Read, write, enjoy.

The Best of The Week

Burning Chrome (review) by Rancid_Pickle

"Burning Chrome", from a great collection by the same name, came in the same year as the arrival of Big Brother in Orwell's "1984". Personal computers resided in many classrooms and homes, CompuServ and Bulletin Board Systems were tying up phone lines across the nation, and colleges were putting together computer curriculum as fast as they could. MTV was a huge hit, and they actually played music videos (starting with The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" in '81). Game systems evolved from Atari 2600's and Pong, and the first video format wars found VHS killing off Sony's Betamax. Movies like "Bladerunner" evoked dark protagonists with flaws.

This inundation of flashy color video and sound, combined with computers and sedentary gaming, began to distract the family units until they were islands of personality. If everyone gathered around something it was normally the television where the only talking came…

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Angora, Sultan of Timor (person) by Rancid_Pickle

Angora was the Sultan of Timor and refused to allow the British East India Company to station garrisons on Timor. Of course, when he turned them down they decided to take what they wanted by force. He was driven out of the whole of his island except the chief town, also called Angora.

Deciding to take revenge, he turned pirate and went to sea in command of a small fleet of five well-armed proas and several galleys. His first prize was a packet brig carrying dispatches from…

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We did not know it was a war (fiction) by Glowing Fish

We never knew it was a war when it started. We didn't even know when it started. It was a war the same way that cleaning out your gutters, or degaussing a CRT monitor was a war. (Forgive that these examples are anachronistic: I am translating, of course). On our end, at least. For them it was like deodorizing a room. We weren't aware of each other's presence, we were shadows slipping by each other. There weren't governments, either, at least not galaxy wide for us or them. The Milky Way, for some…

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News for Noders

Everything2 News, August 2017 by Tem42 Tue Aug 01 2017 at 18:18

August 4 Happy birthday avalyn!

August 6 広島

August 27 Happy birthday Bitriot

If you have an item for this calendar, /msg Tem42.

Everything2 News, July 2017 by Tem42 Sat Jul 01 2017 at 16:39

July 1: Brevity Quest 2017 begins!

July 4: Alice’s Day (AKA Alice in Wonderland Day); also Independence day in the US.

July 19-24: Hemingway Days; party central is Key West, Florida.

July 31: Harry Potter's Birthday.


If you have anything to add to this calendar, let Tem42 know.

Everything2 News, June 2017 by Tem42 Thu Jun 08 2017 at 0:03

SciFiQuest 3017: The Frontier that Wouldn't End... hasn't ended. Still. See the quest node for details.

June 4: Aesop's Birthday.

June 11: TerribleAspect's birthday!

June 16: Bloomsday.

June 19: Juneteenth.

June 21: The first day of summer (northern hemisphere) and winter (southern hemisphere).

June 25 SciFiQuest 3017: The Frontier that Wouldn't End has ended.

June 28: Tau Day.


Get ready for Brevity Quest 2017, coming soon to a website near you!


If you have an item for this calendar, /msg Tem42.

Everything2 News, April 2017 by Tem42 Sat Apr 01 2017 at 14:58

April 1: April Fool's Day has been cancelled. Everyone just go home.

April 6: Happy birthday, borgo!

April 7: Happy birthday, Tem42!

April 12: Yuri's Night

April 22: It's Earth Day, fellow earthlings!

April 24: Happy birthday, Rancid_Pickle!

April 24: It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown!


SciFiQuest 3017: The Frontier that Wouldn't End is coming May 1st!

If you have something to add to the monthly news, /msg Tem42.

March 2017 - TLS is Live! by jaybonci Mon Mar 27 2017 at 16:02

Hello everyone,

As you can see in your URL bar, TLS (https://) is live!

What does this mean for you?

We are on the lookout for various browser warnings. All of the themes have all been ported over. There are some http assets in some of the second-tier superdocs, but we'll clean those up as we find them. If you are seeing crazy browser warnings or can't access the site, please drop me an email. On-site messages or Github issues are also good for keeping track of broken things.

We should see an increase in search engine traffic as they tend to penalize non-https sites. This is one of the steps to continue to secure the future of the site, and I'm very pleased we're able to get it done.

Additionally, the load on the server is considerably higher. I've pushed some changes to stabilize it, but we may experience some choppiness. Please let me know if you get connection errors

A lot of really old features or features that won't handle the 301 redirect properly may break. We'll do what we can to support them, but this is one of the instances where old broken stuff might just end up staying broken.

-Jay