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The Friday Five for 5 June 2026: Books! These questions were written by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) canadiangirl16. 1. Do you enjoy reading? 2. What is the first book you remember reading? 3. Who is your favourite author? 4. What is your favourite book? 5. What is the last book you read and the first you'll read next? Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below. If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more! **Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.** |
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Puccini double bill from Opera 5 |
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) vass |
Fri 2026-06-05 00:54 |
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Things Books
Since last I posted one of these, of course I read Ann Leckie's Radiant Star. I loved it. Leckie's doing something different with narrative voice this time around, so mark that off your bingo card, and if you enjoy Victorian novels then this narrator might be particularly enjoyable for you. It goes very hard.
Having read that (and then a friend's annotations, which I then sent on with the ARC to the next person in the chain) I decided I wanted to take some space to recover with T Kingfisher's fourth paladin book, Paladin's Faith. Which, as it turns out, is also going much harder than I expected.
I am also making my way slowly through Nick Walker's Neuroqueer Heresies, and finding it unsatisfying. I'd be less critical of it as polemic (although still annoyed at the prescriptivism and the exhorting readers to police other people's language too if they don't use "neurodivergent" and "neurodiversity" according to Dr Walker's preferred definitions), but when she's stating outright in the book that she intends to use it as a textbook to teach in university, I want more rigour and citations.
Fandom
Enjoying a resurgence of Radch discussion on Discord.
More ephemeral fic in the Nine Worlds fandom. May was good for that.
Crafts
Finished the table.
Tech
Wayland and gnashing of teeth.
That said, I learned how to use xargs in Bash, which made Android backups easier for me.
Garden
Harvested what is, amazingly, not the last of the tomatoes. Semi-dried all the ripe tomatoes I had in the oven, and froze the results. Did a little weeding, and sowed pak choy and calendula seeds.
Cats
They don't like the cold weather, but Mighty Hunting continues. |
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Jaunting out for cultural reasons Some years ago I advised a composer who was composing an opera about A Historical Figure about whom I am something of a Nexpert, and I am now on their mailing list and get info on their current activities and broadcasts and so on -
And I was invited to the Private View of this, taking place at a venue which is only a reasonable bus-ride and short walk away.
Also giving me the chance to see a small part of the nearish locality with which I am relatively unfamiliar, and which has its charms.
I am not sure I was entirely enthused by the artworks - there was one installation of ceramics where I wished I had someone there to whom I could murmur that they had an urgent phallic look -
My main problem with the venue, however, was the acoustics - I think it was the kind of space where once you got a certain mass of people conversing it would always have been a bit trying for me and my hearing aids, but combined with the ambient music coming out of the various speakers, not optimal at all. (Though maybe its own soundscape....)
I don't think there was anyone there I knew besides The Composer - mostly of a younger generation and art/music people rather than groves of academe - and I didn't really get into much chat, but I did get 2 admiring comments on the green hair streaks and 1 compliment to my pendant (which I think I got at Wiscon, unless it was 4th St?).
However, I have had a sweet email from The Composer thanking me for coming. |
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Observation I keep the nails on my left hand very short (except the thumb) because string player. But I just keep the ones on my right hand filed to not be ragged or too pointy, and there is usually 2-3mm of white on most of the nails most of the time. Last week, over the course of about 48 hours, every nail on my right hand snapped off. The thumb has splintered into the quick, but so far is holding together. And now my left thumb nail has just cracked.
Working hypothesis: radiation therapy? Timing might work? Otherwise, I can't think of anything else likely to have weakened all the nails simultaneously.
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Hacking Meta’s AI Chatbot Posted by Bruce Schneier https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/06/hacking-metas-ai-chatbot.html https://www.schneier.com/?p=72140 Hackers are convincing Meta’s AI support chatbot to let them take over other peoples’ accounts:
A video posted on X showed the step-by-step process to hack someone’s Instagram account. The hacker allegedly used a VPN to spoof the targets’ presumed location to avoid triggering Instagram’s automated account protections. Then, the hacker opened a chat with Meta AI Support Assistant and asked the bot to add a new email address to the target’s account. The chatbot can be seen sending a verification code to the email address provided by the hacker; the hacker then shares the verification code with the chatbot, which prompts the chatbot to show a button to “Reset Password.” The hacker enters a new password and takes over the victim’s account.
[…]
On Monday, Instagram spokesperson Andy Stone said in a reply to Wong’s post and others that the issue was now fixed. It’s unclear how many Instagram users had their accounts improperly accessed.
It’s not that easy. Probably this particular tactic is now blocked. But there are others, many others, and they cannot be blocked as a class. The real problem is that LLM chatbots are not trustworthy enough for this application.
Another news article. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/06/hacking-metas-ai-chatbot.html https://www.schneier.com/?p=72140 |
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Peak breakfast pot I’ve been making overnight oats in jars for the bloke and me since the start of the year, and have experimented with varying ingredients and quantities. I think I’ve finally found the balance I like best, so I’ve carefully documented this below in case I ever stop making them regularly. - Base layer is 3 medium-sized strawberries, chopped into 1cm pieces. For the bloke, 4 tablespoons of oats, for me, 3 tablespoons.
- Shake the jar to mix oats and strawberries. This is especially important if using the jumbo oats (as shown here), otherwise I end up adding too much milk.
- Add milk to just below the top layer of oats. For him, whole milk, for me, oat milk.
- Add full-fat Greek yoghurt. For him, 3 heaping tablespoons, for me, 2. This helps to moisten the top layer of oats, and also gives a smooth layer between the oats and the crunchy bits at the top.
- Add Linwoods Milled Flaxseed, Sunflower, Pumpkin & Chia Seeds & Goji Berries. Two teaspoons for both of us. I used chia seeds on their own for a while, but I found that I didn’t much care for their crunchy texture and tendency to get stuck in my teeth even after soaking them briefly in water to activate their mucilaginous properties. This mixture is much nicer.
- Add 3-4 teaspoons of pomegranate seeds. These have the right balance of juice and crunch after the yoghurt layer.
- Finish with granola. I prefer the stuff that has freeze-dried strawberries mixed in. For him, 2 tablespoons, for me, one.
- Put lids on jars, store in fridge until morning. I find these fill me up sufficiently that I’m rarely hungry before lunch, although I often eat a banana around coffee time just to give myself a little boost.
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Just One Thing (04 June 2026) It's challenge time!
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
Go! |
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| sonia |
Wed 2026-06-03 19:48 |
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Links: The doing is the point The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. by Minas Karamanis. Alice can now do things. She can open a paper she's never seen before and, with effort, follow the argument. She can write a likelihood function from scratch. She can stare at a plot and know, before checking, that something is wrong with the normalization. She spent a year building a structure inside her own head, and that structure is hers now, permanently, portable, independent of any tool or subscription. Bob has none of this. Take away the agent, and Bob is still a first-year student who hasn't started yet. The year happened around him but not inside him. He shipped a product, but he didn't learn a trade. Appearing Productive in The Workplace from No One's Happy. The reckoning will not be subtle. The firms still doing the work properly will be in a position to charge for it. The firms that have hollowed themselves out will discover that what they hollowed out was the thing the client was paying for. The AI Bubble from No One's Happy. The reason none of them can stop is that the investment, the revenue, and the justification for the next investment are the same transaction. If Microsoft reduces its OpenAI commitment, it loses one of Azure’s largest customers, the AI revenue line that justifies $192 billion in capex, and the earnings growth that holds its stock price — all at once. The same logic binds Alphabet and Amazon to Anthropic: the equity position and the cloud contract are the same bet, and unwinding one unwinds both. Funny but serious, Chieng issues an AI warning to grads by Liz Mineo, Harvard Staff Writer. He continued, “Whatever your chosen profession is, please don’t let AI rob you of the fun part of it. Your generation’s upcoming battle won’t be humans against AI; that’s at least two months away. … It’s going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It’s going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles.” Quality in the Age of Slop by Sinclair Target. This blog post is very long and almost entirely about the 1974 bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. It is also about AI—there will be some juicy takes, pinky swear—but those familiar with ZAMM should consider themselves warned. [...]
Quality is related to caring because once you care, once you are interested, you have a vantage point from which to make Quality judgments. These Quality judgments (e.g. "Is this good code?") are based in part on the romantic mode of understanding and so within the classical mode alone aren't defensible. But they are necessary, because in the moment-to-moment work on the machine, there are thousands of facts you could consider, thousands of alternative threads you could follow, all equally valid in the classical mode, and the only way to make any sense of it all is to apply a Quality-focused version of Occam's Razor. How To Not Be Wrong About AI by Greg Wilson. A slide deck on how to evaluate and create studies about AI to get real, usable information. |
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Another Fantasy Bundle - Kobolds Ate My Baby This is an offer of a new (2024) edition of the humorous fantasy RPG Kobolds Ate My Baby with a lot of support material. It uses a rules set based on the polymoph system, unfortunately I last saw the old set some time around the year 2000 (it was published in 1999), and while I'm pretty sure I have a copy somewhere I now have no idea where that somewhere might be, and can't do a direct comparison - basically, the new version is quick and simple with a lot of gratuitously horrible things happening to the player characters, and looks to be a lot of fun to play. Think of it as Paranoia with baby-eating monsters the whole world wants to destroy as the player characters and you won't go far wrong... https://bundleofholding.com/presents/KAMB2026
  As mentioned above, it's been a long while since I looked at this game. The new edition is prettier than the old one, with better layout and a lot of new art (all of the art is by John Kovalik), and there are a lot of adventures and add-ons in the bundle, offering kobolds new and exciting ways to die. It's VERY silly, but sometimes silly is fun, and you can learn it VERY quickly. Enjoy! |
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Wednesday Reading Meme What I Just Finished ReadingJenny Teichmann, Pegasos: An Easy Ancient Greek Reader: A very short original novella in Ancient Greek, retelling the story of Bellerophon and Pegasus, with a facing glossary including basically every word on the page. It's fun! I liked it! Yay, horsies! What I'm Reading NowComics Wednesday! ( Doctor Strange #7, Fantastic Four #12, Iron Man #6 )What I'm Reading NextWho knows? I mean, I'm awake right now; I feel like this is a victory.
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The Good Luck Girls, by Charlotte Nicole Davis  In a country with Wild West vibes, young girls are often sold to brothels, to become sex slaves when they come of age. They are given magical tattoos of buds when they're bought. These tattoos slowly grow and blossom into flowers that the girls are nicknamed for. They cause excruciating pain when they're covered up, preventing the girls from fleeing and blending into the populace. But this isn't the only barrier to escape. The entire wilderness area is haunted by angry ghosts that can take physical form and rip you to shreds. On Clementine's inaugural rape night, her would-be rapist nearly suffocates her, and she brains him with a lamp. As she would be executed for that, she, her older sister Aster who's been a sex slave for years already, and three other girls manage to escape the brothel and flee in search of a rumored woman who can remove the magic tattoos. By far the most interesting character in the book is Violet, the brothel bully, spoiled brat, and magical opium addict who is the only one who knows where to find the woman who will be their salvation, if she actually exists. As they flee across the haunted wilderness, they're pursued by magical slavecatchers, are joined by a boy, and meet some rebels. Clementine has a romance with the boy, two of the girls have a romance together, and Violet and Aster have intense feelings which hopefully go somewhere in the sequel. This novel has an extremely cool setting and unusual worldbuilding. I love ensemble casts and wilderness traveling. I expected to adore this, but while I did enjoy reading it, I didn't love it. I had been under the impression that the girls all had different magical powers, which is my own fault for misreading the blurb, but I was disappointed that they don't have any, except that Clementine can talk to ghosts a bit. More importantly, only Aster and Violet, plus Clementine to some degree, get any real characterization. I was interested in them enough that I'll read the sequel, but the book overall felt like it should have been fantastic but ended up merely good. Content notes: There is a very violent, graphic rape attempt in chapter one. That's it for that but the repercussions of years of sexual abuse are felt throughout the novel. |
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June is here! Yay! ***************************************( Read more... ) |
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Bundle of Holding: Kobolds Ate My Baby! This new Kobolds Ate My Baby! Bundle presents Kobolds Ate My Baby!, the cult-classic tabletop fantasy roleplaying game of anti-dungeon-crawl silliness, in its 2024 Orange Book edition from 9th Level Games. Bundle of Holding: Kobolds Ate My Baby! |
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Media Roundup: Misc Sequential Art I've been nearly constantly sick and/or overwhelemed for the last two weeks, but I did read some things!
The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier, Scott McCloud, et al.— A story about a group of kids forming a cartoonists club and making comics that’s also an intro to basic comics making and concepts. I’ve been wanting to read a bit more comics theory. (I’ve read Understanding Comics, but that was a while ago) Anyways this was cute and fun, but didn’t really scratch my comics theory itch. Would probably be good to give to a kid who is interested in comics though.
Supergirl's Family Vacation written by Brandon T. Snider, art by Sarah Leuver— This is so charming! It’s one of those graphic novels that’s its own little continuity – Supergirl is 13 and lives with her cousin Superman and his family and feels overlooked as a superhero. Anyway she convinces them all to go on vacation and then adventure happens! They go on a space road trip! Natasha Irons is there (she’s Supergirl’s best friend) Lois gets to be awesome but doesn’t steal the scene. There's a short scene of Batman and Wonder Woman getting instructions to take care of the stuff while they are away!
The whole thing is just very warm. I love the manga influenced art, the expressions are great, the colors are great! At one point there are magical girl-esqe transformation scenes. It’s very cute and sweet!
Batman & Robin Eternal by James Tynion IV et al— This did a much better job than Batman Eternal at being a story about legacy, and was just more cohesive in general. Only being half as long probably helped some. I read this when I was sick and bit out of it so I feel like some bits of it went over my head.
Laid-Back Camp Vol. 15-17 by Afro— While I’m on my slice-of-life manga kick I thought it would be nice to get caught up with this series.. It’s still one of my favorites of the genre, it's got food, female friendship, and great landscapes. It does make me sad that I am too disabled to go camping though.
Lightfall books 2-4 by Tim Probert— I was going to read these a bit slower, but they were due at the library so I had to hurry up a bit. This series is really good! I love the art, it's evocative, plus there are great landscapes! Also I didn’t say last time but there is a very good cat! The story went in some unexpected directions and I want to know what happens next! Too bad it's going to be a while before the next book is out.
A new season of my beloved wacky Chinese reality show The Truth has started airing and I'm excited for it! It's been a while since I watched anything. |
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