{"id":4843,"date":"2025-10-26T19:01:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T02:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=4843"},"modified":"2025-10-26T19:01:36","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T02:01:36","slug":"two-weeks-in-the-life-october-26-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=4843","title":{"rendered":"Two Weeks in the Life: October 26, 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello, friends and enemies. First, for my California readers, a reminder that I wrote a little guide for the upcoming election and it is available in English<\/a> and Spanish<\/a>. If you’re in another state, make sure to vote in your own elections! Alas I don’t have a guide for you, but if you message me with any specific election questions, I can help you look for information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my last post, I mentioned that someone out there is trying to access my blog. It’s still going. I’m getting emails every day about IPs getting locked out for too many failed attempts. Among other things, they are trying to guess my user name so they can log in. They haven’t guessed it yet but even if they did they would also need the password and to get through two-factor authentication. Why is this happening? I have no idea. I’ve been operating this site since 2013 without problems, but here I am now with this weird issue. I would love to know why this is happening to me, a person with fewer than 25 subscribers. So weird. <\/p>\n\n\n

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My blog’s security report on blocked threats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Current Events<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I can only conclude that this administration, and I suppose the years of Republican political machinations that led to this point, does not want us to be able to vote. The Supreme Court recently heard arguments for a case that could lead to them eliminating the only remaining part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act<\/a>, “which empowers the federal government to protect voters from racial gerrymandering meant to dilute black voting power.” This case is based on Louisiana’s 2020 redistricting effort, but of course is immediately relevant to what’s happening now with Texas<\/a> and their efforts to redistrict in favor of Republicans (and California’s subsequent response in the form of Proposition 50<\/a>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stay with me for the next bit because I don’t have a fully fleshed out theory yet but I do think these things are connected. We also recently saw that Dominion Voting Systems\u2014the people who make the voting machines\u2014was acquired by a company named Liberty Vote<\/a>, which called the purchase “a bold and historic move to transform and improve election integrity in America.” The new owner is, per Wired<\/a>, a “former Republican party operative” and the voting systems are used in 27 states. The other thing I’m thinking about is ProPublica’s report that over 170 U.S. citizens<\/em><\/a> have been detained by ICE. ICE is out here picking up any brown people they feel like bothering and they don’t trouble themselves with due process and whether people are citizens. Taken together, I am, like many people, really concerned about our right to vote being curtailed. It seems like having a weird Republican guy buy the voting machines, having ICE detain citizens who could vote against the things ICE stands for, and letting states gerrymander as much as they want is all part of a conservative strategy to deny the right to vote to the “wrong” people: the people who won’t vote for Trump. As Trump becomes increasingly unpopular<\/a> and his own base realizes that they, too, are going to lose access to SNAP benefits and healthcare subsidies, limiting who gets to vote is going to become a bigger priority so the Trump administration can maintain the fiction of legitimacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Books and Other Words<\/h2>\n\n\n
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A Discovery of Witches<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I re-read A Discovery of Witches<\/a> by Deborah Harkness over the last month. The author shares a schedule every year for a re-read because the book begins the day before the autumnal equinox, so you can plot the timeline from there. Technically I did not follow the schedule because the book ends on November 1 and I’m already finished, but once I got started I did not wish to stop. I was happy for an opportunity to re-read this book because there are some new books in the series that I haven’t read yet, and I always feel like reading the early books before reading the new books makes for a better experience. I like Discovery of Witches <\/em>a lot and one of the cool things about it is that the author has grounded it in real life, even though it’s a fantasy and a romance between a witch and a vampire. Both the main characters are academics, so Harkness mentions specific places like the reading room that Diana (the witch) likes to study in at Oxford’s Bodleian library. And then the library’s social media account posts cool videos and of the same reading room! I guess this is some real nerd shit but that’s who I am. In any case, read this book for a little autumnal magic and romance.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Rebel Blade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I also read Davinia Evan’s Rebel Blade<\/a>, which is the last book in its series and the sequel to Shadow Baron<\/a>, which I wrote about in my last post. I liked it and I thought it was a good ending to the series. I know last time I mentioned there was a gratuitous dragon and I was annoyed about it, but I am happy to report the dragon was mostly a symbol of the return of magic and didn’t figure heavily into the story. I also was under the impression that there would be a bigger romantic element, but I was pleased that the author subverted my expectations and didn’t lean hard on the romance (nothing wrong with a romance of course! I just think this was a stronger story without it). Taking the series as a whole, the first book dealt with Siyon, who becomes the titular Notorious Sorcerer<\/a>, the second book is Anahid and how she decides to break with societal expectations, and this last book is about Anahid’s sister (also Siyon’s friend) Zagiri, who basically gets involved in a revolution and forces her fellow rich people who run the government to change their ways and start including regular people in the city’s governance (very fantastical stuff). I will say there is something therapeutic about reading about fictional revolutions these days. Maybe I need to look for some more revolutionary reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, on the internet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n