honey and sting

What images are used as avoda zarah, and can you benefit from things that have previously been used for avodah zarah? If so, what sorts of things and what needs to be done first, and who has to do them. Still a fun time!

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On the bright side, the advantage of using one-store-only virtual cards lets me know exactly which online restaurant ordering site (orderonlinemenu.com) has the leaky data security, and my credit card automatically denied the fraudulent charge.

Oy.

At least it was just a virtual number stolen, so from the email, it seems like maybe my credit card won't decide to cancel this number and give me a new one if I report the fraud. After the Really Absurd Number Of Times my card number got stolen last year, I had to make a list in a spreadsheet of which card and which virtual numbers on which cards were used on which sites, so I could update them. So even if not, this process is easier than it was. But the email just says to lock the virtual card number so it can't be fraudulently charged. Which it already has been.

This is just so annoying.

A Diary Of A Wimpy Kid knockoff published by Artscroll, and is exactly what you'd expect given its bona fides.

Dovi is a 4th grader at a new school and is having problems fitting in, except we have no reason to believe he's not fitting in, because that's told and not shown in any way, so it's not clear why his teacher sends him to the school therapist rabbi to be told to keep a diary. He misses his old school but we are never given any specifics about his old school or his old friends. Specifics? What specifics?

We don't even get a good idea of how many siblings he has and the age spread (his oldest brother -- probably -- went off to yeshiva in Israel, except considering the age spread of the kids, that's likely high school, but why mention any details?)

He does a lot of unspecified learning, including running a chavrusa program. He gains friends. He has no real problems and is not a wimpy kid. The shenanigans are generic and probably very boring to the target audience, who are used to the many books in this genre already, and except certain things from a confessional diary of a 4th grader at a new school who has to see the school therapist because he's not fitting in. Those things are not in this book.

Overall, I found it very bland. And that's probably the biggest problem.

Because the thing is, I don't like Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. It's better than Captain Underpants, but most things are better than Captain Underpants. All these Wimpy Kid books and that entire segment of midgrade -- I don't like them.

I'm not supposed to like them. They are written to appeal to a midgrade audience, not to the parents of the midgrade audience.

Dovi Diaries was written to appeal to adults.

But you know what? I've read worse from Artscroll.

Woke up to a fantastic review of Queen Demon in the August Locus. Here's an excerpt:


This is a fantastic novel, set in a fascinating world with truly compelling characters. It is shot through with grief, with the reverberations of destruction and the aftermaths of trauma: While the past timeline gives us emotional focus on the characters’ griefs, immediate traumas, and desperate choices, the present makes plain the extent of the Hierarchs’ destruction of the rest of the world, the scars in the landscape, in societies, in the vanishing of entire cultures. New societies have built themselves out of the ruins, in the shadow of what was lost and in its absences. While we see it particularly from Kai’s perspective, understanding his losses and his wounds, his scars and his griefs, and what healing has been possible for him between the past and the present, it’s not unique to Kai, either. Loss with all its jagged edges looms over this fragile recovery. These scars wear not only upon the main characters but upon their allies and opponents, too: Trauma, both personal and generational, is a strongly motivating factor and a weight that influences most of the personal relationships and many of the political interactions that we see.
-- Liz Bourke, Locus August 2025


Queen Demon is the sequel to Witch King, and it will be out in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook (narrated by Eric Mok, on October 7

Tomorrow (Wednesday the 30th) Summer of Science Fiction & Fantasy: Martha Wells in conversation with Kate Elliott

July 30 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm PT Register at this link:

https://www.clarionwest.org/event/summer-of-science-fiction-fantasy-martha-wells-in-conversation-with-kate-elliott/

It's free!

A good time! Some nice stuff where you can really see the development of halacha over time about a lot of relevant kashrus stuff (bread, cheese, wine, milk, fish, grasshoppers, prepared foods, etc). But not much to note about specifics. But it is amusing that grocery fraud is such a constant: yes, you do have to be concerned that someone who is claiming to sell something has actually substituted something cheaper instead, and also people will absolutely pass off fish as being another kind of fish. You gotta know what you're eating!

My notes behind cut.

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