The fact that the option to enroll in extended security updates for Windows 10 hasn't shown up yet on my PC is stressing me out.
I almost regret not buying a Windows 11 capable PC a few years ago (how hard they're pushing Copilot/AI stuff turned me off it and the news about one of the Windows 11 updates bricking SSDs doesn't fill me with confidence).
Do you have experience copyediting or proofreading academic journals? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Chinese or Italian to English? Do you have experience in managing or leading people? The OTW is Recruiting! Learn more at: https://otw-news.org/w8thejrv
Bakers, do you worry that you, too, might be a wreckerator?
Well, have no fear, pastry pros! There are plenty of warning signs to look for:
You Might Be A Wreckerator If....
- ...you consider "happy" a four-letter word.
- ...your cakes have more plastic on them than frosting.
- ...when you say, "I could just eat you up!" to a baby, you really mean it.
"It's...looking at me." "Ugly little spud, isn't it?" "I think it can hear you, Ray."
- ...cupcake cakes are your "specialty."
- ...your family crest says, "Spell check is for loosers."
- ...you not only know what this is, you think it's well done:
- ...you're frequently asked what time the earthquake hit.
- ...you pride yourself on following customer requests to the letter:
And finally, you might be a wreckerator if...
...you have to ban photography in your bakery to stop your cakes from showing up on Cake Wrecks.
(I get the e-mails, folks; I know you're out there!)
Thanks to Kimber, Amy S., Lori M., Carrie M., Whitney, Mary Rose, Liz, Stephanie B., Lisa R., & JR, who think it'd make more sense to just hire better bakers, but that's why they're not "good" management material.
+ Relootedhas a demo up! Reclaim real African artifacts from Western museums in an Africanfuturist heist game! I won't be able until I get home, but I've been super excited since I saw the trailer.
+ In Defense of Despair. We are also reading Aracelis Girmay’s “You Are Who I Love,” in which the speaker unfurls a list of people they love, people they want to see survive, people doing what those not committed to close and tender attention might call the daily tasks of living: a person stirring a pot of beans, a person selling roses out of a cart, a person crossing a border, a person carrying their brother home, a person singing Leonard Cohen to the snow. You, reader, do not personally know these people, but their motivations spark a familiar feeling—here is someone trying to survive in a world that can render a person unable to get out of bed. You, too, may love a person who cannot get out of bed, which is why you cherish the things that convey, I am trying to stitch together enough small moments to have a life for a little bit longer.
My husband and I moved into an apartment complex recently. We befriended some of our new neighbors while sitting around the swimming pool. We have discussed politics with some of them, having been given hints that we are all on the same page. But one couple — whom we like a lot — has provided no information about their politics. We have no idea where they stand! The state of the country is very important to us, and we are willing to socialize only with people who support our beliefs. Should we continue to see this couple whose politics are a mystery, or should we tell them where we stand and see how they react?
What I Just Finished Reading: Since last Wednesday I have read/finished reading: Something Whiskered (A Cat in the Stacks Mystery) by Miranda James. (Just the one book because I was reading a lot of fanfic.)
What I am Currently Reading:Garden of Lamentations (A Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James Mystery) by Deborah Crombie.
What I Plan to Read Next: One of my other library books, possibly Key Lime Sky by Al Hess.
Book 99 of 2025: Something Whiskered (A Cat in the Stacks Mystery) (Miranda James)
I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy this book, but I really liked it. ( spoilers )
I enjoyed this book, and it had the benefit of not having any obvious continuity errors! I'm giving it five hearts.
Do you have experience copyediting or proofreading academic journals? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Chinese to English? Can you read and translate from Italian to English? Do you have experience in managing or leading people?
We're excited to announce the opening of applications for:
TWC Committee Copyeditor - closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC
Tag Wrangling Volunteer - closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 125 applications
Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) - closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 45 applications
Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Italian) - closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer - closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don't see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.
All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.
If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.
TWC Committee Copyeditor
Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Copyeditors professionally copyedit submissions for TWC according to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 18, Merriam-Webster online, and the TWC style guide. Editorial standards are those of a university press.
The copyeditor's main responsibility will be to carefully copyedit word-processed manuscripts to correct errors of grammar, usage, style; normalize presentation of information; check the literature; and ensure consistency of usage of, e.g., presentation, capitalization, italic, and numbers.
Applicants are required to pass a brief copyediting test that will be drawn from live copy (a not yet published article that is currently in production). All returned tests will be assessed and the applicant provided with feedback.
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are in need.
Wranglers need to be fluent in English but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Čeština (Czech), Español (Spanish), isiZulu (Zulu), Polski (Polish), Português brasileiro (Brazilian Portuguese), Suomi (Finnish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), Türkçe (Turkish), Українська (Ukrainian), ไทย (Thai), Русский (Russian), беларуская (Belarusian) and 한국어 (Korean) — but help with other languages would be much appreciated!
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 125 applications
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we're currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Chinese.We welcome all Chinese dialects! The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Chinese into English.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 45 applications
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you're an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we're currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Italian. The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Italian into English.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 30 applications
Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you an organizational wizard? Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history or experience in wiki editing? The Fanlore committee is looking for new Chair Track Volunteers to join our team!
Fanlore is the committee responsible for maintaining and promoting the Fanlore wiki. We promote Fanlore on social media, run Fanlore editing challenges, support Fanlore editors, write the wiki's policy and help pages, and respond to emails from editors and readers. The Chair Track Volunteer position is for people who have the time and dedication to learn all about our operations so that they can be considered for the role of committee Chair.
We're looking for someone who has experience in wiki editing and an understanding of social media, who is comfortable with personnel management and training new recruits, and who is experienced in leadership or management whether in a business or nonprofit environment. Candidates also need strong time management skills and the ability to work on and track multiple tasks at a time. If that's you, please apply!
For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within one week of submitting your application.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 40 applications.
The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.
Parade speaks with 'The Pitt' creator R. Scott Gemmill and executive producer Joe Sachs about creating their mass shooting storyline for the Max medical drama, and what medical procedures they invented for the show.
When I went to try on the buttoned crocheted collar, I found there was a loose end (or rather a pair of loose ends, since I had done the fuzzy edging with two yarns at once, and that needed fixing. So I did.
After that, I assessed the other crocheted thing I had gotten out, decided that it does indeed need to be partly taken apart, and began frogging. This may take quite a while, but I know what the garment wants now.
So far, all my crochet is free-form and made up out of my head. Some day I should learn to read patterns, which would also let me write down what I've done in case anybody else wants to try it.
Craft: crochet at first, and then uncrocheting Time: one hour Notes: having Blittle League on as I am taking something fairly simple apart turns out to work wonderfully, and I have been wanting to watch those episodes again Thoughts: one of these times I should try crocheting something that involves putting pieces together, like hexagons or squares or weird escherian shapes
Do you have experience copyediting or proofreading academic journals? Would you like to wrangle AO3 tags? Can you read and translate from Chinese to English? Can you read and translate from Italian to English? Do you have experience in managing or leading people?
We’re excited to announce the opening of applications for:
TWC Committee Copyeditor – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC
Tag Wrangling Volunteer – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 125 applications
Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Chinese) – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 45 applications
Tag Wrangling Volunteer (Italian) – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 30 applications
Fanlore Chair Track Volunteer – closing 24 September 2025 at 23:59 UTC or after 40 applications
We have included more information on each role below. Open roles and applications will always be available at the volunteering page. If you don’t see a role that fits with your skills and interests now, keep an eye on the listings. We plan to put up new applications every few weeks, and we will also publicize new roles as they become available.
All applications generate a confirmation page and an auto-reply to your e-mail address. We encourage you to read the confirmation page and to whitelist our email address in your e-mail client. If you do not receive the auto-reply within 24 hours, please check your spam filters and then contact us.
If you have questions regarding volunteering for the OTW, check out our Volunteering FAQ.
TWC Committee Copyeditor
Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international peer-reviewed Diamond Open Access online publication about fan-related topics that seeks to promote dialogue between the academic community and fan communities. Copyeditors professionally copyedit submissions for TWC according to Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) 18, Merriam-Webster online, and the TWC style guide. Editorial standards are those of a university press.
The copyeditor’s main responsibility will be to carefully copyedit word-processed manuscripts to correct errors of grammar, usage, style; normalize presentation of information; check the literature; and ensure consistency of usage of, e.g., presentation, capitalization, italic, and numbers.
Applicants are required to pass a brief copyediting test that will be drawn from live copy (a not yet published article that is currently in production). All returned tests will be assessed and the applicant provided with feedback.
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy tag wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role, we’re currently looking for wranglers for specific fandoms only, which will change each recruitment round. Please see the application for which fandoms are in need.
Wranglers need to be fluent in English but we welcome applicants who are also fluent in other languages, especially Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), Čeština (Czech), Español (Spanish), isiZulu (Zulu), Polski (Polish), Português brasileiro (Brazilian Portuguese), Suomi (Finnish), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), Türkçe (Turkish), Українська (Ukrainian), ไทย (Thai), Русский (Russian), беларуская (Belarusian) and 한국어 (Korean) — but help with other languages would be much appreciated!
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 125 applications
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Chinese.We welcome all Chinese dialects! The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Chinese into English.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 45 applications
The Tag Wranglers are responsible for helping to connect and sort the tags on AO3! Wranglers follow internal guidelines to choose the tags that appear in the filters and auto-complete, which link related works together. This makes it easier to browse and search on the archive.
If you’re an experienced AO3 user who likes organizing, working in teams, or having excuses to fact-check your favorite fandoms, you might enjoy Tag Wrangling! To join us, click through to the job description and fill in our application form. There will also be a short questionnaire that will help us assess whether you have the skills and attributes that will lead to your success in this role.
Please note: you must be 18+ in order to apply for this role. For this role we’re currently looking for applicants who are fluent in both English and Italian. The work will involve both regular Tag Wrangling work and translating tags from Italian into English.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 30 applications
Do you have experience in managing or leading people? Are you an organizational wizard? Do you have an interest in preserving fannish history or experience in wiki editing? The Fanlore committee is looking for new Chair Track Volunteers to join our team!
Fanlore is the committee responsible for maintaining and promoting the Fanlore wiki. We promote Fanlore on social media, run Fanlore editing challenges, support Fanlore editors, write the wiki’s policy and help pages, and respond to emails from editors and readers. The Chair Track Volunteer position is for people who have the time and dedication to learn all about our operations so that they can be considered for the role of committee Chair.
We’re looking for someone who has experience in wiki editing and an understanding of social media, who is comfortable with personnel management and training new recruits, and who is experienced in leadership or management whether in a business or nonprofit environment. Candidates also need strong time management skills and the ability to work on and track multiple tasks at a time. If that’s you, please apply!
For your application to be considered, you will be required to complete a short task within one week of submitting your application.
Applications are due 24 September 2025 or after 40 applications.
Catch as Catch Can, by elishavah. shrift: When Dad tossed Dean one burger and Sam the other, and Sam ended up with a hand full of crumpled yellow paper and nothing else except a smear of ketchup on his jeans, Dad straightened up. He frowned at Dean, told him to… Continue reading →
In this sequel to The Three-Body Problem, it's now out in the open that an alien invasion is coming. But the aliens' doomed planet is far away and this is hard SF, so they're not expected to reach Earth for 400 years. The book follows a mostly new set of characters and international organizations as they try to work out a long-term plan to somehow defend Earth against a force with vastly superior technology and no interest in negotiating.
This book is 500 pages long and I don't think it had to be. I found the first half a real slog, as it mostly focused on plot elements that I felt were not plausible (not for speculative reasons, but for No Real Person Would Ever Do This reasons) and, surprisingly, a romance. I don't know if Liu got the criticism that the first book didn't care about people so he decided to put in a love story, or what, but the way he handles it is extremely strange and unrealistic and made me question whether he had ever interacted with a woman in his entire life, so maybe he should have stuck with ideas over people.
It also suffers from a rather flat and awkward English translation that calls way more attention to the fact that it is a translation than the first book's did. (They had a different translator for this one, but brought back Ken Liu for book three.) That's not the book's fault, but it definitely affected my experience of it.
That said, the second half did pick up a lot, and leaned much more heavily into Liu's strengths as a writer: the inventive worldbuilding and the show-stopping cinematic set pieces. I did enjoy that and it brought me back to what I liked about the first book. Liu has a distinctive knack for making even catastrophic and grisly events weirdly fun to read about because of how hard he commits to them and how intricately he constructs their details. Anybody can write about stuff blowing up in space, but not everybody can show exactly why and how it's blowing up, zoom into individual pieces of debris and out to massive chain reactions, and have a reader like me, who is often bored by action scenes, attentively following along every step of the way.
many spoilery thoughtsThe main thing I thought was implausible was the concept of the Wallfacers. Basically, the UN chooses four people and gives them each unlimited resources to develop and enact a plan to defend against the aliens. There's no oversight and anything they do is legal and unquestioned. This is supposed to counter the aliens' ability to remotely surveil Earth; if the plan takes shape in one person's head, then the aliens, who are said to not understand secrets and deception, won't find out about it.
Many things about this concept invite skepticism, but my biggest issue is how the presentation glosses over the complexity of human societies. Liu assumes that essentially everyone in the world will tacitly support whatever the UN does, with no significant debate or objection, even when it directly affects people's lives. He has the Wallfacers using so many resources for their massive defense constructions that it's crushing the global economy, and people just twiddle their thumbs and let it happen. He often paints global reactions with an extremely broad brush, like "people felt/thought X" as though all of humanity were a monolith. I can't speak for countries other than my own, but in this situation I can confidently say that half the people in the US probably wouldn't even believe the aliens were real, and even if they did, they sure as hell wouldn't put their faith in four people arbitrarily selected by the UN to save us all.
Sometimes Liu seems to know there are problems with these ideas, as when the narrative flashes forward a couple of centuries and the Wallfacer project is seen as one of the many "silly" things attempted during the initial panic over the invasion. Then again, Wallfacer Luo Ji's plan does basically work in the end, so I wasn't really clear on what the book was trying to say here.
I did enjoy the future worldbuilding, where most humans live in underground cities of massive treelike skyscrapers that hold up the ceiling where a holographic sky is projected. He did a slightly better job here of showing that cultures aren't all the same; a lot of people in the future are "hibernators" who were put into stasis in the past at various times and reawoken later, and their attitudes often differ from people who are native to the future. This also helped build a believable friendship between Shi Qiang and Luo Ji, since they're the only two people they know from their time. (I think this is the only compelling human relationship in the book, certainly better than whatever the hell was supposed to be happening with Luo Ji and the imaginary woman he made up in his head who turned out to be real somehow... It's a long story.)
I was also interested in the concept of the accidental generation ships. Almost the entire Earth fleet is destroyed by an alien probe that they thought was harmless, and the few crews that barely escape believe (understandably) that returning to Earth is suicide and that continuing to flee is humanity's best hope for survival. This entire scenario plays out over the length of a chapter, but whole books could be written about it! The part where they realize that they have too many people to keep alive long-term and some will have to be sacrificed read like an homage to "The Cold Equations," though I don't know if that story is as well-known among Chinese SF readers.
Of course it's also consistent with the book's generally pessimistic outlook on space exploration. I did know before I started reading what the "dark forest" solution to the Fermi Paradox is, but I didn't know the hypothesis was named after the book!! The idea is that the reason we haven't found aliens is that the galaxy is fucking dangerous and any planetary civilizations that foolishly jump around waving their hands and flashing neon signs trying to make first contact only make themselves a target. Aliens are out there, but the ones who have survived are the quiet ones. As a person whose favorite SF canon is Star Trek, this obviously doesn't align with my preferred way of looking at things, but it's internally consistent and not implausible, so I can roll with it. I am invested enough to read the third book, and looking forward to getting back to a translator who knows what he's doing at least.
The Central Plaza Mansion tower offers palatial 900 square foot apartments for a mere ¥35,000,000. It is a deal too good for the Kano family to turn down... although they should have.
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