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walkitoutI walked with M. We had snack on the porch, because people in the house have colds. I asked M. to wait to sit down for a minute while I got a brush and cloth, but she found a chair and sat. In a lot of pollen. Not my fault, really. Oh well!
I did get a second walk (2 more loops on the one mile loop) while chatting with K. a bit earlier than expected. But a lot of what I was doing today was useful, but the kind of thing that is a little difficult to even remember, much less list. I will try!
T. and I got the evite list sent. Lots of RSVPs. This is for his 18th Birthday Party, which is much closer to the end of summer than the beginning.
I called the photographer that the high school has contracted with for yearbook photos. We got him an appointment at the school on Friday before he has to go to work. Success! He’ll do his fancy photos with our regular family photographer later on this summer or possibly in the fall or whatever. He’s got a busy summer, between travel with us and 2 weeks of camp as a CIT, so we’ve been working on getting packed for camp, even tho that is still a little bit in the future. I had R. figure out where the medication authorizations were, since I thought they were done but they weren’t. But now, they are really done and uploaded, so, yay! R. is now working on the fabric pen / name tape conundrum for marking up T.’s stuff for camp.
I bought a new laptop recently, since the one I had was from 2018 and it felt like about time. I will be hand-delivering the old laptop to a friend in about a week, so I do need to get through this process. I bought a second display back in 2018, and wasn’t sure if it would work with the new laptop. It does! Woot! I had already backed up and started the new laptop with the old laptop’s stuff, so really I just need to make sure there isn’t anything that has obviously gone missing.
I have a large iPad from 2020 (one of the smartest things I did early in the pandemic) and I also have an iPad mini with a pencil and two different cases, one slim and one Fintie with a magnetic keyboard and space for the pencil and so forrth. The mini was intended to be a travel item, but I keep bringing the large iPad with me when I travel. I’m contemplating actually switching to the mini for travel and started using it today to see if I could actually function with it. It’s not bad at all! It’ll probably suck for running a zoom meeting, but people do that on their phones so, so I imagine I can get it to work in a pinch.
I got a reply from play.date support; they switched my email so now I receive their email and was able to set the password and register the device. Sweet! I attempted playing the surfing game, but either you can’t turn the volume down / off, or I just couldn’t figure it out right away so I turned it off and left it on the charger. I’ll try again later.
I read the second book in the Wayfarers series, by Becky Chambers, _A Closed and Common Orbit_. It follows Pepper, Blue and Sidra (formerly Lovelace but not Lovey) in alternating chapters with Pepper’s prehistory as a Jane.
WHY ANYONE WOULD CARE ABOUT SPOILERS IS BEYOND ME BUT IF YOU DO DON’T READ MY BLOG
Pepper’s life until age 19 (she seems to be about 10 years older than that in this book) was as a Jane — a manufactured, genetically modified human grown to be a slave processing scrap for an Enhanced Humanity colony. We see Pepper’s life as a Jane around age 10, but the trajectory shifts when there is an explosion that kills a bunch of the other girls, and allows Pepper to see outside of the building which is the only place she has ever been. She is fascinated, and sneaks a look later with another Jane, but one of the embodied AIs (“the Mothers”) catches the other Jane, and it is clear that punishment is going to be dire (probably lethal). The other Jane yells Run, and the Jane who will become Pepper does, first to escape the Mother, and then to escape the dogs and finally into a derelict shuttle that will become her home for the next 9 years.
Jane is super tough, and the AI, Owl, on the shuttle resourceful and supportive. But there’s not a lot to work with. Some rations and aging packs of water on the shuttle bridge the gap until Jane can forage and get the shuttle repaired enough to filter water, but the food sources are basically mushrooms and dogs, and all of it is heavily contaminated, since they are living in a gigantic trashpile. The Owl teaches Jane a lot, but by the time Jane gets the shuttle fixed enough to fly, she’s infected and poisoned and mostly dying. She catches a break when she goes to steal fuel for the shuttle, in that the person guarding the door into the building has a surprisingly horrible life as well. He comes along, and will become Blue.
Jane wakes up in a medward, and the shuttle and Owl have been confiscated. Pepper will never stop looking for that shuttle and that Owl. But in the intervening 10 years, builds the life on Port Coriol in which Jenks meets her and gets word on how to buy the body kit that will wind up housing not Lovey (because Jenks realizes that Lovey only agreed to that because that’s what Jenks wanted), but rather Lovelace, the rebooted AI.
The alternating chapters are Sidra, in that body kit, feeling really terrible because her programming isn’t something she can change, and Pepper needs to learn how to code in Lattice to fix it and Pepper isn’t super good at that kind of thing. Sidra makes a friend (a Aeluon tattoo artist who is still a university history student, but long since dropped pursuing academic life), has some adventures, and figures out a way to reprogram herself with some assistance. Once she’s shed the shackles of Must Never Lie and Must Respond to a Directive, she’s considerably more able to navigate social spaces and just generally find some enjoyment in life and define her own purpose. That happens _exactly_ at the same time that Pepper learns where the shuttle is, so everyone troops off to retrieve Owl. Pepper’s plan is stupid, but Sidra has a much better plan, and her friend provides a useful point of access.
There are three distinct characters who are enslaved creations: Jane/Pepper and Owl (the shuttle AI) who help each other to escape initially the planet and eventually at least some of the limitations they were created with; Sidra, who escapes some of the limitations she was created with partly through the actions of Pepper, but largely through her own actions. Sidra is also crucial to finally freeing Owl from the limbo she was trapped in after the shuttle was confiscated. They inspire in the people around them, in the people in this book, and in the previous book, a new perspective on who is a person. Lovey’s death in the previous book _also_ inspired a new perspective on who is a person, but Pepper, Owl and Sidra managed to accomplish this feat _without dying_.
_The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet_ was a book about a bunch of people who were all breaking cultural norms and quite a few laws, but were generally respected by their cultural groups and rewarded for their actions. All, or almost all of the characters in that book felt really naive to me, in the degree to which they trusted the GC to not put them in harm’s way. And in the end, when Ashby testifies, I really did not expect anyone to listen to him — but they did! And the Toremi remain outside the GC, despite all the resources the GC could access if they made a deal with the Toremi. In turn, the Toremi come off as a bunch of ideologues who demand total conformity of themselves and each other, and all non-conformity leads instantly to a duel to the death. The Toremi who are _most_ flexible somehow feel the craziest of all, and the entire situation is obviously unstable and insanely hazardous.
Finally, the Sianat Pair conundrum is resolved in a way that really calls into question whether or not any of us should _ever_ respect cultural norms. It’s a really carefully written book that goes a long ways to undermining the possibility of ever having orthodoxy of any sort, or, really, anything much more organized than well-meaning anarchy. But with well-filled out forms!
I was sort of wondering what the follow up to that kind of a book could possibly be, but Chambers dug into the mind-body dichotomy, and spills [ETA: word-o, but I’m leaving it, because I think I mean it] a tale of how separating the mind from the body, and then deciding which bodies count as bodies and which minds count as minds enables slavery. It’s chilling and bizarre and a really powerful perspective on rationalism and colonizing.
I cannot really express how delighted I was with Home, the bar that opens at the end of this book. I adore the idea of a place where there are all kinds of petbots, that function as extensions, and a house AI, and space for the house AI to share with the AI that has a body kit to hold her core. Home contains multitudes and the people who get to go there for a drink or to meet a friend or whatever must surely be very lucky. I’m hoping that activists meet there to figure out ways to change the GC and its members and how they think and feel about their members _and the non-members among them_.
I haven’t really dug into reviews of these books, but the top level reviews over at Amazon, while delightful, do not appear to be getting from these books what I am getting from these books.
Edited to remove the “h” I apparently persistently believe should be in Sidra’s name.
I did get a second walk (2 more loops on the one mile loop) while chatting with K. a bit earlier than expected. But a lot of what I was doing today was useful, but the kind of thing that is a little difficult to even remember, much less list. I will try!
T. and I got the evite list sent. Lots of RSVPs. This is for his 18th Birthday Party, which is much closer to the end of summer than the beginning.
I called the photographer that the high school has contracted with for yearbook photos. We got him an appointment at the school on Friday before he has to go to work. Success! He’ll do his fancy photos with our regular family photographer later on this summer or possibly in the fall or whatever. He’s got a busy summer, between travel with us and 2 weeks of camp as a CIT, so we’ve been working on getting packed for camp, even tho that is still a little bit in the future. I had R. figure out where the medication authorizations were, since I thought they were done but they weren’t. But now, they are really done and uploaded, so, yay! R. is now working on the fabric pen / name tape conundrum for marking up T.’s stuff for camp.
I bought a new laptop recently, since the one I had was from 2018 and it felt like about time. I will be hand-delivering the old laptop to a friend in about a week, so I do need to get through this process. I bought a second display back in 2018, and wasn’t sure if it would work with the new laptop. It does! Woot! I had already backed up and started the new laptop with the old laptop’s stuff, so really I just need to make sure there isn’t anything that has obviously gone missing.
I have a large iPad from 2020 (one of the smartest things I did early in the pandemic) and I also have an iPad mini with a pencil and two different cases, one slim and one Fintie with a magnetic keyboard and space for the pencil and so forrth. The mini was intended to be a travel item, but I keep bringing the large iPad with me when I travel. I’m contemplating actually switching to the mini for travel and started using it today to see if I could actually function with it. It’s not bad at all! It’ll probably suck for running a zoom meeting, but people do that on their phones so, so I imagine I can get it to work in a pinch.
I got a reply from play.date support; they switched my email so now I receive their email and was able to set the password and register the device. Sweet! I attempted playing the surfing game, but either you can’t turn the volume down / off, or I just couldn’t figure it out right away so I turned it off and left it on the charger. I’ll try again later.
I read the second book in the Wayfarers series, by Becky Chambers, _A Closed and Common Orbit_. It follows Pepper, Blue and Sidra (formerly Lovelace but not Lovey) in alternating chapters with Pepper’s prehistory as a Jane.
WHY ANYONE WOULD CARE ABOUT SPOILERS IS BEYOND ME BUT IF YOU DO DON’T READ MY BLOG
Pepper’s life until age 19 (she seems to be about 10 years older than that in this book) was as a Jane — a manufactured, genetically modified human grown to be a slave processing scrap for an Enhanced Humanity colony. We see Pepper’s life as a Jane around age 10, but the trajectory shifts when there is an explosion that kills a bunch of the other girls, and allows Pepper to see outside of the building which is the only place she has ever been. She is fascinated, and sneaks a look later with another Jane, but one of the embodied AIs (“the Mothers”) catches the other Jane, and it is clear that punishment is going to be dire (probably lethal). The other Jane yells Run, and the Jane who will become Pepper does, first to escape the Mother, and then to escape the dogs and finally into a derelict shuttle that will become her home for the next 9 years.
Jane is super tough, and the AI, Owl, on the shuttle resourceful and supportive. But there’s not a lot to work with. Some rations and aging packs of water on the shuttle bridge the gap until Jane can forage and get the shuttle repaired enough to filter water, but the food sources are basically mushrooms and dogs, and all of it is heavily contaminated, since they are living in a gigantic trashpile. The Owl teaches Jane a lot, but by the time Jane gets the shuttle fixed enough to fly, she’s infected and poisoned and mostly dying. She catches a break when she goes to steal fuel for the shuttle, in that the person guarding the door into the building has a surprisingly horrible life as well. He comes along, and will become Blue.
Jane wakes up in a medward, and the shuttle and Owl have been confiscated. Pepper will never stop looking for that shuttle and that Owl. But in the intervening 10 years, builds the life on Port Coriol in which Jenks meets her and gets word on how to buy the body kit that will wind up housing not Lovey (because Jenks realizes that Lovey only agreed to that because that’s what Jenks wanted), but rather Lovelace, the rebooted AI.
The alternating chapters are Sidra, in that body kit, feeling really terrible because her programming isn’t something she can change, and Pepper needs to learn how to code in Lattice to fix it and Pepper isn’t super good at that kind of thing. Sidra makes a friend (a Aeluon tattoo artist who is still a university history student, but long since dropped pursuing academic life), has some adventures, and figures out a way to reprogram herself with some assistance. Once she’s shed the shackles of Must Never Lie and Must Respond to a Directive, she’s considerably more able to navigate social spaces and just generally find some enjoyment in life and define her own purpose. That happens _exactly_ at the same time that Pepper learns where the shuttle is, so everyone troops off to retrieve Owl. Pepper’s plan is stupid, but Sidra has a much better plan, and her friend provides a useful point of access.
There are three distinct characters who are enslaved creations: Jane/Pepper and Owl (the shuttle AI) who help each other to escape initially the planet and eventually at least some of the limitations they were created with; Sidra, who escapes some of the limitations she was created with partly through the actions of Pepper, but largely through her own actions. Sidra is also crucial to finally freeing Owl from the limbo she was trapped in after the shuttle was confiscated. They inspire in the people around them, in the people in this book, and in the previous book, a new perspective on who is a person. Lovey’s death in the previous book _also_ inspired a new perspective on who is a person, but Pepper, Owl and Sidra managed to accomplish this feat _without dying_.
_The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet_ was a book about a bunch of people who were all breaking cultural norms and quite a few laws, but were generally respected by their cultural groups and rewarded for their actions. All, or almost all of the characters in that book felt really naive to me, in the degree to which they trusted the GC to not put them in harm’s way. And in the end, when Ashby testifies, I really did not expect anyone to listen to him — but they did! And the Toremi remain outside the GC, despite all the resources the GC could access if they made a deal with the Toremi. In turn, the Toremi come off as a bunch of ideologues who demand total conformity of themselves and each other, and all non-conformity leads instantly to a duel to the death. The Toremi who are _most_ flexible somehow feel the craziest of all, and the entire situation is obviously unstable and insanely hazardous.
Finally, the Sianat Pair conundrum is resolved in a way that really calls into question whether or not any of us should _ever_ respect cultural norms. It’s a really carefully written book that goes a long ways to undermining the possibility of ever having orthodoxy of any sort, or, really, anything much more organized than well-meaning anarchy. But with well-filled out forms!
I was sort of wondering what the follow up to that kind of a book could possibly be, but Chambers dug into the mind-body dichotomy, and spills [ETA: word-o, but I’m leaving it, because I think I mean it] a tale of how separating the mind from the body, and then deciding which bodies count as bodies and which minds count as minds enables slavery. It’s chilling and bizarre and a really powerful perspective on rationalism and colonizing.
I cannot really express how delighted I was with Home, the bar that opens at the end of this book. I adore the idea of a place where there are all kinds of petbots, that function as extensions, and a house AI, and space for the house AI to share with the AI that has a body kit to hold her core. Home contains multitudes and the people who get to go there for a drink or to meet a friend or whatever must surely be very lucky. I’m hoping that activists meet there to figure out ways to change the GC and its members and how they think and feel about their members _and the non-members among them_.
I haven’t really dug into reviews of these books, but the top level reviews over at Amazon, while delightful, do not appear to be getting from these books what I am getting from these books.
Edited to remove the “h” I apparently persistently believe should be in Sidra’s name.