Theory of the day: Primates started using alcohol extensively so they could tolerate each other better. Community and collaboration are exhausting, so social drugs make it easier to develop complex societies.

the only reason I ever go to a dealership

I needed to get a recall taken care of in my car and the nearest dealership wasn't taking appointments. So I went a bit further away and had a miserable two hours waiting. I was planning on working and reading but they were not only BLARING music, but to add insult to injury, it was 1970s soft rock. Other people in the waiting area (tiny, without enough chairs for everyone) agreed that it was way too loud so I asked that it be turned down, to no avail. I left a Google review about it and they called to try to get me to change it, but they had their chance! (Locals, this was Matthews Hyundai; steer clear.)

 (For normal car stuff, this year I've started going to a mechanic in walking distance to my house. I know from experience that they are not the best or the cheapest but the convenience is worth it.)

book

The Raven Scholar: This was a perfectly fine young adult fantasy (though I don't understand why it's a Hugo finalist). But as I also found with Red Rising, I'm no longer able to maintain much interest in contrived trials or contests. I discovered when watching Dune (a book I really liked in my 20s) that I'm bored by Chosen One narratives too. I wonder if that's just my personal tastes changing or whether it's common for people to be interested in/ bored by different themes as they age? In what directions have your tastes changed?

accommodations

An article on benches. Standing has been a problem for me for a long time: first because of low blood pressure, and added to that now are foot problems. I can't do things which involve standing in line, waiting without seats (like in some train stations), or socializing while standing (like some kinds of parties and concerts). I'm not one to hang out at the mall, but unlike most public areas, there are at least seats there. 

blinded by science

My opthalmologist recommended Intense Pulsed Light for my dry eyes. It's expensive, not covered by insurance, needs to be repeated regularly, and doesn't have a good enough evidence base for me to feel comfortable trying it when my job is unstable. But at a follow-up appointment (which I almost walked out of because I was in the waiting room for so long), they recruited me into a study which would let me get it for free!

I am paying in other ways though. The testing hurts, it's lots of appointments with long wait times, and the amniotic membrane they're studying was excruciatingly painful for the first day and required me to keep my eye taped shut all weekend. But I'm doing something useful for science and, if nothing else, should learn whether the IPL is worth doing again in the future.

the last Stephen King I will ever read

11/22/63: Stephen King is showing his age, and not just in his unwillingness to edit. His nostalgia for the 1950s and for high school are almost embarrassing. His belief that, for example, a 35-year-old in 2011 would call directory assistance to try to find people, was jarring. There is also no suggestion that same character might miss things like the internet, Indian food, good TV, etc. when living in the past (maybe because the peaches and misogyny taste so good?)

Initially I was drawn in; there was a strong start. But then I thought, "the time travel stuff he's exploring has been more thoughtfully done by lots of sci-fi writers." And then, "why is he describing every single child playing on the street, and giving play-by-plays of boxing matches?" And then, "Why does he imagine the air was cleaner in a mill town after industrialization but before the EPA?" And then, "Is every single woman going to be a trope instead of a person?" And then, "Why is he foreshadowing so awkwardly?" And then, "Making this book twice as long as necessary would be fine if it meant really great character development and increased emotional investment, but since that's not there and the dialogue is so awkward, I could have skipped the entire middle half of the book."

I found the audiobook narrator annoying and could have more easily skimmed or skipped sections on paper, so that format was a bad choice for me. I only finished because it received great reviews (from white Boomers I assume) and I was hoping for a payoff at the end, but that didn't come through either. Just say no to the sunken cost fallacy!

we could make a deep sea trench one

During my son's visit, we went to a common "OMG we need to get out of the house" outing from 20 years ago: the state museum. It remained mostly the same as it has been since 1985 but there was a fun temporary dinosaur exhibit, which included a bunch of hands-on activities which seemed pretty cool for little kids. What I absolutely LOVED and had never seen before: a topographic rice table. A projector displayed different colors depending on how you dug or piled the rice. Here's a video of a similar one, only the one at the museum also showed habitat-appropriate dinosaurs as land or sea was created. If my kids were little I would absolutely be figuring out how to build one in my house.

sports

USMNT is a sports acronym I don't care to remember the meaning of so I always translate it as US Mutant Ninja Turtles. Which implies the existence of Mutant Ninja Turtles in other countries I guess. Pollution, so sad :(

money

Quote of the day: "There is no way to be an ethical billionaire except possibly by divorcing one."

books

I inadvertently simultaneously read two books with paraplegic or quadriplegic main characters.

- Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor: I've never read anything quite like this before and really enjoyed it. The protagonist is unapologetically independent in a way that I don't often read. (A lot of reviews talk about how unlikable she is- I found her relatable but that perhaps speaks to how unlikable I am.) She writes a massive bestseller which gives her the opportunity to get powered prosthetic legs after being in a wheelchair since she was 12. Synthetic bodies/ minds and their implications were a major theme of her book (there is a book-within-the-book) and, well, I won't spoil the rest. While marketed as sci-fi, it's primarily a family drama. Themes include ableism, the patriarchy across various cultures, family and societal expectations, fame, Hollywood whitewashing, immigrant experiences, where we stop and where the other begins, and what makes a human; but I wouldn't consider any one of those PRIMARY themes.

Binti by this author and Rosewater by Tade Thompson also tie Nigerian culture into sci-fi in a way that feels fresh to those of us used to reading a lot by white men, if you're interested in that. I listened to the audio and suspect that made me like it more.

- A Body, Undone by Christina Crosby is a memoir by a woman who suffered a devastating bike crash. My experience is that most memoirs themed around this sort of experience are often (a) not well-written and (b) have a kind of forced positivity/ inspiration porn aspect to them. This has neither of those failings and I initially found it really compelling. Unfortunately it felt like a series of disconnected essays, some mostly unrelated to her disability, and I don't think that worked as well as a more focused narrative would have in this case. Its discussions surrounding gender, worker's rights, etc. feel weirdly dated (Freud came up more than once); I was thinking it was written in the 90s but it came out in 2016. She's an English professor and several of the essays tie her experience into literary structures, which unfortunately is not my thing. So it wasn't bad but I skimmed big parts of it.