Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

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📚 four of 2020: The Empire Strikes Back, by Donald F. Glut ⭐️⭐️

A clumsy and unimaginative adaptation. Most interesting for the handwritten notes contributed by a former owner of this copy, correcting all the Han/Leia romance to be screen-accurate.

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📚 three of 2020: Dune, by Frank Herbert ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1966 Hugo Best Novel

This one (mostly) holds up well; still an excellent book, with its mix of SF adventure, ecological messages, political maneuvering, and religious themes. Well worth the re-read after many years.

Our Idols are Fallible

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Isaac Asimov has long been, and still is, one of my favorite authors. He was also a person who regularly sexually harassed women. Both statements can be (and are) true, without me having to give up the former or condone the latter.

His history with women is no secret, and is the subject of the article Asimov’s Empire, Asimov’s Wall:

Over the course of many decades, Asimov groped or engaged in other forms of unwanted touching with countless women, often at conventions, but also privately and in the workplace. Within the science fiction community, this is common knowledge, and whenever I bring it up in a room of older fans, the response is usually a series of nods. The number of such incidents is unknown, but it can be plausibly estimated in the hundreds, and thus may match or exceed the long list of books that Asimov wrote.

…I regularly hear the argument that Asimov was simply a product of his era. You certainly don’t need to look far to find parallel offenders, including Asimov’s friend Randall Garrett, of whom Frank Herbert recalled, “You could follow his movements … by the squeals of the women whose bottoms he had just pinched.”

But excusing Asimov by saying that some of his contemporaries were guilty of similar transgressions is like downplaying his productivity by pointing out that other authors were prolific.

I find it important to recognize and consider the flaws in the people and the media that we enjoy, rather than shrugging them off or brushing them under the proverbial carpet. It doesn’t mean we have to “cancel” things, banishing entire swaths of previously-enjoyed content when we discover the creator said or did something we find problematic (though in some instances, we may decide to; each person has to determine that for themselves depending on their values and the situation in question). But learning how to hold ourselves and others to higher standards means not ignoring the failures when they appear.

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📚 two of 2020: Encounter at Farpoint, by David Gerrold ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A fairly straight adaptation, only a few notable differences from the broadcast episode. As a friend noted, quite amused by the descriptions of men (competence, personality) and women (they’re hot!). 🖖

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📚 one of 2020: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, by Fredrik Backman. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A great first book for the year, this one is wonderful. Touching, heartfelt, and hilarious, and a beautiful blend of real and fantasy worlds. An instant favorite.

Who are you? Where are you (virtually)?

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Now that I’m (once again) working on resurrecting my regular blogging here (as opposed to walled gardens like Facebook), and as I’ve opened comments up again, I’d love to know if people are actually stopping by (either directly or through RSS/newsreaders) and paying attention to my rambling—and I’d love to know if any of you have blogs or webspaces of your own outside of Facebook so I can keep up with what you post!

So, please feel free to leave a comment (or, if you’d prefer, ping @djwudi on Twitter, or go old-school and email me) and let me know who you are and what blogs, website(s), podcasts, or other projects you have going on that I can add to my reading list!

And if you’re also looking for ways to expand your world outside of Facebook and the like, may I recommend setting up a blog of your own somewhere? You can post whatever you want, you own the content, and you don’t have to worry about algorithms keeping your stuff from being shown to people who want to see it.

A really easy way to get started that I have been using in conjunction with this site for a while now and can recommend is micro.blog. It lives in a space somewhere between Twitter and more full-featured systems like WordPress, which makes it a perfect way to get set up blogging. It’s inexpensive ($5/month or $50/year for them to host your blog, or free if you can connect it to an externally hosted blog–such as a free basic WordPress.com blog), and has a nice community of users. More information on micro.blog is available on their help pages.

Or if you’re just looking for ways to read what you want to read without depending on Facebook’s algorithms to surface things, I’d like to suggest an RSS newsreader such as NetNewsWire (for macOS, iOS coming soon) or FeedBin (web-based). Just tell the newsreader what sources (websites, blogs, news sites, etc.) you want to read, and they take care of the rest. Newsreaders have been how I’ve read most of my daily news for years now, and it’s a far nicer experience than having to go to each individual website to see what’s new.

Whoever you are and however and wherever you exist online, howdy! Glad you stopped by!

My New Year’s Resolutions

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My resolutions for this year:

  • 5120 x 2880
  • 1920 x 1080
  • 1668 x 2224
  • 1125 x 2436
  • 368 x 448

(That’s my retina iMac, its secondary display, and my iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, respectively. Yes, I make this same stupid joke every year, ‘cause it makes me laugh.)