LJ have broken cross-posting from DW
I have been automatically cross-posting my DW entries to LJ for some time now (since April 2017), and AFAICT this has mostly Just Worked.

The DW folks recently said that LJ have stopped co-operating with them about the cross-posting feature; they used to pass-list DW's IP so that even if one person put in the wrong password, most people would still be able to cross-post and now refuse to do so (or even acknowledge that they used to).

I have also been pointed at section 9.2.6 of the current LJ ToS, which prohibits "use [of] automatic scripts (bots, crawlers etc.) to [...] interact with the Service".

So it looks like it will no longer be possible to have my DW entries cross-posted to LJ (and indeed the most recent couple of entries haven't made it across); I'll copy this entry over by hand, but I don't think continuing to do so regularly is going to happen.

If that's going to be a problem for you, do comment, but do please consider joining me over at DW (or using your OpenID account to read me on DW)...

Current Mood: grumpy

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2021 Hugo Award: Best Novelette
I managed to read all of these and get my vote in just before the deadline. All six of these were good stories, and it was hard to rank them.

1. The Inaccessibility of Heaven, Aliette de Bodard; a well put together mystery tale with fallen angels
2. The Pill, Meg Elison; holds an uncomfortable mirror up to how we treat fat people and the pressures we put on them to lose weight
3. Monster, Naomi Kritzer; a well-realized if grim tale of biology, bullying, and betrayal
4. Two Truths and a Lie, Sarah Pinsker; this is a horror story about a children's TV presenter, weird and well-written
5. Helicopter Story, Isabel Fall; it was good to actually get to read this after all the kerfuffle around its publication, it's very angry and has a disappointingly binary view of gender, in my opinion
6. Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super, A.T. Greenblatt; a superhero with a not very useful power in a world where they are not valued, this is a well-constructed story, and putting it last feels a bit mean

This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/766074.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

2021 Hugo Award: Best Short Story; Best Series
The voting deadline is approaching, and I'm not going to get everything read in time. I have, however, read all the short stories, and will be voting thus:

1. "Open House on Haunted Hill", John Wiswell. A moving story, with humour, and I liked the sideways take on the haunted house trope.
2. "Metal Like Blood in the Dark", T. Kingfisher. I don't want to spoiler this, but I liked the issues raised and it's a pleasing story.
3. "Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse", Rae Carson. An affecting story, and a pleasing change from standard zombie fare.
4. "A Guide for Working Breeds", Vina Jie-Min Prasad. Fun if unsubtle parable about labour and the choices we do and don't have about our work.
5. "The Mermaid Astronaut", Yoon Ha Lee. A nicely constructed tale, takes the little mermaid in not entirely expected directions, but didn't move me.
6. "Little Free Library", Naomi Kritzer. A charming tale, but the plot felt a bit telegraphed.

I've read enough of three of the nominated series to form an opinion on them, so will be voting thus:

1. "The Murderbot Diaries", Martha Wells.
2. "October Daye", Seanan McGuire
3. "The Lady Astronaut Universe", Mary Robinette Kowal.

This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/765900.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies, the Secret Barrister
I read The Secret Barrister's eponymous first book in 2020, around the time I was in Nottingham for IVFDF. Fake Law is their second book, and is about how (and to some extent why) the law and its operation is systematically misreported (by media and politicians).

Each chapter follows a similar structure, for different areas of law: some headlines and interview / twitter snippets are outlined about a particular case or cases, and then the author goes through the facts behind the cases concerned, how the law in that area actually operations, and how the misinformation was harmful to the individuals concerned and/or wider society.

I think that is, perhaps, a key message of this book - the law is not just about the individuals concerned in a particular case; we like to think we live in a country ruled by laws, but there has been a distinct trend in recent years to undermine the rule of law - either by direct and mendacious attacks on judges from those who should know better (and/or whose job it is to uphold the independence of the judiciary), or by blocking access to the courts to all except the very rich, or by encouraging us all to think of law as merely something that happens to other people. The Secret Barrister's argument is that the rule of law is there for all of us: to ensure that the executive can be answerable to the laws made by parliament, to ensure that we are all treated fairly (for example, that my employer who acts legally is not disadvantaged by doing so), that the state cannot deprive us of property or liberty without due process, and so on. Law only works if everyone can rely on it being fairly enforced.

They are a persuasive and clear (if occasionally slightly condescending) writer. A weak point is perhaps that while the short final chapter does outline some structural improvements that might be made, I didn't come away from reading it feeling like there was much I could do (send my MP a copy??) to improve the situation... This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/764838.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

2021 Hugo Award: Best Novel
I've read them all now, so time to vote!

I struggled a bit to rank these, but this is where I ended up:

1. Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse
2. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
3. The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin
4. Network Effect, Martha Wells
5. The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal
6. Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

The voting deadline is 20 November, so I really need to get to the shorter fiction soon! This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/764566.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
This is the last of the Hugo novel shortlist.

It's a strange and beautiful book; an enigma. Try and read it without spoilers the first time! The narrator lives in the House, a vast labyrinth of halls filled with statues of things that do not otherwise exist in the House. The upper levels are cloud, and the lower levels filled with water. The only other person in the House is the Other, who calls the narrator Piranesi. The narrator is studying the house, trying to learn of its wonders.

This is a book that will reward a re-read, I think, although I don't know whether I will thereafter like it more or less. There's a lot going on here, and the ending felt like it was fair, too (which isn't universal in mystery stories!) This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/764351.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

When Sorrows Come, Seanan McGuire
This is the 15th October Daye book, and it is basically fanservice. Toby and Tybalt are getting married, at last! If you're invested in these characters and their relationships, you'll enjoy this book (if you've not read any of this series, don't start here!). It was fun to spend time with all these characters again, though the plot felt a bit light. This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/763134.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

A couple more 2021 Hugo Novels
Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse. This is the first of a series (I don't know of how many; a sequel is due out next year); it's a fantasy novel set somewhere that isn't obviously European (if you see what I mean); there is magic, a conflict between old a new gods, four POV characters, and a lot of flashback. I was a bit worried at the start that I'd not be able to keep all the various elements organised in my head, but that didn't turn out to be an issue. I liked the different voices of the POV characters, the sense of a coherent world (though there was the odd bit of "let me show you how much world-building I've done"), and that the plot had some interesting twists without feeling contrived. It builds nicely to the climactic scenes, too.

The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal. Another prequel novel to "The Lady Astronaut of Mars", this is later than the events of The Calculating Stars. I broadly liked this, and the plot had more tension than The Calculating Stars, although I felt that ( mild spoilersCollapse ) were perhaps a bit too contemporary right now!

I just have Piranesi to go from the Novel shortlist now... This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/760384.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Some 2021 Hugo Novels
Past form suggests if I wait until I've read all of them, I'll have forgotten what I thought about at least some of the first-read novels from the Hugo shortlist, so, in order of reading:

Network Effect, Martha Wells. Another Murderbot story! I really enjoy Murderbot - a page-turny adventure with a whole load of digs at capitalism and reflection on what it means to be human. There's not much new to the formula in this book ( spoilersCollapse ). If you've not read Murderbot, start with All Systems Red and read the series in order.

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir. I really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, to which this is the sequel and was really looking forward to reading it as a result. I'm afraid to say that while I found myself compelled to keep reading to find out where the book was going, I didn't really enjoy it, which is mostly because I didn't understand it, even having got to the end. ( spoilers for both this book and the previousCollapse ) But much of that is really unclear almost throughout, and I had to refer to the plot summary on WP to put some of it together afterwards. It's structurally very clever, but I'm afraid I'm too stupid to "get" it; maybe once I've read the forthcoming final part of the trilogy I will come back and go "wow, that was actually very neat", but at the moment my inclination is more to say "Read Gideon the Ninth, and leave it at that unless you are smarter than me or like being confused".

The City We Became, N. K. Jemisin. I imagine you get more out of this if you know New York well, but I still really enjoyed it. I like the ideas, the social commentary (which never quite crosses over into feeling preachy), the sense of place in the different boroughs, and the way the various characters and their abilities evolve. Another one I had difficulty putting down! I imagine people from one particular of the five boroughs may feel hard-done-by, mind you... This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/759371.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

2121 Hugo Award: Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form.
I've now watched (and reviewed!) all of these, so time to rank them:

1. The Old Guard
   
2. Palm Springs
   
3. Tenet
   
4. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
   
5. Soul
   
6. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
   

You may have seen the reviews I've written previously, but I would happily recommend the first two films if you've not seen them yet. This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/757628.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Tenet
This is the last of the films off this year's Hugo Award shortlist. There is a very complex time-travel plot here, which I think doesn't in fact stand up at all, but there are a series of delightful (and delightfully silly) action sequences (a number of which we see twice) which try and keep you from thinking too hard about the plot. It's trying very hard to do a bunch of clever stuff, but doesn't stick the landing. Also, some of the dialogue is a bit hard to make out, which is an error in a film that is already pretty confusing! ( Some spoilersCollapse ) This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/757250.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Soul
The penultimate short-listed film for the Hugo Award this year, Soul is a Pixar film about Joe Gardner, a jazz pianist and teacher; and 22, a soul who is stuck in the Great Before. It's a beautifully-animated film with a great soundtrack and some very funny moments (and far too much cringe for my liking!). But I found the plot rang hollow (and its ontology(?) was very strange), and it dragged surprisingly for a relatively-short film. ( More review, with spoilersCollapse ) This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/756410.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Freaks; The Vast of Night
We've watched a couple of films that weren't on the Hugo shortlist!

First was Freaks (the 2018 Scifi, not the 1932 horror); Chloe lives with her father, who insists on covering all the windows and never letting her leave the house. He teaches her to pretend to be normal (e.g. to have opinions on baseball, a sport she's never seen), and tells her that the bad men will try and kill her if she ever goes outside. I can't say much more about the plot without going into spoilers, but one of the things I liked about this film was that you spend quite a long time wondering what is going on - is the father paranoid, bad, or is there actually danger outside? Why all this talk of normals?

All becomes clearer as the film goes on, but the plot has plenty of twists, and the characters are all pretty believable, underpinned by some really good acting. Recommended.

The other was The Vast of Night, which is a Scifi mystery set in 1950's New Mexico. It's a curious piece - there's some distancing framing (as an episode of "Paradox Theatre Hour"), there are precious few close-ups, and the genre nods are liberally scattered (the radio station is WOTW, for example); and it's definitely a slow-burner despite only being 90 minutes long.

I rather liked it; there are some great moments (oddly, I found the hyper-efficient switchboard operator fascinating), and it's very well placed in its setting without becoming historical fiction. It's an atmosphere piece more than anything else, I think, and it builds that atmosphere very effectively. This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/755950.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Slightly more general dealing sheets; Android again
Shuffling is not the most interesting part of card games, and folk are often not that good at it; you get more interesting bridge hands if a computer shuffles, for example. Also, I've been looking at playing cards that are more suitable for outdoor use, and they tend to be less easy to shuffle. Which has got me thinking about dealing sheets again (and thus Android apps).

When playing bridge in person (such a long time ago now!) I've been dealing off a friend's handy web dealing sheets - each number tells you which pile to put the card onto, and you end up with a properly-random bridge deal.

Bridge works really well for this approach - you deal out all the cards, and their order within a hand doesn't matter. So using a dealing sheet is basically no more effort than dealing from a shuffled deck in the usual manner.

There are plenty of games where this approach doesn't work so well - games like patience or Bezique where you need to order the entire deck (I'm not sure if there's a not-totally-awful way to do that). I think there are intermediate classes of games where the deal is more hasslesome, but the wins of not having to shuffle (and always getting well-shuffled hands) might still make a dealing-sheet a viable approach...

Take cribbage - you'd still deal into four piles - two hands of six, the starter, and the rest of the deck. And most of the time you could stop part-way through the deck (I'm sure one could calculate the expected distribution of end-points...). So you could have a very similar output, and add a "stop" instruction rather than printing out the rest of the "put all these cards onto the 'rest of deck' pile".

Which brings me back round to thinking about a smartphone app - the webpage is great for bridge, and for places where you have a network connection, but I do wonder if a dealing app would be useful for offline use (and could be extended to support other deal types). Last time I collected opinions on app development there were some interesting suggestions for my stated preferences of Free, drivable from the command-line/my editor, and buildable for F-droid. I have subsequently become aware of Nativescript (for various varieties of JavaScript, none of which I speak), Kotlin (seemingly the new default Android language), and Flutter (a new language and framework entirely). I don't know if anyone's tried any of those (or other approaches)...? This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/754393.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Palm Springs
Another Hugo shortlist entry. I wasn't really expecting to enjoy this, as romcoms are very much Not My Thing, but I actually thought it was pretty good (and had plenty of laugh-out-loud moments).

The premise is a wedding day that is an infinite time-loop for a few of the characters - one of whom has been looping for ages, another of whom gets stuck in the loop at the start of the film; so we learn about what's going on as they do. Despite Groundhog Day not being explicitly mentioned ever, this is a plot device that's been used before, but I liked the fun (and near-absence of cringe comedy) and humour of this, as well as the hints of darkness (there's a nihilism under the surface that is never lingered on) that made the characters much more sympathetic.

At 90 minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome, either. This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/753881.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

The Old Guard
Third of the Hugo shortlist, and the best so far by a comfortable margin. The premise here is a small band of almost-immortal mercenaries; what they do with their time, what it's like being a new (and very old) immortal, and what happens when someone thinks they might be useful to Big Pharma...

This was more interesting and less just-endless-fight-scenes than I was expecting (though the fight scenes are very well done!), although it was still a fairly predictable plot (while Obbxre tvivat Naql na rzcgl tha was a twist we didn't spot coming, we both said "Zreevpx'f fgvyy va gur cragubhfr" when gur yvsg jnf frra tbvat qbja). Some of the character motivations around key plot points felt a bit flat, though. I'm not sure the plot as a whole entirely stands up to scrutiny, either...

I did like that all the characters are pretty competent (including the villains), and that most of them (the exception being Merrick) have complex motivations. I like that there's a central queer relationship that isn't just one aspect of the relevant characters. And the fight scenes are very well done :) This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/753449.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

2021 Hugo Award: Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
atreic and I thought it might be fun to watch the Hugh short-listed films this year. I'm beginning to think this may have been a bad idea...

We figured alphabetical order is as good as any, so started with Birds of Prey. This is a DC Comics film about Harley Quinn, and the events that spiral from her break-up with The Joker. It has a similar sassy fourth-wall breaking energy to Deadpool, but is nothing like as funny; and while I enjoyed the chaotic roller-coaster series of events, I didn't find myself caring very much about the plot. Also, I'm not sure this is really SF/Fantasy - it has the same sort of cartoon physics/violence of a James Bond movie, but beyond one appearance of Oynpx Pnanel'f pnanel pel novyvgl there is essentially no paranormal activity here. Entertaining enough, but nothing to get excited about.

Rom-coms are not really my thing, and I can't abide cringe comedy. But I do enjoy Eurovision. I absolutely hated Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, though. ( you may not want a paragraph of me ranting about how terrible this film was; probably contains spoilersCollapse ) Dreadful, dreadful film. In slightly-redeeming features, Graham Norton as himself is quite amusing (though rather phoning it in), and Husavik is not a bad Eurovision-style number.

Anyhow, so far I still think that Possessor (which, alas, didn't make it onto the ballot) is miles ahead... This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/753286.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

On init systems
Systemd is in many ways an improvement over System V init (sysvinit), but I worry about the direction it seems to be going in (and how upstream interact with folk), and I think distributions need to work a bit harder to preserve user choice in this area. ISTM there is space for a more tightly-focused new init system.( Read more...Collapse ) This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/748479.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Making Thunderbird talk to Google Calendar again
I have a google calendar associated with my work email address, and I mostly use Thunderbird as my MUA. If you have a similar set up, you've probably been using the provider for google calendar - it's the second most popular Thunderbird add-on.

That stopped working for most people late last year, or at least the ability to respond to calendar invitations did. Thunderbird are moving to a new "MailExtensions" framework for add-ons, and I think some part of the legacy framework for older add-ons (like the google calendar provider) has managed to mess up the relevant settings.

Google Calendar does, however, support CalDAV, so you can instead connect Thunderbird to your google calendar thus. The settings to do so aren't entirely obvious, though, so I thought I'd briefly outline how to get this working.

You'll need to know the email address you sign on to google with, and your calendar ID. If you're using your default calendar, that's also your email address (otherwise see [0] below). Then proceed as follows:

• File menu -> New -> Calendar
  
• select On the Network; click Next
  
• select CalDAV
  
• Username is the email address you sign in to google with
  
• Location is https://apidata.googleusercontent.com/caldav/v2/CALID/events replacing CALID with your calendar ID
  
• Click Next
  
• Put something sensible into Calendar Name
  
• De-select Show Reminders (otherwise you get reminded about all the past events when it first loads)
  
• Make sure its associated with the correct email address (this is the one you'll reply to meeting invitations with)
  
• Click Next
  
• Click Finish
  

You should be set; a window will probably pop up and ask you to sign into your google account and allow Thunderbird access to your calendar (say yes!). I found that I couldn't set "Prefer client-side email scheduling" during the creation process and had to enable it via calendar preferences once I'd set the calendar up. Set this if you want to be able to respond to calendar invitations by email.

The bit of this that took a bit of work was the Location setting, which I found in Google's CalDAV API Developer's Guide.

[0] If not, find it in google calendar thus: click the gear and then "settings". On the left-hand pane find the calendar you want under "Settings for my calendars" and click on it. In the menu that appears, click on "Integrate calendar" (or scroll the right pane until you get there). The first item under the heading is the calendar id. This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/747469.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).

Possessor
Intrigued by a pair of enthusiastic reviews in the Graun, I watched this online. It's an eerie near-future scifi horror, where the protagonist (Tasya Vos) is someone who is projected into the mind of other people to take over their bodies to perform assassinations. The work is not without its risks, though, and Vos is somewhat estranged from her family and also starting to perform erratically at her job.

So much of what is going on is either seeing Voss' estrangement from herself and her family or seeing how the people she takes over behaving just a little off-kilter because they are quite literally not themselves. And of course the consciousness of one of the targets starts fighting back...

Also of note is the firm which has staff spying on people through their laptop cameras in order to evaluate their home decor(!) and lifestyle, implicitly so they can be more effectively targeted by advertising.

This is a tense and claustrophobic film, with a not inconsiderable quantity of gory violence, and I'm not sure the plot quite stands up to scrutiny in a couple of places (jvgu fb zhpu grpu, fheryl gurl fubhyq xabj jurer Ibff'f gnetrg vf ng nyy gvzrf?), but it's a pretty effective piece of cinema; I should try and remember to nominate it for the Hugos next year... This entry was originally posted at https://emperor.dreamwidth.org/745366.html. View () comments or post a comment (you can use OpenID if you don't have a DW account).