WHB Weekly Digest 2023-03-31
Welcome to my first weekly With Both Hands Digest! I have moved hosting providers from Squarespace to Ghost. I had used Squarespace for 14 years, and I decided that I wanted a more modern platform that makes it easier to do the things I want to do.
Welcome to my first weekly With Both Hands Digest! I have moved hosting providers from Squarespace to Ghost. I had used Squarespace for 14 years, and I decided that I wanted a more modern platform that makes it easier to do the things I want to do.
I will explain some of those things here, as well as give you the usual Linkfest style blog post with interesting things I've found this week.
Full Bio & All Posts
NAU is my alma mater, and I remember running into a lot of guys like Butchart, although I never him myself.
Newsletters
One of the reasons I wanted to change platforms was to make it easier to send out email newsletters. I of course could have used something like Mailchimp with Squarespace, but I like that Ghost has integrated email support.
You have three options for subscribing to With Both Hands.
The Long View - The output of the Long View Re-posting Project, all of John J. Reilly's blog The Long View, his essays and book reviews, and any news relevant to the re-publication of John's books
Book Reviews - Book reviews, literary criticism, and my opinions on stories
Everything - a weekly digest of everything that goes on here
Thucydides stated that Athens replaced the yearly tribute on Delian League members of 600 Talents with a 5% import/export tax.
— LiorLefineder (@lefineder) March 25, 2023
If 600 Talents = 5% Import/Export
then total trade in Ionia/Black Sea equals 12K Talents, or 240,000,000–348,000,000 USD. pic.twitter.com/yzFeqppbcT
A Twitter thread on estimating the economy of the Ionian Greeks.
Better content tags
Benjamin Espen
I now have the ability to generate better dynamic content, such as this tag for Forgotten Ruin, which allows me to collect together all of the posts I've written about Nick Cole and Jason Anspach's D&D inspired military adventure series.
I used to put static links at the end of series posts to point readers to other books in the same series, or by the same authors, but now all reviews will point dynamically to those things, which will update automatically.
In a fairytale, a young woman is brought to a mysterious nobleman's castle to be his bride. But he has to leave for a whole and gives her the keys that will open every room in the estate.
— Moundshroud of the Snows (@KKalvaitis) March 27, 2023
On the condition that she not open one specific door.
That is forbidden. pic.twitter.com/10otSogFMj
Twitter user @KKalvaitis spawned a host of great discussions with this thread on how Disney's popular Beauty & The Beast did violence to the deep structure of fairy tales.
My internet friends Aaron Irber and Gregorio Montejo talk about the works of R. A. Lafferty. I especially like the contrast Gregorio makes between Gene Wolfe, who Gregorio calls the ultimate writer-as-engineer, and Lafferty, who Gregorio calls a bard.
Internet friend Jon Mollison runs miniatures using Dragons Rampant and Xenos Rampant, with the scenario inspired by the Forgotten Ruin RPG from author friends Jason Anspach and Nick Cole.
Benjamin Espen
This week I wrote a short blurb on Spy x Family, my current favorite manga.
Benjamin Espen
Every week features the best memes I can find that resonate with what I try to do here.
Comments
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I look forward to hearing from you all! I hope you enjoy the new site. Or if you hate it. Or if you just want to leave a vindictive caricature of me. You can email me, my address is ben@ this domain, you can find me on Twitter, or you can sign-up and make a comment.
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