petrea_mitchell: (Default)
I am not excited by the pomp and pageantry of predetermined political conventions. Behind-the-scenes pieces about how they run, though, those are interesting. Like this one at Politico about the staff trying to keep all those speakers on time and on topic.
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
One of the things I love about Money Stuff is that it doesn't just provide an endless stream of bizarre financial news, it will stop and explain the underlying workings at a level that even finance naïfs like me can understand. Thursday's issue leads off with a great example, explaining how a clever idea to leverage accounting rules results in lots of natural gas wells not being capped despite laws saying they need to be capped.

Item #2 in that newsletter is much less technical and explains how the naked pursuit of more money is leading large investors to demand that Fox spin off its news division into a public-benefit corporation which would be required to focus on reporting true and accurate news.

Meanwhile, over at Politico today, there is a fascinating article which, being a book excerpt, buries its lede:

As money-launderers and illicit financiers hide their money in the American Midwest, they’ve become part of the story of the decline of small-town, blue-collar America.
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
Hopefully soon I'll stop feeling like I have to check Politico obsessively to find out what new crazy thing is going on every day. But I will keep reading the weekend edition of Politico Playbook, because it always includes links to a few interesting non-political articles.

Like this one, for instance: "Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage?" is fascinating and entertainingly written tale of intercontinental supply chains, ramen, the FDA, and skulduggery at the heart of Big Pasta.
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
That new rain gear that was going to take three weeks to get to me? Showed up three days ago. Aramark is taking "underpromise and overdeliver" very seriously, it seems.

Cat


A very relaxed cat The most relaxed cat on the Catio Tour, in the best-named catio they've ever had: Fort Catsop (after locally well-known landmark Fort Clatsop).

Fandom


I now have a supporting membership for Smofcon 37, now that it offers supporting memberships. Last year's Smofcon streamed a few program items, and when the topic came up this year someone (perhaps snarkily) suggested that it would be great if the remote listeners were helping pay for the cost of streaming, whereupon several of us said that we'd be perfectly happy to pay for some kind of online-only membership to help defray costs.

Gaming


Only two people showed up for this week's KeyForge session, likely due to Rose City Comic Con happening this weekend. We played a couple of non-official games and I made a decision about what deck I'll bring to the next one.

Tried to make some actual progress toward my goal in Sunless Skies instead of just flying around exploring. Also went back to Fire Emblem: Awakening for a couple more chapters on Hard mode.

Books and media


I finished browsing through the Basque book and got picked up Terminal World by Alasdair Reynolds, which I'm most of the way through. Great setting, nice crunchy sf, and a good pace of revealing clues so that you can play along with the characters and figure out things before they do; but also some very Hollywood villains and a repetitive tendency for characters to dismiss things as "people you don't need to know about" or "no one goes there" or "never mind what the side effects are" followed by those things shortly turning out to be very important indeed. The protagonist is a pretty smart guy and I wish he'd started asking a few more questions by now. All in all, a great example of why Reynolds is just an author I read to tide myself over between new Peter F. Hamilton books.


I took my first look at the upcoming anime season and aaaaaaah it looks bad.

Politics )
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
I got to go to OSCON 2019 this week. Saw interesting and not-so-interesting presentations, learned things, might have a new favorite programming language. (Full disclosure: I get excited about new programming languages very easily.)

I'm seeing a lot of posts all around the net the last couple days on the topics of Boy It's Hot Today and What The Moon Landing Means To Me. It's only just topped 80F here, and as a child of the 1980s, the moon landing is primarily associated in my mind with reading bitter commentary about how Kennedy blew up the chance to do space right.

Cat


Barbecue Cat on the patio

Barbecue Cat, one of Phosphor's feral relatives, considers whether it's worth getting up from the nice warm patio and scurrying away, or whether the human might keep its distance.

Fandom


Here a are the rest of the summer premieres. I seem to be on a country music quote kick.

Somebody on the Amazing Stories editorial staff is tinkering with the look and feel of the blog. It looks like maybe I can stop worrying about finding at least one screencap that looks decent when trimmed to a square image.

Books and media


Nothing watched beyond anime. I am definitely going to keep watching BEM even though it looks like it won't be bloggable due to limited distribution.

I finished reading Lost Cities of Africa and will say something more about it at some point.

Gaming


The impending release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is getting me excited about Fire Emblem all over again, except I don't have a Switch and won't be getting one any time soon, so instead I've gone back to Fire Emblem: Awakening for a playthrough on Hard mode.

Have also been checking in on Fallen London. I'm not really sure what I'm doing but I seem to be making progress.

Politics )
petrea_mitchell: (Default)
I'm writing this from La Grande, Oregon, on the way back from Spikecon.

Cat



Obnoxious Cat in the backyard

This is Obnoxious Cat, who snarls at me as I put the ferals' food out in the morning, and then swoops in and eats a little bit of it himself. We thought he was feral himself, but after we put fliers up around the neighborhood to make sure, we got a call from his owner.

Also he's already been neutered. I can only imagine what he was like before that.

Fandom



There was a weekly anime commentary to finish off the last couple shows of spring and also the season preview.

And I made it to Spikecon. Con report at a later date.

Books and media



I started in on a reread of Lost Cities of Africa to see if it can add anything useful to my miniatures project.

It's anime premiere time, so I'm watching a couple of those per day. Favorite so far: Dr. Stone is everything I hoped it would be. In another tab, I have the page where Funimation should have posted the first episode of BEM by now open so that I can refresh it every few minutes.

Gaming



Nothing to say outside of the Spikecon report.

Politics )

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