Hornet

F

Reading's slowed to a crawl. Last year I read: - Haruki Murakami's "Underground", about the Aum Shinrikyo subway attacks in 1995. A Buddhist cult gassed the Tokyo subway using Sarin. This is a collection of interviews with victims, and uninvolved cult members. - Haruki Murakami's "Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and the End of the World" - Scifi/Fantasy novel. Don't want to say much more than that. It's a good idea to go into that one blind - Aubrey Wood's "Bang Bang Bodhisattva", A queer cyberpunk mystery. Underrated. - William Gibson's Bridge and Sprawl trilogies entire (Again). Old favourites. I love them. - Started but haven't yet finished "Noli me Tangere", the first novel by Jose Rizal, second president of the Philippines and revolutionary martyr.

- What are you reading? - How acquire? - What do you generally read? - Where you find out about books and that? Read this one called "Botchan" recently that was good, by this suave looking fucker A few of his novels are set in and around schools and universities during the Meiji period. So; people in education or teaching during a time of very dramatic social change, which is something I never even thought about before but leads to hella compelling books. "Botchan" is basically about a hard-headed, basically simple Tokyo guy, black sheep of his family, who moves to the absolute sticks after Falling into teaching as a profession, attempting to stay above the weird internal politics of the school he's been placed in. I'm now about halfway through this book about the antivax movement by a pediatrician called Paul Offit. It's called "Deadly Choices - How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens us All". Some interesting parts so far include the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund in the US giving out substantial awards for whooping cough vaccy injuries at it's onset, and all those "vaccine injuries" later proven to be due to the same genetic condition; and an expert in a vaccine injury class action being shown to not know when questioned on the study he was citing; what the age range or the gender balance of the children involved was... and then the lawyer examining him rugpulling and revealing that the study was on RATS. (Which the expert didn't know! Dude hadn't read it). It's sad and scary as fuck but shows epidemiologists and paediatricians doing what they do, which is cool. Offit also wrote the excellent "Autism's False Prophets" and I feel like keeping up on counter-antivax and autism-woo stuff is kinda work-relevant, kinda-interesting. Places I get books: Amazon (bleh), one excellent pain-in-the-ass bookshop that is just a big, old school heap of books with no decent POS machine so you gotta use cash, which is annoying, and charity shops (solike; the British version of Goodwill). I find out about books through friends, distance learning, sometimes /lit/, and sometimes lucky dip.

Dad gave us a crapload of gardening tools. I'm talking like a hoe, rake, spade, edger and fork. We got a community gardening plot so they'll see use! There was also a hamper with various cheeses and spreads and things, too many to list.

Unknown Summer by Burial

Kevin Mitnick, (hacker) died 59. Guy was a phone phreak before he even touched a computer. His autobiography, 'Ghost in the Wires' is nuts https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

Cormac McCarthy died, aged 93. (Author of The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian.) Massive loss to literature. No-one wrote like him. Once in a century talent and completely unique.

This movie blew my fucking dick clean off. Yooooooo. It's the Shit, people. It's Existentialist Monty Python's The Matrix and beautiful. Laughed, cried. Watch it!

Lol

Finished watching this today. I started the season expecting very little, having hyped myself up for the videogame and found myself v.disappointed. It's a fun 1-seasoner... very kinetic and exciting. I liked it a lot.

Based on the novel "The Peripheral" by William Gibson (2014) "Set in the future when technology has subtly altered society, a woman discovers a secret connection to an alternate reality as well as a dark future of her own." Loved the novel. High hopes for this, although I learned that GreatDismal wasn't able to be on set for a lot of filming owing to health issues. There had never been a truly good William Gibson adaptation. (I personally love Johnny Mnemonic tho.) Studios have been playing whiffleball with the Neuromancer rights since basically 1984. Here's hoping!