Alex Claman

Xteink X4 and CrossPoint Reader

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:39:58 -0400

My Xteink X4 arrived a few days ago! Ordered one after the write-up on Aftermath; already really enjoying the convenience and form factor. I’ve successfully reduced some of my phone time each day by grabbing the X4 instead.

After some deliberation, I opted to flash CrossPoint Reader over the base firmware. As is the nature of things, there are already at least 2 CrossPoint forks out there already, each of which is doing some different things: Papyrix Reader and CrossPet, “Your pocket e-reader — with a virtual chicken.” I’ll be keeping an eye on all three projects.

To Be Played - November 2025 Edition

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 12:32:51 -0500

Star Birds (Toukana Interactive)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive)
Sol Cesto (Tambouille, Géraud Zucchini, Chariospirale)
ANIMAL WELL (Billy Basso)
JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time (Superbrothers, Pine Scented)
despelote (Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena)
Griftlands (Klei Entertainment)

To Be Played - November 2025 Edition

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 12:32:51 -0500

Treasures of the Aegean (Undercoders)
Planet of Lana (Wishfully)
Get in the Car, Loser! (Love Conquers All Games)
Cyber Knights: Flashpoint (Trese Brothers)
Sephonie (Melos Han-Tani, Marina Kittaka)
Thank Goodness You’re Here! (Coal Supper)
Herdling (Okomotive)
Phoenix Springs (Calligram Studio)
Hardspace: Shipbreaker (Blackbird Interactive)
Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios)
Wanderstop (Ivy Road)
Saltsea Chronicles (Die Gute Fabrik)
FAR: Changing Tides (Okomotive)
How to Say Goodboye (Florian Veltman, Baptiste Portefaix, ARTE France)
Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition (Guerrilla, Nixxes Software)
Astroneer (System Era Softworks)
The Beekeeper’s Picnic - A Sherlockian Adventure (The Wonder Room)
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (Capcom)
Stray (BlueTwelve Studio)
Demonschool (Necrosoft Games)
Islands & Trains (Akos Makovics)
Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (Polygon Treehouse)
Terra Nil (Free Lives, Clockwork Acord)
Jumplight Odyssey (League of Geeks)
Below the Crown (Misfits Attic)
TUNIC (TUNIC Team)
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive)
Harold Halibut (Slow Bros.)
The Rise of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games)
Scarmonde (Ephiam)
PEAK (Team PEAK)
Out There: Oceans of Time (Mi-Clos Studio, Goblinz)
Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games)
Epigraph (Matthew Brown)
Caves of Qud (Freehold Games)
Dwarf Fortress (Bay 12 Games)
1000xRESIST (sunset visitor)
Tactical Breach Wizards (Suspicious Developments)

So-called 'AI' in Academia

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 13:50:47 -0400

A small collection of links:

Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia
[Higher Ed’s rush to adopt AI is about so much more than AI](https://defector.com/higher-eds-rush-to-adopt-ai-is-about-so-much-more-than-ai]
Large Language Muddle: It’s okay to be a Luddite
Against AI

To Be Played - October 2025 Edition

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 12:20:52 -0400

Already about halfway through through October, but better late than never

Updated 2025-12-07

Herdling (Okomotive)
IXION (Bulwark Studios)
Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic (3Division)
Sable (Shedworks)
The Farmer was Replaced (Timon Herzog)
Islands & Trains (Akos Makovics)
The Wandering Village (Stray Fawn Studio)
FAR: Changing Tides (Okomotive)
Treasures of the Aegean (Undercoders)
Cloudpunk (ION LANDS)
Chained Echoes (Umami Tiger [Matthias Linda])
How to Say Goodbye (Florian Vellman, Baptiste Portefaix, ARTE France)
Perfect Tides (Three Bees)
Slay the Princess (Black Tabby Games)
Sea of Stars (Sabotage Studios)
Cloud Gardens (Noio)
Wildermyth (Worldwalker Games LLC)
The Banished Vault (Lunar Division)
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog (Space Colony Studios)
Titanfall 2 (Respawn Entertainment)
Star Renegades (Massive Damage, Inc.)
REKA (Emberstorm Entertainment)
Griftlands (Klei Entertainment)
SIGNALIS (rose-engine)
Strange Horticulture (Bad Viking)
Animal Well (Billy Basso)
Sol Cesto (Tambouille, Géraud Zucchini, Chariospirale)
Dread Delusion (Lovely Hellplace)
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale (NeocoreGames)
Frostpunk (11 bit studios)
R.E.P.O. (semiwork)
moon: Remix RPG Adventure (Onion Games)

Now Listening - Bluff City: There Is No Greater Love

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 16:58:12 -0400

Huge fan of the Blake Blossom intros on this one; something about the “overheard phone call” nature of them works so well to pull me into the setting. The continued slow unspooling of information to the listener about Blough City is great.

This also marks the point in my re-listen where my memories of the first season get a lot patchier. I think, if pressed, I could have dredged up something about this arc in terms of the masquerades, but not much else.

Now Listening - Bluff City: The Cost of Greed

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 08:32:13 -0400

And now we’re off to the races (although not the street races, that happens much later).

JAKE THE JACKAL IS HERE! One of my all-time favorite Art characters and – honestly – one of my all-time favorite FatT characters period. Jake instantly feels like a fully-fleshed out character, Art has a bunch of mannerisms and “flavor” ready to go, and he’s a fun, very physical presence. Probably overthinking it, but it’s interesting to contrast Jake (and Hadrian, etc.) with Uncle Nicky, who even now several arcs into Perpetua I still don’t really feel like I have a great handle on as a character. Things like backstory and motivations have been gestured to, but it’s still not really coming together for me. I like Nicky as a character and Art as a player (I think I honestly align pretty closely with Art when I’m playing games), so it’s not a big problem, but I find myself reflecting on it especially when there Nicky seems to be least fleshed-out of the PCs so far. Which was, again, thrown in sharper relief via Jake.

Now Listening - Bluff City: A Bowling Alley, a Boxer, and a Bird

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 15:42:42 -0400

I’ve been a supporter of Friends at the Table’s Patreon since June 2020. Which means – checks notes – that I’d only been listening to the main show for about 5 months before becoming a backer. Pretty sure that I backed at the necessary level to get Bluff City from the get-go, although I don’t think I started listening to Bluff City for at least a little while after that, possibly until January of 2021.

To Be Played - September 2025 Edition

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:17:36 -0400

Inaugurating this as a semi-regular “series” of sorts, motivated equally by a desire to cut down on how many tabs I have open at any given point and also by wanting to “rescue” my wishlist from being locked into Steam.

Updated 2025-10-12

Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)
- this is my biannual reminder that I want to go back and give Hollow Knight another shot
Cyber Knights: Flashpoint (Trese Brothers Games)
Star Traders: Frontiers (Trese Brothers Games)
Vintage Story
Sol Cesto
868-HACK (Michael Brough)
The End of Gameplay (droqen)
Caravan SandWitch (Studio Plane Toast)
SNØ: Ultimate Freeriding (Studio Gauntlet)
Star Birds (Toukana Interactive)
Animal Well (Billy Basso)
Strange Horticulture (Bad Viking)
The Banished Vault (Lunar Division)
Phoenix Spring (Calligram Studio)
Planet of Lana (Wishfully)
Cloud Gardens (Noio)
Titanfall 2 (Respawn Entertainment)
Little Orpheus (The Chinese Room)
Harold Halibut (Slow Bros.)
Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (Dim Bulb Games, Serenity Forge)
Jumplight Odyssey (League of Geeks)
1000xRESIST (sunset visitor 斜陽過客)
Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios)
Dwarf Fortress (Bay 12 Games)
Amarantus (ub4q)
Beacon Pines (Hiding Spot)
Tenderfoot Tactics (Badru, Michael Bell, Isa Hutchinson, Taylor Thomas, Zoe Vartanian, Madison Pathe)
Slay the Princess (Black Tabby Games)
Pepper Grinder (Ahr Ech, MP2 Games)
Riven (Cyan Worlds Inc.)
Terra Nil (Free Lives, Clockwork Acorn)
The Invincible (Starward Industries)
Frostpunk (11 bit studios)
BATTLETECH (Harebrained Schemes)
Benign Land (Leandros Ntolas)
Stray (BlueTwelve Studio)
Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition (Guerilla, Nixxes Software)
R.E.P.O. (semiwork)
Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon (FromSoftware, Inc.)
Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios)
PEAK (Team PEAK)

Now Reading - August 2024

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 12:14:08 -0400

Finally picked up my copy of the gorgeous, Charles-Vess-illustrated omnibus edition of Le Guin’s Earthsea cycle last week for the first time in months and read a full chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea (Chapter 7, to be precise). This is my first time re-reading Earthsea since I read the series for the first time in 2018 and thus the first time I’ve really sat with it in the context of Sofia Samatar’s gorgeous fantasy novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories. This time, I was struck by the resonances between the Stone in its isolated northern castle as described by Le Guin and the Stone with its religious texts as described by Samatar. Will continue pondering this as I keep reading Earthsea, but it makes complete sense that the two are in dialogue (even that’s just on the level of me as the reader).

Now Watching - Johnnies Mnemonic

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 17:02:13 -0400

And so continues (finally…) the erstwhile “Summer” of Cyberpunk, with a movie that I have in fact seen before not so long ago…

I’ve now watched 2022’s Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White. It’s…reductively, it’s “just” the 1995 film re-graded into black and white. However, this is the director’s (Robert Longo) preferred version of the film; he apparently wanted to shoot that way in the first place, but the studio denied him.

Rhythms and Habits

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 18:12:23 -0400

Another semester dawns.

From Rebeccah Toh, back in March

These days I’m trying to write whenever I have the time. Instead of writing only when I make myself sit down to write and doing it for an hour, and thinking that is the right way to do it, I’m trying to write whenever and wherever. It’s actually not too different from what I’ve always been doing. The difference is now I am also allowing myself to see that these little notes I’m writing are not just discardable notes but smaller parts of a bigger piece of work.

Now Playing: Blue Prince

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 11:17:00 -0400

My partner and I have been playing on the order of about 2-3 runs per afternoon/evening/night a few times per week. Absolutely adoring it! Thoroughly enjoying the slow unfolding of the various puzzles and mysteries within. Especially fun to have it up on the big screen so we can play from the comfort of the couch and appreciate the visuals.

Now Watching - Johnny Mnemonic

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 08:26:28 -0400

The beginning of my “Summer” of Cyberpunk

A genuinely delightful, blast from the past, beamed-straight-into-my-eyeballs-from-the-90s film. It bears almost no resemblance to the original short story (which may honestly be for the best since it’s a feature-length movie)…

Now Playing: Mid June

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 14:37:07 -0400

I’ve been letting myself play some more bits of games more consistently these past couple weeks; mostly games that lend themselves to a “I can play for less than 10 minutes, progress something, and hop off” approach.

This includes Outward, where I have fought and died to a mantis shrimp for the last time (for now). Going to do some wider ranging exploring the next time I play, although I do plan to try to snag some blue sand from the shrimp beach once (very carefully).

Now Playing: Outward, Session 1

Sat, 10 May 2025 15:15:40 -0400

Figuring I might as well start writing at least a little bit about the games I’m playing, how they’re going, etc.

I’ve been playing through Outward in little bits; picked it up on sale after a few members of Friends at the Table starting doing a Let’s Play series of it.

In my most recent longer session, I:

walked out Cierzo, was knocked unconscious by two hyenas, and was brought back into Cierzo by a hunter
walked back of Cierzo, was knocked unconscious by hyenas, and dragged back to their lair
picked up a lantern in their lair, couldn’t see enough to fight, was knocked unconscious by a hyena, and was brought back to Cierzo by a hunter
walked back out of Cierzo, managed to kill one hyena, was knocked unconscious by the second hyena, and dragged back to their lair
managed to kill one hyena, retrieve my pack, and escape back to Cierzo
embarked on an expedition to a troglodyte cave, where I managed to gradually pick off three troglodytes, until I was knocked unconscious by a troglodyte mage
woke up on the central mountain of Chersonese (I can’t remember the name at the moment) – having been brought there by someone helpful named, I think, Gef – went to sleep, woke up in an ambush, was knocked unconscious by outlaws, and brought to their mines as a prisoner

Only after playing this entire session did I realize that I had to hold down right trigger to use any of the abilities in my command palettes.

Playing by Post

Sun, 04 May 2025 15:43:30 -0400

Ideally going to maintain this as one of those “living documents” that I’ve always liked the sound of.

Radicale, Coda

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 18:13:47 -0400

As documented in my previous posts 1, 2, 3, and 4, I’ve been having…trouble…with my radicale installation. Went as far in the past couple weeks of switching from the python package (the most up-to-date version) to the Ubuntu-packaged version – a downgrade from 3.5.2 to 3.1.8, which, yikes, but that’s what I get for using an Ubuntu LTS droplet I guess – which is definitely not the thing that seems to have actually, finally, at long last delivered me from this stupid cycle in which I trapped myself. The issue, in the end, turned out to be a misconfigured rights file. The documentation for it was right there the whole time, starting me in the face. But at least I figured this out now.

Reorganizing

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 18:41:58 -0400

Doing some behind-the-scenes reorganizing which will hopefully not affect anything here but will help me feel a bit more organized.

Jellyfin on the Steam Deck

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:15:43 -0400

Once again, doing a bit of archiving for future reference. Planning to try to get a Steam Deck this summer; Jellyfin set-up continues to move slowly.

while you’re at it, launch it and set up your server
right click on JMP in the application menu and “Add to Steam” optional: for improved controller support, install and open Flatseal and add “/run/udev:ro” (without quotes) under filesystem -> other files for JMP go back to Game Mode optional: use Decky and the SteamGridDB plugin to make it look pretty (there are plenty of community assets to choose from already, so this is time well spent) if you haven’t granted controller access above, select controller settings and download and apply the most popular layout click “Play” Open the client settings inside JMP and enable “Fullscreen” (might have to force the screen if Auto doesn’t work) that’s it, enjoy

Sourced from this comment on an r/SteamDeck post

Highlighted: Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 11:33:42 -0500

by Tim Robinson

ISBN: 9781590172773

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This bare, soluble limestone is a uniquely tender and memorious ground. Every shower sends rivulets wandering across its surface, deepening the ways of their predecessors and gradually engraving their initial caprices as law into the stone. This recording of the weather of the ages also revivifies much more ancient fossils, which are precisely etched by the rain’s delicate acids, so that now when a rising or setting sun shadows them forth, prehistory is as urgent underfoot as last night’s graffiti in city streets. And every hairline fracture the rock has sustained throughout its geological troubles is eventually found out by the rain and dissolved into a noticeable cleft, so that the surface is divided up in a fashion that has been decisive for the development of field boundaries and paths, which have been obliged to follow and so reinscribe like visible scars the old invisible wounds. Further, this land has provided its inhabitants the Neolithic tomb-builders, the Celtic cashelor, the monastic architect, the fence-making grazier of all ages—with one material only, stone, which may fall, but still endures. To this retentive nature of the terrain itself must be added the conservative effect of its situation just beyond the farthest reach of Europe, wrapped in a turn or two of ocean. The material destructiveness of modern life is only now beginning to impinge on Aran, and until very recently the sole custodian of this land of total recall has been a folk-mind of matching tenacity, focused by the limitations of island life and with the powers of memory of an ancient oral culture.

Highlighted: Burning Chrome

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 13:27:28 -0500

by William Gibson

ISBN: 9781473217454

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I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. I’d had to turn both those twelve-gauge shells from brass stock, on a lathe, and then load them myself; I’d had to dig up an old microfiche with instructions for hand-loading cartridges; I’d had to build a lever-action press to seat the primers—all very tricky. But I knew they’d work

2025 Intentions Followup: February

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:33:17 -0500

Checking in on my 2025 intentions, about a week and a half into the second month of the year:

despite some unseasonably warm weather these past few days, it’s not consistently warm enough for me to be willing to get back on my bike
I am very slowly working on kitchen skills (and most of my progress is mental reframing, not actual skills), but I’m working on it!
continuing to use some of my paper notebooks and it feel very nice to open each one for their assigned things
A friend and I have texted about setting up working time! We may be starting this coming week!
on the “reading more of my physical books” page (haha): luxuriating in my copy (a gift from my family a few years ago) of the Charles Vess-illustrated omnibus compendium of the Earthsea Cycle by Le Guin and planning to return to Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything once I’ve finished my tour of Aran via Tim Robinson
just trying to take the dissertation prospectus work a day at a time
- another ongoing part of this is doing my best to reframe my “exams” as simply a formal check-in on my progress toward the prospectus proper

Radicale Update (ideally the last...)

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 18:25:56 -0500

Still not entirely unsure why I’m having the issue that I was (see previous posts 1, 2, and 3), but I finally figured out a remarkably simple fix: adding a single line to the systemd user unit file instructing the service to restart automatically every 20 minutes (RuntimeMaxSec=20m).

2025 Intentions

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:05:28 -0500

In no particular order, and the intent not to treat failure or inattention punitively:

get back on my bike (once the weather is warmer)
be more comfortable in the kitchen and with the basics of cooking
use (some of) my plethora of blank notebooks
- have already started doing this! it feels good!
set up (semi-)regular co-working schedule with friends
read more paperback and hardcover books that I already own
- including TTRPGs!
survive PhD exams and the prospectus process

Highlighted: You Dreamed of Empires

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 15:05:28 -0500

by Álvaro Enrigue

ISBN: 9780593544792

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She hadn’t had an easy life, but it was the one she’d had. She’d been born the eldest and only daughter of a lord of Olutla, in the deep, sweet, ancient lands of the Gulf, and that was why she spoke an antique Nahuatl, as if out of the old songs. She also spoke Popoloca, the mother tongue, source of fundamental words: chile, caca, chichi, hule. Like someone speaking Castilian in public and Latin at home. To the lords of Tenoxtitlan, she was an apparition, an emissary from the past. Aguilar had tried to explain to Caldera the Colhua’s awe and unease at hearing Malinalli translate for the messengers of Moctezuma on the way to the capital. It was as if Ovid had asked for salt at Pope Leo’s table; as if one day in Plato’s symposium somebody had raised his hand and talked like Achilles. They called her Malintzin, Doña Marina, because she was connected to the very root of everything. In fact, by the time they reached the city she was more famous than Cortés: no one knew that his name was Hernando-Helnantzin, they would have called him—because to them he was the huey Caxtilteca, spokesman of Castilla and companion of Malintzin: El Malinche.

Highlighted: The House by the Sea

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 15:05:28 -0500

by May Sarton

ISBN: 9780393313901

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I was totally ignorant about dogs. I had fallen in love with one special dog, Tamas’ mother, but knew nothing about the breed except that they were sensitive and beautiful. But luckily for me Shelties (Shetland shepherds) are by nature guarders not hunters, so Tamas can be let out safely at all times, even when I go away for half a day, and will never run off. He also shepherds Bramble, the last of the wild cats, whom I had tamed at Nelson. For her, his arrival as a small barky puppy was traumatic. For three weeks she would not come up on my bed and stayed out most of the time. But Tamas learned, learned not to bark —how moving it was that afternoon when he approached Bramble, sitting beside me on a couch, and swallowed his bark! I saw him do it, saw the impulse come, and then be quelled. And for a while that day they sat side by side, and then, little by little, became fast friends.

Highlighted: Orbital

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 15:05:28 -0500

by Samantha Harvey

ISBN: 9780802161543

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Sometimes they look at the earth and could be tempted to roll back all they know to be true, and to believe instead that it sits, this planet, at the centre of everything. It seems so spectacular, so dignified and regal. They could still be led to believe that God himself had dropped it there, at the very centre of the waltzing universe, and they could forget all those truths men and women had uncovered (via a jerking and stuttering path of discovery followed by denial followed by discovery followed by cover-up) that the earth is a piddling speck at the centre of nothing. They could think: no negligible thing could shine so bright, no far-hurled nothingy satellite could bother itself with these shows of beauty, no paltry rock could arrange such intricacy as fungus and minds. So they sometimes think it would be easier to unwind the heliocentric centuries and go back to the years of a divine and hulking earth around which all things orbited the sun, the planets, the universe itself. You’d // need far more distance from the earth than they have to find it insignificant and small; to really understand its cosmic place. Yet it’s clearly not that kingly earth of old, a God-given clod too stout and stately to be able to move about the ballroom of space; no. Its beauty echoes its beauty is its echoing, its ringing singing lightness. It’s not peripheral and it’s not the centre; it’s not everything and it’s not nothing, but it seems much more than something It’s made of rock but appears from here as gleam and ether, a nimble planet that moves three ways in rotation on its axis, at a tilt on its axis, and around the sun. This planet that’s been relegated out of the centre and into the sidelines the thing that goes around rather than is gone around, except for by its knobble of moon. This thing that harbours we humans who polish the ever-larger lenses of our telescopes that tell us how ever-smaller we are. And we stand there gaping. And in time we come to see that not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s of a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre, just a giddy mass of waltzing things, and that perhaps the entirety of our understanding consists of an elaborate and ever-evolving knowledge of our own extraneousness, a bashing away of mankind’s ego by the instruments of scientific enquiry until it is, that ego, a shattered edifice that lets light through.

Highlighted: The Passion

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 15:05:28 -0500

by Jeanette Winterson

ISBN: 9781448113361

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I had hoped to stay in with the pocket Bible given to me by my mother as I left. My mother loved God, she said that God and the Virgin were all she needed though she was thankful for her family. I’ve seen her kneeling before dawn, before the milking, before the thick porridge, and singing out loud to God, whom she has never seen. We’re more or less religious in our village and we honour the priest who tramps seven miles to bring us the wafer, but it doesn’t pierce our hearts. St Paul said it is better to marry than to burn, but my mother taught me it is better to burn than to marry. She wanted to be a nun. She hoped I would be a priest and saved to give me an education while my friends plaited rope and trailed after the plough. I can’t be a priest because although my heart is as loud as hers I can pretend no answering riot. I have shouted to God // and the Virgin, but they have not shouted back and I’m not interested in the still small voice. Surely a god can meet passion with passion? She says he can. Then he should.

Now Watching - Dune: Prophecy S01E05

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 19:16:27 -0500

spoilers abound

Chloe Lea is incredible in this episode, and I fervently hope that she goes on to get more roles after this, because WOW did she do a great job of physically and vocally evoking Raquella
definitely didn’t have “Desmond Hart is Tula’s secret love child from that time she slept with an Atreides and then murdered (almost) all of that family” on my bingo card
shoutouts to the show for letting the empress be horny
this is, once again, the strongest episode yet (replacing episode 4), and it finally felt like the actors have some (small bit of) space to lean into the emotional side of things
- that stuff was there before, but now it feels like there’s enough plot stuff revealed that the emotional side of things is landing more for me
although there’s not much there for her to work with, Sister Jen’s actress is doing a very good job with her material
- calling Lila “Doe Eyes” is, uh, very much coded a certain way to my reading
- the way that Jen is continually set apart from all of the other acolytes is interesting in the wake of the visions
the emperor is just continually hilarious in how easily he can be controlled – a single eye flutter and he folds like a wet paper towel
Mikaela continues to be one of the more intriguing characters, and I wish that she’d had a larger role
I still wish that this show could be 2-4 episodes longer; so much of the plot arc stuff feels stuffed into single episodes that could work better spread across two

Now Watching - Dune: Prophecy S01E04

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 13:05:57 -0500

spoilers abound

of course there’s a High Council – I have no idea if this is in the books, I don’t care, this is absolutely just a just a rip-off of Game of Thrones and its specific set-up of king plus ruling council
okay, I like this dream plotline in the Sisterhood that this episode seems to be following
STARLINER ALERT (or whatever the name of the massive Space Guild FTL ships are)
wow the Landsraad is really just the Roman Senate, isn’t it – the space, the layout, the claims to stability
I continue to be intrigued by the Desmond Hart stuff, but at this point (I think there are only 2 episodes left after this one?) I don’t know if I trust the show to actually pull it off, whatever it turns out to be
Mark Strong continues to a hilariously hapless and toothless emperor
…oh right, that revolution subplot that will probably ultimately go nowhere
- “the spice will finally flow to all of us” lol sure thing buddy
also realizing that I don’t quite understand how Kieran is related to the Atreides who Tula murdered last episode – unless he was the one with the limp who she let go?
I kind of wish that the set-up wasn’t entirely this episode, but I’m enjoying the political machinations that Valya is ensnaring her nephew within
yes, also enjoying the sketching of the dream, even if it’s a bit contrived that so many of them are drawing at the same speed
- YES IT’S GOING BADLY YESSSS
- OK, back on board with the they’re all in sync now thing
- oh no why is it still monotheism?
I do like that the empress is going full Julia Domna
once again, this show would benefit immensely from a couple more episodes so that a lot of this has more time to breathe
- yeah WOW this is so very true
Javicco might be the most clueless person in this show and it’s consistently hilarious
I checked and this is only 6 episodes; I think this should have been at least 8, potentially 10 – then these various plot lines and characters would have more room to breathe
I like the imperial crowns. Nice little bit of world building there
…oh damn time for things to really go off the rails in a way that probably no one saw coming
Travis Fimmel is chewing this scenery and I’m here for it
- …huh, a bold move on his part to try and claim that the emperor is “bold” and “strong” keep manifesting that one my guy
oooh neat cello cue
okay, another flashback, why not
- GODSDAMMIT ERASMUS WHY DIDN’T I PUT THAT TOGETHER UNTIL NOW
I also wonder why no one does anything to challenge Hart? Like it clearly takes intense focus to effect the burning…
oh hey, more genetics via blood
time for more psychosexual stuff with Hart and the emperor I guess
I like that apparently all Reverend Mothers just casually carry concealed switchblades
omg slay girlboss Valya
oh SHIT is Sister Theodosia a Face Dancer?!
I still don’t think they’ll be able to tie things up decently in the remaining two episodes, but I think this was the strongest one yet. The show continues to struggle underneath the weight of GoT though

Now Watching - Dune: Prophecy S01E03

Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:11:58 -0500

The GoT comparisons/throughlines continue
It’s the Harkonnen planet, which is icy and cold – it honestly looks like they’re reusing costumes if not also locations (not in a good way). This also isn’t helped by Mark Addy popping up as the Harkonnen patriarch, looking like nothing so much as an exhausted Robert Baratheon if he lived with Ned Stark
The acting is overall good (Olivia Williams in particular has been doing some heavier lifting in this episode and the last to good effect) but the writing just isn’t quite there
…okay I can’t tell how much of this is just me reading into it, but there’s entire swaths of this episode that could fit into an episode of GoT with almost no edits
Still parsing how I feel about this show
I’m fine with re-using costumes and locations, etc.
It’s just that this feels derivative and overly economical, if that makes sense
…oh no this just keeps going with the GoT recycling. They just did a Red Wedding type thing
I am willing to cut the show’s writers a bit of slack when I remember that they’re adapting a trilogy co-written by Kevin J. Anderson
Not much slack, but a bit
Shoutout to Mark Addy growling “Sorceress!” for all he’s worth

Now Watching - Dune: Prophecy S01E02

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 10:33:46 -0500

spoilers abound

I am now caught up on Dune: Prophecy, just in time for tonight’s episode
(which I may very well wind up watching next weekend at this rate)
This was another oddly-paced episode, with a lot of characters standing around talking about how dire their various situations are and then promptly…walking around a bit (sometimes to a different room!) and then continuing to talk
And for a six-episode series, it doesn’t feel great that this was so much filler
It does have a really cool (and horrifying) expansion/alternate version of the Bene Gesserit genetic memory thing that is suitably haunting
Oh, and of course the prominent Atreides is secretly involved in a rebellion plot which includes a Fremen woman because the Atreides can’t actually be evil and classist. Oh and also the Fremen woman is secretly a member of the Sisterhood because 1) plots on plots on plots and 2) this universe is approximately the size of a food court.

Radicale Update...Again...

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 14:16:17 -0500

Still tinkering and trying to figure things out.

Some more links (to complement the first set)

So the problem isn’t – as hoped as of the previous update – that the issue was the https-specific config.

In the latest attempt, per the GH discussion linked above, I’ve added a redirect rule to the nginx subdomain config file so that /radicale is pointed to /radicale/. This seems to have done nothing, other than prettify the file a bit.

Now Watching - Dune: Prophecy S01E01

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 10:33:51 -0500

spoilers abound

Watching the first episode of Dune: Prophecy
It’s…honestly really just GoT in space. I’m also really confused by the decision to have so much of the story in this first episode communicated by rather awkward info-dump narration and exposition
Oooh not even 15 minutes into the episode and there’s already a 30 year timeskip
Oh the joys of very flimsy logic giving a paper-thin pretense for one character to identify characters to the audience
…oof. Not only is this fight choreography very awkward, this scene is essentially a rehash of the Gurney/Paul scene from the first movie
Oh hey Mark Strong (I’d forgotten he was in this)
Already have a character saying “the spice will flow”
Okay, having both Jodhi May (who played Calanthe in the first season of The Witcher) and Mark Addy (Robert Baratheon from GoT) is continuing to make this feel more like GoT with a space veneer
I think there has to be a reason for it, but Mark Strong is playing the emperor as the least comfortable person in every room he’s in
Space cocaine exists
Now they’re space vaping
It really is the future
Oh, also like the first episode of GoT (death): it ends with the (in this case successful) attempted murder of a child
Thinking about it more, I feel like the series would have gotten off to a better start if the first episode had actually committed to spending time with younger Valya and only jumped forward 30 years at the very end, because that would have allowed for some more organic storytelling about the Great Houses, the Empire, and the Bene Gesserit themselves

Radicale Update

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 15:35:46 -0500

Quick follow-up to the previous radicale post.

It would seem that I’ve finally resolved my issues with the connection between nginx and radicale by…following the radicale documentation for a secure connection between the two, which involves explicitly adding the domain’s SSL certificate and key to the radicale location in the server block through proxy calls (if I’m understanding how this works…which I think I am…partially…).

…aaand as I was writing this the same error popped up again. Cool. Great. Wonderful!

Battery Charging Threshold

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 19:31:04 -0500

Continuing the mostly enjoyable process of slowly configuring my system to my liking, I wanted to figure out setting battery charge and discharge thresholds.

Starting from the ArchWiki, in this instance, seems to have been a mistake, and one that I only realized at the tail end of the process. Here are the documents that actually helped:

Burnout

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:11:23 -0500

Update 2024-11-24

In a shocking twist, I’m still somewhat burned out. Which is a great spot to be in at this exact point, since it’s finals season and I’m painfully aware of my (not immediate, but looming intensely) exams deadlines.

Some scattered thoughts, in no particular order. No intended rhyme or reason.

I’m only now building myself back up from the depths of one of the worst bouts of academic burnout I think I’ve ever experienced.¹

Radicale

Wed, 30 Oct 2024 11:51:00 -0400

Have been tinkering with radicale on my DigitalOcean droplet; still having issues which primarily have to do with Thunderbird but continuing to futz around and it’s at least working on my phone. Throwing some links down below for safekeeping and later reference.

What happened to well-known URLs configuration
Thunderbird is failing autodiscovering Address Books
Error log but successful connection when using reverse proxy with NGINX
Reverse Proxy Diagnostics Troubleshooting
Server Diagnostics Troubleshooting
Wrong nginx config in documentation
- n.b.: the documentation in question has since been updated, so this may be a moot point to include

Hoping that I can resolve the few lingering issues soon!

Now Watching - October 2024

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 10:58:50 -0400

Strange Darling (2024), 10/10/2024

A well-done, twisty story. I enjoyed the nonlinear narrative presentation, the story was well-written (although I could see the main twist within the first scene), and the two leads did excellent work.

Nosferatu (1922) x Radiohead (2024), 10/11/2024

Watched this at a 10pm screening, so was fighting head-nods for the back half. A cool concept that mostly worked, although I could have done without the additional (admittedly minor) occasional visual overlays.

A Brief Pacdiff Note

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 17:23:17 -0400

Another short note mostly so that I have this more readily at hand.

The pacdiff tool uses vimdiff, so the vim parts are already familiar.

The two key pacdiff option are -s (--sudo) and -b (--backup); both self-explanatory.

I found this comment on a Reddit post asking about pacdiff – the comment is the most useful part, therefore excerpting it here:

Simply type pacdiff -s and it will run sudoedit to merge the files. Use v to open vim with the pacnew file on the left, and the working file on the right with the focus on the pacnew file. Step through the changed hunks with ]c [move backward through the chunks with [c] and then dp to push the chunk to the working file, or edit the working file as you want. Then exit from vim and type r to remove the pacnew. Sometimes I may pull changes to the pacnew with do (e.g. if you mostly want the pacnew version) and then o to overwrite with pacnew.

Pass Backups and Migration

Fri, 11 Oct 2024 09:35:32 -0400

password-store keeps your passwords (or any other sensitive information) saved in GnuPG encrypted files organized in ~/.password-store.

Mostly archiving this here for my own future reference, but also in the event that the StackOverflow suite of sites continues its AI-fuelled downward trend.

Migration

Pulled primarily from SuperUser with an added section from this gist

This requires setting up a remote git repo (which is also a good idea for redundancy/interoperability:

$ pass git init
$ pass git remote add origin <url>
$ pass git add -A
$ pass git commit -m "initial commit"
$ pass git push -u origin master

This will push all passwords to the git repo; make sure that the git repo is private.

Lore24, Entry 4

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 15:33:13 -0500

The valleys of the Châzkem Mountains house many individual and small groups of dwellings. The people who live there are linguistically diverse, but culturally unified on the basis of their religious practices and their architectural style, which are closely linked. All structures within the valleys are built to have a single door, which uses post and lintel construction. One symbol apiece is carved into the stones, for a total of three symbols per building. These symbols are derived from a shared syllabic writing system, which records an unknown language (see the work by Asydis and Mesym for the first full scholarly treatment of the phenomenon). Depending on the combination of symbols used, the valley’s residents can make structures into cold storage spaces, heated buildings, or resistant to earthquakes – among many observed potential effects. As of this writing, many years of scholarly investigation have been expended trying to decipher what spirit(s), god(s), demon(s), angel(s), or other entities are propitiated, with very little to show for it. One stubborn minority continues to insist that individual spirits are instantiated by each construction, but this is plainly preposterous.

Lore24, Entry 3

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 15:27:04 -0500

Great Lanouf Ravens

Commonly known as Babble-Crows. Large blue/black messenger birds, identifiable vis-à-vis other ravens by a faint white banding on the wing, specially trained to memorize and repeat spoken messages. They will only repeat the message if a specific key phrase is spoken aloud.

They are highly valued by anyone who can manage to purchase or train one.

Not infrequently confused with the Lesser Dadwi Raven, nicknamed the Traitor-Crow.

Lore24, Entry 2

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 15:38:21 -0500

Decided to experiment with a 3-card tarot draw for inspiration

Page of Pentacles, upright (ambition, desire, diligence)
Ten of Cups, upright (inner happiness, fulfillment, dreams coming true)
Temperance, upright (middle path, patience, finding meaning)

Diligently Following the Middle Path is a god of healers, who takes the form of a teenage boy. He is very tall and has a graceful build. He has yellow hair worn in a style that resembles a helmet. His slanted eyes are green. He has dark skin. He is usually portrayed as wearing a practical uniform that is mostly charcoal-colored in color. He carries a doctor’s bag. He has prominent cheekbones. He can purify any area of disease.

Trying out Lore24

Sat, 06 Jan 2024 16:00:49 -0500

I tried out Dungeon23 last year, but for a variety of reasons didn’t stick with it. Partly due to the sense of rigidity that the dungeon concept has, but mostly just because it wound up being too much of a chore to work on each day.

However, I really like the idea of chipping away at creating a setting over the course of a year – and, honestly, that’s still faster than my normal pace. So, when I read about Lore24 today on Virtual Moose, I was definitely intrigued, and after reading the linked post with more details, decided to try it. I probably won’t be able to work on it daily, but I’m aiming for least weekly.

Miniflux, Part 2

Fri, 08 Dec 2023 10:57:32 -0500

I finally found the motivation to muck around with setting up Miniflux again.¹ Managed to set it up on a DigitalOcean droplet; my only frustration is that for reasons that I haven’t yet discerned nginx runs just fine for a few days a time and then crashes. It’s simple to log in and reboot, but I’d like to figure out if there’s a workaround or fix I can implement.

Update 2024-01-14: It turns out that miniflux was running out of memory, trying to restart, and then crashing because one of its subprocesses (?) had already restarted. Adding more memory seems to have resolved the issue.

Making Time

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 10:15:31 -0400

I try to be deliberate about making time. In some aspects of my life, I succeed. In just as many (if not more), I frequently fail.

Remind

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 13:35:44 -0400

As part of my potentially harebrained plan to switch to cross-platform, open source alternatives when possible, I’m slowly working on getting set up with Dianne Skoll’s remind, which I quite like already. Some of the helper programs aren’t available on macOS, but on the strong chance that I’ll be switching to a Linux distro in the future – more on this as the situation develops – this isn’t much of an obstacle.

Jenny Odell, Saving Time

Wed, 30 Aug 2023 13:34:17 -0400

This is intended as an ongoing, developing post as I continue to ponder and ruminate on the book

I am thus considering this a small, but hopefully growing, garden (of sorts)

The discussion of “gardening time” continues to stick with me, particularly the example of receiving bean seeds from a friends which were themselves only the latest round of seeds from a plant purchased in the 1970s

It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.

Fast and Furious FastTrans Submission

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 08:55:05 -0400

Something that I threw together for the FastTrans zine organized by Gender Reveal. It didn’t get accepted, but I had fun with it!

We shall live eternal, shiny and chrome, Or, There’s no true death in Valhalla: Auto(motive)-gender, the liminal road, and the resurrective potential of the engines (of capitalism) in Fast & Furious and Mad Max: Fury Road

In my humble opinion, the only good joke Family Guy ever made was that explicit sex scenes were filmed for each Fast & Furious movie involving Dom and Brian due to both Vin Diesel and Paul Walker (RIP) wanting them in the films, but those scenes were always cut prior to release. One of my favorite jokes about the upcoming Fast X – which should have been called Fast-Ten Your Seatbelts – is that it’ll be the movie where Dom finally gets to fuck a car on-screen (I refuse to write this fanfic).

Miniflux, Part 1

Fri, 07 Apr 2023 10:12:14 -0400

A step-by-step process for install Miniflux on a Raspberry Pi.

Update repositories (and upgrade as needed): apt update

Configure the miniflux apt repo (as two separate lines):

$ echo "deb [trusted=yes] https://repo.miniflux.app/apt/ /" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/miniflux.list > /dev/null
$ apt update

Install miniflux: apt install miniflux
Install PostgreSQL: apt install postgresql
Create the PostgreSQL database:

tabling for now due to persistent segmentation fault…

Andor

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 15:33:55 -0800

Andor continues to live in my head rent-free, so I thought I might as well inaugurate this section of the site by making a post with some of my thoughts. I’ll update this as I keep thinking.

First and foremost, this is a show absolutely in a complex conversation with Rogue One, even as it is doing its own different – sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly – narrative work. The trailer for the film:

Threnody

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 13:50:39 -0400

If Kipling

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 13:40:39 -0400

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, donbt deal in lies, Or being hated, donbt give way to hating, And yet donbt look too good, nor talk too wise:

Test

Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Testing

February 2020 Media Diet

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What I’ve read and watched this month (February 2020), accompanied by a one-sentence review:

Books
- The True Queen (2020) by Zen Cho -
- Upright Women Wanted (2020) by Sarah Gailey -
- Lightspeed Magazine, January 2020 -
- Lightspeed Magazine, February 2020 -
Movies
- Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) -
TV
- Sex Education (S1) -

January 2020 Media Diet

Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

What I’ve read and watched this month (January 2020), accompanied by a one-sentence review:

Books
- The Vela (Season 1) (2019) by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, S.L. Huang, and Rivers Solomon - A timely consideration of refugees, immigration, and crisis.
- The Monster Baru Cormorant (2018) by Seth Dickinson - Superbly, beautifully brutal. Thornier and bloodier than Traitor.
- The Cybernetic Tea Shop (2016) by Meredith Katz - An exquisitely quiet, caring story about grief and healing.
- Mutiny at Vesta (2018) by R.E. Stearns - A fun romp through an intriguing universe.
- Magic for Liars (2019) by Sarah Gailey - This one packs a stupendous punch.
Movies
- Pokemon Detective Pikachu (2019) - Enjoyable enough, although I have no personal connection to the source material.
- The VVitch (2015) - Visually spare, chillingly effective.
TV
- Euphoria (S1) - Enjoyable and thought-provoking; not sure if there’s enough there to sustain a second season.
- The Mandalorian (S1) - Baby Yoda. Baby Yoda. And an intriguing look at other parts of the galaxy.
- When They See Us (S1) - Words can’t do this justice; it’s powerful, heartbreaking, and necessary viewing.

Thinking About Work

Sun, 31 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

To quote one of my favorite shows, “I’m a planner.”

I like to think I’m a fairly self-aware person.

Of course, like everyone, I’m not perfect, and there are time when I come up short, either in other people’s estimation or my own.

All of which is to say: I spend a decent of time analyzing myself and my interactions with other people. As a result, I have a good understanding of how I work, and strategies to maximize my productivity during the portions of the day where I have both time and energy to get things done. This semester, I am also, technically speaking, overloading with four full classes as opposed to the required three.

Grad School - The First Three Weeks

Sat, 15 Sep 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Hello! I am, in fact, still here.

In the months since my last little mini-review, I have finished my job at the bookstore, learned Latin, packed up (most of) my worldly possessions, and moved to Lubbock, Texas. It’s been a rather hectic few months.

So far grad school has been about what I expected it to be; to be clear, this is a very good thing. There are, and continue to be, a lot of new things to adjust to, like TAing a class, the higher expectations for work, and renting a house, to name a few.

In Review - Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear

Mon, 28 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The line that I always use when describing this book is that it contains my all-time favorite use of a sewing machine.

Karen herself is whip-smart, hilarious, emotional, stubborn, and courageous; in a word: human. The entire cast of characters is vibrantly alive and unapolegetically themselves, whether they be an African-American lawman, a transgender sex worker, or a queer sex worker like Karen herself. The story hums along at a good clip, the action is satisfyingly energetic, and the intriguing glimpses into the larger world (like the official Mad Scientist licenses, mentions of something like the Civil War, and Rapid City’s history and development) make it feel like there is more to the world than just this story.

In Review - Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I discovered and started this book under false pretences.

I heard about it via an interview on Eidolon with the author. Given the fact that I skimmed this article at work with half an eye on the register to ensure that I didn’t miss a customer, my comprehension was…lacking. Thus, my main takeaway was that this was essentially a modern-day retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone, and not much more–despite the second paragraph:

August 2017 Media Diet

Thu, 31 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Books

Shattered Pillars (Eternal Sky #2) by Elizabeth Bear: Some of the most well-written, compelling fantasy I’ve ever encountered. A
Heir to the Empire (The Thrawn Trilogy #1) by Timothy Zahn: Good plain Star Wars fun. B+
Dark Force Rising (The Thrawn Trilogy #2) by Timothy Zahn: Continues the story, with some fun twists. B+
The Last Command (The Thrawn Trilogy #3) by Timothy Zahn: A satisfying conclusion. Good character moments. B+
Specter of the Past (The Hand of Thrawn #1) by Timothy Zahn: I’ll be completely honest; I read this mostly for the Mara sections. B
Vision of the Future (The Hand of Thrawn #2) by Timothy Zahn: Again, mostly read it for the Mara/Luke sections. B
Borne by Jeff VanderMeer: A fascinatingly strange and disturbing story. Come for the giant flying bear, stay for the other weirdness. A-
The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald: My least favorite of the three Sebald works which I’ve read to date, but still worthwhile. A-
Steles of the Sky (Eternal Sky #3) by Elizabeth Bear: An immensely satisfying and surprising conclusion to an incredible trilogy. High stakes and a fast pace, but it doesn’t forget the importance of the characters and their relationships. A+
Boxes by Pascal Garnier: An odd, understated little novel originally written in French. Predictable, but with an appealingly dry humor. B

Movies

In Review - The Winged Histories

Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar

This is one of my all-time favorite books. Samatar creates and populates a lushly described, fully realized world and society undergoing change and upheaval, splitting the story into the personal narratives of four women who each relate differently to the events of the story: a soldier, a scholar, a poet, and a socialite. This is a story deeply concerned with the art of story-telling, preservation, and transmission. If nothing else, pick it up to experience some amazingly gorgeous prose. N.B.: this is a companion novel to A Stranger in Olondria, which I would also highly recommend.

Crystals

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A Misty Morning

Sun, 04 Dec 2016 14:25:07 +0000

A few pictures from last Sunday morning

A Snowy Morning

Sun, 04 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A couple photos from this morning.

A Reminder

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Today marks the one year anniversary of my grandfather’s death.

He was the last of his generation (as far as my family is concerned). He was the last. And suddenly he was gone.

This is not a paean. I’m not much for singing, nor do I think that my writing could in any way do him justice. I simply felt the need to acknowledge this day and to put it up here as a reminder.

2016 Summer Articles Roundup

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000

A compilation of the articles I’ve read and enjoyed this summer.

“In my country today there are people who are wondering if the Resistance had a real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation this question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological meaning of the Resistance.”

Ur-Fascism

“THE world has enjoyed an unprecedented run of peace, prosperity, and cooperation the last 25 years, but now that might be over. At least when it comes to those last two.

Hippolytus 836-851

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This is an exercise in translating. I mostly sourced it from other previous translations.

Theseus
Deep, deep beneath the earth,
Let me go and make my home in the darkness
for I have lost you, dearest companion.
Your death has destroyed much more than yourself.
[Addressing the attendants pleadingly]
Will any of you tell me what happened?
[Angrily]
Or does my palace keep you useless rabble for nothing?
[He turns away, speaking more to himself]
Oh, the grief that I feel! Past utterance, past endurance,
I am lost.
My children are motherless and my house is undone.
You left us, you left me!
You, dearest and best of all women that
the dazzling sun beholds, or the starry radiance of the night.

Briefly Noted - Tea

Mon, 25 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“Tea may not fix the world, but it can help you take a break from it.”

I really appreciated this piece about how tea helped one woman deal with the stresses of her life. In some ways it definitely syncs up with how I view and drink tea.

2015 in Books

Wed, 30 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I have read some amazing books this year.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

A well-written, disturbing psychological thriller that doesn’t reveal too much at one time and has a couple interesting twists.

Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica

I would like to live in Stormwrack. The sequel, A Daughter of No Nation, came out recently, and I’m planning on reading it early next year. The author has also written a couple short stories set in the same world, which I’ll include either here or (more likely) in a short stories post.

Summer Evenings

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

On the end of the day, a dog, and time

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Highlights for ‘The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows’

by John Koenig

ISBN: 9781501153662

Created with Highlighted. Highlights may be protected by copyright.

merrenness, n.: the lulling isolation of driving late at night-floating through the void in an otherworldly hum, trailing red jewels in the darkness, your high beams sweeping back and forth like a lighthouse. Hungarian merre, where? in which direction? Pronounced “mair-uhn-nis.”

p. 25

heartspur, n. an unexpected surge of emotion in response to a seemingly innocuous trigger-the distinctive squeal of a rusty fence, a key change in an old pop song, the hint of a certain perfume-which feels all the more intense because you can’t quite pin it down. From heart + spur, a spike on a heel that urges a horse to move forward.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Alex Claman, and this is my (very sporadically updated) site. Details pending.

Elsewhere:

Twitter (for as long as it lasts): @alexclaman
Cohost: aclaman
itch.io: aclaman
Humanities Commons: aclaman

Colophon

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