media and link roundup, oct. 2024 edition
I was originally intending to make media roundups and link roundups a separate thing, but I'm very behind on some of these media roundup entries and I accumulated some cool links faster than expected, and anyway it's my blog, I can do what I want. So, without further ado: media and link roundup!
Books
- The Fox Wife, by Yangsze Choo. I picked this up for a flight, because I liked the title and it appeared on someone's "best SF novels this year so far" list and sounded interesting. I was not disappointed! It's a historical fantasy set in early twentieth century Manchuria (and surrounding locations), it's a revenge story, it's so much more than that. Compelling read; I read most of it on the plane and then finished the rest of it up the next weekend, which is much quicker than I usually get through books. Highly recommend.
- Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. Military sci-fi that was recommended to me on Cohost when I asked for book recommendations; it, like many of the things I like, is about a corrupt empire. I liked this, but it is definitely the first book of a series, so it's hard to really comment on it.
- Translation State, by Ann Leckie. Not many authors can make a diplomatic hearing about someone's legal status into a gripping read, but not many authors are Ann Leckie. Explores concepts of gender and what it means to be human and the ways translators are not neutral entities. Great read, as ever.
Movies
- Drive My Car, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. This is a lovely film; it deals with grief, and the weight of the past, and the way our lives touch one another, set against beautiful backdrops of the Hiroshima countryside. About three hours long, but highly recommended.
- Evil Does Not Exist, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. This one's still on the Criterion Channel, which was kind enough to announce its premier. It is a story about a remote mountain village and its conflict with a startup that is trying to use pandemic subsidies to build an ill-considered glamping site in the area; it's beautifully shot, only about an hour and a half, and has haunted my thoughts since I first watched it.
Games
- Frosthaven. A board game followup to the universally beloved Gloomhaven, Frosthaven is a campaign game; I've been playing with a regular group for a year or so now. It's a dungeon crawler with a lot of interesting tactical choices to be made. While most of Gloomhaven's scenarios are fairly straightforward as far as objectives go (usually you win when you have defeated all enemies), most of Frosthaven's scenarios have some gimmick or other to deal with; this means that while there is more variety, the scenarios are sometimes hit or miss. Sometimes the scenarios are great, and sometimes the gimmick is a bit of a slog. But overall I love this; you really do need a group that's willing to commit for the long haul, but it's rewarding to play through.
- Victory Heat Rally. I picked up this little arcade racer after seeing that one of the speedrunners for Inertial Drift (another arcade racer I highly recommend) was doing some runs for it. This is a lot of fun. It's retro-styled but has controls that feel fairly modern and stages that are considerably easier to parse; it ends up playing a bit like Mario Kart 8 if there were no powerups. And personally that's what I want to see. There are a few stages where the difficulty seems a touch overtuned--you might need to switch to a different car to clear some of them--but I was able to gold nearly every stage without too much difficulty, and the game is fairly young and they've said they're looking into difficulty for the first patch. Sadly there's no online multiplayer (and I haven't heard mention of any plans to have them) but there is four player couch multiplayer, and the single player is pretty compelling. $20 well spent.
Links
As always, use an adblocker (uBlock Origin is still recommended), and be safe out there.
- The Eephus Pitch, A Play Within A Play Within an MMO, and When Home Goes Read-Only, by aurahack. I love this sort of braided personal essay, and this hits all the high notes that make it such a great format.
- My grandma's duck collection, by Coco-Fraise. There are stories in every little object, and this little portrait of a grandmother's collection of ducks is a beautiful snapshot of a life.
- Sofia Santos's OSINT Exercises. These are fun challenges to use information that is freely available on the internet to track down, for instance, the location a photograph was taken. In many cases the solution is alarmingly easy; I think everyone should try a few of the easier exercises so they can understand that data posted online is not as private as you might think.
- The Disappearance of an Internet Domain, by Gareth Edwards. An interesting look at the ramifications to digital infrastructure of geopolitics--specifically, how the British government ceding sovereignty of an Indian Ocean territory could spell the end of the popular .io TLD--so websites like itch.io may need to find a new home.
Youtube Videos
- The Narcissist Scare, by Sarah Z.1 This is a good video essay on a particularly uncomfortable internet trend (the narcissist/empath binary) that weaponizes therapyspeak to paint certain people as categorically evil. About an hour in length; highly recommend.
- Soviet Era "Rack Locks" by LockPickingLawyer. LPL's calming lockpicking videos are what finally got me into actually taking lockpicking seriously, but that's not why I'm sharing this video. I'm sharing this video because this is an extremely cool, simple locking mechanism that I have never seen before. I'll take his word for it that they aren't very secure, but damn if that isn't some elegant design. Only a few minutes.
I actually meant to put this in my last link roundup (it was, in fact, one of the core things I had been planning to put in there) but I didn't put it in my link roundup folder; I'm very unused to actually organizing what I'm doing so when I try to organize things I usually end up missing something. Ah well, it's still good.↩