Contrary to the saying, this old dog learned a new trick recently.
Or rather, this old dog learned he’d been doing the trick wrong all these years and finally learned how it’s supposed to be done.
Learning an error of my ways is good but here I lose a distinction I’ve long enjoyed making between a connoisseur and a gourmet.
This old gag caught my eye recently:
As usual in these cases, it’s a trick question.
It occurs to me that the date format used in the title can be ambiguous. It’s certainly a local format. The longer form used for Friday Notes, (e.g. Oct 16, 2026), is specific but makes post titles longer than I like. I use the ambiguous form for brevity.
But for the record, throughout this blog, when used, I do mean month/day/year. Which I’ve long thought is an awful format because it doesn’t sort naturally, especially with no leading zeros on single digits. The sortable form is yyyy–mm–dd (with leading zeros on single digits).
But I digress (already!), so without further ado, here’s the local weather:
I’m off to a late start (it’s nearly noon) starting this early-in-the-month Friday Notes post. The delay is because I spent several hours this morning updating my Movies page (which lists my favorite movies as well as my rating system).
I’m not done updating it; I want to add some lists of films by favorite directors (Wes Anderson, Christopher Guest, Quentin Tarantino). Wikipedia has those lists, of course, but I like having a reference page with links I most care about.
But enough about movies. On to the Notes!
For a bit over a year now, I’ve included various monthly weather charts and observations in the Friday Notes posts. In some cases, those sections were lengthy enough to call for their own posts. (Which would also keep those not caring about my local weather out of said weather.)
Therefore, as of today, a new Weather Notes subdivision of Friday Notes (similar to the Science Notes subdivision established two years ago). Easy now to ignore if so inclined.
And now, the weather…
Back in 2023, I happened to read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by Yuval Noah Harari. I ended up not impressed by the book [see Sapiens: The Book] but did find two aspects of it compelling and memorable: the idea of our facility with fiction, and the idea of game-changing human Revolutions.
It is said: ‘Once you have an X hammer, everything becomes an X nail.’ (For whatever value of ‘X’.) Our mental concepts frame our worldview, and I’ve been considering human culture through the lens of these Revolutions.
Here I take a stab at just listing them.
The last edition of Sci-Fi Saturday reported on the science fiction books I’ve read recently (for a rather generous definition of “recently”). This edition reports on the recent science fiction movies (and some TV shows, mostly animated).
Early warning: among the ones new to me, there is only one I’ll particularly recommend. Most were “just okay” (though one is worth a small rant). Others were re-watches, and those generally have higher scores — of course they do; I re-watched them because I liked them.
By the way, the definition of science fiction is also a little generous here.
After putting the blog largely on hold this spring and summer, I’m trying to get back into it by doing a bit of catch-up. (Or at least discover if and how I really want to get back into it.)
Five posts so far this month (not counting this one) compared to five posts during the three summer months (June, July, August), so I’m off to a good start.
Didn’t manage even to post a Friday Notes in August, so there’s more than enough for (at least) a second edition this month.
The recent Sci-Fi Saturday post listed the SF books I’ve been reading (so far) this year, and the even more recent Mystery Monday post listed the murder mystery books likewise. Haven’t read any science books lately (I’ve been getting science news from New Scientist magazine), but I have been watching TV. Maybe too much, but at least it’s evenings only.
Baseball has occupied a lot of my viewing time this summer (the MN Twins are a whole other post). I can only stand to watch three to five hours of TV in an evening, so a three-hour baseball game doesn’t leave much room for my stories.
Nevertheless, there is more than enough for a TV Tuesday post.
Posts pertaining to programming!
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