Rich and Strange Aeons

Thanks to the pandemic, this isn't my first Christmas alone. Or even the first in another country. First in a country that doesn't care much about it, though. Japan does care a bit, so I thought I'd at least take a peek, after two days in for leg recovery and rain-avoidance.

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In non-Japanese news, I've been reading the Books of the Raksura. I think the Murderbot books are more entertaining, also better edited -- bunch of low level grammar errors in these. Still, they've become entertaining. I read "The Falling World" by mistake; going back to the actual first book was much more intelligible.

Watanare 7 is in the queue; I look forward to it with a mix of anticipation and "what drawn-out shenanigans now?" dread.

Watatabe anime continues to be good.

I read the Bovadium Fragments, a recently published Tolkien thing, basically a short satire about cars in Oxford, and political fight over a bypass road. Was interesting both for his writing and the historical context of cars taking over an newly-industrialized Oxford.

And, this should really have its own post, but a review article on whether it's fair to call SARS-Cov-2 "airborne AIDS". Short answer: strictly speaking no, they're pretty different. But there's a lot of evidence of SARS2 messing up your immune system in its own ways, with rising rates of other disease infections and maybe cancers, so in a "should I really try to avoid getting this?" sense, then yes.

Speaking of old appliances: while my gas stove has sensible electric ignition, the gas oven apparently has to be lit with a lighter. Not even conveniently, you have to lift a metal bottom to get at the gas. Unclear if the ignition broke beyond repair or if this is by design. I am way less enthused about trying to use it now. (No baked potatoes?) Also, the dial for the oven gas was broken, though will be replaced... I'm just glad it got stripped in a gas-off position.

In addition to the Odyssey, I finished reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It's still fun, apart from the Christ Sledgehammer at the end. I noticed that Lewis gives Eustace something he's good at, botany -- though I don't think that ever contributed to the plot or solving a problem.

I remember as a kid reading about prisoners being fed bread and water, the ultimate in minimalist diet. Bread for food, water for drink, eh? It occurs to me that there's a good chance they also needed the water to make the bread edible: traditional bread goes stale quickly and I doubt prisoners were getting the fresh stuff... hell, you'd be happy if it were just stale and not moldy or wormy. This thought brought to you by my soaking a solid baguette to make it edible again.

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I also finally finished reading Unearthly Powers, by Alan Strathern, a book my friend Amy had turned me onto. I was really slow, she not only finished before me but could have finished re-reading it before I did. To be short, it's about the differences between transcendent (otherworldly) and immanent (this-worldly) religions, and how a given faith may shift between those over time.

Immanentism – a form of religiosity oriented towards the presence of
supernatural forces and agents in the world around us, which are
attributed with the power to help or thwart human aspirations.

Transcendentalism
– a form of religiosity oriented towards the transcendence of mundane
existence and the imperative of salvation or liberation from the human
condition.

All religions have immanentism; some newer ones have transcendentalism as well.

As Amy put it, the book is also trying to explain why "world religions" went through "folk religions" like a hot knife through butter. I don't feel like trying to give a fair summary, but in addition to my old idea that just being a missionary religion gives you an advantage -- you keep trying, they don't, eventually you succeed -- Strathern talks about other differences: immanentist religions tend to be open and empirical in a sense, they're not trying to resist missionary activity, in fact priests and sacred kings may adopt or co-opt the new religion for various religions; OTOH once emplaced, transcendentalist philosophy tends to close the door behind it -- now drought or famine or failure in war aren't a sign of weak gods but a punishment or a test or a reminder to focus on salvation.

Not much Mexico news today, I was indoors working to finish up being forced onto unpaid leave by Bureaucracy. I did go out for food, to my torta stand, getting a torta cubana (mmm) and a sincronizada. That's basically a US quesadilla plus ham and veg... also two tortillas, not one folder. To Mexicans the difference would be bigger, since their quesadillas use corn tortillas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sincronizada

Totally unrelated, I've read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Ozma of Oz. The first was meh, I'm neutral on it. I read it 5 years ago apparently, yet much of it sparked no recall.

Ozma, OTOH, was hilarious through much of the book. Man, that hen. Let me spam quotes and comments under a cut.

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Have received my second Moderna. I moved my arms through the 15 minute waiting period, and walked around the park for an hour or so before daring to take the trains home rather than another Lyft. Late that evening I started to feel aches and blah, and I slept so-so with all the blankets on. Next day, I don't think I ever had a really high fever, but definitely slept a lot.

Coupled days of idleness after that, I'd felt fine at home, but I went for a 40 minute walk and it figuratively killed me (and became a 45-50 minute walk, not counting breaks). Got some nice Filipino food out of it, though.

In unrelated news I have ended up in a cutthroat leaderboard on Duolingo. The top score isn't that high, only 1269, not in the 2000s, but no one seems willing to fall into the demotion zone, and I'm struggling to stay neutral.

Books read:
Pyramids (Pratchett)
Bloom into you: Regarding Saeki Sayaka (all 3 volumes)
The Truth
Going Postal
Soul Music

Nothing Special https://www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/nothing-special/s3-episode-10/viewer?title_no=1188&episode_no=92
Was recommended by a friend last Sunday, I just finished up. Cute fantasy. Unusual format: each entry is a chapter of pages in vertical sequence, often doing odd things with comic space. I think someone read Understanding Comics.

Qualia the Purple. Was recommended as a deep concept SF yuri manga. That is not inaccurate. Was it good? I dunno: ending felt weak to me, and I was never deeply into the characters. Was it a trip? Oh hell yeah: cognitive science, quantum mechanics, optics, also references to anime like Nanoha and Monster and maybe Madoka. Apparently based on a novel, actually.

Alexander of Macedon, Peter Green. Don't recall how I heard of this. Was interesting and well written. I guess there are lots of different 'takes' on Alexander; this one was "genius war leader, great at tactics and improvisation and guessing what opponents would do, also superstitious murderous megalomaniac." Also lucky, he came close to dying multiple times. Native Persian infantry seems to have been horrible, at least by comparison to Macedonians or Greek mercenaries.

Alliance Rising, Cherryh's recent Alliance/Union novel. Felt a bit odd continuity-wise but I guess it's way earlier than anything else. I noticed that for much of the book very little had actually happened, just pages and pages of people *worrying*. I guess that's very Cherryh.

Possibly the worst person to be in a Cherryh novel is an honest and benevolent person, because no one else will be able to believe in and trust in you.

It's been a slow time. Partly from getting a cold last weekend. Colds hit me hard the first few days. Now I'm doing better but blowing my nose a lot.

Highlights:

* Bats! Went back to the Roma Street Parklands, saw lots of flying foxes around dusk, dipping into the pond. Apparently it's wetting their front fur, then they go hang and suck it off to drink.
* I watched "Your Name", it was pretty good, though I'm grumpy about the ending. And that's Shinkai's happiest ending...
* On the 8th I took the train down to Helensvale to visit E&A on their 12 acres of land; that was pretty fun, just hanging out and walking. Didn't sleep well though, foam mattresses aren't my thing and they have many chickens including roosters, so I fell asleep late and was woken around 4.
* Then E took me over to Griffith and I explored some of the Gold Coast. Got my feet wet in the Pacific!
* Read GRRM's Fevre Dream, aka Life On the Mississippi With Vampires.
* Took a bus trip outward, to explore more. It wasn't very exciting but I'm glad I tried. "LA with better transit or maybe selection bias" continues as an impression.
* 90% of everything closes by 9PM.
* Tried exploring Fortitude Valley and Central Station areas. There's a Chinatown but it's tiny and half-dead.
* Lots of public toilets. Some of them look creepy but none of them have smelled bad. Even Japan can't say that though I gave it a lot more chances to fail.
* Going by the store and my second host, Australia is big on instant coffee.
* Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) busways seems hardly less resource-intensive than subways. Big concrete busways and stations platforms and such. I guess the stations can be shorter.
* Go Card machines have terrible touchscreens.
* Re-read Lord of the Rings, first time since before 2004.
* Re-read Crispin's Zar Star Trek novels. Second one felt pretty dire at first but eventually got good.

I finished Revolts. Farley is really good at writing thrillers. A friend's daughters get very excited watching tense movies or episodes, especially the youngest girl, even when they know the plot and outcome; youngest will get up to shake out tension, or hide from the TV, or cling to mother for comfort. I felt a lot like that reading this book, having to put down the book because eeeeeee. This despite the fact that if you describe the plot baldly, it's a ridiculous concatenation of unlikely setbacks.

Oh, and the plane did crash, but *not* because of the storm! Well played, Farley.

I'm currently reading the Black Stallion's Ghost, which I'm sure I did read, because I doubt there are two novels in the series with the Everglades, sawgrass, Seminoles, and twisted icons. I still recall nothing of the plot.

Some years ago, I read someone commenting on the ubiquity of servants in a well-off pre-appliance household, and how they were invisible in e.g. Jane Austen. This had given me the idea that they didn't appear at all. Now I'm re-reading Price and Prejudice for the first time in years, and while they don't appear as characters (so far, 1/5 in; I think some of Darcy's do when Lizzie visits Pemberley), they do in fact get mentioned a lot.

While Jane is sick at Bingley's, "a servant", "a housemaid", and his housekeeper are mentioned. There's also Nicholls, presumably his cooking, making white soup for a ball.

Mrs. Bennett mentions keeping servants, Mr. Bennett says he hopes she ordered a good dinner, she frostily assures Mr. Collins that they can keep a good cook, and "Lydia, my love, ring the bell—I must speak to Hill this moment."

Finally, on Collins' visit:

"During dinner, Mr. Bennet scarcely spoke at all; but when the servants were withdrawn,"

So they are invisible as people -- more so than in Game of Thrones, say -- but they and their services are acknowledged as existing.

As a contrast, Bilbo and Frodo don't seem to keep any servants other than the gardening service; not only are none mentioned, but both bachelors are mentioned in the context of doing housework themselves. Sam does go off to Crickhollow "to do for Mr. Baggins" but that seems more about Sam than Frodo actually needing or expecting a servant.

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Spot the userpic pun!

2018 book count: 109 fiction, 26 non-fiction. I'd meant to read more non.

32 fiction with female main characters, 36 male, 25 other (both?), 16 unlabeled (most of those are Spice and Wolf, which I guess should be mostly 'male' in terms of 3rd person POV but Horo is so important I was reluctant to go that way. That or I was lazy with cut and paste.)

47 by female authors, 55 male, 20 other, 13 unlabeled. other definitely means male/female author pairs, like the Liaden series, while unlabeled tends to mean "I don't know", like for fanfics by authors with opaque names.

The whole Lady Trent series. I enjoyed re-read it, and some arc bits made more sense when I read them back to back.

_A Numerate Life_, John Allen Paulos. I've enjoyed his classic books (_Innumeracy_) but this grumpy memoir-skeptical memoir didn't have much IMO. It did have something though, an observation that almost no one is entirely normal.

Imagine that 90% of people are 'normal' on some dimension. Imagine that there are lots of mostly independent dimensions: height, IQ, sexual orientation, kink, family history, travel... if there are 10 such, then under 35% of people are normal on all dimensions. If 20 such, 12%. Up to you to decide how many ways you could characterize people, or how many of them to treat as normal.

_Port of Shadows_: years later, Glen Cook returns to the Black Company series, with an interquel, set after the first book. It was a gripping read, and possible inconsistencies were lampshaded within the text...