📚 Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

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18/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Excellent account of the settling and first steps of terraforming Mars, taking place over a few decades. Good hard sci-fi, with fascinating ideas on how it could be done and the effects, both micro (on the people involved and their immediate society) and macro (on the larger sociopolitical societies of Earth and Mars as it grows, and the physical effects on Mars). Fascinating from start to end; very much looking forward to continuing through the trilogy.

Also interesting reading this at a time when Mars is often in the news as an eventual destination once again, both realistic (NASA) and unrealistic (Musk), not long after reading and seeing Andy Weir’s The Martian and its film adaptation, just after finishing season four of For All Mankind, which is set on Mars, and while seeing Zach Weinersmith frequently post about his recent book looking at how Mars colonization is more difficult and dangerous than most people think. I wonder how much of what we know has changed since this part of the trilogy was written and how it might affect the underlying story if it were written today (I’m assuming that the Green Mars and Blue Mars sequels, being necessarily further extrapolated and less dependent on current real world science, would be less affected).

Me holding Red Mars

Year 50 Day 301

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Me driving our car home, taken from the passenger seat.

Day 301: I actually went to work today! And then was busy enough that I totally forgot to take a picture to prove that I was feeling well enough to leave the house, so my wife snapped this shot on our way home.

These Are Facts

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From Solarbird’s latest Fascism Watch (see the original post for more details and links to sources):

I want to present a list of items which are very well documented facts, but would’ve been absolutely, patently insane 10 years ago. I mean, the kind of rantings that got you thrown out of every conversation and mocked for years afterwards – and which are all now verified as true.

[…]

  • The Republican House is a tool of Russian intelligence, routinely using disinformation from Russian intelligence services, and either not caring whether the disinformation was true or not or knowing it was using disinformation and using it anyway, in conjunction with the Russians.

    […]

    The ‘Russia hoax’ was never, ever a hoax.

  • Trumpist allies within in the FBI and US intelligence services have similarly shown willingness to either take money from Russian agents or suppress information about Russian intelligence disinformation, particularly when doing so benefits the Republican party.

  • CPAC – the Conservative Political Action Conference, where insurrectionist leader and former President Trump spoke on Satuday – is a Nazi forum that welcomes Nazis. This isn’t an allegation anymore, there were literal Nazis openly welcomed on the floor and throughout the event.

    Some of these fascists overtly called for the end of democracy at this event and its replacement by a theocratic government. […]

  • Said former president and insurrectionist is running for president and thus far easily winning the Republican nomination. Amongst other actions, he’s promising to be a dictator on day one, and he and his allies are planning to use Red-state militaries against Blue states and to build a mass system of concentration camps. […]

  • Where Republicans have power now, they are trying to overturn marriage equality as a stepping stone to making LGBT people illegal again, arresting women for miscarriages, banning trans people and health care for trans people, banning books at scale and criminalising librarians who try to run underground book sharing programmes with laws which carry felony sentences, appointing terrorists to library oversight committees, introducing bills to criminalise sexting between adults, pledging ‘holy war’ against women pop stars.

    Oh yes, and doing everything they can to stop people from voting.

    And they will do all of this – every single bit of it – nationally, if they can.

Year 50 Day 299

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Me sitting on our couch, with my MacBook running OBS, an iPad acting a second screen showing the final video output, and a DJ controller half-shoved behind pillows to one side.

Day 299: More work on prepping for DJing at Norwescon. Today I was working on making sure I had a good video output setup with OBS to send to the projection screen that will be behind me on stage during the dance. It’s a variation on what I use when streaming, and I really like the way it comes out.

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🎥 Meg 2: The Trench

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Meg 2: The Trench (2023): ⭐️⭐️

This was dumb. The first Meg was entertaining; still a big dumb monster movie, but at least with it you could (just) hit the point of suspension of disbelief and go along for the ride. This one took far too long with the setup for very little payoff, and just prompts eye rolls when it tries to be entertaining. Another one we’re glad we didn’t chance in the theater.

🎥 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical

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Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (2022): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was fun. While the songs weren’t such that I’m going to want the soundtrack, I really did enjoy the creativity of a lot of the lyrics. And somehow I hadn’t realized that Emma Thompson was in this (and made a marvelous Ms. Trunchbull).

Must admit, though — I actually think that the choreography for Revolting Children works better for this parody video than with the original music.

Year 50 Day 298

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Me on the couch in my Star Trek pajamas, with my MacBook Air open on my lap and the Music app running full screen and displaying a long list of tracks.

Day 298: I have more energy, but still have a head full of goo. Spending some of my downtime on prepping my music library for DJing the Thursday night dance at Norwescon.

Which involves more swearing at Apple than this long-time Apple user would like it to. I really wish they’d give the Music app the love and care it so desperately needs, particularly when it comes to people like me, who have a large library of owned music and care about metadata, and are not interested in cloud features. I just want an app that concentrates on organizing, managing, and playing what’s on my computer. iTunes in its early days did a great job of that, but it (or its current “Music” incarnation) hasn’t been solid in years.

Year 50 Day 296

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Me in my home office, with shelves full of books and trinkets behinnd me.

Day 296: Good news — improvements are being made! While not at 100%, I’m definitely feeling better, and actually got dressed today instead of spending another day in pajamas. (Though, really, sweats and a t-shirt aren’t that different from pajamas, but still!)

Bad news — it looks suspiciously like now it’s my wife’s turn to go through this. Which is not great, but better to go in series so that we can take turns taking care of each other, instead of both of us being sick at the same time and nobody having the energy to do anything for the other.