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Quarter Cent
Jan. 5th, 2025 10:17 pmIt's a new year.
Trip to Texas over winter break went all right. Wonderful Christmas together. Fun time with the cousins. Took a trip to the Fort Worth Stockyards to see the longhorn cattle drive, went to the Crayola Experience (like the Lego Discovery Center but swap blocks for crayons) on Erica's birthday.
Transitions impend. The Biden administration limps along as the lamest of ducks. Biden commuting the death sentences of most of the federal death row was the most notable good bit. Leaving a few exceptions out (the surviving Boston Marathon Bomber, e.g.) was, well, I can understand the choice. I would have preferred a more unequivocal rejection of the death penalty. But if Biden thinks it should be reserved for a narrower set of cases and grants clemency consistent with that, it's a step in the right direction.
I finished watching The Magicians before that show departs from Netflix in a few days. I'm glad I finished that and ambivalent about having started. It was at least an interesting take on its source material. I read Seasonal Fears, the sequel to Seanan McGuire's Middlegame, another dip in the highly-specific alchemical conspiracy American road-trip novel genre. Was good. I also read Nostalgebraist's latest bit of web-fiction, The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen in which a mad prophet discovers the true meaning of Christmas. Like the author's other work, it's very interesting and well written.
Trip to Texas over winter break went all right. Wonderful Christmas together. Fun time with the cousins. Took a trip to the Fort Worth Stockyards to see the longhorn cattle drive, went to the Crayola Experience (like the Lego Discovery Center but swap blocks for crayons) on Erica's birthday.
Transitions impend. The Biden administration limps along as the lamest of ducks. Biden commuting the death sentences of most of the federal death row was the most notable good bit. Leaving a few exceptions out (the surviving Boston Marathon Bomber, e.g.) was, well, I can understand the choice. I would have preferred a more unequivocal rejection of the death penalty. But if Biden thinks it should be reserved for a narrower set of cases and grants clemency consistent with that, it's a step in the right direction.
I finished watching The Magicians before that show departs from Netflix in a few days. I'm glad I finished that and ambivalent about having started. It was at least an interesting take on its source material. I read Seasonal Fears, the sequel to Seanan McGuire's Middlegame, another dip in the highly-specific alchemical conspiracy American road-trip novel genre. Was good. I also read Nostalgebraist's latest bit of web-fiction, The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen in which a mad prophet discovers the true meaning of Christmas. Like the author's other work, it's very interesting and well written.
