Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

If you’re looking for ways to take care of those who deeply need it right now, here’s where you can start:

Vote No on the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) 

This deceptively named bill aims to increase the surveillance powers of the state in the US, and restrict access to information under the guise of protecting children while they’re online. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great article explaining why KOSA is bad for everyone, including kids but especially communities of traditionally marginalized people. The function of this bill is to cut off vulnerable people from communities and information, and it’s absolutely critical that the bill does not pass.

Bluesky user Queer Witch has made it easy to make your voice heard regarding this issue: text SIGN PHJDYH to 50409 to contact your senators.

Supporting Palestine 

• Donate to the Red Cross 
• Donate to Doctors Without Borders
• Donate to Organizations Providing Legal Aid
• Donate to Media Organizations Providing Fair Coverage
• Get involved with PCRF
• Connect with Jewish Voice for Peace
• Check out and share these curated resources
• Use Resistbot to message all of your representatives

Alasdair Stuart Review: The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow

The incredibly insightful Alasdair Stuart joined the Stone Soup Digest as a regular contributor last week! Check out his review of the newly released game from Wadjet Eye Games and Cloak and Dagger Games, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, and be sure to subscribe to The Full Lid for more brilliant pop culture analysis.

Ladz teams up with illustrator Soren Häxan

Ladz’s latest, The Fealty of Monsters, includes illustrations by Soren Häxan. You can preorder it now wherever you like to get your books. 

Personal Canons Cookbook Highlights

Eden Royce’s Life Lessons in the Kitchen

Eden Royce is a writer from Charleston, SC and the author of middle-grade titles Root Magic (2021) and Conjure Island (2023), as well as the short story collection for adults Who Lost, I Found: Stories (2023). She is a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and a Nebula Award Finalist, and has written articles for Writer’s Digest and We Need Diverse Books. Her first adult novella, a Southern Gothic entitled Hollow Tongue, is scheduled for publication in 2024.

Read her essay and try her recipe for a fluffy, satiny white cooked frosting that requires no butter, cream, or icing sugar. 

Currently Reading: H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of nature's most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's own state of grief after her father's death, and together raptor and human "discover the pain and beauty of being alive" (People).

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

Featured New Release: System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries Book 7)  by Martha Wells

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore