56/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As with the rest in this series, a nice selection of funny, mysterious, charming stories.
📚 The Nixie of the Mill-Pond and Other European Stories edited by Kel McDonald and Kate Ashwin
55/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The next in this anthology series. As this one is European stories, it was the first with stories I recognized. Once again, a good selection, with good artwork, and while overall a little lighter than the other two I’ve read so far, still has a few pleasant moments of darkness.
📚 The Night Marchers and Other Oceanian Tales edited by Kel McDonald, Kate Ashwin, and Sloane Leong
54/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
More short graphic adaptions of fables from around the world; this edition centering on Oceania (primarily Hawaii and the Philippines).
📚 The Woman in the Woods and Other North American Stories edited by Kel McDonald, Kate Ashwin, and Alina Pete
53/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
One of a series of six (eventually; five are published, the sixth is in production) anthologies of short comics based on indigenous cultures; this one is stories from North America. I enjoyed all the stories, with a good range of humor, heartfeltness, and darkness.
📚 Past Prologue by L.A. Graf
52/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
More time travel shenanigans to get everything wrapped up means more opportunity to get a little confused as to which version of each character is in which setting, but it works out in the end. And the final scene is actually a nice way to finish things off.
But once again, the back cover blurb is wrong, but has just enough relation to make me think that there were some major rewrites and the blurbs were written from the original pitch instead of the final work for some reason.
📚 Future Imperfect by L.A. Graf
51/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Part two of this trilogy involves a lot of time travel, or dimensional travel, or both, which occasionally makes it a bit difficult to keep track of who is where/when, but for the most part tracks decently.
The back cover blurb is somewhat closer to the plot of the book than with the first book in the series, but still has some notable differences. Maybe the blurbs were written much earlier in the planning process, before rewrites and editorial adjustments? The cover image also has no relation to the story.
📚 Present Tense by L.A. Graf
50/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Set directly after “The Naked Now”, the Enterprise decides to use their extra three days to do a low-stakes check on an away team on a boring planet. Suddenly, everything goes wrong! The first book in a trilogy, so nothing gets wrapped up here, but it’s the usual Trek adventures. Some extra points for having cave exploration scenes that were claustrophobic enough to wig me out a little.
Weirdly, the summary blurb on the back of the book (and thus, on this site) is entirely unrelated to the actual plot.
Goodbye Twitter
I’d been debating it for a while, but as of tonight, I’m stepping away from Twitter.
Yesterday I downloaded my Twitter data archive (honestly, I have no idea how to process it or what to do with it, but at least I have it), and tonight, I’m using TweetDelete to wipe my Twitter history clean, and have updated my Twitter bio to point to my blog and my Mastodon account.
I’ll be keeping the account open, so that I can hold on to the djwudi username, as I’ve been using that handle consistently for decades, and I want to make sure it stays under my control. However, the account will stay dormant until I feel that Twitter has improved, or until it finally completely falls over, whichever comes first.
I joined Twitter in October of 2007, fifteen years ago, and posted somewhere over 23,000 tweets in that time — not nearly as many as some people, but not too shabby, either. And now, as Elon continues to run it into the ground and let the worst possible users run rampant, I finally hit the point where it’s just not worth continuing to either contribute content or preserve the content I’d contributed in the past. I also recognize the privilege I have in not depending on Twitter for any of the communities I’m part of.
It’s unfortunate…but here it is.
Travel and CO2
A day of travel, as “seen” by a Aranet4 portable CO2 monitor.
Reading this: basically, CO2 levels are a measure of how well a space is ventilated, and can therefore be a handy proxy for a rough idea of how likely it could be that there might be infectious particles (flu, COVID, etc.) in the air. Lower CO2 = better ventilation and less chance of any bugs in the air, Higher CO2 = worse ventilation, stale air, and higher chance of other bugs in the air. It’s not a one-to-one connection, obviously, as there are other variables, such as number of people in the area, but it can be a good way to get a rough measure of the ventilation.
So here’s how my day went (all times shifted one hour from what’s shown on the graph due to the time change).
Until about 8am, I was at the hotel. Levels stayed in the green and slowly decreased through the night, then increased into the yellow as I woke up and was active and moving around, showering, packing, etc.
8-9am, outside and on the light rail to the airport. Nice and green.
9-noon, in the airport, often in the midst of lots of people as I went through the TSA lines. Even in the large, high-ceilinged airport areas, with lots of room for air to move, levels were generally in the yellow. This is part of why crowded situations, even in large or outdoor areas, are still good places to be masked.
Noon-2pm, on the airplane. Lots of people in a fairly small, confined space. Airplanes might have “good” ventilation, but there’s only so much that can be done, and it was solidly in the red the entire time. I was okay with my KN95 through the airport, but switched to an N95 from just before boarding until after disembarking in Seattle, didn’t eat on the plane, and used a straw when drinking to minimize intake of unfiltered air.
2-3pm: Getting my baggage and taking a Lyft home. Right back into the green.
This was a handy little gadget to have with me this week. That, plus masking, plus vaccination and boosters, and I’m feeling pretty confident in my safety measures.
🎥 The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018): ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Well, it’s definitely a Gilliam film, and I do tend to like those, even when I don’t entirely “get” them right off the bat. His tendency to slip in and out of reality at any given point always engages well with me, and this is no exception. I’m just not sure what the actual theme of this one is; I may just need to rewatch it again.
I will admit that, as much as I enjoy both Gilliam and Pryce, casting Pryce as a Spaniard is questionable at best. But then, Gilliam does fall into the realm of “problematic fave” for me, and this is one more instance why.