I was here at my desk this morning cleaning it off and I found underneath some things the book that I have most recently finished reading, Polostan, by Neal Stephenson. The thing about reading N. Stephenson is usually the massive investment involved due to their typical length but in this case he has divvied up a saga to into multiple releases. I picked it up at SFO at Christmastime last year, forgetting, actually, that I had put it on the wishlist I gave my parents (don’t do that). Yes, I liked it, as I usually do with his work. The whole time I was reading it though I was trying to reconcile it and then eventually to disconnect, the title with the Trumpistan moniker that a lot of people I know and/or read gave to the sinking-feeling glimpse of near-future United States in Fall. Which I also really recommend. A few weeks now in hindsight I also realize that the book reminded me of a Russian book I read nearly ten years ago, Happy Moscow.

Something else to mention is that Stephenson has a Substack, and I think it’s free. And he released an article this week which I have not set down with but that I scanned when it first came in – considering AI as one of many intelligences that humans already share the world with, and contemplating a the humans-eyelid mites relationship as a possible model for the AI-humans relationship. I’ll need to read it.

I read a lot of things this week, one of which was this article about the potentially very strong influences that siblings have on each other in their developing years. Nature versus nurture research, but in the past that’s usually focused on the influence that parents have on their children. Thought provoking and worth a read.

Lastly I’m preparing for the spring show the cover band I play in will do later this month. Sultans of Swing is on our setlist and I’ve found in rehearsals that everyone in the group wants to do it this way, but I want to do it this way. Study in contrasts. No, we don’t have a sax player.