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Dom-Com by Adriana Anders is $2.99! It’s a Kindle Daily Deal, so today only! Lara gave this one a B grade:
While I was frustrated by the third act and by the plot line that didn’t make sense, I was delighted by everything else. I really enjoyed reading Dom-Com and am very happy to recommend it to the Bitchery!
An experienced Dom and a baby sub must keep their kink-lives a secret after discovering they’ve just become office mates and professional rivals in this super-steamy contemporary romcom, perfect for fans of Lana Ferguson and Tessa Bailey.
An irresistible collision of dominance, deadlines, and an extremely inconvenient desire.
All Rae Jensen has to do is walk through the door. Inside the club is everything she’s wanted but was afraid to ask a ridiculously hot, brooding Dom with a sharp jawline, sexy forearms, and a low voice that sends goosebumps along her skin when he says “People here call me the General.” For one night, she can forget the stress and her endless responsibilities . . . and just be a saucy little sub, no questions asked.
It’s been a while since Grant Bowman met someone like Rae. Although he’s an experienced Dom, he doesn’t do newbies, especially ones who are such a sweet distraction. But one night couldn’t possibly hurt—until the General discovers they’ll be working together IRL at his new consulting job. Now what started as control is turning into the kind of chaos that destroys careers. But there’s no safe word for falling in love…
I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue is $1.99! This was mentioned on Hide Your Wallet, and both Sarah and I were excited for it.
As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.
But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.
Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.
At Whit’s End by Bailey Hannah is $1.99! This is book four in the Wells Ranch series. It features a single mom and a friends to lovers romance in a small town.
A single mom struggling to raise her rebellious son finds unexpected support in a kind-hearted cowboy in this spicy romance from the author of Seeing Red and Change of Hart.
She’s afraid she’s not enough. He’ll make damn sure she knows she is.
Single mom Whitney Hart is, quite simply, overwhelmed. She’s struggling to raise her ten-year-old son, Jonas. Her ex-boyfriend only seems to come around and help take care of his son when he’s single and hoping to get back together. With Jonas acting out more than ever, Whit realizes she needs help keeping an eye on him over summer vacation.
Enter Colt, a fun-loving cowboy who is tasked with giving Jonas work to do around Wells Ranch to keep him busy. In Colt, Jonas finds a mentor and male role model for the first time in his life. And in Jonas, Colt discovers a friendship that brings a new kind of joy into his life.
Colt and Whit slowly develop a friendship of their own through a shared concern for Jonas, and over the course of the summer, it begins to spark into something more. The attraction and chemistry between them are hard to ignore, but Whit’s insecurities and hesitancy to trust men cause her to pull away.
As miscommunications give way to understanding, the two will discover that sometimes you have to first be broken before you can become whole, and that there’s no one way to create a family.
Love Me Stalk Me by Laura Bishop is $2.99! This is a dark cotemporary romance. The premise made me buy this one while I was shopping at Lovestruck Bookstore a couple months ago. Haven’t gotten around to it yet!
For fans of Lights Out and You comes a dark rom-com debut about a woman who confides her fantasies to an AI boyfriend app—unaware she’s really talking to her hot, tattooed coworker who hacked her phone.
When overworked department store manager Izzy Russo downloads an AI boyfriend app to fill the emotional void left by her inattentive real one, she thinks she’s just venting to a harmless chatbot named “Caleb.” In reality, she’s been pouring her deepest, dirtiest fantasies into the ears of Callahan Knight—her store’s brooding new head of security.
Because Cal? He’s been listening. The moment he saw Izzy, he knew she was his. Did he hack her phone? Absolutely. But who could blame him? A woman like Izzy deserves to be cherished by someone who truly knows her worth—and he’ll do anything to be that man.
So when Izzy finally sees her boyfriend for who he really is, and the danger she’s unknowingly been caught up in, Cal is ready to protect her, no matter the cost. Even if it means revealing the truth.
She might not have meant to build the perfect man. But he’s here now. And he’s never letting her go.
Good Girl by Piper Lawson is FREE! This is a forced proximity, rockstar romance. It’s also the first book in the Wicked series.
Haley’s job is to keep rockstar Jax Jamieson out of trouble…
Not to fall for him.
I was hired to work for a legend. Instead, I’m being seduced by a man.
When I took an internship on rock god Jax Jamieson’s tour, I never thought he’d look twice at me. He’s older, cocky, jaded and nothing like the college guys I’m used to.
He’s gorgeous, rich, talented, and the biggest rockstar in the world.
Too bad I rubbed him the wrong way on day one.
Now he takes divine pleasure in making my life hell. During soundcheck. On the road. At the hotel after shows.
I need this job for reasons he can never know. That’s why I have to be cool under that smoldering gaze and arrogant grin.
The bigger problem is when the cynicism slips away, exposing the cracks beneath. When he lets his guard down to tell me things he hasn’t told a soul.
Because a million women might scream his name…
But he whispers mine.
atlas_obscura_feed
The monastery in Bzovík was founded between 1127 and 1131, it's charter being issued in 1135. Originally a Benedictine monastery (dedicated to the first Hungarian king, St. Stephen), around 1180 it fell under the influence of a religious order called the Premonstratensians. This new leadership expanded monastic teaching to include new economics and agriculture.
Monastic strongholds were often the subject of attack during the 15th century, and as such the building was burned down several times, immediately repaired and rebuilt only to be razed again. In 1530 it was even rebuilt into a vast fortified manor house by a Slovakian oligarch Zigmund Balasa, adding dwellings for soldiers and farming. It was again burned down in 1620, re-established as a church only to be conquered in 1678.
The complex finally fell into a permanent state of deterioration in the early 19th century with habitation ceasing after World War I. Archaeological and architectural study of the site began in the 1930s, though Pevnosť Bzovík suffered under both world wars. Today the fortifications are under general reconstruction, though the church related structures at its center are completely crumbled. But this wonderful ruin remains freely open to the public. Its extensive history can be easily researched online.
bruce_schneier_feedMultiple news outlets are reporting on Israel’s hacking of Iranian traffic cameras and how they assisted with the killing of that country’s leadership.
The New York Times has an
atlas_obscura_feed
A large, rusted spherical pressure vessel set in the woods behind an old, closed down schoolhouse built to store liquefied gas or other materials under high pressure.
A "Horton Sphere" (or Hortonsphere) is a relic from Connecticut's industrial past, looking something like a vintage lunar lander from the golden age of science fiction.
The sphere sits in a fenced off lot (with some breaches in the fencing) behind the defunct Laurel Hill School along with two other crumbled structures. It stands as a local landmark that once held various substances for industrial use. Research tells of other Horace Horton spheres similar to this 37.5' giant in Milford CT and Danbury CT, however those have been swallowed up by time.
"Horton Sphere" is a trademarked name for spherical pressure vessels, invented by the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company after its founder, Horace Ebenezer Horton (1843-1912).
lois_mcmaster_bujold_feeddotaturls_feedpublicdomainreview_feed
A utopian novel where men are no longer necessary.
scalziwhatever_feed
We have an outline! Major characters, plot lines, and various important story beats all laid out. Now to start writing it all up. Very exciting stuff.
This is worth noting because this is the first time Athena and I are doing this, but it won’t be the last, since we’ll be using this process to develop other projects soon. This is what our little family business does, after all: Think of cool stuff that we can then develop into actual projects that will hopefully become things you can see and buy. This is, hopefully, the first of many.
— JS
sistawendy
jstordaily_feedSince their invention, bicycles have been a symbol of the future. But as sociologist Cosmin Popan writes, the type of future it represents has changed dramatically over time.
As early as 1869, Popan writes, the first issue of French bicycling magazine Le Vélocipède Illustré featured an illustration of “Lady Progress” riding an early “boneshaker” bicycle. The modern “safety bicycle” invented in the 1880s extended mobility much more broadly and allowed for new social activities, including the ability of young women to move through the world independently. By the 1910s, futurist and cubist art adopted the bicycle as a representation of the fusion of humanity and machines in the modern era.
The rising bicycle industry also pioneered industrial production techniques such as the assembly line, as well as modern magazine and poster advertising, before the auto industry. And it literally paved the way for cars with cycling clubs campaigning for better roads in Europe and North America.
But, Popan writes, the car quickly became dominant as a mode of transportation and a symbol of fast-moving modern life. Transportation plans in the US and Europe centered cars and were almost always silent about any role for bicycles. By the second half of the twentieth century, media depictions of bicycles often showed them as something exclusively for children, or for odd, childish adults.
In this environment, some activists and intellectuals adopted bikes as part of a resistance to car-centric capitalist modernism. The White Bicycle Plan, created by the countercultural Provo movement in 1960s Amsterdam, proposed closing the city center to cars as part of an effort to curb pollution and improve people’s experience of public space. Participants provided free bicycles for people to use as they wished in the city, prefiguring today’s (often corporate-run) bike-sharing programs.
Popan writes that in the 1970s, philosopher Ivan Illich called the bicycle a “convivial tool” that could help riders escape car culture’s demands on both energy and time (the work needed to buy a vehicle). This harmonized with ideas about building local urban communities promoted in the 1960s and 1970s by figures such as Jane Jacobs.
A more recent development is Critical Mass, a movement that started in 1990s San Francisco and then spread around the world. Participants take over city streets for a carnivalesque monthly ride, contesting cars’ dominance.
Yet today, Popan writes, the most powerful strain in thinking about bicycles and the future comes from government agencies that tend to view them as an adjunct to cars, helping to make cities more efficient and better for business interests. For example, some cities have built “cycling superhighways” that are separated from auto traffic, providing a commuting option most accessible to younger and more athletic commuters.
In contrast, the most visible media depictions of a bicycle-centric future are postapocalyptic stories such as Ken Avidor’s graphic novel Bicyclopolis, in which the collapse of the fossil-fuel-powered industrial age forces a North American city into a different kind of technological track than the one it got on in the 1920s.
The post Bicycling Into the Future appeared first on JSTOR Daily.
reblogarythmvivdunstandotaturls_feeddaily_otter_feedThis is from VAMMRS's rescue of baby Luna in July 2024; after about five weeks under their care, Luna was transferred to Vancouver Aquarium.
bruce_schneier_feedWired has the story:
Shortly after the first set of explosions, Iranians received bursts of notifications on their phones. They came not from the government advising caution, but from an apparently hacked prayer-timing app called BadeSaba Calendar that has been downloaded more than 5 million times from the Google Play Store.
The messages arrived in quick succession over a period of 30 minutes, starting with the phrase ‘Help has arrived’ at 9:52 am Tehran time, shortly after the first set of explosions. No party has claimed responsibility for the hacks.
It happened so fast that this is most likely a government operation. I can easily envision both the US and Israel having hacked the app previously, and then deciding that this is a good use of that access.
cimorene - It's 9 pm, the ground is covered in sheets of ice,beccaelizabeth - (no subject)bluerosekatie in fancake - The Protomen: The Inevitable Fall of the Firstborn by ricefusmartbitches_feed - Cowboys, Dark Romance, & Moreatlas_obscura_feed - Pevnosť Bzovík in Bzovík, Slovakiabruce_schneier_feed - Israel Hacked Traffic Cameras in Iranatlas_obscura_feed - Norwich Horton Sphere in Norwich, Connecticutlois_mcmaster_bujold_feed - e Sharing Knife #1 Beguilment on sale for $1.99dotaturls_feed - The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do.publicdomainreview_feed - Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland (1915)scalziwhatever_feed - Update, re: Secret Project at the Scalzi Compoundsistawendy - Too much of a good thing?jstordaily_feed - Bicycling Into the Futurereblogarythm - What I saw on the web on 2026.3.4james_davis_nicoll - The Paradox Men by Charles L. Harnessvivdunstan - Accordion practicedotaturls_feed - RTL.WTF: read the web like Right-to-Left readers do.daily_otter_feed - Throwback to Sea Otter Pup Luna's Rescuebruce_schneier_feed - Hacked App Part of US/Israeli Propaganda Campaign Against Iranandrewducker - Interesting Links for 05-03-2026timeasmymeasure
