For dragon enthusiasts
I mentioned I didn’t know if the free ebook promotion for Mara was permanent or like a rental.
It’s permanent. I just checked, and I’ve got it through the account. So if you want Mara for free, Mara and the Trolls will be free again at the end of this month.
Also the paperback is going back to full price, $14.99 on Feb 1st, so if you want a tangible book to hold in your hand, it’s three bucks off now.
I enjoyed the context more than the story. It’s only one scene, and the murders happen off camera. The narration isn’t that exciting. But I like seeing where Cassandra comes from, the history of violence that begins with Atreus, and the nature of the phrophecies.
The story is sort of nonsensical. Imagine a musical where instead of silly and building into song, they’re tragic, devolve into song, and then they start murdering each other. It’s musical melodrama.
I really liked Carlos from the 2006 Casino Royale. That guy was excellent.
North is up
The St James Lowlands are a protrusion of continental crust stuck to the Fhysay oceanic plate. To the west of the Fhysay/Arsae subduction zone lies the St James subcontinent, called the Hashash (Icelands) in Whitehall and Morrun Vie (Vanishing Land) in Thangrodom. In Tharsi, it is the Hurror (Suffering Cold). The subcontinent effectively makes the Doon plateau.
Extending some five hundred leagues north of the plateau in a wide teardrop shape, the lowlands are broad alluvial plains. Mostly flat, the highest point of the lowlands is about two hundred feet above sea level if one eliminates the Doonish foothills. Some few islands lie off the coasts, almost entirely runoff and sandbars. In the winder, the west side of the lowlands is often icelocked. The east side is occasionally icelocked, but the prevailing currents swing wide north around the teardrop, sheltering the east. This creates polynya north of the goblinmounts where immense numbers of arctic wildlife, walrus, penguins, seals, etc. shelter from the winter.
Not in all years does this polynya form. In particularly cold winters, ice will push as far south as the Invedeletch coast. This is a 1% event, but results in immense hardship for the aquatic animals. Such freezes are called ‘Dyings’ by goblins.
The north coast of the goblin lands is an oceanic seacrust/seacrust subduction zone where the Fhysay crust is subducted under the Arsae crust. The obducting Arsae crust is pushed up, forming the goblinmounts themselves. This is a young and highly active boundary. The mountains aren’t tall compared to the neighboring Doon, but are extremely steep. Strong upthrust lifts them constantly, but strong weathering from the northern winds and storms cuts them down at the same time. The result is a rocky, barren mountain range with deep erosion cut valleys. There are relatively few signs of glaciation at lower altitudes and northern extrema, but at higher and more southerly peaks, glaciation is extremely common. Mountains that border the Shaggheritach are often horns, separated by U-shaped valleys unlike the Vs further north.
Pool’s open. That’s nice.
Sometimes, when life gets me down and I need a little pick-me-up, I go stand outside in the rain to let a stranger stick a Q-tip up my nose. It’s just what I do. They swirl it around for a little while. Some are steady-handed, and some get a little squirrelly. Those swabbings wake me up like coffee never will.
I can’t take that away from the medical professionals. They look so happy to be in a little tent for eight hours a day, swaddled to the gills, and spending hours of their lives sticking Q-tips up noses. I feel like we have a bond, and that really keeps me going.
The ice cream place on Pearl St lists their hours as
Sun – Thu: 10am – 10pm
Fri – Sat: 10am – 10pm
Sorta weird.
As things stand right now, I’m scheduled to get the Covid vaccine sometime in the summer.
Let me begin with: okay. If that’s the way it is, getting a vaccine within a year and a half of vaccine research starting is amazing. No complaints.
There are some rumors floating around that vaccines may be opened to everyone sooner. The train of logic is that only vaccinating the most at risk adds a choke point, so in order to get the most doses into arms, vaccinating everyone who might want it may be faster. More vaccinations lead to fewer deaths, hospitalizations, and infections, in order of importance, so open vaccinations might be safer for those at the highest risk than giving it to the highest risk population exclusively. While 90% vaccination/infection rates may be required for herd immunity, how significant are the damping factors of 10% herd immunity? 20%? 30%?
This is all speculation though. We don’t know, and the information to make these estimates as more that WAGs doesn’t exist. We also don’t know how significant that choke point is. Can we vaccinate the most at risk and other people without slowing down vaccinations for the high risk populations? I read a lot of people arguing with each other over this and don’t really think anyone knows. I don’t. In the US, the vaccine has been available for about a month. That isn’t a whole lot of time to extrapolate best practices for 330 million-ish people.
On an unrelated note, don’t you think the Underarmor athletic mask looks like a jockstrap for your face?