Young woman at the supermarket checkout a packet of flowers, a bottle of wine, and nothing else. Seems like there was a story there. None of my business so I didn’t say anything.
Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death
— Nelson Mandela
My review of “Black Ice,” a Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly
I finished reading “Black Ice,” the second Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly. Good at the beginning and end, drags a bit in the middle. I did not find the action set-piece at the climax compelling, though the attack on the helicopter was cool. The characters and dialogue are well done, as are the LA locations.
I would have liked the book more if I’d cared about the murder victims. But I didn’t, and neither did any of the characters. I find that essential in a crime story—do I actually care whether the murderer is caught? Are there any emotional stakes?
In the first Bosch novel, Connelly seems to be finding the character, but now Harry Bosch is fully formed, and very much like the character in the tv show, which we love.
Read another? Sure, why not? Connelly has written 37 crime novels, all in the same universe, so that will keep me busy a little while.
We only have 37 more episodes of Yellowstone to watch, plus eight episodes of 1923, plus ten episodes of 1883.
I’m not seeing much interest in my linkposts here, so I’m just going to post them on Tumblr (atomicrobot.live), Mastodon (@mitchw@mastodon.social) and the Atomic Robot Live group on Facebook).
How platforms—like Amazon, Google, Twitter, Facebook, and now Tiktok—turn to shit. By Cory Doctorow:
“ … first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
Will the sun ever set on the British empire?.
This article by Randall Munro, author of the xkcd comic, just keeps getting better and better.
The exact day when the sun stopped setting on the [British] empire was probably sometime in the late 1700s or early 1800s, when the first Australian territories were added….
Every night, around midnight GMT, the sun sets on the Cayman Islands, and doesn’t rise over the British Indian Ocean territory until after 1am. For that hour, the little Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific are the only British territory in the sun.
The Pitcairn Islands have a population of a few dozen people, the descendants of the mutineers from the HMS Bounty.
Amid Rising Homelessness, City Council Declares Housing a ‘Fundamental Human Right’ [Times of San Diego] This is performative bulllshit. The homeless don’t need declarations. They need housing.
Google’s most serious antitrust challenge to date [Casey Newton]
Laid Off in Your Living Room: The Chaos of Remote Job Cuts. (NYTimes/Emma Goldberg).
First time getting laid off is lonely and scary.
A Happy Memory Can Help You Fall Asleep, if You Know How to Use It. “Lying in bed each night, Andy Buelow often finds himself thinking one thought over and over: How awesome it was to ride the ferry across Lake Michigan as a kid.”
James D. Walsh, Intelligencer staff writer:
“They’re professional and self-employed,” said David Rey, who, after years overseeing security teams in New York department stores, published Larceny on 34th Street: An In-Depth Look at Professional Shoplifting in One of the World’s Largest Stores. “Just like what we do for a living — going to work — they pay their bills and rent and raise their children off the proceeds that they get from shoplifting.”
None of the boosters interviewed for this story could name someone who shoplifted for any other reason than to support a drug habit.
Seth Godin nerds out about typography for a bit. “Typography is a signal, not just a way to put letters on a page.… They say you can tell a lot about someone from their handwriting. For my professional life, my handwriting has always involved a keyboard.”