Signal Wave

rf-signal-wave-hi.png

Good morning!

And major thanks to zoebear for handling the OT two weeks ago. I was on the road due to the unexpected death of my partner's sister, and it was a road trip like no other: we basically followed a cell of tornadoes up the east coast in bumper-to-bumper traffic. We kept getting messages on our phones that there was a "severe threat" and we should take cover; I looked around me, saw that we were in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate and filed the warning in the same place I put "Falling Rocks" signs. Luckily, we never encountered the storms personally, though we kept showing up to sites with twisted guard rails and bits of trees flung about. In Virginia, we thought we'd escaped the traffic, only to encounter its brother in D.C.: in the middle of the night it took us two hours to go four miles.

Then one day in Massachusetts I was straightening my car out in a parking space. I put it into R and instead it went enthusiastically D. It leapt forward into a steel pole, which was a rather shocking experience, and totalled the car. Apparently this is something that happens occasionally to Toyota hybrids. Let's just say I'm really grateful that that particular mechanical failure happened while I was parking.

At that point I realized I wasn't going to be writing my OT that week. I called zoebear, and mondo thanks to her for bailing me out.

Also, I should apologize for the lack of OT last week. Upon getting home from Massachusetts, I had a day before I had to leave again to go on a trip with my mom. She's going through hell because her husband of many years has Alzheimer's and she really needed the trip. We were supposed to be staying in a condo, and I was dumb enough to think the condo would have access to working WiFi. Turned out the condo was one room in an old motel from the fifties or sixties. There was wifi, but for some reason connecting to it didn't enable me to connect to any websites. So I was stuck. I do apologize for having no OT last week.

So on to this week's OT!

What I'm watching:

Lucifer-Season-4-Netflix.jpg

I've been binge-watching the first three seasons of Lucifer to get ready for the new season which launched a few days ago. I'll let you all know what I think of the new season when my partner is ready to watch it with me (I hope not long from now!) If any of y'all are also fans of the show, please, no spoilers in the comments; I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Well, it felt long. Smile

I'm also watching the following Danish movie, in chunks (do you think that violates the art work? Obviously, it's meant to be watched in one sitting).

lykke.jpg

Bille August is a world-renowned Danish filmmaker. His work includes a film version of Isabel Allende's novel House of the Spirits and the movie Pelle the Conqueror; I've seen them both but had forgotten the director's name Fool Fool Fool Fool Fool
His latest work, from last year, is a cinematic version of an eight-volume novel by Nobel-prize-winning Danish author Henrik Pontoppidan, Lykke Per or "Lucky Per." It's being translated "fortunate" in the film because (I think) the word "lykke" means both lucky and happy.

The main character has the idea for connecting all the regions of Denmark together via a system of canals powered by wind turbines and tidal power. Following this ambition leads to a nasty rift with his puritanical family; he emerges from what I would call an abusive background with a lot of pride and a touchy temper, which gets him into trouble with government bureaucrats who have the power to give the yes or no to his project.

However, he gets a lot of financiers and entrepreneurs on his side, partly through marrying the highly intellectual daughter of a rich Jewish philanthropic family. (It's funny to think of a world where businessmen and bankers would be interested in funding a project that contributed to the common good, even if they were doing it primarily for their own profit. I guess what's really funny is thinking of a world where businessmen and bankers would think their profit could be connected to the common good).

I hope it doesn't end with a vindication of his puritanical bastard of a father, but I suspect it does.

What I'm reading:

powdermage1.jpg

In Connecticut, my friend Dave lent me the Powder Mage trilogy. It explores a theme I've been interested in for a while: what happens when you mix magic and industrialization? In this book, you've basically got weapons at the level of muskets and bayonets, so I'm placing it somewhere in the late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century level of real world tech. What makes this version of the story intriguing is that magic and technology don't just exist side-by-side, but have actually combined to create a hybrid: the "powder mage" who can light gunpowder at a distance, use gunpowder like a drug to heighten his physical strength and senses, and alter the course of bullets. This type of mage exists in conflict (mostly) with the traditional kind of mage, who wields the elements. The result is a lot of very interesting fights, and an intriguing thought experiment: how will this conflict or combination of powers affect society?

There's another reason to place it in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century; the story begins with the attempt to overthrow a monarchy and replace it with a republic. Overlaid on all of this is the fact that an actual god, or at least a super-powerful being worshipped as a god, Kresimir, founded the nine nation-states and their monarchies, so there is a struggle of sorts happening between deities as well.

This is a little bit more of a boy's book than I usually read. Such a statement is odd coming from me, so let me clarify: while I like war stories in fantasy and science fiction (after all, The Lord of the Rings itself is a war story, as is Babylon 5), I generally don't go for stories that focus intensively on the details of war. It's the same reason I tend not to read "hard" science fiction (beyond people like Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke); after "hard" science fiction has done its first, second, and third goes at things like robotics and space travel, it has a tendency to talk to me a whole lot about weapons and tactics and battles and more weapons and tactics and battles and yet more weapons and tactics and battles. I've got nothing against weapons and tactics and battles in gaming, but when I'm reading a story I like some discussion of weapons, tactics and battles mixed with a lot more social stuff, both on a macro level (what is happening politically and culturally?) and a micro level (what is happening between people and inside their heads?) So far, Brian McClellan has managed to include just enough social and relationship material to keep me going, as well as inserting one or two mysteries that I haven't figured out (always a good way to get me on the author's side). I'm halfway through the second book, so we'll see how it goes! He's got enough writing chops that he can keep my attention even in a lot of the nitty-gritty scenes, which obviously helps.

All the way up and down the coast I was listening either to my partner's Itunes or her daughter's; here's a couple of the tunes I heard a lot. Dave Matthews' "Ants Marching" came on every time we cranked up my partner's Itunes, which led to the trip being dubbed the "Shut Up Dave" tour. It's a good thing I like this song!

Heard this one a lot too. It's neat to see a gal from Boston fall in love with Cajun music.

"Allentown" came on just as we were passing Allentown on the way back. I love it when shit like that happens.

How are you all today?

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

janis b's picture

I’m glad you made it safely through all the obstacles, and I’m very sorry for your losses.

If I don’t respond again it’s because the power is out. It’s blowing like crazy outside.

I love Lucifer! Now that I’ve seen all the seasons, including the most recent, I may have to start over again.

I’m reading Heavy, by Kiese Laymon. You don’t want to read it in bed before sleeping, but it is very eloquent and impressive.

up
0 users have voted.

Sounds like the journey from hell. Glad you made it back alive!

Was going to link DMB Everyday, but youtube is flukey today.

up
0 users have voted.
detroitmechworks's picture

Badly, I might add. The problem I find with most magic/technology blends is that they tend to ignore the most basic principles of the incompatibility. If magic was proven and repeatable, scientists would claim it was science. If they can't get consistent results, they claim it's false and anybody who has other results that they can't prove in a lab is a liar.

Hence, any story about magic and technology interaction is really a religious story masquerading as a war story. (Games in particular have started using magic as an allegory for religion BIG time. I personally think Tolkien was playing with that a little, especially in his portrayal of Saruman.)

Course, IMHO, the big problem with many of our cults these days is they refuse to call themselves religions. Any time a group starts dictating actions based of their beliefs, and is willing to kill others because of it, they're a religion, no matter what they call themselves. Personally, I think the Cult of the Free Market and the Sacred Democracy is a little loopy.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8G-LwWNn0]

up
0 users have voted.

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks @detroitmechworks
of magic and religion. Magic in Middle-earth is inseparable from the mythology that underpins that universe. Among other things, the elves' capacity to imbue objects with extraordinary properties was due to their existing in a kind of state of grace -- they were intended to be sort of like humanity Before the Fall. Their "magic" -- a human concept they didn't really understand -- was largely just an extension of will and intent: The unusual features of Sam's elven rope, for example, would have been the result of nothing but the deliberate, difficult and diligent intent of its makers.

That said, I'm afraid I side with the scientists. If you claim you can effect some kind of change on the physical universe using mumbo jumbo, you're welcome to prove that you can. If you can't, that doesn't necessarily make you a liar -- perhaps you truly believe you can do that which you cannot do -- but it makes your claim irrelevant to me; exactly as irrelevant as someone showing off their perpetual motion machine or their cold fusion reactor. If it makes you happy to believe you can talk to the dead, or to demons, or to angels, then be happy. I mean, you're wrong -- the dead no longer exist, and the demons and angels never did -- but we're all wrong about lots of things, lots of the time.

Ultimately, it's a false conundrum. Scientists attempt to observe, model, and explain reality. If "magic" happens -- if it is part of reality -- it happens somehow, and that somehow is subject to observation, modeling and explanation. "Modern" homeopathy, for example, is definitively "magic": There is no observation, no model, and no explanation that fits any part of the "dilute and dilute and dilute and then it will become potent enough to affect your biology through some kind of memory imprint that's been left behind in the water" framework of homeopathy. (Which is a preposterous and groundless framework that was just some oddball idea that popped into the head of one guy for no good reason, and he babbled it out into the world, and somewhat astonishingly people bought it. Who knows whether he himself believed it.) If anyone were ever to show in a double-blind experiment that even one such remedy had a statistically measurable effect, scientists would suddenly get very, very interested indeed, because it would represent a shocking weakness in our models of reality. But nobody ever will, because it's just silly nonsense.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I gotta run--taking my mom out for Mother's Day. See you this afternoon!

up
0 users have voted.

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Anja Geitz's picture

If I didn't know in advance what had happened to you, I would've mistaken the details of your trip for what you're reading/watching. Sounds like the both of you could've really used a martini, or a butter cream chocolate cake, or both after that trip. Yikes!

I like the idea of magical stories but I prefer to keep my magic on a much smaller scale. Like a family secret. Maybe discovering after a trip to an exotic nursery, the small tree I planted turns into a fully grown one over night bearing these unusual looking nuts. I imagine myself lying in bed blissfully unaware of this only to be awakened by the sound of the nuts dropping from the tree, one by one, onto the ground. I gather these unusual nuts in a basket and take them inside the house. After a close examination, what do I find? Inside each of them is perfectly rolled up $100 bill. What this would mean to the world at large interests me less than how I explain to my Sister that I have a money tree in my back yard, and trying to figure out a way to keep the squirrels away. Smile

Have a great Mother's Day and don't skimp on the mimosas. You deserve the indulgence!

up
0 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

behind Lucifer is none other than Jeff Lieber, who used to write some hilarious stuff over at dPOS? He also wrote about his tribulations trying to get a "Created by" credit for Lost.

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

TheOtherMaven's picture

(by Randall Garrett).

The basic thesis is that the laws of magic were discovered, formalized and organized before science had a chance to get off the ground, and the result is a weird Steampunk world where magic works reliably and predictably and is well understood, while science is at best hit-or-miss (steam trains but no horseless carriages of any type, long-distance communication ("teleson") that nobody knows how it works, a primitive flashlight is a major and Top Secret breakthrough, etc. etc. etc.).

Geopolitically it's a radically different world too, stemming from the circumstance that Richard I survived the arrow wound and resultant infection at Chaluz (1199), but it shook him up and made him settle down to do a proper job of ruling. (Not sure anything would have done that, but a writer gets to make his own rules, so what the hey.) He lasted another twenty years and was succeeded by his Breton nephew Arthur, not his feckless brother John, and the "Anglo-French Empire" covers half of Europe (minus outliers like Andalusian Spain) and has expanded into the Americas. The east end of Europe is controlled by the (EEEvil!) Polish Empire, with a gaggle of loosely united German buffer states in between and the disunited Russian principalities holding their own east of Poland. Off to the southeast there's a rump version of the Byzantine Empire, called "Roumeleia", which appears to include (parts of?) Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and enough of western Turkey to control the waterways into the Black Sea.

The stories are loaded with Shout-Outs, Tuckerizations, and a boatload of puns - and half the fun is figuring out just who is supposed to be whom and what did the author mean by *that*.

There are a couple of continuations by Garrett's good friend and writing buddy Michael Kurland, but they don't reach the same level of High Weirdness.

up
0 users have voted.

There is no justice. There can be no peace.

The Aspie Corner's picture

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X02gJQZoeFg]

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: The Democratic Party is exactly where the Republicans were a decade ago.

On an unrelated note, good to see you again, ma'am. Hope you're well.

up
0 users have voted.

Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.