Sally's Journal

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/14/im-posting-some-recent-charcuterie-spreads-i-did-for-no-other-reason-than-i-feeling-like-showing-yall/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56408

I’ve been making more charcuterie boards than usual lately, and I’d like to think practice makes fairly decent, so I’d like to show y’all some of my recent spreads I’ve done for gatherings and parties and whatnot. I usually post them on Instagram and Bluesky, but just in case you missed them, you can get your fix right here and now!

For the 4th of July I was in Texas, and my friend hosted a party, for which I volunteered to supply some snackage for. Here’s the charcuterie board:

For this board, I used prosciutto, salami, Munster, Kerrygold aged cheddar, Brie, chimichurri gouda, fig and honey goat cheese, candied pecans, Castelvetrano olives, Mike’s Hot Honey, Honeycomb, and cherries. Everything on there except the pecans I picked up at H.E.B.

This was the rest of what I served:

While the salsa and guac I bought pre-made from H.E.B., I did assemble the watermelon, feta, and mint salad and drizzled it with honey, and put together the caprese skewers with balsamic glaze. I honestly think this turned out really well! I was very happy with my summery salad and light bites.

Just a few days ago I got my AppyHour Box (which I have regrettably not been doing posts over lately!) and decided to make a little board for my dad and his friend that was visiting from out of town.

This board consisted of a Togarashi cheese, an aged gouda, a smoked goat cheese, dried cherries, coppa, and prosciutto (I think it was a Calabrian Chili prosciutto?). The two jams I forgot to take the lids off of are a caramelized pear and honey spread, and a raspberry hibiscus jam. I thought this was a cute little lunch for my dad and his guest, and I’m glad the enjoyed it.

Finally, this past weekend, I hosted a friend’s baby shower at the church. She said she expected around fifty people to attend, and I can say with confidence I’ve never tried to make a spread for that many people before. I was definitely intimidated, but I was determined to make an approachable spread that would appeal to the masses and not spend hundreds of dollars doing it.

I didn’t capture everything, but here’s the gist of how it turned out:

And of course, a close up:

The spread contained Asiago, jalapeno Havarti, fig goat cheese, cranberry cheddar, smoked cheddar, cherries, grapes, rosemary almonds,  chocolate covered almonds, hard salami, prosciutto, pimento stuffed olives, fig spread, and whole grain mustard.

There was also cucumbers, bell peppers, baby carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, dill dip, salsa, tortilla chips, garden vegetable entertainment crackers, fig and sesame crisps, honey mustard mini pretzels, rosemary flatbread crackers, coconut macaroons, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered shortbread cookies, and chocolate covered Belgian waffle cookies.

Other than the tortilla chips, whole grain mustard, fig spread, rosemary almonds, and chocolate covered pretzels, I bought everything at Aldi, and despite buying doubles if not three of absolutely everything I listed, my total came out to $220. I was able to make this huge spread and refill it when it got low and feed 50 guests for just over $200. Who knew Aldi was so cool?! I spent about fifty bucks more than that on my spread for the Texas party, and that was only to feed about ten people.

The best thing on the spread from Aldi was the honey mustard mini pretzels, or the chocolate covered waffle cookies. I am definitely going to be stopping at Aldi more often for some surprisingly cheap and yummy treats.

What item looks the best to you? What’s your go-to cheese to serve for entertaining guests? Am I the only one who didn’t realize how neat Aldi was? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/14/im-posting-some-recent-charcuterie-spreads-i-did-for-no-other-reason-than-i-feeling-like-showing-yall/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56408

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/report-from-the-cambridge-cybercrime-conference.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=70463

The Cambridge Cybercrime Conference was held on 23 June. Summaries of the presentations are here.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/report-from-the-cambridge-cybercrime-conference.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=70463

It turns out that North & South (2004) is not soothing to watch whilst stitching; I am not interested in the 1850's generally, I am in no fit state to be entertained by the Industrial Revolution and labor unrest, and the cinematography is bleak. Richard Armitage's jawline does not make up for these flaws.

The Three Sisters plot has begun giving me peas! It is surprisingly difficult to distinguish between "immature snap pea" and "mature snow pea". I should probably give up this plot next year, as the fee is almost twice as much as the one near my apartment, and getting there & back is annoying, and the plot is weed central ....but the raspberry patch! I got sour and sweet cherries at the farmer's market, which of course means that I made cherry-pit whipped cream to go with the cherry galette; it is now corn and zucchini season, which is one of my favorite seasons; I miss having a grill so much. It is absolutely perfect grilling weather.

Somehow I have three community events at the same time tonight: a embroidery meetup, a constituent outreach meeting with my city councilor, and a meeting of the neighborhood association board. ::facepalm::

sunshine_revival

We’re heading towards the middle of July, and I hope the weather is treating you kindly this summer, no matter where you are. Any fun plans so far? I’ve spent this week on the mountain, reconnecting with family and staying in a pretty cool house. And talking about houses…

Challenge #4:

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

Creative: Write from the perspective of a house or other location.

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/14/the-big-idea-marie-vibbert-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56403

Author Marie Vibbert is back on the blog today with a fresh new novel that’s bigger and badder than ever. Dive into her Hellcats universe once more and see the world from an all new perspective in Andrei and the Hellcats.

MARIE VIBBERT:

Why are all sex robots depicted as miserable? Wouldn’t they just program them to be really horny? Thus, I created the character of Andrei: a sex-positive sex robot who loves his job, and humans. All the humans. When Galactic Hellcats was released in 2021, people responded warmly to this minor character, and when I asked, “What do you want in a sequel?” one of the top responses was, “More Andrei! And let him have sex! Why do you have two sex bots in this book and no one gets past second base?”

Why? Because my dad might read this book! I didn’t say that. I blushed and affirmed I would try harder in the sequel to be as uninhibited as Andrei.

And sequel time has come! My first goal was a book that wouldn’t require reading the previous one, and so Andrei and the Hellcats is from Andrei’s perspective, as a relative outsider. As I drafted, I realized that my little idea about sex robot preferences led into a bigger idea: how do we form our moral preferences? Can robots (or AI) have a conscious choice in their morality? What does that say about morality itself?

I know, that sounds heavy for a book about a sex robot enlisting a space biker gang to rescue his sister from an evil queen, but come drop down this mental rabbit hole with me.

As I fleshed out Andrei’s character to take center stage, I had to confront aspects of his life, personality, and preferences. He likes sex, a lot. Check. So why does he work as a hospitality manager at a space station instead of enjoying an all he can shag buffet at a brothel? Did he have a choice, or was he built for this role? Was he hired or purchased?

All of these questions funnel down into the intersection of consent and capitalism. Andrei cares a lot about consent in sex; he has whole libraries of code for it. He recognizes hesitation, the body language of distress and coercion. “I don’t enjoy inflicting harm,” he laments at one point, “I’m really only comfortable when there are safe words.” Yet he has never examined his own consent to play the role assigned to him, until the evil queen comes along and kidnaps him and his sister. He thinks Queen Jasmine of Ratana is simply roleplaying “Evil Queen and the mindless sexbot” until after their tryst, when she waves her hand and says “deactivate yourself.” Through her words and actions she makes it clear she doesn’t think Andrei is self-aware, and he realizes she felt that way the entire time they were fooling around. This prompts a moral crisis: have other clients of his mistaken play for reality? Does he need to update his most sacred algorithms?

Poor Andrei! What is sapience? What is consent? I wanted to have him follow this rabbit hole to money as a motivation, anti-capitalist gal that I am. To that end, I had this fun idea to have him in conflict with the Hellcats. They are, to put it mildly, uninterested in property rights, especially kleptomaniac Ki. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if, having finally enlisted the gang, he’d interrupt the ensuing caper with, “Excuse me, does that belong to you? Put it back.” 

To quote Ki, “Ugh, it’s like taking my social worker on a heist!”

Nothing makes a plot outline happier than juicy, theme-relevant complications! But I found the right opening for my little gag difficult to find, and part of that was, well, I was already forcing Andrei to confront his programming through every step of the plot. First the evil queen, then I put him on his own on a strange planet with nothing but his keen fashion sense and gift of gab. How can he find where they’ve taken her? How can he begin to save her? He has no local currency and has to contemplate breaking his programmed reverence for property rights to even get to a point where he can start searching in earnest. He wonders why he can’t bring himself to steal what he needs, why he was programmed to be a good little capitalist. “Were we designed to desire things to keep us working? Could we learn to do without designer clothes and porn subscriptions?”

By the time he gets to the Hellcats, he’s ready to hear Ki out when she takes it upon herself to turn him to the lawless side of the force. He has already seen that laws can be unjust; the queen’s law declares him and his sister property! When Ki compares hoarding money to hoarding kisses, Andrei accepts that ownership is not as important as good snogs… or the safety of sapient beings.

As I was writing, I found myself a little envious of Andrei. He can consciously edit his moral programming when he discovers a bias in it, while I make the same gaffs nine or ten thousand times before I learn. Well, so do the Hellcats. They have those relationship arcs to get through, all that learning what and who to prioritize. So while he learns from them, Andrei gets to drop some truth bombs in return. “Darling, I get it. When you and your brother left the factory… I mean, when you were born, your settings were the same…. Then you were sent out into the world, and your programs updated.”

Ninety percent of writing a novel is making decisions. Where could I fit in my little anti-theft Andrei gaff? Well, I couldn’t. Then I realized he still cared about the rule of law. Ah ha! The confrontation now comes not from stealing, but from breaking and entering, and I got to use all the snarky lines I had daydreamed.

Andrei sighs, “Humans take so long to make decisions! How did they ever get around to inventing us?”

(… she wrote, thinking about her own plot outlining.)

That accomplished, I was free to make everything worse! Bwah ha ha. Have to push all those moral lessons harder with some external examples, right? So they all get captured in a forced labor camp. It’s dark. I found myself pausing on a scene where an explosive implant takes out a guy’s arm because sometimes they just go off and thinking, “Um, self? Is this still a lighthearted space romp?” And lo, the moral quandary has come home: the choices I make as an author can reflect my own morality (or lack thereof.) 

I couldn’t just have them blow up their way out of there, leaving the other slaves behind. Crap. I had to go back and change the entire ending heist to reflect my values of collective action. Andrei, I hope, would be proud. 

Andrei gets through the plot, the Hellcats get through the plot, and the author gets through the plot: each a little wiser for it.

The book should be available wherever books are sold. Have your local independent bookstore order it, or your library! 

And we all snarked happily ever after.

Andrei and the Hellcats: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Powell’s

Marie Vibbert: Website|Facebook|Instagram

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/07/14/the-big-idea-marie-vibbert-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56403

KPop Demon Hunters was an experience for sure. It felt slightly weird to watch because it uses distinctly Korean materials but from an outside perspective. The girls' exaggerated comic acting was very Western animation-y, and the traditional Korean medical clinic scene bore no resemblance to real life, obviously.

Even with Korean dubbing it had the distinct feel of a foreign film, because it was! Korean-speaking actors and dubbing artists speak very differently, and the voice acting was obviously dubbing-style because the original was in English.

I also felt like the story had a lot of potential that it didn't quite reach, and foreshadowed things that didn't actually happen. But that's pretty deep in spoiler territory so maybe I'll go there in a different, spoiler-cut post.

Where the movie truly shone was its stylish, energetic representation of K-pop, including in no small part its earworm soundtrack. Fans have been pointing out all kinds of K-pop tropes like the tiny powerhouse rappers Zoey and Baby, the similarity of the two bands to legends like Blackpink and BTS, and the way the male band debuted with a catchy bop ("Soda Pop") before coming back with a darkly cynical, technique-heavy number ("Your Idol").

It wasn't just the stars who got the spotlight; so did the fandom and community, from the fans who filled stadiums for their faves to online challenges and breathless anticipation for new releases. The movie also went into some, though by no means all, of the darkness behind this adoration, and made a good case for the potential destructiveness of such massive franchises and fandoms.

The love of the genre and the fandom, backed up by extraordinary music and production, was what gave the movie its heart and turned what could have been a gimmicky throwaway into a snapshot of an era. The depiction in KPop Demon Hunters of the love and fragility, the beauty and hollowness at the heart of K-pop was arguably more powerful than its scripted story. That's not a knock on the story so much as a statement on the nature of the narrative: K-pop is an age to be experienced in all its glory and corruption, not a tale to be told from a comfortable distance. It is one's own story to live and not someone else's to watch, and that is arguably the true power of KPop Demon Hunters.

The Works of P. Djèlí­ Clark
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT
Andrea Hairston [moderator]; Leon Perniciaro; Rob Cameron; Tom Doyle; Victoria Janssen
Our Guest of Honor P. Djèlí Clark rounded out his first decade as a published author with a Nebula and a Locus for his fantasy police procedural novel, The Master of Djinn, and both those awards plus a British Fantasy Award for his monster-hunting novella Ring Shout. His short story “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” is short-listed for the Hugo this year. As a History professor at University of Connecticut, he investigates the pathways leading from West African storyteller/poets (griots, a.k.a. djèlí) to the American abolitionist movement. Help us celebrate the works of our honored guest!

The Purposes of Memorable Insults in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 5:00 PM EDT
Storm Humbert [moderator]; Anne E.G. Nydam; Charles Allison; Ellen Kushner; Victoria Janssen
Some of the most quotable lines in science fiction and fantasy are zingers. Wit can do a lot to build a character, a world, and a universe, and has the ability to either support or undermine reader expectations. This panel aims to explore and elaborate on the use of wit—and especially takedowns—in literature, exposing how a verbal jab can serve as more than just a punchline.

Moving from Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing
Salon G/H Friday, July 18, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Cecilia Tan; Jedediah Berry; Sarah Smith; Steven Popkes
It’s becoming increasingly common to hear of authors whose self-published work was so successful that they were picked up by a traditional publisher. But what of the authors who have gone the other way, by turning their backs on traditional publishing and going into self-publishing? Panelists will survey the varying reasons for making this transition, how authors have navigated it, and what this might say about the state of publishing overall.

Kaffeeklatsch: Victoria Janssen
Suite 830 Friday, July 18, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT

The Works of Cecilia Tan
Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 12:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Charlie Jane Anders; Laura Antoniou; Cecilia Tan (i)
Our Guest of Honor, Cecilia Tan, has a publication history that spans Asimov’s, Absolute Magnitude, Ms. Magazine, Penthouse, and Best American Erotica, among others. Writer and editor of science fiction and fantasy, especially as they intersect with erotica and romance, she is also the founder of Circlet Press, an independent publisher that specializes in speculative erotica. Her own writing earned a Lifetime Achievement for Erotica in 2014 from Romantic Times magazine. She also contributes to America’s other pastime, baseball, in her role as Publications Director for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Come hear our panel discuss Cecilia’s many talents and accomplishments.

Un-Kafkaesque Bureaucracies
Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Alexander Jablokov; J.M. Sidorova; Laurence Raphael Brothers; Steven Popkes
In fiction, bureaucracies are generally depicted as evil in its most banal form, yet many of the actual bureaucracies that shape our lives exist to protect us from corporate greed. How can—and should—we tell other stories about bureaucrats and bureaucracies, particularly as the U.S. stands on the precipice of disastrous deregulation? And might fantasies of bureaucracy (such Addison’s The Goblin Emperor and Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor) be the next cozy subgenre?

The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction
Create / Collaborate Saturday, July 19, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT
Kate Nepveu [moderator]; Claire Houck/Nina Waters; Laura Antoniou; Victoria Janssen
In an article of the same name (https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/endless-appetite-fanfiction), Elizabeth Minkel discussed how “2024 was the year [fanfic] truly broke containment—everyone seemed to want a piece of the fanfiction pie, leaving fic authors themselves besieged on all sides.” Attempts to steal and monetize fanfic proliferated, as did reviews treating living authors as distant and unreachable. What do these trends say about larger changes in attitudes toward stories and creators? How can fans of all kinds nurture supportive connections to authors?

Dear Miss Manners: The neighbor who lives directly across the street from me parks in front of my house. If this was occasional, I wouldn’t care, but it’s become the daily routine. I can’t imagine consistently doing this.

I enjoy looking out my window in the evening, but now my view is a car every night.

Today a work truck parked in front of my house, so the neighbor parked in their own driveway (which is always clear, as is their curb). When the truck left, they moved their car back to my curb, leaving their driveway empty the rest of the day.

I realize this could sound petty, but our other neighbors respect this unwritten rule.

In addition to unwritten, the rule is possibly unknown to this neighbor. Miss Manners trusts that you don’t think the car is purposely parked with the intention of blocking your view, and that you realize that others have a legal right to park on a public street.

Therefore, the neighbor would be doing you a favor by refraining from parking there. And to ask a favor requires purging any annoyance you feel and admitting that complying would be a voluntary kindness.

An amusing confession of your staring-out-the-window habit would be more effective than an admonishment for violating neighborhood expectations.

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=4354

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July 14th, 2025: Thanks to everyone who came out to the signings - it's always great to meet readers and ESPECIALLY great to meet readers in a city I've never been to before!! I had a fantastic time and I hope you did too! – Ryan

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=4354