Month: September 2024

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Music: Theme Music of the Moment

I assigned theme music to a stranger a few months back*. This was a first for me, and I realized I should choose my own theme music before assigning songs to others.

Theme music isn’t a new idea. I worked at a company with a professional events team, and if you walked on stage, you were allowed to choose the music that would play during your walk-on. So, making this kind of choice has occurred to me before. (For people without events teams: It’s like the walk-on music for evening shows, but chosen by you rather than, say, Questlove, who has made some fantastic, context-based choices (only some of which he has regretted), making the song apply on a few levels).

I listen to a surprising amount of instrumental music. La cittá nuda by The Dining Rooms stands out for me as a gliding energetically through a lively city evening, so I’ll put it on my theme list:

*You had to be there, it was a “vibe” – the weather was fantastic, I finished work , SF bay was serene, this person was relaxing in front of me, Massive Attack was in my headphones – it was just a perfect moment.

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Reading: What I’m Reading Now

  • N.K. Jemison has a collection of short stories, and while many of them are from earlier in her career, they don’t feel like early, learning-the-craft stories – they are absolutely superb. The collection also opens with an essay about what it is like to write science fiction stories with people who are like us ethnically, and how great it feels to envision futures that include us!
  • I Tamed My Ex-Husband’s Mad Dog (graphical fiction) is in chapter 89, and either everyone is going to die, or the main characters will live happily together, or maybe they’ll be happy for a VERY BRIEF TIME before they all die? IT IS SO TENSE! I could barely make it through chapters 87-88, which involved a lot of blood – blood that had belonged to one of the main characters, so they couldn’t make the joke I like so much about it being someone else’s.
  • The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway (graphical fiction) is at chapter 82, and there is some tension building as the main characters are apart, as one of them figures out who the assassination target was during their vacation, and tries to get information on… something that they shouldn’t be able to remember.
  • Men of the Harem (graphical fiction) has resumed at full speed, and it isn’t completely clear that Empress Latil is the vampire lord that two of her most handsome fans hope she will be. It also isn’t clear why she can punch vampires and send them flying across a room. Also, magic tools allow some characters to wear the faces of other people, a complication I didn’t need!
  • The Remarried Empress (graphical fiction) has also come out of hiatus, and I’m still pleased by how much the art style tightened up over the course of its 187 chapters (so far). While the empress’ remarriage was supposed to be primarily political, her new spouse is so much more fun than her old one! And, because paternity testing science exists, there is a lot of drama in her former palace…
  • US Political and World News. There is SO MUCH OF IT right now. And it is a roller coaster.
  • Letters. Which my hands have hurt too much to respond to prettily. (I think I understand why there were so many searches combining COVID and arthritis….)
  • My Japanese lessons. Oh, the torment of half-remembering a language!

I hope your own reading provides you as much pleasure as mine gives me.

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Music: Recent Playlist for Spinning

Screenshot of recently played songs on my iPhone's Apple Music list from my library. Details in body of post
Screenshot from my Apple Music app on my iPhone.
  • Enter Formless by The Glitch Mob (for warming up)
  • Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups
  • Dropkick the Punks by The Faint
  • Line Up by Elastica
  • Hard to Explain by the Strokes
  • Arabella by Arctic Monkeys
  • The Adults Are Talking by The Strokes
  • Reptilia by The Strokes
  • INDUSTRY BABY by Lil Nas and Jack Harlow (I still giggle at “OG so proud of me that he choking up while he making toast)
  • Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand
  • RU Mine? by Arctic Monkeys (often used while speeding up)
  • Finally Moving by Pretty Lights (for cooling down)
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Reading: News Summaries about Science

I make a real effort not to write about my employment (in (a) my specialty, legal operations; now within (b) the biopharma industry, (c) primarily in oncology (cancer medicines)) here, but my work does lead to lots of interesting reading! Especially in the medical/pharmaceutical research area, where the statement ‘it’s a great time to be alive‘ is especially true: many health conditions that were previously immediately fatal can now be managed, and rather than having months left to live, one can often live to one’s nearly normal lifespan.

The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) is meeting in Barcelona this week, and so lots of new research is being presented there, and will make its way into the news.

Back when I worked at a company that had a drug for melanoma (a type of skin cancer), we all received sunscreen and a presentation on how few patients were still alive five years after their diagnosis. (WE WORE THE SUNSCREEN AFTER THAT!). The article below describes further progress with newer treatments that allow more and more people to live longer, despite this previously-quickly-fatal disease:

Half of advanced melanoma patients live for 10 years with double drug treatment
Experts hail ‘remarkable’ trial results for treatment of a form of skin cancer that once had grim prognosis

I’m not a scientist, and I’m not representing any of my current or past employers when I write about this topic: this is my genuine excitement that science is delivering solid progress for serious medical conditions.

Many people will bemoan the state of the world uniformly, and there certainly is abundant war, strife, exploitation, and [so more other negative human stuff than I have time to detail here, and which you already grasp anyway]. There are also people working hard to help people they don’t even know live long enough to see their little kids graduate from school – and they are succeeding! These improvements in survival have been developed in our lifetime, and provide wonders that our grandparents could not have imagined.

While research about possible cures that are in the earliest stages of basic research (and have not been tested in people) appear to be more thrilling, the stuff that has already been proven to work in people is much more exciting – and close to being available to people you care about.

I’m looking forward to geeking out over more high level, non-specialist summaries about great scientific progress in medicine.

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Life: Plants and Music

Flower Piano (with real flowers)
Weblog by A. Elizabeth Graves. iPhone photography and links to science-y and foodie topics.

This weekend through September 22nd, there are pianos with talented pianists playing music in the SF Botanical Garden at the Flower Piano celebration. The pianos are out in the elements, but several of them have a canopy to protect them from above this year – hopefully they’ll stay in shape!

I visited yesterday and heard everything from Beatles covers to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue from pianists of a wide range of ages.

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Life: Migraines & Friendships

Novelty pens labeled "failure is always an option" and "you can be replaced"
Novelty pens labeled “failure is always an option” and “you can be replaced” from a colleague. I laughed out loud. She noted that those of us who are more seasoned see them as funnier than young people. Note that we work in the legal profession.

I returned home from work on Wednesday, and wondered why the lights were so bright and the lines in my kitchen seemed so wavy. I was just tired enough to wonder what was wrong with the lights… but it wasn’t the lights.

This is called “aura,” and it’s like the special effects you see when you have your eyes dilated by an eye doctor. I can achieve the same effect through the magic of MIGRAINE HEADACHES.

Despite the beginning of a new migraine series (they rarely happen just one day in a row), it’s been a lovely week. It isn’t just all the people congratulating me on my promotion, though that is sweet: it’s all the people just being delightful to interact with.

It’s the scientist I bumped into after leaving a bookshop, who chatted with me on the sidewalk for perhaps 20 minutes; it’s the young person from another team who is always so optimistic; it’s the gal from another company who once had me sample farmer’s market strawberries, and who chats with with me so comfortably that it feels like we’ve always known each other; it’s the gal from a global function who bought espresso with me and was charming even at 6:45 in the morning as we made our way toward our ferry; it’s the shuttle driver I ride with 3 or so times a week, who knows I don’t ride in the evening, yet rolled down his window to try to tempt me with a shuttle ride to the train station (which made me laugh out loud – it’s a free shuttle); it’s the attorney who popped into my office with a question, and then told me she is amazed that I am so consistently PLEASANT and that listening to my voice is like walking into a spa; it’s the workers at the fancy coffee place who know my name, and I know theirs…

Perhaps it was the isolation of 2020-2021’s safety precautions still influencing me, but I appreciate people being casually enjoyable so much. I’ve enjoyed it in the past, but it feels… more special now. Having lost those opportunities for a while, I ensure that I notice and enjoy them now. I will relish them right up to the next pandemic!

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Coffee: Mmmmmmm

Collage of colorfully filtered images of a latte with a heart on the foam and black cardamom sprinkles

I’m still drinking the Black Cardamom Latte at Blue Bottle as my treat when I am running early on the way to work. it is delicious, plus two women I commute with are often there at the same time, so we can chat as we wake up. So pleasant…

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Book (Manga): The Summer Hikaru Died, Volume 4 by Mokumokuren

Paperback cover of the English version of The Summer Hikaru Died, Volume 4 by Mokumokuren

The Summer Hikaru Died, Volume 4
(Japanese title: Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu)
by Mokumokuren
published by Yen Press
2024

The story of rural schoolboy Yoshiki and the eerie, replacement version of his dear friend, Hikaru, resumes with a sink full of bloody clothes, plus a newfound determination to figure out what Hikaru is.

The boys’ research uncovers darkness. A name written by original Hiraku triggers a rant from Hikaru’s unfocused grandfather about a man asking <a being> for something inappropriate in the distant past, which created the current misfortunes… Hikaru uncovers creepy place names of surrounding towns… A local back to bury her mother shares that her sister went up the mountain and never came back…

The only positive-seeming news is that Kurebayashi-san, the ordinary-looking lady whose dead husband’s unworkable-but-wanted return informs her views with deep empathy, intervenes when the boys are in danger. She has an ability to push <things> back to where they belong, and a theory about why there are so many <things> in the village now.

Her theory involves Hikaru.

This volume ends in violent suspense at the end of chapter 21. (Chapter 29 will be released this week in digital format, so my impatience while awaiting the tankōbon to be printed is catching up with me!)

This is my first real horror manga, and it is SUPERB. I am eager for more.

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