(This review is a cross-post of one I posted on the furry.engineer mastodon instance. I wanted to cross-post it here so folks here on the Lemmy side of things could see it as well.)
“Lago’s eyes reflected the sickly yellow bursts of sapfire blazing in the distance…” and thus begins the epic second book, Masks of the Miscam, of Joaquin Baldwin’s Noss Saga series. From the start, we are thrown right into the action, where we left off from the end of the first book, Wolf of Withervale. We follow the group as they explore further into the stories and histories that surround the mysterious domes located across the lands of Noss. We see much more of the world too, branching far beyond what was shown in Book I. With this are found new allies and friends, mysterious new civilizations, enemies old and new, and the hint at what is to come in the Noss Saga.
Spoilers
Much like in the first book, the exploration of LGBT themes is heavily present, and even expanded upon. The slowly budding relationship between Lago-Sterjall and Aio-Kulak shows this well, especially with the backdrop of Kulak’s Miscam tribe, the Laatu, not being accepting of same-sex relationships. Nor are they accepting of non-Miscam being in possession of the sacred animal masks, the Silvesh, that Lago and Jiara now hold. We also see an exploration of intersexual “allgender” peoples as well, and how they are handled by the Miscam.
With the exploration of the Laatu Felid tribe of the Miscam, we begin to learn that each tribe has its own way of handling things, and that not all things are acceptable among different Miscam peoples. Upon more expansion and learning of the other Miscam, it becomes apparent that they cannot be universally viewed through rose-tinted glasses. Each tribe has handled things differently, some for the better, some for the worse, some not making it to the present day of the story at all. This depth to the story greatly exceeds what might have been expected from the first book, and greatly increases the richness of the series as a whole, and genuinely makes one desire to learn more about each tribe. In the background of all of this, we see the Red Stag marching his forces ever further towards more Domes and more conquest.
We also learn so much more about the sacred Silvesh masks, and come to learn that Noss itself is far more than just a rocky planet, a point that is going to play a pivotal role in the coming saga. Like the first book, it will strike a strong chord with those that carry Animistic or Shamanistic knowledge, just like its expanding universe of Miscam tribes and their Silvesh animal mask bearers will strike a chord for Therians reading it. It need not even be said that Furries will adore it as well. We see the return of old faces too, such as Banook and Crysta, who all play key roles at pivotal parts of the story. Banook also plays another interesting role in this story, as a background for the conflict Lago-Sterjall feels between his love for the Bear in the far North, and the Laatu prince now with him. This sets up a potential exploration of some polyamorous themes in the story later on as well. _
With Book II of the Noss Saga, we see how the story is now going to start unfolding before our heroes. What has started as a simple discovery of a strange mask is rapidly turning into a tale well worthy of being called a saga. Joaquin Baldwin has, like with Book I: Wolf of Withervale, expertly crafted a beautifully profound story, rich with storytelling, world building, character design, and more. Each chapter pulls in the reader, leaving them wanting more with each page they read. Masks of the Miscam is a beautiful story, and sets in motion so much more to come. It leaves us all desiring to what know what lies on the path forwards for our heroes of the Noss Saga, and I truly cannot wait to see what is in store for them!
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/7859245
The Great Linux Uprising
Bonus color version ft. Madagascar Penguins:
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/12722680
Died from reading this
I learned something today... and I'm not better off for having learned it. What a dumb ass virtue signal to use on something.
10/10 for Voyager, with a shout-out to Eternity too!
There are plenty of ways to convince people to take privacy and security more seriously, but this isn't it. This is more likely to make people not take it seriously. Spotify Wrapped is a fun little gimmick that a lot of folks appreciate. Heck even I did, and I only rarely use Spotify.
It's likely something out of their control. I imagine their payment processor either uses it, or requires the site to use it. Mostly to combat automated fraud.
You likely won't find any site, that has online shopping, that doesn't use some sort of way to gatekeep against this behavior, unless it's crypto-based. And even then it likely still has something like that. Even if the site redirects to Paypal, you're gonna face that.
Your approach simply isn't realistic to the modern web. You can try uBlock, but blocking those connections likely will make the site ultimately not work for you.
Fairphone brings a much better device to market with better cameras, a better screen, likely a better chip, open hardware specifications and modularity, a completely unlockable bootloader (with likely support for CalyxOS and other ROM's shortly), and up to 8 years of software support(!), but people say they won't get it because no headphone jack...
MFW people have their priorities extremely mixed up... That's been the world now for 6 years, it's time to get over it. Letting perfect be the enemy of good is how you decide to throwaway something as good as what Fairphone seems to be offering. Sony still offers Android devices with headphone jacks, just don't be upset if you don't get another Android version pushed to your device.
It's honestly remarkable how few people in the comments here seem to get the joke.
Never stop dissecting things, y'all.
Probably because it is... Cannabis smoke isn't that healthy overall, but it's found to be safer than Tobacco smoke is at least. It doesn't carry nearly the carcinogenic risks of tobacco, and afaik, it doesn't carry the same risks for COPD, chronic bronchitis, etc. Though longer term studies would be needed for those to get real data to know for sure.
This sounds a bit like how to bring the shared blocklists from Twitter to Lemmy. Those were a disaster on Twitter, and I don't expect it'll end any better here either...
Please don't use tools like this. Manually curate instances you feel the need to defederate with. The Fediverse was built on a model not unlike that of email. You wouldn't just randomly block whole email providers willy-nilly, so you shouldn't do so here on the Fediverse either.
Meanwhile...
OpenSuse Tumbleweed is a great choice for a rolling-release distro that is also really stable too.
This is why we need 3, 4, or even 5 monitors at a time.