Bundle of Holding: The Burning Wheel

An all-new Burning Wheel Bundle presenting The Burning Wheel, the medieval-themed tabletop fantasy roleplaying game about vibrant, dynamic characters whose beliefs propel the story.
Bundle of Holding: The Burning Wheel
Would my dog or cat really eat me if I died alone?
People talk about this like it's so shocking, or like it means your pet obviously doesn't really love you, but c'mon. I love my cat, but I'd eat her in a heartbeat if she was already dead and there was nothing else left. She's my cat, she's not my baby. It's not like I've gone full on Donner Party - and let's be clear, if that was all that was left on the table, and they were already dead, I'd do that too. At least, I'd think about doing it. I suppose I might not be able to bring myself to go that far, but I wouldn't find it shocking if another person did!
Pickleball and chill
One of the other players wanted to start up a group within our group inviting the better players. This lands below the aggressive advanced group but a little above some of our group. He is doing it on Tueaday and Thursday at noon. So four hours later in the day (everyone's retired so who cares). For those of use already signed up for Monday/Wednesday/Friday it offers up the possibility of playing every day. I'm not sure my wrist and shoulder will find that enticing. But I was invited and will play tomorrow (and my usual Wednesday) so we'll see how I feel by Thursday.
I used to ride my bike only every other day until one time I started doing my ride every day. Turned out I didn't need as much down time as I thought. I suspect this will not be the case now. I'm older and the joint stress is worse. But we'll test the theory.
Just now I cancelled my USAA Visa card with its $35000 credit limit. It will be interesting to see if my credit score goes down. Other than two Google screwups I've not used the card for over a year so it may not make any difference at all. But I don't need it and don't want to have it sitting around for no reason. One less thing to track. I've got $2.17 in my USAA checking account and think I've found the last auto deposit entity and redirected it so I can completely close that account too. And I just transferred the $2.17 so once that reads zero ... Another simplification in my life.
Meanwhile I really need a nap. So I'm off to take a shower and a nap.
A Disappointing and Brief Article on the Mahabharata
It's hard to tell whether the content in this article is thin because there isn't much to say or because of the overall superficiality of the work. I'm guessing the latter, as other articles and books I've found on India have been richer.
Shah, Shalini. 1991. “Women and Sexuality in the Mahabharata” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 52: 138-144.
In addition tot he superficial nature of this article, there were numerous editorial problems with it, leading me to question the professionalism of the parent publication.
# # #
This article is very short, more a set of presentation bullet-points than a full article. Only one small section is relevant and that material is given rather odd connections to Classical Greek motifs. Given that the whole article is somewhat cursory, I feel more forgiving of the briefness of the material.
The article notes “There is only a solitary reference to relations between individuals of the same sex. In the Anushasana Parva Panchachuda tells Narada that when women find no males at hand, they satisfy each other’s desires.” This is also a reference to another publication describing “solitary women who would dress up their female friends as males and passionately embrace them.” The author suggests these practices were due to the segregation of women in polyamorous patriarchal households.
Worried no more

I think we'll be busy enough. Plus I still have a week to add to the list. Plus he can watch me eat. That should make up for no sports channels. hahahaha
And, yep, my latest thing is writing on my fridge with erasable markers.
Highlights from Today’s KDDs
All of Us Murderers
All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles is $1.99! This standalone historical romance mystery released in October and many of you were really excited for it. What did you think?
The lush Gothic drama of Crimson Peak meets the murderous intrigue of Knives Out with an LGBTQIA+ love story to die for from award-winning author KJ Charles.
WHO WILL SURVIVE LACKADAY HOUSE?
When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative’s remote Gothic manor, he is horrified to find all the people he least wants to see in the world: his estranged brother, his sneering cousin, and his bitter ex-lover Gideon Grey. Things couldn’t possibly get worse.
Then the master of the house announces the true purpose of the gathering: he intends to leave the vast family fortune to whoever marries his young ward, setting off a violent scramble for her hand. Zeb wants no part of his greedy family—but when he tries to leave, the way is barred. The walls of Lackaday House are high, and the gates firmly locked. As the Dartmoor mists roll in, there’s no way out. And something unnatural may be watching them from the house’s shadowy depths…
Fear and paranoia ramping ever-higher, Zeb has nowhere to turn but to the man who once held his heart. As the gaslight flickers and terror takes hold, can two warring lovers reunite, uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House—and live to tell the tale?
Lucky Day
RECOMMENDED: Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle is $2.99! Carrie reviewed this one and gave it an A:
This book is strongly structured and balances humor, different kinds of horror, sadness, and a way to find purpose and healing in the midst of chaos. I adored it, but I cannot stress how incredibly gory and violent this book is. If you have a strong enough stomach, and you like the spooky conspiracy vibes of The X-Files and Welcome to Nightvale, you will probably like this too.
“An existential masterwork that, like life, is equal parts atrocity and delights.”—Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of Masters of Death
Lucky Day is the latest from Chuck Tingle, USA Today bestselling author of Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays, where one woman must go up against horrifying odds to save the world.
Four years ago, an unthinkable disaster occurred. In what was later known as the Low-Probability Event, eight million people were killed in a single day, each of them dying in improbable, bizarre strangled by balloon ropes, torn apart by exploding manhole covers, attacked by a chimpanzee wielding a typewriter. A day of freak accidents that proved anything is possible, no matter the odds. Luck is real now, and it’s not always good.
Vera, a former statistics and probability professor, lost everything that day, and she still struggles to make sense of the unbelievable catastrophe. To her, the LPE proved that the God of Order is dead and nothing matters anymore.
When Special Agent Layne shows up on Vera’s doorstep, she learns he’s investigating a suspiciously—and statistically impossibly—lucky casino. He needs her help to prove the casino’s success is connected to the deaths of millions, and it’s Vera’s last chance to make sense of a world that doesn’t.
Because what’s happening in Vegas isn’t staying there, and she’s the only thing that stands between the world and another deadly improbability.
My Best Friend’s Honeymoon
My Best Friend’s Honeymoon by Meryl Wilsner is $2.99! This was an April release. I remember seeing a few of you mention this one in the comments and it seems like it was pretty hit or miss.
Meryl Wilsner’s spicy f/nb romance, where two lifelong best friends go on a nonrefundable honeymoon together and discover sometimes to find a happily ever after, you just have to ask.
Elsie Hoffman has been engaged to her college boyfriend for a year and a half. Ginny Holtz has been in love with Elsie for almost a decade and a half.
When Elsie discovers her fiancé already planned their wedding and honeymoon as a surprise and she’s expected to be in a white dress in seven days, she swiftly realizes she’s let herself become too comfortable with a future she never wanted. She breaks things off, and a week later is on a plane to the Caribbean for her non-refundable honeymoon with her best friend Ginny instead.
Ginny thinks it’s high time Elsie learned how to speak up for herself. So, they make a deal with her. For the next week, Elsie can have whatever she wants, wherever, however, and whenever she wants it, as long as she asks. They never expected Elsie to want them.
What starts as choosing activities and taking selfies soon turns to toe-curling kisses and much, much more. But what happens when the honeymoon is over?
Meryl Wilsner’s My Best Friend’s Honeymoon is about not only learning to ask for what you want, but for the happiness you deserve.
Automatic Noodle
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz is $2.99! This is a sci-fi novella and I love how colorful the cover is. I mentioned it in Hide Your Wallet.
A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.
You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.
But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.
Crazy Spooky Love
Crazy Spooky Love by Josie Silver is $1.99! This is book one in the Melody Bittersweet series. The setup gives me Stephanie Plum vibes, but with ghosts.
A plucky medium, her fame-chasing ex, and an infuriatingly handsome skeptic reporter make for a complicated love triangle—and that’s before the ghosts get involved. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of One Day in December comes the first novel in a ghost-hunting series full of romance and humor.
In the leafy, charming town of Chapelwick, the Bittersweet family has been a fixture on High Street for as long as anyone can remember. Their rambling black-and-white building houses all three generations of ghost-sensitive Bittersweet women and their business, Blithe Spirits.
On her twenty-seventh birthday, Melody Bittersweet converts the disused back storeroom into her office and opens her own business. Unlike the rest of her family, she’s not taking down messages from ghosts—she’s taking them out.
Soon, the Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency takes on its first a grand old house that won’t sell because a trio of incumbent ghost brothers raise merry hell whenever prospective owners arrive to view it.
It soon becomes clear that there’s a whole heap of unfinished business between the Scarborough brothers—including murder—and Melody isn’t the only one trying to unravel the mystery. Leo Dark, her rakish ex and business rival, is also on the case, along with the TV crew that trails him.
To make matters worse, the sarcastic and skeptical (and annoyingly good-looking) local reporter Fletcher Gunn has his nose in the story as well. Sniffing out a way to publicly discredit the Bittersweets is his favorite assignment—and has absolutely nothing to do with his inability to resist Melody.
With her business on the line, it’s up to Melody to work out the brothers’ issues, but can she protect her own very susceptible heart from Fletcher’s charm? Does she even want to?
The Seven O’Clock Club
The Seven O’Clock Club by Amelia Ireland is $1.99! I believe Sarah said she was starting this one on a previous Whatcha Reading. Have any of you read this one?
Four strangers are brought together to participate in an experimental treatment designed to heal broken hearts in this surprising and heartfelt debut novel from author Amelia Ireland.
In a perfectly ordinary building, four strangers who couldn’t be more different meet for the first time. Their skepticism of this new kind of grief therapy—and the unnervingly perceptive group leader—means they’re all wary, but as the weeks go by, they find themselves returning again and again, pulled to work toward healing, even if it means first facing the pain head-on.
A sharp-tongued lawyer who has no intention of letting down her walls, a fragile young woman looking for a place to belong, a musician at the top of his game who’s one drink away from losing it all, and an interior designer facing the crumbling of her picture-perfect life—this unlikely group slowly opens up, not only to the possibility of a happier future but to friendship, change, and even romance.
When a shocking revelation reveals the real reason they were chosen for this group, it shakes the very foundation of what they thought they knew. What began as a journey designed to heal turns out to be a much greater test of friendship, strength, and love as they realize happiness is just outside the door…if they’re brave enough to seek it.
A Brief Memory of City of Truro
I remember the cool air of the hall, the not-faint smell of oil, and the quiet hum of people moving around the exhibits. City of Truro had a presence that stopped me mid‑stride — elegant lines, polished brass, and that unmistakable Great Western green. Even without nostalgia to lean on, it was impossible not to feel its significance.
Seeing that sibling locomotive in

The new Three Rivers Stadium
This weekend I learned that they are retiring NYC Metro cards. I am a subway token girl. The tokens were a little smaller than dimes and clung to the bottom of your purse, especially when you were in a hurry. I was long gone from NYC by the time they retired tokens and now they are retiring the token replacements.
If ya live long enough...
It is still pretty dark and also foggy. Perfect for swimming but not in ice cold water. I wonder if we will be able to volleyball tomorrow. I'll go down to the pool/gym later today to find out. And probably do some time on those horrible machines. Oh! I just got a note from Erica (the fitness director) saying this morning the pool is 79 degrees which is, technically, within (bottom) the range for lap swimming but not for my lap swimming.
I do think I'm going over to the second hand shop this morning and see if I can score a purple or green sweater to unravel for hair. I know the goods will be better and more varietal at Goodwill BUT also there is a whole lot more stuff to tempt me at Goodwill so best to stick to Value Village.
But they don't open til 10 so I guess I'll get dressed first.

Interesting Links for 29-12-2025
- 1. Why all the Criticism of Good Men Fighting for Healthier Masculinity?
- (tags:masculinity gender men patriarchy society )
- 2. German journalist on flotilla accuses Israeli guards of rape
- (tags:israel rape )
- 3. Salesforce regrets firing 4000 experienced staff and replacing them with AI
- (tags:AI business fail )
- 4. My Open Letter To That Open Letter About AI In Writing And Publishing - Chuck Wendig
- (tags:ai scifi publishing )
- 5. Tiny! Cute! Bat!
- (tags:bats cute video )
Cover Snark: Brooch Toots
Welcome back to Cover Snark!

Sarah: Pam G has sent us two!
PamG: Oh baby, looks like a mystery skin condition in an Elvis wig to me. All I can see is grandma’s animal print spandex. Also, those eyes! We used to get that a lot when photographing the doggos. And, and WHY are their nether regions fading into an alien cityscape.
Elyse: Sir, you’re gonna need an ointment for that.
Sarah: So the guy with the Geordie eye headband in the X Men movie has some dermatologic challenges ahead? We’ve had alien nanny, alien daycare…is this Alien Dermatologist?
Amanda: There’s another cover edition and it’s just the dude. His spots were squares and diamonds.

PamG: when I searched for the cover image, I got a bonus. And lizard boy is not romantic. No no, Lizard Boy, her head does not unscrew
Sarah: I honestly thought the blue Goyard print one was hugging a rock. Cradling a meteor. Snuggling some geology. ALL OF THAT makes more sense than whatever is happening here.
Elyse: This Tik Tok chiropractor videos are going to too far.

From MegCat: Somebody needs to tell him that urine is not a good way to put out a fire.
Sarah: Another crotchfire or the same crotchfire?
Amanda: He is most certainly naked.
Sarah: He looks like he smelled something very, very bad. I suspect a surprise when the fire is out- if he has enough dragon pee to extinguish it.

From Kim: What is that weird bulge on the side of his stomach? Maybe positioning, but I can’t look away from it. And why does it look almost like it has a beak? Maybe it’s just my phone.
Sarah: I think this person, who might be a queen or might be a monster, or both – why limit yourself? – should have that looked at right now. Like, put the sword down and go to urgent care.
Amanda: Is that a brooch shooting out of his butt? A butt brooch?
Sarah: Who toots the brooch?
Soooooooooooooooo, people at /r/EnglishLearning will at least once a week
And this will generate a burst of absolutely, frustratingly useless nonsense, because people just do not know how they talk. They don't know how they talk, they can't analyze their phonetics on the fly, and they are staggeringly unaware of these facts.
I keep telling these people to go to /r/linguistics instead, but thus far, nobody has taken my advice. Which is a pity, because I do give excellent advice, especially in this case.
But seriously - nobody knows how they talk. It's like trying to explain the biomechanics of walking. Sure, you've been doing it since you were a toddler (probably?), but that doesn't mean you have any understanding at all of what the hell you're doing as you propel yourself from place to place. I bet you can't even explain how you adjust for your varying center of balance!
(no subject)
on NFTs and the art market
To explain what NFTs really were, first it's necessary to understand the manipulation of the art market by billionaires. Simplified, it goes something like this:
Billionaire A buys, over the course of years or decades, a bunch of art by some artist whose work is worthwhile but affordable. It doesn't have to be the most worthwhile work out there. Billionaire B buys a bunch of art by some other artist. Maybe it's a hundred pieces at five to ten thousand dollars apiece, or maybe it's somewhat fewer, somewhat more expensive pieces, but for most artists it's going to cost less than a million dollars over that artist's lifetime to become the foremost collector of that artist's work.
Some time later, perhaps after the death of the artists in question, Billionaire A (or his heirs) sells one of the pieces of art to Billionaire B for millions of dollars, and Billionaire B likewise sells a piece to Billionaire A for a similar sum. Billionaires A and B then also each donate one of their pieces of art to a museum.
By selling the pieces, they establish a value for the rest of their collection, and that means they can take the full market value of the donated piece off of their income without having to recognize the capital gains on the donated piece. This offsets the capital gains on the sold piece, net tax liability zero. And the amount of cash they each had to shell out to buy the multi million dollar pieces also nets out to zero. But suddenly they each have a billion dollars worth of art with an established market value that they can use as collateral for a low interest loan so they can buy an island or a jet or a rape victim's silence or whatever else they feel like buying that day.
It's not just that the billionaires have gotten this money tax free. It's that they have mostly made up the money in question. It's not real! But they get to spend it anyway.
This massive distortion of the art market has all kinds of knock-on effects, some of them positive. At the very least, it establishes value to billionaires of supporting living artists in ways that might not be significant to them but are certainly significant to the artists. It puts some of the art in museums where people other than the billionaires get to see it. The massive loss of tax revenue outweighs these benefits, but there was still a benefit.
NFTs were a way to make this market distortion more efficient. But the invented value lost its plausibility and the market collapsed.
AI is like this: mostly a market distortion with some real benefits, outweighed as they may be by the downsides. But the current financial arrangements of the AI companies have gotten too efficient, and lost sight of the value plausibility.
Art survived the NFT implosion. I hope computers survive the AI implosion.
Book Review: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer
In the last couple years I've moved my non-LHMP book reviews over to Dreamwidth to keep a certain separation between my voice as an author and my voice as a reader. But I want to give this one a bit more visibility.
Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is not simply my favorite book of the year, but is my candidate for Best Book of the Year overall. This is not simply a book about history but is a book about the process of history. It demonstrates the fractal messiness of the people, places, and events that we try to tidily sort into specific eras, and especially how all those people, places, and events are braided together into a solid fabric. Palmer doesn’t shy away from pointing out how thoroughly our understanding of history is shaped by the prejudices and preoccupations of historians; she embraces this aspect noting at every turn how her own take is shaped by her love of the city of Florence and especially its most controversial son, Machiavelli.
But what makes this book great is the humor poured into the cracks around the politics, violence, and art. (A recurring feature is little comic dialogues that summarize key events in a narrative style familiar to anyone on Twitter or Bluesky. I desperately want to see these presented in visual format, whether as live theater or animated shorts. It’s hard to pick a favorite line, but the top two are “Maria Visconti-Sforza: I’m standing right here!” and “King of France: You Italians are very strange.”)
The book concludes with what I can only describe as a stump speech for the importance to the contemporary world of studying and understanding history, embracing the necessary messiness of “progress,” and the hope that we can indeed continue the Renaissance project of reaching for a better world.
This is a very long book, though paced in manageable chapters. When I decided to read it and found that the audiobook was the same price as the hardcover, I went for audio (at over 30 hours!) and listened to it while taking the train home from the International Medieval Conference. The narration is top-notch, capturing the emotional range of the text perfectly. The side benefit is that the combination of material, voice, and length made it perfect to add to my “sleep-aid audiobooks” collection, which means I get to enjoy it over and over again (in the bits and pieces I consciously hear). But of course I bought the hardcover too, not only so I could get Palmer to autograph it, but because I needed to be able to track down my favorite bits and check out the footnotes.
Every day obsession
This week I started a tracker. It's an app on my phone. I built a template and every day I will fill it in with notes. I have no plans for this info but I do get a weird satisfaction from just keeping up with it and knowing I have it.

Yesterday the pool water was cold and the air in the pool room was 79 when it's always 81. I reported it to the front desk but The Guy Who Never Does What You Ask was on duty so I know I was wasting air. This morning, I knew the sun was going to be out and if I wanted to swim before the clouds lifted, I'd better get going. BUT I also wore my track suit and went prepared to use one of the machines in the gym instead. The pool water was colder than yesterday and the air was now 76. The same guy was on at the front desk. So no one will even know about it until tomorrow. It takes a few days to heat up that water. Volleyball on Tuesday is looking iffy. Tomorrow's swim ain't happening. BUT I did enjoy today's. After the first five or so laps, the cold isn't terrible. Not great but not terrible.
The sun is out now and the mountains are covered with snow. It's a beautiful sight. I did not move one inch from my table to take this photo right now. This is what I see.

I really can't believe that I get to live in this apartment with this view for the rest of my days. I often feel like I'm being pranked. I think it's the equivalent of impostor syndrome but for retirees.
Biggie had another bloodless pee. I am so hopeful that at least this latest issue might not kill him. Of course, if it does not, he'll think of some other way soon, I'm sure.
Today I'm thinking maybe some work on the puzzle in the elbow, maybe some TV, maybe some knitting. The usual.

