@Teri_Kanefield Thank you for this! Very interesting reading. It explains my uneasy feeling that there’s a circular argument going on, and that the “election interference” angle is a real stretch.
Honestly the funniest thing about this whole business is the idea that the National Enquirer employs fact-checkers (“we determined that the story was not true, but bought it anyway”)
I'm really enjoying "Renegade Nell" (on Disney+). The pitch is simple and fun: "18th century highwaywoman with superpowers, starring Orla from Derry Girls". But it's the execution that really shines.
It's the kind of outsider fantasy fiction I really love, by a writer best known for police dramas. Rather than recycling tired old tropes, it's steeped in obscure English folklore—Billy Blind! Herne the Hunter! All with a fast and surprising plot and great dialogue. Feels very Tim Powers-ish.
I was reading the other day about the Cretaceous extinction event, that we now know was caused by an asteroid impact. What was strange was the timing—a 1992 book talked about a 1979(!) theory as being increasingly favoured.
I’m sure I remember as a kid in the 80s that the extinction of the dinosaurs was seen as this huge unsolvable mystery. But no, not really, scientists were pretty sure it was volcanos and/or asteroids.
What other great unsolved mysteries have actually been solved already?
I'm still learning Japanese vocabulary on the side. Every so often I'm excited to realise I can figure out the kanji for words I already knew. For example, I just now realised that "dojo" → dō jō → 道 場 → "way place", i.e. the place where you study the Way (whichever dō that is — kendo, judo, etc).
Another fun one is "daimyo", who are your old-timey samurai clan chieftains. I always used to mispronounce this as "diam-yo", but it's actually dai-myō → 大名 → "big name"!
Last night was Strathbungo's "Window Wanderland", where we all put coloured displays in our front windows. Usually we just make a picture with tissue paper, but this year I wanted to try something fancier: Bungo Bloxx!!
Our windows had a couple of moving Tetris screens. If you scan the QR code, one of the boards appears on your phone; you can play and your moves show up in the window display. (The link still works if you want a wee shot: https://moreplease.com/ww24)
It's anachronistic for King Arthur's knights to participate in jousting tournaments -- jousting as a sport didn't exist yet during the early middle ages when the stories are set. But it was popular during the high middle ages, when a lot of Arthurian romances were written, so medieval writers sometimes put in jousting scenes.
Question for Americans: do people in other states get annoyed by Iowa, New Hampshire etc getting first say in the presidential primaries? That’s one of the things about US politics I find really hard to understand, it just seems incredibly undemocratic.
I have resumed my piano lessons. I'm happy with my choice of the Samson Carbon. My total outlay for this adventure so far comes to less than $150.
I have figured out how the keyboard wants to be used: pop an iPad running a MIDI-capable app like GarageBand into its “cup-holder", and it becomes a perfectly good self-contained novice-friendly synthesizer. The tablet even powers it!
Also, yes, I have scrawled notes about notes onto the white keys with a black dry-erase marker. It's my keyboard.
@jmac You might find both the layout and notation make some sense as you get the knack for them (if that’s not a tautology…) The key bit for me is that being able to transpose (move up or down by N notes) is very useful, which would steer you towards a fully regular and relative layout/notation (e.g. “isomorphic keyboard”), but you also need some asymmetry to get started, so you can instantly find middle C or whatever, by eye or by touch. Hence the weird-looking staves and black keys
I told someone at dinner last night that Ubik is an accessible starting point for exploring Philip K. Dick's oeuvre.
That feels wrong because it's such a weird story and maybe I should have said The Man in the High Castle instead?
On the other hand Ubik is such a wonderfully, arrestingly, unsettlingly strange story, and if you like it, you'll probably like most everything else the man wrote.