Conceptual modeling
🙂
I got through some Munzner reading and decided to pause and analyze what I’d seen so far, and I came up with some ideas that I haven’t recorded, but then I got sidetracked by other issues–the questions of (1) what activities count as modeling and (2) which additional academic and professional fields I should draw from for modeling insights. I decided to come to some kind of resolution on those before returning to my infographic study.
Along related lines, my spooky audiobook listening this month has been interrupted by Model-Driven Software Engineering in Practice by Marco Brambilla, Jordi Cabot, and Manuel Wimmer. I’d known about it for a while without really understanding what it was about, but after one of the authors wrote a blog post that basically expressed what I’m trying to do with this project, I decided I needed to jump in and induct myself into the MDSE community by reading the book, and hopefully I can find ways to participate.
Futurism
🤔
The futurism group met for one of our free-form discussions, and at my end of the table we talked about the articles one of our members had posted in the event comments, which centered around dataism (Wikipedia on dataism; is tech evolution inevitable?); climate change (a new warning and new messaging from scientists); and the shift from democracy to dictatorship (the effectiveness of Trump’s brazenness; the benefits and drawbacks of Fox News for Trump). In our discussion he brought up the good question of what we’d do with all the extra heat from fusion power if we’re trying to reduce global warming, so I might look into that.
Experimental literature
🙂
I finished the Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, kind of a slog for me toward the end but still interesting and worthwhile. My eventual goal is to take a bunch of notes on it so my links list can become an annotated bibliography that will give people reasons to read the works. In the meantime I appreciate just having a better sense of the overall subject.
Fiction
🙂
For my creepy October stories, I started with Evil Eye by Madhuri Shekar, a short one I picked up on Audible a while back. It’s performed as a drama in the form of phone conversations between an Indian woman in America and her overseas parents, centered around her dating life (or lack of it). Things start out normal and then slowly spiral into the darkness. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was immediately engaging, enjoyable, and somehow relatable, even though it was largely outside my experience, and it kept me listening.
After that I started Experimental Film by Gemma Files, which will apparently be supernatural horror once I’m far enough, but I got temporarily sidetracked by the MDSE book. Experimental Film is a little lecturey so far and harder to get into than Evil Eye, but it’s fun to have something like a bonus chapter to RCEL, and I was pleased to find that a discussion of the avant garde felt familiar to me rather than alien.
Movies
🙂
Sunday I saw the movie Ad Astra with Tim, and despite the questionable science of the plot, the setting felt plausible and fed the part of me that wants to see us colonize the solar system. It even fit in some realistic-feeling action scenarios. But the point of the story was the main character’s personal journey, and the film handled it thoughtfully.
I’d like to see Ad Astra eventually. Haven’t seen a movie since I saw the Downton Abbey movie.