They’re not happy its true, but they’re still excellent reads and there’s enough light to make them not be morose :)

For the upcoming episode of the podcast I have just finished Carrion Crow by Heather Parry. If you’re a fan of Jane Eyre or The Yellow Wallpaper the similarities are unmissable - its a very good book but you’ll need a fucking strong stomach. It’s like if David Cronenberg had decided to write a Jane Austen novel.

Whilst I wait for our next group read, I’m re-reading one of the ever fantastic Shardlake novels

If you carry on past the first trilogy (which I highly recommend) prepare to have your heart ripped open and stamped on. No spoilers, but that boy suffers.

Koreader is theoretically great. Offers a range of connection settings (e.g. FTP, Calibre over wifi etc) that makes life easier. Unfortunately its (in my experience) pretty buggy. I have a Kobo Clara and after the third time of Koreader simply wiping my ereader I just went back to using the stock Kobo software. Koreader is much heavier on battery use too.

Lots of assumptions in this thread that the concept of ‘religion’ is interchangeable with ‘theism’. It isn’t. There’s quite a few large religions that are, or can be practised, in a nontheistic way including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taosim and Jainism. There’s even a branch of Quakerism that is nontheistic.

Wider definitions of religion exist than simply ‘belief in a supernatural deity/deities’, including my own - that of modern atheistic Satanism.

In terms of bigotry - being shitty to whole groups of people based on their belief in a non-existent being feels weird to me. Being shitty if they then use that belief to justify their own bigotry is not weird and is called activism. Or to put it another way - if someone believes in a god and prays in a church and makes no comments that support the infringement of other peoples rights to exist and live their lives as they want to then that’s totally fine by me.

Thank you.

Lack of audit is not great I agree. I can see from a basic web search that security is an issue but I’m not sure ‘nightmare’ is warranted. The lack of audit seems to be main focus of concern and I’d say thats a judgement call for each person depending on threat model. I was hoping for something more conclusive than that. Its certainly adequate for a more privacy-centric way of communicating than an app that doesn’t cater for Apple users at all.

Could you link me some resources for that? I may need something to demonstrate that to others.

Seems pretty similar to Jami except that it lacks the iOS and desktop clients that Jami already has.

When they come out they’re going straight to the top of the TBR pile.

If you genuinely think Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jarry are good people you need to look into them a lot more.

It’s also easy to learn and ready-to-go on just about every shared hosting package on offer.

Read Rosemary’s Baby for the next podcast episode. Honestly, if you’ve ever watched the (original) movie you almost don’t need to read the book, its the most faithful adaptation I’ve ever seen. Almost word-for-word in a lot of places.

Having finished that, I’m now reading Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts which, for those unfamiliar, is sci-fi with a speculative edge. I’m about 25% in and it has me hooked.

At the risk of sounding like a boomer - as long as you let algorithms decide what your expectations of both yourself and any potential partner are, you are hamstringing yourself. All people are more than a set of preconceived roles that a bunch of influencers decided were relevant.

You need to date. By which I mean go outside where people are, socialise, find people you like for multiple reasons (so not just perceived attractiveness, not just wage, not just the role you think they might have) and ask them out. The worst that can happen is they say ‘no thanks’. And if it takes 20 times before someone says ‘yeah OK’ then so be it. Its not a competition and no one is keeping score. Dating someone is literally the only way to get to know them beyond your own assumptions.

Bandcamp is better than Spotify - Ampwall is better than Bandcamp. It’s artist owned (developed by Chris from the non-fash Black Metal band Woe). The fees are much, much lower than Bandcamp.

Not sure what to make of that

Don’t worry, we’re not LaVayen’s ;)

It’s not great obviously but I’m not sure the word ‘debate’ is accurate.

According to the Lords schedule for next week, this is the only mention of VPN’s I could see. And an oral question is literally that - a question;

“Oral questions are not intended to give rise to debate, and should be drafted in such a way that the minister can make their initial reply in no more than 75 words. Proceedings on each question, including supplementary questions and answers, are limited to ten minutes.”

Good! We have subscribers via the various distribution methods (website, rss, spotify, apple, youtube etc) in the low to mid hundreds (very difficult to be precise!) but to be honest, we’d all probably do it even if we just had 10. We don’t place ads or have sponsors and we don’t yell at everyone to subscribe, like etc. We do it because we love books and enjoy doing it - thats pretty much it :)

What an odd question.

You clearly know you have a ‘type’ and can easily point out examples of that type - that being the case why on earth do you need a word for it? How does applying a word help you find more people of that type? You’re not classifying a new species.

Changes literally every day! At the moment I’m loving Witch Club Satan’s new single You Wildflower.

Also (sorry for the spam), I co-present a metal radio show which plays music from explicitly antifascist and/or anti-bigotry artists called Contra Odium.