Roundup (8 Sept 2019)

[jaggedwolf]

Reading

From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew

The second part of Singapore's first PM's memoirs. Dude had some unique viewpoints, many of which I uh, dislike, to put it mildly, but he gives a very thorough accounting of his beliefs and thought processes, and I can appreciate that insight. Will probably give the first part of his memoirs a read sometime.

Malay Sketches by Alfian Sa'at

Short story collection by one of Singapore's eminent playwrights. Good read, set in lots of different periods of Singapore and Malaysia's history. My favorite one was "Two Brothers".

This Is What Inequality Looks Like by Teo You Yenn

An eloquently-written, maddening ethnographic study of Singapore's low-income population. Teo covers lot of ground (the mess of different bureaucratic agencies that a person seeking state assistance is supposed to interface with, the limited mobility of their lives, the state framing of poverty as a temporary state), but the part that stuck with me was about kids in those families entering primary school and immediately getting flagged as lagging behind. Streaming in education's supposedly about meeting the different abilities of kids, and what does that even mean when there's already such a vast difference in the opportunities those kids have had to learn those specific things that school values. Depressing, would like to shove this book into every Singaporean's hands.

The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt

A fun f/f sci-fi romp! I loved the leads, the crew (Ashok's self-modding, honestly, ofc this would happen), the aliens. It's been a while since I've liked an alien race as much as I have the Liars. Uh, I could not help but be reminded of Starship Iris's Violet by Elena early on in the book. (Biologist who just experienced a traumatic experience where her ship got wrecked? Check. Startingly direct at times? Check.) Callie was a very good grumpy ship captain.

Also the leads were horny for each other even in the middle of serious-business conversations and I can respect that. One of those books I rated three stars ("I liked it") not because it was a steady three throughout but because as much as there were parts I really really liked, there were a couple of parts where I was very thrown in an immersion-breaking way. Still looking forward to reading the next two books in the series.

Other Media

Caught up on Critical Role, modulo the last hour of the most recent episode, and I'm in love with the new character art

I got to see the Juno Steel live show last night and it was pretty good once I got used to seeing the voice actors, not picturing the character art. I'd forgotten a lot of the smaller moments of the episode: Juno throwing Peter's doodles at him; the hand-holding at the end; the gift that is Juno hurting himself to use the Lassionic Capsule. Here's hoping that next year they do the S1 finale! (Well, I guess Peter's episode is right before it, but that would also be great.)

I listened to five episodes of The Penumbra Podcast's other series, Second Citadel. I think Ser Damien is my favourite now? Ruthless, defensive Ser Caroline is amazing as well - I love how frickin messy her and Marc's competition is in the first pair of episodes, both of them unfairly having to prove themselves and yet still ready to throw the other one under the bus.

Random Articles

Midway through listening to a podcast episode I got distracted by a mention of epigenetics and started wondering whether that was just a tiny version of Lamarck's debunked theory of evolution. This article, One More Time No Epigenetics Is Not Lamarckism makes a convincing case it isn't.

Race Riots Remain Biggest Bogeyman