I’ve been going through a little bit of a writer’s block lately, so I figure I’m going to start trying this “week notes” format I’ve seen from some other bloggers. Not that I expect I’ll be very good at sticking to a regular schedule, but I like the idea of having somewhere to put some of my shorter thoughts that’s more organized than somewhere like Mastodon.

Books

I recently finished Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, the first book in The Expanse, along with a small group of others from the fediverse. I knew at around the halfway point when I was struggling to put it down that it was going to be one of my favorite books, and I was right!

A quick rundown of what I really liked about it:

• It borrows elements from a lot of different genres, not just sci-fi.
• The setting feels unique and grounded. Though humanity has spread throughout the solar system, they haven’t quite conquered space yet.
• I found the two point of view characters interesting, and I like that the story alternates perspectives throughout.

If you want to know more about Leviathan Wakes, you should check out Joel’s review of it. He’s one of the others from the group I read along with and most of his thoughts echo my own.

I’ve just barely started the next book in the series, Caliban’s War, and it’s already shaping up to be as interesting as the first.

Games

One of the new games I’ve been enjoying is Webfishing. It’s a sort of casual social fishing game that gives me similar vibes to social games of the 2000s. It’s also a pretty nice way to unwind with a podcast or music in the background.

I’ve also just barely started Metro 2033 (Redux) and am liking it so far. I’m not totally sold on some of the survival mechanics quite yet, possibly because they’re not explained all that well. I expect they’ll grow on me once I get used to them. I’ve had this game sitting in my Epic Games account for ages because they gave it away for free at some point. It turns out Steam is having a big sale on the series right now to celebrate the new VR game, so I’ll probably be completing my collection once I play a bit more and before the price goes back up.

US Election

Like a lot of people, I was following the election this week. I do feel though like I have a slightly different perspective than most people since neither candidate of the two major parties managed to win my vote this year.

I’m not surprised by the winner, only at how much of a landslide it ended up being. I do believe most people are inherently good, and with Trump winning by such a wide margin I think the “Americans are just racist/sexist/etc.” doomer theory is extremely off-track and holds no water at all.

Now the reason I’m not surprised is that the Democratic Party has done a stellar job at painting itself as out of touch, corporate and opaque. How they thought it was a good idea to nominate someone who has had such abysmal approval ratings and performed so poorly in the 2020 primary is beyond me. We’re talking about a race between someone who is seen as anti-establishment, an outsider, who, for better or worse, truly does speak his mind, and someone who is seemingly incapable of speaking in an open setting without reading a script word for word. With the current state of the economy and heightened levels of distrust in establishments, the outcome sort of seems obvious in hindsight.

I’m hoping the Democratic Party can learn some lessons from this and actually bring their A-game next election. And I’m not despairing about what happens in the meantime. We know who Trump is. He, like Harris, has already had plenty of opportunities to ruin the country if he wanted to and it was within his power to do so. I might not have a lot of faith in our leaders generally, but I do still have faith in the system to provide some balance.

If you’ve been freaking out a bit over the outcome, I don’t blame you one bit. There’s lots of valid reasons to be worried these days but I think it helps to remember a few things. The people talking at us in the media live in their own bubbles. You know more about average day to day life than they do, so don’t give them more attention than they deserve. Many of them will try their best to make you feel afraid and anxious. If they didn’t, they’d have a greater chance of losing you during the ad break.

— JP