First Lines of Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary"

 "'What's two plus two?'

Something about the question irritates me. I'm tired. I drift back to sleep.

A few minutes pass, then I hear it again.

"What's two plus two?"

The soft, feminine voice lacks emotion and the pronunciation is identical to the previous time she said it. It's a computer. A computer is harassing me. I'm even more irritated now."

- Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary.

Another entertaining book from the author of The Martian. I don't want to give anything away about this book as there's a steady stream of revelations, but similar to his successful first novel the book is propulsive, humorous, and doesn't shy away from using science to make sense of the world. While I found some of the scenes, explanations, and achievements to be a bit too pat, Weir's engaging every-geek protagonist helps you suspend disbelief and go along for the ride. Fun vision, well executed, great read.

Summerlicious Tab Dump

 Some interesting things I've read:

• A persuasive case that, despite its very real cultural value, no successful business makes money supporting the Long Tail
  
• So You've Decided to Bungle your Company's Flexible Work Plan. It's funny because it's true. 
• A few reads about current musical trends:
• Why Music has Lost it's Charms. Risk-adverse labels yes, but also this: "[Labels realized that] they were being paid exactly the same amount per song whether the song was brand new or 50 years old. They quickly concluded that if their customers (stations and streamers) were indifferent to the age of the content and the end users were actually looking for the older music, there was little or no reason to rock the boat and push for new material. Investing in new talent turned out to be an incremental cost which they chose to avoid." 
• The above quote is most likely at the core of why The New Numbers on Music Consumption are Very Ugly
• Umair Haque makes the case that while the above is true, technology and algorithms are a technical reason why music doesn't sound like music anymore, another factor contributing to the problem
• In The Lost Art of Looking at Nature, Rachel Reiderer astutely observes that in our current environment of terrible climate change and ecodoom stories, she appreciates the genius of David Attenborough: "The bulk of the screen time is spent shoring up this anodyne, if novel, notion: plants are sensory marvels. The beauty and strangeness acts as a spoonful of sugar, so diverting that you hardly notice the fleeting discussions of the ecological importance of plants and how they are endangered by monocultures and climate change. These less frequent passages are the series’ medicine. Attenborough’s films often end with a call to action. But it is savvy of him, both as an artist and as an activist, to make plenty of room for pleasure. ... To pause for a moment, guided by an old naturalist’s eye for curiosity and beauty, is restorative. It gives a viewer the energy to face the hard truths of the rolling crisis and serves as a reminder of the wonders outside the human world that are also at stake."
• A visual guide to the Aztec Pantheon
  
• Six Zen Buddhist livelihood guidelines
  

Related:

• Tab Dump 2021: Music
  
• Time for another Tab Dump
• Bride of Tab Dump

First Lines of Bae Myung-Hoon's "Tower"

"Some liquors serve as currency. In life, there are times when one must give something to someone with no guarantee of getting anything in return."

-  Bae Myung-Hoon, Tower

An collection of interconnected short stories I picked up on the recommendation of Lawyers, Guns and Money, Myung-Hoon's book revolves around a massive tower that houses over 500,000 people. The stories stand alone but also flesh out how such a complicated enterprise operates.

I liked the stories but found that none of the protagonists, with the exception of the sad-sack security guard overseeing the elephant in “The Buddha of the Square”, were particularly interesting as people. Which is always a risk in satires as ideas usually supersede the characters. And here we have governmental functionaries, or normal people trapped in an immense system, so there’s a lot of “after all, what can one do?” passivity that I find it hard to identify with. Of course, this lack of agency could be the point; after all, these people live their whole lives in a building (kinda like a spaceship!) and Myung-Hoon does show dehumanizing accommodations in their lives. For example, the characters are always needing to navigate various elevators, or deal with the social strata of where they are working or living in the tower (a great metaphor for social status). On the other hand, “Taklamakan Misdelivery” shows the power of a people coming together to accomplish a large task, so I could just be missing the point. Regardless, I found this book more interesting than moving; it didn't touch me emotionally like my favorite books do.

Mother and child

I've always liked this picture I drew of Kelly and Hunter, way back when the H-man was a toddler. I was happy with how the background came out - always a struggle for me. I also find drawing kids hard, and feel that I was able to capture the essence of little Hunter's innocent surprise even if I'm not satisfied technically.

First Lines of Anthony Doerr's "Cloud Cuckoo Land"

 "A fourteen-year-old girl sits cross-legged on the floor of a circular vault. A mass of curls haloes her head; her socks are full of holes. This is Konstance.

Behind her, inside a translucent cylinder that rises sixteen feet from floor to ceiling, hangs a machine composed of trillions of golden threads, none thicker than a human hair. Each filament twines around thousands of others in entanglements of astonishing intricacy. Occasionally a bundle somewhere along the surface of the machine pulses with light: now here, now there. This is Sybil."

- Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr

I was worried that Doerr's latest novel wouldn't live up to the brilliance of his Pulitzer Prize winning All the Light We Cannot See. I needed have, for Cloud Cuckoo Land is everything I want out of a novel: it's entertaining, meaningful, beautiful, moving, and inspirational. A wide range of characters dispersed across time and location all struggle against the conditions of their lives, finding inspiration in a story about the mythical Cloud Cuckoo Land. So not only is it a moving book about life, but about finding life in a book that inspires people to keep going, sometimes in dire situations. I don't want to say more and spoil anything. Go out and read it today: highly recommended.

First Lines of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Friday Black"

 "Fela, the headless girl, walked towards Emmanuel. Her neck jagged with red savagery. She was silent, but he could feel her waiting for him to do something, anything." 

- Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black, the story "The Finkelstein 5"

A powerful collection of near-future stories that feel like they honestly extrapolate current trends to their logical conclusions. My favorites so far are "The Finkelstein 5" which shows one possible outlet for minority anger after years and years of blatant injustice; "Friday Black" a picture of a consumerist dystopia from the point of view of a sales clerk, and "Zimmer Land" with powerful questions of the implications of virtual outlets for immoral urges. Most of these go over the top - in a good way.