploit it: Err heavily on the side of helping the deserving. This is just a close cousin of means-testing, and means-testing always does more harm than good.

Came expecting some Dragonlance. Did not leave disappointed! 😀

Also, The Bookshop is going on my TBR immediately.

My 20-year-old kid was just lamenting that today's children will never know an Internet that's not all brain-rot garbage. She said (and I paraphrase): "I see so many toddlers in strollers staring at their iPads, showing them 'Cocomelon' and the like, that must be rewiring their brains in a bad way."

"Nintendo 64 turns 30 in 2026. The console you spent countless hours huddled around as a kid..."

No, that was the Atari 2600, which I'll have you know was a big step up from our Apple II. Now please excuse me as I finish turning into that guy from Last Crusade after he drank from the wrong Grail.

I've still not seen or read any plausible answer to: "Why should we believe that this DOJ/FBI, which has had months to redact/lose/burn/shred/delete anything they want with no accountability or oversight, can be expected to reveal anything close to the 'real' files?"

I'd love to hear one, though!

Oooh, neat! That does sound like you've opened a linguistic can of worms for yourself. 😜 (And, yeah, I do love me a good silhouette!)

Ha! I generally draw the line on the "it's fine" side of those two words, but there's no objectively wrong place to draw it for secondary-world fiction. I admire your dedication. :-)

(But if that's your challenge, also watch for dunce, boycott, mausoleum, and chauvinism!)

OMG THIS GAME. I can only imagine the multiple hearts attacks Dodgers and Jays fans are having right now.

If, like me, you are a fan of both Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ozymandias and Philip Larkin's This Be The Verse, you will recognize this mashup as one of the greatest achievements in the history of the Internet.

I think we can close down the Internet, now that we've seen the greatest thing it has to offer.

A hand-drawn map of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, showing the whole Disc in the upper two-thirds, and a blow-up of the city of Ankh-Morpork in the lower third. Marginalia includes the orangutan Librarian, the Luggage, and Death. Other details include the turtle and elephants who carry the world, a custom compass rose, and numerous named cities and geographical features.

My daughter hand-draws maps on commission, and her most recent -- depicting Terry Pratchett's Discworld -- is amazing!

Imagining this exchange from, say, 10 years ago:

"in 2025 a player is going to get on base NINE TIMES in a single game in the World Series."

"Whoa! That's hard to believe. Are you sure you're not making th-"

"And that same dude is going to be his team's starting pitcher THE NEXT DAY."

I've noticed this a bit, yes, though I confess I don't find much fault with "bitter as seawater." My own experience is that seawater is most salty but also with some unpleasant (seaweed-y? fishy?) overtones that one could reasonably describe as bitter.

With you on the roach one though!

I may have to buy two copies so my wife and I won't fight over it the moment I bring it into our house!

It's odd how divorced NFL box-scores can be from the actual score.

In the Rams v. Jags game, the Jaguars had more yards (358-271), and more yards/play. The teams had identical 3rd-down conversion rates, neither team committed any turnovers, and time of possession was very close.

Rams 35, Jags 7.

Pretty sure it’s because Gygax and Arneson also were borrowing from other fantasy authors for the magic system — Vance and Saberhagen in particular. In some of the latter’s books, there were (IIRC) similar restrictions, e.g. metal interfering with spellcasting. That’s my best guess! 🙂🗡️🧙‍♀️

I don't know how I missed until two minutes ago that @alixeharrow.bsky.social was releasing a new book (The Everlasting, out on 10/28), but when I found out, I called my local indie bookstore to pre-order so fast, there's still smoke rising off my phone.

a bald man wearing a plaid shirt and a blue vest is looking at the camera with his hands on his hips Alt: a bald man wearing a plaid shirt and a blue vest is looking at the camera with his hands on his hips

Patriots fans watching Mac Jones in 2025

Ugh! That’s awful. How long had the campaign been going on?

I’ve always felt a D&D game is a partnership between a dm and the players. That’s an outright betrayal. 😡

YouTube video by gioiellidellamusica Vasily Kalinnikov " Symphony No 1" (2. Mov.)

The second movement of Kalinnikov's Symphony No. 1.

The whole symphony is my favorite piece of classical music, but the 2nd movement in particular is just (for me) heartbreakingly beautiful.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E11v...

Loved this article. When I started reading, I soon thought: I wonder if the author is familiar with my old colleague Marc LeBlanc's taxonomy? Was not disappointed!

Did you know that since those old LG days, he's also done board game design? Check out Heroes Welcome! It's fu... er, well, you know.

Two questions:

1) My (college-aged) kids both played Cthulhu Death May Die recently, and they had good things to say. What did you think, both narratively and mechanically?

2. When you played Guillotine, did everyone involved speak in bad French accents the whole time, as is required by law?