Yesterday was so much fun. I watched a ton of movies while weaving, which is so much slower for me than crochet. I can’t put my finger on why it takes so long, nor why I find it dissatisfying, yet I keep picking up that cheap little lap loom to keep adding rows.
It’s not as fun as crochet but it’s Good Enough on days when my hands/arms/shoulders/chest muscles have had enough of punching a hook through tightly-woven heavy-weight acrylic and I clearly need a rest. Who knew I’d have to treat crochet like heavy lifting sometimes? In terms of recovery, anyway.
Didn’t I mention I was watching movies? I was about to *stop* watching movies when I decided to do one more before bed. On a whim, I tossed Four Christmases on the tv, and I loved it. I never would have picked that of my own volition. What a treat!
Of course the world is still outside and my feed is on fire. Shall we read a bit?
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One side-effect of COVID I wouldn’t have expected? It slowed work toward ending tuberculosis. Nonetheless, doctors are getting closer to the end of TB, and they think we’ll see it in this generation.
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I am not a global policy wonk but I’m guessing that Biden and Xi finding a pleasant place in US/China relations is good news for general stability, especially during war in Ukraine and Gaza.
When asked if he would still describe Xi as a dictator, Biden said (to paraphrase): “Yeah, because communists have dictators.”
There are plenty of people in power who see democracy and communism as enemies of one another. Folks can’t escape conflating One Particular Execution of Political System with the Whole Political System. I argue that America doesn’t look real good in its execution of democracy either. Our leadership is so old, they’re still waving McCarthyist era flags, and that’s a *real* bad era for democracy. In America, communism is China’s or Cuba’s dictatorships.
This is on my mind because I was talking to someone in the Boomer generation about her knee-jerk response to words like communism and socialism. A whole generation conditioned to jerkaknee over something so hard, they’ll kick anyone who says, “Maybe public ownership can be better than private ownership in some situations?” There’s minimal room for nuanced discussion about systems of governance that might do more for the social contract America is failing to fulfill.
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My first and favorite talking point about usage of the computer stuff we market as AI is “we need consenting and compensated inclusion in data sets.” Which is to say, I think ‘AI’ can be cool when everyone has agreed to be involved. I still have gross feelings about YouTube’s AI song thing, but that’s probably because my next few talking points are about the ecological impact, practices which continue aggregating wealth at the top, and “how much synthetic media do we really need?”
I do respect how much *fun* AI can be to play with, especially for non-artists, so this is probably in that vein.
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The Crown is back. Before I try it again, I’m going to need a LOT of good reviews saying they treated Diana right. They whiffed it in season 5.
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For kids in crisis, it’s getting harder to find long-term residential treatment.
Intermountain parents and staff were shocked when the facility announced suddenly at the end of the summer that it would close its doors this fall, blaming staffing shortages. […] Megan Stokes recently worked as executive director of the National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs. She thinks staff shortages are not the full story regarding Intermountain’s troubles.
“We are seeing a lot of long-term facilities moving to what they call the short-term, intensive outpatient,” she says. “You’re able to get insurance money easier.”
Too many families are suffering unsupported in this country. Many folks are stuck at home in a situation where they can’t provide safe and appropriate care for their children.
Healthcare reform would help a lot of people. I want to see insurers out of the game entirely and medicine made nonprofit. Unrealistic, I know, because there is private insurance even in places like Canada and the UK, but that shouldn’t be the endgame goal.
We have to keep talking about the silent tragedies happening to families all around us right now because they’re too busy to tell us they need help.
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Sega in America is accused of union-busting via layoffs.
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Shadow & Bone was cancelled by Netflix. I’m sad on one hand – I loved the first season, and all the Darkling/Alina fics that spawned from it are *my* Reylo. On the other hand, I didn’t get through the second season and kinda completely hated it. Would I want to hate a third season? No, but if this kills my flow of filthy fanfic, I’m gonna get grumpy.
Unfortunately, that also means no Six of Crows spinoff.
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Jon Stewart versus China continues? This thing has been weird for a while.
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“Can we please stop shooting things in space?” ask private space companies. “It’s hard to fly around the debris.”
Russia shot down one of its older satellites, Kosmos 1408, with a Nudol missile launched from the ground. The test, intended to demonstrate Russia’s capability to shoot down assets in space, showered more than 1,500 pieces of debris into low-Earth orbit. This has forced the International Space Station and Chinese Tiangong station to perform avoidance maneuvers, along with many private and government-owned satellites.
Russia is not the only country to perform such tests. India recently did so, and in the more distant past, China and the US have also demonstrated such capabilities.
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You can read an excerpt from Tananarive Due’s new book, The Reformatory, on Tor.com.
