Off for the Canada Day Weekend

Tomorrow is Canada Day up here in the Great White North. I'll be spending my time watching fireworks and barbecuing steaks. Nobody will be paying any attention to the internet over the weekend, given that Monday is also the July 4th holiday in the US.

So blogging will resume on Tuesday.

In the meantime, here are some flowers for you to admire.

 

We're Toast 25

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. It is part of an ongoing series of posts.

• Planet Hunger: Inside the Global Food Crisis. "Putin — and greedy CEOs — are already putting 20 million people on the brink of starvation. If we don’t make big changes now, we will face mass food shortages."
• Greedflation: Why Your Grocery Bills Are Soaring. "Our food comes from a handful of giant corporations that see any crisis as a chance to boost profits."
• ‘The Fuse Has Been Blown,’ and the Doomsday Glacier Is Coming for Us All. 'New data suggests a massive collapse of the ice shelf in as little as five years. "We are dealing with an event that no human has ever witnessed,” says one scientist. “We have no analog for this”'
• With the end of Roe, the US edges closer and closer to civil war. "The question is no longer whether there will be a civil conflict in America. The question is how the sides will divide, and who will prevail."

Featured Links - June 28, 2022

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• Astronomers Radically Reimagine the Making of the Planets. "Observations of faraway worlds have forced a near-total rewrite of the story of our solar system."
• Rarely Seen Paintings by J.R.R. Tolkien Portray a Lush ‘Lord of the Rings’ Landscape. "The Tolkien Estate recently published a trove of rare, unpublished art by the famed fantasy author on its website."
• Monkeypox Has Undergone “Accelerated Evolution”, Mutating At Unprecedented Rates. "The ongoing monkeypox outbreak is unprecedented. This research could help to explain why."
• Covid hasn’t given up all its secrets. Here are 6 mysteries experts hope to unravel. Two years into the pandemic, there is still a lot to learn about the virus.
• The 100 Most Popular Emojis Explained. "There are so many emojis, it can be difficult to know what they all mean. Here are the most popular emojis explained."
• State of CSS 2022. "Web styling features of today and tomorrow, as seen at Google IO 2022, plus some extras."
• America Is Sliding Into the Long Pandemic Defeat. "In the face of government inaction, the country’s best chance at keeping the crisis from spiraling relies on everyone to keep caring." Another essential read from Ed Yong.

2022 Locus Awards

The winners of the 2022 Locus Awards were announced last weekend. These awards are voted on by the readers and subscribers of Locus, the SFF genre's news magazine.

These are the awards in the various novel categories.

• SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
• FANTASY NOVEL: Jade Legacy, Fonda Lee (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• HORROR NOVEL: My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan)
• YOUNG ADULT NOVEL: Victories Greater Than Death, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Teen; Titan)
• FIRST NOVEL: A Master of Djinn, P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom; Orbit UK)

A Master of Djinn also won the Nebula Award for Best Novel this year.

Photo of the Week - June 26, 2022

I saw this basket of geraniums on my walk Friday and was seriously tempted to grab it and take it home. I didn't but I did take this picture to enjoy later. Taken with my Pixel 4a. 

Saturday Sounds - John Mellencamp - Strictly a One-Eyed Jack

I've been listening to and enjoying John Mellencamp's music ever since his Johnny Cougar days. His concert at Maple Leaf Gardens on the Lonesome Jubilee tour was one of the first that Nancy and went to together and turned me into a lifetime fan. (His cover of Richard Thompson's "Shoot Out the Lights" was even darker and more intense than Thompson's version).

His latest album, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, is solidly in the tradition of outcast Americana music. This New Yorker profile describes it as "blundering, bleak and engrossing", all of which is true. It isn't a happy album, but it's very listenable and fits the mood of our times. Springsteen fans should note that he performs on three songs, including the single, "Wasted Days". 

Public Domain Art from Artvee

If you're a regular gallery or museum goer, you may want to check out Artvee, a site for viewing and downloading public-domain art. You can browse by category (for example, landscapes), movement, culture, or artist, or view curated collections. The collection of NASA Visions of the Future posters is one that I especially liked.

Given that all the art is in the public domain, you won't find much by current or 20th-century artists, but there's certainly enough here to keep you browsing for hours.

Featured Links - June 20, 2022

For some time, I've been using Pocket and Pocket to Kindle to send long articles I want to read to my Kindle. I'm a few months behind on reading them but catching up. This week's Featured Links post collects some articles from late last year that I thought were still worth reading.

• Brian Herbert on Dune: 'My Father Could See Into the Future'. "Frank Herbert’s son is the keeper of the canon and the ultimate defender of his dad’s work."
• I Don't Know That I Would Even Call It Meth Anymore. "Different chemically than it was a decade ago, the drug is creating a wave of severe mental illness and worsening America’s homelessness problem."
• And In the End. "Fifty years ago, the Beatles went through rock’s most famous breakup. Inside the heartbreak, the brotherhood, and why the music still matters."
• The Expanse Authors Were Always Building Toward Leviathan Falls' World-Altering Ending. "James S.A. Corey duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck get spoilery about their biggest choices."
• Rothko at the Inauguration. "A story of America in three scams."
  
  

Photo of the Week - June 19, 2022

Here's a picture from my trip to the Sault a couple of weeks ago. It shows the shore opposite my sister's cottage on Goulais Bay, with a large wind farm on the top of the hills. I processed this picture in Adobe Lightroom to bring out the colours.

Fujifilm X-S10 with 16-80 F4 at 45 mm., 1/1600 second at F8, ISO 400, Velvia film simulation.

Saturday Sounds - Drive-By Truckers - Welcome 2 Club XIII

Today's music is the latest album from one of my favourite bands, the Drive-By Truckers. I've been listening to them for more than a decade, although I've never managed to see them live. Welcome 2 Club XIII is rather less political than their last but still has some powerful, intense songs. 

 

2021 Nebula Awards

The 2021 Nebula Awards were announced in May. They are voted on by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association (SFWA), the guild for SF and fantasy authors. These are the winners of the fiction awards.

• Best Novel: A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark
• Best Novella: "And What Can We Offer You Tonight" by Premee Mohamed
• Best Novelette: "O2 Arena" by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
• Best Short Story: "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" by Sarah Pinsker

This page has a complete list of the 57 annual Nebula awards.

Movie and TV Reviews - May 2022

Short reviews of TV shows we watched in May.  Between baseball and a month filled with various family events, we didn't watch any movies.

TV Shows

• Outer Range: Think of it as Lost in Montana. I wish the season had been longer so the story could have had more of a resolution. I guess we'll have to wait for season 2. If it goes past that, I'll probably stop watching. (Amazon Prime)
• Nova: High-Risk High Rise. Watching this reinforced my intention never to live above the 10th floor in a high-rise. (PBS)
• Restoring Notre Dame. A documentary on the current state of the restoration of Notre Dame after the fire. It's quite fascinating, especially the segment about the stained glass windows. (BBC)
• Nova: Dinosaur Apocalypse. Several episodes featuring new discoveries about the demise of the dinosaurs. My inner 12-year-old loved it. (PBS)
• Professor T: Another British police procedural featuring an oddball profiler. In this case, he's played by Ben Miller who was one of the leads in Death in Paradise. I probably wouldn't have watched the whole season if it hadn't been for that, as Miller is a very good actor, although he was wasted on the somewhat formulaic plots. (Acorn TV)