37/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A very amusing travel guide for those exploring the English countryside. Of particular interest if you’re a fan of cozy mysteries, either the literary type with punny titles, or the BBC Midsommer Murders type.
Geekery
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Uncanny Magazine Issue 58 edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Monte Lin
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.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home by Peter Lerangis
34/2024 – ⭐️⭐️
A kid’s adaptation of the fourth movie, illustrated with stills from the film. Serviceable, exactly as expected, no surprises.
Clarkesworld Issue 212 edited by Neil Clarke
33/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
My favorites this month were “The Portmeirion Road” by Fiona Moore and “The Weight of Your Own Ashes” by Carlie St. George.
Reclaiming the Web
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.
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.
Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold
32/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
On a stopover at Earth, Miles’ double life as Lord Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith finally comes to a head. More of the clever mix of military SF, politics, and quirky characters that continue to make this series such fun.
New Page: Link Recommendations
I’ve just added a new Link Recommendations page, inspired by @lori@hackers.town’s post:
…search is irreparably broken. Finding solid information about a topic is harder and harder. I think the only way we can fix this is to go back to relying on human curation.
The Yahoo model (not unique to Yahoo, but it’s a relatable example for people my age) was having a directory of websites based on topics. You go to the anime section, you get links to various anime websites. There wasn’t an infinite slop of fake blog results.
…my proposal was, and still is, simple. Do you have a personal website? Or just anywhere you can share some links? Make a page full of links to resources for things you care about. […] Then link to other people’s lists of links. […] Make a giant interconnected web of resources and get the word out in spaces you’re in for those topics that you’ve got a wealth of information gathered, and encourage others to do the same.
I’ve just started, so it’s far from finished (and as is often the case with these things, “finished” isn’t exactly a state ever likely to be reached), but it’s a start!
Star Trek III Short Stories by William Rotsler
31/2024 – ⭐️⭐️
A collection of six middling short stories. Four are set between the end of TWoK and the main action of TSfS, the final two are set at indeterminate times (Admiral Kirk is in command, Spock is alive). As with the other Rotsler Trek books I’ve found, not really worth searching out unless you’re a collector.
