Everybody drop what you're reading and go pick up Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.
So accidental injury as a side effect of attempted high-tech bugging? That is interesting. Thanks for linking.
This is wild. "A consensus has formed among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the U.S. government — and the CIA in particular — is hiding the full extent of what it knows about the source of Havana Syndrome. The victims offer two general hypotheses as to why. The first is that releasing the full intelligence around Russian involvement might be so shocking as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, thereby raising thorny questions as to how a nuclear power fond of showing off its hypersonic missiles ought to be made to pay. The second is that acknowledging Havana Syndrome is caused by a foreign adversary could put a damper on recruitment to the CIA and State Department." Hell of an indictment either way.
Sent a couple of chapters from my latest experiment in novel writing to an agent. Haven't heard back, which may be par for the course. I'll keep going with it regardless and try again once it's closer to completion. Had a great long weekend visiting Beechworth, land of Ned Kelly and the place where I was raised but haven't returned to in years. Perfect weather. Excellent wine. Great food. Astonishingly friendly people.
Great novels I've read recently: - Prophet Song by Paul Lynch - The Trees by Percival Everett - Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright Currently back on the Everett wagon with Erasure, which may well be the best of his I've read yet.
Seems more like white people still aren't having sex. What's going on, white people?
> I recognize I'm the only person here who knows what "rotoscope" means which is part of the problem Nah, man. Everybody who played Prince of Persia on the Apple 2E remembers rotoscoping!
US politics is a source of considerable anxiety to me and many of my friends here. That said, and with the caveat that I'm speaking as an outsider, I get the impression the rift in American society is largely urban versus rural (with the discord being exploited by wealthy interests, of course). How do you see the map looking were it to split? Richard Morgan's book Black Man envisions a future US split into the Republic (Jesusland), the North Atlantic Union and the Pacific Rim, although I gather he based this distinction on existing literature about the topic.
Tom Lehrer can come out of retirement!
Jeffrey Sachs delivered a public lecture here in Melbourne on leadership in sustainable development last night. He was a wonderful speaker and it was an excellent event. But he slipped in a line about Covid being "most likely created in a US lab" and didn't elaborate further, which left everybody in the audience bemused. I fear we are on the brink of genocide in Gaza.
When I saw this posted (Hacker News) somebody commented that there was a fad among British nightclubs in the 80s to put telephones at every table for a similar purpose. Also, if you haven't watched Babylon Berlin yet, the first couple of seasons are worth a look.
Watching Reddit's slow demise is the saddest thing on screen since Molly died in A Country Practice.
It would be great to see you there (I'm travelling for work on the other side of the world at the moment, but will be back there in a week). How long since you last visited? The pandemic hit Melbourne hard. It's back on track, but the scars are still there in the number of people asking for money or living rough on the streets. We're also in a severe rental crisis that I think Kiwis can probably relate to.
If I can make this work in my schedule, I'll come. I very much enjoyed catching up with Kleinbl00 and butterflyeffect last week.
You're out in New Mexico, aren't you? I'm doing NYC, Ann Arbor / Detroit and Redmond / Seattle. If you find yourself in any of these places, I could use some guidance on drinking American beer.
We had neo-Nazis giving Nazi salutes in the middle of Melbourne this week. Working from home for the rest of this week because my partner has covid (a policy of my employer). This is the second time she's had it and I've missed it despite sharing a bed. Three years in to the pandemic, and I've still yet to test positive to covid, no matter how frequently I test. I assume I must have had it at some point.
The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy, is a masterpiece.
Obligatory reminder from me that our world continues to be impoverished by your failure to write a memoir. Get on it.
The dinner scene in The Square is one of the greatest scenes in cinema I've ever watched. I also found The Killing of a Sacred Deer entertaining.
That was a fantastic read. The final straw that led me to deactivate my Twitter account.
That sounds fucking awful. I'm sorry, dude. Daughter from California Syndrome?
Aren't you guys in your mid-20s? What's he doing getting gout at that age?
Human embryos have already previously been created without egg and sperm. Consider the Monash iBlastoid.
Congrats on successfully defending your PhD!
Sad reading. > I realize now that he groomed me from childhood. I was his perfect mark—and still am. I’ve found ancient yellow pads in my student papers from 50 years ago bearing the first paragraphs of my attempts to write this story. I see in them the beginnings of how I chose my profession, and sometimes I fear that I, too, am a confidence man, selling the proposition that hours of conversation with me will change a life. Beautiful.
Another suggestion not raised here is that the increase in obesity is driven by rising carbon dioxide levels (example discussion). That would also potentially explain why higher altitude locations have lower weight gain.
I've been quiet. Here's an update from Melbourne. I mentioned late last year that we'd bought our first place. I may not have mentioned that it is located on what has now officially been recognised as the coolest street in the world.[1] Melbourne has just come out of another snap two week lockdown, during which we appear to have eradicated the delta variant locally (helps that the Victorian Government ordered the shut down as soon as it was detected). Across the border in NSW, things appear to be deteriorating much like it did for us last year (and which led to a truly traumatic three and a half months of hard lockdown). It's weird seeing another city, one which up to now had done so well during the pandemic, falling to the same mistakes and hubris we demonstrated 12 months earlier. Despite the comparative success of six out of seven states in locking the rest of the world (and hence COVID) out, vaccine rollout remains a fiasco. COVID vaccination rate in Australia is worst in the OECD. Which means we'll soon be locked out of the rest of the world. Lockdowns aren't all bad. For instance, and further to my first paragraph, our apartment is located directly above a bar. We bought this apartment during the first lockdown, when the bar was closed. We had previously known it as a wine bar, but at some point in the year or so before we bought it had turned into a live music venue. This was not something we realised until after we moved in. I've caught up on a lot of sleep in the past two weeks. Tonight, the music is back on. Still, it is good to see Smith Street returning to life. [1] Individual results may vary.
Congratulations, mike. I'm seething with jealousy.
Sorry, Cumol. It's a shit situation, I know. The only takeaway I have from the past three and a half months is that if you're going back into lockdown, a hard lockdown, with all the inconvenience that entails, is much more effective at bringing this thing under control and enabling things to reopen sooner. That and ignore the naysayers and tabloids that try to break social cohesion and exploit the situation to sow mistrust in public institutions.