Kitty kitty
Mar. 20th, 2026 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moemKitty, kitty, small and dark
in our tiny city park
framed inside my camera's eye
thou showst a lack of symmetry.
In what distant street or yard
dost thou live, alone and scar'd?
To what calling wouldst thou hear?
What the hand, dare skritch thy ear?
With what morsels, & what fish
could I invite thee to the dish
and when thy throat began to purr
would not my happy heart concur?
in our tiny city park
framed inside my camera's eye
thou showst a lack of symmetry.
In what distant street or yard
dost thou live, alone and scar'd?
To what calling wouldst thou hear?
What the hand, dare skritch thy ear?
With what morsels, & what fish
could I invite thee to the dish
and when thy throat began to purr
would not my happy heart concur?
Why this blog update is late
Mar. 16th, 2026 03:57 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
stross_feed... The TLDR is: the cataract in my one mostly working eye (the other has about 50% retinal occlusion) is steadily getting worse, and I'm scheduled for surgery on March 27th.
NB: no need to lecture me about cataract surgery, I've already had it on the other eye. Same team, same hospital, same prognosis. I know exactly what to expect. Nor are your best wishes welcome: replying to them gets tiring after the fiftieth time (see: poor eyesight, above).
But worsening eyesight means that reading (and writing!) is fatiguing, so I gradually do less and less of it in each session.
Consequently I've been spending my screen time, not on the blog, but on a revision pass over my next novel, and on writing the follow-up.
(No, I can't give you any details: let's just say they're space operas, not Laundry Files, and I'll talk about them when my agent gives me the go-ahead. Book 1 is written, subject to editing, and Book 2 is about 10-15% written. And neither of them is Ghost Engine, the white whale I've been fruitlessly hunting for the past decade, although the viable chunks of GE may get recycled into Book 2.)
After my eye surgery I'll be going to Iridescence, the 2026 British Eastercon, the following weekend in Birmingham. I have some program items: I'll update this blog entry when I have a final schedule.
After Iridescence, I'll be heading to Satellite 9 in Glasgow (May 22nd to 24th). And after that I'll be attending Metropol Con in Berlin, July 2nd to 5th.
I'm not attending any US SF conventions for the forseeable future (being deported to a concentration camp in El Salvador is not on my bucket list), but I will try to attend the 2027 World Science Fiction convention in Montreal, assuming the Paedopotus Rex hasn't gone on a Godzilla-style rampage north of the border by then, and that intercontinental air travel is still possible. (See, my inability to resist that kind of cheap shot is exactly why I'm not visiting the US these days: ICE want to see your social media history going back 5 years, and I gather they're using some horrible LLM tool from Palantir to vet travellers.)
We now return you to your regular scheduled kvetching about the state of world affairs until my eyeballs are firing on all cylinders again. (Say, did you know that 30% of the world's fertilizer is shipped through the Straits of Hormuz? And about 20% of the sulfur that ends up as feedstock in sulfuric acid for industrial processes comes from sour Gulf crude, so ditto? Not to mention the helium that is required to keep MRI machines and TSMC's semiconductor fab lines running, never mind your grandkids' party balloons? Happy days ...)
goodbye minoanmiss
Mar. 15th, 2026 10:51 pmcellioI've known minoanmiss online for decades, and got to meet her in person twice. She turned fifty in January, and two weeks ago she had a fatal seizure. Complicated family stuff meant delaying saying anything in public.
MM had an infectious smile and took joy in sharing art, music, and food. She always had stickers to give to children she encountered when out and about, she cooked meals for her local food bank, and she spread drawings and poetry online and in tangible form. I have many postcards, holiday cards, and magnets with her work, and I've enjoyed many of her fruitcakes and confections. In a last act of giving, her organs gave life to three other people.
Due to an abusive past she struggled to see her own value sometimes. But she also saw the many friends who gathered around her and the unknown people she helped in the world, and I hope that that helped her get through rough times. There was a non-religious service on Friday (which I attended on Zoom) and an in-person memorial gathering today in Boston, and it stands out how many people from different circles were together in those places. There's going to be a virtual memorial on April 12; details will be shared later on the announcement list (signup link).
She was doing what she loved -- cooking -- when it happened, way too early. I miss her.
Performing some traffic maintenance today
Mar. 14th, 2026 01:04 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceHappy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.
BOFH: What physics defines as impossible, sales call
Mar. 13th, 2026 09:30 ambofh_feedEpisode 5 The Boss imagineers a new laptop spec with help from AI
BOFH logo telephone with devil's horns The Boss wants a new laptop – believing that you should equip yourself for the job you want, not the job you have. Apparently, he wants to be a physicist for NASA who operates his computer by mind control from the Fortress of Solitude.
Update, Netchoice v Wilson (South Carolina): motion for preliminary injunction filed
Mar. 12th, 2026 10:35 amdenise posting in dw_advocacyCase: Netchoice v Wilson, 3:26-cv-00543, (D.S.C.)
Netchoice's litigation page: Netchoice v Wilson
Netchoice filed the motion for preliminary injunction on March 9. It isn't available on the docket in RECAP yet (and I'm over my threshold for PACER fees that will get refunded for the quarter, or else I'd put it there!) but it is available on Netchoice's litigation page: Motion for Preliminary Injunction. They haven't included the declarations, but here's Dreamwidth's declaration as filed, authored by yours truly. Because of the wild incoherence of so many of the provisions of this law, many of which were new because a lot of states have switched to using different model legislation, I had to write almost all of our declaration for this one from scratch (while recovering from a lumbar puncture, lying flat on my back in bed: never let it be said I am not completely extra about the lengths to which I will go to fight against this bullshit), so much less of it will look familiar than usual, but boy was I mad.
We'll let you know when the judge makes a ruling on the PI! And three cheers as always for the Netchoice team and for the outside litigation counsel team, who is Lehotsky Keller Cohn for this one and who put in massively heroic effort to get this filed as fast as possible thanks to the law taking immediate effect.
Netchoice's litigation page: Netchoice v Wilson
Netchoice filed the motion for preliminary injunction on March 9. It isn't available on the docket in RECAP yet (and I'm over my threshold for PACER fees that will get refunded for the quarter, or else I'd put it there!) but it is available on Netchoice's litigation page: Motion for Preliminary Injunction. They haven't included the declarations, but here's Dreamwidth's declaration as filed, authored by yours truly. Because of the wild incoherence of so many of the provisions of this law, many of which were new because a lot of states have switched to using different model legislation, I had to write almost all of our declaration for this one from scratch (while recovering from a lumbar puncture, lying flat on my back in bed: never let it be said I am not completely extra about the lengths to which I will go to fight against this bullshit), so much less of it will look familiar than usual, but boy was I mad.
We'll let you know when the judge makes a ruling on the PI! And three cheers as always for the Netchoice team and for the outside litigation counsel team, who is Lehotsky Keller Cohn for this one and who put in massively heroic effort to get this filed as fast as possible thanks to the law taking immediate effect.
The List of Shame
Mar. 9th, 2026 04:22 amdenise posting in dw_advocacyPeople frequently ask us about whether their specific US state is trying to enact a social media age verification law so they can call their state representatives and yell at them about it! I have had "build a system that will let me easily update this without having to do so manually, categorizing these bills by status, what problems they have, and what we'd do about them if they pass" on my want-to-do list for a really long time, but until I can, here's the current list of bills I know about.
This (very long, sigh) list is accurate to the best of my knowledge as of 8 March 2026, but it may not include every bill that's been introduced in every state. (I've used a few different lists plus my own "searching until I got too depressed to continue" to assemble it, excluding laws I think have absolutely no chance of passing but including laws where I think there's still even a slight chance.) If you know of one that isn't on the list, please let me know in the comments!
These are state laws only. I'm concentrating on those because you can find lists of bad federal bills more easily, but all the lists of state bills I know of are industry-gated or limited-distribution. If you don't have a preferred source for finding out about bad federal legislation about the internet, Bad Internet Bills (from Fight for the Future) and the EFF Action Center are a great place to start!
This list is only counting social media bills; I am not including bills that don't apply to us because they're modeled on the app store/OS age signal model legislation or bills that deal with age verification for other services like chatbots or "AI companions", because I'd go completely off the rails and resort to just screaming incoherently when the list passed a hundred items. I will try to update this at least quarterly, or whenever the Magic 8 Ball says there's a rapidly moving bill that you need to yell at people about.
( The Current Hall of Shame )
This (very long, sigh) list is accurate to the best of my knowledge as of 8 March 2026, but it may not include every bill that's been introduced in every state. (I've used a few different lists plus my own "searching until I got too depressed to continue" to assemble it, excluding laws I think have absolutely no chance of passing but including laws where I think there's still even a slight chance.) If you know of one that isn't on the list, please let me know in the comments!
These are state laws only. I'm concentrating on those because you can find lists of bad federal bills more easily, but all the lists of state bills I know of are industry-gated or limited-distribution. If you don't have a preferred source for finding out about bad federal legislation about the internet, Bad Internet Bills (from Fight for the Future) and the EFF Action Center are a great place to start!
This list is only counting social media bills; I am not including bills that don't apply to us because they're modeled on the app store/OS age signal model legislation or bills that deal with age verification for other services like chatbots or "AI companions", because I'd go completely off the rails and resort to just screaming incoherently when the list passed a hundred items. I will try to update this at least quarterly, or whenever the Magic 8 Ball says there's a rapidly moving bill that you need to yell at people about.
( The Current Hall of Shame )
