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Cake day: July 16th, 2023

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  • I dropped ASOIAF in the middle of the third book. It probably had something to do with knowing it’d never be finished, but I just felt bored. It was all so high stakes and meaningless, not for me.

    The writing in The Expanse is grating, it’s all he said, she said, he said, they said, he said, said said said said said said said said said said said. If I hadn’t been listening to it while at work I’d have bailed in the first book. If you can get past that the series has great world building and I love Avarsarsla.

    Rothfuss is indeed great but I can’t recommend it to anyone knowing we’re only getting two nights of the three promised.

    Silo is actually on my list.

    I’ve also been rereading the Honorverse by David Weber. I love it still but it gets to be a slog and the story is feels like it’s the same everytime. I want to get past book 6 or 7 but never have.

    I can’t say enough good things about the Stormlight Archive.

    But then again I also enjoyed the hell out of Brent Weeks’ Lightbringer series which seemed to be mostly disliked on the whole. I read it before the 4th and 5th books were released so I’m not sure where it goes and need to get back to it some day.

    Speaking of Weeks, the Night Angel Trilogy is bomb. It’s no literary masterpiece but it’s a dark and gritty world that sets your expectations and fulfills them over and over again. The story is cliche and I like it. The characters are fun to follow as they navigate the plot points I can see coming from books away.


  • I read Mistborn and loved it, my partner finished it a week or two later and then we both struggled to get into the second book. Vin, the main character treats a creature that is in her thrall with extreme prejudice. While it certainly fits the character it was such a change of tone that it threw both of us right out of the series. Mix in a whole new world of politics and coalition building and the story plods. I dropped the Mistborn series like 7 or 8 chapters into The Well of Ascension.

    I’ll come back to it in audiobook form.

    Speaking of audiobooks, I’ve listened to all of The Stormlight Archive. Audiobooks have one major advantage to actually reading the words, it is easier to multitask. If the story is boring I’m less likely to notice while preparing dinner. With Stormlight however I listened to the books 12 hours a day. The voice actors are Kate Reading and Michael Kramer, they only work on books they like. They also did all of Wheel of Time together.

    Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I frequently sat down and just listened to the story throughout the day because I am so engrossed in the world and the lives of Kaladin, Syl, Shalan, and others. It’s a storytelling medium that lends itself to multitasking and I frequently stopped to just listen.

    I think it’s hard to go wrong with a starting point in the Cosmere. The magic system in Mistborn is really interesting and the world is dark and gritty like chewing charcoal; Unpleasant not offensive. The Stormlight Archive is bold and wide ranging with concepts, ideas, and exploration of pain, trauma, and metal health. I recently read Tress and the Emerald Sea, a light-hearted romp about a girl who lives on a desolate rock in the middle of an ocean and wants to stay there.

    Just jump in, the worst thing that can happen is you find it’s not to your taste. When that happens it’s all good and I find some other masterpiece to chew on. It happens for me with videogames all the time. Elden Ring is not for me. :)



  • An insurance CEO was shot to death this morning, it’s a start.

    To be less callous, he looked like a cute man, and his family is obviously devastated. Police say they have no suspect and no motive yet… But it was an assassination not random violence, I think we know the motivation. It’s pretty sad overall, but surely it’s also sad that someone was driven to this point by the company he was an exec of.




  • Also there is evidence that it is harmful to cis people. Especially cis women who might be queer or straight or gender nonconforming or not. These fuckwads always forget trans men exist and just harass women more with this shit. They don’t give a fuck off you’re trans or not, it’s about control. And their especially interested in controlling women.

    It’s also directly tied to fascism. Eco points to Machismo in point 12 of Ur-Fascism. “[Fascists hold] both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” Meaning it’s not just women, trans women, gay men, people outside of traditional 1940s gender roles, but it also includes straight, cis men who just don’t seem to be straight and cis enough.





  • Hey, y’all need to chill out. The cops have qualified immunity because they are better trained and educated than the average civilian. Y’all think this was a medical imaging center!? You don’t know that! They could have been growing dangerous Marijuana that immigrated here illegally from Mexico to eat the dogs and cats!

    Thank God our boys in blue took the time to clear this potentially dangerous building of any possible threats! That MRI machine nearly got one of them until they disarmed and detained it!

    Just another dangerous day on the job!


  • If you have a CDL there is a federal database that tracks drug and alcohol offenses that had become mandatory to enroll in for most jobs in the industry.

    Why don’t we have something like that for cops?

    Maybe it tracks reports of discipline and can be used by the public to file complaints with police departments.

    I know something like this is talked about a lot but we already built something similar for truckers. There are 1.36 million CDL holders and 708,000 cops. Seems like it’d be pretty easy to copy their homework.