bush height

this is how large they are today.  I'm curious how much they grow in the next week.

the anthropocene reviewed ch 30 super mario cart through ch 44 three famrers on their wya to a dance

ch 30 super mario cart pg 181

One of the fun things about super mario cart is that it's really competitive beacuse the further back you are the more powerful your question box items are.  This is basically the exact opposite of real life.  

ch 31 bonneville salt flats pg 185

The slat flats are in soithern utah near thr navafa bprder.  It was part of the great salt lake fifteen thousand years ago.  Now its just left over salt.  It's this crazy huge piece of baren land.  it sure is cool looking.

ch 32 hiroyoku Doi's circle drawings pg 191

Just hn likes signing things because its a taks he can get engrossed in.  Doi draws circles because hes overwhelmed by sadness due to the deathnof his brother and drawing circles distracts him from that.

ch 33 whispering

John didnt used to.like whipsering.  But due to the global pandemic,  nobody whisprs anymore cause of the germs.  He kind of misses it.

ch 34 viral menigitis

John had viral menengitis anf it sucked.  He had a headacje for basically a week straight when he was in the hospital.  He didnt have any sort if  openi g expericne that .ade him appreciate life more or anything.  It was just all consu.ing pain.  Then he had the same headaches on and off for a year.  He is not a fan of the this too shall pass approach that most people have with someone in pain.  His whole thing is that we should simpley acknowledge the pain of otheres.

ch 35 plague

Covid sucks.  The black plague was significantly worse.  But a lot of things were the same.  Blaming minorities, the poor being disproportionately affected, misinformation, etc.  There were some silver lining stories, but largely wife scale human suffering is just really bad.  All i hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones of those who didnt make it.

ch 36 Wintry Mix

Thjs is kinda about gardening and kinda about the winter before the apocalypse.  Summer and fall are perferable to wintery mix, but winter without covid is preferable to spring with it.

ch 37 the hot dogs of baejarins Beztu Pylsurw

hangovers suck, hotdogs are a good hangover food.  The first ever olypic metal was in handball in 2008.  The economic collapse in 2008 was a once in a lifetime bad deal.  Except for the once in a lifetime bad deal we're going though now.

ch 38 the notes app

John writes a lot of notes.  Mostly in the margins of books he's reading.  But in the modern era he often finds himself pen less and has turned to the iPhone notes app.  There's some fun ones with explanations in this chapter.

ch 39 the mountain goats

John likes the band the mountain goats.

ch 40 the qwerty keyboard

that was easy to type cause those letters are right next to each other.  The history of the qwerty keyboard is fun.  There used to be a bajillion different typewriter setups.  Almost all of them had jamming problems.  The thing that made the QWERTY keyboard better was that you were often switching hands as you typed and as such were less likely to have two of the hammers jam together.  The other thing is that the gun company bought the keyboard right after the civil war and flooded the market, basically putting all other keyboard companies out of business.

ch 41 the world's largest ball of paint

The world largest ball of paint started as a baseball tha that a guy and his son painted and then other people came around and painted it now its a HUGE roadside attraction.  John's thought is this is a metaphor for all art.  You do your part and then it kind of takes on a life of it's own as other people consuume it.  Yoh may think what you created was great,  but it takes a lot of luck for the circumstances to be right for your art to be well received.  The paint that the guy and h is son painted are under tons of layers of other paint, but that doesn't make it any less his art.

ch 42 Sycamore Trees

Life is meaningless.  But then you see a squirrel run up a sycamore tree and you think maybe its not all bad.

ch 43 new partner

New partner is a song john likes.  I guess its about love cause there's talk about love in this chapter.

ch 44 three farmers on their way to a dance

This photo is German.  Who knew?  The three young men on their way to a party are not farmers.  It's two iron miners and an office worker.  This photo was taken just before WW1.  All three of them served for the German army in WW1.  One of them died.

Altered carbon ch 37 - 42 ( the end )

 Ch 37

They're cleaning up the aftermath of the invasion of the fight club.  Ortega and Takeshi are talking about what must a guy like Carnage have prepar ed for backuo and restore when he gets RD'd.  Ortega says hes gotta habe people that can download his memories basically to the point of his death.  Takeshi counters with the theory that he might be better of with a week of missing memories if he was doing something really illegal.  Th cant interrogate you for memories you dpnt have.  He has a bit of an opifany and thunks he knows what really happeded to Boynton.  Jes gotta get to the cloud place.

chh 38 pg 317

Takeshi has been a naughty boy.  He made a copy of humslef in a badass ninja sleeve.  His first thought is that if being in this sleeve is wrong (cause earth is trying to make their import illegal 🚫 ) he doesnt wanna be right.  He has a long entertaining talk with himself.  

ch 39 pg 325

The plan is tha Takeshi in Ryker sleeve is gonna go bang miriam Bancroft again.  The ninja sleeve is gon na go do the attack on the ☁ cloud place.  Somehow this involves going with ortega to get drugs.  Allso everyine with Elliot getting in a virtual space created by Jimmy Hendricks.  

ch 40 pg 335

They do some awesome space age mission impossible stuff to get ninja Takeshi on the cloud unnoticed.  Ortega is basically a distraction talking to Kawahara about Takeshi. Takeshi witnesses some of the super illegal stuff the cloud gets so handsomely paid to keep hush hush and he kills the customer.

Ch 41 pg 345

Takeshi makes his way to Kawahara.  He has guns and he explains that elliit has corrupted her stack backup with a virus.  So if she wants to make it out of here alive, it'll be with a full confession, which he will record via a divise in his eye.  The rough stuff story is that the Meths are against this 653 law where they can bring dead people back to testify.  Right now Catholics are exempt.  Soo the meths pretty !uch only use Catholics for their snuff play.  I dont remeber the details but basically after Bancroft killed a Catholic girl who was given plastic surgery to look like his wiife, Kawahara told him about this whole conspiracy and framing Ryker and everything and he decided to kill h imself rather than get involved.

trepp shows up and shoots Takeshi.  The n she turns on Kawahara but Kawahara haas Takeshi gun and kills trepp.  Takeshi with his fancy ninja body is still alive and fights Kawahara.  Shhe ends u p ripping the recording device out of his eye,  but he has a tiny bomb in his hand and it s powerful enough to blow up the floor and the tw o of them start falling.

ch 42 pg 360

Takeshi visits a science lady and she confesses she injected one of Bancroft's clones with some chemical.  He then goes to Miriam and she confesses that Kawahara had her inject the clone knowing it would make his seed poisonous and as such the next person  he had sex with would die.  That's how they had him murder the Catholic girl to get the blackmail that didn't work.

altered carbon ch 31 through 36

Ch 31 pg 277.

They get an apartment and Irene does the virus.

Ch 32 pg 279

Tak convinces Bancroft of the virus story it seems.  As hes getting ready to leave he notices the telescope eyepiece has been wiped off.  It's focused on head in the clouds, a fancy pants 👖 airship.  He's gotta go investigate.   On the way out he tells Miriam Bancroft that the job is done and she and kawahara can relax cause larents won't be finding out the truth of what happened.

Ch 33 pg  285

Takeshi doesn't have any connection to the head in the clouds so he talks to someone that does.  After a bit of talking we are told this is the doctors head we're talking to.  He's pretty well conditioned.  So the questioning doesn't go well.  So Takeshi jumps out of the virtual and runs a torture program on the doctor.  I got the impression it was a deal where he made a copy of the doctor and had the doctor torture himself.  

Takeshi has a talk with the hotel.  About how long the torture is estimated to take before the doctor is likely to result in useful answers to Takeshi's questions.  Also about the legal ramifications of all this.  If the cops come looking for the doctor, the hotel will be bound to give them all the data.  They will find that the hotel was involved in the torture and the punishment for that can be up to total shutdown.  So basically the hotel is putting it's life on the line for Takeshi.

CH 34 pg 292

The hotel has broken the doctor.   It tells Takeshi it could put a fakw Takeshi in the simulation to keep the doctor company.  With this info Takeshi says, well if thats possible, just have the copy do the whole interogation.  Kadmin calls.  He's got Ortega.  Either Takeshi turns himself over to Kadmin or Ortega dies.  So like any self respecting hero he runs to save the damsel in distress and sacrifices himself.

CH 35 pg 299

Kadmin brings Takeshi to the fight barge.  There Carnage talks to Takeshi about how there's gonna be a fight and it will be broadcast and the appeal is that a lot of people know Ryker and want to see him die violently.

CH 36 303.

Kadmin is in a much more powerful sleeve.  Takeshi had no  chance of not dying.  But this isn't just a guy trying to kill another guy.  We've got lots of paying customers to entertain.  So kadmin takes Hus time.  Too much time cause the cavalry of Trepp and Ortega's partner Bautista show up to save Takeshi.

Babylon ashes ch 19 through 36

ch 19 pa pg 166

Pa and her ship captains are looking at their options now that they have left Marco and there arent a ton of them.  They decide joining up with Fred Johnson is the best move.  

ch 20 naomi pg 174

There's lots of bobbie and naomi talking about Pa.  Part of them want to welcome her back into the good OPA with open arms cause she was good people during the slow zone book.  But she did abandon fred and was more than happy to join up with Marco when he murdered a bunch of earthlings.  Holdens going.

ch 21 jakulski pg 182

jakulski is our eyes and ears on medina station.  Hes just a tech.  He gets suckered into being part of the welciming party for the martians that are coming back through the ring.  They built a ship on the other side and people are psyched to see it.  But now hes drinking woth the rest of the tech team and theyve a

L got different theories as to why the martians have decided to come back now.  Each more frightening than the one before.  Lots of doom and gloom around here.

ch 22 holden pg 189

Off they go to meet Pa.  Fred pulled all his people so it's our original four plus peaches and Bobbie.  They make there way to where Pa is and there's a bunch of ships and targeting lasers are active and it feels like they're hopelessly outnumbered but they're ready for a fight.   But Pa answers their hail and talking starts. 

ch 23 pa pg 198

Holden and pa are talking, she has a colony ship and Holden wants her to hand it over and she obliges.  Then mistles are headed their way.  The roci shoots them down.  There's a lot of talking about the existential crisis they're in.  Marco is coming after them and they don't have any assurance that anyone is going to welcome them into the warm honeyed bussom.

ch 24 prax pg 206

The free navy are walking around Ganymede with guns now.  Making it very clear they're in charge.  Prax is supposed to be uploading some data but instead finds himself watching two hours of Holdens videos from ceres and China and other places people live to show people that don't live there that we're all people.  Things kinda suck here politically speaking, but life is good for Prax and his family. 

ch 25 fred pg 213

Fred is going to meet woth other opa heads that didn't go over to Marco.  He is trying to keep it on the downlow so Marco doesn't find out about it and kill them all.  So he wants a ride there from holden.

ch 26 filip pg 221

Marco found the Rosinante heading from Ceres to Tyco.  They're pretty sure fred is on that ship .  They're gonna go take them out.

ch 27 bobbie pg 228

Marco has three ships to their one.  On one hand this seems real bad.  The analogy to show maybe its not soo bad is a guy with the football running ahead of a pack of defenders.   Doesn't really matter how many guys are chasing you,  if they can't catch you, you're likely to score the touchdown.   But bobbie likes to fight so we're fighting.  They get some help from ceres and one of Marcos ships splits off to deal with that.  The roci is trying to shoot missles and anti missle bullets at Marco but eventually they will lose that battle because thyre still out gunned.  Except that the Roci has a rail gun.  After some fancy flying by Alex and fancy shooting by Bobbie, they win the fight.

ch 28 holden pg 236

All that fancy maneuvering had a cost. Fred had a stroke and died.  It's almost as bad as if they'd been blown up.  Getting Fred to Tyco alive was they mission and they failed.

ch 29 Avasarala pg 244

Avasarala is overwhelmed by everything.   Getting the message from holden that fred is dead was a crushing blow.  A bit of an ego crushing blow.  She tells her assistant Said (sai eed nen an en ji bad.  It's not that difficult.   Why can't anyone in this country properly pronounce my name) to cancel everything.   He lets her grand daughter  (who she had been avoiding) come in so she can take part in the emotional pain.   She straightens up and sends a return message to Holden.  You get your sorry ass to Tycho Station and make this work.

ch 30 Filip pg 252

Marcos is blaming philip for their losing the fight to holden.  It's standard Marco bullshit.  If he loses he tries to remessage it as a win for his master plan and if he cant do that he finds a scapegoat.  In this case, Philip was the gunner, so it's  his fault they lost the fight.

ch 31 pa pg 260

Nico Sanjrani, chief economist of the belt comes to talk to Pa.  He lays out the plans he had to develop the infrastructure the belt would need to survive without earth.  Then he tellls her tjat Marco didn't follow through with any of it and they've got three years til everything goes to shit.  She asks what They need to do now.  He doesn't know.  I guess he just wanted to share his panic with someone. 

Holden calls to beg Pa for help.

ch 32 Vandercast pg 268

Vandercast works with jakulski from chapter 21.  Vandercast is in jail on medina station getting interrogated about some ships that came back from the other side of a ring all at once trying to attack medina station.   It dodnt work out.  The railguns Nd station defenses did their job real good and all the attacking ships were destroyed. After a bit more interrogation and isolation a group in free navy uniforms comes along to tell him hes free to go.  He goes back ro work.  Turns out he was gone for threee days.  The free navy reports they found the mole that helped the colonists plan their attack.  Vandercast thinks maybe not, maybe it's just a scapegoat. 

ch 33 holden pg 276

There's 5 belter higher ups for the meeting.   Four invitees and Anderson dawes,  former governor or. Ceres.  Pa recorded a video for an introduction to holden. Holden  l a imz frex hD a plan.   If you wann hear it, come back in 20 hours.  You're free to leave before then.  If you tske part in the planning meeting,  you're in and won't be free anymore.

ch 34 dawes pg 284

Despite being kicked out of the belter planning party cause he qasnt invited, Dawes is going around campaigning for Holden.  Talking to everyone who was invited and telling them what they need to hear un order to get them on Holden 's side so they can take this stand against Marco.

ch 35 Amos 292

Amos has a simple straightforward relationship with sex.  Its a thung he needs to do every now and then.  Whhen he feels the nit having had sex for too long tention has built up too much he goes to a whorehouse to release the tension.  The main benefit of down ng it this way is that after first sexual encounter re

Eases the tensuon, he sleeps super good.  But its not working.  Something about those missles in the battle against the three free navy ships is bothering him.  So he goes to talk to Holden.  They had a direct hit with one of those missiles.  But it didnt go off.  Holden tells him its cause he shut them off.  Filip was on one of those ships and Holden wasn't gonna kill Naomi's kid if he could avoid it.  Amos is ok with that.  But then he has to ask holden if maybe thats a sign that he's not the man for the job of replacing Fred, the butcher, Johnson.  Holden knows he's not, but he's gonna try anyway.

ch 36 Filip pg 300

Filip is on whatever place they're on right now and he's having some noodles and a beer.  He feels very alone.  Some guy fr the ship comes to talk about his feelings.  Its hard, father son relationship.  Especially when you work on a spaceship together.  Ship guy says he and his dad almost always settled their beefs via physical violence.  

But Marco's not just dad.  He's president or wjayeber of the free navy can't have a fight with the free navy head to squash dad beef.  On the news feed Fred Johnsons death is annniunced.  They go back to the shio and its party time.  Some drunk girl kisses Filip.  Marco gives a speech and he's all "we did it."  Filip is hurt by this.  When they lost the fight to the Rosi, its filips failure.  When Fred Johnson dies because the ship that Filip was shooting at had to make maneaubers that cause Fred to have a stroke Filip doesn't get the credit, its just "we" did it.  

Altered carbon ch 25 through 30

Ch 25 pg 221 Tak gos to europe with Trepp and meets someone in a basillica. Said person's name is Kawahara amd they're another d ch and powerful like Bancroft. Kawahara tells Tak to convince Bancroft he killed himself. They offer money and when Tak refuses they turn to threats. Remember Sarah from the beginning of the book? Kawahara has her and if Tak doesn't do what they want they're going to put her in a bpdy and torture her. 

 ch 26 pg 231 Trepp wants to party and Tak is down. So they do eye drop meth and get super duper high. Tak says hes gonna go back to bay city and do what Kawahara told him to do. 

 Ch 27 pg 241 Tak and Ortega have sex 

 CH 28 pg 250 They're ona boat. It's Rykers boat. He got it working a case in Australia. There the cops are often private contractors that have get paid in spoils from the person that they arrest. This is illegal in bay city. The point of this story is to remind Tak that Ryker was a dirty cop even if he wasnt guilty of what he got.put away for. Annd so is Ortega cause she beat up kadmin. Now Tak is gonna do some sort of qhore house investigation to help. Onvince Bancroft that he killed himself. 

 ch 29 pg 255 Tak's plan is to convunce Bancroft he got a computer virus from a whore house and he kiLed himself an hour before his backup to prevent his backup from getting infected. He has Kawahara get a hold of auch a virus and tak is gonna create the fake paper trail. Hes also havong Kawahara get someone named Elliot off the stacks amd into a body. 

 ch 30 pg 266

Irene Elliot is the mother of one of the sex workers that Bancroft ruined.  She's gonna plant the virus at a virtual whorwhouse.  Tak takes her to hang out with her husband for a while before she does the deal.  Tak and Trepp have some coffee and make small talk that serves as more world building about the corps.

The anthropocene reviewed CH 15 academic decathalan through ch 29 monopoly

 Ch 15 academic decathlon n

John went to an alamaba boarding school.  He's a smart kid tjays ba d at school.  His friend Todd is a smart kid thats good at school.the academic decathalon has a set up where you have 3 a stufents 3 b students anf 3 c studemts.  Todd was an a stude t anf john was a c student.  John Domi nated agasi t c stufents.  Fun childhood memory.

chCHh 16 sunsets

The sun is your only God

ch 17 Jerzy Dudek's perfornace on may 25, 2005

Jerzy dudeck is a polish goalie.  He grew up in a mining town amd got his start on his mining companies team.  Then he went semi pro.  Then he signed on with a dutch team and eventually did well enough to make a living at it.  Reading this i had no idea what the year was.  It was 1995.  So it shouldn't be a huge surprise thay jerzy as one of the best goalkeepers in Europe got a multimillion pound contract to play for Liverpool.  Where this goes into 2005 is when pope john paul, a fellow Pole, died on the day of the European final between Liverpool and Milan.  This messed up jerzy something fierce cause a polish pope doesnt happen that often and he was one of Jerzy's heros.  So it shouldn't be a huge surprise that he did not play well in the first half of the game and Liverpool went down 3-0.  But Jerzy got it together and they came back to win the game.    The part of this that is great to think about in the middle of a global pandemic is that eventually we will feel.comfortable going to sports in person.  I sure hope it's by next summer cause id really like to go back to the NBA summer league.

ch 18 penguins of madagascar

The opening scene of the penguins of Madagascar is remarkable because the boom operator sends our three heros into their life of adventure by nudging them off a cliff.  This is true to reality because the myth that lemmings run off cliffs en mass is based on a documentary where the film maker trapped a bunch of lemmings, put them in a dump truck 🚚and dumped them off a cliff.  What a bunch of assholes.

ch 19 piggly wiggly

The piggly wiggly was the first supermarket in the 1920s.  The way groceries used to work was you gave your grocer a list of what you wanted and they went and got it.  It was mainly fresh food and there weren't many brand names.  The piggly wiggly changed all that cause people picked their own food.  One side effect was cheaper prices and more processed foods with brand names.  It was hugely successful.  But the owner was a real dick and there were some walstreet shenhannegans amd he lost the chain and declared bankruptcy.  He ended up a!king a second fortune with a supermarket chain he named after himself, Clarence Saunders, sole owner of my name.  He also had a super successful football team he also named after himself.  But like a lot of people, he lost everything in the depression.

ch 20  thenatan's famous hot dog eating contest

Eating contests are gross.  The 4th of july nathans hotdog eating contest is the grossest.  And i guess also racist.

ch 21 cnn

John thinks cnn talks too much about what's new and not enough about the circumstances that led to the current news.

ch 22 harvey

Thus is the movie where jimmy Stuart is mentally ill and has an imaginary friend named Harvey who's a man-sized bunny 🐇.  John's first serious bout with depression came when he was young in Chicago.  He couldn't eat, he just drinks sprite.  He tells his boss he's gotta go home to Orlando to figure it out.  He tells him his job will be waiting for him when he comes back.  He also tells him to watch Harvey.  He ended up coming back in a couple 💑 months.  

ch 23 the yips

Rick Ankiel was a pitcher.  He got the yips, a sudden unexplainable loss of your ability to do some sort of athletic skill.  Like pitching accurately or serving in Tennis.  Rick s career as a pitcher was over.  But he came back as an outfielder. Good for him

ch 24 auld lang syne

It's a good song about remembering old friends.  One such old friend of John is a lady named Amy who helped him get his writing career going by giving him little writing gigs for radio.  She died and John doesn't feel like he handled it well.  But he thinks of her when he sings the song.

ch 25 googling strangers

John likes to google strangers that he knows will be going to the same party as him.  He's often astonished that he can basically learn everything there is to know about a person by googling them.  John did a stint as a hospital chaplain back when he was considering going to divinity school.  The worst experience he had was with a little boy who had serious burns.  He always assumed the boy had died because the ER doctor was pretty sure he wouldn't make it when he got sent up to the ICU.  But John googled him recently.  Turns out he's still alive.

ch 26 Indianapolis

You gotta live somewhere.  But Indianapolis isn't so bad.  Even when compared to New York where John came from.  His neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and his yard requires too much maintenance, but it's one of the most economic and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in America.  His neighbor Chris told him to google it.  We know John likes to google.  He did and it is.  Not too shabby.

ch 27 Kentucky bluegrass

This chapter is all about lawn maintenance.  John doesnt like it.  Its very wasteful.  This chapter makes me think i should replace my front lawn with planters.  I water my lawn so its nice for my dog to walk on.

ch 28 the Indianapolis 500

Car racing huh?  Allso buke riding amd coolers with water and beer.

ch 29 monopoly

This is about the board game monopoly.  How it accurately shows that as time goes n capitalism ends up with a consolidation of wealth.  It speaks of the history of the invention of the game.  How a lady invented it to show the ills of capitalism and she didn't make any money from it.  She just shared it with her friends for fun and over time the game evolved.  The guy that got rich off it did so because he patented it and was then able to sell it and became a millionaire.