anelith | Recent Entries

I can sometimes tell when I'm going to get a migraine when I do poorly on my usual morning Duolingo lessons. It's before any pain or other indicators start, but it's a pretty consistent correlation. Actually good to get ahead of it so I appreciate the early warning. A true "heads up" as it were.

A couple of days ago there was a heated discussion on my town's Facebook page about clearing snow and ice away from fire hydrants and storm drains. The original post was from a man who complained that, a few days after a big snow and ice storm, the town hadn't yet cleared out the hydrant near his house -- there was a flavor of "what do we pay taxes for anyway?" Two groups of commenters emerged. Many people who replied agreed with the poster, adding on that our town taxes are way too high, etc. Then there were those that replied with suggestions that perhaps we, the citizens, should share responsibility for clearing the snow and ice away from the hydrants and drains that protect our property. It went back and forth and at last count the post had over 200 comments.

Today as I drove into the center of town I saw a town truck with a DPW employee shoveling out one of the many hydrants on that street that are completely buried in several feet of ice. It will take him a long time for each one.

I think it's part of the common current attitude toward government workers at all levels, that they are always out to get you in some way. Either they're not doing enough, or they're doing too much. I don't see many people thinking about how many employees it would take to quickly clear out all the hydrants and drains, and whether the DPW has the budget to hire all those folks, and what those employees might be doing when they aren't needed for shoveling. Or what other parts of town government the average voter would be willing to see cut back or eliminated in order to have more DPW employees who go out and shovel. Or whether the voters would be willing to pay higher taxes in order to have more people to shovel. Or even whether the citizens should be wholly responsible for that task, leaving DPW employees to do other work.

It's just easier to complain that the town isn't doing it as promptly as one might wish.

If these angry Facebook posters can't understand the budgetary math of DPW employees shoveling snow and ice off hydrants, then what hope do we have of getting them to understand what federal government employees do?

This book was the strangest reading experience I think I’ve ever had. While reading, one part of my mind was going “I can’t believe this ever got published” and the other part was sinking into it like a warm bath, getting all emotionally gooey. It’s the most self-indulgent, wish-fulfilling fic I’ve ever read, of either pro or fan variety. Or it could be considered a terrifying dystopia. Your mileage may vary!

The novel would be categorized “near-future” SF but it’s really “this very moment” SF – the major world leaders and political movers-and-shakers are exactly who they are today, with names changed and in a couple of cases gender-swapped (not sure why). The political situation is pretty much as it is now, although the story doesn’t dwell on specific issues. Some reviews refer to this book as satire but I think the portrayals of these real life people are spot on, no exaggeration necessary.

The set-up: An SF writer named Samantha August is abducted by aliens in a very public manner off a city street – there are lots of cell phone videos of her vanishing in a beam of light, and the alien ship is clearly visible above. While the rest of humanity is going predictably nuts about this below, Samantha wakes to find herself orbiting Earth in the spaceship with only an AI as companion. The AI explains that three alien races are working together on an “Intervention” for humanity. There’s a fair bit of backstory about this Intervention and why the aliens are doing it. More to the immediate point, they want Sam to be their envoy to the rest of humanity.

There are several steps to the Intervention. First, many ecologically important areas of Earth are invisibly protected by forcefields – all humans gently but implacably ushered off and away, while animals remain to do as they will. Second, all violence is stopped at every level, large and small. No weapons will function, not even knives or fists. Those are just the initial steps.

The book has been described as a First Contact novel where we never have contact. It’s not really about the aliens, it’s about how we react to having Utopia forced upon us. Can we still find some way to fuck it up?

It’s a very talky book – especially when Sam converses with the AI, who develops an understated but engaging personality. The self-indulgence I mentioned is not just the author’s fictional wish fulfillment, but also his torrent of personal philosophy.

There are many moments of extremely satisfying fan service for old-school SF fans. Again with the self-indulgence, but so very fun. My husband read the book first and he was almost literally bouncing while I was reading because he was impatient for me to get to those bits – he wanted to yell about it together. It’s a great book for discussion afterward. If you read it, I'd love to know what you think.

It's easy to wander into a new fandom these days, thanks to AO3... so the other day I found myself reading some wonderful Person of Interest fic, and since the show is available on Netflix I thought I would give it a go. I managed to get halfway through the pilot episode and was so frustrated by what appears to be an enormous plot hole I stopped there.

So if there's anyone out there who can answer this I'd appreciate it. The pilot shows that Harold and John are given Person X to watch -- they don't know whether Person X is a victim or a perpetrator, they don't know any reason why this person is a nexus. But I know from the fic that a computer called the Machine is the supplier of Person X's identity. The Machine must have an algorithm for deciding that Person X is a problem -- why can't Harold access the relevant data/evidence? He's the programmer, right?

Is this another case where TV screenwriters demonstrate they don't actually understand what a computer is? Or should I just be patient and tamp down on my frustration?

So I heard this morning that the latest thing that has the far-right in a lather is that Toblerone had their chocolate certified halal. No change in how they make it, just got it certified. So the neo-Nazis are calling for a boycott. What this says to me is that I should go out and buy some Toblerone. We used to put it in the boys' stockings, somehow got away from that the past few years (they still got chocolate, just different kinds). It may be a bit weird and muddled to buy chocolate for Christmas stockings just because it was certified halal, but I think my family would appreciate it all the more.

I have a friend who recently immigrated from Iraq, and she doesn't speak English very well. Her mother doesn't speak it at all. Yesterday my friend asked for help deciphering a transcripted voice mail -- it was instructions about her mother's upcoming medical procedure. I did my best to tell my friend what it said, and she translated for her mother. Mom has to fast for 24 hours before the procedure. I've had to do that myself so I said, ruefully, that it will make her hungry. Mom laughed and said she was used to it as she does it for a whole month. I guess Ramadan does give her practice!

Not quite sure what to do during this weird transitional time where lots of people are on Pillowfort and Dreamwidth as well as Tumblr. I'll try posting on both PF and DW, so apologies if you're seeing this twice. I'm not sure about using DW's crossposting thingy so I'll do it manually.

I just finished a delightful fantasy novel, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho. During the holidays I don't want to read anything too deep or stressful; this fit the bill perfectly. Clearly influenced a great deal by Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but (as many of the blurbs say) owes a big debt to Georgette Heyer's regency romances. Witty dialogue in the best Heyer tradition, and a social/governmental structure that includes magic as in Clarke's novel. BUT! With a wonderfully expanded world -- English or European magic isn't the only type that exists. Cho is Malaysian, currently living in the UK according to the author bio, and she brings in Malay magic and folk traditions. Their interaction with English sorcerers is hilarious but doesn't shy away from the issues of colonialism and bigotry.

This could be the beginning of a series but doesn't have to be; the ending is satisfying enough that it could stand alone.

On a different topic -- I'm wondering what people think of the mini-series adaptation of Pratchett's Hogfather. I know it's a holiday tradition for some, but this year is my first viewing (I've read the book several times). I find myself... underwhelmed? by the mini-series. It's so very faithful to the book, but I feel that it drags as a result. Or is that the reason it drags? When I read the book I feel that the meshing storylines zip along, but this version is just a slog. I thought the Going Postal mini-series was much better.

Current Music: dishwasher chugging along

Way back in the days of LJ, my husband was EccentricOrbit. I don't know if he'll ever return to using social media, let alone get an account here, but I'm going to use that name for him for lack of anything better.

Recently EccentricOrbit and I were discussing the recent SF series Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells. Actually we were having a fairly heated disagreement – heated for us, which is not all that warm – about the sentience or lack thereof of one of the side characters. Since a goodly number of the characters are robots, including the main POV character, it’s not a simple question.

But what struck me was how both of us used specific pronouns to refer to the POV character. Murderbot is the narrator and never indicates any gender for itself. When other characters refer to Murderbot, the author adroitly avoids he/him/she/her by using “cyborg” or “SecUnit” or whatever. So when I heard myself saying things like “…she does this…” and EccentricOrbit said things like “… but he never does that…,” it took me awhile to realize we were using different pronouns to refer to the same character. We both saw Murderbot in our own image. There’s nothing in the text to indicate any gender at all, so this was entirely our own doing. If I hadn’t had this argument with EO I wouldn’t have realized this unspoken assumption we both made.

It made me appreciate how skillfully Martha Wells had eliminated all trace of the POV character’s gender in her own writing, and also made me realize what a dilemma Ursula Le Guin had with The Left Hand of Darkness. Much has been said (by Le Guin and others) about why she opted to use masculine pronouns referring to her genderless Gethenians. Due to the novel’s structure and themes, she couldn’t use the first person trick with that book. It makes me wonder how different my reading experience would have been if Le Guin had used they/them. Maybe if she was writing it today she would have. Oh well, it was still an absolutely remarkable book and ground-breaking for its time.

By the way, I found the Murderbot Diaries very reminiscent of a lot of fic about Bucky Barnes – many of the same themes about the struggle to form an identity of one’s own after being used as an impersonal tool. Great books.

Years ago I stuck with LJ longer than I should have, while others set up shop in Dreamwidth or InsaneJournal.
By the time the tumbleweeds were blowing through LJ, fandom had more or less settled on Tumblr. So I never did anything with Dreamwidth, just moved directly from LJ to Tumblr. Now Tumblr is combusting so... I'll stake a claim here. And on Pillowfort. It will be interesting to see where it all winds up.

I loathed Tumblr's user interface so much, found it so confusing, that I never posted a single thing there. It didn't seem worth the bother to figure it out -- it was enough to click the heart button and occasionally send an ask or a message. Dreamwidth seems much more comfortable, so maybe I'll use it more.