A sad tale's best for winter
October by China Mieville. Account of the Russian Revolution, focussing chapter by chapter on the ten months leading up to October. It's very much a novelists' account, thrillingly written with vivid descriptions of the people and the scenes. Well worth reading, but will annoy any hardline anti-communist types with its enthusiam.
What I'm Reading 2
The Old Ways
by Robert Macfarlane. Travelogue where the poet writes about travelling along various ancient
routes, mostly walking but with a couple of sailing trips. Beautifully written and insightful.
What I'm Reading 3
The Barrow Will Send What it May
Second novella in the Danielle Cain series about an anarchist
punk involved with demons. Bit rough round the edges but a good story.
Theatre
Saw
The Winter's Tale
at the Globe Theatre, which I'd never actually seen or read before. Made the right decision
not to read up on it as unusually for Shakespeare it has a reasonable ending.
Enjoyed it a lot, though the change of tone from the tragic first half to the comic
second half is a bit jolting.
What I'm Watching
Saw
The Predator.
Pretty much what I expected. Decent tongue-in-cheek
update to the classic movie, with a motley crew of soldiers
psych-invalided out trying to rescue a child and take on
the alien. Pretty good fun but not outstanding or original.
Liked the spin it put on the earlier episodes.
What I'm Watching 2
Saw spy thriller
Red Sparrow
about a famous ballerina who becomes a honeytrap spy.
Was a bit disappointed by it: it has a grimdark tone but is a bit
too over the top to suspend disbelief for instance the spy sex school and the torturer.
Ends up combining the fun of John Le Carré with the plausibility of James Bond.
Me
Was really busy at work with another release, but seems to be getting better now.
Kid seems to have adjusted to school but is a bit bored: they seem to be learning at the level and pace of the least capable kids. E.g. he can count to a hundred and read simple books, but they're teaching them to count to 10 and recognise letters. He seems fairly happy though, gets plenty of playtime and greets the other schoolkids in the supermarket.
Been ramping up the running post-injury, doing plenty of distance again. Had a big plateau for a while but finally managed to get back to running 10km in less than an hour. That feels like a big milestone to me.
Links
Socioeconomics.
The time may be right for land-value taxes.
100 policies to end austerity has
6 so far.
Teens want online privacy but share publicly.
Random. A Cappella THX Logo Them. Live London Underground train map. Video: Acrobatics in a wind tunnel. The shape of the Nepal flag. Timeline showing the evolution of the churches of Scotland from 1560 including pejorative epithets.
Articles. Science's bullying problem Netherlands cycling culture. Worst bosses from "Ask a Manager". German football clubs have 50+1 rule which is meant to ensure that the majority control of a club remains in the hands of its members. Beatles chords: "a mean of 9 chords, peaking at a maximum of 21 chords for McCartney's 'You Never Give Me Your Money.'"
Politics. The Dark European Stain: article looking at the differences as well as the similarities between modern far-right and original fascism. How democracy died in Hungary.
Sci/Tech. Interview with Voyager scientist Dr Garry E Hunt. Whatever Happened to the Semantic Web? Idle until urgent. TypeScript at Google: "Experienced webdevs show up at Google and it's like visiting an alternative timeline." Video: Inside the browser event loop. Tape storage not going away.
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