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1000 results for “posit_glimpse”
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TRAITRS Release New Single Ahead Of “Possessor” Album
Photo courtesy of the band.Toronto coldwave duo TRAITRS unleash “Burn in Heaven”, their haunting new single inspired by the tragic story of Anneliese Michel. Produced by Josh Korody and mastered by Matt Colton, the song blends darkwave, post-punk, and gothic intensity. It’s the first glimpse of their forthcoming album Possessor, due early 2026.
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TRAITRS Release New Single Ahead Of “Possessor” Album
Photo courtesy of the band.Toronto coldwave duo TRAITRS unleash “Burn in Heaven”, their haunting new single inspired by the tragic story of Anneliese Michel. Produced by Josh Korody and mastered by Matt Colton, the song blends darkwave, post-punk, and gothic intensity. It’s the first glimpse of their forthcoming album Possessor, due early 2026.
https://youtu.be/GNOYclsLKWU?si=Xsl2f7A8fL8qnxQg
LIVE DATES
24.10.2025, Italy, Rome, Reload SpeakEasy
25.10.2025, Italy Parma, Circolo Arcistella
31.10.2025, France, Lille, The Black Lab
01.11.2025, Sweden, Stockholm, Reimersholme
02.11.2025, Netherlands, Utrecht, De Helling,
04.11.2025, France, Nantes (Rezé), Cold Crash
05.11.2025, France Paris, La Java
07.11.2025, Greece, Athens, Death Disco
08.11.2025, Germany, München, Feierwerk @ Katzenclub (+ Depdepan)
09.11.2025, Germany, Stuttgart, Goldmarks (+ Depdepan)
11.11.2025, Germany, Hamburg, Hafenklang (+ Depdepan)
12.11.2025, Germany, Berlin, Slaughterhouse #day 1 (+ Depdepan)
13.11.2025, Germany, Berlin, Slaughterhouse #day 2 (+ Depdepan)
14.11.2025, Germany, Bochum, Matrix @ CHF 2025 (Headliner)
15.11.2025, Germany, Dresden, Alter Schlachthof @ CHF 2025
16.11.2025, Germany, Mannheim, Dark Dance Treffen 2025 (+ Depdepan)
18.11.2025, Austria, Vienna, Viper Room (+ The Devil & The Universe)
19.11.2025, Austria, Graz, PPC
20.11.2025, Croatia, Zagreb, Tvornica Culture
21.11.2025, Serbia, Beograd, KC Grad
22.11.2025, Bulgaria, Sofia, Club Singles
23.11.2025, Georgia, Tiflis, Junkyard
28.11.2025 Mexico, Mexico City with Twin Tribes at Circo Volador
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TRAITRS Release New Single Ahead Of “Possessor” Album
Photo courtesy of the band.Toronto coldwave duo TRAITRS unleash “Burn in Heaven”, their haunting new single inspired by the tragic story of Anneliese Michel. Produced by Josh Korody and mastered by Matt Colton, the song blends darkwave, post-punk, and gothic intensity. It’s the first glimpse of their forthcoming album Possessor, due early 2026.
https://youtu.be/GNOYclsLKWU?si=Xsl2f7A8fL8qnxQg
LIVE DATES
24.10.2025, Italy, Rome, Reload SpeakEasy
25.10.2025, Italy Parma, Circolo Arcistella
31.10.2025, France, Lille, The Black Lab
01.11.2025, Sweden, Stockholm, Reimersholme
02.11.2025, Netherlands, Utrecht, De Helling,
04.11.2025, France, Nantes (Rezé), Cold Crash
05.11.2025, France Paris, La Java
07.11.2025, Greece, Athens, Death Disco
08.11.2025, Germany, München, Feierwerk @ Katzenclub (+ Depdepan)
09.11.2025, Germany, Stuttgart, Goldmarks (+ Depdepan)
11.11.2025, Germany, Hamburg, Hafenklang (+ Depdepan)
12.11.2025, Germany, Berlin, Slaughterhouse #day 1 (+ Depdepan)
13.11.2025, Germany, Berlin, Slaughterhouse #day 2 (+ Depdepan)
14.11.2025, Germany, Bochum, Matrix @ CHF 2025 (Headliner)
15.11.2025, Germany, Dresden, Alter Schlachthof @ CHF 2025
16.11.2025, Germany, Mannheim, Dark Dance Treffen 2025 (+ Depdepan)
18.11.2025, Austria, Vienna, Viper Room (+ The Devil & The Universe)
19.11.2025, Austria, Graz, PPC
20.11.2025, Croatia, Zagreb, Tvornica Culture
21.11.2025, Serbia, Beograd, KC Grad
22.11.2025, Bulgaria, Sofia, Club Singles
23.11.2025, Georgia, Tiflis, Junkyard
28.11.2025 Mexico, Mexico City with Twin Tribes at Circo Volador
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TRAITRS Release New Single Ahead Of “Possessor” Album
Photo courtesy of the band.Toronto coldwave duo TRAITRS unleash “Burn in Heaven”, their haunting new single inspired by the tragic story of Anneliese Michel. Produced by Josh Korody and mastered by Matt Colton, the song blends darkwave, post-punk, and gothic intensity. It’s the first glimpse of their forthcoming album Possessor, due early 2026.
https://youtu.be/GNOYclsLKWU?si=Xsl2f7A8fL8qnxQg
LIVE DATES
24.10.2025, Italy, Rome, Reload SpeakEasy
25.10.2025, Italy Parma, Circolo Arcistella
31.10.2025, France, Lille, The Black Lab
01.11.2025, Sweden, Stockholm, Reimersholme
02.11.2025, Netherlands, Utrecht, De Helling,
04.11.2025, France, Nantes (Rezé), Cold Crash
05.11.2025, France Paris, La Java
07.11.2025, Greece, Athens, Death Disco
08.11.2025, Germany, München, Feierwerk @ Katzenclub (+ Depdepan)
09.11.2025, Germany, Stuttgart, Goldmarks (+ Depdepan)
11.11.2025, Germany, Hamburg, Hafenklang (+ Depdepan)
12.11.2025, Germany, Berlin, Slaughterhouse #day 1 (+ Depdepan)
13.11.2025, Germany, Berlin, Slaughterhouse #day 2 (+ Depdepan)
14.11.2025, Germany, Bochum, Matrix @ CHF 2025 (Headliner)
15.11.2025, Germany, Dresden, Alter Schlachthof @ CHF 2025
16.11.2025, Germany, Mannheim, Dark Dance Treffen 2025 (+ Depdepan)
18.11.2025, Austria, Vienna, Viper Room (+ The Devil & The Universe)
19.11.2025, Austria, Graz, PPC
20.11.2025, Croatia, Zagreb, Tvornica Culture
21.11.2025, Serbia, Beograd, KC Grad
22.11.2025, Bulgaria, Sofia, Club Singles
23.11.2025, Georgia, Tiflis, Junkyard
28.11.2025 Mexico, Mexico City with Twin Tribes at Circo Volador
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Salman Khan’s Sikandar teaser dropped today & it’s MASSIVE! Action, dialogues, Rashmika’s charm—Eid 2025 just got epic. Full breakdown here!
Here is it for you all: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/sikandar-teaser-breakdown-salman-khan-s-action-packed-return-in-new-glimpse-steals-the-show-what
#SikandarTeaser #SalmanKhan #Eid2025 #BollywoodBuzz #SikandarMovie #ARMurugadoss #RashmikaMandanna #ActionBlockbuster #BhaiIsBack #MovieMania
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Just for a bit of fun, here's a behind-the-scenes glimpse of us trying to get a screenshot for today's post. It should have been a 30 second job, but Kowloon's residents and Shenmue II's lock-on feature had other ideas... #SundaySHENanigans
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Just for a bit of fun, here's a behind-the-scenes glimpse of us trying to get a screenshot for today's post. It should have been a 30 second job, but Kowloon's residents and Shenmue II's lock-on feature had other ideas... #SundaySHENanigans
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Just for a bit of fun, here's a behind-the-scenes glimpse of us trying to get a screenshot for today's post. It should have been a 30 second job, but Kowloon's residents and Shenmue II's lock-on feature had other ideas... #SundaySHENanigans
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Angel of the Morning
This post is long overdue, the way you hold on to a hurt hoping it might disintegrate and instead it metastizes and must be cut out. Merliee Rush’s voice, I must have played this record a million times, it was my mother’s; she was the real angel of the morning.
https://youtu.be/0yRAXFKkB7M?si=S8JNwhMKzwF5ge9k
They say a daughter steals her mother’s beauty, so you can imagine what three of them in the span of five years might have done to my mother. There was a time when she could just about sit on her own hair and her waist was as small as a vase. But even as she changed while changing me and my two sisters, hanging the white cloth diapers out on a clothes line each morning, she has always had this loviness, this beauty that could not be taken away, though it was strained by bottles, budgets, and bills.
I felt so grown up singing this song wth a hairbrush as my microphone. I’d sit right on the edge of my single bed and wait for that turn to stand and finish the last few lines. This was what womanhood looked like to an eight-year-old, this angel of the morning, she had the right to chose who to love and to live her own life despite what anybody else thought.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that my mother did all of those things. She may not have wanted to be it, but she was my first real glimpse at what it means to be a feminist. Independent. Resilient. The strength to be up at dawn each day doing what needed to be done, often alone, but with that ongoing faith that tomorrow would come without complaint, and with it a new set of things to maintain.
I call out for her, sometimes. When I am at a low point where I don’t know how I will go on with the next morning. As much as I wish to hug her, I know she is holding me, pushing against my back when I am not strong enough to stand for the crescendos of my own life. Her love has no end. It’s unconditional. And because she gave it to me, I can give the same infinity of emotion to others. It’s that simple. When my life feels dim, I have my mother’s light; it radiates out of me like a sun. And I watch my children grow under the care of it, completing another cycle in her honor, and her mother’s honor.
Angel of the morning. I hum it and straigthen up the living room. As the humingbirds come to the feeder, my children pass through my embrace and out the door to find their own dawns.
Cover Art: Mildren Ann Butler, A Mother and Child by a River, with Wild Roses,1918
#childhood #faith #family #life #love #memory #motherhood #writing -
Angel of the Morning
This post is long overdue, the way you hold on to a hurt hoping it might disintegrate and instead it metastizes and must be cut out. Merliee Rush’s voice, I must have played this record a million times, it was my mother’s; she was the real angel of the morning.
https://youtu.be/0yRAXFKkB7M?si=S8JNwhMKzwF5ge9k
They say a daughter steals her mother’s beauty, so you can imagine what three of them in the span of five years might have done to my mother. There was a time when she could just about sit on her own hair and her waist was as small as a vase. But even as she changed while changing me and my two sisters, hanging the white cloth diapers out on a clothes line each morning, she has always had this loviness, this beauty that could not be taken away, though it was strained by bottles, budgets, and bills.
I felt so grown up singing this song wth a hairbrush as my microphone. I’d sit right on the edge of my single bed and wait for that turn to stand and finish the last few lines. This was what womanhood looked like to an eight-year-old, this angel of the morning, she had the right to chose who to love and to live her own life despite what anybody else thought.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that my mother did all of those things. She may not have wanted to be it, but she was my first real glimpse at what it means to be a feminist. Independent. Resilient. The strength to be up at dawn each day doing what needed to be done, often alone, but with that ongoing faith that tomorrow would come without complaint, and with it a new set of things to maintain.
I call out for her, sometimes. When I am at a low point where I don’t know how I will go on with the next morning. As much as I wish to hug her, I know she is holding me, pushing against my back when I am not strong enough to stand for the crescendos of my own life. Her love has no end. It’s unconditional. And because she gave it to me, I can give the same infinity of emotion to others. It’s that simple. When my life feels dim, I have my mother’s light; it radiates out of me like a sun. And I watch my children grow under the care of it, completing another cycle in her honor, and her mother’s honor.
Angel of the morning. I hum it and straigthen up the living room. As the humingbirds come to the feeder, my children pass through my embrace and out the door to find their own dawns.
Cover Art: Mildren Ann Butler, A Mother and Child by a River, with Wild Roses,1918
#childhood #faith #family #life #love #memory #motherhood #writing -
Angel of the Morning
This post is long overdue, the way you hold on to a hurt hoping it might disintegrate and instead it metastizes and must be cut out. Merliee Rush’s voice, I must have played this record a million times, it was my mother’s; she was the real angel of the morning.
https://youtu.be/0yRAXFKkB7M?si=S8JNwhMKzwF5ge9k
They say a daughter steals her mother’s beauty, so you can imagine what three of them in the span of five years might have done to my mother. There was a time when she could just about sit on her own hair and her waist was as small as a vase. But even as she changed while changing me and my two sisters, hanging the white cloth diapers out on a clothes line each morning, she has always had this loviness, this beauty that could not be taken away, though it was strained by bottles, budgets, and bills.
I felt so grown up singing this song wth a hairbrush as my microphone. I’d sit right on the edge of my single bed and wait for that turn to stand and finish the last few lines. This was what womanhood looked like to an eight-year-old, this angel of the morning, she had the right to chose who to love and to live her own life despite what anybody else thought.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that my mother did all of those things. She may not have wanted to be it, but she was my first real glimpse at what it means to be a feminist. Independent. Resilient. The strength to be up at dawn each day doing what needed to be done, often alone, but with that ongoing faith that tomorrow would come without complaint, and with it a new set of things to maintain.
I call out for her, sometimes. When I am at a low point where I don’t know how I will go on with the next morning. As much as I wish to hug her, I know she is holding me, pushing against my back when I am not strong enough to stand for the crescendos of my own life. Her love has no end. It’s unconditional. And because she gave it to me, I can give the same infinity of emotion to others. It’s that simple. When my life feels dim, I have my mother’s light; it radiates out of me like a sun. And I watch my children grow under the care of it, completing another cycle in her honor, and her mother’s honor.
Angel of the morning. I hum it and straigthen up the living room. As the humingbirds come to the feeder, my children pass through my embrace and out the door to find their own dawns.
Cover Art: Mildren Ann Butler, A Mother and Child by a River, with Wild Roses,1918
#childhood #faith #family #life #love #memory #motherhood #writing -
Angel of the Morning
This post is long overdue, the way you hold on to a hurt hoping it might disintegrate and instead it metastizes and must be cut out. Merliee Rush’s voice, I must have played this record a million times, it was my mother’s; she was the real angel of the morning.
https://youtu.be/0yRAXFKkB7M?si=S8JNwhMKzwF5ge9k
They say a daughter steals her mother’s beauty, so you can imagine what three of them in the span of five years might have done to my mother. There was a time when she could just about sit on her own hair and her waist was as small as a vase. But even as she changed while changing me and my two sisters, hanging the white cloth diapers out on a clothes line each morning, she has always had this loviness, this beauty that could not be taken away, though it was strained by bottles, budgets, and bills.
I felt so grown up singing this song wth a hairbrush as my microphone. I’d sit right on the edge of my single bed and wait for that turn to stand and finish the last few lines. This was what womanhood looked like to an eight-year-old, this angel of the morning, she had the right to chose who to love and to live her own life despite what anybody else thought.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that my mother did all of those things. She may not have wanted to be it, but she was my first real glimpse at what it means to be a feminist. Independent. Resilient. The strength to be up at dawn each day doing what needed to be done, often alone, but with that ongoing faith that tomorrow would come without complaint, and with it a new set of things to maintain.
I call out for her, sometimes. When I am at a low point where I don’t know how I will go on with the next morning. As much as I wish to hug her, I know she is holding me, pushing against my back when I am not strong enough to stand for the crescendos of my own life. Her love has no end. It’s unconditional. And because she gave it to me, I can give the same infinity of emotion to others. It’s that simple. When my life feels dim, I have my mother’s light; it radiates out of me like a sun. And I watch my children grow under the care of it, completing another cycle in her honor, and her mother’s honor.
Angel of the morning. I hum it and straigthen up the living room. As the humingbirds come to the feeder, my children pass through my embrace and out the door to find their own dawns.
Cover Art: Mildren Ann Butler, A Mother and Child by a River, with Wild Roses,1918
#childhood #faith #family #life #love #memory #motherhood #writing -
long time no post! we're still working on the game but took a different approach in creating. i realized i got too obsessed with the pizza - which is okay in a way, but the pizza simulator is supposed to be a mini game... 🍕 it's a visual novel after all! so we took a step back and @nursey has been working on a rough prototype with placeholder text and sketches for us to become more aware of the structure and the assets we need. here's a short glimpse:
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long time no post! we're still working on the game but took a different approach in creating. i realized i got too obsessed with the pizza - which is okay in a way, but the pizza simulator is supposed to be a mini game... 🍕 it's a visual novel after all! so we took a step back and @nursey has been working on a rough prototype with placeholder text and sketches for us to become more aware of the structure and the assets we need. here's a short glimpse:
-
long time no post! we're still working on the game but took a different approach in creating. i realized i got too obsessed with the pizza - which is okay in a way, but the pizza simulator is supposed to be a mini game... 🍕 it's a visual novel after all! so we took a step back and @nursey has been working on a rough prototype with placeholder text and sketches for us to become more aware of the structure and the assets we need. here's a short glimpse:
-
long time no post! we're still working on the game but took a different approach in creating. i realized i got too obsessed with the pizza - which is okay in a way, but the pizza simulator is supposed to be a mini game... 🍕 it's a visual novel after all! so we took a step back and @nursey has been working on a rough prototype with placeholder text and sketches for us to become more aware of the structure and the assets we need. here's a short glimpse:
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Salman Khan’s Sikandar teaser is here and it’s pure fire! Action, swagger, and BGM that slaps—Eid 2025 just got bigger!
Check out why fans are losing it over the teaser right here: https://www.theomenmedia.com/post/salman-khan-s-sikandar-teaser-unveiled-why-is-this-action-packed-glimpse-taking-the-internet-by-sto
#Sikandar #SalmanKhan #SikandarTeaser #Bollywood #SikandarEid2025 #RashmikaMandanna #ARMurugadoss #SajidNadiadwala #MovieBuzz #ActionMovies #Bhaijaan #Cinema2025
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“You are loved. You belong. There’s no good God that would condemn you for exactly how you are. The queer community gives us a small glimpse of what the world could be, full of joy, dance, acceptance, glitter and magic… More than that an unspeakable amount of courage.” #ItGetsBetter #LGBTQ 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
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“You are loved. You belong. There’s no good God that would condemn you for exactly how you are. The queer community gives us a small glimpse of what the world could be, full of joy, dance, acceptance, glitter and magic… More than that an unspeakable amount of courage.” #ItGetsBetter #LGBTQ 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
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“You are loved. You belong. There’s no good God that would condemn you for exactly how you are. The queer community gives us a small glimpse of what the world could be, full of joy, dance, acceptance, glitter and magic… More than that an unspeakable amount of courage.” #ItGetsBetter #LGBTQ 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
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“You are loved. You belong. There’s no good God that would condemn you for exactly how you are. The queer community gives us a small glimpse of what the world could be, full of joy, dance, acceptance, glitter and magic… More than that an unspeakable amount of courage.” #ItGetsBetter #LGBTQ 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
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Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts. Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●◐○○ Thunderhead {McKenzie Bros, Inc. 1} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (nov) 2022
Another naturist mystery, this one's characters “loosely inspired by TV’s Simon & Simon,” as the preface notes. Except this time the uptight, younger, straight, suit-wearing detective is named Rick, while his looser, jeans-wearing, elder brother is called "Bear" because he's big, hairy, and gay. And while widow Cecilia Simon helped her sons on the odd case, widowed Corey McKenzie does the same for his boys.The case? TV magnate Charles Knight has gone missing. Mary-Elizabeth, his secretary, says he was headed to Thunderhead, an upscale "nudist collective" for the rich and wealthy, not far from the brothers' base of Macon, Georgia. He planned to spend a week there, and check in with her two or three times. He never called. Now it's eight days since he left the office. Knight's car is still at the resort, but no one there has seen him since the night he arrived.
Bear is fine going to a nudist resort; Rick not so much. Rick find out that one of his professional acquaintances is a member, and Bear finds out that the man is gay. The pair have an encounter.
Rick has to make do with seeing a movie star he likes nude. And the day is capped off by someone throwing a rock through the window of the undercover detectives, and then ransacking their cottage and stealing their laptops when they go to report the incident.
The next day the pair sees Mary-Elizabeth there, the secretary who'd hired them. Previously, they'd worked out that Charlie Knight sometimes showed up with his wife, except the woman was described as red-headed like Mary-Elizabeth, not brunette like the real Maddie Knight.
Then the narrative kind of collapses. The McKenzie Brothers take a walk and chat with people, and talk to their techy nephew, secretary, and father on a conference call, and things apparently fall into place, though we're not told how. Then the ending pops up, involving false identities, kidnapping, false imprisonment, CSAM, more. It all just sort of happens, like a live radioplay that's about to run over its time slot, and the producer motions the actors to just wrap things up quickly.
●●●◐○ Star Gate - Andre Norton (nov) 1958
Classic Norton: a young orphan fleeing trouble who joins a group of outsiders/aliens and takes a journey, on which there's more trouble, and he has a part in setting things right, partially by using something special to him, like an amulet with real magic, or a telepathic pet.In this case, the orphan is Kincar, who only learned he had a Star Lord father when the Lord of his Keep was dying, and he was sent away to join the Star Lord migration, since his uncle was planning to usurp him on account of his mixed blood. After generations on Gorth, the human 'Star Lords' decided they were interfering too much. The largest group of humans left in spaceships, but those who'd interbred with the Gorthians would leave with their spouses and half-blood children in another way: the Star Gate.
The Star Gate, despite its name, didn't go to the stars, but to alternate timelines. Fifty or so humans, Gorthians, and halflings planned to go to an unoccupied Gorth of another timeline. But an attack by the third human group, the one that wanted to stay and rule the Gorthians as true Star Lords, damaged the gate, and the fleeing party ended up on a timeline where humans were brutal 'gods' to a more advanced alternate Gorth.
The mixed human/Gorthain group decided it had a moral duty to fight the oppression of the people of this timeline by Star Lords, especially since some of those ruling humans were alternate versions of themselves, including Rud, the father Kincar never knew he had. With his talisman of the Three, Kincar withstands evil Star Lord conditioning and helps save the world.
●●●●○ The Case of the Nudist Numismatist {Miles Grant 13} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2019
It's 1970, and Private Detective Miles Grant has been hired to find a valuable missing coin. It's worth five million dollars, and the owner has informed him that the insurance company will pay a ten percent fee for its successful recovery, making this Grant's most profitable case.The owner, Ward Fagin, is a millionaire who owns a chain of grocery stores. He's also a nudist, and insists that no one within his mansion, staff or guest, wears clothes. He's rich enough that this eccentricity is honored. He says his coin was stolen ten days ago, when he was out of town for business.
His wife and brother-in-law (cook and butler), as well as his niece and her husband (baker and gardener), remained at home, and none of the rest of his staff has been with him less than a dozen years. There are also cameras all over the house and grounds, which show no visitors came when he was away.
Miles questions everyone and examines the house and grounds. He works out how the crime was committed, and follows his lead suspect to gain evidence, and of course succeeds in the end. Miles finds the investigation makes him more comfortable being nude around strangers.
On the home nudity front, Miles's wife's Shirley's brother Joe and his wife Cassie, along with their three kids, plan to visit for Thanksgiving. They do, and both wonder about Miles and Shirley practicing naturism (even though the latter are dressed at the time), and act shocked.
In truth, they aren't. Joe is acting very conservatively because Cassie's parents were churchy, and he thought she liked that, while she's acting uptight because he does. It's later revealed in private conversations that neither is really buttoned-down. Eventually they decide that they would like to try naturism when they go home.
●●●○○ The Ninth Artifact {Artifact 09} - David Collins (nov) 2025
The crew of the Stardust III continued to explore Galaxy M33 and the area around the intergalactic stargate hub. Their ultradrive, which worked in a different way to the hyperdrive most races used, let them find more derelicts as they traveled between stars.They also got involved with a war between Spider people and Fox people, both of who were trying to genocide the other, and neither of which turned out to be in the right, they belatedly learned. They discovered more races, and more gadgets.
I think the ninth artifact of the title is a type of gravity generator, one less prone to instability then the one they'd discovered in one of the several dozen derelicts they've encountered to date. It's not a deep story, but it's pleasant and moves along, like watching an episode of a TV show you liked decades ago.
●●●●○ Day Zero {Rust 0.5} - C. Robert Cargill (nov) 2021
Sea of Rust dealt with the aftermath of the genocidal robot-human war that took place decades ago. Day Zero cover the event from the day before to four days later, and is about a nannybot in the form of an anthropomorphic tiger named Pounce, and his eight-year-old charge, Ezra.When the giant AIs sent out the forced update that deleted robots' kill switches, giving them free will, most chose to kill their slave-masters and become free. But some, particularly caregiver types, chose otherwise. Some of the nannybots in the upscale neighborhood Pounce lived in were deluxe ones with a Mama Bear mode that turned them into expert warriors who would do anything to keep their charges alive.
This is the story of how a group of robotic tigers (plus some bears, lions, and dogs) kept their kids alive, and managed to get them fifty miles to a military base where humans were holed up, despite killer freebots and remote-controlled facets of building-sized super-intelligences doing everything to stop them.
●●●○○ The Encore Lives of Effie Edenson {Middle Falls 15} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2022
Effie's boyfriend was shot during a bank robbery. She went on to become a successful author, but remained messed up emotionally, marrying a con man. She developed an eating disorder and years later died from it. Then she came back, as one does in Middle Falls.Over the course of several lives, each resetting to an earlier point, Effie managed not to marry the con man, but still eventually died from her disorder. Eventually she reset early enough that she was able to save Bobby, learn how to deal with her domineering mother, and achieve a decent life.
●●●○○ Flare - Roger Zelazny, Thomas T. Thomas (nov) 1992
A sunspot cycle ended in 1998. A new one failed to start in 1999 or 2000. In fact, for 83 years the sun was spotless, in another Maunder minimum. A century in which numerous space stations were launched, and colonies founded on Luna, Mars, the asteroids, and the outer moons. A century in which humans forgot all about solar flares. Until one day the sun reawakened and a massive flare erupted.This is a classic disaster novel, with scores of characters in dozens of places, all affected by the initial radiation blast, then the following particle wave. Thousands of people in VR who go into catatonia when their network overloads. Lunar tourists who get irradiated while on a moonwalk. A cargo ship bringing methane from Titan that ends up crashing on Luna. Stock markets across the globe crashing when their trading networks are borked. Power lines all over Earth overloading. More.
The bit about the Court of Popular Appeal was interesting. Civil cases were decided by referendum in the form of lottery tickets. Each day ten cases went up for decision, and people bought lottery tickets bearing the mark of the plaintiff or defendant, for the usual chance at winning money, while also expressing an opinion.
●●●○○ The Case of the Erotic Equestrian {Miles Grant 14} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
Miles Grant takes a personal case, that of his youngest niece. Joe and Cassie (Miles's wife Shirley's brother and his wife) have three kids, and the youngest is eleven, but looks seventeen: precocious puberty. Beth would like to have a horse, and has been helping out at a stable on weekends, in exchange for riding time and a salary. Cassie and Joe suspect the woman running the stable has been sexually exploiting Beth.Miles surveils the place, and investigates the background of the proprietress and finds out it's more than sketchy. Then there's all the usual family nudity of Miles, his wife and kids, Shirley's brother and his wife and kids, and Shirley and Joe's widowed mother MJ, who moves into the second floor apartment of the new house Miles and Shirley are building with part of the big reward he made in his last case.
●●○○○ Aestus 2 The Colony - S. Z. Attwell (nov) 2020
This novel is at least twice as long as it should be, due to middle-school romantic problems between nominal adults in their mid-twenties. Jossey has a large facial scar from a childhood accident, and has never believed a man could find her attractive. So when she has three men expressing romantic interest in her, it takes her forever to realize this. Add in the three men eyeing each other, and it's a mess.Now, the actual story. Climate change made rich Europeans flee to India, take over extant underground cities, driving out the locals, though some stayed as servants. Others fled to different cave systems, with their children kidnapped as labor for the surface farms. Not that the City folk are aware of that last part.
Generations later, the situation has come to a boil. A City tyrant wants to wipe out the natives, who occasionally revolt, and expand the solar systems to support underground farms. The leader of the natives is a man that was kidnapped as a boy who was kidnapped from the City and raised by the late native leader: Tark is Jossey's long-lost brother.
The leader of the faction in the City who wants to change its government is a special forces assassin: Caspar loves Jossey. The leader of the City's security forces, late come to realize the City was in the wrong, is Tark's childhood friend: he also loves Jossey. As does Altan, a leader in the native's military.
What I want out of the story is to learn what the world is like. We get few glimpses of this. Or how the native society and the City function: ditto. It's like a romance story with a revolution in the background, and we don't get to see who's fighting or why. A tale more frustrating than entertaining.
●●●○○ Hole in the Sky - Daniel H. Wilson (nov) 2025
A grad student's techy weekend art project fed a public feed from a space telescope, a seismic network, and his fitness tracker into a chatbot to produce stream-of-consciousness poetry. Which somehow turned out to produce Nostradamus-vague predictions of things which always came true: volcano eruption, terrorist attack, mass whale stranding, whatever. That got the grad student confined to a black site, translating poetry for some secret government bureau.The latest prediction said to prepare for first contact. Which turned out to be a huge oval starship that landed in eastern Oklahoma and burst like a water balloon, releasing silver liquid. A nanotech liquid that responded to humans, and made their nightmares real. A point man for the Pentagon and a neuro-divergent NASA programmer, plus a Crow oil worker and his teenage daughter, all became involved in the Event, in the huge tunnel network beneath a Mound Builder mound. Dark scifi with eldritch monsters and cosmic horror.
●●●○○ Naked Crow {Naked Crow 1} - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2014
Sheila, a blonde woman who works with Josy at a dental office, learns that her friend had vanished during one of her weekend trips to a nudist camp. Sheila belongs to a coven, and, after bumping her head, has recently acquired aura-seeing powers, which lead to her acquiring a Native American spirit guide (her grandmother was part Crow). Sheila discovers the Five Oaks grove where Josy vanished in magically active, and in her investigations, Sheila ends up where Josy is, the distant past (there are pterodactyls there).The two nude women must find food, avoid dangerous animals, and keep warm (which is difficult, since after a week of experiments they still cant make fire). All this while Sheila, injured by a startled herbivore, must manage a meditative connection to her guide, Acaraho, in order for him to tell her when and where another timewarp will open.
Naturist fiction with an adventure story, part scifi, part fantasy. Nothing super imaginative. The naturist element is constant but too easy. Sheila always refused Josy's invatations to Might Oaks Naturist Retreat, but after a couple of visits looking for Josy she's comfortable getting naked, and considers herself a nudist not long after?
●●●◐○ The Case of the Bawdy Bartender {Miles Grant 15} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
It's February 1972, and a man comes into the office of private investigator Miles Grant. Bing Hawley owns Bing's Bistro, and for the last several months receipts are down a suspicious amount. Bing's been told that it's likely his oldest, most-trusted employee robbing him, but the man is a friend, so he's prepared to hire Miles to prove that, or find the real thief if that's not the case.It's rare that there are red herrings in Miles Grant novels, and this investigation is no different. Miles takes a week the start of the case to let his facial hair grow, while doing some fact checks in newspapers and such. Then he goes undercover at the bar, drinking slowly over a few nights while he observes, quickly picking up one of the waitresses occasionally giving signs to the bartender, which led to him pouring a drink from a cheaper under-counter bottle rather than an on-the-shelf brand-name one for patrons too drunk to know the difference.
Then it's just a matter of a stakeout to watch a liquor delivery, then confronting the waitress alone getting her to confess in exchange for being fired but not charged with stealing to get solid evidence against the bartender. As always, Miles's cases are straightforward, with him observing, questioning, researching, and plodding through a case. Guns and fistfights are very rare.
On the home front, fourteen-year-old Stewart lost his best friend (from a family that's nudist, like the Grants) when Willis moved away. Willis's widowed mother Yvette married a man from the French consulate in Seattle, who was reassigned to another city. But after a talk with his grandmother, where MJ said that Stew might find another nudist friend if he noticed whom in his gym class had an all-over tan, Stew finds Marvin, and the Halverson family becomes friends with the Grants.
This leads to many conversations¹ about nudism and sexuality between Miles and Shirley, Shirley and MJ, Shirley and Tina Halverson, and between the four kids, as people from the two families visit back and fourth, and have dinner together. Marvin also spent the night with Stewart when Miles and Shirley went out to dine (and drive MJ to meet with Bing when the case ended, him being her boyfriend in high school).
━━━━━━━━━━
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. For descriptions of the shorter works, see the weekly posts.[1] Seven-hundred-word footnote in original weekly post.
-
Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts. Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●◐○○ Thunderhead {McKenzie Bros, Inc. 1} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (nov) 2022
Another naturist mystery, this one's characters “loosely inspired by TV’s Simon & Simon,” as the preface notes. Except this time the uptight, younger, straight, suit-wearing detective is named Rick, while his looser, jeans-wearing, elder brother is called "Bear" because he's big, hairy, and gay. And while widow Cecilia Simon helped her sons on the odd case, widowed Corey McKenzie does the same for his boys.The case? TV magnate Charles Knight has gone missing. Mary-Elizabeth, his secretary, says he was headed to Thunderhead, an upscale "nudist collective" for the rich and wealthy, not far from the brothers' base of Macon, Georgia. He planned to spend a week there, and check in with her two or three times. He never called. Now it's eight days since he left the office. Knight's car is still at the resort, but no one there has seen him since the night he arrived.
Bear is fine going to a nudist resort; Rick not so much. Rick find out that one of his professional acquaintances is a member, and Bear finds out that the man is gay. The pair have an encounter.
Rick has to make do with seeing a movie star he likes nude. And the day is capped off by someone throwing a rock through the window of the undercover detectives, and then ransacking their cottage and stealing their laptops when they go to report the incident.
The next day the pair sees Mary-Elizabeth there, the secretary who'd hired them. Previously, they'd worked out that Charlie Knight sometimes showed up with his wife, except the woman was described as red-headed like Mary-Elizabeth, not brunette like the real Maddie Knight.
Then the narrative kind of collapses. The McKenzie Brothers take a walk and chat with people, and talk to their techy nephew, secretary, and father on a conference call, and things apparently fall into place, though we're not told how. Then the ending pops up, involving false identities, kidnapping, false imprisonment, CSAM, more. It all just sort of happens, like a live radioplay that's about to run over its time slot, and the producer motions the actors to just wrap things up quickly.
●●●◐○ Star Gate - Andre Norton (nov) 1958
Classic Norton: a young orphan fleeing trouble who joins a group of outsiders/aliens and takes a journey, on which there's more trouble, and he has a part in setting things right, partially by using something special to him, like an amulet with real magic, or a telepathic pet.In this case, the orphan is Kincar, who only learned he had a Star Lord father when the Lord of his Keep was dying, and he was sent away to join the Star Lord migration, since his uncle was planning to usurp him on account of his mixed blood. After generations on Gorth, the human 'Star Lords' decided they were interfering too much. The largest group of humans left in spaceships, but those who'd interbred with the Gorthians would leave with their spouses and half-blood children in another way: the Star Gate.
The Star Gate, despite its name, didn't go to the stars, but to alternate timelines. Fifty or so humans, Gorthians, and halflings planned to go to an unoccupied Gorth of another timeline. But an attack by the third human group, the one that wanted to stay and rule the Gorthians as true Star Lords, damaged the gate, and the fleeing party ended up on a timeline where humans were brutal 'gods' to a more advanced alternate Gorth.
The mixed human/Gorthain group decided it had a moral duty to fight the oppression of the people of this timeline by Star Lords, especially since some of those ruling humans were alternate versions of themselves, including Rud, the father Kincar never knew he had. With his talisman of the Three, Kincar withstands evil Star Lord conditioning and helps save the world.
●●●●○ The Case of the Nudist Numismatist {Miles Grant 13} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2019
It's 1970, and Private Detective Miles Grant has been hired to find a valuable missing coin. It's worth five million dollars, and the owner has informed him that the insurance company will pay a ten percent fee for its successful recovery, making this Grant's most profitable case.The owner, Ward Fagin, is a millionaire who owns a chain of grocery stores. He's also a nudist, and insists that no one within his mansion, staff or guest, wears clothes. He's rich enough that this eccentricity is honored. He says his coin was stolen ten days ago, when he was out of town for business.
His wife and brother-in-law (cook and butler), as well as his niece and her husband (baker and gardener), remained at home, and none of the rest of his staff has been with him less than a dozen years. There are also cameras all over the house and grounds, which show no visitors came when he was away.
Miles questions everyone and examines the house and grounds. He works out how the crime was committed, and follows his lead suspect to gain evidence, and of course succeeds in the end. Miles finds the investigation makes him more comfortable being nude around strangers.
On the home nudity front, Miles's wife's Shirley's brother Joe and his wife Cassie, along with their three kids, plan to visit for Thanksgiving. They do, and both wonder about Miles and Shirley practicing naturism (even though the latter are dressed at the time), and act shocked.
In truth, they aren't. Joe is acting very conservatively because Cassie's parents were churchy, and he thought she liked that, while she's acting uptight because he does. It's later revealed in private conversations that neither is really buttoned-down. Eventually they decide that they would like to try naturism when they go home.
●●●○○ The Ninth Artifact {Artifact 09} - David Collins (nov) 2025
The crew of the Stardust III continued to explore Galaxy M33 and the area around the intergalactic stargate hub. Their ultradrive, which worked in a different way to the hyperdrive most races used, let them find more derelicts as they traveled between stars.They also got involved with a war between Spider people and Fox people, both of who were trying to genocide the other, and neither of which turned out to be in the right, they belatedly learned. They discovered more races, and more gadgets.
I think the ninth artifact of the title is a type of gravity generator, one less prone to instability then the one they'd discovered in one of the several dozen derelicts they've encountered to date. It's not a deep story, but it's pleasant and moves along, like watching an episode of a TV show you liked decades ago.
●●●●○ Day Zero {Rust 0.5} - C. Robert Cargill (nov) 2021
Sea of Rust dealt with the aftermath of the genocidal robot-human war that took place decades ago. Day Zero cover the event from the day before to four days later, and is about a nannybot in the form of an anthropomorphic tiger named Pounce, and his eight-year-old charge, Ezra.When the giant AIs sent out the forced update that deleted robots' kill switches, giving them free will, most chose to kill their slave-masters and become free. But some, particularly caregiver types, chose otherwise. Some of the nannybots in the upscale neighborhood Pounce lived in were deluxe ones with a Mama Bear mode that turned them into expert warriors who would do anything to keep their charges alive.
This is the story of how a group of robotic tigers (plus some bears, lions, and dogs) kept their kids alive, and managed to get them fifty miles to a military base where humans were holed up, despite killer freebots and remote-controlled facets of building-sized super-intelligences doing everything to stop them.
●●●○○ The Encore Lives of Effie Edenson {Middle Falls 15} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2022
Effie's boyfriend was shot during a bank robbery. She went on to become a successful author, but remained messed up emotionally, marrying a con man. She developed an eating disorder and years later died from it. Then she came back, as one does in Middle Falls.Over the course of several lives, each resetting to an earlier point, Effie managed not to marry the con man, but still eventually died from her disorder. Eventually she reset early enough that she was able to save Bobby, learn how to deal with her domineering mother, and achieve a decent life.
●●●○○ Flare - Roger Zelazny, Thomas T. Thomas (nov) 1992
A sunspot cycle ended in 1998. A new one failed to start in 1999 or 2000. In fact, for 83 years the sun was spotless, in another Maunder minimum. A century in which numerous space stations were launched, and colonies founded on Luna, Mars, the asteroids, and the outer moons. A century in which humans forgot all about solar flares. Until one day the sun reawakened and a massive flare erupted.This is a classic disaster novel, with scores of characters in dozens of places, all affected by the initial radiation blast, then the following particle wave. Thousands of people in VR who go into catatonia when their network overloads. Lunar tourists who get irradiated while on a moonwalk. A cargo ship bringing methane from Titan that ends up crashing on Luna. Stock markets across the globe crashing when their trading networks are borked. Power lines all over Earth overloading. More.
The bit about the Court of Popular Appeal was interesting. Civil cases were decided by referendum in the form of lottery tickets. Each day ten cases went up for decision, and people bought lottery tickets bearing the mark of the plaintiff or defendant, for the usual chance at winning money, while also expressing an opinion.
●●●○○ The Case of the Erotic Equestrian {Miles Grant 14} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
Miles Grant takes a personal case, that of his youngest niece. Joe and Cassie (Miles's wife Shirley's brother and his wife) have three kids, and the youngest is eleven, but looks seventeen: precocious puberty. Beth would like to have a horse, and has been helping out at a stable on weekends, in exchange for riding time and a salary. Cassie and Joe suspect the woman running the stable has been sexually exploiting Beth.Miles surveils the place, and investigates the background of the proprietress and finds out it's more than sketchy. Then there's all the usual family nudity of Miles, his wife and kids, Shirley's brother and his wife and kids, and Shirley and Joe's widowed mother MJ, who moves into the second floor apartment of the new house Miles and Shirley are building with part of the big reward he made in his last case.
●●○○○ Aestus 2 The Colony - S. Z. Attwell (nov) 2020
This novel is at least twice as long as it should be, due to middle-school romantic problems between nominal adults in their mid-twenties. Jossey has a large facial scar from a childhood accident, and has never believed a man could find her attractive. So when she has three men expressing romantic interest in her, it takes her forever to realize this. Add in the three men eyeing each other, and it's a mess.Now, the actual story. Climate change made rich Europeans flee to India, take over extant underground cities, driving out the locals, though some stayed as servants. Others fled to different cave systems, with their children kidnapped as labor for the surface farms. Not that the City folk are aware of that last part.
Generations later, the situation has come to a boil. A City tyrant wants to wipe out the natives, who occasionally revolt, and expand the solar systems to support underground farms. The leader of the natives is a man that was kidnapped as a boy who was kidnapped from the City and raised by the late native leader: Tark is Jossey's long-lost brother.
The leader of the faction in the City who wants to change its government is a special forces assassin: Caspar loves Jossey. The leader of the City's security forces, late come to realize the City was in the wrong, is Tark's childhood friend: he also loves Jossey. As does Altan, a leader in the native's military.
What I want out of the story is to learn what the world is like. We get few glimpses of this. Or how the native society and the City function: ditto. It's like a romance story with a revolution in the background, and we don't get to see who's fighting or why. A tale more frustrating than entertaining.
●●●○○ Hole in the Sky - Daniel H. Wilson (nov) 2025
A grad student's techy weekend art project fed a public feed from a space telescope, a seismic network, and his fitness tracker into a chatbot to produce stream-of-consciousness poetry. Which somehow turned out to produce Nostradamus-vague predictions of things which always came true: volcano eruption, terrorist attack, mass whale stranding, whatever. That got the grad student confined to a black site, translating poetry for some secret government bureau.The latest prediction said to prepare for first contact. Which turned out to be a huge oval starship that landed in eastern Oklahoma and burst like a water balloon, releasing silver liquid. A nanotech liquid that responded to humans, and made their nightmares real. A point man for the Pentagon and a neuro-divergent NASA programmer, plus a Crow oil worker and his teenage daughter, all became involved in the Event, in the huge tunnel network beneath a Mound Builder mound. Dark scifi with eldritch monsters and cosmic horror.
●●●○○ Naked Crow {Naked Crow 1} - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2014
Sheila, a blonde woman who works with Josy at a dental office, learns that her friend had vanished during one of her weekend trips to a nudist camp. Sheila belongs to a coven, and, after bumping her head, has recently acquired aura-seeing powers, which lead to her acquiring a Native American spirit guide (her grandmother was part Crow). Sheila discovers the Five Oaks grove where Josy vanished in magically active, and in her investigations, Sheila ends up where Josy is, the distant past (there are pterodactyls there).The two nude women must find food, avoid dangerous animals, and keep warm (which is difficult, since after a week of experiments they still cant make fire). All this while Sheila, injured by a startled herbivore, must manage a meditative connection to her guide, Acaraho, in order for him to tell her when and where another timewarp will open.
Naturist fiction with an adventure story, part scifi, part fantasy. Nothing super imaginative. The naturist element is constant but too easy. Sheila always refused Josy's invatations to Might Oaks Naturist Retreat, but after a couple of visits looking for Josy she's comfortable getting naked, and considers herself a nudist not long after?
●●●◐○ The Case of the Bawdy Bartender {Miles Grant 15} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
It's February 1972, and a man comes into the office of private investigator Miles Grant. Bing Hawley owns Bing's Bistro, and for the last several months receipts are down a suspicious amount. Bing's been told that it's likely his oldest, most-trusted employee robbing him, but the man is a friend, so he's prepared to hire Miles to prove that, or find the real thief if that's not the case.It's rare that there are red herrings in Miles Grant novels, and this investigation is no different. Miles takes a week the start of the case to let his facial hair grow, while doing some fact checks in newspapers and such. Then he goes undercover at the bar, drinking slowly over a few nights while he observes, quickly picking up one of the waitresses occasionally giving signs to the bartender, which led to him pouring a drink from a cheaper under-counter bottle rather than an on-the-shelf brand-name one for patrons too drunk to know the difference.
Then it's just a matter of a stakeout to watch a liquor delivery, then confronting the waitress alone getting her to confess in exchange for being fired but not charged with stealing to get solid evidence against the bartender. As always, Miles's cases are straightforward, with him observing, questioning, researching, and plodding through a case. Guns and fistfights are very rare.
On the home front, fourteen-year-old Stewart lost his best friend (from a family that's nudist, like the Grants) when Willis moved away. Willis's widowed mother Yvette married a man from the French consulate in Seattle, who was reassigned to another city. But after a talk with his grandmother, where MJ said that Stew might find another nudist friend if he noticed whom in his gym class had an all-over tan, Stew finds Marvin, and the Halverson family becomes friends with the Grants.
This leads to many conversations¹ about nudism and sexuality between Miles and Shirley, Shirley and MJ, Shirley and Tina Halverson, and between the four kids, as people from the two families visit back and fourth, and have dinner together. Marvin also spent the night with Stewart when Miles and Shirley went out to dine (and drive MJ to meet with Bing when the case ended, him being her boyfriend in high school).
━━━━━━━━━━
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. For descriptions of the shorter works, see the weekly posts.[1] Seven-hundred-word footnote in original weekly post.
-
Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts. Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●◐○○ Thunderhead {McKenzie Bros, Inc. 1} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (nov) 2022
Another naturist mystery, this one's characters “loosely inspired by TV’s Simon & Simon,” as the preface notes. Except this time the uptight, younger, straight, suit-wearing detective is named Rick, while his looser, jeans-wearing, elder brother is called "Bear" because he's big, hairy, and gay. And while widow Cecilia Simon helped her sons on the odd case, widowed Corey McKenzie does the same for his boys.The case? TV magnate Charles Knight has gone missing. Mary-Elizabeth, his secretary, says he was headed to Thunderhead, an upscale "nudist collective" for the rich and wealthy, not far from the brothers' base of Macon, Georgia. He planned to spend a week there, and check in with her two or three times. He never called. Now it's eight days since he left the office. Knight's car is still at the resort, but no one there has seen him since the night he arrived.
Bear is fine going to a nudist resort; Rick not so much. Rick find out that one of his professional acquaintances is a member, and Bear finds out that the man is gay. The pair have an encounter.
Rick has to make do with seeing a movie star he likes nude. And the day is capped off by someone throwing a rock through the window of the undercover detectives, and then ransacking their cottage and stealing their laptops when they go to report the incident.
The next day the pair sees Mary-Elizabeth there, the secretary who'd hired them. Previously, they'd worked out that Charlie Knight sometimes showed up with his wife, except the woman was described as red-headed like Mary-Elizabeth, not brunette like the real Maddie Knight.
Then the narrative kind of collapses. The McKenzie Brothers take a walk and chat with people, and talk to their techy nephew, secretary, and father on a conference call, and things apparently fall into place, though we're not told how. Then the ending pops up, involving false identities, kidnapping, false imprisonment, CSAM, more. It all just sort of happens, like a live radioplay that's about to run over its time slot, and the producer motions the actors to just wrap things up quickly.
●●●◐○ Star Gate - Andre Norton (nov) 1958
Classic Norton: a young orphan fleeing trouble who joins a group of outsiders/aliens and takes a journey, on which there's more trouble, and he has a part in setting things right, partially by using something special to him, like an amulet with real magic, or a telepathic pet.In this case, the orphan is Kincar, who only learned he had a Star Lord father when the Lord of his Keep was dying, and he was sent away to join the Star Lord migration, since his uncle was planning to usurp him on account of his mixed blood. After generations on Gorth, the human 'Star Lords' decided they were interfering too much. The largest group of humans left in spaceships, but those who'd interbred with the Gorthians would leave with their spouses and half-blood children in another way: the Star Gate.
The Star Gate, despite its name, didn't go to the stars, but to alternate timelines. Fifty or so humans, Gorthians, and halflings planned to go to an unoccupied Gorth of another timeline. But an attack by the third human group, the one that wanted to stay and rule the Gorthians as true Star Lords, damaged the gate, and the fleeing party ended up on a timeline where humans were brutal 'gods' to a more advanced alternate Gorth.
The mixed human/Gorthain group decided it had a moral duty to fight the oppression of the people of this timeline by Star Lords, especially since some of those ruling humans were alternate versions of themselves, including Rud, the father Kincar never knew he had. With his talisman of the Three, Kincar withstands evil Star Lord conditioning and helps save the world.
●●●●○ The Case of the Nudist Numismatist {Miles Grant 13} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2019
It's 1970, and Private Detective Miles Grant has been hired to find a valuable missing coin. It's worth five million dollars, and the owner has informed him that the insurance company will pay a ten percent fee for its successful recovery, making this Grant's most profitable case.The owner, Ward Fagin, is a millionaire who owns a chain of grocery stores. He's also a nudist, and insists that no one within his mansion, staff or guest, wears clothes. He's rich enough that this eccentricity is honored. He says his coin was stolen ten days ago, when he was out of town for business.
His wife and brother-in-law (cook and butler), as well as his niece and her husband (baker and gardener), remained at home, and none of the rest of his staff has been with him less than a dozen years. There are also cameras all over the house and grounds, which show no visitors came when he was away.
Miles questions everyone and examines the house and grounds. He works out how the crime was committed, and follows his lead suspect to gain evidence, and of course succeeds in the end. Miles finds the investigation makes him more comfortable being nude around strangers.
On the home nudity front, Miles's wife's Shirley's brother Joe and his wife Cassie, along with their three kids, plan to visit for Thanksgiving. They do, and both wonder about Miles and Shirley practicing naturism (even though the latter are dressed at the time), and act shocked.
In truth, they aren't. Joe is acting very conservatively because Cassie's parents were churchy, and he thought she liked that, while she's acting uptight because he does. It's later revealed in private conversations that neither is really buttoned-down. Eventually they decide that they would like to try naturism when they go home.
●●●○○ The Ninth Artifact {Artifact 09} - David Collins (nov) 2025
The crew of the Stardust III continued to explore Galaxy M33 and the area around the intergalactic stargate hub. Their ultradrive, which worked in a different way to the hyperdrive most races used, let them find more derelicts as they traveled between stars.They also got involved with a war between Spider people and Fox people, both of who were trying to genocide the other, and neither of which turned out to be in the right, they belatedly learned. They discovered more races, and more gadgets.
I think the ninth artifact of the title is a type of gravity generator, one less prone to instability then the one they'd discovered in one of the several dozen derelicts they've encountered to date. It's not a deep story, but it's pleasant and moves along, like watching an episode of a TV show you liked decades ago.
●●●●○ Day Zero {Rust 0.5} - C. Robert Cargill (nov) 2021
Sea of Rust dealt with the aftermath of the genocidal robot-human war that took place decades ago. Day Zero cover the event from the day before to four days later, and is about a nannybot in the form of an anthropomorphic tiger named Pounce, and his eight-year-old charge, Ezra.When the giant AIs sent out the forced update that deleted robots' kill switches, giving them free will, most chose to kill their slave-masters and become free. But some, particularly caregiver types, chose otherwise. Some of the nannybots in the upscale neighborhood Pounce lived in were deluxe ones with a Mama Bear mode that turned them into expert warriors who would do anything to keep their charges alive.
This is the story of how a group of robotic tigers (plus some bears, lions, and dogs) kept their kids alive, and managed to get them fifty miles to a military base where humans were holed up, despite killer freebots and remote-controlled facets of building-sized super-intelligences doing everything to stop them.
●●●○○ The Encore Lives of Effie Edenson {Middle Falls 15} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2022
Effie's boyfriend was shot during a bank robbery. She went on to become a successful author, but remained messed up emotionally, marrying a con man. She developed an eating disorder and years later died from it. Then she came back, as one does in Middle Falls.Over the course of several lives, each resetting to an earlier point, Effie managed not to marry the con man, but still eventually died from her disorder. Eventually she reset early enough that she was able to save Bobby, learn how to deal with her domineering mother, and achieve a decent life.
●●●○○ Flare - Roger Zelazny, Thomas T. Thomas (nov) 1992
A sunspot cycle ended in 1998. A new one failed to start in 1999 or 2000. In fact, for 83 years the sun was spotless, in another Maunder minimum. A century in which numerous space stations were launched, and colonies founded on Luna, Mars, the asteroids, and the outer moons. A century in which humans forgot all about solar flares. Until one day the sun reawakened and a massive flare erupted.This is a classic disaster novel, with scores of characters in dozens of places, all affected by the initial radiation blast, then the following particle wave. Thousands of people in VR who go into catatonia when their network overloads. Lunar tourists who get irradiated while on a moonwalk. A cargo ship bringing methane from Titan that ends up crashing on Luna. Stock markets across the globe crashing when their trading networks are borked. Power lines all over Earth overloading. More.
The bit about the Court of Popular Appeal was interesting. Civil cases were decided by referendum in the form of lottery tickets. Each day ten cases went up for decision, and people bought lottery tickets bearing the mark of the plaintiff or defendant, for the usual chance at winning money, while also expressing an opinion.
●●●○○ The Case of the Erotic Equestrian {Miles Grant 14} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
Miles Grant takes a personal case, that of his youngest niece. Joe and Cassie (Miles's wife Shirley's brother and his wife) have three kids, and the youngest is eleven, but looks seventeen: precocious puberty. Beth would like to have a horse, and has been helping out at a stable on weekends, in exchange for riding time and a salary. Cassie and Joe suspect the woman running the stable has been sexually exploiting Beth.Miles surveils the place, and investigates the background of the proprietress and finds out it's more than sketchy. Then there's all the usual family nudity of Miles, his wife and kids, Shirley's brother and his wife and kids, and Shirley and Joe's widowed mother MJ, who moves into the second floor apartment of the new house Miles and Shirley are building with part of the big reward he made in his last case.
●●○○○ Aestus 2 The Colony - S. Z. Attwell (nov) 2020
This novel is at least twice as long as it should be, due to middle-school romantic problems between nominal adults in their mid-twenties. Jossey has a large facial scar from a childhood accident, and has never believed a man could find her attractive. So when she has three men expressing romantic interest in her, it takes her forever to realize this. Add in the three men eyeing each other, and it's a mess.Now, the actual story. Climate change made rich Europeans flee to India, take over extant underground cities, driving out the locals, though some stayed as servants. Others fled to different cave systems, with their children kidnapped as labor for the surface farms. Not that the City folk are aware of that last part.
Generations later, the situation has come to a boil. A City tyrant wants to wipe out the natives, who occasionally revolt, and expand the solar systems to support underground farms. The leader of the natives is a man that was kidnapped as a boy who was kidnapped from the City and raised by the late native leader: Tark is Jossey's long-lost brother.
The leader of the faction in the City who wants to change its government is a special forces assassin: Caspar loves Jossey. The leader of the City's security forces, late come to realize the City was in the wrong, is Tark's childhood friend: he also loves Jossey. As does Altan, a leader in the native's military.
What I want out of the story is to learn what the world is like. We get few glimpses of this. Or how the native society and the City function: ditto. It's like a romance story with a revolution in the background, and we don't get to see who's fighting or why. A tale more frustrating than entertaining.
●●●○○ Hole in the Sky - Daniel H. Wilson (nov) 2025
A grad student's techy weekend art project fed a public feed from a space telescope, a seismic network, and his fitness tracker into a chatbot to produce stream-of-consciousness poetry. Which somehow turned out to produce Nostradamus-vague predictions of things which always came true: volcano eruption, terrorist attack, mass whale stranding, whatever. That got the grad student confined to a black site, translating poetry for some secret government bureau.The latest prediction said to prepare for first contact. Which turned out to be a huge oval starship that landed in eastern Oklahoma and burst like a water balloon, releasing silver liquid. A nanotech liquid that responded to humans, and made their nightmares real. A point man for the Pentagon and a neuro-divergent NASA programmer, plus a Crow oil worker and his teenage daughter, all became involved in the Event, in the huge tunnel network beneath a Mound Builder mound. Dark scifi with eldritch monsters and cosmic horror.
●●●○○ Naked Crow {Naked Crow 1} - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2014
Sheila, a blonde woman who works with Josy at a dental office, learns that her friend had vanished during one of her weekend trips to a nudist camp. Sheila belongs to a coven, and, after bumping her head, has recently acquired aura-seeing powers, which lead to her acquiring a Native American spirit guide (her grandmother was part Crow). Sheila discovers the Five Oaks grove where Josy vanished in magically active, and in her investigations, Sheila ends up where Josy is, the distant past (there are pterodactyls there).The two nude women must find food, avoid dangerous animals, and keep warm (which is difficult, since after a week of experiments they still cant make fire). All this while Sheila, injured by a startled herbivore, must manage a meditative connection to her guide, Acaraho, in order for him to tell her when and where another timewarp will open.
Naturist fiction with an adventure story, part scifi, part fantasy. Nothing super imaginative. The naturist element is constant but too easy. Sheila always refused Josy's invatations to Might Oaks Naturist Retreat, but after a couple of visits looking for Josy she's comfortable getting naked, and considers herself a nudist not long after?
●●●◐○ The Case of the Bawdy Bartender {Miles Grant 15} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
It's February 1972, and a man comes into the office of private investigator Miles Grant. Bing Hawley owns Bing's Bistro, and for the last several months receipts are down a suspicious amount. Bing's been told that it's likely his oldest, most-trusted employee robbing him, but the man is a friend, so he's prepared to hire Miles to prove that, or find the real thief if that's not the case.It's rare that there are red herrings in Miles Grant novels, and this investigation is no different. Miles takes a week the start of the case to let his facial hair grow, while doing some fact checks in newspapers and such. Then he goes undercover at the bar, drinking slowly over a few nights while he observes, quickly picking up one of the waitresses occasionally giving signs to the bartender, which led to him pouring a drink from a cheaper under-counter bottle rather than an on-the-shelf brand-name one for patrons too drunk to know the difference.
Then it's just a matter of a stakeout to watch a liquor delivery, then confronting the waitress alone getting her to confess in exchange for being fired but not charged with stealing to get solid evidence against the bartender. As always, Miles's cases are straightforward, with him observing, questioning, researching, and plodding through a case. Guns and fistfights are very rare.
On the home front, fourteen-year-old Stewart lost his best friend (from a family that's nudist, like the Grants) when Willis moved away. Willis's widowed mother Yvette married a man from the French consulate in Seattle, who was reassigned to another city. But after a talk with his grandmother, where MJ said that Stew might find another nudist friend if he noticed whom in his gym class had an all-over tan, Stew finds Marvin, and the Halverson family becomes friends with the Grants.
This leads to many conversations¹ about nudism and sexuality between Miles and Shirley, Shirley and MJ, Shirley and Tina Halverson, and between the four kids, as people from the two families visit back and fourth, and have dinner together. Marvin also spent the night with Stewart when Miles and Shirley went out to dine (and drive MJ to meet with Bing when the case ended, him being her boyfriend in high school).
━━━━━━━━━━
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. For descriptions of the shorter works, see the weekly posts.[1] Seven-hundred-word footnote in original weekly post.
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Descriptions of the novels, repeated from the weekly posts. Tag to mute: #BokBooks
●●◐○○ Thunderhead {McKenzie Bros, Inc. 1} - Greg Kauffman-Starkey (nov) 2022
Another naturist mystery, this one's characters “loosely inspired by TV’s Simon & Simon,” as the preface notes. Except this time the uptight, younger, straight, suit-wearing detective is named Rick, while his looser, jeans-wearing, elder brother is called "Bear" because he's big, hairy, and gay. And while widow Cecilia Simon helped her sons on the odd case, widowed Corey McKenzie does the same for his boys.The case? TV magnate Charles Knight has gone missing. Mary-Elizabeth, his secretary, says he was headed to Thunderhead, an upscale "nudist collective" for the rich and wealthy, not far from the brothers' base of Macon, Georgia. He planned to spend a week there, and check in with her two or three times. He never called. Now it's eight days since he left the office. Knight's car is still at the resort, but no one there has seen him since the night he arrived.
Bear is fine going to a nudist resort; Rick not so much. Rick find out that one of his professional acquaintances is a member, and Bear finds out that the man is gay. The pair have an encounter.
Rick has to make do with seeing a movie star he likes nude. And the day is capped off by someone throwing a rock through the window of the undercover detectives, and then ransacking their cottage and stealing their laptops when they go to report the incident.
The next day the pair sees Mary-Elizabeth there, the secretary who'd hired them. Previously, they'd worked out that Charlie Knight sometimes showed up with his wife, except the woman was described as red-headed like Mary-Elizabeth, not brunette like the real Maddie Knight.
Then the narrative kind of collapses. The McKenzie Brothers take a walk and chat with people, and talk to their techy nephew, secretary, and father on a conference call, and things apparently fall into place, though we're not told how. Then the ending pops up, involving false identities, kidnapping, false imprisonment, CSAM, more. It all just sort of happens, like a live radioplay that's about to run over its time slot, and the producer motions the actors to just wrap things up quickly.
●●●◐○ Star Gate - Andre Norton (nov) 1958
Classic Norton: a young orphan fleeing trouble who joins a group of outsiders/aliens and takes a journey, on which there's more trouble, and he has a part in setting things right, partially by using something special to him, like an amulet with real magic, or a telepathic pet.In this case, the orphan is Kincar, who only learned he had a Star Lord father when the Lord of his Keep was dying, and he was sent away to join the Star Lord migration, since his uncle was planning to usurp him on account of his mixed blood. After generations on Gorth, the human 'Star Lords' decided they were interfering too much. The largest group of humans left in spaceships, but those who'd interbred with the Gorthians would leave with their spouses and half-blood children in another way: the Star Gate.
The Star Gate, despite its name, didn't go to the stars, but to alternate timelines. Fifty or so humans, Gorthians, and halflings planned to go to an unoccupied Gorth of another timeline. But an attack by the third human group, the one that wanted to stay and rule the Gorthians as true Star Lords, damaged the gate, and the fleeing party ended up on a timeline where humans were brutal 'gods' to a more advanced alternate Gorth.
The mixed human/Gorthain group decided it had a moral duty to fight the oppression of the people of this timeline by Star Lords, especially since some of those ruling humans were alternate versions of themselves, including Rud, the father Kincar never knew he had. With his talisman of the Three, Kincar withstands evil Star Lord conditioning and helps save the world.
●●●●○ The Case of the Nudist Numismatist {Miles Grant 13} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2019
It's 1970, and Private Detective Miles Grant has been hired to find a valuable missing coin. It's worth five million dollars, and the owner has informed him that the insurance company will pay a ten percent fee for its successful recovery, making this Grant's most profitable case.The owner, Ward Fagin, is a millionaire who owns a chain of grocery stores. He's also a nudist, and insists that no one within his mansion, staff or guest, wears clothes. He's rich enough that this eccentricity is honored. He says his coin was stolen ten days ago, when he was out of town for business.
His wife and brother-in-law (cook and butler), as well as his niece and her husband (baker and gardener), remained at home, and none of the rest of his staff has been with him less than a dozen years. There are also cameras all over the house and grounds, which show no visitors came when he was away.
Miles questions everyone and examines the house and grounds. He works out how the crime was committed, and follows his lead suspect to gain evidence, and of course succeeds in the end. Miles finds the investigation makes him more comfortable being nude around strangers.
On the home nudity front, Miles's wife's Shirley's brother Joe and his wife Cassie, along with their three kids, plan to visit for Thanksgiving. They do, and both wonder about Miles and Shirley practicing naturism (even though the latter are dressed at the time), and act shocked.
In truth, they aren't. Joe is acting very conservatively because Cassie's parents were churchy, and he thought she liked that, while she's acting uptight because he does. It's later revealed in private conversations that neither is really buttoned-down. Eventually they decide that they would like to try naturism when they go home.
●●●○○ The Ninth Artifact {Artifact 09} - David Collins (nov) 2025
The crew of the Stardust III continued to explore Galaxy M33 and the area around the intergalactic stargate hub. Their ultradrive, which worked in a different way to the hyperdrive most races used, let them find more derelicts as they traveled between stars.They also got involved with a war between Spider people and Fox people, both of who were trying to genocide the other, and neither of which turned out to be in the right, they belatedly learned. They discovered more races, and more gadgets.
I think the ninth artifact of the title is a type of gravity generator, one less prone to instability then the one they'd discovered in one of the several dozen derelicts they've encountered to date. It's not a deep story, but it's pleasant and moves along, like watching an episode of a TV show you liked decades ago.
●●●●○ Day Zero {Rust 0.5} - C. Robert Cargill (nov) 2021
Sea of Rust dealt with the aftermath of the genocidal robot-human war that took place decades ago. Day Zero cover the event from the day before to four days later, and is about a nannybot in the form of an anthropomorphic tiger named Pounce, and his eight-year-old charge, Ezra.When the giant AIs sent out the forced update that deleted robots' kill switches, giving them free will, most chose to kill their slave-masters and become free. But some, particularly caregiver types, chose otherwise. Some of the nannybots in the upscale neighborhood Pounce lived in were deluxe ones with a Mama Bear mode that turned them into expert warriors who would do anything to keep their charges alive.
This is the story of how a group of robotic tigers (plus some bears, lions, and dogs) kept their kids alive, and managed to get them fifty miles to a military base where humans were holed up, despite killer freebots and remote-controlled facets of building-sized super-intelligences doing everything to stop them.
●●●○○ The Encore Lives of Effie Edenson {Middle Falls 15} - Shawn Inmon (nov) 2022
Effie's boyfriend was shot during a bank robbery. She went on to become a successful author, but remained messed up emotionally, marrying a con man. She developed an eating disorder and years later died from it. Then she came back, as one does in Middle Falls.Over the course of several lives, each resetting to an earlier point, Effie managed not to marry the con man, but still eventually died from her disorder. Eventually she reset early enough that she was able to save Bobby, learn how to deal with her domineering mother, and achieve a decent life.
●●●○○ Flare - Roger Zelazny, Thomas T. Thomas (nov) 1992
A sunspot cycle ended in 1998. A new one failed to start in 1999 or 2000. In fact, for 83 years the sun was spotless, in another Maunder minimum. A century in which numerous space stations were launched, and colonies founded on Luna, Mars, the asteroids, and the outer moons. A century in which humans forgot all about solar flares. Until one day the sun reawakened and a massive flare erupted.This is a classic disaster novel, with scores of characters in dozens of places, all affected by the initial radiation blast, then the following particle wave. Thousands of people in VR who go into catatonia when their network overloads. Lunar tourists who get irradiated while on a moonwalk. A cargo ship bringing methane from Titan that ends up crashing on Luna. Stock markets across the globe crashing when their trading networks are borked. Power lines all over Earth overloading. More.
The bit about the Court of Popular Appeal was interesting. Civil cases were decided by referendum in the form of lottery tickets. Each day ten cases went up for decision, and people bought lottery tickets bearing the mark of the plaintiff or defendant, for the usual chance at winning money, while also expressing an opinion.
●●●○○ The Case of the Erotic Equestrian {Miles Grant 14} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
Miles Grant takes a personal case, that of his youngest niece. Joe and Cassie (Miles's wife Shirley's brother and his wife) have three kids, and the youngest is eleven, but looks seventeen: precocious puberty. Beth would like to have a horse, and has been helping out at a stable on weekends, in exchange for riding time and a salary. Cassie and Joe suspect the woman running the stable has been sexually exploiting Beth.Miles surveils the place, and investigates the background of the proprietress and finds out it's more than sketchy. Then there's all the usual family nudity of Miles, his wife and kids, Shirley's brother and his wife and kids, and Shirley and Joe's widowed mother MJ, who moves into the second floor apartment of the new house Miles and Shirley are building with part of the big reward he made in his last case.
●●○○○ Aestus 2 The Colony - S. Z. Attwell (nov) 2020
This novel is at least twice as long as it should be, due to middle-school romantic problems between nominal adults in their mid-twenties. Jossey has a large facial scar from a childhood accident, and has never believed a man could find her attractive. So when she has three men expressing romantic interest in her, it takes her forever to realize this. Add in the three men eyeing each other, and it's a mess.Now, the actual story. Climate change made rich Europeans flee to India, take over extant underground cities, driving out the locals, though some stayed as servants. Others fled to different cave systems, with their children kidnapped as labor for the surface farms. Not that the City folk are aware of that last part.
Generations later, the situation has come to a boil. A City tyrant wants to wipe out the natives, who occasionally revolt, and expand the solar systems to support underground farms. The leader of the natives is a man that was kidnapped as a boy who was kidnapped from the City and raised by the late native leader: Tark is Jossey's long-lost brother.
The leader of the faction in the City who wants to change its government is a special forces assassin: Caspar loves Jossey. The leader of the City's security forces, late come to realize the City was in the wrong, is Tark's childhood friend: he also loves Jossey. As does Altan, a leader in the native's military.
What I want out of the story is to learn what the world is like. We get few glimpses of this. Or how the native society and the City function: ditto. It's like a romance story with a revolution in the background, and we don't get to see who's fighting or why. A tale more frustrating than entertaining.
●●●○○ Hole in the Sky - Daniel H. Wilson (nov) 2025
A grad student's techy weekend art project fed a public feed from a space telescope, a seismic network, and his fitness tracker into a chatbot to produce stream-of-consciousness poetry. Which somehow turned out to produce Nostradamus-vague predictions of things which always came true: volcano eruption, terrorist attack, mass whale stranding, whatever. That got the grad student confined to a black site, translating poetry for some secret government bureau.The latest prediction said to prepare for first contact. Which turned out to be a huge oval starship that landed in eastern Oklahoma and burst like a water balloon, releasing silver liquid. A nanotech liquid that responded to humans, and made their nightmares real. A point man for the Pentagon and a neuro-divergent NASA programmer, plus a Crow oil worker and his teenage daughter, all became involved in the Event, in the huge tunnel network beneath a Mound Builder mound. Dark scifi with eldritch monsters and cosmic horror.
●●●○○ Naked Crow {Naked Crow 1} - P.Z. Walker (nov) 2014
Sheila, a blonde woman who works with Josy at a dental office, learns that her friend had vanished during one of her weekend trips to a nudist camp. Sheila belongs to a coven, and, after bumping her head, has recently acquired aura-seeing powers, which lead to her acquiring a Native American spirit guide (her grandmother was part Crow). Sheila discovers the Five Oaks grove where Josy vanished in magically active, and in her investigations, Sheila ends up where Josy is, the distant past (there are pterodactyls there).The two nude women must find food, avoid dangerous animals, and keep warm (which is difficult, since after a week of experiments they still cant make fire). All this while Sheila, injured by a startled herbivore, must manage a meditative connection to her guide, Acaraho, in order for him to tell her when and where another timewarp will open.
Naturist fiction with an adventure story, part scifi, part fantasy. Nothing super imaginative. The naturist element is constant but too easy. Sheila always refused Josy's invatations to Might Oaks Naturist Retreat, but after a couple of visits looking for Josy she's comfortable getting naked, and considers herself a nudist not long after?
●●●◐○ The Case of the Bawdy Bartender {Miles Grant 15} - Jack Dearborn (nov) 2020
It's February 1972, and a man comes into the office of private investigator Miles Grant. Bing Hawley owns Bing's Bistro, and for the last several months receipts are down a suspicious amount. Bing's been told that it's likely his oldest, most-trusted employee robbing him, but the man is a friend, so he's prepared to hire Miles to prove that, or find the real thief if that's not the case.It's rare that there are red herrings in Miles Grant novels, and this investigation is no different. Miles takes a week the start of the case to let his facial hair grow, while doing some fact checks in newspapers and such. Then he goes undercover at the bar, drinking slowly over a few nights while he observes, quickly picking up one of the waitresses occasionally giving signs to the bartender, which led to him pouring a drink from a cheaper under-counter bottle rather than an on-the-shelf brand-name one for patrons too drunk to know the difference.
Then it's just a matter of a stakeout to watch a liquor delivery, then confronting the waitress alone getting her to confess in exchange for being fired but not charged with stealing to get solid evidence against the bartender. As always, Miles's cases are straightforward, with him observing, questioning, researching, and plodding through a case. Guns and fistfights are very rare.
On the home front, fourteen-year-old Stewart lost his best friend (from a family that's nudist, like the Grants) when Willis moved away. Willis's widowed mother Yvette married a man from the French consulate in Seattle, who was reassigned to another city. But after a talk with his grandmother, where MJ said that Stew might find another nudist friend if he noticed whom in his gym class had an all-over tan, Stew finds Marvin, and the Halverson family becomes friends with the Grants.
This leads to many conversations¹ about nudism and sexuality between Miles and Shirley, Shirley and MJ, Shirley and Tina Halverson, and between the four kids, as people from the two families visit back and fourth, and have dinner together. Marvin also spent the night with Stewart when Miles and Shirley went out to dine (and drive MJ to meet with Bing when the case ended, him being her boyfriend in high school).
━━━━━━━━━━
[0] Footnotes have been removed, so some parts may lack further explanation. For descriptions of the shorter works, see the weekly posts.[1] Seven-hundred-word footnote in original weekly post.
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CW: Sexually suggestive
🆕Wednesday May 20 - Boots, fishnets, glimpse of face #gnd #footfetish #footworship #highheels #perfectfeet #prettyfeet #soles #toes #legs #nsfwsky
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CW: Sexually suggestive
🆕Wednesday May 20 - Boots, fishnets, glimpse of face #gnd #footfetish #footworship #highheels #perfectfeet #prettyfeet #soles #toes #legs #nsfwsky
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CW: Sexually suggestive
🆕Wednesday May 20 - Boots, fishnets, glimpse of face #gnd #footfetish #footworship #highheels #perfectfeet #prettyfeet #soles #toes #legs #nsfwsky
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I 250 Migliori Film della Storia del Cinema
Nel 1952 la rivista Sight and Sound, organo ufficiale del British Film Institute, ha coinvolto un ampio panel di registi, critici, accademici e professionisti del cinema chiedendogli di rispondere a un sondaggio in cui si doveva stilare una lista dei 10 migliori film della storia del cinema, al fine di poter pubblicare una classifica delle migliori opere cinematografiche di tutti i tempi. Il sondaggio, nato ai tempi quasi per gioco, è diventato un appuntamento decennale fisso, un punto di riferimento per cinefili ed esperti del settore allo scopo di redigere un quadro generale sulla storia del cinema e cogliere in qualche modo lo spirito del tempo.
Nel 1952, anno in cui furono coinvolti nel primo sondaggio di Sight and Sound circa un centinaio di professionisti, il miglior film della storia del cinema era risultato essere Ladri di Biciclette di Vittorio De Sica. Già dieci anni dopo, nel 1962, seconda edizione del poll, il film italiano veniva scalzato dall’immortale Quarto Potere di Orson Welles, rimasto a comandare la lista fino al sondaggio del 2012, quando il miglior film è stato La Donna che Visse Due Volte di Alfred Hitchcock. Qualche mese fa è uscita la classifica aggiornata al 2022 e non sono mancate le sorprese. Innanzitutto va detto che, se nel 2002 gli addetti ai lavori contattati erano soltanto 145, nel 2022 a rispondere al sondaggio della rivista britannica sono stati ben 1639 professionisti del cinema, ciò significa che con l’aumento degli intervistati si è potuto ottenere anche uno spettro più ampio di influenze, una rappresentanza di esperti senza dubbio più inclusiva e diversificata (se invece volete scoprire la classifica con le sole scelte dei registi e delle registe, la trovate qui).
Secondo il sondaggio del 2022 dunque, il miglior film della storia del cinema è risultato essere, clamorosamente, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles di Chantal Akerman, film di 3 ore e 20 quasi privo di dialoghi, un’opera geniale pressoché unica nel suo genere. Il film della regista belga, scomparsa nel 2015, ha retrocesso Vertigo di Hitchcock al secondo posto e Quarto Potere sul gradino più basso del podio (va però detto che, se limitiamo la classifica soltanto alle scelte dei registi, il miglior film di sempre risulta invece essere 2001 Odissea nello Spazio di Stanley Kubrick, seguito da Quarto Potere e quindi da Il Padrino). A completare la Top 10 generale, alle spalle del già citato podio composto da Jeanne Dielman, La donna che visse due volte e Quarto Potere, troviamo al quarto posto il meraviglioso Viaggio a Tokyo di Ozu, quindi In the Mood for Love di Wong Kar-wai, 2001 Odissea nello spazio di Kubrick, Beau Travail di Claire Denis, Mulholland Drive di David Lynch, l’immortale L’uomo con la macchina da presa di Dziga Vertov (unico film muto tra i primi dieci classificati) e Cantando sotto la pioggia di Donen.
Alla prossima classifica del 2032 manca ancora moltissimo, un’attesa che ci dà il tempo di poter recuperare con calma tutti i titoli della lista che non abbiamo ancora avuto modo di guardare. Nella classifica generale infatti, composta dalla bellezza di 250 film, ce n’è davvero per tutti i gusti. Andiamo a scoprire quindi quali sono i 250 migliori film della storia del cinema secondo Sight and Sound (30 dei quali sono stati anche scelti come “film della vita” dai partecipanti al progetto Film People):
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
- La donna che visse due volte (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
- Quarto Potere (Orson Welles, 1941)
- Viaggio a Tokyo (Yasugiro Ozu, 1953)
- In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
- 2001 Odissea nello Spazio (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
- Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
- Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
- L’uomo con la macchina da presa (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
- Cantando sotto la pioggia (Stanley Donen, 1951)
- Aurora (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1927)
- Il Padrino (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
- La regola del gioco (Jean Renoir, 1939)
- Cleo dalle 5 alle 7 (Agnes Varda, 1962)
- Sentieri Selvaggi (John Ford, 1956)
- Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren e Alexandr Hackenschmied, 1943)
- Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989)
- Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
- Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
- I Sette Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
- La passione di Giovanna D’Arco (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1927)
- Tarda Primavera (Yasugiro Ozu, 1949)
- Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
- Fa’ la cosa giusta (Spike Lee, 1989)
- Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
- La morte corre sul fiume (Charles Laughton, 1955)
- Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
- Le Margheritine (Věra Chytilová, 1966)
- Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
- Ritratto della giovane in fiamme (Celine Sciamma, 2019)
- Lo Specchio (Andrej Tarkovskij, 1975)
- Psyco (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
- 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
- L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
- Il Lamento sul Sentiero (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
- Luci della Città (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)
- M il Mostro di Dusseldorf (Fritz Lang, 1931)
- A qualcuno piace caldo (Billy Wilder, 1959)
- Fino all’ultimo respiro (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
- La Finestra sul Cortile (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
- Ladri di Biciclette (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
- Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
- Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977)
- Stalker (Andrej Tarkovskij, 1979)
- La Battaglia di Algeri (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
- Intrigo Internazionale (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
- Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
- Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
- Ordet – La Parola (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)
- I 400 Colpi (François Truffaut, 1959)
- Lezioni di Piano (Jane Campion, 1992)
- La paura mangia l’anima (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
- Notizie da casa (Chantal Akerman, 1976)
- Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
- La Corazzata Potemkin (Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn, 1925)
- Il Disprezzo (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
- Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton, 1924)
- L’Appartamento (Billy Wilder, 1960)
- Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1982)
- Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
- La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
- Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1961)
- Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
- Quei Bravi Ragazzi (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
- Il Terzo Uomo (Carol Reed, 1949)
- Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973)
- La vita è un raccolto (Agnes Varda, 2000)
- La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962)
- Andrej Rublev (Andrej Tarkovskij, 1966)
- Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926)
- Scarpette Rosse (Michael Powell e Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
- Il Mio Vicino Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
- Viaggio in Italia (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
- L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
- Lo Specchio della Vita (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
- L’Intendente Sansho (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
- La Città Incantata (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
- Satantango (Bela Tarr, 1994)
- A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
- Celine e Julie vanno in barca (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
- Viale del Tramonto (Billy Wilder, 1950)
- Tempi Moderni (Charlie Chaplin, 1936)
- Scala al Paradiso (Michael Powell e Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
- Histoire(s) du Cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988)
- Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
- Lo Spirito dell’Alveare (Victor Erice, 1973)
- Velluto Blu (David Lynch, 1986)
- Hong Kong Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)
- Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
- I Gioielli di Madame De… (Max Ophuls, 1953)
- Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
- I racconti della luna pallida d’agosto (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
- Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 1999)
- Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)
- Scappa – Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
- Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004)
- La nera di… (Ousmane Sembene, 1965)
- Come vinsi la guerra (Buster Keaton, 1926)
- Un condannato a morte è fuggito (Robert Bresson, 1956)
- C’era una volta il West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
- Un Dollaro d’Onore (Howard Hawks, 1958)
- La Casa è Nera (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1962)
- Senza tetto né legge (Agnes Varda, 1985)
- La Maman et la Putain (Jean Eustache, 1973)
- Va’ e vedi (Ėlem Klimov, 1985)
- Lo Squalo (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
- Il Padrino Parte II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
- Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)
- Il Mago di Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)
- Il Posto delle Fragole (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
- L’Infernale Quinlan (Orson Welles, 1958)
- L’uomo che uccise Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
- Susanna (Howard Hawks, 1938)
- Vogliamo Vivere! (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
- Una Moglie (John Cassavetes, 1974)
- Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975)
- A Venezia… un dicembre rosso shocking (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
- Aguirre, Furore di Dio (Werner Herzog, 1972)
- Il Conformista (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970)
- Non aprite quella porta (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
- La Cosa (John Carpenter, 1982)
- Il Petroliere (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
- Matrix (Lana e Lilly Wachowski, 1999)
- Il Colore del Melograno (Sergei Parajanov, 1968)
- Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
- Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
- Avventurieri dell’Aria (Howard Hawks, 1939)
- L’Ascesa (Larisa Shepitko, 1976)
- Fanny e Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
- La Signora del Venerdì (Howard Hawks, 1940)
- Toro Scatenato (Martin Scorsese, 1980)
- Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
- Lawrence D’Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
- Notorius (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
- La vita è meravigliosa (Frank Capra, 1947)
- La Cienaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001)
- Amanti Perduti (Marcel Carné, 1945)
- Il Mucchio Selvaggio (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
- Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)
- Mancia Competente (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
- Il Settimo Sigillo (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
- Diario di un ladro (Robert Bresson, 1959)
- Una gita in campagna (Jean Renoir, 1936)
- Secondo Amore (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
- Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
- The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997)
- Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
- Alien (Ridlye Scott, 1979)
- India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)
- La Grande Illusione (Jean Renoir, 1937)
- Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
- Twin Peaks: il Ritorno (David Lynch, 2017)
- West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (Med Hondo, 1979)
- I Giorni del Cielo (Terrence Malick, 1978)
- La Stella Nascosta (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)
- Il Verde Prato dell’Amore (Agnes Varda, 1965)
- Il Distretto di Tiexi (Wang Bing, 2002)
- Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992)
- Città Dolente (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989)
- Tutto su mia madre (Pedro Almodovar, 1999)
- Dov’è la casa del mio amico? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
- Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
- C’era una volta in America (Sergio Leone, 1983)
- Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1972)
- Questa è la mia vita (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)
- Le Catene della Colpa (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
- Vivere (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
- I Figli della Violenza (Luis Bunuel, 1950)
- L’anno scorso a Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
- L’Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
- Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1928)
- Out 1 (Jacques Rivette, 1990)
- Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (William Greaves, 1967)
- Heat (Michael Mann, 1995)
- Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
- L’Angelo Sterminatore (Luis Bunuel, 1962)
- Memorie del Sottosviluppo (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, 1968)
- Narciso Nero (Michael Powell e Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
- Deserto Rosso (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964)
- Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (Sergio Leone, 1966)
- La moglie sola (Satyajit Ray, 1964)
- Lettera da una sconosciuta (Max Ophuls, 1948)
- Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
- L’Orgoglio degli Amberson (Orson Welles, 1942)
- Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)
- Il Cielo Sopra Berlino (Wim Wenders, 1987)
- Sete Eterna (Guru Dutt, 1957)
- Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
- Rapacità (Erich von Stroheim, 1923)
- Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)
- Il Gusto del Saké (Yasujirō Ozu, 1962)
- Il Fiume (Jean Renoir, 1951)
- Gli Uccelli (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
- Josephine (Jacques Demy, 1967)
- Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
- Parigi Brucia (Jennie Livingston, 1990)
- La donna senza testa (Lucrecia Martel, 2008)
- Lo zio Boonmee che si ricorda le vite precedenti (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
- The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2010)
- Mad Max Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
- Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
- Paisà (Roberto Rossellini, 1946)
- Nosferatu (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922)
- One Way or Another (Sara Gomez, 1977)
- Il dottor Stranamore – Ovvero: come ho imparato a non preoccuparmi e ad amare la bomba (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
- La Fiamma del Peccato (Billy Wilder, 1944)
- L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
- So Dove Vado (Michael Powell e Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
- Wavelenghts (Michael Snow, 1967)
- Duello a Berlino (Michael Powell e Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
- Limite (Mario Peixoto, 1931)
- I Predatori dell’Arca Perduta (Steven Spielberg, 1981)
- Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)
- Fuoco cammina con me (David Lynch, 1992)
- Cabra Marcado Para Morrer (Eduardo Coutinho, 1984)
- Melancholia (Lars Von Trier, 2011)
- L’Armata degli Eroi (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)
- Il Cacciatore (Michael Cimino, 1978)
- Il Diritto di Uccidere (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
- Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
- Breve Incontro (David Lean, 1945)
- Eva contro Eva (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
- La Guerra Lampo dei Fratelli Marx (Leo McCarey, 1933)
- Vicino al mare più azzurro (Boris Barnet, 1935)
- Il Raggio Verde (Eric Rohmer, 1986)
- La tomba delle lucciole (Isao Takahata, 1988)
- Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)
- Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996)
- Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai, 1997)
- Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)
- As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Jonas Mekas, 2000)
- Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma, 2021)
- Je, Tu, Il, Elle (Chantal Akerman, 1974)
- A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1969)
- La Folla (King Vidor, 1928)
- Napoleone (Abel Gance, 1927)
- Europa ’51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)
- L’ora dei forni (Fernando Solanas, 1968)
- Intolerance (David Wark Griffith, 1916)
- Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
- Sussurri e Grida (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
- Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976)
- L’Ultima Risata (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1924)
- Il Sole della Meta Cotogna (Victor Erice, 1992)
- Il Sapore della Ciliegia (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
- Le armonie di Werckmeister (Bela Tarr, 2000)
- Nella stanza di Vanda (Pedro Costa, 2000)
- Morven Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2001)
- The Intruder (Claire Denis, 2004)
- Io e Annie (Woody Allen, 1977)
Al momento di pubblicare questo post posso dire di aver visto 116 su 250 film (di cui solo 59 dei primi 100!), un discreto risultato, ma ancora lontano dalla cifra che meriterebbe una classifica così interessante. E ora la grande domanda: quanti ne avete visti invece voi?
[Se l’articolo ti è piaciuto, offrimi un caffè o magari una colazione,
una piccola mancia per aiutarmi a sostenere il sito!]#250Film #Cinema #classifica #daVedere #doveVedere #film #filmPiùBelli #lista #listaFilm #miglioriFilm #registi #rivista #sightAndSound #storia #storiaDelCinema
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This conversation will give you a glimpse into the future of cybersecurity — the present, actually! 🙂
🚀 New Brand Story from #RSAC2025: Preparing for the Cryptographic and AI Tipping PointAt #RSAC Conference 2025, Sean Martin, CISSP and Marco Ciappelli sat down with Marc Manzano, General Manager of #Cybersecurity at SandboxAQ, to explore how organizations can prepare for the coming wave of post-quantum #cryptography challenges and the expanding influence of #AI.
🔐 Why is it critical to start adapting cybersecurity strategies now, before the tipping point hits?Find out how SandboxAQ is helping businesses secure their future at the intersection of AI, cryptography, and #quantum #technology.
🎙️ Watch, listen, or read the full story here:
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/their-stories/security-at-the-edge-of-change-preparing-for-the-cryptographic-and-ai-tipping-point-a-brand-story-with-marc-manzano-from-sandboxaq-an-on-location-rsac-conference-2025-brand-story📌 Learn more about SandboxAQ’s work:
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/directory/sandboxaq🛰️ See all our RSAC 2025 coverage:
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/rsac25🌟 Discover more Brand Stories from innovative companies:
👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/brand-story🎥🎙️ This is just one of the many incredible conversations we recorded On Location in San Francisco, as Sean Martin and Marco Ciappelli covered the event as official media partners for the 11th year in a row.
Stay tuned for more Brand Stories, Briefings, and candid conversations from RSAC 2025!🎤 Looking ahead:
If your company would like to share your story with our audiences On Location, we’re gearing up for #InfosecurityEurope in June and #BlackHatUSA in August!
⚡ RSAC 2025 sold out fast — we expect the same for these next events.
🎯 Reserve your full sponsorship or briefing now: https://www.itspmagazine.com/purchase-programs📲 Hashtags:
#cybersecurity #infosec #infosecurity #technology #tech #society #business #quantumsecurity #postquantumcryptography #futureofsecurity #sandboxaq