I’m all for it and hopeful. For the first time I’m beginning to feel that there’s a real chance that even the US could move towards a General Strike before too long in response to how drastically conditions are collapsing across the board.

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell

I’ve been reading such a long list of rave reviews from authors like Kazuo Ishiguro and Alan Moore and publications like the LA Review of Books as well as hearing the same from close friends that I finally bumped this book to the top of my backlog stack.

It’s a horror book set in the early '80s in Argentina, weaving the kind of mystical conspiracy of Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum or Pérez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas and Ninth Gate novels over and through the very real state terrorism of the Argentinian Junta’s Dirty War. I’m only about 75 pages into the 600 or so, and the slow-burn opening is just now starting to unfold into something more overtly disturbing, but the deceptively simple/basic prose creates a remarkably sophisticated and subtle story that is creeping into me like magic. Disturbing magic, lol.

Highly recommend.

That’s hot. Also I hadn’t realized Dylan Dog was still going. 367, wow. I feel like rewatching Cemetary Man.

What a tough question to answer, stretching all the way back to Atari 2600 for me.

I think I’ll pick No Mercy/Virtual Wrestling Pro 2 on the N64. Possibly thousands of hours both solo and competitive at a friends with some incredible round robin tournaments with up to five participants. Just amazing Create A Wrestler and one of my handful of favorite gameplay mechanics ever. Also we were paying during the exciting days of pro wrestling so we had that enthusing us as well.

I played it on a 2019 Macbook Pro about two years ago now and oof, it was unsurprisingly rough. Probably unplayable, but through stubbornness I managed to make it through that first chapter available in early access. At the time I got it on Steam, I thought I’d be able to play it via GeForce NOW but then Google went an snapped it up and made it exclusive for Stadia. So instead I downloaded it to the Mac and suffered through crap resolution and crappier frame rates.

I just got a new M2 MBP after my old one went tits up on me and downloaded the game again to see how things are different and holy moly, it plays great at full resolution with most settings maxed out. Go Apple Silicon, and especially go Larian! Thank you so much for doing a native Mac version. I’d much rather play it this way than on the PS5. We’ve already got four ready to party up in online co-op with the new classes and races when the official release happens.

Agreed. I love Discovery, despite/because/whatever the occasional cheese and the overflow of Michael’s tears. I really enjoyed the fact that they went what some people want to belittle under the term woke. To me, they went empathetic, emotionally healthy. Not using emotional immaturity to create artificial, clumsy plot suspense through the characters acting foolishly/immaturely. It’s the Federation… they 100% are woke. Empathy and understanding and patience are qualities they’d prioritize to succeed both as a civilization and at smaller scale a crew, and it’s nice to see the characters act accordingly. I get enough toxic stupidity in my daily contemporary life. It’s nice to dream about humans improving in wisdom. Thanks, Discovery.

I just started Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor.

I loved Cloud Cuckoo, I really didn’t care for Seveneves (and I actively disliked Termination Shock… it’s been a progression but I do believe my taste and Neal Stephenson have finally cleanly diverged), and Ioved The Overstory, though yeah, I agree that I think it ultimately was drawn out. I read it while on a big plant, tree, fungus and mycorrhizal kick, reading lots of books on the possibility of plant sensation/communication/cognition.

I ended up loving Ministry. The way it was written felt like it was putting together moments to evoke more of a history of events rather than developing a rich narrative around a few characters. The individual human characters were less important than the development of official and non-official policy that grew through the book, seeing how it all might happen. It really worked for me in this case.

I read it a few months after having read Stephenson’s Termination Shock, which I really didn’t care for. I feel like his dialogue and sensibilities about characters and society haven’t really moved since the early 90s, except to get progressively more weirdly monarcho-libertarian. I think I’m finally done picking up his new books out of habit.

Fair enough. The pacing was definitely unconventional.

Tchaikovsky’s output is kind of stunning, especially given just how good I find so much of his stuff, how memorable. “We’re going on an adventure!”

I started with The Player of Games and that was a great way for me. I think that was when it actually came out, so it’s been a while since I read that series but I absolutely loved it.

I wasn’t crazy about The Expanse with the first book but it just kept growing on me and ended up one of my very favorites. And the same thing happened with the tv adaption. Truly amazing.

Lastly, speaking of the links, is there a way to make the link on the main page open the actual link to the external source instead of opening the post and comments? I feel like I am having to do extra clicks just to get to the content posted. I am used to viewing the content first, then going to the comments later if I choose to.

I’d like to add that I also would love to have this feature. I think about it each and every time I click on a post referring to a source.

Thanks, until this moment I had blotted that adaptation out of my brain.