GLADLY

The one I tagged is The Silt Verses, starring Sister Carpenter who is one of my favorite protagonists in anything EVER. The Silt Verses is fantasy-horror tragedy set in a world where gods are very present, very active, and very hungry. Human sacrifice is what powers this world and all of society is structured around this fact. In this world of gods and laws and sacrifices and late-stage capitalism, Carpenter is a worshipper of an illegal river god, who she has done so many terrible things in the name of, and who she is losing her faith in. Carpenter is a stubborn survivor, grouchy and standoffish and carrying the weight of so much doubt and pride and regret and she CANNOT catch a break—she’s not the whimpering type but everything else fits her to a T and I love her.

Another one that absolutely fits the bill is The Pasithea Powder, a sci-fi space opera about the aftermath of a devastating space war. Captain Sophie Green is now a war hero, and Dr. Jane Gonzalez is now a war criminal, and they used to be best friends, and they are… not anymore. The story starts with Sophie on a “friendship tour” after her planet lost the war and has to make nice (she is very bad at making nice) and Jane in prison (for the Unethical Science she was doing, the horror when it was revealed which led to her planet losing the war). They are also both wrecked and haunted by the death in the war of Sophie’s boyfriend and Jane’s best friend, who is haunting the narrative more than just about anyone ever. Jane and Sophie are both A MESS and unfortunately they are the only ones who seem to notice or care that Jane’s unethical science is still being used and there is another war brewing on the horizon. Politics, aliens, slowburn F/F with the most disaster bisexuals you have ever seen. REALLY good.

Talking about women who whimper and fuck up and go to prison and try so so so hard and are hurt and sad and angry and everything: NICA STAMATIS HOW COULD I FORGET MY GIRL NICA from Greater Boston. Greater Boston doesn’t really have a protagonist—it is joyously and deliberately a great big ensemble cast—but the Stamatis siblings Leon, Nica, and Dimitri are where it all started. It’s a magical realism/slipstream story, a mosaic of people interacting in this strange and alternate Boston, centering around the political campaign for the Red Line subway to secede and become its own underground train city. I love every character, even the awful ones, but if you want a woman who whimpers throughout the whole thing and is always on the brink of death (more metaphorical than literal, but still) and thinks she's a monster for the things she's done and saves so many people and hurts so many people and fucks up and tries again and has so so so many scars (again metaphorical, but oh boy her metaphorical scars) That’s Nica.

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

HYPERBASS FLUTE

I present, THE OCTOBASS

It’s so big that it needs keys to hit the strings.

And in the reverse direction there exists the Pochette. Translated from French, it means pocket, as it was a pocket sized violin like instrument.

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software