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2023 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify Listening Trends)
Another year has ended and so it’s time to take a look at the music I listened to all year. First of all, it was yet another year in which I grew my personal music collection. I’ve seen more an more artists removed from places like Spotify, Apple Music, etc, so it’s still important to…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110, July 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 110, July 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 3 of 5 stars I was wondering what happened to the novellas in the newer issues – editorial in this issue answers the question – they were taking longer short stories and felt the novella section was redundant. Science Fiction—The Null Space conundrum…
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But it wasn’t for production!
If you’re a developer you’re probably familiar with the idea that you will make a hack or a demo project just to demonstrate that the concept works and then management takes it and runs and next thing you know, your ugly hack is the production code. Well, I guess this is because it’s the way…
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Others are also excited about Obojima Tales
I’ve been backing a few different D&D 5e adventures on kickstarter, but the one I’m most excited about getting fulfillment on is Obojima: Tales from the Tall Grass. It’s so freakin’ beautiful that I had to hold myself back from getting the package that came with everything. But I’m not the only one excited bout…
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Review: Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 106, March 2019
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 106, March 2019 by John Joseph Adams My rating: 4 of 5 stars SCIENCE FICTION The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves (Violet Allen) – a story that seems (however horrifying) even more likely now than it did when this issue was first printed. I don’t want to give anything away so…
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Review: The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects
The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects by Emily Prokop My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve always liked books, articles, and podcasts about little trivia like this. There are so many objects in our world and they each have a history! We often gloss over those things that have existed since we…
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How Go Helped Save Healthcare.gov!
I recently used Mastodon to ask for recommendations for Go podcasts and one of the suggestions was Go Time. One of the recent episodes in the feed was a rerun of an older episode about “How Go helped saved HealthCare.Gov“. This was extra interesting to me since I wrote my Master’s Special Project on Healthcare.gov.…
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Review: Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang My rating: 4 of 5 stars It will be very interesting to compare this book to Seize the Stars when I get to it next year. Both involve the seeming impossibility of pushing for justice against a society…
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2022 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify Listening Trends)
Another year, another look at my music trends for the year. It was another year of music acquisition (supporting the artists, ftw! – I knew Spotify wasn’t paying artists well, but Corey Doctorow’s book, Chokepoint Capitalism really brought home how much they’re screwing over artists), although I think things may slow down in 2023. Here…
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The Pelican Brief is a ridiculous movie
In short succession 2 podcasts I listen to covered the movie adaptation of The Pelican Brief. If you watched it back in the 1990s you probably didn’t realize how bananas the plot of this movie was. It sounds OK in short summary – some evil corporations kill 2 US Supreme Court judges to prevent a…
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Review: Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing
Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein My rating: 5 of 5 stars I know a lot about money and its history and I still learned a bunch in this book. Jacob Goldstein, who also narrates, uses his podcast-acquired skills to make the stories he uses to illustrate the history of…
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Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers My rating: 4 of 5 stars If, like me, Firefly’s untimely demise has left a hole in your SFF heart ever since you discovered it (it was DVDs for me back when Netflix was about DVDs), then this book is probably perfect for you.…
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Thoughts on the 2022 Hugos
The Hugo Awards (Science Fiction and Fantasy award given out at WorldCon; anyone who bought a ticket can nominate and vote) were given out this past weekend. Here is a link to all the awards and winners. I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts, organized by category. Best Novel – I’d read…
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2021 in Music (Last.FM and Spotify Listening Trends)
This year I was able to attend the Paul and Storm / JoCo concert that COVID stole from me last year. While there I bought the entire Paul and Storm discography, but I think because I listened to it so much on Spotify in the past, I didn’t listen to it as much as I…