I see that it was about a year ago that I first tried out Bose Hearphones: directional sound-canceling/amplifying earbuds. Specifically, you can use them to turn up the volume on the world around you, and/or to cancel sound coming from certain directions. I most often have them set so that sound from in front of […]
Ursula K. Le Guin’s website includes a list of her “major titles,” in several categories. Chaos Golubitsky created a chronological reordering of the novels, story collections, and nonfiction books from that list, and has given me permission to post it here. One complication for anyone looking for a complete-Le Guin-chronology list: this list doesn’t include the poetry, […]
Mother’s Day is complicated, and different people have very different reactions to it. Sympathies to all for whom Mother’s Day is a difficult, painful, or complicated day. Happiness to all for whom Mother’s Day is a joyful occasion to celebrate. To those who have no strong feelings about it either way, and to those experiencing […]
I’ve purchased an unusual number of new-to-me boardgames recently, and have now played all of them. Some notes: Colt Express Players play train robbers in the Old West. A nice mix of preprogramming moves (à la RoboRally) with a certain amount of flexibility in how you execute the moves. Competitive, not cooperative, but not as […]
Short version of this post: At my alma mater, Swarthmore College, documents have recently been revealed that describe a lot of awful behavior by members of the two fraternities on campus. Eventually, both fraternities decided to disband. Much longer version follows. Background Swarthmore is a small liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania. For decades, it’s been home […]
Books! Free to a good home. Let me know if you want any of these. Priority given to locals and to others who I’ll see in person soon (at WisCon or at Swarthmore Alumni Weekend, for example), and to people in the US (for ease of mailing). Haven’t managed to take photos of these, sorry. […]
I recently came across my printed copy of “A Hundred Necessary Rules of Conduct for Children,” by Christopher Dock, Mennonite schoolmaster, originally published in 1764. Occurred to me that (a) perhaps various parents of my acquaintance might find it useful in teaching their children how to behave :), and (b) it might be available online. […]
A friend just posted a comic about the difficulty of getting kids to look for things that they’re missing (like their shoes). It suddenly occurred to me that my experience with asking kids to look for things is that the kids go off to look but seem kind of at a loss as to how […]
My Tesla Model 3 arrived yesterday. I ordered it on the morning of the first day they were open for pre-order: March 31, 2016. The expected delivery date kept getting pushed back (for about a year, starting in late 2017, their delivery estimator said my car would be ready in 4–6 months); even after the […]
Content warning for mention of possible use of publicly available tracking technology by stalkers and harassers. The New York Times published an article last week about creating a face-recognition system using publicly available camera feeds: To demonstrate how easy it is to track people without their knowledge, we collected public images of people who worked […]
In 1989, I wrote a story (titled “Absences”) about a kid and her brother who had survived an alien invasion. Part of the core idea of the story was that the invading aliens were super sensitive to sound; humans who made too much noise got killed, and the protagonist’s brother was deaf, so the protagonist […]
I’m disappointed in the ACES Executive Board’s statement about the incident in which a presenter said the N-word during a presentation at ACES 2019. My post here is a long discussion of the Board’s statement—first my responses to what they wrote, then a description of some things I wish they had said, then a couple […]