hazel

The stolen law While on a special assignment in space, Kira uncovers a…

also, a strong rec for you if you've never read it: www.goodreads.com/book/show/45... The Stolen Law by Anne Mason, the only SFF I've ever read which turns on legal interpretation & forensic legislative analysis (sequel to the Dancing Meteorite, which I also love)

though I do remember being stunned as a teenager at the realisation that what I thought was a fantasy series was in fact HARD SCIFI what a twist!!!

I honestly don't know if I read anything of hers published after the mid-nineties or so. I do recall the last of the Pern books of her I read being pretty meh - just not as compelling as, say, the dragonsong/singer/drummer trilogy.

the government is entitled to sometimes decide that rat poison is what is needed for a particular rat infestation! but they shouldn't be doing it by accident!!!

as you should be! sometimes the sausages might have rat poison and it's the "might" that's the problem.

I unabashedly love Restoree, which was one of the first SFF books I read written by a woman.

ten thirty on a friday night and am thinking about henry thring's "bills are made to pass as razors are made to sell" again. probably my favourite of all the niche legislative development aphorisms. (I do not know of any others.)

very excited to try this!

it's great, but god it is so much shakier (lived experience, may not be physics) than the old house. not a problem 99.9% of the time, unpleasant during, say, earthquakes

so three years ago we bowled our old cottage held together by asbestos, borer, and duct tape, and build a modern 2-storey house with advanced features like insulation, double-glazing, piles, floor joists, and consistently working plumbing.

TO BE CLEAR that was like a 4.9? maybe a 5.0? we'll wait for geonet. but long enough and shaky enough to get the blood pumping, not enough to be damaging (here)

oh fuck #eqnz

it's amazing to me how many people are like "it's a great use of my time to teach the algorithm to write an email rather than just write the email"

ours starts in the last week of September and ends on the first week of April, so slightly past each equinox in each direction. my city is about the same latitude as Chicago so we have pretty dark mornings for a few weeks when it shifts forward in Sept

I am happy for my baseball-watching friends who have had a good time and/or a good time that has ended in a bad time

I gave up c. lvl 13 when I first bought it and got back into it coz my brother is playing a heavily modded version and I sort of wanted something popcorny - a little bit of dopamine every time you bounce around a planet scanning shit. it's doing it for me at the moment.

I have been playing ridiculous hours of Starfield lately and turns out while the early game is not as satisfying as Fallout or Skyrim, by mid-game (I just hit level 30) I'm actually feeling more compelled to learn the secrets of the galaxy etc

somewhere in Wellington, a PR team is sighing in unison

surely wands are fine, as they're one-handed. staves would be a problem.

Today I made a dice bag and 2 shoulder bags for various friends out of my scrap fabric stash and this was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon chatting to people and practicing sewing zips

Revolver is a great album and Good Morning, Sunshine is a delight, this is my at best lukewarm take of the day

NZLII is a brilliant resource run on a shoestring budget (for example, it is to the best of my knowledge the only source online for legislation as it was published prior to 2007) and people can really take a hike

To the person who writes nasty messages to NZLII: fuck off.

(and that's just one of many governmental models out there in the world)

like, here in NZ we have a king (Charles III) and a Governor-General (like many other commonwealth countries) but that fact is the least important in any discussion of the actual functioning of our democracy because the powers of the head of state are so limited. head of government is the key.

tbh I think part of the mess the US is in is because it has fixated so strongly with its own creation myth of the founders drawing up a perfect constitutional democracy that it's been unable to move with many of the improvements to governance/democracy evolving in the past 250 years

oh Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, etc

I think you were there, so Kirk/McCoy!

I still *love* the Storm Trilogy by Mercedes Lackey, specifically the character and arc for Duke Tremaine, and I think it holds up very well as post-apocalyptic fantasy

thanks, it's been pretty chill!