Just in case you were doubting my persistence…
Still persistent
July 2026 – Greetings
I am here! I have been working too much (my life story), drinking about the right amount of coffee, and reading heavily without writing about reading. Writing about what I’ve read helps me process my thoughts and is an important step for me, whether or not I post about my writing here…
My reading (and viewing) since my last post includes:
Books
- Starter Villain by Scalzi
- Redshirts by Scalzi
- The Final Architecture: Shards of Earth, Eyes of the Void, and Lords of Uncreation by Tchaikovsky
- Hyperion by Simmons
- There is No Anti-Memetics Division by qntm
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Le Guin
- Bad Blood by Carreyrou
- The Future by Alderman
- Murderbot Diaries: Platform Decay [#8] by Wells
- Seasons of Glass and Iron by El-Mohtar
- A Psalm for the Wild Built by Chambers
- The Fox Wife by Choo (an absolute favorite)
- Drift Magazine volume 9: Bali by its editors
- Ancillary Justice by Leckie
Manga/Manhwa
- The Spark in Your Eyes
- The Summer Hikaru Died (continued)
- Purple Hyacinth
- The Heavenly Demon Wants a Quiet Life
- The Grand Duke’s Bride is a Warrior from Hell
- The Archmage Becomes the Swordmaster’s Youngest Daughter
- How About a Cosmic Horror
Graphic Novels
- She Eats the Night
- Monstress (volumes 1-3 with more coming)(my favorite current thing!)
Film / Television
- Slow Horses
- The Gorge
- Murderbot (the tv series)
- Prey
- Andor S1
- Alien Earth
- Ballerina
- Sinners
- Tron: Ares
- Bullet Train
I’m working on other projects, but plan to return here to write again. Truly. But not promptly.
Language Study: Persistent, yet also lazy
Yes, I’ve been studying for TWO THOUSAND TWENTY FIVE DAYS.
Yes, I am now doing this as lazily as possible: I’m in one of the lower-achievement leagues. And I’m comfy there.
My katakana (Japanese alphabet for foreign words) is slowly improving… But I’m studying so slowly that I’m forgetting kanji (more complex characters representing entire words) that I learned a year ago. (Ooops.)
Coffee: Mmmm.
So good. (And so dark!)
(I would ramble about which particular beans these are, but I had put them in an unlabeled jar, and no longer recall. My best guess is Ethiopian Fancy from Peet’s: the flavor profile is about right.)
Holidays, AI, and Candy Hearts
The Valentine’s Day holiday, which I do not take seriously, has often provided entertainment value. (What was that? Oh, yes, I was ‘married’ for a VERY long time. But also no: I believe in love, just not as a reason to sell pink things.)
My favorite piece of entertainment with this holiday theme is Janelle Shane’s 2018 comedic adventure in attempting to train a neural network to make candy heart statements.
Candy Heart messages written by a neural network
Around Valentine’s Day in the US and UK, these things called candy hearts (or conversation hearts or sweethearts) appear: small and sugary, bearing a simple, short Valentine’s message. There are only room for a few characters, so they read something like “LOVE YOU” or “CALL ME” or “BE MINE”.
Many of these are… remarkable, and unlikely to have a positive effect on your beloved unless they have a unique sense of humor.
I think my favorite in the harmless category is:
Dr. Shane also provides a link to the candy heart image generator (cryptogram.com/hearts), which is useful for my types of niche purposes. 🙂
Book (Manga): The Summer Hikaru Died, Chapters 32 – 33
The Summer Hikaru Died, Chapters 32 – 33
by Mokumokuren
published in English by Yen Press
2024 – 2025 (ongoing)
These volumes are building tension VERY SUCCESSFULLY.
Not only is the fabric of reality pocked with holes through which misfortunes arrive in the human world and boys’ home region, but their friend Maki is connected through family traditions to the Other Side, and is likely to be dragged over into it (which is fatal) if Yoshiki and Hikaru don’t intervene.
Hikaru’s intervention plan is… risky. And low tech! And this is all I want to say until the story reaches some safe-to-discuss milestone.
Great storytelling and creepy vibes continue – Mokumokuren is doing a superb job in pacing these episodes.
Music: Macroblank at Bandcamp
I’ve noticed that several songs on somafm’s Fluid channel/station that I especially like are by Macroblank, and that Macroblank has SIXTY releases at Bandcamp (the site that gives musicians a bigger piece of the profits than most others), so I am signed up for an account, and purchased the entire Macroblank discography.
If you want to see what I listen to and purchase in the future, you can visit my profile as lene2025 here.
Macroblank’s discography can be found here:
I’m wandering through the albums nearly at random, but have come back to the satisfying song Wrath of God on the Proxima Centauri release a few times (link below).
This is a pleasantly chill soundtrack for this rainy weekend.
Music: Vaporwave Weekend
I love electronic music, and many types of it, but fall behind in understanding the labels/names of the subgenres.
Future Soul I grasped. Liquid Trap I still suspect is a nickname to a nickname to a niche subgenre. But am I really into the microgenres Vaporwave, Mallsoft, and Barber Beats? Um… Maybe? Or is this all just invented so that other people can’t tell whether we’re cool or not?
My mood of the moment is Inner Lights from Macroblank’s collection Occult. This song sounds best with bass-heavy speakers .
Life: Returning Home to the Smell of Coffee
Gold and gray
Weblog by A. Elizabeth Graves. iPhone photography and links to science-y and foodie topics.
(Image above: Thursday evening image of the stormy sky above the bay before the arrival of current rainstorms; this image will be a future source of oil pastel color studies and related painful lessons!)
I remain amazed that my new pour-over-imitation-chemex device makes such a pleasant cup of Sulawesi-Kalosi (Peet’s). It doesn’t beat Yosemite Dos Sierras, but I enjoy it still.
It makes my house smell so nice. Especially after being out in the rain while running errands. Warmth and coffee. Ahhhh.
*
My errands included making the person at the hardware store laugh as she was ringing me up. She burst out unexpectedly while ringing me up with, “HAHAHA! You’re tall!” (I brought something to the counter that hangs from a very high hook, and she was impressed that I was able to get it on my own.) Reaching stuff FTW!
Other accomplishments today include sleeping 11 hours (I am/was a wreck), depositing a check I was sure I would never receive (a cleaning deposit from a place I lived a full year ago), cancelling a video streaming subscription, and signing up for a new audio streaming service!
My next task: writing to my European friends and explaining the current state of affairs from my point of view. What? No, I can’t just send the poop emoji, but thanks for the suggestion.
Food: Social Food (and anti-social US developments)
Even as an introvert, I love to (a) socialize with friends while (b) eating delicious foods. So this was a dining out weekend! I had a spontaneous cocktail and dinner outing with a friend Friday, and a long-planned ramen and caffeine social outing Saturday.
Friday, I took my team out for Thai food (lychee iced tea goes with everything!) and espresso drinks. In the evening, I enjoyed great conversation over a fine cocktail, za’atar fries, roasted brussel sprouts, flavorful baba ganoush. After running late Saturday afternoon, I enjoyed catching up with two long-standing friends, hearing about recent travels, AND enjoyed spicy ramen with ‘artisanal’ gluten-free noodles, a brief walk, a delicious almond milk latte, and picked up vegan nachos on the way home before the weather turned colder. At home, my meals have included vegan potato and poblano scrambles (with JustEgg and chipotle habañero salsa), pour-over dark roast coffee (Peet’s Sulawesi-Kalosi), gluten-free high protein waffles with raspberry fruit spread, yuzu and plain green teas, a homemade Thai green curry, more of those vegan nachos… and I’m not convinced that I’m done eating yet!
The only challenge: it is “cold” to us locals, and something about cold weather inspires me to want to overeat and then hibernate for at least a month.
This past week of January 2025 here in the U.S. feels like an especially good time to stress-eat and then withdraw from the world. Events in the U.S. associated with the new administration are… what was the Lemony Snicket story called, something like A Series of Unfortunate Events? That. The news is THAT. Reading about current events this past week has been painful.
My country has withdrawn from most meaningful international projects. Taxpayer funding for health and science programs has abruptly ceased. Government officials have been illegally fired; government employees with job offers in hand are receiving notice that their offers are being rescinded. Historical fascist gestures that were immediately condemned in Europe were normalized by the domestic media. (‘Shoutout to Germany for using their expertise to call it as they saw it). There is a propaganda effort to suppress information about the achievements of women and people of all ancestries other than European. The new administration has made a combination of invasion threats and trade war moves against both of our nearest neighbors, plus (somehow) Denmark, Columbia, and Panama…
The words I would choose to characterize these developments are neither fit for printing nor the public internet, though they are passionate and fair. I’m unlikely to write about world / current events here. (This blog is slow-paced and not time-sensitive. I save my tirades for people who can exchange these sentiments in person.) But know that I’m aware of them, even if I am choosing not to address those topics here.