Reading

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Book 46 - David Barber "When the Fat Lady Sings"

David Barber "When the Fat Lady Sings: Opera History As It Ought To Be Taught" (Sound And Vision)

The subtitle says it all: Opera History as it ought to be taught. (Although it's really about the composers rather than their operas.)

As with his other books, it is a humorously engrossing book. You don't have to be a big opera buff to enjoy this exhilarating and entertaining book. If you feel down, this will definitely perk you up.

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Book 45 - Iain Banks "Transition"

Iain Banks "Transition" (Abacus)

Banks usually splits his novels between contemporary fiction and science fiction, but here he publishes what is obviously a science fiction story under his 'contemporary' nom de plume. I'm unsure of the reasons for this, but it is certainly his most enjoyable novel in quite some time, an improvement on The Steep Approach to Garbadale, which was just The Crow Road reheated.

The story, told from the point of view of several characters, but mainly that of a man called Temudjin Oh, is about an organisation called The Concern, which intervenes in the affairs of alternate realities for supposedly benign reasons. They do this using the talents of 'Transitionaries', people who can flit between realities with the aid of a drug called Septus. With me so far? Good.

But the head of the Concern's central council, Madame d'Ortolan, has her own agenda, and Oh finds himself a hunted man. A renegade called Mrs Mulverhill comes to his aid, and he finds himself caught in a power struggle for control of The Concern. It's an ambitious storyline and thankfully free, for the most part, of Banks's recent penchant for making his characters mouthpieces for his political rhetoric.

Banks is no stranger to mixing genres; his earlier novels, such as Walking on Glass and The Bridge, featured fantasy elements, but here the whole story is fantastical.

However, I do have reservations. The structure is fragmented to say the least, and the start of the book is very confusing. You're not sure what's going on, and it takes perseverance to get a grip on the story. As ever, Banks can tell a good tale, but what I'd really like is for him to return to the form of Espedair Street or The Crow Road - brilliantly told contemporary fiction. However, well worth reading.

Current Mood: bitchy

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Book 44 - Billy Bragg "The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging"

Billy Bragg "The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging" (Black Swan)

Billy Bragg is a well-known singer-songwriter and activist, and this is a very personal account of English identity. He examines both the history of dissent in England and his own family history as a way of examining how he came to his own views, and rounds it off with a passionate plea for a proper, modern Bill of Rights in this country as a way of countering the rise of fascist organisations like the BNP (British National Party), who have been particulalry succesful, until recently, in his own East End of London. It's an interesting account of Englishness (rather than what it is to be British, for the Welsh and Scots seem more secure in their own identity), but it is rather uneven in the way it is written. At times, the account becomes too personal, almost autobiographical, with long sections on the rise of Punk music and his part in the music scene of the time. Interesting in itself, but too much detail compared to the more measured historical analysis of English identity.

Perhaps I was expecting more of the latter and not expecting the depth of autobiography; I certainly enjoyed that part more and became restless when the focus switched back to his own family. Probably this should be two books, not one, each one a little more focused.

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Book 43 - A. K. Blakemore "The Manningtree Witches"

A. K. Blakemore "The Manningtree Witches" (Granta Books)

Sadly, I could not get into this novel about witchfinder Matthew Hopkins and his investigation of witches in Manningtree during the English Civil War. It was doubtless quite beautifully written, but most of that beauty was expended on place and visuals, rather than on trying to understand the characters. It felt emotionally detached and a little boring. Unfortunately I think I have recently responded this way to several novels by contemporary poets. It is probably a "me problem" not a "them problem," but I have found that several poets approach novel writing in ways that just don't gel with me as a reader.

Code deploy happening shortly

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.