A rare linkpost is sighted
Mar. 29th, 2025 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I've been hoarding links over the past week — mainly via the same two sources, which are blogs of meaty-but-light-touch, longform criticism, pop cultural commentary, and book reviews — the kind of stuff that's what I most miss about the old-school, pre-social media internet, and which I was delighted to discover still exists, if not in quite the same volume or prevalence.
First up, two reviews specifically of Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes and more broadly commenting on the 'cosy' SFF trend. I'm not sure I'd be quite so firm in my conclusions (sometimes, you just want to read gentle, low-stakes fiction, and that's okay), but I thought both made some interesting, and persuasive points. Review number one is by Liz Bourke, and review number two is by Wesley Osam.
Also by Osam, this post on extractive AI, and a review of Tone (Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno), which is another reminder that I really do need to read through Samatar's entire bibliography.
If any of you contributed to the Kyiv Independent's fundraiser for small local media outlets in Ukraine (in the wake of the US government's freezing of international aid; I posted about this a few months back), you might be interested to know the results of your contributions: there's an update on the Gofundme page outlining all the fantastic things the three organisations (in the frontline regions of Sumy, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv) have been able to achieve thanks to the donations.
I've also just really been appreciating Timothy Snyder's newsletter, which helps me continue to feel like I'm not losing my mind in this terrible, unmoored world, but I assume that anyone who vaguely shares my politics is already aware of it.
First up, two reviews specifically of Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes and more broadly commenting on the 'cosy' SFF trend. I'm not sure I'd be quite so firm in my conclusions (sometimes, you just want to read gentle, low-stakes fiction, and that's okay), but I thought both made some interesting, and persuasive points. Review number one is by Liz Bourke, and review number two is by Wesley Osam.
Also by Osam, this post on extractive AI, and a review of Tone (Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno), which is another reminder that I really do need to read through Samatar's entire bibliography.
If any of you contributed to the Kyiv Independent's fundraiser for small local media outlets in Ukraine (in the wake of the US government's freezing of international aid; I posted about this a few months back), you might be interested to know the results of your contributions: there's an update on the Gofundme page outlining all the fantastic things the three organisations (in the frontline regions of Sumy, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv) have been able to achieve thanks to the donations.
I've also just really been appreciating Timothy Snyder's newsletter, which helps me continue to feel like I'm not losing my mind in this terrible, unmoored world, but I assume that anyone who vaguely shares my politics is already aware of it.
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