First social distancing project: connected all ethernet capable devices in the TV cabinet via wire to a new Eero, thus taking five black boxes off of the WiFi network and replacing them with one white box.

Elizabeth Warren did her best to save the country, but sadly the country has decided that it does not want to be saved.

Many years ago, in a presidential primary, I actually did vote for Joe Biden.

But this year, on Super Tuesday, I get to vote for an actual First Choice, Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez 📚

This first novel is a story of far future travel, found families, love, and loss. Although set on an interstellar stage, much of the subtext is drawn from current woes: environmental disaster, corporate greed, and the tyranny of valuing central authority over individual aspirations. The main focus is on the variety and interactions of the characters who enter and exit as time passes and major events reshape the narrative, often in disastrous ways; be warned that bad things happen, both to good people and bad.

The writing is excellent and the plot intricate, jumping through time both literally (as characters incur time debt due to interstellar travel) and in shifts between narrative threads following the various characters. The central relationship is between Nia, captain of of an independant trading ship, and the boy she rescues, adopts and raises, a boy who in the end transforms both her life and the entire interstellar culture through which she moves. There are echoes of Samuel R. Delaney’s Nova in the portrayal of the ship and its crew, but the treasures they are seeking are not transuranic elements but latent human abilities which are mysterious and transcendent.

Highly recommended.

The Vanished Birds

The Last Skywalker 🎥

There has been much discussion about the merits and failings of The Rise of Skywalker, and in particular the narrative tensions between that film and its immediate predecessor in the series, The Last Jedi. The character arcs seem to bend to the point of breaking, and in particular the romantic relationships are confusing and unsatisfying to many viewers. Why does Finn go from having three potential life partners to having none? Why does Rose also end up alone, and indeed barely even present? What is the purpose of introducing Zorii as one of Poe‘s past partners? Is Jannah supposed to be anything more than a potential love interest for Finn?*

And finally, why does the film largely revolve around the most controversial of relationships, that between Rey and Kylo/Ben? There‘s no reason that the redemption of Ben Solo requires having that last kiss. Are we to believe that it is Ben‘s pure love for Rey which prompts him to make the ultimate sacrifice and save her life? Or was it the literal last appeal of this mother, prompting his own memories of his father, which causes him to turn back to the light? Might it not have been a better and more fit ending for him to make that sacrifice, and as his last act to make a sincere and heartfelt apology for all of the vile and manipulative abuse to which he had subjected Rey in all three films?

One can speculate that Ben‘s redemption was part of the story from the beginning, an obvious parallel to that of Anakin/Vader in Return of the Jedi. In that case it was not romantic love but family bonds which broke the ties to the dark side; it would have been much better to make that explicit in the finale, with Leia serving as the family connection who opens Ben‘s eyes to the horrors he has committed and giving him a path to redemption. This is but one of the many sad consequences of Carrie Fisher‘s untimely death, that Leia was not really present to save Ben, and perhaps the last Skywalker film as well.

—

* She‘d better not be his sister. She certainly should not be a potential love interest for Lando. I mean, he’s old enough to be her father…

I have too many passwords for too many accounts. Even with a password manager I’m not keeping track of them all.

Last day in California before returning to New England. No swimming again because they are rebalancing the pH in the pool, which seems to take a couple of weeks.

So after many months of not dealing with WordPress I have finally given up and decided to let Micro.blog handle it for me. WordPress offered me so many options and tweaks that I was unable to find my way; while Micro.blog offers so few that I was able to get up and running within hours.