shanmonster | Reading

Is the current location of our Solar System the reason no one's coming to visit?

One More Reason the Aliens Might Be Avoiding Us

A linguist goes undercover to unravel a xenological puzzle whose answer is in plain view.

The Language of Liars by S L Huang

For large-scale projects, specifically for ships. All my ship-related resources for the era are for the British Navy, and books on colour that I've read have been on artists' paints or dyes.

How would a French Imperial Navy vessel be painted, not at one of the big shipyards? Would it be mixed up on site from raw ingredients, or bought in? Would there be barrels, buckets with lids, cannisters, vats or what - and what would the paint be made of?

Searching online produces info on painting scale models, or contemporary pictures of ships. I found a chapter on ship decoration in Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of Battle but that doesn't have the early-in-the-process details I want. I found an article on the pre-Revolutionary Navy in the International Journal of Maritime History, by David Plouviez, that's too early and still doesn't cover paint.

Thank-you in advance.

Watch on YouTube

Free to view now until the 18th, GMT, I assume.

The Battle Against Enshittification

dw_dev: AI and Dreamwidth.
Great post from

mark about exactly how DW could use AI (potentially spam filtering), and how it will never use it (feeding your posts into the maw).

404 Media: 'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back.
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

The Verge: Grammarly is using our identities without permission.
When users select the 'expert review' button in the Grammarly sidebar, it analyzes their writing and surfaces AI-generated suggestions 'inspired by' related experts. Those 'industry-relevant perspectives' include the likes of Stephen King, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan, among many others.

Wired: Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI 'Expert Review' Feature.
I'm sure everyone enjoys getting sued by Stephen King.

The Flytrap: Sex Workers Versus the Algorithm.
Mostly about payment processors, but also about filtering: the endless dance around content bans requires constantly coming up with new ways to craft video titles and content that are frustrating not only for adult performers, but also their customers.

The Guardian: The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all.
Age-verification systems require collecting sensitive data to support the biometric information. In no time, the internet will become a fully surveilled digital panopticon.

Canadian Politics
(I'm actually saving fewer links about this, because it's mostly pretty disheartening. And I can't deal.)

TheBreach: Pierre Poilievre is misleading the public about refugee healthcare (Video: 3 minutes).
Desmond Cole fact checks his misinformation and explains how blaming the most vulnerable distracts us from fighting for good health care for all.

The Tyee: Advocates Hope a Ruling Will Change RCMP Treatment of Indigenous Witnesses.
But critics say the Canadian rights tribunal didn’t go far enough after finding police discrimination.
Nominally good news, but so much about this case pisses me off. $7k each? Seriously? Reminder that the one person who got state protection in all of this, the guy who (allegedly) abused all those people, is John Furlong. Fuck that guy.

The Breach: A notorious RCMP unit shaped B.C. universities’ reaction to Palestine encampments.
From Fairy Creek to university campuses, CRU-BC is positioning itself as the go-to police force for repressing dissent.
Category: jackbooted thugs.

Kind of Cool, Actually:

HeatherCoxRichardson: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter | Reckoning with Jason Herbert Podcast (Video: 1:43 hours).
Words cannot express how validating this was. Lo! How many long years have I said that AL:VH is the most historically accurate Lincoln movie? HCR agrees.

The Tyee: What Can You Do with Used Plastic and 3D Printers? Meet Two Pros.
Not sure how scalable this is, but it's a cool project.

The Narwhal : In northeast B.C., fresh food is scarce. This First Nation hopes geothermal energy could change that.
Cool project to restore food security after Site C fucked it up, hopefully they can get funding.

NorthernBallet: Northern Ballet's Gentleman Jack | Costumes (Video: 2 minutes).
I've really been enjoying the promo clips for this new ballet. I hope there's some way to watch it online.

John Brown's body lies a-moldering in a very different grave in a very different North America.

Fire on the Mountain by Terry Bisson

https://xkcd.com/3218/

Aww, the oceanic crust and the continental crust are getting married!

https://xkcd.com/3218/

Who is stalking the son of the man convicted for causing the Seryong Lake Disaster?

Seven Years of Darkness by You-Jeong Jeong (Translated by Chi-Young Kim)

Okay, I thought I knew science, but after several days of researching this, all I've got is indecision and a headache.

Original fiction, unspecified not-too-far-future time.

My character is the pilot of a small cargo ship in the asteroid belt. (No FTL, no artificial gravity.) Said ship has sufficient radiation shielding to be safe under normal conditions. My idea is that there's an unusually strong solar event (solar flare? coronal mass ejection?), and he has to survive by positioning his ship on the shadowed side of an asteroid (rocks are good shielding), and use his excellent piloting skills to stay there until the storm passes.

1. Does this, theoretically, actually work?

2. I'd like the solar event to be a Coronal Mass Ejection, because some CMEs move relatively slowly, and that gives my character time to make a narratively interesting choice. But is it the CME itself that's hazardous to human life, or a sort of "bow wave" of radiation that precedes it? And if the latter, is that radiation moving at the speed of the CME, or the speed of light? (I keep thinking I have a grasp on this, and then the next source I read contradicts it.)

Guidance appreciated, fellow space enthusiasts!

ETA: Okay, based on comments and additional research the comments inspired, my takeaway is: (1) CMEs can happen with or without accompanying radiation, (2) the stuff in the CME itself is not dangerous to humans, (3) the dangerous-to-humans part of the radiation travels at the speed of light. Which means this story is probably dead; I really needed that longer warning time for the narratively-interesting parts, darn it.

NDP MP Lori Idlout crossing floor to Liberals, bringing Carney closer to majority

but at least the Alexander brothers are going to jail, possibly forever (content warning on that link: semi-graphic descriptions of sexual assault).

(Yes, I know, carceral feminism, etc, let me have this.)

Current Mood: satisfied

Desperate passengers and crew escape their ailing starship, only to find an angry, vengeful oligarch waiting to greet them.

This Insubstantial Pageant by Kate Story