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The heat broke today, but more importantly, the humidity broke too. I can think without the feel of a shirt suctioned to my body with sweat. A light breeze and evaporation is all I’ve desired these past few days, and relief is here in time for the weekend! 🌞
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Murderbot show thoughts
Murderbot - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Do a quick search and you’ll see why Murderbot is so popular. The books are wonderful, a series of short and sharp action dramadies that speak to the experience of a socially awkward part of ourselves, trying to figure ourselves out amongst the weird others.
This show mostly hits the mark the books target. I think it suffers a bit from being the first season; it hits its stride in the last few episodes, going from being happy fan service to a compelling character study and social commentary. (One could do a nice essay comparing the Corporation Rim scenes with Andor.) I also think it suffers from its fandom cheering and celebrating a little too hard for their favorite series; if you push past that, and give it a few episodes, it’s a solid start to what could be a good series.
Ultimately, I cheered for Murderbot on screen for the same reason I did in the books - I see myself in the awkward, anxious robot who needs to pretend to be something else to fit in and not be hurt, but has a lot of affection for its weird, nonsensical clients it has, despite its better judgement, formed a bond with. 📺🤖🚀
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The bat is just as defiant of prediction as the Big Bang – small winged evidence that the possible is always vaster than the probable and the imagination of life is always greater than that of the living.
Maria Popova is more eloquent and clear than three quarters of science content on social media, and the rest can only aspire to be as well read as her.
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Sat down for a beer at Moniker Brewery, and the flower pot started a conversation with me. 💬🌸🍺
If you could have the credit for creating any piece of art - painting, music, movie, book, etc. - which would you choose & why?
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I admire this random person’s attempt to add some dark whimsy to an otherwise banal gas station. 📸🖼️🐦⬛⛽️
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It’s the return of one of my favorite times of the year: sitting outside my cafe, sipping tea and eating a muffin while I solve my morning puzzles. For every two bites, I sprinkle a pinch of muffin on the ground for the sparrows. The morning and I hold each other in quiet regard. ☕️🧩🐦⬛🌞
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Building the Reading Habit - Hild
Hild has been the perfect book for my work towards reinvigorating my long dormant reading habit. I highly recommend it to everyone looking for a solid work of fiction, especially if you’re into historical fiction or works like A Song of Ice and Fire.
The book jacket summary pretty much works, to know broadly what you’re in for. Honestly, what drew me to it was the blurb from Neal Stephenson, and the promise of a good story about realistic medieval life from a girl’s point of view. I’d have slogged through it by now if that was all there was to this work, but it’s been more
Hild is a thick book, filled with deeply researched details and descriptions that not only bring the world alive, but assumed I was keeping up and wasn’t afraid of looking up a detail on google. It requires attention and time, but not so much that I’d lose track of what’s happening if I put it down for a day when life intervened. As Hild herself grows into herself and in her relationships with others, learning to use her weirdness and the rumors about her to shape her life and her destiny, I find myself growing with her and appreciating my own gifts and weirdness, which makes me anticipate and enjoy the times I spend in her world.
It’s the combination of the length of the book and the rewarded investment that I find perfect for exercising my reading habit. I’ve read other excellent books, but they’ve been with a goal in mind - for my book club, or for work, or because I thought I should read them and was pleasantly surprised. Or they’ve been smaller books in series - The Witcher series, for example. With the smaller books, the size becomes a distraction: however good the book is, I want to hurry up and finish so I can move on to the next one I feel I should be consuming. If it isn’t entertaining or immediately clear, I just need to slog through it and get my reward so I can get to the next book, rather than engage with the author and the work. Hild is big and rewarding enough that I can savor it, and there is no goal in mind, just a book that looked interesting, and with that combination, my attention and habit get stronger.
I’m on the last 150 pages. I’m not sure what I’ll read next; there’s a sequel, which I’ll likely pick up. Even if I reach for a shorter or more goal-fulfilling work, though, I’ll approach that with a different mindset, thanks to my experience with Hild. 📚
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Only thing worse than no AC on a hot day, is your favorite cafe with broken AC on a hot day. 🥵🌞
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A busy day today! I’ve just hit Providence Pride to avoid the worst of the heat and the crowds, and picked up some Girl Scout cookies and a pretty moon-shaped necklace.
Now for lunch, then a presentation on being a GM for a TTRPG, then to Middletown for my friend’s band!
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My local burger joint hung these flower decorations and lights from the ceilings, and instantly turned a utilitarian, blandly masculine vibe into a whimsical, delightful place that still serves a great burger for a great price. 🌸🖼️
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My sister’s husband’s dog is, um, particular about his name. 🐕
Transcript: Me: Got it! My best to Lisa and Brad and their dog! Dad: TRUMAN [photo of annoyed Truman] Me: 🤣 My apologies!
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Awnings over HVAC
How to Dress and Undress Your Home
So many good ideas in this article on using textiles and movable structures inside and outside can cool and heat your space. I’m most enamored with the toldos - I can picture many areas in Providence hoisting them above streets and common areas to provide shade and relief. The outdoor farmers markets could hoist them between stalls, too.
I’m not too much into the idea of a smart home, but it seems like this is one area it makes a lot of sense. There are automatic curtain and shade controllers, and I’m sure there are automatic home window devices too. Why not automatic awning controls? Tie these into a smart home hub, and they can move the textiles and structures around to handle the heat, sun, wind and cold. I’d bed the savings in running the home heating and cooling systems would more than offset the outlay in equipment, and it could work while the occupant is away or distracted.
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Of Rooks, Jackdaws, Cats, Dogs, and Kings
“You look like that when you listen to music,” she said. “You watch everything, don’t you? Why?”
“It’s peaceful. I learn things.”
Athelburh untied her braid and began combing through it with her fingers. “What things?”
“That rooks — dogs, cats, people — do some kinds of things depending on how old they are. Like those young rooks. In autumn they’ll lose their face feathers, and they’ll start playing fying for the fun of it, only they’re not doing it for the fun of it, they’re proving they’re good enough for the rookery, that they can stay. Like gesiths with their boasting and fighting. And rooks are like jackdaws — like people. They have families. They talk. They don’t like change. There’s an ash spinney a mile away where they like to go pluck the twigs for their nest. Always the same place; one patch is almost bare of twigs. But they’re just twigs, why fly all that way? I don’t know. But that’s what they do.”
… “And what do dogs and cats do?”
“Dogs own space and cats own time. … The cats share the barn and the byre. All of them. But you’ve seen the big ginger tom with the torn ear? … He gets to sit on the hay bale by the door at middæg. The two grey queens curl up there at æfen. The tom wouldn’t go there in the evening, and the queens wouldn’t go there at middæg. But a dog in hall or the kennel likes his own corner, morning, noon, and night. That’s his corner, no one else’s.”
“And people?”
“Kings travel from place to place like a cat but want to own those places like a dog. It’s why there are wars.”
- Hild, pg. 241 💬📚
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Photos from the No Kings Rhode Island Statehouse event. The rain and a busy road didn’t keep people away for the full two hours, and from what I hear, the other Providence No Kings event was even better attended! 🪧✊🇺🇸
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Look what life gifted me today! 🦕
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The rain isn’t keeping people away, just slowing their arrival. 🪧✊🏻🇺🇸
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I Do Not Remember My Life and It’s Fine
This is a fascinating read! I had a shallow understanding of what aphantasia is before reading this account of trying to remember without access to mental imagery.
This and his list of introspective descriptions can make for an engrossing night’s reading!
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Bookworm serendipity: when you finish a book at the exact moment the album you’re listening to finishes. 📚🎵
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What happens when the intelligence goes out?
Thinking about the AI industry’s promise of intelligence that flows like electricity — a metaphor that carries the implications both of ubiquity and central generation — I wonder what happens, in the future, when the intelligence goes out?
Another reason for us to be skeptical of AI, and to double down on our social, economic and technological infrastructure.
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I predict, in a few years, that freelancing and job-seeking coders will advertise their services with, “I fix AI coded projects.” If these people charge enough, maybe this whole vibe coding thing will wither as the waste of time it always was.
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Reading this was like a reverie of childhood, when I’d consume every techno-optimist magazine and show I could find, and imagine the great new world everything was building towards.
I’ve always loved world building, wether in fantasy or propaganda; I suspect it ties into my interest in cartography and organization systems, where not only does everything have a place, but every element relates to the other. Science booster journalism like Bray’s article feels a lot like that - here is how structural protein research, specifically around silk, might help create a world where syringes aren’t necessary and cancer can be treated with silk lenses. That “might”, the possibilities it encompasses? I’m always teetering on the edge of its spell. 🔬🗺️💭
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I like to think I’m pretty mobile with my work needs. Have laptop and internet access, will travel. I have to rethink that.
Today, I’m working on campus, in my old, now repurposed, space. Multiple interruptions, with people loudly talking as they walk behind me. A mess of untidy wires. Clutter and detritus everywhere. Even the keyboard feels wrong; I keep tapping the wrong keys and making mistakes.
Have I become too settled? Too inflexible? Or was my old work environment always this way, and only with distance am I able to see it?
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I enjoyed V, for all that it showcased every single bad 80s trope. I wonder if it was supposed to be a send-up of all the alien invasion action movies that got in the hands of some better than average writers who did what they could with the script. Redone today, with some tweaks, it could be a timely commentary on Trump, DOGE and MAGA.
The series was redone in 2009 with the charismatic Morena Baccarin in the lead, but based on what I’m reading of the timing of its release, I doubt I’ll give it a watch.
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Currently watching the original V miniseries. It’s like They Live, but less macho and somehow even more campy. 📽️🚀
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Trump warns Walmart not to raise prices due to his tariffs | AP News
I one hundred percent, lifetime guarantee you that he would not accept those demands for any of his businesses. Well , the non-bankrupt ones.
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