A Nod to Nothing: Things I Read August 2018

I better update those last two lists....I have some books and articles to enter/etc. I have been keeping up. I'm just not doing a very good updating job. And I should stuff some real posts in here somewhere....maybe about the Trylon. Eryn and I started going to the Spaghetti Western series.

(BOOK) 8/30/2018: Ring of Swords by Eleanor Arnason

I read this book originally about the time it came out. A very brave bit of scifi, at least at the time, with non-hetero relationships between the characters (alien and human) and a deep dig into the differences between the cultures. A really great book and worth a second read.

8/29/2018: Boo: A Reading List About Ghosts - Longreads

A good list.

8/28/2018: Highway Fine Dining in the Upper Midwest: A Brief History of the Minnesota Supper Club - we had the Monte Club in my hometown.
8/27/2018: Do Men Enter Bathtubs on Hands and Knees So Their Balls Hit the Water Last? - the Cut

Hilarious.

8/26/2018: Chapter from Quest
8/25/2018: Chapter from genetic
8/24/2018: The State of the Bestiary is Stable (about Magic the Gathering) - Hazlitt.com

I didn't find this a particularly illuminating article on the game. He started to dig into some of the gaming strategy and opinions of the designer, and then just moved along. Too surface and not enough depth for me.

8/23/2018: Chatper from genetic
8/22/2018: Coding for Cloud 101: A Cloud Guru (about 58 minute)

Serverless patterns were interesting: command pattern, messaging pattern, legacy api pattern, fan-out pattern, pipes and filter pattern (! Cascade !)

8/21/2018: We Can't Fix the Internet - Kotaku

I'd posit the issue isn't the internet (exactly) but that the internet feeds something inherently wrong with people.

8/20/2018:
8/19/2018
8/18/2018
8/17/2018
8/16/2018
8/15/2018:
8/14/2018
8/13/2018:
(STORY) 8/12/2018: Little Red Riding Hood from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

Does NOT end happily. Don't let your children talk to wolves or wander around in the woods alone.

8/11/2018 (video): Why 'Deaths of Despair' May Be a Warning Sign for America - Moving Upstream: Two Princeton economists share their provocative theory in this episode of Moving Upstream - Jason Bellini, WSJ

Interesting watch in conjunction with the Noah Smith commentary and the 10 Years after the collapse article on 8/6.

8/10/2018: Many Americans Still Feel the Sting of Lost Wealth: The housing crash hurt the poor and middle class more than the rich, who rode the bull stock market. - Noah Smith at Bloomberg opinion

"Wealth inequality eats at the core of a society. But as long as the wealth of the middle and lower classes is growing -- as it was up until 2006 -- the corrosive effect of inequality will be limited. For half of the country, the housing collapse destroyed a 60-year story of the American dream -- no wonder so many people are turning to populism and socialism."

8/9/2018: The problem with Twitter, as shown by the Sarah Jeong fracas: Behind our Twitter wars lies Twitter’s problems. - Ezra Klein on Vox

Twitter is not your friend.
It leaves you explaining jokes that can’t be explained to employers that don’t like jokes anyway.
context collapse

8/8/2018: The Business of Too Much TV: There are more great shows in production now than ever before — but it’s never been harder to make one. - Vulture.com. Older (2016) article referenced in the 10 years after the crash article on NYMag. I was interested in whether they talked about modern escapism (dystopia drugs and entertain style), but it was primarily about the boom in production (100 series to 450 series in a few years).
8/7/2018: The Greatest Upset in Quiz Show History: Agnes Scott vs. Princeton, GE College Bowl, 1966. - Slate.com (referred to me by Mean Mr. Mustard on twitter)
8/6/2018: Ten Years After the Crash, We Are Still Living in the World It Brutally Remade - NYMag. A seriously long compilation article. And seriously depressing.
(STORY) 8/5/2018: The Yellow Dwarf from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

A conniving desert fairy and an ugly yellow dwarf conspire to marry a prince and princess and keep them from each other. The plate with the dwarf riding a black cat is amusing.
Very Romeo and Juliet - they die in the end and a mermaid turns them into palm trees.

(STORY) 8/4/2018: East of the Sun and West of the Moon from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

A princess chases her prince with the help of the winds. She's the hero of this story.

(STORY) 8/3/2018: Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

no one ever told the prince his nose was really long, but once they did he got the girl (I think the moral is don't coddle your children or they won't realize their true potential....maybe).