A package’s progress from NJ to IL: Feb 8, 7 pm: Accepted by USPS in Collingswood, NJ, ~800 miles from destination. Feb 8, 8 pm (~1 hour after previous location): Arrived in South Jersey distribution center, NJ, ~800 miles from destination. Feb 9, 7 am (~11 hours later): Departed South Jersey distribution center. Feb 10, […]
Here’s a long detailed post about how my travel day went. (For background, see my post from the other day.) (The first three photos attached to this post show me after shaving in preparation for wearing an N95 mask; the fourth one shows me wearing the mask; the fifth shows me on the plane, with […]
Short version of this post: I’m in Oak Park for the next couple months. Longer version: After months of uncertainty and waffling, I decided to come to Oak Park to see Mary Anne and Kat. I’m not going to go into detail here about my whole thought process leading up to that decision. I will […]
Here’s a pet peeve of mine about a communications situation that comes up sometimes in certain kinds of science fiction. The situation: Some characters are on a spaceship. They need to communicate with other characters on another spaceship nearby, but the radio isn’t working. In most versions of this situation that I encounter, the two […]
Back in 2017, I watched the first five episodes of The Expanse, but bounced off of it. I was intrigued by the plot and a couple of the characters, but the show overall just didn’t grab me. I was especially put off by it being yet another TV show where the writers had apparently decided […]
Short version of this post: I’m looking for recommendations for books to read aloud that feature more character diversity and less wince-inducing prejudice than my longstanding favorite read-aloud books tend to have. (But I have more criteria than that; see below.) Longer version follows. I’m looking specifically for books that meet all of the following […]
I’ve seen several web pages that explain how to calculate vaccine efficacy, but most of them explain it in terms of a formula rather than explaining what the formula means. Here’s the simplest conceptual explanation I’ve seen: a VE of 90% indicates […] a 90% reduction from the number of cases you would expect if […]
The winter solstice arrived in the northern hemisphere about six hours ago. (And the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere, of course.) Here’s my usual reposting of some winter-solstice verses. First, an excerpt from T. S. Eliot‘s “Burnt Norton” (1935): At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor […]
Flash Player will stop working at the end of the year. (It’s already been shut down in some browsers.) So if you want to revisit any old-favorite Flash games, now’s the time. For example, there’s the lovely flOw, made by (at least some of?) the same people who made Journey and Sky and Flower. Microbes […]
A while back, I found out that ganache is basically chocolate mixed with cream, and ever since then I’ve been occasionally making this tasty quasi-ganache in my microwave. Here’s an approximate recipe. Short version: Put some chocolate in some cream, warm it up in the microwave for a minute, and mush it all together; then […]
Today I learned about British sf writer and editor Hilary Bailey. I just read her 1964 novelette “The Fall of Frenchy Steiner.” I read it in The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women, in which I had previously read a couple of stories that I would classify as non-fantastical literary fiction, by a couple […]
It turns out that it’s possible, and fun, to play various kinds of games on a video call (such as Zoom or Google Meet). Note: In this post, I’m talking about games to play with friends and family. The topic of playing games online with randomly chosen strangers is a different thing, and not something […]