Book thirty-two of 2018: Moving Mars, by Greg Bear. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Actually finished a couple weeks ago, but was vacationing and not posting photos.)
2018-08-27
Testing the Sunlit app for posting photos. A small selection from last week’s vacation trip to Lake Coeur d’Alene. I can’t imagine doing the lakehouse-and-boat lifestyle full-time, but it was fun to try it out for a few days!
2018-08-28
2018-08-29
2018-08-30
Linkdump for September 1st through September 3rd
Sometime between September 1st and September 3rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- It Came From the ’70s: The Story of Your Grandma’s Weird Couch: “The ’70s, however, was a time when everyone, even the Western-loving square, was more open to experimenting in some way. Some people tried drugs or hosted swinging sex parties; others channeled their sense of adventure exclusively into garish upholstery.”
- Why tech’s favorite color is making us all miserable: “The cold blue light of modern touchscreens may be aesthetically pleasing, but it poses health problems. Designers and technologists should take cues from military history and embrace the orange.”
- Lego Wants to Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks (Without Anyone Noticing): “It wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030.”
- The man who owns the Moon: "For more than 35 years, Dennis Hope has been selling land on the Moon. Hope registered a claim for the Moon in 1980 and, since the US government & the UN didn’t object, he figures he owns it (along with the other planets and moons in the solar system)."
- A twitter thread in which I drag every single US president in order:: Not many get off lightly — nor should they. Not an approach to history you're likely to find in most history classes.
Linkdump for August 1st through September 1st
Sometime between August 1st and September 1st, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- The P-I error that changed Seattle history: "Occasionally, newspapers report factual errors. A well-intentioned interview subject gives bad information, a name is spelled wrong, a breaking news story is inadvertently peppered with grammatical errors. But no incorrect newspaper story has had a bigger impact on Seattle history than one published June 7, 1889."
- 98.6 degrees is a normal body temperature, right? Not quite: “Forget everything you know about normal body temperature and fever, starting with 98.6. That’s an antiquated number based on a flawed study from 1868 (yes, 150 years ago). The facts about fever are a lot more complicated.”
- The “I Am Steve Rogers” Joke in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Is the Definitive Captain America Moment: That’s who Captain America is, a man who listens to and believes in people when they tell him who they are. That’s a lesson we all should take away from that moment.
- The Bullshit Web: “An honest web is one in which the overwhelming majority of the code and assets downloaded to a user’s computer are used in a page’s visual presentation, with nearly all the remainder used to define the semantic structure and associated metadata on the page. Bullshit — in the form of CPU-sucking surveillance, unnecessarily-interruptive elements, and behaviours that nobody responsible for a website would themselves find appealing as a visitor — is unwelcome and intolerable.”
- Ignorant Hysteria Over 3D Printed Guns Leads To Courts Ignoring The First Amendment: "…in the last few days the hysteria [over 3D-printed guns] has returned… and much of it is misleading and wrong, and while most people probably want to talk about the 2nd Amendment implications of all of this, it's the 1st Amendment implications that are a bigger deal." Interesting. I'm not at all comfortable with wide availability of 3D-printed guns, but this analysis of the issues is worth reading.
And Summer vacation part two (four nights with friends at a lake house on Lake Coeur d’Alene in Idaho) is done! Had to make it a working vacation, but when not being responsible, I drove a boat, rode a rainbow floaty unicorn, swam in a lake, and had a grand time!
Summer vacation part one was in the mountains; today we leave for summer vacation part two, by a lake! As before, connectivity will be low priority, so y’all have fun without me for another week. Once more, don’t let anything important happen while we’re gone, okay?
Summer vacation part one (four nights camping at Seaquest State Park) is done! Saw Mt. St. Helens on a smokey, hazy day and on a gorgeous, clear day, introduced two of our nieces to camping, got my new tattoo’s first unsolicited compliment from a stranger, and many bug bites. 😁
Running away to the mountains for a few days for part one of our summer vacation! Will be either entirely disconnected or nearly so for the duration. Make sure nothing important happens for the next few days, okay?
“Author NK Jemisin has scooped her third Hugo award for best science-fiction novel and, in doing so, has become the standard-bearer for a sea change in the genre’s diversity, as women – especially women of colour – swept the boards at last night’s ceremony.” Excellent.
Leaning ever closer to closing down my Twitter account once I’ve passed on the keys to the Norwescon social media accounts. Between their inconsistent application of rules and their neutering of third-party clients, it’s harder to care about staying.