Aron 2 Blue

 "The Fault In Our Stars" by John Green. This is the book that launched John Green. And I get it - it is hard and touching and romantic and realistic and optimistic and depressing. Hazel Grace and Augustus both have cancer, are snarky teenagers, and they fall in love. "I don't want to be a grenade" hit me really hard.  And then Hank Green got cancer! Thankfully, his treatment was successful and he's back to normal health, because I like all-the-things that Hank and John have done, and I hope they keep doing for a long while.

Space empire, anyone? Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy, by Anne Leckie. Imperial Radch series . I picked the first one up for a book club I couldn't attend, and highly recommend it. It explores a number of deep themes, and I can see why it won all three major sci-fi awards. *** Spoilers *** Multiple minds, multiple viewpoints, single consciousness. The main character is a ship and most of it's crew, made up of "ancillaries". These humans are integrated into the ship's consciousness as additional brains/bodies. The author noted the difficulty of portraying a being with many viewpoints available to it, but I think they did an admirable job. Surveillance - what is a relationship like when the ship can sense everything about her crew except their thoughts? Gender - the main language does not have gendered pronouns, so all characters use she/her until specifically proven otherwise, and often the main character forgets. Imperialism - beings are not c...

I'm never sure how these things make it into production - did someone test it? They must have relied solely on automated tests, I guess. I had a FedEx delivery coming, and I wanted to add delivery instructions. There's a link as part of the tracking page, but it makes me set up an account. If I have to, sigh. The delivery instructions page is dead simple - a drop-down for preferred location to leave a package, and a text entry for notes.  However, the "submit" button at the bottom of the page is not enabled, and won't become enabled no matter what I type in the text field. I had to find the "try our new design" checkbox at the top of the page and flip to the new design for it to work. Strike 1: didn't test the old form, which is the default. I tried to type in a front door code for my building, but when I typed #, I got an error "No special characters permitted". Somehow all punctuation is disallowed, including comma, period and apostrophe....

Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher Make a dog of bones for your companion. The dust-wife has power, but Marra is never quite sure how much her folk-magic can do. Marra pursues a plot to get revenge and protect her sister, but what happens if it actually works out? Fun in that creepy way. Recommended.

Babel, An Arcane History, by R. F. Kuang Alternate history Oxford, England, 1830s, where the mismatches in translation between languages powers magic. The total obsession with language is a central theme.  It was a hard book to read. The very likable main characters always seemed on the brink of a happy resolution, until crushing twists and turns dragged them to a darker place. It can be taken as a parable on the modern techno-state, and the absolute reliance we have on all forms of technology. What happens when the modern support structure breaks down? Well, New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, for example. The people at the top of the pyramid only care about ordinary people as pawns, laborers, inputs to the system, to be exploited. I was shocked at how easy it was for the British noble class to dismiss and minimize the value of all other people and cultures. I was wishing for some happier resolution for Robin and his best friend Ramy, but I think that I knew it would not have bee...

The town Chapel Hill now uses three separate charging station types at town facilities, which means three separate apps. A user thinks: how annoying. A UX designer thinks: opportunity! The ChargeUp app had me swearing at it this morning. I had used it once before, and remembered scanning a QR code on the station to get started. I open the app and click the big "Charge" button at the top right: This dumps me to a screen "We notice you haven't added a vehicle yet" - what? I didn't have to last time? The add vehicle screen has a list of every car company that has made a chargeable vehicle. Why can't I type so I don't have to scroll to "T"? OK, now I have a vehicle, can I charge? I can't click the vehicle to charge. If I hit the back arrow, I'm adding a vehicle again. I click "add" and now I have a second vehicle? What? **swearing commences** Are there other buttons I can click? Oh, there's navigation at the bottom of the...