Ran > Recent Status Updates

Give women power - not a hearth to keep or an office to run, but real power, power that she didn’t have to constantly guard or justify - and she would gain all power’s evils with it.

If Aurdwynn’s first habit is rebellion, then Falcrest’s first love is revolution. Falcrest, oh Falcrest, she will lobotomize her rulers and rise up crying out from the Suettaring hilltops: We demand a better form of tyranny!

Who just has $1 million to dump into a start-up? Better yet, who has family friends who will do that?

... I think mysteries just aren’t to my taste. Will I have to be reminded every March?

Still waiting for the “hopeful” part of this story ...

What is this?

Just got to the part about one of the characters knowing Rabe during Nanking, ... I don’t know why the rest of the “time-traveled-to” wars were acceptable, but this one felt like a bridge too far.

Took me an entire meal to explain this plot to my family.

Akala explains the layers of race and class issues in modern Britain in layman's terms, fantastically well, and as lived experience. His book is better than getting a PhD in history, politics, and socioeconomics with regards to class and race. And I'm annoyed that I can't find a copy in a library on this side of the Atlantic.

RA discussion: “There’s a librarian in it, main character.”
“Do they get the librarian right?”
“Well, it’s high-fantasy set in a sort of medieval world with small elements of steampunk.”
“So, ... no?”
“He lives in books? Idk, I think it’s not really applicable since he leaves the library quite promptly for an adventure.”

RA discussion: “There’s a librarian in it, main character.”
“Do they get the librarian right?”
“Well, it’s high-fantasy set in a sort of medieval world with small elements of steampunk.”
“So, ... no?”
“He lives in books? Idk, I think it’s not really application since he leaves the library quite promptly for an adventure.”

This author has a thing with the seraphim. So my mind just keeps going, “six-winged, many-eyes, soaring aloft, born on their wings,” over and over.

Thank you, Jessica Wei, for including public transit data.

Oh, within three pages, I got the start to the Apple maps vs. Google maps question. Good!

Wait a minute, iPhone launched with Google Maps on it? What the hell happened in 2012 when Apple launched its own Maps? Why?

Ugh, Snow Crash Reference.

Bill asks, “Do you remember the last time you were truly and totally lost?” He was lost in Boston/Brookline in the early 2000s, writing, “The city was merciless to a transplanted Texan: It was like a foreign language. The locals seemed to take pride in the missing signage, serpentine streets, and the roundabouts.” Yes, we did. Still do. No gridlife here. And then he mentioned the Big Dig. Hah!

[On eating 30€ oysters that were perfection] I suppose you could say, What price love? Or, as Eleanor Clark put it: ‘Obviously, if you don’t love life, you can’t enjoy an oyster.’

And if you happen to be a woman dining alone, you also happen to be exercising a hard-won right, one that still doesn’t exist everywhere.

The object of [Tokaido, a French board game about taking the Tokaido road from Tokyo to Kyoto in the Edo period], unlike most, is not to get to the end of the road first or amass the most money. It’s to have the richest experience possible.”

Ugh, vignettes on an interstellar inter-generation clone campaign. >_>

It was nice when you could look up to your parent, even as an adult, and think, This is who I fucking want to be when I grow up.

Your people skills are admirable.

‘I’m a fucking financial genius!’ (Kiva kills me with laughter.)

The airline pilots sketch, in which 'two airline pilots ... become so bored on a long-haul flight that they decide to amuse themselves by making ambiguous announcements to frighten their passengers' cracked me up. Best sketch in this book!

Graham and I adored this man's cast of mind: it reminded us of Lloyd George's observation of the Irish Republican Eamon de Valera that arguing with him was "like trying to pick up mercury with a fork."