There are moments I really dislike Jacob’s TWOP recaps. And then there are times when I adore them, as with his recap of last week’s Chuck: “‘Anyone else want to be my boyfriend?’ [Sarah] screams, and everybody watching, even pets and little babies, raises their hands, some for the first time.” Um, yeah. Although why Jacob seemed to be sure that Awesome was somehow set up to get the Intersect when Ellie was the obvious target confused me. Maybe he’s so used to the other skeevy gender stuff the show does that he jumps straight to Awesome, and indeed I was disappointed that Ellie didn’t get the Intersect and that Awesome once again conspired to keep her away from what everyone else knows.
Pro tip: when in the course of work you have to Google for images of the Naked Cowgirl, remember that you have SafeSearch turned off.
Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present: Long book arguing that the three themes/concepts have structured American reactions to and interventions in the Middle East, a thesis broad enough that it’s pretty hard to imagine falsifying it. Basically, our policies were a lot more coherent in the eighteenth century, and it’s such a mess now that all we’ve got left is hoping that our relations magically improve.
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing: “She didn’t write it. She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. She wrote it, but ‘she’ isn’t really an artist and ‘it’ isn’t really serious, of the right genre—i.e., really art.… She wrote it, but there are very few of her.” Brilliant and angry, Russ writes of the multiple techniques used out of bad faith and ignorance to eliminate women writers (and other artists) from popular and scholarly consciousness. This time around I noticed in particular her discussion of the suppression of antecedents and community, so that every prominent woman artist appears anomalous, isolated, and surprising.
Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects: I really like this novella, as I like other work by Chiang. He takes the idea of AIs very seriously, and then integrates them with software platforms (which can become obsolete) and with human tendencies to anthropomorphize, and the results are painful and insightful.
Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars: Four novellas by King. They’re pretty grim: we have murder, rape revenge, wishing bad luck on a best friend, and a marriage with a deadly secret. Not King’s best, but not unreadable if you have a strong stomach for human awfulness.
Laura Anne Gilman, Hard Magic: Urban fantasy as CSI, or maybe vice versa: a team of young hotshots investigates magical crimes using techniques derived from scientific CSI. There was a lot of training and inter-team politics, which certainly seemed appropriate for the characters, but it wasn’t quite grabbing my interest.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Cryoburn:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
facetofcathy has a thought-provoking and not terribly spoilery review (it discusses the culture of the planet on which Miles has his latest adventure and the roles of women throughout the series) with which I basically agree. The way in which Miles casually disrupts the lives of others, with consequences for them and their families, was very much on display, as was his lively mind and willingness to cut corners. It was a perfectly respectable outing, exploring some of the ramifications of cryopreservation technology with a bit of allusion to present troubles with securitization and corporate ownership of government.
Pro tip: when in the course of work you have to Google for images of the Naked Cowgirl, remember that you have SafeSearch turned off.
Michael B. Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present: Long book arguing that the three themes/concepts have structured American reactions to and interventions in the Middle East, a thesis broad enough that it’s pretty hard to imagine falsifying it. Basically, our policies were a lot more coherent in the eighteenth century, and it’s such a mess now that all we’ve got left is hoping that our relations magically improve.
Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing: “She didn’t write it. She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. She wrote it, but ‘she’ isn’t really an artist and ‘it’ isn’t really serious, of the right genre—i.e., really art.… She wrote it, but there are very few of her.” Brilliant and angry, Russ writes of the multiple techniques used out of bad faith and ignorance to eliminate women writers (and other artists) from popular and scholarly consciousness. This time around I noticed in particular her discussion of the suppression of antecedents and community, so that every prominent woman artist appears anomalous, isolated, and surprising.
Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects: I really like this novella, as I like other work by Chiang. He takes the idea of AIs very seriously, and then integrates them with software platforms (which can become obsolete) and with human tendencies to anthropomorphize, and the results are painful and insightful.
Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars: Four novellas by King. They’re pretty grim: we have murder, rape revenge, wishing bad luck on a best friend, and a marriage with a deadly secret. Not King’s best, but not unreadable if you have a strong stomach for human awfulness.
Laura Anne Gilman, Hard Magic: Urban fantasy as CSI, or maybe vice versa: a team of young hotshots investigates magical crimes using techniques derived from scientific CSI. There was a lot of training and inter-team politics, which certainly seemed appropriate for the characters, but it wasn’t quite grabbing my interest.
Lois McMaster Bujold, Cryoburn:
facetofcathy has a thought-provoking and not terribly spoilery review (it discusses the culture of the planet on which Miles has his latest adventure and the roles of women throughout the series) with which I basically agree. The way in which Miles casually disrupts the lives of others, with consequences for them and their families, was very much on display, as was his lively mind and willingness to cut corners. It was a perfectly respectable outing, exploring some of the ramifications of cryopreservation technology with a bit of allusion to present troubles with securitization and corporate ownership of government.
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