bangersandmash

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:22:52 -0400

Finished reading: Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito 📚 This was a total lark. Feito’s prose is elaborate and ornate, basking in imagery and metaphor. The wantoness of the bloodletting really brought back memories of The Red Wedding in George R.R. Martin’s A Storm of Swords.

Sun, 24 May 2026 12:20:17 -0400

Finished reading: Velocity Weapon by Megan E. O’Keefe 📚 This was so much more than I expected it to be. So much deception and betrayal. Loved every page and can’t wait to continue the series!

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:30:08 -0400

Finished reading: Audition by Katie Kitamura 📚

This one confused me so much. It felt like there was a whole section of the book took all the built up tension and skipped forward in time to where everything was just, “cool.” Beautifully written, but I felt so lost.

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 07:20:13 -0400

Sagrada Família

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 06:20:39 -0400

Park Güell

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 22:28:49 -0400

Finished reading: Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah 📚 That was a romp. Powerful, political, visceral, yet tender in world only one or two mistakes away from the political and economic world I live in. Anti-carceral. As we all should be.

Wed, 16 Oct 2024 08:17:27 -0400

Finished reading: I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger 📚Leif Enger’s use of language — especially metaphor — is mesmerizing and humbling. I found myself jealous of his ability to describe the world in a language so rich and illustrative, yet still within the bounds of the character.

Future home of the living god

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 10:48:36 -0400

Currently reading: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich 📚

I have been on a tear of readings really, really, good books lately. After years of reading maybe a novel or two a year, I’ve fallen back in love with “the novel,” and have been reading a lot more this year. I’ve been getting very excited about so many books and using so many superlatives to describe them. I will have to work on this, I now. But I need people to understand how amazing this book is. 2024 is the perfect time to read a book about the fall of society, religious domination of the state, resisting the subjugation of women’s bodies for science and the state, Indigenous sovereignty, the meaning of family and the forms it can take, and more. There is just so much Love in this book. So much hope. I’m flying through this book at an incredible pace and am sad that the ending is coming because I just want to stay with these characters.

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 10:47:36 -0400

Currently reading: Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich 📚

Very promising start to this one. So far Erdrich is weaving a strong tale of characters which overlapping tensions and stakes. The cataclysm hinted at hasn’t fully revealed itself, but the minefield of family relations is lovingly given life with characters who all easily assert their own voice and read with an vibrancy that comes from an author spending time crafting them into distinct actors, nut just mere characters. Also. Love the hot dog scene.

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 10:13:35 -0400

Finished reading: The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn 📚

I loved the conceit of this novel. Constructing a story through fragmentary glimpses into life on an interstellar ship via snippets of info you’re to piece together form HR exit-interviews. But this was a novel of absence, for me. All anonymous. All gestures towards something and some things in which the author’s goal seems to be to leave all signifiers empty. It basked in the vagueness of gesture, of the knowledge that those in the book would understand, but aloofly leaving the reader a fistful of straws at which to grasp.

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 07:34:01 -0400

Currently reading: The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn 📚

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 11:52:48 -0400

Finished reading: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner 📚

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ this was incredible. The characters, the world building, the way that Kushner weaves the history of Neanderthals and homo sapiens into a story about inherited, adopted, and chosen personal, regional, and political identities, values, and loyalties was magnificent. And the prose… wow. Does a book about an agent provocateur have any right to be so intricately, empathetically, and beautifully written? I think this one is going to stay with me for a while.

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 16:26:22 -0400

Finished reading: On Earth as It Is on Television by Emily Jane 📚

I tore through this book. Looked forward to the end of my day when I could get back to it. It was weird, quirky, charming, openly-laughing-in-front-of-other-people-funny. Yet the ending left me wanting. It felt rushed. Still, I highly recommend you’re looking for a book that has aliens, family politics, unexplained medical conditions, and highly opinionated cats.

Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 09:03:53 -0400

Capt. Grace Hopper in 1982 noting the tendency to focus on hardware and software when we should be focusing on data quality. Highly relevant in a time of LLMs.

One of the things that bothers me is that we’ve talked about data processing for 30 years we spend all our time talking about hardware and software. We paid no attention to the data. And yet the data is our raw material. Our output is information - our product. And we should be concentrating on the data and the information. The hardware and software are, after all, only the tools which we do the processing, and should not occupy the primary position in our thinking. It’s high time that we began to turn our attention to the data and the information that we’re putting out.

Hopper, Grace. (1982, August 19). Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People (Part 1) (NSA.Hopper.TVC930A) [Video recording]. Computer and Information Sciences Institute. National Security Agency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9iqF5uTFk)

Wed, 04 Sep 2024 21:49:55 -0400

Finished reading: Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang 📚

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 09:47:58 -0400

Currently reading: Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang 📚

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 16:49:20 -0400

Currently reading: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 📚

On the recommendation of a friend. The concept of AFs is really interesting. Ishiguro is really giving some complex ethical questions a lot of room to breathe. So far, so good

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:17:09 -0400

Currently reading: The Future by Naomi Alderman 📚

Really enjoying this end-of-the-world exploration of power, privilege, and technology. My brain is having trouble accepting just home powerful some of the technology is (\verging on deus ex machina at times), but overall this has been really enjoyable so far.

Commit to telling the story in the age of streaming

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:07:19 -0400

I’ve been thinking about stories in the age of streaming and the need for the sugar-high of instant engagement. Two announcements crystallized this for me: the announcement that Ted Lasso is coming back and that The Acolyte is being cancelled.

Ted Lasso had a story to tell and it told it beautifully. It was a story in three acts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I loved those characters. But is there more to be squeezed from them? Additional seasons are just Apple trying to re-catch lightning in a bottle. There is no narrative reason for more. Apple just wants a franchise (and money).

The Acolyte had a story to tell. It also had a lot of world-building and un-building to do as it challenged viewers to unlearn the lessons of the Original Trilogy and view a universe through a new politics and morality. But it didn’t perform as hoped and the story is now lost to us (see also: racism, and sexism. So much of both).

One season isn’t enough. The teams and communities that create these shows need time to learn. Time to reflect, digest, and build upon lessons learned. The second season of Parks and Recreation. The second season of The Office. This is where these shows got good and learned to tell an engaging story on their own terms. Characters clarified. Narrative techniques were executed more confidently. What’s the point of feedback if there’s no time to learn from and incorporate the feedback. Don’t pack up your toys and go home. Get better.

I wish The Acolyte had been given more. It was a giant canvas of potential the writers had only barely began to engage with. I wish Ted Lasso could have stayed “finished” and shown that restraint can make things better and special. In the world of streaming, every show deserves to tell a complete story. Whether it’s a one-season anthology or a three season arc, or the high-concept production of a fifteen-book series. Choose a story. Commit. Struggle. Compete. Work hard. Make better stuff, not just new stuff.

Commitment and belief, attempting to fix things, learning and experimenting, and seeing things to completion is what will make these back catalogues better. Not the dead husks of abandoned shows. I have less faith in streamers as destinations for entertainment. As I realize that my family’s main engagement with Netflix, for example, is back-catalogue non-Netflix content, it becomes easier and easier to justify cancelling, for example

And don’t get me started on The Outer Range

Sun, 18 Aug 2024 18:34:16 -0400

Finished reading: The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey 📚

I enjoyed this one so much that it became a mealtime topic of conversation with my wife. Eventually, she had to tell me to shut up about it because she probably wants to read the book now. I really enjoyed the way that this one peeled back the ethical issues of cloning, and the meaning of agency. Read the book. Then read the acknowledgements. This book was written in blood and suffering.

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 18:23:01 -0400

Finished reading: Redshirts by John Scalzi 📚

This lost me in the middle, but I persevered. Last chapter went some way to making amends. Won’t re-read, but wouldn’t mind if it ended up as a mini-series somewhere.

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 13:05:35 -0400

Currently reading: Redshirts by John Scalzi 📚

Coming back to Scalzi after a bit of a break. Loved the The Interdependency series and am hoping to bask in a bit of an irreverent and sarcastic take on the tropes that make speculative fiction so wonderful to read.

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 18:38:23 -0400

Finished reading: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

This book changes shape as it goes. I thought I’d known it, seen it before as I read through the opening chapters. But, as Zoey notes somewhere along the path, a humanity I didn’t expect took over the story and left me somewhere I didn’t expect to be standing, with an appreciation for a well-woven narrative, deftly executed. Loved it.

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 15:14:35 -0400

Currently reading: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

Just started today. This is my “cottage book” for August 2024. Hoping for great things!

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 18:11:57 -0400

Currently reading: Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera 📚