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Diachronic Shear
Jul. 10th, 2022 03:34 pmWe spent the last week at Sandy Island Camp, which was really nice after missing the last two summers. (It was closed in 2020 and we weren't feeling up for it in 2021, when my parents chose not to go for the first time since they started going in 1988.) Melissa and Simon were there for the week, too. (Elliott wasn't able to get the time off and was working from elsewhere.) The weather was good, and I tried to have a relaxing week, despite the news apparently being all mass murder and assassination. Erica really enjoyed the dancing and art and time with her cousin.
I managed to get through a few books for the first time in a while:
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland - My usual one thousand page Neal Stephenson book per year (actually more like 750). This one was a bit of a Laundry-Files-esque science-fantasy supernatural-bureaucracy procedural / time travel thriller. A fun read. Apparently Galland did a sequel as a solo venture, will have to check that out.
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz - This sci-fi book is set in the world where the metaphorical attempt to politically turn back time is literalized by means of giant time machines embedded in the earth's crust. The protagonist is embroiled in an edit war between the Daughters of Harriet and the Comstokers and gets caught up in various efforts to set right what once went wrong (or thwart what could be made to have). Which isn't, it turns out, a matter of just killing the right (the wrong?) people. Or is it? A great story, and unfortunately even more timely now than it was when it was published a few years ago.
The Abolition of Prison by Jacques Lesage de La Haye - A brief scholarly introduction to the philosophy of prison abolitionism. Basically: Prison does a really bad job of achieving many of its nominal goals, prison is bad from the perspective of many moral frameworks (and still pretty dicey even in some where retribution is a virtue), prison is at least way less necessary than it's made out to be. I found it to be a worthwhile read, not a bad starting point for a look into the prison abolition movement.
Today was my birthday (my age is now Erica's squared), and Julie treated me to a nice lunch out. Fun day, except Erica is being super whiny for some reason. I'm going to the Bay Area for an internal Kotlin conference next week, so I guess Julie will be stuck dealing with that.
I managed to get through a few books for the first time in a while:
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland - My usual one thousand page Neal Stephenson book per year (actually more like 750). This one was a bit of a Laundry-Files-esque science-fantasy supernatural-bureaucracy procedural / time travel thriller. A fun read. Apparently Galland did a sequel as a solo venture, will have to check that out.
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz - This sci-fi book is set in the world where the metaphorical attempt to politically turn back time is literalized by means of giant time machines embedded in the earth's crust. The protagonist is embroiled in an edit war between the Daughters of Harriet and the Comstokers and gets caught up in various efforts to set right what once went wrong (or thwart what could be made to have). Which isn't, it turns out, a matter of just killing the right (the wrong?) people. Or is it? A great story, and unfortunately even more timely now than it was when it was published a few years ago.
The Abolition of Prison by Jacques Lesage de La Haye - A brief scholarly introduction to the philosophy of prison abolitionism. Basically: Prison does a really bad job of achieving many of its nominal goals, prison is bad from the perspective of many moral frameworks (and still pretty dicey even in some where retribution is a virtue), prison is at least way less necessary than it's made out to be. I found it to be a worthwhile read, not a bad starting point for a look into the prison abolition movement.
Today was my birthday (my age is now Erica's squared), and Julie treated me to a nice lunch out. Fun day, except Erica is being super whiny for some reason. I'm going to the Bay Area for an internal Kotlin conference next week, so I guess Julie will be stuck dealing with that.
