Hung Out to Die

personal, politics, weather Leave a comment

Canadian wildfire smoke moves across map, spreading bad air quality to Midwest, East Coast (USA Today via msn.com)Thousands of COVID-19 cases still reported every week | Fact check (USA Today via msn.com) I was almost completely unable to do anything but life’s basics for a couple of days last week. As the air quality maps quickly showed my little corner of Wisconsin falling into the purple zone, for “unhealthy” air quality due to wildfire smoke, not only were my eyes almost constantly stinging, but any…

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When the Gaming Honeymoon Never Ends

glbt, personal, videogames Leave a comment

After I first finished Final Fantasy VII over twenty-five years ago, it didn’t take me long to realize that I would need to play through it again before I could form a complete opinion about its qualities, simply because the game had hit me with so much that my mind was still reeling days after I completed that first playthrough. While I eventually came to the conclusion that Final Fantasy VII was the greatest video game I had played up to that point in my…

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Glory Be to [Insert Name of Country Here]

books, internet, politics, writing Leave a comment

AI and Its Effect on the Book Publishing Industry (goodereader.com)Julie Plec and More WGA Members Detail Writers Strike Negotiations, Demand Streamers to Release Ratings: ‘We’re Mad’ (Variety via msn.com) One personal project that always seems to be on the back burner for me is an examination of the fiction written during the Cold War in the Soviet bloc countries. My interest in this started about a decade ago, after Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son won the Pulitzer. For his novel, Johnson did extensive studies…

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The Other Shoe

personal Leave a comment

This past September was one of the worst months of my life. As I’ve detailed before, various circumstances led to me having to move to Platteville the day before I started teaching here, and as if that big move wasn’t enough to exhaust me on its own, I had to walk across campus repeatedly the next day, before I could even teach my first class, just to handle various tasks that I couldn’t get to earlier, leaving me a worn-out mess as I started that…

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Joining Yours and Mine

mom, personal Leave a comment

Grimes Unveils AI Software to Allow Artists to Replicate Her Voice (Complex via yahoo.com) The process by which I went from living in Mom’s house in Toledo at the start of 2017, two months after her passing, to living with Hedder in an apartment in Colorado Springs by the end of the year, is long and bitter, and I probably won’t be able to share that story with anyone but the closest of my friends until several more people pass away. Suffice it to say…

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