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booksthatburn.com
Books That Burn
@booksthatburn.com
3.4K followers 2.7K following 3.1K posts
Book review blog and podcast. Member of Certain POV Podcast Network. Robin (they/them). 🏳️‍🌈 #NoAI
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Gazan MA Boost; Help nurse Ahmed stay alive: https://chuffed.org/project/130260
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booksthatburn.com
Very excited to read The Lucky Machine by Aimee Cozza (@aimeecozza.com) especially when I saw the stripes on the spine line up with the first book in the series.
It's an attention to detail which is instantly pleasing.
The Warm Machine and The Lucky Machine, both by Aimee Cozza. The spines have dull gold and dark blue/black striping, printed so the diagonal stripes continue across the spines.
December 30, 2025 at 4:29 AM
booksthatburn.com
Merry Christmas!
December 25, 2025 at 6:12 AM
booksthatburn.com
My comments in the survey.
While there might be niche LLMs trained on all opt-in data for specific use cases (processing of scientific data, iterative design, etc.), any proposal for using genAI "ethically" for writing and/or art is caught in a bind where the makers of these tools want them to be used as much as possible to justify their own existence, but a tool which is so broad as to be used by anyone for any purpose is also so inexact as to be ineffective in each case. LLMs produce a statistically average or predictable result, which is destructive to creative efforts. In order to create these broad tools, the writing and art of millions of people have been copied without attribution (pirated) and fed into the models as training data. There is no way to extract ill-gotten data once it has been fed into the model. If there is going to be ethical usage of genAI and LLMs, it will not be found in the tools which are being endlessly pushed onto the public.
December 24, 2025 at 2:51 PM
booksthatburn.com
Third day
December 24, 2025 at 4:35 AM
booksthatburn.com
2nd night
December 23, 2025 at 4:35 AM
booksthatburn.com
God Jul!
December 22, 2025 at 4:59 AM
booksthatburn.com
When people get inspired by other people's art, you get things like "The Starry Night" (1889), because Van Gogh was inspired by Japanese art, specifically but not only "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (1831) by Katsushika Hokusai.
They are not the same image. They are not trying to be.
"The Great Wave off Kanagawa" - woodblock print. A great wave (okinami) in blue and white curls up on the left side of the page, with the crest of the wave swirling clockwise. Three narrow boats with blue-clad people are tossed about by the churning water. the boats and the sky have yellow and brown tones, contrasting with the blue and white of the water. "The Starry Night" painting A blue and white sky is dominated by a clockwise swirl of light or perhaps wind, churning in the night. Yellow stars with auras of golden light are dotted across the sky, with the bright yellow moon in the upper right corner of the painting. A green and brown tower of vegetation reaches up in the left half of the painting, while a town slumbers in the lower right.
December 15, 2025 at 3:25 PM
booksthatburn.com
"I'M NOT MAD YOU'RE MAD"

"I like it up here. Yeah, uh, that's why I'm here. I don't even want cuddles. Mweh."
A brown and orange tortoiseshell cat (Folio), curled up on top of a bookcase in a corner of the room, with her head resting against the wall. Her tail is draped over the edge of the bookcase, an assortment of fantasy books are visible on the shelf below where she is resting. The same brown and orange tortoiseshell cat (Folio), curled in a circle, sleepily glaring out into the room from her position atop the bookcase in the corner of the room. Several toy animals (a fox, a horse, and a koala) are visible on the shelf with her, each of which are basically the same size as she is.
November 27, 2025 at 5:12 PM
booksthatburn.com
When you're sulking about being denied access to secret-wall-cavity-lint but also are cute.
A brown and orange tortoiseshell cat (Folio) in loaf pose with a vaguely dissatisified expression on her face, on the top of a bookcase next to plush toys. Her cheek is lightly resting on the face of a toy fox.
November 27, 2025 at 2:42 PM
booksthatburn.com
After a day stuck in the wall after a week-long plumbing emergency in our apartment, Folio is desperate to get back to her own private Narnia in the cavity under the bathtub, accessed through a hole in the wall that is now blocked by the painting in the video.
November 27, 2025 at 1:34 PM
booksthatburn.com
Grimoire, have you considered not taking a bath next to the microphone when I'm recording?
A tortoiseshell cat (Grimoire), sitting upright next to a purple microphone, with her head turned towards the mic in a way that makes her serious golden eyes visible.
November 1, 2025 at 5:00 PM
booksthatburn.com
Happy birthday! Enjoy this photo comic I made of my cats last week.
Two tortoiseshell cats sitting on a black and white hallway rug, looking at an orange toy snake on the rug between them. The smaller cat (Detective Grim) is wearing a detective hat and has a small pipe in her mouth. The larger cat (Inspector Folio) is facing away from the camera. Transcript: Grim: "Inspector Folio, what do you have for me today?" Folio: "Good Morning Detective Grim, it appears the victim was sssssstrangled" The same cats as before, but now Inspector Folio's head is turned so her monocle is visible on her left eye. Transcript: Grim: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” Folio: "Therefore...we must invessssssstigate purrther"
October 5, 2025 at 3:41 PM
booksthatburn.com
No reviewer (or even staff member) will have perfect knowledge of all the red flags for one topic, let alone misc topics from 500 books.
Also, the more someone knows about at topic, the worse they get at estimating what non-experts would know. Everyone's list of "obvious" red flags is different!
XKCD comic 2501: Average Familiarity [Ponytail and Cueball are talking. Ponytail has her hand raised, palm up, towards Cueball.] Ponytail: Silicate chemistry is second nature to us geochemists, so it's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows the formulas for olivine and one or two feldspars. Cueball: And quartz, of course. Ponytail: Of course. [Caption below the panel] Even when they're trying to compensate for it, experts in anything wildly overestimate the average person's familiarity with their field. Title text from original: "How could anyone consider themselves a well-rounded adult without a basic understanding of silicate geochemistry? Silicates are everywhere! It's hard to throw a rock without throwing one!"
July 30, 2025 at 2:43 PM
booksthatburn.com
Here's what's known (among other names) as the "engineering triangle".
Something can be done quickly, done cheaply, or done well.
The competition relies on free labor from bloggers, and we read a lot of stuff thoroughly. This means it's cheap and meeting a quality standard.

But it's slow. So slow.
A triangle with the three points labeled "Speed", "Cost", and "Quality". Speed - "It needs to be done by [deadline]" Cost - "It needs to be done for no more than $[some amount]" Quality - "It needs to pass [some quality standard(s)]"
July 30, 2025 at 12:38 PM
booksthatburn.com
Good news! Looks like he said basically that plus more like a couple hours ago.
Screenshot of Elon Musk's X/Twitter posts from June 5th, 2025 at 12:46 PM. First post: "Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate." Second post: "Such ingratitude"
June 5, 2025 at 7:31 PM
booksthatburn.com
My moderation lists had me covered - they were already blocked, and good riddance.
bsky.app/profile/case...
bsky.app/profile/vena...
A blocked Bluesky account: Unsolicited Manuscripts (@un-manuscripts.bsky.social) Two alerts are visible: Muted by "People who can't manage basic human decency" User Blocked by "Platform Manipulation, Spam, & Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior"
April 23, 2025 at 7:48 PM
booksthatburn.com
I've started making scale mail, Folio is fit-testing it for me.
@lollardfish.bsky.social
A sleeping tortoiseshell cat, with pale bronze and orange scale mail draped like a blanket over her back.
April 19, 2025 at 2:57 AM
booksthatburn.com
An iterative process, and a rewarding one, but certain parts go very slowly.
The Good Place cactus meme, where Janet is labeled "I Want Hue", and Michael is labeled "Me". i want hue: shows a palette of ten colors. They are pink, lavender, white, orange, blue, green, dark gold, light tan, a soft blue, and a different lavender. There are lock symbols on the lavenders, dark blue, gold, and tan. Me: I'm trying to pick a high contrast color for users with protanopia. Is that orange a new color for the theme, or just fancy yellow? i want hue: It's a new color [shows a chart of color comparisons between the colors from the palette, ranked by comparing pairs of colors for contrast. At the top are pairings of dark gold and lavender, orange and lavender, orange and dark lavender, dark gold and lavender, and then a mix of tan, green, and lavender.] Me: Perfect, give it to me and I'll check it in Color Oracle i want hue: [hands a new version of the chart to me, now the same pairs of orange and lavender look very similar to the gold and lavender above and below them, but the hex values next to them clearly mark them as the same palette.] Reference only, not all shown in the image, Hex codes for colors in this palette: #bc4d8a #9393e7 #ededf3 #c05b3e #3eaae6 #60b668 #585814 #aaa75f #3a3a83 #6d6dbc
March 30, 2025 at 4:35 AM
booksthatburn.com
Playing Subnautica (again) and the color simulation is fantastic. Specifically, how red light behaves underwater.
Red is a short wavelength, which means while it's intense up close, it fades very rapidly in water. This ship is mostly red, but the back looks blue because it's further away from me.
Screenshot of a Cyclops ship from Subnautica. The front of the ship appears dark red, but the color fades to a nondescript dark blue towards the far end away from the player. A closer view of a Cyclops ship from Subnautica. The front half of the ship appears red, and the very end of the ship appears dark blue, but much more of the ship looks red in comparison to the previous image.
March 16, 2025 at 7:09 PM
booksthatburn.com
Wake up babe, new cybertruck euphemism just dropped.
Snippet of text from an article about an issue with Cybertruck body panels. "...tailgate and killing you. Just the other body panels and trim pieces. The good news is, he claims to have only seen similar issues on about 15 to 20 percent of the incEl Caminos he's worked on. The bad news is that he says it appears to be more common on new trucks..." Read More: https://www.jalopnik.com/1796761/tesla-cybertruck-body-panels-flying-off-while-driving/
February 24, 2025 at 8:12 PM
booksthatburn.com
If you see this, post a knight.
The book "Oathbreakers" with the illustrated sword on the cover perfectly covered by a real longsword, viewed from directly above. A small tortoiseshell cat with bright golden eyes and a dark face (making her eyes almost luminous in contrast) is sitting just below the book, with her body blocking part of the swordblade. Her tail is slightly blurry because the image was taken while it was mid-flick, not sure why the photographer was posing her instead of petting her.
February 15, 2025 at 2:50 PM
booksthatburn.com
Reposted with alt text
WHAT DEMOCRATS DID TODAY February 12, 2025 - Every single Senate Democrat voted against confirming Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence - Senator Raphael Warnock introduced the Capping Prescription Costs Act to cap all out- of-pocket costs on prescription drugs - Arkansas Senate Democrats successfully voted down a bill to allow municipalities to remove fluoride from their water systems - A coalition of 191 House and Senate Democrats sent a letter demanding the removal of Elon Musk's operatives from the CFPB - Democrat Ken Jenkins won a special election for Westchester County Executive, soundly defeating his Trump-backed opponent
February 13, 2025 at 1:10 PM
booksthatburn.com
THEY HAVE SEPARATE UK/US options but still spell the UK version with US spelling 😭
The Good Place Cactus meme where Janet is DaVinci Resolve and Michael is labeled "me". Janet (DaVinci Resolve): "I have several language options for you under these country flags" Michael (Me): Are you sure you have several language options or is it just English again? DaVinci Resolve: I have 30+ language options under these flags Me: Okay, give me a language that isn't English DaVinci Resolve labeled with a long list of languages, hands a cactus labeled "American English" to a disappointed me (as Michael). The countries are: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Chinese Taipei, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom.
February 9, 2025 at 12:15 AM
booksthatburn.com
Not a physical item, but I made a spreadsheet that generates the html code for my link directory website!
It took me a month to get the whole thing from zero to functional, now I'm refining it with more features.
A screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet and some of the VBA code which underlies it. The spreadsheet has columns in several colors, and the VBA code has several modules, functions, and subs. The best bit of code I made for the spreadsheet (which any other Excel nerds can have for free) is this cluster of three macros which let you find any cell in any column based on info from a particular row of any other column: Function ColNumFinder(SheetName1, ColName As String) As Integer ColNumFinder = Application.Match(ColName, SheetName1.Range("1:1"), 0) End Function Function RowNumFinder(SheetName1, RowName, colNum As Integer) As Integer Dim SearchCol As String SearchColLetter = ColLetter(colNum) SearchCol = SearchColLetter & ":" & SearchColLetter RowNumFinder = Application.Match(RowName, SheetName1.Range(SearchCol), 0) End Function Function CellFinder(SearchSheetID As Worksheet, SearchColName As String, _ AnswerColName As String, SearchRowName As String) 'Set Variable Types Dim colNum1 As Integer, RowNum1 As Integer, _ FoundCell(2) As Integer 'Starts tested portion of function colNum1 = ColNumFinder(SearchSheetID, SearchColName) RowNum1 = RowNumFinder(SearchSheetID, SearchRowName, colNum1) colNum2 = ColNumFinder(SearchSheetID, AnswerColName) FoundCell(1) = RowNum1 FoundCell(2) = colNum2 CellFinder = FoundCell End Function
February 6, 2025 at 8:19 PM
booksthatburn.com
A great choice!

This reminded me of my favorite line discussing any study: "the ice-cream signal was robust."

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
"Last summer, I got a tip about a curious scientific finding. “I’m sorry, it cracks me up every time I think about this,” my tipster said. Back in 2018, a Harvard doctoral student named Andres Ardisson Korat was presenting his research on the relationship between dairy foods and chronic disease to his thesis committee. One of his studies had led him to an unusual conclusion: Among diabetics, eating half a cup of ice cream a day was associated with a lower risk of heart problems. Needless to say, the idea that a dessert loaded with saturated fat and sugar might actually be good for you raised some eyebrows at the nation’s most influential department of nutrition." Earlier, the department chair, Frank Hu, had instructed Ardisson Korat to do some further digging: Could his research have been led astray by an artifact of chance, or a hidden source of bias, or a computational error? As Ardisson Korat spelled out on the day of his defense, his debunking efforts had been largely futile. The ice-cream signal was robust. It was robust, and kind of hilarious. “I do sort of remember the vibe being like, Hahaha, this ice-cream thing won’t go away; that’s pretty funny,” recalled my tipster, who’d attended the presentation. This was obviously not what a budding nutrition expert or his super-credentialed committee members were hoping to discover. “He and his committee had done, like, every type of analysis—they had thrown every possible test at this finding to try to make it go away. And there was nothing they could do to make it go away.”
February 4, 2025 at 6:04 PM