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Entry tags:

viewing

wednesday media

What I recently finished watching:

S3 of Dark Winds, which GRRM (who is an executive producer of the show) makes a cameo in, hee. Also Jenna Elfman guest stars as an FBI investigator in from DC. This one goes hard on the "dark" part of the title, with some fairly gruesome crimes going on, as well as the emotional darkness from the fallout of the events of the previous season.

As usual I really enjoyed seeing my local landscapes, and the general Indian-country vibe of the show. (As I've mentioned before, I live not far from Navajo, though the local tribe is actually the Southern Ute; also, the college down the road is free for enrolled tribal members of any US tribe.) I was less a fan of how the season really consisted of very separate storylines, Bernie in the Border Patrol and Joe and Jim on the rez, however, the Navajo police investigation was well integrated with Joe's personal story, which made it all that more interesting. (Also here I have to admit that although I like Jim Chee as a character, I don't find him very attractive - a combination of Kiowa Gordon's chubby face and his truly dreadful 1970's costuming - so the romantic storyline was a little flat for me.)

However, damn do I love Bernie! However, her storyline confused me a bit, because it started out being about human trafficking but ended up being about drugs? But there was also a frightened Mexican family involved? Not sure what was going on there. I did figure out before the reveal who the bad guys and the complicit guys were (and heh, I bet the Republicans are none too pleased at the show painting the Border Patrol as a den of corruption) and wow, the ending of that bit was very kickass.

What I'm watching now:

S2 of Andor, which I only remember certain points from S1 so I was pretty confused during the first episode. Hopefully it will become clear(er) after the second episode, tonight.

Entry tags:

Murderbot! (No spoilers)

Murderbot: I'm enjoying it. Some minor quibbles, but so far so good. Also, I made icons!

murderbot figurine torso, reddish tinged.

Intoabar: Got my

intoabar assignment, and agh! My plan is to do (probably) the last in my SGA/Losers crossover series, and it'll be futurefic, set well after canon. Soooo, the mods gave me an SGA character who dies in season 5! But... I think I have a way around it. Good thing SGA is full of whacky plots!

Book recs:
Overgrowth by Mira Grant. Highly advanced sentient plants seed Earth (like they do with all viable planets) and their offspring/harbingers grow up exact mimics of humans, but tell everyone they're actually plants and the invasion is coming. No one believes them, of course. Then the armada arrives. Very gripping, highly engaging characters, explores issues about predatory sentients (like the plant aliens, and humans), and about found families and whether humanity en masse deserves saving. Although there was an ecological message (the plants aren't happy we've been terrible stewards of the planet), and the ending was happy in a limited way (but horrific in other ways), I felt the aliens were a bit too sweeping in their plans for the non-human parts of Earth's biosphere. And also, they weren't really alien enough for me; Tchaikovsky did that better. Very enjoyable, however, but it is horror, so CW for body-horror, explicit violence at times, and for carnivorous plant-aliens.

Death in the Spires by KJ Charles. Her first murder mystery - there's some romance as well, but it's mostly a mystery. Very well done: a nice complex plot, not too easy to guess the outcome, good pacing, and hard to put down. Set in 1905 England, focussing on a clique of gifted Oxford students (the Seven Wonders) who are haunted by the murder of one of their number at the college 10 years before. One of them, Jem, is driven to investigate, and it all gradually unravels. I liked it a lot. CW for some description of the original murder, and there's a past violation of one character but it's softened by period language and euphemisms. Also, lots of unthinking* period-appropriate slurs like 'cripple' (Jem has a club foot), and regarding the Black member of the clique.

* the author wasn't unthinking, but it's historically accurate so despite many of the characters being relatively enlightened for their times, there's some use of slurs.

Entry tags:

listening,
reading

thursday reads and things

Because I was going to do this yesterday, but time is soup.

What I've recently finished reading:

I went back to the Nantucket Trilogy and read the last book, On the Oceans of Eternity by S. M. Stirling, which yay, did deliver on the exploration of the American continent which I complained about in my review of #2. But I think these books could have done with some rearrangement and editing and maybe being four books instead of three, because this was a (virtual) doorstopper, and it still felt as though a few of the threads came to abrupt ends. I mean, I liked it overall, though I did skim battle battle battle battle. And the characterization is pretty minimal - none of these characters are particularly compelling, or distinctive other than by tricks of locution, and the Evil people are Evil and the Good people are Good and Good wins yay. But the characterization of the situation is pretty good, the whole "modern people dropped in the Bronze Age" thing is just great, even if it does strain belief that they have enough intellectual resources and physical skills to make a go of it.

What I've recently listened to:

I recently found out that an acquaintance of mine, a neurologist, started a podcast late last year, and as I wanted to listen to something while running that wasn't politics for a change I picked out an episode from February (there are only nine episodes) that sounded interesting. Stranger Tongues, Stranger Tides is about communication between humans and non-humans; it starts with his own experiences with a scrub jay in his back yard, and moves on to discussions of experiments in communicating with animals, and attempts to communicate with his autistic son, and eventually communication with (possible) aliens and "AI" LLMs.

I really enjoyed it, and I think that if you liked Ed Yong's An Immense World and/or Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series (and especially if you read my post from 2023 about Ezra Klein's interview with Tchaikovsky and their discussion of how his work is an exploration of personhood and AI) you may too. The entire podcast series is available at https://www.significant-podcast.com/ but I just typed Significant into my podcast app and found it that way. I plan on listening to the rest!

Entry tags:

flowers,
garden

Here we go...

3 weeks 4 Dreamwidth
My giant Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia Diversifolia) is finally starting to flower! You can probably see all the buds as well - it'll keep on flowering through autumn and into early winter. Makes a nice spot of colour in these greyer days. After it's done I'll wait for a sunny winter's day and chop it right back with my loppers. I'll strip off the leaves for the compost as they have about the same level of nutrients as artificial fertilisers. What you see here is one year of growth since I last cut it back (the power lines are safe: it's not actually menacing them).

Enormous treelike plant taller than the single-story flat behind it, lots of big green leaves and seven big yellow daisy flowers.

Close up of a huge golden yellow daisy, deeper gold centre and green leaves around it.

Three links make a post (tumblr edition)

3 weeks 4 Dreamwidth
Three things from tumblr that caught my eye, or ear.

At some point in the past, fuckingfuckersfucked made a map of Terry Pratchett's Ankh Morpork in the style of google maps. Expand it to see lots of detail - very cool!

Before System Collapse was released, elexuscal made a summary of the Murderbot Diaries works up to that point. It's not a bad resource for catching up, but not really needed for the coming tv show (might even be better not to remember the book too clearly for that!) Warning for spoilers, of course.

Dangerous bonkers fascist Laura Loomer tweeted angrily that pope Leo was a WOKE MARXIST POPE (begging to be a band name). So then schmoyoho noticed Woke Marxist Pope scans with Pink Pony Club, and then runawaymarbles wrote parody lyrics to that tune, and then camalyng recorded the song. This is what tumblr is for!

Entry tags:

music,
music rec

Music Playlist - Lyrical

3 weeks 4 Dreamwidth
Another short YT music playlist. This one was harder to title - the songs aren't really "chill", or necessarily entirely happy. But they're beautiful. Once again they're eclectic, just music I like. Click on the image for the vids.

Alison Krauss outside in summer, in a music vid.

Tracks
Blessing - The Lost Words
Harvest Moon - Neil Young
Shape of My Heart - Sting
Coffee - Chappell Roan
The Lucky One - Alison Krauss & Union Station
The Parting Glass - The Wellermen