A very different environment for Cleric Chih, but no less about stories than the other entries in the series. We even learn a bit more about Signing Hills and the neixin. A great story that has hit me extra hard this year due to some family stuff, but I don’t want to spoil the story.

As always, I love Nghi Vo’s magical realism version of China. The cleric Chih and their mission to document all the knowledge reminds me somewhat of Sazed from the first Mistborn trilogy, another favorite character of mine. This time she’s in the Riverlands, which seems to be a kind of asian version of the American wild west (at least as depicted in movies and tv shows). It also introduces (I think…I don’t remember seeing it before) some wuxia into the Singing Hills series.

I think this book is my second-favorite of the Secret Novels (or Hoid novels), after Tress, and potentially tied with Yumi or just ahead of it. Like many of the Secret Novels you can get through most of it without knowing too much of the Cosmere, although, like many of the Secret Novels, portions of the climax and falling action might sound like nonsense to you if you aren’t caught up with The Cosmere. Although if you’ve read up to Stormlight 5 you’ve likely read all the rest of the Cosmere, if you’re one of those Cosmere readers that reads each series in order rather than in publication order, Stormlight 5 has the many relevant connections to what’s going on in this story. I would also say that Isles of the Emberdark would also be highly relevant to this story.

If you read this blog regularly, you know I love retro dice. A year or so ago I backed the Kickstarter for a set of 80s D&D Adventures and character options and I finally got the dice that were the one physical item I backed. I absolutely love the design:

I especially love the cassette tape for the 20 spot on the d20. I’m now torn on my favorite retro dice. The VHS dice form 1985 games has the best case. I love the Miami-style dice as someone who grew up there, but these dice epitomize the color scheme of the early-to-mid 80s. Reminds me of the colors I would see on clothes and building decorations.

I just posted the following to my Github profile about AI usage in my programming projects. Sharing here to document my current thinking on the subject:

AI Usage

I know that opinions on AI usage are very divided at the moment. Some people I respect, like the hosts of Fallthrough and Mike Kennedy of Talk Python don’t see any issues with using it as part of the development process. (Although the Fallthrough hosts are against AI Slop, especially in communications ). Others won’t touch any repo that has included AI contributions.

After a period of exploration that peaked while I was vacation with a lot of time on my hands, my usage of AI has more or less fallen back to where it was before my blitz of AI posts a couple weeks ago. This post is a summary of some interesting AI-related topics since my last post.

AI And Learning

In my 23 Aug post about Positive AI usage I mused on some ways that students might be able to use AI in a positive way instead of just having it be a complete negative. Since then I heard a Fresh Air episode about how tech giants influence American schools that mentioned Estonia making a deal with one of the AI companies to make it only answer socratically if a student was using it. Combining that with what I wrote in my blog post it was interesting to get this email from ChatGPT: