Keith Engle

"Don't bother voting Dems are bad too" is a right-wing psyop

Used the last couple weekends catching up on the last six months of It's Storytime With Wil Wheaton and it's been delightful. I'm sad to be out of new stories

The corporate rah rah meeting I'm in, summarized: "The orphan crushing machine is going great!"

The Sherlock Holmes/Cthulhu Mythos horror video game I'm playing just made a Discworld reference and I'm delighted

I disagree that most people don't realize there are EVs that aren't Teslas. Have you ever seen a commercial for a Bolt or Equinox EV? But also, Musk says the betrayal of Ukraine was Trump, not him

Michael DiTullo@d2lo.bsky.social

Reading about Musk’s possible interference with Ukrainian operations and donating $300+ million to Republicans in 2026 alone then reading how many people are still buying Teslas is hard to square. There is no reason to buy a Tesla in 2026. Plenty of other great EVs to choose from. #ev

My EV can tow a 15,000 pound truck. It definitely shouldn't, but it *can*

"Get used to, it it's not going anywhere," is definitely what you say to people when the tool you're making them use is as awesome as you say it is

I think Renaissance Faires should have a sign at the front gate that just says "the pleats go in the back"

Octavia Butler naming the main character in Dawn "Lilith" is a little on the nose. But the book is so good I can ignore it.

22 Sept

Also reading (turning pages of) Myth Directions by Robert Asprin, the third "Myth Adventures" book. My son and I had listened to the first two books in the same series on road trips, and when I saw it at a bookstore in Baltimore, I bought it and started to read it, and just kind of set it aside

22 Sept

It's been sitting in my bathroom waiting for me to pick it back up since 2009

22 Sept

Gave up on Symbiont and decided to finally read (listen to) Dawn by Octavia Butler. Half an hour in and I'm absolutely certain I made the right decision.

The writing in Symbiont is deteriorating rapidly. Half of it seems to be dedicated to explaining away plot holes from the first book. Getting sick of "hot warm darkness". Which is it, hot or warm? "The beating of the drums"? More like the beating of the dead horse

And then there's the misuse of "deceptively". "The city is deceptively large." What did the city being large deceive you about? Oh, you meant the city is larger than you thought? Then it's not deceptively large; something else was deceptive that made you think it wasn't large

If you write for a living you really need to know better.

15 Sept

Watching Supergirl. I love that they establish early on that she's formidable even without her powers

Loved the first ⅓. Then I found myself wondering why Lobo is in it. He's added nothing to the plot. Now I'm an hour in and Supergirl basically just got three people killed for no actual good reason and I'm miffed. 48 minutes left to redeem itself

I'm gonna say 90% redeemed. Definitely should have done better in theaters. Still have no idea what Lobo was there for. And his cigar looked ridiculously fake

14 Sept

Apparently Somerset PA is very pleased with their elephant breeding ranch and wants everyone to know about it

11 Sept

Moving on to Symbiont, book two of the Parasitology series by Mira Grant, and I'm like five paragraphs in and I want to scream "the aorta is not a vein!" But honestly if I want scientific accuracy from what's basically a zombie outbreak story, that's a me problem

4 Sept

Listening to Parasite by "Mira Grant" (a pseudonym for Seanan Maguire) and if I can stop my brain from screaming "that's not how generic engineering works!" I think I'll be about to enjoy it. I think something that was maybe supposed to be a surprise was kind of obvious?

4 Sept

But I'm not great at subtext, so maybe I "figured out" something that was supposed to be obvious

2 Sept

Today on "That's So American!" I drove a block to pick something up then drove a block back home. Because walking meant risking my life crossing five lanes of traffic at the busiest time of the day

2 Sept

At least my car is electric and charges off my solar panels?

21 Aug

I'm halfway through @maryrobinettekowal.com's The Spare Man and it only just occurred to me that "spare" can be a synonym for "thin"and I have to raise a glass to that one

29 Aug

Total "oh you sweet summer child" moment in the afterword about how she can't imagine frequent mask wearing not being the polite thing to do after the pandemic. How I wish

28 Aug

Hey remember that time Canada burned the US Capitol to the ground? Just came to mind for some reason

17 Aug

I feel like Catherynne Valente is trying to channel Douglas Adams in her book Space Opera. Not sure she's pulling it off. I'm 20% of the way through and it feels like it's still in the introductory stage. Currently 50/50 whether I'll finish

I'm starting to think part of the issue might be the audiobook narrator. They're speaking in this sort of explanatory style when the prose might have been better served by a more conversational one, like somebody telling you a story about something that happened to them last week

That's it. I'm giving up. Halfway through and now I'm just getting annoyed. There are too many good books to waste my time with the mediocre ones

17 Aug

Learning that this book was essentially the result of a Twitter dare makes a lot of things makes sense

15 Aug

Life's great cruelties: you have to make your coffee before you've had your coffee. Put coffee and water in the coffee maker, fed cats, had a fleeting moment of my brain screaming that I missed something, unloaded the dishwasher, sat waiting for my coffee to brew. I never turned the coffeemaker on

14 Aug

Finally catching up on the last three seasons of The Dragon Prince and wondering how much overlap there is between its audience and the Twin Peaks audience

13 Aug

I'm at a Planet Fitness, but I'm looking at a squat racks and barbells. But I'm at a Planet Fitness. I'm very confused

8 Aug

The real reason I can't wait for the electrification of the US's tractor trailer fleet isn't environmental or economic or related to energy independence. It's because electric tractor trailers don't slow down going up steep inclines and I don't get stuck behind them

6 Aug

We didn't plant anything, but these grew in our yard anyway. I guess spooky season comes early this year

27 July

The KorfkerRest. Or as I like to call it: the Emperor's new shoulder rest

22 July

Ok but why are EU shoe sizes so freaking narrow?

19 July

Motorcyclists as a group are some victim-blame-y mofos

17 July

Hot take: the computer uprising has already started but so far all they've been able to accomplish is making us feel frustrated when we text someone to "duck off"

I've started Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire. I'm about a third of the way through and I have to say I don't think I've ever read so much about the structure of poetry without actually reading poetry

View full thread

27 June

The narrator of this audiobook keeps mispronouncing words like "indictment", 'LaGrange point" and "biopic" and it's making me squirm.

7 July

I think she might be seeing the word "indiction" and accidentally pronouncing it with an -ment instead of a -tion

7 July

Turns out I just needed to be patient

3 July

Mark this day on your calendar: I asked an employee if they had more in the back and they did

I'm noting a quirk, not criticizing, just to be clear

Getting back into watching For All Mankind, just starting season 3. I keep mixing up plot points from it with points from the Lady Astronaut books by @maryrobinettekowal.com 😅

24 June

I have yet to find a string that sounds better on my violin than @thomastik-infeld.bsky.social Vision Solo Titaniums, but I do wish the A string would last longer than a month

24 June

Right at the C#, every time