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Rec-Cember: Two recent short Murderbot gen fics

As I don't have the bandwidth for a lot of reccing tonight, here are two quick recs of short Murderbot friendship gen from the last couple of days that I enjoyed. Both of these are more bookverse than show-based.

Ransom by

BoldlyNo (400 wds, Gurathin-centric)
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.

The Truth, Bitter as It Is by

HonorH (900 wds, Gurathin & Murderbot)
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.

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A couple of links

amperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.

Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:

“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”

Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.

Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:

“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”

Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.

Current Mood: chipper

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Mood Theme in a Year Returns!

moodthemeinayear is coming back in 2026 with a new twist: Creating a custom mood theme can now earn you Dreamwidth points!

Mood Theme in a Year is a community that takes a laid-back approach to creating a custom mood theme. If you've always wanted to create your own mood theme (those little images that pop up when you select something from the drop-down "Mood" menu when posting), this is a great place to do it! Take your time creating graphics for anywhere between 15 and 132 moods, either following the community's suggested schedule or going at your own pace. (Though you need to make a minimum of 18 graphics to earn any paid time.)

The "official" schedule starts again from the beginning on January 1st, but you can jump in at any time during the year; feel free to challenge yourself as well with Bingo cards or the Mood Theme in a Month calendars! Learn more in the community pinned post or profile.

I hope to see you there!

Current Mood: ecstatic

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Mood Theme in a Year Returns!

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weekend open thread – December 13-14, 2025

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/weekend-open-thread-december-13-14-2025.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32145

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand.

Here are the rules for the weekend posts.

The post weekend open thread – December 13-14, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/weekend-open-thread-december-13-14-2025.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32145

Taronga Zoo to rewild cleared farmland with native Australian animals

Posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries

https://www.metafilter.com/211411/Taronga-Zoo-to-rewild-cleared-farmland-with-native-Australian-animals

Taronga Zoo to rewild cleared farmland with native Australian animals. Taronga Zoo has successfully bred native Australian animals for years — but it now has a vision on how to re-establish their populations.

https://www.metafilter.com/211411/Taronga-Zoo-to-rewild-cleared-farmland-with-native-Australian-animals

Original: poetry: unread

Title: unread
Fandom: Original
Challenge: Flood
Note: 4x haiku

( Read more... )

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The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson

After a wet-bulb heat wave kills thousands in India, the UN forms an organization, the Ministry for the Future, intended to deal with climate change on behalf of future generations. They're not the only organization trying mitigate or fight or adapt to climate change; many other people and groups are working on the same thing, using everything from science to financial incentives to persuasion to terrorism.

We very loosely follow two very lightly sketched-in characters, an Irish woman who leads the Ministry for the Future and an American man whose life is derailed when he's a city's sole survivor of the Indian wet-bulb event, but the book has a very broad canvas and they're not protagonists in the usual sense of the word. The book isn't about individuals, it's about a pair of phenomena: climate change and what people do about it. The mission to save the future is the protagonist insofar as there is one.

This is the first KSR book I've actually managed to finish! (It's also the only one that I got farther in than about two chapters.) It's a very interesting, enlightening, educational book. I enjoyed reading it.

He's a very particular kind of writer, much more interested in ideas and a very broad scope than in characters or plot. That approach works very well for this book. The first chapter, which details the wet-bulb event, is a stunning, horrifying piece of writing. It's also the closest the book ever comes to feeling like a normal kind of novel. The rest of it is more like a work of popular nonfiction from an alternate timeline, full of science and economics and politics and projects.

I'm pretty sure Robinson researched the absolute cutting edge of every possible action that could possibly mitigate climate change, and wrote the book based on the idea of "What if we tried all of it?"

Very plausibly, not everything works. (In a bit of dark humor, an attempt to explain to billionaires why they should care about other people fails miserably.) Lots of people are either apathetic or actively fighting against the efforts, and there's a whole lot of death, disaster, and irreparable damage along the way. But the project as a whole succeeds, not because of any one action taken by any one group, but because of all of the actions taken by multiple groups. It's a blueprint for what we could be doing, if we were willing to do it.

The Ministry for the Future came out in 2020. Reading it now, its optimism about the idea that people would be willing to pull together for the sake of future generations makes it feel like a relic from an impossibly long time ago.

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Lurking in my drafts

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Muppets Noir

Posted by Paul Slade

https://www.metafilter.com/211410/Muppets-Noir

This winter Kermit's on the case. Cartoonist Roger Langridge previews his new Muppets comics series

https://www.metafilter.com/211410/Muppets-Noir

This wasn't any rink-dink fly-by-night setup

Posted by chavenet

https://www.metafilter.com/211409/This-wasnt-any-rink-dink-fly-by-night-setup

Before there was Only Fans or Porn Hub or any of the other thousands of adult sites, before there was even an internet, there were adult BBSs. There were hundreds of these, but one of the most well known, and certainly one of the best designed, was called SEXTEX. [Text may be NSFW]

https://www.metafilter.com/211409/This-wasnt-any-rink-dink-fly-by-night-setup

updates: the wall of shame, the performance review restrictions, and more

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/updates-the-wall-of-shame-the-performance-review-restrictions-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=35180

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past. Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. My office has a wall of shame with the names of people who are late or out sick

We had a Very Ballsy coworker bring it up in a staff meeting, demanding to know whether they preferred we infect all the people, children, and families we worked with every day in order to avoid being shamed for our own illness. (Yes, this was a preschool/daycare.) She also pointedly asked why *management* who called out sick or were otherwise not present were not included on the list.

They did the very performative “oh, we had no idea you felt that way, that’s not how we meant it AT ALL” and then got rid of the list. But I did overhear them grumbling in the office later that “it worked, though.” They wanted staff to be mad at each other for being over our child:teacher ratios, instead of complaining to management.

I’ve since changed careers, and while I’m still hourly, nobody shames me for taking a sick day anymore.

2. I can only rate one person on my team “exceptional” no matter how well they do

I took your advice to heart and started changing how I spoke about the ratings. My team doesn’t love the idea of forced ranking, but understands why there’s some limits. Handling the discussions at the start of the ratings period helped with the introduction, since it wasn’t tied to any negative feedback, and all in all it went well. In the meantime, my manager retired, and my team was assigned to a different supervisor, Lainey, with direction to grow our focus. My team is super excited because Lainey is setting up a lot of opportunities that are interesting to them and may even lead to promotions down the road. The excitement definitely helps drive motivation within the team. Finally, as I started writing this update, word came down that our ratings system was being adjusted and the new system will have a wider range of ratings, so there’s a good deal more nuance I can apply to my scoring.

I’m still frustrated that I can’t formally reward all of the passion and expertise that my seasoned crew brings to their work, but I’m happy that I was able to navigate them to a new understanding without destroying the trust we’ve built together over the years. Thank you for the assist in how to give my team the transparency they deserve.

3. I feel guilty about getting my coworker’s job after they were let go (#4 at the link)

I have a teeny tiny update to my question about getting taking a coworker’s job after they were let go.

After getting into the meat of their job and realizing how backed up they were, I uh, I get it now.

4. I don’t want to collect students’ dues anymore (#5 at the link)

A big thank you to Alison and all of the commenters for all of the advice. Looking back to when I wrote in, there was a lot of other stuff/drama that was feeding into my problem. All of the faculty in my department have very big feelings, and my supervisor and department were not on good terms with one another. My problem became another part of that. After a lot of back and forth between several offices, our business office was able to find a solution that theoretically will work. I say theoretically because we’ll try it out for the first time next semester. But, I’m optimistic it will work and I won’t have to handle any cash besides my own. I’m calling this a win.

This experience has also shown me how much I let myself get mired down in office drama. I’m working on trying to pull back from all of that right now. I also think it’s time to start looking for new opportunities.

Thanks again for Alison and everyone’s help!

The post updates: the wall of shame, the performance review restrictions, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/updates-the-wall-of-shame-the-performance-review-restrictions-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=35180

How to leave the U.S.A.

Posted by Bella Donna

https://www.metafilter.com/211408/How-to-leave-the-USA

From The New Yorker (free archive): Migration is never simple, but money helps. At least half the world's nations offer visas or fast-track citizenship to foreigners in exchange for investments or cash. According to Eric Major, whose company, Latitude, helps people apply for such programs, citizenship-by-investment clients once primarily came from places with limited civil and economic freedoms—Russia, China, Iran. Now the majority of them come from the U.S. "We are seeing an increase in Americans actioning a Plan A (full outright migration, with a view of leaving the US) as opposed to just securing a Plan B," Major told me in an e-mail. "We just signed up a nasa lady (moving to Portugal), a SpaceX guy (moving to Malta), and a Cornell University professor (moving to London)."

For Americans without much money, grandparents can be a golden ticket. Tens of thousands of U.S. citizens have sought out second passports since last fall, hunting down birth registrations, marriage certificates, and records from synagogues and churches. By one estimate, forty per cent of Americans could be eligible for another citizenship. Failing that, online influencers advertise alternative paths to a beautiful, affordable, gun- and car-free life style: using Social Security payments to qualify for a Portuguese passive-income visa, skirting Thai laws with regular "visa runs" to Cambodia, or exploiting Albania's generosity—twelve months visa-free!—to try out the Mediterranean. This ever-proliferating content often glosses over bureaucracy, crime, and the fact that Westerners tend to sequester themselves in spaces that locals can't afford. Anywhere must be cheaper—and less stressful—than America is today. A recent survey by the Harris Poll, a research firm, found that nearly half of its respondents had considered leaving the U.S., citing politics and the cost of living as their main factors. There's a historical irony to these responses. Americans are looking to emigrate for the same reasons that immigrants once came to America—for safety, economic security, better opportunities, and an over-all sense that their families would have a better future.

https://www.metafilter.com/211408/How-to-leave-the-USA

We're looking for exceptional applicants...

Posted by PlusDistance

https://www.metafilter.com/211407/Were-looking-for-exceptional-applicants

The National Institute of Health is recruiting on Facebook. The replies are more fun than a trunk full of bear meat.

https://www.metafilter.com/211407/Were-looking-for-exceptional-applicants

Disharmony at Eurovision

Posted by autopilot

https://www.metafilter.com/211406/Disharmony-at-Eurovision

Last week's meeting of European Broadcasters voted to not vote on participating countries, leading Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain to withdraw from the 70th anniversary of Eurovision, following through on their September warning to the EBU over Israel's inclusion in the song contest.

https://www.metafilter.com/211406/Disharmony-at-Eurovision

death of a titan

Posted by mittens

https://www.metafilter.com/211405/death-of-a-titan

"John Varley died two days ago on December 10, 2025. A great many will mourn him as a science fiction writer whose work they enjoyed. But this misses his moment."

Locus on Varley's death.

https://www.metafilter.com/211405/death-of-a-titan

Looking Back at the White Man

Posted by Rumple

https://www.metafilter.com/211404/Looking-Back-at-the-White-Man

In January 1934, the eminent anthropologist Julius Lips sat in a small hotel room at the Hôtel des Nations in the Latin Quarter of Paris, staring down at a trunk full of cardboard-mounted photographs. It was about all he had with him, having fled Germany with no family, no means of support, and no clear conception of his future except the idea that he might make his way to the United States. The photographs in the trunk, collected over a decade and through an extensive scholarly and institutional network, were of artworks from around the world that depicted the figure of the European through non-Western eyes. Some wryly humorous, some outright insulting, these objects tell a different story than that which Europeans had told themselves during the age of colonialism. Lips intended his research to culminate in a groundbreaking book, the working title of which was "How the Black Man Looks at the White Man."

Looking Back at the White Man: The story of Julius Lips.

The photo captions in this piece are an essay unto themselves. Lips' book was eventually published in 1937 as The Savage Hits Back, Or The White Man Through Native Eyes (Google Books' scan is higher quality). Lips' work is obviously extremely dated, and yet at the time was a faint harbinger of a post-colonial sensibility that is still permeating through Anthropology and related disciplines.

https://www.metafilter.com/211404/Looking-Back-at-the-White-Man

open thread – December 12, 2025

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/open-thread-december-12-2025.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32114

It’s the Friday open thread!

The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers.

* If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer.

The post open thread – December 12, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/open-thread-december-12-2025.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=32114

vote for the worst boss of 2025: the finals

Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/vote-for-the-worst-boss-of-2025-the-finals.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34651

It’s the final round of the Worst Boss of 2025 voting. We’ve narrowed the pool from eight nominees to two (see results from the first round and second round). The two finalists go head-to-head below.

A Frightful Face-Off – The Nominees:

If the voting isn’t showing up for you, you can also vote directly here.

The post vote for the worst boss of 2025: the finals appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/12/vote-for-the-worst-boss-of-2025-the-finals.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=34651

171 - 142 - 22 - 7 - 1

Posted by mrjohnmuller

https://www.metafilter.com/211403/171-142-22-7-1

"After listening carefully to the people of Markham–Unionville in recent weeks and reflecting with my family on the direction of our country, I have informed the Speaker and the Leader of the Opposition that I will be joining Prime Minister Mark Carney in the government caucus." - Former CPC MP Micheal Ma

This comes on the heels of two other departures from the Conservative Caucus, Alberta MP Matt Jeneroux, who is leaving politics, and Nova Scotia MP Chris d'Entremont, who joined the Liberals in November. Last night, PM Carney introduced his newest MP to much enthusiasm at the Liberal holiday party. The Liberal Party now has 171 seats in the House of Commons, 1 seat short of a majority. Following the breaking news, on CBC Power & Politics, a hastily-assembled reporter roundtable reacts. These departures place further pressure on Conservative Party leader Poilievre, who is facing a leadership review in January, and is floundering in the polls, although still popular with his base.

https://www.metafilter.com/211403/171-142-22-7-1