Trying out the Orion browser on macOS after listening to the discussion on The Talk Show 416. It looks good but I don’t think I can set command-click to open a new window as I can in Safari.

Time to clean the house, which I seem to be doing by figuring out NSImage scaling factors. The trick is to inspect the underlying bitmap representation when present.

Lent by Jo Walton 📚

Jo Walton is a wonderful writer, in all senses of “wonder,” and this story exhibits many of her skills. It shares a deep connection to the city of Florence with Or What You Will, and also references the Platonic philosophy embodied in The Just City and its sequels, including the early humanist Pico della Mirandola as a character. But it is mainly a reflection on the confluence of faith and philosophy in the Italian Renaissance, and the protagonist is another historical figure, the monk Girolamo Savonarola, who tries to guide the city away from the corruption of the Church and towards a more equitable and faith-based society.

But this is not just an historical novel, it is set in a fantasy universe where demons are real and Hell is an actual place, and Girolamo has to deal with matters of faith, opposing the Pope, but also matters of politics and kings to keep Florence self-governing, and matters of deep metaphysics, including the important question: can a demon ever be forgiven after the Fall, and return through good works and faith to the love of God? The mechanism for this reflection is metempsychosis, where the story doubles back on itself to repeat Girolamo’s life, not always in the same way; and as the book goes on the variant lives telescope together, each new narrative building on the last.

Girolamo himself is an interesting person, at times kind and considerate of others, sometimes prideful and overly devoted to the trappings of faith, a sin he frequently acknowledges to himself and others. I found it somewhat challenging to accept a world in which God works in such mysterious ways, and puts so many people through so much suffering; but there are also moments of peace and serenity amidst the pain. And although the stories are not directly linked I suggest reading this one before Or What You Will.

Recommended.

Book cover for Lent by Jo Walton, a seated figure of a monk holding an open book on the right, being threatened by a large hairy demonic figure on the left with glowing eyes and batlike wings, framed by white marble pillars in the foreground.

Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard 📚

A while ago I read The Red Scholar’s Wake by the same author; both are space opera romances based on Vietnamese culture, part of the Xuya Universe series of connected stories. Each work in the series is largely independent, sharing the same future history where Asian rather than European nations come to dominate the western hemisphere, and in the far future expand to the stars, resulting in a starfaring civilization based on Eastern rather than Western values.

The story is fairly short and action packed, centered on four junior navigators assigned to help track down and deal with a hyperspace squid-creature, each from one of the four clans which are responsible for taking ships safely into and out of said hyperspace. Each has distinctive characteristics, ranging from neurodivergent to traumatized to just too curious for their own good, but the primary viewpoints are Nhi and Hạc Cúc, who gradually discover that despite their differences and cross-clan distrust they are stronger together. Yes, the found family of misfits save the day, overcome institutional obstacles, and find hope for the future.

Recommended.

Book cover for Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard, a grey and pink figure balanced above a vertical row or planets with a small spacecraft below, the head of a rooster on the left and of a snake on the right.

Today I turned Siri off on my laptop, first because I never use it, and second (and more importantly) because it puts that ugly color splotch in my menu bar.

TIL the pizza oven does not get hot enough to cook the pizza when it has a puddle of ice under the stone.

Used Xcode’s Swift Assist for the first time this weekend; it was hit and miss, sometimes suggesting what I intended to type, but other times going in a very different direction.