• 26 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Well I should be finishing The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu but honestly western magical realism just isn’t doing it for me. It’s August’s small book club read so I’ll get back to it.

    In the meantime I’ve been re-reading Last Exit by Max Gladstone because Ruthanna Emrys and Anne Pillsworth are starting a re-read discussion and I’m reminded that it was awesome and that I felt like there was a lot I was missing when I read it the first time, so just refreshing my memory to be able to keep up with the discussion.








  • I don’t think you’re alone on the Southern Reach books by Vandermeer. I did read them, but holy moly it was a slog towards the end. It’s a trippy slow psychological descent. Without any concrete aspects for the reader to hang their hat on, it’s exceedingly difficult (for me at least) to get a picture of what’s going on, what’s really happening. I think they’re well written, but they are not really my thing.











  • Daytime reading: Witch King by Martha Wells

    • Fantasy – My mental jury is still out on this one. Characters are likeable, but the world is still quite murky which makes certain motivations and behaviors hard to parse.

    Nighttime reading: The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin

    • ??? – Haven’t gotten far enough in it to even know. It’s a period piece in mid 19th century. Maybe magical realism?






  • I don’t know if it’s technical detail translating poorly into journalism, but from reading up on it, I don’t believe it was just a sensor deploying at the wrong time. It was a sensor providing flight stability critical information with no tri-mode redundancy built in (sold secondarily as a “safety mechanism” reporting incorrectly, causing MCAS to react fatally.

    I think that “sensor with no redundancy” is a pretty important fact.





  • I think that’s basically the argument that just puts blinders on and assumes everything is perfect and why pretend otherwise. A comment I’ve read that I think has some merit is that they didn’t put an end to legacy admissions, bias for donors, employee families, and other special recommendations. These are all systems that favor class and are predominantly white. So why did the justices pretend that admissions are all based around merit and achievement when they are not?

    If more were being done about the systemic causes, then I think there would be less frustration with this decision. Since we clearly have quite a long way to go on the systemic issues, this ruling is pretty naive in my view.




  • I don’t disagree. However I spend most of my time in kbin.social/sub where I’ve already curated most of the groups I care to look at and engage with. I really only venture into /all when I’m kinda bored. Thus, so far, it hasn’t really been too terribly problematic to do that.

    It would be nice to declare a language whitelist and have a filter for it, but I suspect kbin has some more important things on the To Do list for the moment, and maybe devs will get around to it when they’ve got a breather. We’re likely going to have another influx on the 1st after the alien site kicks app devs in the nuts.