Brent Simmons shared a great, and terrifying, and hopeful, email from his family living in Minnesota, about what’s happening there.
Reading
How to Take Smart Notes
Sönke Ahrens
books
Finished reading: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
Another nice cozy story. Includes a nice little riddle near the beginning that’s fun to piece together yourself.
The ending is a little too telegraphed for me, and …
Seventeen People is a perfect use of the Web.
I wish to put things like this into the world.
books
Finished reading: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz.
Cozy restaurant with robots, set in a speculative future where California has violently seceded from the US.
It’s pretty short and rapid-fire. Which makes the bingo card of San Francisco …
Year in books for 2025
Here are the books I finished reading in 2025.
Observations: I was aiming for 24 and ended up with 16, 7 of which were audiobooks, all completed during road trips. Only one “growth” book this year: Tiny Experiments.
Best book: The Book …
books
Finished reading: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
A cozy bit of magic, with raspberry jam.
Plays a little fast and loose with the timeline, and I had trouble envisioning the myriad nonhuman characters because only exceptional bits got described. …
books
Finished reading: Cursed Charm by Jali Henry
Could have been a fun fantasy read: vampires versus witches. Instead, the very special girl is saved not by relationships or character growth but by learning she’s even more special!
Also: hamfisted race …
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: all done and lovely. The interior got a wreath!
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: bag 4 gives it frosted feet. Which I assume means that, in this universe, canonically, Hoth is not an ice planet but an icing planet.
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: Bag 3 gives it some form. This guy is a lot more stable than they look in the movies…
Lego Gingerbread AT-AT: Making progress… bag 2 is also full of whimsy. Whoever designed this set loved Lego and Star Wars and Christmas. What a treat.
The Lego Gingerbread AT-AT has more Christmas, more story, and more satisfaction in Bag 1 than that entire Advent calendar did.
Posting an interior photo now because I bet this entire milieu gets covered up in the final assembly.
books
Finished reading: Captain Kidd by Samuel Marquis
An opinionated, thoroughly researched biography of history’s most notorious pirate. Turns out most of what I “know” about Kidd was British propaganda to save the king substantial embarrassment.
Even …
books
Finished reading: SPQR by Mary Beard.
A long history of Ancient Rome, ending abruptly a few centuries after Christ. I learned a lot from this book, but the author does you no favors to help keep straight dozens of similar names and timelines. (She …
books
Finished reading: Hyperion by Dan Simmons
Amazing, creative, interlocking far-future stories structured after the Canterbury Tales.
Fascinating, but reads more like an anthology of short stories rather than a novel. Definitely want to read the next …
Got home from family Christmas last night; finished Lego Star Wars Advent calendar this afternoon.
Pretty disappointing; just a bunch of mostly unrelated builds that just barely tell a story.
Oh well. On to bigger and better builds later today.
I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.
Interesting perspective.
I was taught these same things in my English classes in several east-coast US states. I don’t think my writing sounds like ChatGPT at all, but it …
versenotes
Doing some research for Advent of Carols, I came across a review of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in The Atlantic that calls it a “Hegelian dialectic.”
Seriously.
The same paragraph confuses “e.g.” with …
I love size comparisons like this. This new one has beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and some interesting inclusions.
Size of Life by neal.fun.
I often wonder how specific to be on that page. It’s country-level for now, but I might want to record for myself which cities, which ski resorts, and so on, somewhere for easy reference.
The best time to plant a tree, &c.
travel
Updated my Where Have I Been page to add 🇸🇰 Slovakia!
That makes 20 countries, a worthy milestone.
(We technically did not spend the night. But we spent most of a day exploring Bratislava and its castle and Christmas markets and breweries, so I’m …
travel
Hot Bratislava brewery take: every beer (all two) at the relatively brand-new Kláštorný Pivovar is better than every beer at the founded-1752 Bratislavsý Meštiansky Pivovar.
The casual history in Europe amazes me.
This church, St. Anne’s in Vienna, was built in 1320, consecrated 1510 by the Jesuits, and the gorgeous baroque frescoes and altarpieces are 1750s. That means that the restoration is older than my country, and …
Achievement unlocked: write and publish a newsletter on the train between Prague and Vienna.
It would be more topical if my newsletter had anything to do with travel, but at least it was Christmas-themed, sort of.
travel
Still on our plane to Paris, I just booked the Tapster Academy at Pilsner Urquell. Definitely the most fun I had last time I was in Prague! The best part is they don’t let you drink any until you pour it correctly.
Pictured: the custom bottle of beer …