Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: The History of Hentai Manga

Kimi Rito’s The History of Hentai Manga is something that is not common in general – an academic text aimed for wider audience on the topic of adult materials which does not approach the topic from what I’ll call a sex-negative perspective. On more than a few occasions I’ve accounted works on sex work and pornography which are sex (and sex worker)-negative, or try to take a neutral perspective and end up on a somewhat patronizing point of view. Certainly, I haven’t encountered any which cover the medium from an art-history standpoint. Kimi Rito’s work does provide what I’d almost call a more art-history point of view – not in the form I’d have chosen, but still an interesting form nonetheless.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Campaign Diary: Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen – Part 1

I’ve been running Shadow of the Dragon Queen for my D&D Group – so I’m going to discuss the first part of the adventure, including how it went when I ran it.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Why I Switched My Hosting from WordPress.com

You may have noticed, in the past few weeks, that my site has been looking a little weird. That it’s had a few visual hiccups in terms of how it looks and is presented. (If you’re only reading everything I write on Patreon, you probably haven’t noticed). That’s because I’ve switched my web hosting from WordPress.com to Bluehost, and I feel it’s worth mentioning why.

A smaller reason why is, honestly, it’s slightly cheaper. I was paying about $300+ a year for my hosting through WordPress.com, in order to get a plan that allowed for advertising (in an attempt to finally reach my Google Adsense payment threshold). I’m paying about $250-ish a year with Bluehost, so that’s significantly less expensive.

The larger reason is that the person who runs WordPress.com, Matt Mullenweg, has been, frankly, acting like a git. He’s been harassing hosting providers and alienating plugin authors. It’s been involved enough that TechCrunch had to write an explainer article. In short, he’s he kind of git that, candidly, is causing problems for the WordPress platform as a whole – to enough of a degree where I can sincerely see WordPress forking, the way that OpenOffice forked to LibreOffice. If that happens, and the fork comes, if I’m still on WordPress.com for hosting, I can’t go either way. So, I’m off WordPress.com, and am now on Bluehost on the foreseeable future.

As a quick note – this has broken Email Subscriptions. In the interim, I’d recommend using RSS, or following my BlueSky or Mastodon accounts.

Posted on by Alexander Case

Book Review: Carl Sagan’s Cosmos

Reviewing something like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is a tricky proposition. On the one hand, it’s a book by an acclaimed scientist – and more significantly one of the eminent science writers and presenters of the 20th Century. It’s also a companion volume to one of what is considered to be one of the best science television series of all time. Hard stop. On the other hand, it’s hard for me to say that any particular author or work is above criticism or discussion – and I’ll admit we don’t talk about the book the way we talk about the TV show – so I’m going to give it a shot anyway.

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