Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

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39/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1996 Hugo Best Novel

As good as every other time I’ve read it, and I think it’s still my favorite of Stephenson’s novels. “Modern Victorians with ubiquitous nanotechnology create a fancy children’s book” might not sound like that fascinating of a concept, but it definitely is. In addition to the oft-mentioned things about Stephenson’s writing that always work for me but don’t work at all for others — the snark, digressions, and sidetracks — it’s his ability to convey highly technical concepts in understandable form, which is highlighted here in some of the stories that the Primer tells, that has always been a big part of the appeal of this book for me.

Me holding The Diamond Age

The Abyss

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The Abyss (1989): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Finally got around to watching the new 4K release of The Abyss (the Special Edition cut, of course). Happily, it still holds up, and remains solidly in my list of favorite films. Even though I’ve seen it many times, know the story, and can quote quite a bit of it, I still found myself getting pulled in. The characters are fun, the claustrophobic tension is great, and the expanded details and characterization make the special edition well worth the extra time. And, of course, finally being able to have a high-quality copy is a real treat.

Long-time favorite quotes:

Hippy: “I got to tell you, I give this whole thing a sphincter-factor of about 9.5.”

Lindsey: “So raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water-tentacle.”

Lindsey (again): “We all see what we want to see. Coffey looks and he sees Russians. He sees hate and fear. You have to look with better eyes than that.”

Dune: Part Two

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Dune Part: Two (2024): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Absolutely gorgeous, from start to finish, landscapes and production design both. I do kind of wonder if the Harkonnen designs were intentional homages to Giger’s work on the designs for Jodorowski’s aborted attempt. At some point I’ll want to find time to watch both parts back to back (maybe after Messiah comes out I’ll make it a trilogy marathon).

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

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36/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1995 Hugo Best Novel

Complex in both story and character, this becomes an excellent exploration of the differing personalities of the Vorkosigan brothers in the midst of military adventure and political maneuvering. As with the rest of the series, it’s Bujold’s ability to craft realistically flawed characters, some in very serious ways, while still making them relatable, believable, and often quite funny, that really makes these stand out. Though most of the books in the series are written to be readable on their own, this is one where I’d definitely recommend reading earlier books first.

Me holding Mirror Dance

Uncanny Magazine Issue 58 edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Monte Lin

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35/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Favorites this month were “Happily Ever After Comes Round” by Sarah Rees Brennan, “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou, “Markets of the Otherworld” by Rati Mehrotra, and “Hands Like Gold and Starlight” by K.S. Walker.

Me holding Uncanny Magazine issue 58 on my iPad

Reclaiming the Web

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Excellent article by Molly White looking back at what the web used to be and forward to how we could bring that back: We can have a different web.

As a lifelong lover of the web, it’s hard not to feel a little hopeless right now. […] It is tempting, amid all of this decay, to yearn for the good old days.

[…] Nothing about the web has changed that prevents us from going back. If anything, it’s become a lot easier. We can return. Better, yet: we can restore the things we loved about the old web while incorporating the wonderful things that have emerged since, developing even better things as we go forward, and leaving behind some things from the early web days we all too often forget when we put on our rose-colored glasses.

I’m just one (very small) corner of the ‘net, but I do what little I can to keep my site as clean as possible. No ads, no minimal trackers (EDIT: Huh…Ghostery is telling me I have two trackers on my site. I’ll look into that. I try not to have any, and I’m not sure where these are coming from.), not even any metrics (I have no idea how many — if any — visitors I get here). Like Molly and the people she mentions in the article (I voted in the Mastodon version of the poll that she screenshots), I miss the “good old days”. I hope there are enough other people who also do that we can reclaim some of that outside of the walls of Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) and others.

Or as Angus McIntyre said:

This excellent article by @molly0xfff reminded me of the sci-fi trope where everyone in the future lives in a domed bunker & gets told not to go outside because it’s a wasteland filled with Bad People.

Of course the protagonists leave the dome & find that the reality is a bit different: outside can be scary, but it’s not the hellscape they were told.

Big Tech walled gardens are the dome; outside them is a risky wonderland that’s ours for the taking.

Leave the dome.