Weekly Roundup: Feb. 21, 2026
Crafting
The red knit hat, a protest piece for immigrant aid in Minnesota, is at 5 in. Probably won't be done for the whole big mass wear your hat thing at the end of the month. And with temperatures in the 60s here in Atlanta, this is following my usual pattern of needing a knit and then starting way too late.
Still working on cutting out the pattern for a Free Sewing Simone shirt. The most annoying part of working with independently drafted patterns is printing out the PDF pattern onto 8.5 by 11 inch sheets, taping all of those sheets together into one big sheet, and then cutting the individual elements out.
Wank of the Week
This Discussion of the limits of gender identity as an explanatory framework has been making the rounds. It has also been drawing a lot of wank. I don't feel like doing a full post on it, but:
- Wilchins did stick her foot in her mouth, and someone else associated with the newsletter probably should have caught it.
- I don't believe that two of the leading non-binary people in philosophy intended to imply a causative relationship between non-binary gendered identity and anti-trans extremism in America. Especially when that interpretation is challenged in the same article. The solution is not to go back to a binary model of transsexuality, but to move forward with new narratives and possibly even a plurality of narratives.
- The concept of gender identity has not gained legal grounds in the courts, nor does it support all non-binary people. Many of us don't ever have the unnegotiated sense of what we are.
- The response feels suspiciously like the Isabelle Fall incident. In that case, a trans author ended up getting dragged with personal attacks for writing the "wrong" type of transgender science fiction. (I saw it as an extension of speculative ideas previously discussed by Peter Watts with his militarized zombies.)
- It has seriously undermined my confidence in Bluesky as an alternative to Twitter if it is going to produce the same kinds of discourse.
Links
- A Revised Solarpunk AI Manifesto. Connects to ideas that I'm exploring, that the predatory business models of supermassive AI are problems that started with web 2.0 and the consolidation of internet services in the hands of a few large corporations.
- New Trek comics set in the post-Picard era, featuring Seven of Nine and Raffi.
- And while we are talking about gay Star Trek, I loved Jay-Den serving looks in episode seven of Starfleet Academy as the best man at a wedding.
- Dogs who learn words like sharing toys
- The happiest dog at the Olympics
Music
Games
I picked up Monstrosity by Candlenaut Games. It plays like a good iteration of the Entity solo TTRPG concept with the addition of a hex crawl. So far, my only issue with it has been needing to search through the entire document to find out what the starting energy should be. The Entity Series adds a much welcome focus on game mechanics, providing fairly significant consequences should you fumble resource management and choices over time. These merge very well into a plot line about a lone astronaut attempting to survive on a broken spaceship.
TTRPG Mod Idea
All player characters are modern witches.
- Gearhead: mechanical objects
- House: home and gardens
- Punk: resistance to authority
- Eco: local ecosystems
- Death: graveyards
- Animal whisperer: animal species
- Cyber: Computer code
- Academic: Books, research, lore