#older than my thesis which I only started working on in 2022)

[szkicel]

I’m working on a pinned post, where I want to include a short description for each of my major project so it’ll be easier to navigate my characters, bc a big shock - I also have projects that aren’t about bugs lol (tho you know damm well that I will try to implement them somehow anyway jhbdjhbd)

I thought about also mentioning minor projects that I have in the background and which aren’t that well developed yet, but ngl the list is literally like „a hamster metroidvania” or „dystopian central europe” bc they’re THAT underdeveloped, so I decided I’m not gonna bother unless you ppl will ask me to talk about it lol

[evelhak]

📚

I'm back with talking about my books.

💜Kaapin nurkista♠️

(from the corners of the closet)

Published: 2022 by Nysalor

Genre: Young Adult, LGBT+, Fiction

My second published book, and so far the only realistic one, which was written in 2016. Mostly when I should have been writing my master's thesis. This one was written before Unitytöt, although it was published later. To be perfectly honest, I was not going to publish it, because back when I was first looking for a publisher, everyone's reply was that a book about asexuality won't sell, and as time went on I started to feel like it isn't what it was meant to be when it was written, anymore. So even if I did find a publisher for it, it would no longer be as timely and relevant as it was, because attitudes towards asexuality were changing and therefore the experiences of teenage and 20-something asexuals, whose lives this book is about, would be changing too. However, the publisher who picked up my first book, saw a description of this work on my website and wanted to publish it, so I ended up agreeing in the end. After all, this book would still be relevant to asexuals of my own generation as a retrospective look at the atmosphere of our teenage and early twenties, so if it would be relatable to no one else, at least it would be to us. I reframed it a little, to be set in a specific year (2011) which it wasn't at first, but I felt it was important now, so that people would be able to go into it with slightly more of a historical fiction lens, because it really only makes sense when being looked at from its specific time frame.

This is the story of a 17-year-old high school student Jaro, who was forced out of the closet as early as in middle school, when no one knew what asexuality was. His strongest moral support is his best friend Venla, who is still a closeted lesbian, most of all because of her judgemental girl group. Jaro has been able to live a relatively quiet life in high school apart from one bully, until things escalate and Jaro gets the blame for his own bullying. Venla encourages Jaro to go to an ace meet to find people who could share his experiences, and Jaro makes a new friend who steers both of their lives in new directions. It's a book about the experiences of an invisible minority, loneliness and bullying, as well as the belonging and empowerment of being seen by someone. Some of the book also deals with sexual abuse in a way that might be intense to some, though not graphic.

When I first wrote this book, there were no novels about asexuality in Finnish, and I felt strongly that someone had to write the first one, which is why this is written as an "issue" book. Asexuality is its main subject, instead of including the queer narrative as just another element of the story, which is more popular these days. In fact, it was already going to that direction in 2016, but I felt that asexuals had completely missed the train of books about asexuality. (As well as other less visible queer people.) Aces were only starting to gain visibility when more well known queer identities were already moving from books about queerness to books where queerness is a factor. But asexuality still wasn't well known enough that it would have felt natural for me to skip the "issue book" stage of development, so to speak. The fact that even in 2022, when this book was published, it was still probably the first or the second Finnish book about this subject, kind of speaks for itself, although more books about asexuality did come out that same year, which is amazing! There are also many aro-spec characters in this book, as well as some other queer characters.

In the end, I'm really glad I decided to publish this book. I've had the pleasure to witness that it really was a meaningful story to many asexual people, some that were also much older or younger than me. And some who were not even asexual. I think the craziest thing I've heard said about this books is that "it was better than Loveless". I don't really care about being "better than" because art is subjective, but in that exact context it was one of those moments that made me feel like... "Woah, I'm a real author". Because I love Alice Oseman's work, so to think that someone thought my book was as real as the book of someone famous who I admire, was some moment. The criticism this book has gotten has been a lot more along the lines I was expecting. Because it's a description of what queer life was as a teenager in the early 2010s, the characters get really preachy sometimes. Because that's how it was. I knew some people would not enjoy that aspect of the book. And in general, my books are never the cup of tea of the readers who don't like to focus on relationships and introspection, too. A criticism I was actually really surprised by was that the book is too "othering". At first I felt like that was such an interesting way to look at a book that is largely about the feeling of otherness. But then I realized... this criticism is actually the best comment that I could have possibly heard. Because I only heard this from people younger than me, and if the feeling of otherness is not relatable to young people, then... that's AMAZING. That's the best thing I could ever have hoped to hear from young queer people. That means society really is changing.

As happy as I am that some people have gotten exactly what they seem to have needed from this book, my own feelings towards it remain complicated. Because it's doing so much better than my fantasy books, which are my long-term passion, not realistic fiction. This is the only one of my books to have been featured on the national news channel's TikTok, and it's also the only one that was selected on a government funded list of small distribution quality literature, which allows libraries to purchase books from that list more easily to diversify their selection. It makes no sense for me to feel disappointed about this at all, but I do a little. As unknown as I am, all exposure matters, and I would rather have it for my fantasy books. (People reading my realistic fiction book evidently doesn't automatically lead them to look for my fantasy books.) This book is something I wanted to do for the asexual community, and as such it has done its job, and of course for that I'm glad that it has a little bit more exposure than my other work. But as an author, my priority is not realistic fiction, so. *shrug*

I still want to write about more asexual characters and contribute to the better understanding of different kinds of experiences, including asexuals. Community and trying to bridge gaps between people is always going to be one of the driving forces behind why I write, but realistic fiction is just not the main way in which I want to do it. I'm a fantasy and/or a speculative fiction author, because that's just my natural style, and writing realistic fiction always feels like shoving rectangular pieces into round holes for me. As much as I love Jaro and Venla and other characters in this book, I sometimes hated writing their story. I have sometimes jokingly said that I would rather invent an entire magic system to make one plot point work, than I would Google if a shop is open at a time my characters need to visit it, or how long it takes to drive from one city to another, but with this book I felt so often that it was literally true!

Still, I love all my books.

[gchoate17]

I watched 30 movies in 2022 – down from 46 last year. Here they are, ranked in order. Most of them can be found on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. I also ranked the shows I watched this year.

The Forgotten Battle -- Dutch-language film with subtitles. I appreciated that the movie included real-world military strategy, and it showed war from the front lines as well as from the civilians’ perspective. It managed to touch on the resistance without making it more than it was, and most impressive of all, the film humanized a character fighting for the wrong side without making him a complete saint.

To the Bone -- Usually movies about disorders, diseases, or issues in general are so focused on shedding light on those things that they forget to care about actual plot or character development, but this one did a great job on all fronts.

The King -- War in the 15th century was ridiculous, but fun to watch.

The Great Gatsby (2013) -- Baz Luhrman was the perfect filmmaker for the glitz and glam of the 1920s. The first 45 minutes of the movie was fantastic. My hangups were the shortcomings of the story – Gatsby works best as a flawless person who doesn’t need love, which is an impossibility. Also, Daisy doesn’t get to make decisions? (I get it, it was the 1920s, but still.)

The Meyerowitz Stories -- [SPOILER ALERT, kind of] This felt like a Wes Anderson story told by Noah Baumbach, if that makes sense. The characters’ behavior was too on the nose sometimes, but usually the humor of such behavior carried the scene. Great casting. Best scene was Hoffman running away from the gallery opening.

Other People -- Balances humor well with the emotional struggle that cancer brings. Probably the best acting I’ve ever seen from Molly Shannon. Also, Jesse Plemons is in every single movie, I think.

While We’re Young -- I’m scared by how much I related to the “older” couple in this movie.

The Lost Daughter -- Sad and beautiful and terrifying in multiple ways. “Children are a crushing responsibility.”

The Seige of Jadotville -- True story and military tactics and a band of Irish brothers against all odds. All my things.

The Devil All the Time -- Dark and sinister and a kind of underdog story. Robert Pattinson continues to successfully shake off his Twilightness.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society -- Cute, but with some real depth. I cried.

All Quiet on the Western Front -- The brilliance of this movie (novel) is that it shows what cannon fodder individual lives were in World War I, and it humanized the poor bastards who came of age in Nazi Germany.

Munich: The Edge of War -- [SPOILER ALERT] I never understood von Hartmann’s political position – too anti-Hitler for Lena, who is also anti-Hitler? – and so it was hard for me to get his motivation at times.

War Machine -- Fantastic thesis, humorous at times, but from an overall entertainment perspective…mostly dry.

Licorice Pizza -- Man, what I wouldn’t give to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman in this movie.

Hustle -- I love Adam Sandler in dramatic roles. This one started out at a 4.5, ended up at a 1.5. Sports training montage situation.

The Master -- Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix are always brilliant, but I felt like this one dragged a bit. I never felt like we were building toward anything, which was probably the point, but the entertainment value suffered because of it.

The Adam Project -- Playful in a Ryan Reynolds sort of way, has some heart.

I Came By -- I could probably watch George MacKay and Kelly MacDonald in anything. Without them, this is your standard thriller.

The Power of the Dog -- [SPOILER ALERT] The characters pulled complete 180s. Phil was a complete asshole who turned out to just be a closeted gay man? And chaste Rose became an instant alcoholic without her husband stepping in? Doubtful.

IO -- Dystopia fix. Full of improbabilities and character behavior that didn’t make sense. But I liked seeing the girl from Maid in something else.

Hail; Caesar! -- Only worth it for the subtle quirkiness.

Sorry to Bother You -- Interesting premise and I enjoyed the quirkiness, but ultimately the story grew tiresome.

Windfall -- Interesting to see Jason Segel in a role like this, but otherwise, there wasn’t much here for me.

The Colony -- Dystopia fix. Full of improbabilities and character behavior that didn’t make sense.

Sand Castle -- Cliched. And the military consultant or whatever should be fired. “Hoo-AAAAHHH.”

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs -- These vignettes felt like incomplete ideas.

World War Z -- It’s been so long that this movie was marketed to me that I forgot it was a zombie flick. By the time I realized it, I was too tired to keep searching for something else to watch.

Stillwater -- Had faith in Matt Damon to choose good movies. He did not do so here. Cliched out, and so many things that didn’t make sense. How did he afford to stay in a hotel in Europe for so long?

Blade Runner (1982) -- I have no doubt this movie had a major impact when it originally hit theaters, but forty years later, it did nothing for me. (Except maybe highlighting Ray Finkle’s early work.)

See previous years’ lists here: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017.

[the-cemetery-researcher]

Today's progress 20/01/2022

I've been recording graves at Highgate Cemetery since 2011 when I was working on what was originally going to be my MPhil dissertation. Funnily enough in the last decade I've learned a fair bit about grave recording and 2011/12 Josie who did the original recording of the Highgate East graves (selected because in those days I'd been refused entry to the West side to conduct research, whereas in the East side I could just turn up and pay admission) was extremely incompetent. She missed loads of important info and so from January 10th - 12th 2022 I was back there filling in all the gaps. Why did it take me 10 years you ask? I have no excuse really for how long digitisation of my data from the legion of tatty notebooks to neat forms and spreadsheets has taken! It's slow, it's repeatative, but it's also the foundation for everything I'm researching. Between 2015 and 2019 my work at Highgate focused instead on the West side (I got permission once management changed and access was no longer gatekept by someone who left me spluttering and incredulous when thay replied to my research spiel with 'aww you look like a baby!' aged 23. Over two thirds of that stuff had been typed up by the end of 2019, with the last straggles completed by October 2021 (following my return from leave) but somewhere along the way I completely forgot about the older data and it languished in a torn red school exercise book with a mud stained cover. I started to tackle it in November and December 2021, rapidly realising that I needed to return to the cemetery to fill in the blanks. The planed trip finally took place post Christmas and post Covid isolation. Thank you to my wonderful friend Holly for putting me in her very comfy spare room and feeding me awesome cauliflower cheese! I'm about halfway through digitising that new data. I've done 85 graves with 115 left to go, but I did mostly start with the hardest bits first! I'm planning to have it all completed by Sunday, but I've got to spend a fair bit of the next 2 days in the Jewellery Quarter, so we'll see how that goes! Today I also finally did something I had on my to do list since *checks* 11th October 2021. I started to re-read my thesis draft so far. I was terrified. So far I've only re-read the two intro chapters (last reworked 2017) and the two Highgate data chapters (which got work in 2018 and 2019) but they are OK. A lot to do, but more coherent than I hoped. Tomorrow I'll re-read the two Pere Lachaise data chapters and feel guilty about the state that data is in (oh yes, another tatty notebook! And a much bigger backlog!! From 2016!!!). Then I'll skim chapters 8, 9 and 10 (but from memory they are mostly subheadings, bullet points and helpful notes like 'insert analysis here'). One day soon I might even feel up to opening the file which isn't called Chapter 3 (it's called 'f**king moronic s**t') and having a look at how bad of a mess my theory chapter/lit review really is, in the cold light of day, 8 years post-breakdown.

[fmservers]

Huawei, Google, and the tiring politics of tech

The defining question of the 21st century is pretty simple: who owns what? Who owns the telecommunications infrastructure that powers our mobile devices? Who owns the OS that powers those devices? Who owns our data?

Today, we see these intersecting arcs with two prominent tech leaders mired in legal and political processes.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

In Canada, we have day three(!) of the bail hearing for Huawei head of finance Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟), who was arrested at the request of the U.S. last week. And on Capitol Hill today, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, is testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee, starting a few minutes ago at 10am.

These may be pedestrian proceedings, but they are riven with deep debates over the meaning of ownership. Meng was arrested for supposedly selling equipment to Iran through intermediaries in violation of U.S. sanctions. Huawei is a Chinese company, but uses American intellectual property in its products. Thus, America claims worldwide jurisdiction over the company, since it owns the patents beneath Huawei’s products.

Meanwhile, Pichai is testifying over a number of concerns, including data privacy (i.e. data ownership) and Project Dragonfly, the company’s attempt to re-enter China. He also has to contend with another data breach bug discovered yesterday in Google+. Is Google an American “owned” company (as Pichai will attempt to paint it today), or is it a global company owned by shareholders with obligations to enter China?

These aren’t simple questions, which is why the broader question of ownership will be so important for this century. Despite the win-win attitude of free traders, the reality is that much of technology ownership is monopolistic owing to barriers to entry – there are only a handful of telco equipment manufacturers, public clouds, mobile OSes and search engines out there. Whoever owns that property is going to get rich at the expense of others.

That’s why the US/China trade conflict is an irreconcilable tug-of-war.

For China, a developing country by most metrics even if it has glittering cities like Shanghai, owning that technological wealth is crucial for it to reach the zenith of its growth. It cannot become rich without becoming a technology power, a manufacturing power, and a consumer market capital all at once. And it views with deep suspicion American blocks on wealth transfers. Isn’t this just a way to keep the country down, to replay the century of humiliation all over again?

For the U.S., China’s constant conniving to pilfer American intellectual property undermines U.S. economic hegemony. China does want to steal plans for airplanes, and semiconductors, and other high-tech goods. Of course, it eventually wants to have the human capital and know-how to build these themselves, but first it has to catch up. America, fundamentally, doesn’t want it to catch-up.

As more and more wealth derives from technology, technology = politics becomes the bedrock law.

That’s frankly tiring for someone who just loves great products and wants to see massive technological progress for everyone regardless of nationality. But political symbolism is increasingly a language that Silicon Valley and the tech industry writ large have to understand.

Why Oath keeps Tumblring (now with a price tag)

Last week, I wrote a bit of a screed on why TechCrunch’s parent company, Oath, is struggling so badly:

Oath has a problem:* it needs to grow for Wall Street to be happy and for Verizon not to neuter it, but it has an incredible penchant for making product decisions that basically tell users to fuck off. Oath’s year over year revenues last quarter were down 6.9%, driven by extreme competition from digital ad leaders Google and Facebook.

Now, we know the costs of those product decisions, as well as the greater challenges in the digital advertising market. Verizon announced today that it will write down the value of Oath by $4.6 billion. That will change Oath’s goodwill value from $4.8 billion to $0.2 billion in the fourth quarter. Yikes.

This was a necessary accounting valuation change, and one that recognizes the challenges that Oath faces. As the filing said:

Verizon’s Media business, branded Oath, has experienced increased competitive and market pressures throughout 2018 that have resulted in lower than expected revenues and earnings. These pressures are expected to continue and have resulted in a loss of market positioning to our competitors in the digital advertising business. Oath has also achieved lower than expected benefits from the integration of the Yahoo Inc. and AOL Inc. businesses.

The upside is that Oath still has many, many millions of users every month. It just needs to figure out what to do with all of those eyeballs to build a sustainable business.

Can the West build anything?

Photo by VictorHuang via Getty Images

Seriously, from the Financial Times:

The capital should have been celebrating the opening of the east-west London railway, the biggest construction project in Europe, this week. But Crossrail announced in August that it would not begin operation until autumn 2019 at the earliest.

Even that now seemed “wildly optimistic”, one person close to the project said, given the problems with signals, trains and stations leading to “growing panic” among TfL executives. A number of people close to the project now say it may not be ready until late next year.

Crossrail is one of the most important subway projects in the world, designed to dramatically increase capacity in London’s Underground on the east-west axis. But it is just one of a series of major setbacks in infrastructure costs in the West. Meanwhile in California from Connor Harris at City Journal:

Ten years later, supporters have ample cause to reconsider. CAHSR’s costs have severely escalated: the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) now estimates that the train’s core segment alone, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, will cost from $77 billion to $98 billion. Promises that private investors would cover most of the costs have fallen through. Forecasts for the project’s completion date and travel times have also slipped. The fastest trains in the CHSRA’s current business plan have a running time of over three hours, and the first segment of the line—San Jose to Bakersfield, almost 200 miles short of completion—won’t open until 2029.

I want high-speed rail, and I want new subways. I just don’t want new subways that cost billions of dollars per mile, and I don’t want high-speed rail at $100 billion.

The inability of Western countries to build infrastructure within any period of time and within any sort of budget is just mesmerizing. What we are left with is raising the speed limits on subways in New York City from 15 MPH to something a bit more reasonable.

I have talked previously about the need for more startups in this space:

California is home to two very different innovation worlds. For the readers of TechCrunch, there is the familiar excitement of the startup world, with startups working on longevity and age extension, rockets to Mars, and cars that drive themselves. Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, engineers, and product managers are building these futures every day, often on shoestring budgets all in the hope of seeing their solution come to fruition.

Then, there is the “innovation” world of California’s infrastructure. Let’s take the most prominent example, which is the bullet train connecting southern to northern California. The train, first approved in a bond authorized by voters in 2008, is expected to have its first passengers in 2025 — three years after the original target of 2022.

That’s roughly 17 years start to finish, or older than the ages of Facebook (14 years) and the iPhone (10 years) are right now. Given that environmental reviews aren’t even slated to come in until 2020, it seems hard to believe that the route will maintain its current schedule.

Startups, we need your innovation in this space desperately. It’s a trillion dollar market ready for anything that might make these projects move faster, and cost less.

Quick Bites

My quick bites turned into full bites above.

What’s next

I am still obsessing about next-gen semiconductors. If you have thoughts there, give me a ring: danny@techcrunch.com.

Thoughts on Articles

The Increasingly United States – I read this book this weekend. Probably best to just read the reviews for most readers, although if you like modern political science research, this has about all the techniques you can do in American studies these days.

The core thesis is that the notion that “all politics is local” is completely bunk on two dimensions. Voters increasingly vote for candidates at every level of government using the same litmus tests, and they also get their information about politics exclusively from national sources. That basically means city councilors are debating immigration policy (which they have zero control over) rather than trash policy. It also explains the rising polarization in Congress — with less local issues to debate, there are just no opportunities afforded to build coalitions.

The book charts the pathways through which this nationalization takes place, and they will be intimately familiar to most readers (campaign finance changes, national media markets, nationalized policy planning, etc).

The thesis though raises a number of questions. First, how will local issues (zoning, trash pickup, etc.) get the attention they need to make our cities livable and thriving? Second, how can we fund local media so that voters have differentiated visibility into what is happening in their own backyard? These questions aren’t easy to answer, but we must if we want our federal-style system to function the way the founders intended.

The Death of Democracy in Hong Kong by Jeffrey Wasserstrom. A short and emotional look back at the failure of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014 and its ramifications.

Lean In’s Sheryl Sandberg Problem by Nellie Bowles. What does an organization do when the reputation of its founder and major icon turns sour? Lean In is trying to find out. Good if a bit lengthy, but I’m starting to get tired of the constant anti-Sandberg coverage.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

Huge long list of articles on next-gen semiconductors. More to come shortly.

Inside China’s audacious global propaganda campaign | News | The Guardian

Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy – Andreessen Horowitz

Via Danny Crichton https://techcrunch.com