Most of us carry cell phones with us almost everywhere we go. So much so that we often forget not just the usefulness, but even the joy, of having our own radios. For instance:

• When traveling to national parks or other wilderness areas, family and friends can keep in touch even where there is no cell coverage.
• It is a lot faster to just push a button and start talking than it is to unlock a phone, open the phone app, select a person, wait for the call to connect, wait for the other person to answer, etc. I m heading back. OK. Boom, 5 seconds, done. A phone user wouldn t have even dialed in that time.
• A whole group of people can be on the same channel.
• You can often buy a radio for less than the monthly cost of a cell plan.

From my own experience, as a person and a family that enjoys visiting wilderness areas, having radio communication is great. I have also heard from others that they re also very useful on cruise ships (I ve never been on one so I can t attest to that). There is also a sheer satisfaction in not needing anybody else s infrastructure, not paying any sort of monthly fee, and setting up the radios ourselves.

How these services fit in This article is primarily about handheld radios that can be used by anybody. I laid out some of their advantages above. Before continuing, I should point out some of the other services you may consider:

• Cell phones, obviously. Due to the impressive infrastructure you pay for each month (many towers in high locations), in areas of cell coverage, you have this ability to connect to so many other phones around the world. With radios like discussed here, your range will likely a few miles.
• Amateur Radio has often been a decade or more ahead of what you see in these easy personal radio devices. You can unquestionably get amateur radio devices with many more features and better performance. However, generally speaking, each person that transmits on an amateur radio band must be licensed. Getting an amateur radio license isn t difficult, but it does involve passing a test and some time studying for the exam. So it isn t something you can count on random friends or family members being able to do. That said, I have resources on Getting Started With Amateur Radio and it s not as hard as you might think! There are also a lot of reasons to use amateur radio if you want to go down that path.
• Satellite messengers such as the Garmin Inreach or Zoleo can send SMS-like messages across anywhere in the globe with a clear view of the sky. They also often have SOS features. While these are useful safety equipment, it can take many minutes for a message to be sent and received it s not like an interactive SMS conversation and there are places where local radios will have better signal. Notably, satellite messengers are almost useless indoors and can have trouble in areas without a clear view of the sky, such as dense forests, valleys, etc.
• My earlier Roundup of secure messengers with off-the-grid capabilities (distributed/mesh messengers) highlighted a number of other options as well, for text-only communication. For instance:
  • For very short-range service, Briar can form a mesh over Bluetooth from cell phones or over Tor, if Internet access is available.
  • Dedicated short message services Mesh Networks like Meshtastic or Beartooth have no voice capability, but share GPS locations and short text messages over their own local mesh. Generally they need to pair to a cell phone (even if that phone has no cell service) for most functionality.
• Yggdrasil can do something similar over ad-hoc Wifi, but it is a lower-level protocol and you d need some sort of messaging to run atop it.

This article is primarily about the USA, though these concepts, if not the specific implementation, apply many other areas as well.

The landscape of easy personal radios The oldest personal radio service in the US is Citizens Band (CB). Because it uses a lower frequency band than others, handheld radios are larger, heavier, and less efficient. It is mostly used in vehicles or other installations where size isn t an issue. The FRS/GMRS services mostly share a set of frequencies. The Family Radio Service is unlicensed (you don t have to get a license to use it) and radios are plentiful and cheap. When you get a blister pack or little radios for maybe $50 for a pair or less, they re probably FRS. FRS was expanded by the FCC in 2017, and now most FRS channels can run up to 2 watts of power (with channels 8-14 still limited to 0.5W). FRS radios are pretty much always handheld. GMRS runs on mostly the same frequencies as FRS. GMRS lets you run up to 5W on some channels, up to 50W on others, and operate repeaters. GMRS also permits limited occasional digital data bursts; three manufacturers currently use this to exchange GPS data or text messages. To use GMRS, you must purchase a GMRS license; it costs $35 for a person and their immediate family and is good for 10 years. No exam is required. GMRS radios can transmit on FRS frequencies using the GMRS authorization. The extra power of GMRS gets you extra distance. While only the best handheld GMRS radios can put out 5W of power, some mobile (car) or home radios can put out the full 50W, and use more capable exterior antennas too. There is also the MURS band, which offers very few channels and also very few devices. It is not in wide use, probably for good reason. Finally, some radios use some other unlicensed bands. The Motorola DTR and DLR series I will talk about operate in the 900MHz ISM band. Regulations there limit them to a maximum power of 1W, but as you will see, due to some other optimizations, their range is often quite similar to a 5W GMRS handheld. All of these radios share something in common: your radio can either transmit, or receive, but not both simultaneously. They all have a PTT (push-to-talk) button that you push and hold while you are transmitting, and at all other times, they act as receivers. You ll learn that doubling is a thing where 2 or more people attempt to transmit at the same time. To listeners, the result is often garbled. To the transmitters, they may not even be aware they did it since, after all, they were transmitting. Usually it will be clear pretty quickly as people don t get responses or responses say it was garbled. Only the digital Motorola DLR/DTR series detects and prevents this situation.

FRS and GMRS radios As mentioned, the FRS/GMRS radios are generally the most popular, and quite inexpensive. Those that can emit 2W will have pretty decent range; 5W even better (assuming a decent antenna), though the 5W ones will require a GMRS license. For the most part, there isn t much that differentiates one FRS radio from another, or (with a few more exceptions) one GMRS handheld from another. Do not believe the manufacturers claims of 50 mile range or whatever; more on range below. FRS and GMRS radios use FM. GMRS radios are permitted to use a wider bandwidth than FRS radios, but in general, FRS and GMRS users can communicate with each other from any brand of radio to any other brand of radio, assuming they are using basic voice services. Some FRS and GMRS radios can receive the NOAA weather radio. That s nice for wilderness use. Nicer ones can monitor it for alert tones, even when you re tuned to a different channel. The very nicest on this as far as I know, only the Garmin Rino series will receive and process SAME codes to only trigger alerts for your specific location. GMRS (but not FRS) also permits 1-second digital data bursts at periodic intervals. There are now three radio series that take advantage of this: the Garmin Rino, the Motorola T800, and BTech GMRS-PRO. Garmin s radios are among the priciest of GMRS handhelds out there; the top-of-the-line Rino will set you back $650. The cheapest is $350, but does not contain a replaceable battery, which should be an instant rejection of a device like this. So, for $550, you can get the middle-of-the-road Rino. It features a sophisticated GPS system with Garmin trail maps and such, plus a 5W GMRS radio with GPS data sharing and a very limited (13-character) text messaging system. It does have a Bluetooth link to a cell phone, which can provide a link to trail maps and the like, and limited functionality for the radio. The Rino is also large and heavy (due to its large map-capable screen). Many consider it to be somewhat dated technology; for instance, other ways to have offline maps now exist (such as my Garmin Fenix 6 Pro, which has those maps on a watch!). It is bulky enough to likely be left at home in many situations. The Motorola T800 doesn t have much to talk about compared to the other two. Both of those platforms are a number of years old. The newest entrant in this space, from budget radio maker Baofeng, is the BTech GMRS-PRO, which came out just a couple of weeks ago. Its screen, though lacking built-in maps, does still have a GPS digital link similar to Garmin s, and can show you a heading and distance to other GMRS-PRO users. It too is a 5W unit, and has a ton of advanced features that are rare in GMRS: ability to pair a Bluetooth headset to it directly (though the Garmin Rino supports Bluetooth, it doesn t support this), ability to use the phone app as a speaker/mic for the radio, longer text messages than the Garmin Rino, etc. The GMRS-PRO sold out within a few days of its announcement, and I am presently waiting for mine to arrive to review. At $140 and with a more modern radio implementation, for people that don t need the trail maps and the like, it makes a compelling alternative to Garmin for outdoor use. Garmin documents when GPS beacons are sent out: generally, when you begin a transmission, or when another radio asks for your position. I couldn t find similar documentation from Motorola or BTech, but I believe FCC regulations mean that the picture would be similar with them. In other words, none of these devices is continuously, automatically, transmitting position updates. However, you can request a position update from another radio. It should be noted that, while voice communication is compatible across FRS/GMRS, data communication is not. Garmin, Motorola, and BTech all have different data protocols that are incompatible with radios from other manufacturers. FRS/GMRS radios often advertise privacy codes. These do nothing to protect your privacy; see more under the privacy section below.

Motorola DLR and DTR series Although they can be used for similar purposes, and I do, these radios are unique from the others in this article in several ways:

• Their sales and marketing is targeted at businesses rather than consumers
• They use digital encoding of audio, rather than analog FM or AM
• They use FHSS (Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum) rather than a set frequency
• They operate on the 900MHz ISM band, rather than a 460MHz UHF band (or a lower band yet for MURS and CB)
• The DLR series is quite small, smaller than many GMRS radios.

I don t have space to go into a lot of radio theory in this article, but I ll briefly expand on some of this. First, FHSS. A FHSS radio hops from frequency to frequency many times per second, following some preset hopping algorithm that is part of the radio. Although it complicates the radio design, it has some advantages; it tends to allow more users to share a band, and if one particular frequency has a conflict with something else, it will be for a brief fraction of a second and may not even be noticeable. Digital encoding generally increases the quality of the audio, and keeps the quality high even in degraded signal conditions where analog radios would experience static or a quieter voice. However, you also lose that sort of audible feedback that your signal is getting weak. When you get too far away, the digital signal drops off a cliff . Often, either you have a crystal-clear signal or you have no signal at all. Motorola s radios leverage these features to build a unique radio. Not only can you talk to a group, but you can select a particular person to talk to with a private conversation, and so forth. DTR radios can send text messages to each other (but only preset canned ones, not arbitrary ones). Channels are more like configurations; they can include various arbitrary groupings of radios. Deconfliction with other users is established via hopsets rather than frequencies; that is, the algorithm that it uses to hop from frequency to frequency. There is a 4-digit PIN in the DLR radios, and newer DTR radios, that makes privacy very easy to set up and maintain. As far as I am aware, no scanner can monitor DLR/DTR signals. Though they technically aren t encrypted, cracking a DLR/DTR conversation would require cracking Motorola s firmware, and the chances of this happening in your geographical proximity seem vanishingly small. I will write more below on comparing the range of these to GMRS radios, but in a nutshell, it compares well, despite the fact that the 900MHz band restrictions allow Motorola only 1W of power output with these radios. There are three current lines of Motorola DLR/DTR radios:

• The Motorola DLR1020 and DLR1060 radios. These have no screen; the 1020 has two channels (configurations) while the 1060 supports 6. They are small and compact and great pocketable just work radios.
• The Motorola DTR600 and DTR700 radios. These are larger, with a larger antenna (that should theoretically provide greater range) and have a small color screen. They support more channels and more features (eg, short messages, etc).
• The Motorola Curve (aka DLR110). Compared to the DLR1060, it adds limited WiFi capabilities that are primarily useful in certain business environments. See this thread for more. These features are unlikely to be useful in the environments we re talking about here.

These radios are fairly expensive new, but DLRs can be readily found at around $60 on eBay. (DTRs for about $250) They are quite rugged. Be aware when purchasing that some radios sold on eBay may not include a correct battery and charger. (Not necessarily a problem; Motorola batteries are easy to find online, and as with any used battery, the life of a used one may not be great.) For more advanced configuration, the Motorola CPS cable works with both radios (plugs into the charging cradle) and is used with the programming software to configure them in more detail. The older Motorola DTR650, DTR550, and older radios are compatible with the newer DLR and DTR series, if you program the newer ones carefully. The older ones don t support PINs and have a less friendly way of providing privacy, but they do work also. However, for most, I think the newer ones will be friendlier; but if you find a deal on the older ones, hey, why not? This thread on the MyGMRS forums has tons of useful information on the DLR/DTR radios. Check it out for a lot more detail. One interesting feature of these radios is that they are aware if there are conflicting users on the channel, and even if anybody is hearing your transmission. If your transmission is not being heard by at least one radio, you will get an audible (and visual, on the DTR) indication that your transmission failed. One thing that pleasantly surprised me is just how tiny the Motorola DLR is. The whole thing with antenna is like a small candy bar, and thinner. My phone is slightly taller, much wider, and only a little thinner than the Motorola DLR. Seriously, it s more pocketable than most smartphones. The DTR is of a size more commonly associated with radios, though still on the smaller side. Some of the most low-power FRS radios might get down to that size, but to get equivolent range, you need a 5W GMRS unit, which will be much bulkier. Being targeted at business users, the DLR/DTR don t include NOAA weather radio or GPS.

Power These radios tend to be powered by:

• NiMH rechargable battery packs
• AA/AAA batteries
• Lithium Ion batteries

Most of the cheap FRS/GMRS radios have a NiMH rechargable battery pack and a terrible charge controller that will tend to overcharge, and thus prematurely destroy, the NiMH packs. This has long ago happened in my GMRS radios, and now I use Eneloop NiMH AAs in them (charged separately by a proper charger). The BTech, Garmin, and Motorola DLR/DTR radios all use Li-Ion batteries. These have the advantage of being more efficient batteries, though you can t necessarily just swap in AAs in a pinch. Pay attention to your charging options; if you are backpacking, for instance, you may want something that can charge from solar-powered USB or battery banks. The Motorola DLR/DTR radios need to sit in a charging cradle, but the cradle is powered by a Micro USB cable. The BTech GMRS-PRO is charged via USB-C. I don t know about the Garmin Rino or others. Garmin offers an optional AA battery pack for the Rino. BTech doesn t (yet) for the GMRS-PRO, but they do for some other models, and have stated accessories for the GMRS-PRO are coming. I don t have information about the T800. This is not an option for the DLR/DTR.

Meshtastic I ll briefly mention Meshtastic. It uses a low-power LoRa system. It can t handle voice transmissions; only data. On its own, it can transmit and receive automatic GPS updates from other Meshtastic devices, which you can view on its small screen. It forms a mesh, so each node can relay messages for others. It is also the only unit in this roundup that uses true encryption, and its battery lasts about a week more than the a solid day you can expect out of the best of the others here. When paired with a cell phone, Meshtastic can also send and receive short text messages. Meshtastic uses much less power than even the cheapest of the FRS radios discussed here. It can still achieve respectable range because it uses LoRa, which can trade bandwidth for power or range. It can take it a second or two to transmit a 50-character text message. Still, the GMRS or Motorola radios discussed here will have more than double the point-to-point range of a Meshtastic device. And, if you intend to take advantage of the text messaging features, keep in mind that you must now take two electronic devices with you and maintain a charge for them both.

Privacy The privacy picture on these is interesting.

Cell phone privacy Cell phones are difficult for individuals to eavesdrop, but a sophisticated adversary probably could: or an unsophisticated adversary with any manner of malware. Privacy on modern smartphones is a huge area of trouble, and it is safe to say that data brokers and many apps probably know at least your location and contact list, if not also the content of your messages. Though end-to-end encrypted apps such as Signal can certainly help. See Tools for Communicating Offline and in Difficult Circumstances for more details.

GMRS privacy GMRS radios are unencrypted and public. Anyone in range with another GMRS radio, or a scanner, can listen to your conversations even if you have a privacy code set. The privacy code does not actually protect your privacy; rather, it keeps your radio from playing conversations from others using the same channel, for your convenience. However, note the in range limitation. An eavesdropper would generally need to be within a few miles of you.

Motorola DLR/DTR privacy As touched on above, while these also aren t encrypted, as far as I am aware, no tools exist to eavesdrop on DLR/DTR conversations. Change the PIN away from the default 0000, ideally to something that doesn t end in 0 (to pick a different hopset) and you have pretty decent privacy right there. Decent doesn t mean perfect; it is certainly possible that sophisticated adversaries or state agencies could decode DLR/DTR traffic, since it is unencrypted. As a practical matter, though, the lack of consumer equipment that can decode this makes it be, as I say, pretty decent .

Meshtastic Meshtastic uses strong AES encryption. But as messaging features require a paired phone, the privacy implications of a phone also apply here.

Range I tested my best 5W GMRS radios, as well as a Motorola DTR600 talking to a DLR1060. (I also tried two DLR1060s talking to each other; there was no change in rnage.) I took a radio with me in the car, and had another sitting on my table indoors. Those of you familiar with radios will probably recognize that being in a car and being indoors both attenuate (reduce the strength of) the signal significantly. I drove around in a part of Kansas with gentle rolling hills. Both the GMRS and the DLR/DTR had a range of about 2-3 miles. There were times when each was able to pull out a signal when the other was not. The DLR/DTR series was significantly better while the vehicle was in motion. In weaker signal conditions, the GMRS radios were susceptible to significant picket fencing (static caused by variation in the signal strength when passing things like trees), to the point of being inaudible or losing the signal entirely. The DLR/DTR remained perfectly clear there. I was able to find some spots where, while parked, the GMRS radios had a weak but audible signal but the DLR/DTR had none. However, in all those cases, the distance to GMRS dropping out as well was small. Basically, no radios penetrate the ground, and the valleys were a problem for them all. Differences may play out in other ways in other environments as well: for instance, dense urban environments, heavy woods, indoor buildings, etc. GMRS radios can be used with repeaters, or have a rooftop antenna mounted on a car, both of which could significantly extend range and both of which are rare. The DLR/DTR series are said to be exceptionally good at indoor environments; Motorola rates them for penetrating 20 floors, for instance. Reports on MyGMRS forums state that they are able to cover an entire cruise ship, while the metal and concrete in them poses a big problem for GMRS radios. Different outdoor landscapes may favor one or the other also. Some of the cheapest FRS radios max out at about 0.5W or even less. This is probably only a little better than yelling distance in many cases. A lot of manufacturers obscure transmit power and use outlandish claims of range instead; don t believe those. Find the power output. A 2W FRS transmitter will be more credible range-wise, and the 5W GMRS transmitter as I tested better yet. Note that even GMRS radios are restricted to 0.5W on channels 8-14. The Motorola DLR/DTR radio gets about the same range with 1W as a GMRS radio does with 5W. The lower power output allows the DLR to be much smaller and lighter than a 5W GMRS radio for similar performance.

Overall conclusions Of course, what you use may depend on your needs. I d generally say:

• For basic use, the high quality, good range, reasonable used price, and very small size of the Motorola DLR would make it a good all-arounder. Give one to each person (or kid) for use at the mall or amusement park, take them with you to concerts and festivals, etc.
• Between vehicles, the Motorola DLR/DTR have a clear range advantage over the GMRS radios for vehicles in motion, though the GPS features of the more advanced GMRS radios may be more useful here.
• For wilderness hiking and the like, GMRS radios that have GPS, maps, and NOAA weather radio reception may prove compelling and worth the extra bulk. More flexible power options may also be useful.
• Low-end FRS radios can be found very cheap; around $20-$30 new for the lowest end, though their low power output and questionable charging circuits may limit their utility where it really counts.
• If you just can t move away from cell phones, try the Zoleo app, which can provide some radio-like features.
• A satellite communicator is still good backup safety gear for the wilderness.

Postscript: A final plug for amateur radio My 10-year-old Kenwood TH-D71A already had features none of these others have. For instance, its support for APRS and ability to act as a digipeater for APRS means that TH-D71As can form an automatic mesh between them, each one repeating new GPS positions or text messages to the others. Traditional APRS doesn t perform well in weak signal situations; however, more modern digital systems like D-Star and DMR also support APRS over more modern codecs and provide all sorts of other advantages as well (though not FHSS). My conclusions above assume a person is not going to go the amateur radio route for whatever reason. If you can get those in your group to get their license the technician is all you need a whole world of excellent options opens to you.

Appendix: The Trisquare eXRS Prior to 2012, a small company named Trisquare made a FHSS radio they called the eXRS that operated on the 900MHz band like Motorola s DLR/DTR does. Trisquare aimed at consumers and their radios were cheaper than the Motorola DLR/DTR. However, that is where the similarities end. Trisquare had an analog voice transmission, even though it used FHSS. Also, there is a problem that can arise with FHSS systems: synchronization. The receiver must hop frequencies in exactly the same order at exactly the same time as the sender. Motorola has clearly done a lot of engineering around this, and I have never encountered a synchronization problem in my DLR/DTR testing, not even once. eXRS, on the other hand, had frequent synchronization problems, which manifested themselves in weak signal conditions and sometimes with doubling. When it would happen, everyone would have to be quiet for a minute or two to give all the radios a chance to timeout and reset to the start of the hop sequence. In addition, the eXRS hardware wasn t great, and was susceptible to hardware failure. There are some that still view eXRS as a legendary device and hoard them. You can still find them used on eBay. When eXRS came out in 2007, it was indeed nice technology for the day, ahead of its time in some ways. I used and loved the eXRS radios back then; powerful GMRS wasn t all that common. But compared to today s technology, eXRS has inferior range to both GMRS and Motorola DLR/DTR (from my recollection, about a third to half of what I get with today s GMRS and DLR/DTR), is prone to finicky synchronization issues when signals are weak, and isn t made very robustly. I therefore don t recommend the eBay eXRS units. Don t assume that the eXRS weaknesses extend to Motorola DLR/DTR. The DLR/DTR radios are done well and don t suffer from the same problems. Note: This article has a long-term home on my website, where it may be updated from time to time.

With the recent resurgence in Covid19 I ve been working from home a lot and using both my work laptop and personal PC on the same monitor. HDMI KVM switches start at $150 and I didn t feel like buying one. So I wrote a script to change inputs on my monitor. The following script locks the session on the local machine and switches the monitor s input to the other machine. I ran the command ddcutil vcpinfo grep Input which shows that (on my monitor at least) 60 is the VCP for input. Then I ran the command ddcutil getvcp 60 to get the current value and tried setting values sequentially to find the value for the other port. Below is the script I m using on one system, the other is the same but setting the different port via setvcp. The loginctl command is to lock the screen to prevent accidental keyboard or mouse input from messing anything up.

# lock the session, assumes that seat0 is the only session
loginctl lock-session $(loginctl list-sessions grep "seat0 *$" cut -c1-7)
# 0xf is DisplayPort, 0x11 is HDMI-1
ddcutil setvcp 60 0x11

For keyboard, mouse, and speakers I m using a USB 2.0 hub that I can switch between computers. I idly considered getting a three-pole double-throw switch (four pole switches aren t available at my local electronic store) to switch USB 2.0 as I only need to switch 3 of the 4 wires. But for the moment just plugging the hub into different systems is enough, I only do that a couple of times a day.

Google did some interesting research on the impact of discrimination on code reviers [1]. It turns out that this is a bigger problem than most white men would have ever suspected and it even has an adverse effect on Asian people. nothello.net is an amusing site to make the point that you shouldn t use IM to say hello separately from asking the question [2]. A good link to share on your corporate IM system. TechCrunch has an amusing article about the Facebook farewell to Sheryl Sandburg [3]. BleepingComputer has an interesting article about a bug-bunty program from a crime syndicate offering up to $1M in crypto-currency [4]. Among other things finding the real first and last names of the crime lord gets you $1M. BleepingComputer has an interesting article about how deepfakes are being used to apply for work from home jobs [5]. I wonder whether the people doing that intend to actually do any of the work or just get paid for doing nothing while delaying getting sacked for as long as possible. I have read about people getting a job they don t want to do that has a long training period so that they can quit at the end of training without working apparently call center work is a good option for this. BleepingComputer has an interesting article about phishing attacks that use a VNC remote desktop connection to trick a user into authenticating using the attacker s PC [6]. The real problem here is getting humans to do things that computers do better, which is recognising the correct foreign party. Fortune has an interesting article about the problems with Tesla self-driving and the possibility of a recall [7]. The main issue is apparently Teslas driving at full speed into emergency services vehicles that are parked while attending an incident. Having a police car unexpectedly occupying a lane of traffic is something you just have to deal with, either stop or change lanes. Teslas have been turning off autopilot less than one second before impact so Telsa can claim that it didn t happen with autopilot engaged but in reality a human can t take over in less than one second, a pilot I know says it takes 2-3 seconds to take over the controls in a plane. BonAppetit has an interesting and amusing article about protest foods [8] which starts by explaining why Ukrainians are throwing pasta at the Russian consulate. The NVidia blog has an informative post about how Pony.ai optimised their pipeline for sensor data for autonomous cars [9]. Matt Crump wrote an educational and amusing blog post about his battle with cheaters in university tests he administered [10]. The Cricket Monthly has an insightful article about how a batsman manages to see and hit a cricket ball that s going well in excess of 100KM/h [11]. One particularly noteworthy part of this article is the comparison of what amateur cricketers do with what anyone who wants to be a contender for the national team must do. Darker Shades of Blue is an insightful paper by Tony Kern about the needless crash of a B52 at Fairchild air base in 1994 [12]. This is specifically written to teach people about correct and effective leadership.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/2699msyj
• [2] https://nohello.net/en/
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/2aqw4jq9
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/2boyx72h
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/29zm7m4c
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/y9v9vme2
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/2yah3vez
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/ye96qhoc
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/22kmmpjg
• [10] https://tinyurl.com/2ntfw3ow
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/2aprn3w6
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/29bexyah

Review: Sorceress of Darshiva, by David Eddings

Series:	The Malloreon #4
Publisher:	Del Rey
Copyright:	December 1989
Printing:	November 1990
ISBN:	0-345-36935-1
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	371

This is the fourth book of the Malloreon, the sequel series to the Belgariad. Eddings as usual helpfully summarizes the plot of previous books (the one thing about his writing that I wish more authors would copy), this time by having various important people around the world briefed on current events. That said, you don't want to start reading here (although you might wish you could). This is such a weird book. One could argue that not much happens in the Belgariad other than map exploration and collecting a party, but the party collection involves meddling in local problems to extract each new party member. It's a bit of a random sequence of events, but things clearly happen. The Malloreon starts off with a similar structure, including an explicit task to create a new party of adventurers to save the world, but most of the party is already gathered at the start of the series since they carry over from the previous series. There is a ton of map exploration, but it's within the territory of the bad guys from the previous series. Rather than local meddling and acquiring new characters, the story is therefore chasing Zandramas (the big bad of the series) and books of prophecy. This could still be an effective plot trigger but for another decision of Eddings that becomes obvious in Demon Lord of Karanda (the third book): the second continent of this world, unlike the Kingdoms of Hats world-building of the Belgariad, is mostly uniform. There are large cities, tons of commercial activity, and a fairly effective and well-run empire, with only a little local variation. In some ways it's a welcome break from Eddings's previous characterization by stereotype, but there isn't much in the way of local happenings for the characters to get entangled in. Even more oddly, this continental empire, which the previous series set up as the mysterious and evil adversaries of the west akin to Sauron's domain in Lord of the Rings, is not mysterious to some of the party at all. Silk, the Drasnian spy who is a major character in both series, has apparently been running a vast trading empire in Mallorea. Not only has he been there before, he has houses and factors and local employees in every major city and keeps being distracted from the plot by his cutthroat capitalist business shenanigans. It's as if the characters ventured into the heart of the evil empire and found themselves in the entirely normal city next door, complete with restaurant recommendations from one of their traveling companions. I think this is an intentional subversion of the normal fantasy plot by Eddings, and I kind of like it. We have met the evil empire, and they're more normal than most of the good guys, and both unaware and entirely uninterested in being the evil empire. But in terms of dramatic plot structure, it is such an odd choice. Combined with the heroes being so absurdly powerful that they have no reason to take most dangers seriously (and indeed do not), it makes this book remarkably anticlimactic and weirdly lacking in drama. And yet I kind of enjoyed reading it? It's oddly quiet and comfortable reading. Nothing bad happens, nor seems very likely to happen. The primary plot tension is Belgarath trying to figure out the plot of the series by tracking down prophecies in which the plot is written down with all of the dramatic tension of an irritated rare book collector. In the middle of the plot, the characters take a detour to investigate an alchemist who is apparently immortal, featuring a university on Melcena that could have come straight out of a Discworld novel, because investigating people who spontaneously discover magic is of arguably equal importance to saving the world. Given how much the plot is both on rails and clearly willing to wait for the protagonists to catch up, it's hard to argue with them. It felt like a side quest in a video game. I continue to find the way that Eddings uses prophecy in this series to be highly amusing, although there aren't nearly enough moments of the prophecy giving Garion stage direction. The basic concept of two competing prophecies that are active characters in the world attempting to create their own sequence of events is one that would support a better series than this one. It's a shame that Zandramas, the main villain, is rather uninteresting despite being female in a highly sexist society, highly competent, a different type of shapeshifter (I won't say more to avoid spoilers for earlier books), and the anchor of the other prophecy. It's good material, but Eddings uses it very poorly, on top of making the weird decision to have her talk like an extra in a Shakespeare play. This book was astonishingly pointless. I think the only significant plot advancement besides map movement is picking up a new party member (who was rather predictable), and the plot is so completely on rails that the characters are commenting about the brand of railroad ties that Eddings used. Ce'Nedra continues to be spectacularly irritating. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good book, and yet for some reason I enjoyed it more than the other books of the series so far. Chalk one up for brain candy when one is in the right mood, I guess. Followed by The Seeress of Kell, the epic (?) conclusion. Rating: 6 out of 10

The Freedom Phone advertises itself as a "Free speech and privacy first focused phone". As documented on the features page, it runs ClearOS, an Android-based OS produced by Clear United (or maybe one of the bewildering array of associated companies, we'll come back to that later). It's advertised as including Signal, but what's shipped is not the version available from the Signal website or any official app store - instead it's this fork called "ClearSignal".

The first thing to note about ClearSignal is that the privacy policy link from that page 404s, which is not a great start. The second thing is that it has a version number of 5.8.14, which is strange because upstream went from 5.8.10 to 5.9.0. The third is that, despite Signal being GPL 3, there's no source code available. So, I grabbed jadx and started looking for differences between ClearSignal and the upstream 5.8.10 release. The results were, uh, surprising.

First up is that they seem to have integrated ACRA, a crash reporting framework. This feels a little odd - in the absence of a privacy policy, it's unclear what information this gathers or how it'll be stored. Having a piece of privacy software automatically uploading information about what you were doing in the event of a crash with no notification other than a toast that appears saying "Crash Report" feels a little dubious.

Next is that Signal (for fairly obvious reasons) warns you if your version is out of date and eventually refuses to work unless you upgrade. ClearSignal has dealt with this problem by, uh, simply removing that code. The MacOS version of the desktop app they provide for download seems to be derived from a release from last September, which for an Electron-based app feels like a pretty terrible idea. Weirdly, for Windows they link to an official binary release from February 2021, and for Linux they tell you how to use the upstream repo properly. I have no idea what's going on here.

They've also added support for network backups of your Signal data. This involves the backups being pushed to an S3 bucket using credentials that are statically available in the app. It's ok, though, each upload has some sort of nominally unique identifier associated with it, so it's not trivial to just download other people's backups. But, uh, where does this identifier come from? It turns out that Clear Center, another of the Clear family of companies, employs a bunch of people to work on a ClearID[1], some sort of decentralised something or other that seems to be based on KERI. There's an overview slide deck here which didn't really answer any of my questions and as far as I can tell this is entirely lacking any sort of peer review, but hey it's only the one thing that stops anyone on the internet being able to grab your Signal backups so how important can it be.

The final thing, though? They've extended Signal's invitation support to encourage users to get others to sign up for Clear United. There's an exposed API endpoint called "get_user_email_by_mobile_number" which does exactly what you'd expect - if you give it a registered phone number, it gives you back the associated email address. This requires no authentication. But it gets better! The API to generate a referral link to send to others sends the name and phone number of everyone in your phone's contact list. There does not appear to be any indication that this is going to happen.

So, from a privacy perspective, going to go with things being some distance from ideal. But what's going on with all these Clear companies anyway? They all seem to be related to Michael Proper, who founded the Clear Foundation in 2009. They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, heavily invested in blockchain stuff, while Clear United also appears to be some sort of multi-level marketing scheme which has a membership agreement that includes the somewhat astonishing claim that:

Specifically, the initial focus of the Association will provide members with supplements and technologies for:

9a. Frequency Evaluation, Scans, Reports;

9b. Remote Frequency Health Tuning through Quantum Entanglement;

9c. General and Customized Frequency Optimizations;

- there's more discussion of this and other weirdness here. Clear Center, meanwhile, has a Chief Physics Officer? I have a lot of questions.

Anyway. We have a company that seems to be combining blockchain and MLM, has some opinions about Quantum Entanglement, bases the security of its platform on a set of novel cryptographic primitives that seem to have had no external review, has implemented an API that just hands out personal information without any authentication and an app that appears more than happy to upload all your contact details without telling you first, has failed to update this app to keep up with upstream security updates, and is violating the upstream license. If this is their idea of "privacy first", I really hate to think what their code looks like when privacy comes further down the list.

[1] Pointed out to me here

comments

The Reproducible Builds project relies on several projects, supporters and sponsors for financial support, but they are also valued as ambassadors who spread the word about the project and the work that we do. This is the third instalment in a series featuring the projects, companies and individuals who support the Reproducible Builds project. If you are a supporter of the Reproducible Builds project (of whatever size) and would like to be featured here, please let get in touch with us at contact@reproducible-builds.org. We started this series by featuring the Civil Infrastructure Platform project and followed this up with a post about the Ford Foundation. Today, however, we ll be talking with Dan Romanchik, Communications Manager at Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC).
Chris Lamb: Hey Dan, it s nice to meet you! So, for someone who has not heard of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) before, could you tell us what your foundation is about? Dan: Sure! ARDC s mission is to support, promote, and enhance experimentation, education, development, open access, and innovation in amateur radio, digital communication, and information and communication science and technology. We fulfill that mission in two ways:

1. We administer an allocation of IP addresses that we call 44Net. These IP addresses (in the 44.0.0.0/8 IP range) can only be used for amateur radio applications and experimentation.
2. We make grants to organizations whose work aligns with our mission. This includes amateur radio clubs as well as other amateur radio-related organizations and activities. Additionally, we support scholarship programs for people who either have an amateur radio license or are pursuing careers in technology, STEM education and open-source software development projects that fit our mission, such as Reproducible Builds.

Chris: How might you relate the importance of amateur radio and similar technologies to someone who is non-technical? Dan: Amateur radio is important in a number of ways. First of all, amateur radio is a public service. In fact, the legal name for amateur radio is the Amateur Radio Service, and one of the primary reasons that amateur radio exists is to provide emergency and public service communications. All over the world, amateur radio operators are prepared to step up and provide emergency communications when disaster strikes or to provide communications for events such as marathons or bicycle tours. Second, amateur radio is important because it helps advance the state of the art. By experimenting with different circuits and communications techniques, amateurs have made significant contributions to communications science and technology. Third, amateur radio plays a big part in technical education. It enables students to experiment with wireless technologies and electronics in ways that aren t possible without a license. Amateur radio has historically been a gateway for young people interested in pursuing a career in engineering or science, such as network or electrical engineering. Fourth and this point is a little less obvious than the first three amateur radio is a way to enhance international goodwill and community. Radio knows no boundaries, of course, and amateurs are therefore ambassadors for their country, reaching out to all around the world. Beyond amateur radio, ARDC also supports and promotes research and innovation in the broader field of digital communication and information and communication science and technology. Information and communication technology plays a big part in our lives, be it for business, education, or personal communications. For example, think of the impact that cell phones have had on our culture. The challenge is that much of this work is proprietary and owned by large corporations. By focusing on open source work in this area, we help open the door to innovation outside of the corporate landscape, which is important to overall technological resiliency.
Chris: Could you briefly outline the history of ARDC? Dan: Nearly forty years ago, a group of visionary hams saw the future possibilities of what was to become the internet and requested an address allocation from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). That allocation included more than sixteen million IPv4 addresses, 44.0.0.0 through 44.255.255.255. These addresses have been used exclusively for amateur radio applications and experimentation with digital communications techniques ever since. In 2011, the informal group of hams administering these addresses incorporated as a nonprofit corporation, Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC). ARDC is recognized by IANA, ARIN and the other Internet Registries as the sole owner of these addresses, which are also known as AMPRNet or 44Net. Over the years, ARDC has assigned addresses to thousands of hams on a long-term loan (essentially acting as a zero-cost lease), allowing them to experiment with digital communications technology. Using these IP addresses, hams have carried out some very interesting and worthwhile research projects and developed practical applications, including TCP/IP connectivity via radio links, digital voice, telemetry and repeater linking. Even so, the amateur radio community never used much more than half the available addresses, and today, less than one third of the address space is assigned and in use. This is one of the reasons that ARDC, in 2019, decided to sell one quarter of the address space (or approximately 4 million IP addresses) and establish an endowment with the proceeds. This endowment now funds ARDC s a suite of grants, including scholarships, research projects, and of course amateur radio projects. Initially, ARDC was restricted to awarding grants to organizations in the United States, but is now able to provide funds to organizations around the world.
Chris: How does the Reproducible Builds effort help ARDC achieve its goals? Dan: Our aspirational goals include:

• Broad reach. We look for projects that will benefit the widest community possible.
• Social over commercial benefit. We prioritize giving to organizations and funding projects that may not have a viable business model, but provide a clear benefit to society.
• Preservation of the right to innovate. We oppose any efforts that restrict innovation to protect the status quo and keep the current winners in privileged positions.

We think that the Reproducible Builds efforts in helping to ensure the safety and security of open source software closely align with those goals.
Chris: Are there any specific success stories that ARDC is particularly proud of? Dan: We are really proud of our grant to the Hoopa Valley Tribe in California. With a population of nearly 2,100, their reservation is the largest in California. Like everywhere else, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the reservation hard, and the lack of broadband internet access meant that 130 children on the reservation were unable to attend school remotely. The ARDC grant allowed the tribe to address the immediate broadband needs in the Hoopa Valley, as well as encourage the use of amateur radio and other two-way communications on the reservation. The first nation was able to deploy a network that provides broadband access to approximately 90% of the residents in the valley. And, in addition to bringing remote education to those 130 children, the Hoopa now use the network for remote medical monitoring and consultation, adult education, and other applications. Other successes include our grants to:

• The ARRL Foundation, which has awarded dozens of scholarships over the past couple of years to amateur radio operators both young and old.

• The Chippewa Valley Amateur Club, who used the grant to build an emergency communications trailer and improve the emergency communication infrastructure in their community.
• Woodridge Middle School, who have developed innovative, hands-on, radio-related projects that have dramatically increased the test scores of the kids in their STEM program.
• The Make Operating Radio Easier (MORE) Project, which aims to reduce both gender and age imbalances in ham radio, through education and hands-on activities. Led by the IEEE Central Jersey Section, MORE provides mentoring, proactive intervention, and inclusivity to groups that are under-represented in amateur radio.

Chris: ARDC supports a number of other existing projects and initiatives, not all of them in the open source world. How much do you feel being a part of the broader free culture movement helps you achieve your aims? Dan: In general, we find it challenging that most digital communications technology is proprietary and closed-source. It s part of our mission to fund open source alternatives. Without them, we are solely reliant, as a society, on corporate interests for our digital communication needs. It makes us vulnerable and it puts us at risk of increased surveillance. Thus, ARDC supports open source software wherever possible, and our grantees must make a commitment to share their work under an open source license or otherwise make it as freely available as possible.
Chris: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Now, if someone wanted to know more about ARDC or to get involved, where might they go to look? To learn more about ARDC in general, please visit our website at https://www.ampr.org. To learn more about 44Net, go to https://wiki.ampr.org/wiki/Main_Page. And, finally, to learn more about our grants program, go to https://www.ampr.org/apply/

---

For more about the Reproducible Builds project, please see our website at reproducible-builds.org. If you are interested in ensuring the ongoing security of the software that underpins our civilisation and wish to sponsor the Reproducible Builds project, please reach out to the project by emailing contact@reproducible-builds.org.

Anarcat wrote a great blog post about switching from OpenNTP to Chrony which gives a good overview of how NTP works and how accurate the different versions are [1]. Bleeping Computer has an amusing article about criminals who copied a lot of data from NVidia servers including specs of their latest products [2], they are threatening to release all the data if NVidia doesn t stop crippling their GPUs to make them unsuitable for crypto currency mining. I don t support these criminals, but I think NVidia should allow people who buy hardware to use their property as they choose. If cryptocurrency miners buy all the NVidia products then NVidia still makes the sales, they could even auction them to make more money. NPR has a disturbing article about the way execution by lethal injection works in the US [3]. It seems that most people die in an extremely unpleasant way. It makes the North Korean execution by anti-aircraft gun seem civilised. The DirtyPipe vulnerability is the latest serious security issue in the Linux kernel [4]. The report of how it was discovered is very interesting and should be read by all sysadmins. SE Linux will not save you from this as the vulnerability allows writing to read-only files like /etc/passwd. Politico has an insightful analysis of Putin, it s not good news he wants to conquer all territory that had ever been part of a Russian empire at any time in history [5]. The Guardian has an informative article about the EU s attempts to debunk Russian propaganda about Covid19 [6]. Fortunately the sanctions are reducing Russia s ability to do such things now. The Guardian has in interesting article about a project to use literary analysis to predict wars [7]. Funded by the German military but funding was cut after it was proven to work. The Fact Act is a proposal by David Brin for political changes in the US to involve scientists and statisticians in an official advisory role in the legislative process [8], it s an idea with a lot of potential. Technology Review has an interesting interview with the leader of the NSA s Research Directorate [9]. In 2008 the EFF posted a long and informative article about the RIAA s war against music fans [10]. I had followed a lot of the news about this when it was happening, but I still learnt some things from this article that I hadn t known at the time. Also considering past legal battles in the context of the current situation is useful. As an aside all the music I want to listen to is now on YouTube and youtube-dl works really well for me. The 1952 edition of Psychiatry: Journal of Interpersonal Relations has an interesting article On Cooling the Mark Out [11] which starts about how criminal gangs engaged in fraud try to make their victims come to terms with the loss in a way that doesn t involve the police. But it goes on to cover ways of dealing with loss of status in general. The layout is hacky with words broken by hyphens in the middle of lines as it appears to have been scanned from paper, converted to MS-Word, and from there to PDF. But it s worth it. The Internet Heist by Cory Doctorow is an insightful series of 3 articles about the MPAA (MAFIAA) attempts to take over all TV distribution in the US [12]. Wired has an interesting exerpt from the book Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence , by Amy B. Zegart [13]. Interesting summary of the open source intelligence systems (which have nothing to do with open source as free software). But it would be interesting to have an open source intelligence organisation along similar lines to open source software. The guy who tracks billionaire s private jets is an example of this.

• [1] https://anarc.at/blog/2022-01-23-chrony/
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/y75anogy
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/y482gb5q
• [4] https://dirtypipe.cm4all.com/
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/y7plxhzu
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/yk48ponq
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/yzvxmg6v
• [8] https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/factact.html
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/ybzgmtoe
• [10] https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/ycc6vbx6
• [12] https://onezero.medium.com/the-internet-heist-part-i-3395769891b0
• [13] https://tinyurl.com/yaohylxt

For the third time now, I've asked Soci t de Transport de Montr al, Montreal's transit agency, for the foot traffic data of Montreal's subway. I think this has become an annual thing now :) The original blog post and the 2019-2020 edition can be read here:

• Original blog post (2001 to 2018)
• 2019-2020 edition (2001 to 2020)

By clicking on a subway station, you'll be redirected to a graph of the station's foot traffic.

• Orange line (top10)
• Green line (top10)
• Blue line
• Yellow line
• Global Top 10

Licences

• The subway map displayed on this page, the original dataset and my modified dataset are licenced under CCO 1.0: they are in the public domain.
• The R code I wrote is licensed under the GPLv3+. It's pretty much the same code as last year. I've also added a converter script this time around. I takes the manually cleaned 2021 source data and turns it into something that can be merged with the global dataset. I had one last year and deleted it, for some reason...

Review: Redemptor, by Jordan Ifueko

Series:	Raybearer #2
Publisher:	Amulet Books
Copyright:	2021
ISBN:	1-68335-720-5
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	328

Redemptor is the second half of a duology that started with Raybearer. You could read the first book without the second, but reading the second without the first will not make much sense. I'm going to be a bit elliptical in my plot description since there's a lot of potential for spoilers for the first book. Tarisai has reached a point of stability and power, but she's also committed herself to a goal, one that will right a great historical and ongoing injustice. She's also now in a position to both notice and potentially correct numerous other injustices in the structure of her society, and plans to start by defending those closest to her. But in the midst of her opening gambit to save someone she believes is unjustly imprisoned, the first murderous undead child appears, attacking both Tarisai's fragile sense of security and her self-esteem and self-worth. Before long, she's drowning in feelings of inadequacy and isolation, and her grand plans for reordering the world have turned into an anxiety loop of self-flagellating burnout. I so much wanted to like this book. Argh. I think I see what Ifueko was aiming for, and it's a worthy topic for a novel. In Raybearer, Tarisai got the sort of life that she previously could only imagine, but she's also the sort of person who shoulders massive obligations. Imposter syndrome, anxiety, overwork, and burnout are realistic risks, and are also important topics to write about. There are some nicely subtle touches buried in this story, such as the desire of her chosen family to have her present and happy without entirely understanding why she isn't, and without seeing the urgency that she sees in the world's injustice. The balancing act of being effective without overwhelming oneself is nearly impossible, and Tarisai has very little preparation or knowledgeable support. But this story is told with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and in a way that felt forced rather than arising naturally from the characters. If the point of emphasis had been a disagreement with her closest circle over when and how much the world should be changed, I think this would be a better book. In the places where this drives the plot, it is a better book. But Ifueko instead externalizes anxiety and depression in the form of obviously manipulative demonic undead children who (mostly) only Tarisai can see, and it's just way too much. Her reactions are manipulated and sometimes externally imposed in a way that turns what should have been a character vs. self plot into a character vs. character plot in which the protagonist is very obviously making bad decisions and the antagonist is an uninteresting cliche. The largest problem I had with this book is that I found it thuddingly obvious, in part because the plot felt like it was on narrowly constrained rails to ensure it hit all of the required stops. When the characters didn't want the plot to go somewhere, they're sidelined, written out of the story, or otherwise forcibly overridden. Tarisai has to feel isolated, so all the people who, according to the events of the previous book and the established world-building rules, would not let her be isolated are pushed out of her life. When this breaks the rules of magic in this world, those rules are off-handedly altered. Characters that could have had their own growth arcs after Raybearer become static and less interesting, since there's no room for them in the plot. Instead, we get all new characters, which gives Redemptor a bit of a cast size problem. Underneath this, there is an occasional flash of great writing. Ifueko chooses to introduce a dozen mostly-new characters to an already large cast and I was still able to mostly keep them straight, which shows real authorial skill. She is very good with short bursts of characterization to make new characters feel fresh and interesting. Even the most irritating of the new characters (Crocodile, whose surprise twist I thought was obvious and predictable) is an interesting archetype to explore in a book about activism and activist burnout. I can see some pieces of a better book here. But I desperately wanted something to surprise me, for Tarisai or one of the other characters to take the plot in some totally unexpected direction the way that Raybearer did. It never happened. That leads directly to another complaint: I liked Raybearer in part because of the freshness of a different mythological system and a different storytelling tradition than what we typically get in fantasy novels. I was hoping for more of the same in Redemptor, which meant I was disappointed when I got a mix of Christianity and Greek mythology. As advertised by Raybearer, the central mythological crisis of Redemptor concerns the Underworld. This doesn't happen until about 80% into the book (which is also a bit of a problem; the ending felt rushed given how central it was to the plot), so I can't talk about it in detail without spoiling it. But what I think I can say is that unfortunately the religious connotations of the title are not an accident. Rather than something novel that builds on the excellent idea of the emi-ehran spirit animal, there is a lot of Christ symbolism mixed with an underworld that could have come from an Orpheus retelling. There's nothing inherently wrong with this (although the Christian bits landed poorly for me), but it wasn't what I was hoping for from the mythology of this world. I rarely talk much about the authors in fiction reviews. I prefer to let books stand on their own without trying too hard to divine the author's original intentions. But here, I think it's worth acknowledging Ifueko's afterword in which she says that writing Redemptor in the middle of a pandemic, major depression, and the George Floyd protests was the most difficult thing she'd ever done. I've seen authors write similar things in afterwords when the effect on the book was minimal or invisible, but I don't think that was the case here. Redemptor is furious, anxious, depressed, and at points despairing, and while it's okay for novels to be all of those things when it's under the author's control, here they felt like emotions that were imposed on the story from outside. Raybearer was an adventure story about found family and ethics that happened to involve a lot of politics. Redemptor is a story about political activism and governance, but written in a universe whose bones are set up for an adventure story. The mismatch bothered me throughout; not only did these not feel like the right characters to tell this story with, but the politics were too simple, too morally clear-cut, and too amenable to easy solutions for a good political fantasy. Raybearer focused its political attention on colonialism. That's a deep enough topic by itself to support a duology (or more), but Redemptor adds in property rights, land reform, economic and social disparity, unfair magical systems, and a grab bag of other issues, and it overwhelms the plot. There isn't space and time to support solutions with sufficient complexity to satisfyingly address the problems. Ifueko falls back on benevolent dictator solutions, and I understand why, but that's not the path to a satisfying resolution in an overtly political fantasy. This is the sort of sequel that leaves me wondering if I can recommend reading the first book and not the second, and that makes me sad. Redemptor is not without its occasional flashes of brilliance, but I did not have fun reading this book and I can't recommend the experience. That said, I think this is a book problem, not an author problem; I will happily read Ifueko's next novel, and I suspect it will be much better. Rating: 5 out of 10

Wired magazine has many short documentary films on YouTube, this one about How Photography is Affecting Our Brains is particularly good [1]. Matt Blaze wrote an informative blog post about Faraday cages for phones [2]. It seems that the commercial shielded bags are all pretty good while doing it yourself with aluminium foil may get similar results or may get much worse results with no obvious difference in the quality of the wrapping. Aluminium foil doesn t protect that well and doesn t protect consistently. A metal biscuit tin performed quite well and consistently, so that s a cheap option for reducing signals. Umair Haque wrote an insightful article about the single word that describes most of the problems the world faces right now [3]. Forbes has an informative article about the early days of the Ford company when they doubled wages, it proves that they didn t do so to enable workders to afford cars but to avoid staff turnover (which is expensive) [4]. Also the Ford company had a fascistic approach to employees, controlling what they were allowed to do in their spare time if they wanted the bonus payment. The wages weren t doubled, there was a bonus payment that would double the salary if the employee was eligible for the bonus. One thing that Forbes gets wrong is that they claim that it was only having higher pay than other companies that provided a benefit and that a higher minimum wage wouldn t, the problem with that idea is that a higher minimum wage would discourage people from having multiple jobs and allow more families to not have the mother working (a condition for a man to get the Ford bonus was for his wife to not work). The WSJ has an interesting article about Intel s datacenter for running all the different configurations of CPUs that they have supported over the last 10 years for security tests [5]. My Thinkpad (which is less than 10yo) is vulnerable to one of the SPECTRE family of exploits as Intel hasn t released microcode to fix it, getting fixed microcode out for all the systems from major vendors like Lenovo would be a good idea if they want to improve their security. NPR has an interesting article about the correlation between support for Trump in counties of the US with lack of vaccination and Covid19 deaths [6]. No surprises, but it s good to see the graphs. Cory Doctorow wrote an interesting article on the lack of slack in the current American education system [7]. It s not that bad in Australia but we are unfortunately moving in the American direction. Teen Vogue has an insightful article about the problems with the focus on resilience [8], while resilience is good we should make it a higher priority to avoid putting people in situations where they need to be resiliant than on encouraging resilience.

• [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrPkTs-i75A
• [2] https://www.mattblaze.org/blog/faraday/
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/yy8uxrwo
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/yddbw65b
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/y4sjdapn
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/y6olq6zl
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/yxkxy4q7
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/y228lrbj

As a follow-up to yesterday's post listing my favourite memoirs and biographies I read in 2021, today I'll be outlining my favourite works of non-fiction. Books that just missed the cut include: The Unusual Suspect by Ben Machell for its thrilleresque narrative of a modern-day Robin Hood (and if you get to the end, a completely unexpected twist); Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide to the American Status System as an amusing chaser of sorts to Kate Fox's Watching the English; John Carey's Little History of Poetry for its exhilarating summation of almost four millennia of verse; David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years for numerous historical insights, not least its rejoinder to our dangerously misleading view of ancient barter systems; and, although I didn't treasure everything about it, I won't hesitate to gift Pen Vogler's Scoff to a number of friends over the next year. The weakest book of non-fiction I read this year was undoubtedly Roger Scruton's How to Be a Conservative: I much preferred The Decadent Society for Ross Douthat for my yearly ration of the 'intellectual right'. I also very much enjoyed reading a number of classic texts from academic sociology, but they are difficult to recommend or even summarise. These included One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Frederic Jameson and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber. 'These are heavy books', remarks John Proctor in Arthur Miller's The Crucible... All round-up posts for 2021: Memoir/biography, Non-fiction (this post) & Fiction (coming soon).

Hidden Valley Road (2020) Robert Kolker A compelling and disturbing account of the Galvin family six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia which details a journey through the study and misunderstanding of the condition. The story of the Galvin family offers a parallel history of the science of schizophrenia itself, from the era of institutionalisation, lobotomies and the 'schizo mother', to the contemporary search for genetic markers for the disease... all amidst fundamental disagreements about the nature of schizophrenia and, indeed, of all illnesses of the mind. Samples of the Galvins' DNA informed decades of research which, curiously, continues to this day, potentially offering paths to treatment, prediction and even eradication of the disease, although on this last point I fancy that I detect a kind of neo-Victorian hubris that we alone will be the ones to find a cure. Either way, a gentle yet ultimately tragic view of a curiously 'American' family, where the inherent lack of narrative satisfaction brings a frustration and sadness of its own.

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape (2021) Cat Flyn In this disarmingly lyrical book, Cat Flyn addresses the twin questions of what happens after humans are gone and how far can our damage to nature be undone. From the forbidden areas of post-war France to the mining regions of Scotland, Islands of Abandonment explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live in an attempt to give us a glimpse into what happens when mankind's impact on nature is, for one reason or another, forced to stop. Needless to say, if anxieties in this area are not curdling away in your subconscious mind, you are probably in some kind of denial. Through a journey into desolate, eerie and ravaged areas in the world, this artfully-written study offers profound insights into human nature, eschewing the usual dry sawdust of Wikipedia trivia. Indeed, I summed it up to a close friend remarking that, through some kind of hilarious administrative error, the book's publisher accidentally dispatched a poet instead of a scientist to write this book. With glimmers of hope within the (mostly) tragic travelogue, Islands of Abandonment is not only a compelling read, but also a fascinating insight into the relationship between Nature and Man.

The Anatomy of Fascism (2004) Robert O. Paxton Everyone is absolutely sure they know what fascism is... or at least they feel confident choosing from a buffet of features to suit the political mood. To be sure, this is not a new phenomenon: even as 'early' as 1946, George Orwell complained in Politics and the English Language that the word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable . Still, it has proved uncommonly hard to define the core nature of fascism and what differentiates it from related political movements. This is still of great significance in the twenty-first century, for the definition ultimately determines where the powerful label of 'fascist' can be applied today. Part of the enjoyment of reading this book was having my own cosy definition thoroughly dismantled and replaced with a robust system of abstractions and common themes. This is achieved through a study of the intellectual origins of fascism and how it played out in the streets of Berlin, Rome and Paris. Moreover, unlike Strongmen (see above), fascisms that failed to gain meaningful power are analysed too, including Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Curiously enough, Paxton's own definition of fascism is left to the final chapter, and by the time you reach it, you get an anti-climatic feeling of it being redundant. Indeed, whatever it actually is, fascism is really not quite like any other 'isms' at all, so to try and classify it like one might be a mistake. In his introduction, Paxton warns that many of those infamous images associated with fascism (eg. Hitler in Triumph of the Will, Mussolini speaking from a balcony, etc.) have the ability to induce facile errors about the fascist leader and the apparent compliance of the crowd. (Contemporary accounts often record how sceptical the common man was of the leader's political message, even if they were transfixed by their oratorical bombast.) As it happens, I thus believe I had something of an advantage of reading this via an audiobook, and completely avoided re-absorbing these iconic images. To me, this was an implicit reminder that, however you choose to reduce it to a definition, fascism is undoubtedly the most visual of all political forms, presenting itself to us in vivid and iconic primary images: ranks of disciplined marching youths, coloured-shirted militants beating up members of demonised minorities; the post-war pictures from the concentration camps... Still, regardless of you choose to read it, The Anatomy of Fascism is a powerful book that can teach a great deal about fascism in particular and history in general.

What Good are the Arts? (2005) John Carey What Good are the Arts? takes a delightfully sceptical look at the nature of art, and cuts through the sanctimony and cant that inevitably surrounds them. It begins by revealing the flaws in lofty aesthetic theories and, along the way, debunks the claims that art makes us better people. They may certainly bring joy into your life, but by no means do the fine arts make you automatically virtuous. Carey also rejects the entire enterprise of separating things into things that are art and things that are not, making a thoroughly convincing case that there is no transcendental category containing so-called 'true' works of art. But what is perhaps equally important to what Carey is claiming is the way he does all this. As in, this is an extremely enjoyable book to read, with not only a fine sense of pace and language, but a devilish sense of humour as well. To be clear, What Good are the Arts? it is no crotchety monograph: Leo Tolstoy's *What Is Art? (1897) is hilarious to read in similar ways, but you can't avoid feeling its cantankerous tone holds Tolstoy's argument back. By contrast, Carey makes his argument in a playful sort of manner, in a way that made me slightly sad to read other polemics throughout the year. It's definitely not that modern genre of boomer jeremiad about the young, political correctness or, heaven forbid, 'cancel culture'... which, incidentally, made Carey's 2014 memoir, The Unexpected Professor something of a disappointing follow-up. Just for fun, Carey later undermines his own argument by arguing at length for the value of one art in particular. Literature, Carey asserts, is the only art capable of reasoning and the only art with the ability to criticise. Perhaps so, and Carey spends a chapter or so contending that fiction has the exclusive power to inspire the mind and move the heart towards practical ends... or at least far better than any work of conceptual art. Whilst reading this book I found myself taking down innumerable quotations and laughing at the jokes far more than I disagreed. And the sustained and intellectual style of polemic makes this a pretty strong candidate for my favourite overall book of the year.

Just as I did for 2020, I won't publically disclose exactly how many books I read in 2021, but they evidently provoked enough thoughts that felt it worth splitting my yearly writeup into separate posts. I will reveal, however, that I got through more books than the previous year, and, like before, I enjoyed the books I read this year even more in comparison as well. How much of this is due to refining my own preferences over time, and how much can be ascribed to feeling less pressure to read particular books? It s impossible to say, and the question is complicated further by the fact I found many of the classics I read well worth of their entry into the dreaded canon. But enough of the throat-clearing. In today's post I'll be looking at my favourite books filed under memoir and biography, in no particular order. Books that just missed the cut here include: Bernard Crick's celebrated 1980 biography of George Orwell, if nothing else because it was a pleasure to read; Hilary Mantel's exhilaratingly bitter early memoir, Giving up the Ghost (2003); and Patricia Lockwood's hilarious Priestdaddy (2017). I also had a soft spot for Tim Kreider's We Learn Nothing (2012) as well, despite not knowing anything about the author in advance, likely a sign of good writing. The strangest book in this category I read was definitely Michelle Zauner's Crying in H Mart. Based on a highly-recommended 2018 essay in the New Yorker, its rich broth of genuine yearning for a departed mother made my eyebrows raise numerous times when I encountered inadvertent extra details about Zauner's relationships.

Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces (2020) Laura Tunbridge Whilst it might immediately present itself as a clickbait conceit, organising an overarching narrative around just nine compositions by Beethoven turns out to be an elegant way of saying something fresh about this grizzled old bear. Some of Beethoven's most famous compositions are naturally included in the nine (eg. the Eroica and the Hammerklavier piano sonata), but the book raises itself above conventional Beethoven fare when it highlights, for instance, his Septet, Op. 20, an early work that is virtually nobody's favourite Beethoven piece today. The insight here is that it was widely popular in its time, played again and again around Vienna for the rest of his life. No doubt many contemporary authors can relate to this inability to escape being artistically haunted by an earlier runaway success. The easiest way to say something interesting about Beethoven in the twenty-first century is to talk about the myth of Beethoven instead. Or, as Tunbridge implies, perhaps that should really be 'Beethoven' in leaden quotation marks, given so much about what we think we know about the man is a quasi-fictional construction. Take Anton Schindler, Beethoven's first biographer and occasional amanuensis, who destroyed and fabricated details about Beethoven's life, casting himself in a favourable light and exaggerating his influence with the composer. Only a few decades later, the idea of a 'heroic' German was to be politically useful as well; the Anglosphere often need reminding that Germany did not exist as a nation-state prior to 1871, so it should be unsurprising to us that the late nineteenth-century saw a determined attempt to create a uniquely 'German' culture ex nihilo. (And the less we say about Immortal Beloved the better, even though I treasure that film.) Nevertheless, Tunbridge cuts through Beethoven's substantial legacy using surgical precision that not only avoids feeling like it is settling a score, but it also does so in a way that is unlikely to completely alienate anyone emotionally dedicated to some already-established idea of the man to bring forth the tediously predictable sentiment that Beethoven has 'gone woke'. With Alex Ross on the cult of Wagner, it seems that books about the 'myth of X' are somewhat in vogue right now. And this pattern within classical music might fit into some broader trend of deconstruction in popular non-fiction too, especially when we consider the numerous contemporary books on the long hangover of the Civil Rights era (Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, etc.), the multifarious ghosts of Empire (Akala's Natives, Sathnam Sanghera's Empireland, etc.) or even the 'transmogrification' of George Orwell into myth. But regardless of its place in some wider canon, A Life in Nine Pieces is beautifully printed in hardback form (worth acquiring for that very reason alone), and it is one of the rare good books about classical music that can be recommended to both the connoisseur and the layperson alike.

Sea State (2021) Tabitha Lasley In her mid-30s and jerking herself out of a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley left London and put all her savings into a six-month lease on a flat within a questionable neighbourhood in Aberdeen, Scotland. She left to make good on a lukewarm idea for a book about oil rigs and the kinds of men who work on them: I wanted to see what men were like with no women around, she claims. The result is Sea State, a forthright examination of the life of North Sea oil riggers, and an unsparing portrayal of loneliness, masculinity, female desire and the decline of industry in Britain. (It might almost be said that Sea State is an update of a sort to George Orwell's visit to the mines in the North of England.) As bracing as the North Sea air, Sea State spoke to me on multiple levels but I found it additionally interesting to compare and contrast with Julian Barnes' The Man with Red Coat (see below). Women writers are rarely thought to be using fiction for higher purposes: it is assumed that, unlike men, whatever women commit to paper is confessional without any hint of artfulness. Indeed, it seems to me that the reaction against the decades-old genre of autofiction only really took hold when it became the domain of millennial women. (By contrast, as a 75-year-old male writer with a firmly established reputation in the literary establishment, Julian Barnes is allowed wide latitude in what he does with his sources and his writing can be imbued with supremely confident airs as a result.) Furthermore, women are rarely allowed metaphor or exaggeration for dramatic effect, and they certainly aren t permitted to emphasise darker parts in order to explore them... hence some of the transgressive gratification of reading Sea State. Sea State is admittedly not a work of autofiction, but the sense that you are reading about an author writing a book is pleasantly unavoidable throughout. It frequently returns to the topic of oil workers who live multiple lives, and Lasley admits to living two lives herself: she may be in love but she's also on assignment, and a lot of the pleasure in this candid and remarkably accessible book lies in the way these states become slowly inseparable.

Twilight of Democracy (2020) Anne Applebaum For the uninitiated, Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic magazine who won a Pulitzer-prize for her 2004 book on the Soviet Gulag system. Her latest book, however, Twilight of Democracy is part memoir and part political analysis and discusses the democratic decline and the rise of right-wing populism. This, according to Applebaum, displays distinctly authoritarian tendencies, and who am I to disagree? Applebaum does this through three main case studies (Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States), but the book also touches on Hungary as well. The strongest feature of this engaging book is that Appelbaum's analysis focuses on the intellectual classes and how they provide significant justification for a descent into authoritarianism. This is always an important point to be remembered, especially as much of the folk understanding of the rise of authoritarian regimes tends to place exaggerated responsibility on the ordinary and everyday citizen: the blame placed on the working-class in the Weimar Republic or the scorn heaped upon 'white trash' of the contemporary Rust Belt, for example. Applebaum is uniquely poised to discuss these intellectuals because, well, she actually knows a lot of them personally. Or at least, she used to know them. Indeed, the narrative of the book revolves around two parties she hosted, both in the same house in northwest Poland. The first party, on 31 December 1999, was attended by friends from around the Western world, but most of the guests were Poles from the broad anti-communist alliance. They all agreed about democracy, the rule of law and the route to prosperity whilst toasting in the new millennium. (I found it amusing to realise that War and Peace also starts with a party.) But nearly two decades later, many of the attendees have ended up as supporters of the problematic 'Law and Justice' party which currently governs the country. Applebaum would now cross the road to avoid them, and they would do the same to her, let alone behave themselves at a cordial reception. The result of this autobiographical detail is that by personalising the argument, Applebaum avoids the trap of making too much of high-minded abstract argument for 'democracy', and additionally makes her book compellingly spicy too. Yet the strongest part of this book is also its weakest. By individualising the argument, it often feels that Applebaum is settling a number of personal scores. She might be very well justified in doing this, but at times it feels like the reader has walked in halfway through some personal argument and is being asked to judge who is in the right. Furthermore, Applebaum's account of contemporary British politics sometimes deviates into the cartoonish: nothing was egregiously incorrect in any of her summations, but her explanation of the Brexit referendum result didn't read as completely sound. Nevertheless, this lively and entertaining book that can be read with profit, even if you disagree with significant portions of it, and its highly-personal approach makes it a refreshing change from similar contemporary political analysis (eg. David Runciman's How Democracy Ends) which reaches for that more 'objective' line.

The Man in the Red Coat (2019) Julian Barnes As rich as the eponymous red coat that adorns his cover, Julian Barnes quasi-biography of French gynaecologist Samuel-Jean Pozzi (1846 1918) is at once illuminating, perplexing and downright hilarious. Yet even that short description is rather misleading, for this book evades classification all manner number of ways. For instance, it is unclear that, with the biographer's narrative voice so obviously manifest, it is even a biography in the useful sense of the word. After all, doesn't the implied pact between author and reader require the biographer to at least pretend that they are hiding from the reader? Perhaps this is just what happens when an author of very fine fiction turns his hand to non-fiction history, and, if so, it represents a deeper incursion into enemy territory after his 1984 metafictional Flaubert's Parrot. Indeed, upon encountering an intriguing mystery in Pozzi's life crying out for a solution, Barnes baldly turns to the reader, winks and states: These matters could, of course, be solved in a novel. Well, quite. Perhaps Barnes' broader point is that, given that's impossible for the author to completely melt into air, why not simply put down your cards and have a bit of fun whilst you're at it? If there's any biography that makes the case for a rambling and lightly polemical treatment, then it is this one. Speaking of having fun, however, two qualities you do not expect in a typical biography is simply how witty they can be, as well as it having something of the whiff of the thriller about it. A bullet might be mentioned in an early chapter, but given the name and history of Monsieur Pozzi is not widely known, one is unlikely to learn how he lived his final years until the closing chapters. (Or what happened to that turtle.) Humour is primarily incorporated into the book in two main ways: first, by explicitly citing the various wits of the day ( What is a vice? Merely a taste you don t share. etc.), but perhaps more powerful is the gentle ironies, bon mots and observations in Barnes' entirely unflappable prose style, along with the satire implicit in him writing this moreish pseudo-biography to begin with. The opening page, with its steadfast refusal to even choose where to begin, is somewhat characteristic of Barnes' method, so if you don't enjoy the first few pages then you are unlikely to like the rest. (Indeed, the whole enterprise may be something of an acquired taste. Like Campari.) For me, though, I was left wryly grinning and often couldn't wait to turn the page. Indeed, at times it reminded me of a being at a dinner party with an extremely charming guest at the very peak of his form as a wit and raconteur, delighting the party with his rambling yet well-informed discursive on his topic de jour. A significant book, and a book of significance.

Review: Raybearer, by Jordan Ifueko

Series:	Raybearer #1
Publisher:	Amulet Books
Copyright:	2020
ISBN:	1-68335-719-1
Format:	Kindle
Pages:	308

Tarisai was raised alone in Bhekina House by an array of servants and tutors who were not allowed to touch her. Glimpses of the world were fleeting and sometimes ended by nailed-shut windows. Her life revolved around her rarely-seen mother, The Lady, who treats her with deep affection but rarely offers a word of praise, instead only pushing her to study harder. The servants whispered behind her back (but still in her hearing) that she was not human. At the age of seven, in a child's attempt to locate her absent mother by sneaking out of the house, she finds her father and is told a piece of the truth: she is the daughter of the Lady and a captive ehru, a djinn. At the age of eleven she's sent with two guardians to Oluwan City, the capital of Aritsar, to enter a competition she knows nothing about, for reasons no one has ever explained. Raybearer is a young adult fantasy novel, the first of a duology. Like a lot of young adult novels, it is a coming of age story that follows Tarisai from the end of her highly manipulated childhood through her introduction to a world she was carefully never taught about. Like a lot of young adult fantasy novels, Tarisai has some unusual abilities. What those are, and why she has them, is perhaps less obvious than it may appear at first. Unlike a lot of young adult fantasy novels, Raybearer is not set in a facsimile of Western Europe, the structure of gods and religion is not obviously derived from Christianity or Greek or Norse mythology, and neither Tarisai nor most of the characters of this story are white. Some of the characters are; Ifueko draws from a grab bag of cultures that does include European as well as African, Middle Eastern, and Asian. But the food, the physical descriptions, the landscape, and the hair and hair styles feel primarily African not in the sense of specific identifiable regions, but in the same way that most fantasy feels European even if the map isn't recognizable. That gives this story a freshness that I found delightful. The mythology of this world shares some similarities to standard fantasy tropes, including a bargain with the underworld that plays a similar role to fae bargains in some European fantasy, but it also goes in different directions and finds atypical balances, which gave the story room to catch me by surprise. The magical center of this book (and series), which Tarisai is carefully not told about until the story starts, is a system for anointing and protecting the emperor: selection of people who swear loyalty to him and each other and become his innermost circle, and thereby grant him magical protection. The emperor himself is the Raybearer, possessing an artifact that makes him invulnerable to one form of death for each member of his council he anoints. At eleven council members, he becomes invulnerable to anything but old age, or an attack from one of the council themselves. As the reader learns early in the book, that last part is important. Tarisai is an assassin; her mother's goal is for her to be selected as a member of the council for the prince, who will become the next emperor. But there is rather more to this system of magic than it may first appear, in a way that adds good depth to the mythology. And there is quite a bit more to Tarisai herself than anyone expects. Tarisai as a protagonist follows a more typical young adult pattern, but it's a formula that works for me. Her upbringing isolated from any other children has left her craving connection, but it also made her self-reliant, stubborn, and good at keeping her own counsel. One of the things that I loved about this book is that she's not thrown into a nest of vipers and cynical politics. Some of that is happening in the background, but the first step of her mother's plan is for her to earn the trust of the prince in a competition with other potential council members, all of whom are, well, kids. They fight (some), but they also make friends, helped along by the goal and requirement that they join a cooperative council or be sent home. That gives the plot a more collaborative and social feel than one would otherwise expect from the setup. Ifueko does a great job juggling a challenging cast size by focusing on a few kids with whom Tarisai strikes up a friendship but giving the others distinct-enough personalities that their presence is still felt in the story. There are two character dynamics that stand out: Tarisai's relationship with Prince Ekundayo, and her friendship with Sanjeet. The first carries much of the weight of the plot, of course; Tarisai is supposed to gain his trust and then kill him, and the reader will be unsurprised that this takes twists and turns no one expected. But Ifueko, refreshingly, does not reach for the stock plot development of a romance to complicate matters, even though many of the characters expect that. To the contrary, this is a rare story that at least hints at an acknowledgment that some people are not interested in romance at all, and there are other forms that mutual respect can take. Tarisai's relationship with Sanjeet is a different type of depth: two kids with very different histories finding a common understanding in the ways that they were both abused, and create space for each other. It's a great friendship that includes some deeply touching moments. It took me a bit to get into this book, but once Tarisai starts finding her feet and navigating her new relationships, I was engrossed. The story takes a sharp and nasty turn that was hard to read, but Ifueko chooses to turn it into a story of resiliency rather than survival, which makes it much easier to read than it could have been. She also pulls off the kind of plot that complicates and deepens the motives of the obvious villains in a way that gives the story much greater heft, but without disregarding the damage that they have done. I think the plot did fall apart a bit at the end of the book, with too much quick travel and world-building revelations at the cost of development of the relationships that were otherwise at the center of the book, but I'm hoping the sequel will pull those threads back together. And it's so refreshing to read a fantasy novel of this type with a different setting. It's not perfect: Ifueko falls back on Planet of the Hats regional characterization in a few places, and Songland is so obviously Korea that it felt jarring and out of place. Christianity also snuck its nose into the world-building tent near the end in ways that bugged me a bit, although it was subtle enough that I think most readers won't notice. But compared to most fantasy settings, it feels original and fresh. More of this! Ifueko starts this book with a wonderfully memorable dedication:

For the kid scanning fairy tales for a hero with a face like theirs. And for the girls whose stories we compressed into pities and wonders, triumphs and cautions, without asking, even once, for their names.

I think she was successful on both parts of that promise, and it makes for some great reading. Recommended. Followed by Redemptor. Rating: 8 out of 10

The Guardian has an amusing article by Sophie Elmhirst about Libertarians buying a cruise ship to make a seasteading project off the coast of Panama [1]. It turns out that you need permits etc to do this and maintaining a ship is expensive. Also you wouldn t want to mine cryptocurrency in a ship cabin as most cabins are small and don t have enough airconditioning to remain pleasant if you dump 1kW or more into the air. NPR has an interesting article about the reaction of the NRA to the Columbine shootings [2]. Seems that some NRA person isn t a total asshole and is sharing their private information, maybe they are dying and are worried about going to hell. David Brin wrote an insightful blog post about the singleton hypothesis where he covers some of the evidence of autocratic societies failing [3]. I think he makes a convincing point about a single centralised government for human society not being viable. But something like the EU on a world wide scale could work well. Ken Shirriff wrote an interesting blog post about reverse engineering the Yamaha DX7 synthesiser [4]. The New York Times has an interesting article about a Baboon troop that became less aggressive after the alpha males all died at once from tuberculosis [5]. They established a new more peaceful culture that has outlived the beta males who avoided tuberculosis. The Guardian has an interesting article about how sequencing the genomes of the entire population can save healthcare costs while improving the health of the population [6]. This is somthing wealthy countries should offer for free to the world population. At a bit under $1000 per test that s only about $7 trillion to test everyone, and of course the price should drop significantly if there were billions of tests being done. The Strategy Bridge has an interesting article about SciFi books that have useful portrayals of military strategy [7]. The co-author is Major General Mick Ryan of the Australian Army which is noteworthy as Major General is the second highest rank in use by the Australian Army at this time. Vice has an interesting article about the co-evolution of penises and vaginas and how a lot of that evolution is based on avoiding impregnation from rape [8]. Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful Medium article about the way that governments could force interoperability through purchasing power [9]. Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article for Locus Magazine about imagining life after capitalism and how capitalism might be replaced [10]. We need a Star Trek future! Arstechnica has an informative article about new developmenet in the rowhammer category of security attacks on DRAM [11]. It seems that DDR4 with ECC is the best current mitigation technique and that DDR3 with ECC is harder to attack than non-ECC RAM. So the thing to do is use ECC on all workstations and avoid doing security critical things on laptops because they can t juse ECC RAM.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/yzwkogpb
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/yj3wkza4
• [3] https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-singleton-hypothesis-same-old-song.html
• [4] http://www.righto.com/2021/11/reverse-engineering-yamaha-dx7.html
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/y69rnakm
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/yf7pqcc9
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/yejjajts
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/y32hlzsy
• [9] https://onezero.medium.com/jam-to-day-46b74d5b1da4
• [10] https://locusmag.com/2021/11/cory-doctorow-the-unimaginable/
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/yhbxqv8d

Bloomburg has an insightful article about Juniper, the NSA, and the compromise of Netscreen [1]. It was worse than we previously thought and the Chinese government was involved. Haaretz has an amusing story about security issues at a credit card company based on a series of major WTFs [2]. They used WhatsApp for communicating with customers (despite the lack of support from Facebook for issues like account compromise), stored it on a phone (they should have used a desktop PC), didn t lock the phone down (should have been in a locked case and bolted down like any other financial security device), and allowed it to get stolen. Fortunately the thief was only after a free phone not the financial data stored on it. David Brin wrote an insightful blog post Should facts and successes matter in economics? Or politics? [3] which is part of his series about challenging conservatives to bet on their policies. Vice has an interesting article about a normal-looking USB-C to Lightning cable that intercepts data transfer and sends it out via an embedded Wifi AP [4]. Getting that into such a small space is an impressive engineering feat. The vendor already has a YSB-A to lightning cable with such features for $120 [5]. That s too expensive to just leave them lying around and hope that someone with interesting data finds them, but it s also quite cheap for a targeted attack. Interesting article about tracking people via Bluetooth MAC address or device name [6]. Most of the research is based on a man riding a bike around Norway and passively sniffing Bluetooth transmissions. You can buy commercial devices that can receive Bluetooth from 1Km away. A recent version of Bluetooth has random Mac addresses but that still allows tracking by device name which for many people is their own name. Cory Doctorow has a good summary of the ways that Facebook is rotten [7]. It s worse than you think. In 2019 almost all Facebook s top Christian pages were run by foreign troll farms [8]. This is partly due to Christians being gullible, but Facebook is also to blame for this. Cornell has an interesting article about using CRISPR to identify the gender of chicken eggs before they hatch [9]. This means that instead of killing roosters hatched from eggs for egg production they can just put those eggs for eating and save some money. Another option would be to genetically engineer more sexual dimorphism into chickens as the real problem is that hens for laying eggs are too thin to be good for eating so if you could have a breed of chicken with thin hens and fat cocks then all eggs could be hatched and the chickens used. The article claims that this is an ethical benefit of not killing baby roosters, but really it s about saving 50 cents per egg. Umair Haque wrote an insightful article about why everything will get more expensive as the externalities dating back to the industrial revolution have to be paid for [9]. Alexei Navalny (the jailed Russian opposition politician who Putin tried to murder) wrote an insightful article about why corruption is at the root of most world problems and how to solve it [10]. Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article about breaking in to the writing industry which can apply to starting in most careers [11]. The main point is that people who have established careers have knowledge about starting a career that s at best outdated and at most totally irrelevant. Learning from people who are at most one step ahead of you is probably best. Peter Wehner wrote an insightful article for The Atlantic about the way churches in the US are breaking apart due to political issues [12]. Similar things appear to be happening in Australia for the same reason, conservative fear based politics which directly opposes everything in the Bible about Jesus is taking over churches. On the positive side this should destroy churches and the way churches are currently going they should be destroyed. The Guardian has an article about the incidence of reinfection with Covid19 [13]. The current expectation is that people who aren t vaccinated will probably get it about every 16 months if it becomes endemic (as it has in the US and will do in Australia if conservatives have their way). If the mortality rate is 2% each time then an unvaccinated person could expect a 15% chance of dying over the course of 10 years if there is no cumulative damage. However if damage to the heart and lungs accumulates over multiple courses of the disease then the probability of death over 10 years could be a lot higher. Psyche has an interesting article by Professor Jan-Willem van Prooijeni about the way that conspiracy theories bypass rationality [14]. The way that entertaining stories bypass rationality is particularly concerning given the way Facebook and other social media are driven by clickbait.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/ygoyeuzr
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/yekmajo5
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/yzpkbeec
• [4] https://tinyurl.com/ygbq6ccf
• [5] https://shop.hak5.org/products/o-mg-cable-usb-a
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/yzfwg2a5
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/yz2a3vf3
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/yhd9zg72
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/yjg9wcj7
• [10] https://tinyurl.com/yf2exqva
• [11] https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/yzkh29mz
• [13] https://tinyurl.com/yhhg7xf2
• [14] https://tinyurl.com/yjktynmo

Sciencealert has an interesting article on a game to combat misinformation by microdosing people [1]. The game seemed overly simplistic to me, but I guess I m not the target demographic. Research shows it to work. Vice has an interesting and amusing article about mass walkouts of underpaid staff in the US [2]. The way that corporations are fighting an increase in the minimum wage doesn t seem financially beneficial for them. An increase in the minimum wage means small companies have to increase salaries too and the ratio of revenue to payroll is probably worse for small companies. It seems that companies like McDonalds make oppressing their workers a higher priority than making a profit. Interesting article in Vice about how the company Shot Spotter (which determines the locations of gunshots by sound) forges evidence for US police [3]. All convictions based on Shot Spotter evidence should be declared mistrials. BitsNBites has an interesting article on the fundamental flaws of SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) [4]. The Daily Dot has a disturbing article anbout the possible future of the QAnon movement [5]. Let s hope they become too busy fighting each other to hurt many innocent people. Ben Taylor wrote an interesting blog post suggesting that Web Assembly should be a default binary target [6]. I don t support that idea but I think that considering it is useful. Web assembly could be used more for non-web things and it would be a better option than Node.js for some things. There are also some interesting corner cases like games, Minecraft was written in Java and there s no reason that Web Assembly couldn t do the same things. Vice has an interesting article about the Phantom encrypted phone service that ran on Blackberry handsets [7]. Australia really needs legislation based on the US RICO law! Vice has an interesting article about an encrypted phone company run by drug dealers [8]. Apparently after making an encrypted phone system for their own use they decided to sell it to others and made millions of dollars. They could have run a successful legal business. Salon has an insightful interview with Michael Petersen about his research on fake news and people who share it because they need chaos [9]. Apparently low status people who are status seeking are a main contributor to this, they share fake news knowingly to spread chaos. A society with less inequality would have less problems with fake news. Salon has another insightful interview with Michael Petersen, about is later research on fake news as an evolutionary strategy [10]. People knowingly share fake news to mobilise their supporters and to signal allegiance to their group. The more bizarre the beliefs are the more strongly they signal allegiance. If an opposing group has a belief then they can show support for their group by having the opposite belief (EG by opposing vaccination if the other political side supports doctors). He also suggests that lying can be a way of establishing dominance, the more honest people are opposed by a lie the more dominant the liar may seem. Vice has an amusing article about how police took over the Encrochat encrypted phone network that was mostly used by criminals [11]. It s amusing to read of criminals getting taken down like this. It s also interesting to note that the authorities messed up by breaking the wipe facility which alerted the criminals that their security was compromised. The investigation could have continued for longer if they hadn t changed the functionality of compromised phones. A later vice article mentioned that the malware installed on Encrochat devices recorded MAC addresses of Wifi access points which was used to locate the phones even though they had the GPS hardware removed. Cory Doctorow wrote an insightful article for Locus about the insufficient necessity of interoperability [12]. The problem if monopolies is not just an inability to interoperate with other services or leave it s losing control over your life. A few cartel participants interoperating will be able to do all the bad things to us tha a single monopolist could do.

• [1] https://tinyurl.com/yhrq5887
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/yhmog5ex
• [3] https://tinyurl.com/ygnmjm9j
• [4] https://www.bitsnbites.eu/three-fundamental-flaws-of-simd/
• [5] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/ghostezra-telegram-fued-qanon/
• [6] https://tinyurl.com/yhvganlc
• [7] https://tinyurl.com/yfljnlq5
• [8] https://tinyurl.com/yft5qwbc
• [9] https://tinyurl.com/yjjnnyfu
• [10] https://tinyurl.com/yjxq8c2v
• [11] https://tinyurl.com/y7hhrxuz
• [12] https://tinyurl.com/yj33txpj

The News Tribune published an article in 2004 about the Dove of Oneness , a mentally ill woman who got thousands of people to believe her crazy ideas about NESARA [1]. In recent time the QANON conspiracy theory has drawn on the NESARA cult and encouraged it s believers to borrow money and spend it in the belief that all debts will be forgiven (something which was not part of NESARA). The Wikipedia page about NESARA (proposed US legislation that was never considered by the US congress) notes that the second edition of the book about it was titled Draining the Swamp: The NESARA Story Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform . It seems like the Trump cult has been following that for a long time. David Brin (best-selling SciFi Author and NASA consultant) wrote an insightful blog post about the Tytler Calumny [2], which is the false claim that democracy inevitably fails because poor people vote themselves money. When really the failure is of corrupt rich people subverting the government processes to enrich themselves at the expense of their country. It s worth reading, and his entire blog is also worth reading. Cory Doctorow has an insightful article about his own battle with tobacco addiction and the methods that tobacco companies and other horrible organisations use to prevent honest discussion about legislation [3]. Cory Doctorow has an insightful article about consent theater which is describes how consent in most agreements between corporations and people is a fraud [4]. The new GDPR sounds good. The forum for the War Thunder game had a discussion on the accuracy of the Challenger 2 tank which ended up with a man who claims to be a UK tank commander posting part of a classified repair manual [5]. That s pretty amusing, and also good advertising for War Thunder. After reading about this I discovered that it s free on Steam and runs on Linux! Unfortunately it whinged about my video drivers and refused to run. Corey Doctorow has an insightful and well researched article about the way the housing market works in the US [6]. For house prices to increase conditions for renters need to be worse, that may work for home owners in the short term but then in the long term their children and grandchildren will end up renting.

• [1] https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25855081.html
• [2] https://tinyurl.com/yz8pf3j4
• [3] https://doctorow.medium.com/i-quit-9ae7b6010c99
• [4] https://onezero.medium.com/consent-theater-a32b98cd8d96
• [5] https://tinyurl.com/yjnq83qj
• [6] https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

BBI Kenya and live Supreme Court streaming on YT The last few weeks have been unrelenting as all sorts of news have been coming in, mostly about the downturn in the Economy, Islamophobia in India on the rise, Covid, and electioneering. However, in the last few days, Kenya surpassed India in live-streaming proceeds in a Court of Appeals about BBI or Building Bridges Initiative. A background filler article on the topic can be found in BBC. The live-streaming was done via YT and if wants to they can start from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIQzpmVKvro One can also subscribe to K24TV which took the initiative of sharing the proceedings with people worldwide. If K24TV continues to share SC proceedings of Kenya, that would add to the soft power of Kenya. I will not go into the details of the case as Gautam Bhatia who has been following the goings-on in Kenya is a far better authority on the subject. In fact, just recently he shared about another Kenyan judgment from a trial which can be seen here. He has shared the proceedings and some hot takes on the Twitter thread started by him. Probably after a couple of weeks or more when he has processed what all has happened there, he may also share some nuances although many of his thoughts would probably go to his book on Comparative Constitutional Law which he hopes to publish maybe in 2021/2022 or whenever he can. Such televised proceedings are sure to alleviate the standing of Kenya internationally. There has been a proposal to do similar broadcasts by India but with surveillance built-in, so they know who is watching. The problems with the architecture and the surveillance built-in have been shared by Srinivas Kodali or DigitalDutta quite a few times, but that probably is a story for another day.

Uttar Pradesh Population Control Bill

Hindus comprise 83% of Indian couples with more than two child children

The U.P. Population Bill came and it came with lot of prejudices. One of the prejudices is the idea that Muslims create or procreate to have the most children. Even with data is presented as shared above from NFHS National Family Health Survey which is supposed to carry our surveys every few years did the last one around 4 years back. The analysis from it has been instrumental not only in preparing graphs as above but also sharing about what sort of death toll must have been in rural India. And as somebody who have had the opportunity in the past, can vouch that you need to be extremely lucky if something happens to you when you are in a rural area. Even in places like Bodh Gaya (have been there) where millions of tourists come as it is one of the places not to be missed on the Buddhism tourist circuit, the medical facilities are pretty underwhelming. I am not citing it simply because there are too many such newspaper reports from even before the pandemic, and both the State and the Central Govt. response has been dismal. Just a few months back, they were recalled. There were reports of votes being bought at INR 1000/- (around $14) and a bottle or two of liquor. There used to be a time when election monitoring whether national or state used to be a thing, and you had LTO s (Long-time Observers) and STO s (Short-Term Observers) to make sure that the election has been neutral. This has been on the decline in this regime, but that probably is for another time altogether. Although, have to point out the article which I had shared a few months ago on the private healthcare model is flawed especially for rural areas. Instead of going for cheap, telemedicine centers that run some version of a Linux distro. And can provide a variety of services, I know Kerala and Tamil Nadu from South India have experimented in past but such engagements need to be scaled up. This probably will come to know when the next time I visit those places (sadly due to the virus, not anytime soonish.:( ) . Going back to the original topic, though, I had shared Hans Rosling s famous Ted talk on population growth which shows that even countries which we would not normally associate with family planning for e.g. the middle-east and Africa have also been falling quite rapidly. Of course, when people have deeply held prejudices, then it is difficult. Even when sharing China as to how they had to let go of their old policy in 2016 as they had the thing for leftover men . I also shared the powerful movie So Long my Son. I even shared how in Haryana women were and are trafficked and have been an issue for centuries but as neither suits the RW propaganda, they simply refuse to engage. They are more repulsed by people who publish this news rather than those who are actually practicing it, as that is culture . There is also teenage pregnancy, female infanticide, sex-selective abortion, etc., etc. It is just all too horrible to contemplate. Personal anecdote I know a couple, or they used to be a couple, where the gentleman wanted to have a male child. It was only after they got an autistic child, they got their DNA tested and came to know that the gentleman had a genetic problem. He again forced and had another child, and that too turned out to be autistic. Finally, he left the wife and the children, divorced them and lived with another woman. Almost a decade of the wife s life was ruined. The wife before marriage was a gifted programmer employed at IBM. This was an arranged marriage. After this, if you are thinking of marrying, apart from doing astrology charts, also look up DNA compatibility charts. Far better than ruining yours or the women s life. Both the children whom I loved are now in heaven, god bless them If one wants to, one can read a bit more about the Uttar Pradesh Population bill here. The sad part is that the systems which need fixing, nobody wants to fix. The reason being simple. If you get good health service by public sector, who will go to the private sector. In Europe, AFAIK they have the best medical bang for the money. Even the U.S. looks at Europe and hopes it had the systems that Europe has but that again is probably for another day.

South Africa and India long-lost brothers. As had shared before, after the 2016 South African Debconf convention, I had been following South Africa. I was happy when FeesMustFall worked and in 2017 the then ANC president Zuma declared it in late 2017. I am sure that people who have been regular visitors to this blog know how my position is on student loans. They also must be knowing that even in U.S. till the 1970s it had free education all the way to be a lawyer and getting a lawyer license. It is only when people like Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King Jr., and others from the civil rights movement came out as a major force that the capitalists started imposing fees. They wanted people who could be sold to corporate slavery, and they won. Just last week, Biden took some steps and canceled student loans and is working on steps towards broad debt forgiveness. Interestingly, NASA has an affirmative diversity program for people from diverse backgrounds, where a couple of UC (Upper Caste) women got the job. While they got the job, the RW (Right-Wing) was overjoyed as they got jobs on merit . Later, it was found that both the women were the third or fourth generation of immigrants in U.S.

NASA Federal Equal Opportunity Policy Directive NPD 3713 2H

Going back to the original question and topic, while there has been a concerning spate of violence, some calling it the worst sort of violence not witnessed since 1994. The problem, as ascertained in that article, is the same as here in India or elsewhere. Those, again, who have been on my blog know that merit 90% of the time is a function of privilege and there is a vast amount of academic literature which supports that. If, for a moment, you look at the data that is shared in the graph above which shows that 83% of Hindus and 13% of Muslims have more than 2 children, what does it show, it shows that 83+13 = 96% of the population is living in insecurity. The 5% are the ones who have actually consolidated more power during this regime rule in India. Similarly, from what I understood living in Cape Town for about a month, it is the Dutch Afrikaans as they like to call themselves and the immigrants who come from abroad who have enjoyed the fruits of tourism and money and power while the rest of the country is dying due to poverty. It is the same there, it is the same here. Corruption is also rampant in both countries, and the judiciary is virtually absent from both communities in India and SA. Interestingly, South Africa and India have been at loggerheads, but I suspect that is more due to the money and lobbying power by the Dutch. Usually, those who have money power, do get laws and even press on their side, and it is usually the ruling party in power. I cannot help but share about the Gupta brothers and their corruption as I came to know about it in 2016. And as have shared that I m related to Gupta s on my mother s side, not those specific ones but Gupta as a clan. The history of the Gupta dynasty does go back to the 3rd-4th century. Equally interesting have been Sonali Ranade s series of articles which she wrote in National Herald, the latest on exports which is actually the key to taking India out of poverty rather than anything else. While in other countries Exporters are given all sort of subsidies, here it is being worked as how to give them less. This was in Economic times hardly a week back

Export incentive schemes being reduced

I can t imagine the incredible stupidity done by the Finance Minister. And then in an attempt to prove that, they will attempt to present a rosy picture with numbers that have nothing to do with reality. Interestingly enough, India at one time was a major exporter of apples, especially from Kashmir. Now instead of exporting, we are importing them from Afghanistan as well as Belgium and now even from the UK. Those who might not want to use the Twitter link could use this article. Of course, what India got out of this trade deal is not known. One can see that the UK got the better deal from this. Instead of investing in our own capacity expansion, we are investing in increasing the capacity of others. This is at the time when due to fuel price hike (Central taxes 66%) demand is completely flat. And this is when our own CEA (Chief Economic Adviser) tells us that growth will be at the most 6-7% and that too in 2023-2024 while currently, the inflation rate is around 12%. Is it then any wonder that almost 70% are living on Govt. ration and people in the streets of Kolkata, Assam, and other places have to sell kidneys to make sure they have some money for their kids for tomorrow. Now I have nothing against the UK but trade negotiation is an art. Sadly, this has been going on for the last few years. The politicians in India fool the public by always telling of future trade deals. Sadly, as any businessman knows, once you have compromised, you always have to compromise. And the more you compromise, the more you weaken the hand for any future trade deals.

IIT pupil tries to sell kidney to repay loan, but no takers for Dalit organ.

The above was from yesterday s Times of India. Just goes to show how much people are suffering. There have been reports in vernacular papers of quite a few people from across regions and communities are doing this so they can live without pain a bit. Almost all the time, the politicians are saved as only few understand international trade, the diplomacy and the surrounding geopolitics around it. And this sadly, is as much to do with basic education as much as it is to any other factor

Suli Deals About a month back on the holy day of Ramzan or Ramadan as it is known in the west, which is beloved by Muslims, a couple of Muslim women were targeted and virtually auctioned. Soon, there was a flood and a GitHub repository was created where hundreds of Muslim women, especially those who have a voice and fearlessly talk about their understanding about issues and things, were being virtually auctioned. One week after the FIR was put up, to date none of the people mentioned in the FIR have been arrested. In fact, just yesterday, there was an open letter which was published by livelaw. I have saved a copy on WordPress just in case something does go wrong. Other than the disgust we feel, can t say much as no action being taken by GOI and police.

IT Rules 2021 and Big Media After almost a year of sleeping when most activists were screaming hoarsely about how the new IT rules are dangerous for one and all, big media finally woke up a few weeks back and listed a writ petition in Madras High Court of the same. Although to be frank, the real writ petition was filed In February 2021, classical singer, performer T.M. Krishna in Madras High Court. Again, a copy of the writ petition, I have hosted on WordPress. On 23rd June 2021, a group of 13 media outlets and a journalist have challenged the IT Rules, 2021. The Contention came from Digital News Publishers Association which is made up of the following news companies: ABP Network Private Limited, Amar Ujala Limited, DB Corp Limited, Express Network Pvt Ltd, HT Digital Streams Limited, IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd, Jagran Prakashan Limited, Lokmat Media Private Limited, NDTV Convergence Limited, TV Today Network Limited, The Malayala Manorama Co (P) Ltd, Times Internet Limited, and Ushodaya Enterprises Private Limited. All the above are heavyweights in the markets where they operate. The reason being simple, when these media organizations came into being, the idea was to have self-regulation, which by and large has worked. Now, the present Govt. wants each news item to be okayed by them before publication. This is nothing but blatant misuse of power and an attempt at censorship. In fact, the Tamil Nadu BJP president himself made a promise of the same. And of course, what is true and what is a lie, only GOI knows and will decide for the rest of the country. If somebody remembers Joseph Goebbels at this stage, it is merely a coincidence. Anyways, 3 days ago Supreme Court on 14th July the Honorable Supreme Court asked the Madras High Court to transfer all the petitions to SC. This, the Madras High Court denied as cited/shared by Meera Emmanuel, a reporter who works with barandbench. The Court says nothing doing, let this happen and then the SC can entertain the motion of doing it that level. At the same time, they would have the benefit of Madras High Court opinion as well. It gave the center two weeks to file a reply. So, either of end-week of July or latest by August first week, we might be able to read the Center s reply on the same. The SC could do a forceful intervention, but it would lead to similar outrage as has been witnessed in the past when a judge commented that if the SC has to do it all, then why do we need the High Courts, district courts etc. let all the solutions come from SC itself. This was, admittedly, frustration on the part of the judge, but due in part to the needless intervention of SC time and time again. But the concerns had been felt around all the different courts in the country.

Sedition Law A couple of days ago, the Supreme Court under the guidance of Honorable CJI NV Ramanna, entertained the PIL filed by Maj Gen S G Vombatkere (Retd.) which asked simply that the sedition law which was used in the colonial times by the British to quell dissent by Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak during the Indian freedom struggle. A good background filler article can be found on MSN which tells about some recent cases but more importantly how historically the sedition law was used to quell dissent during India s Independence. Another article on MSN actually elaborates on the PIL filed by Maj Gen S. G. Vombatkere. Another article on MSN tells how sedition law has been challenged and changed in 10 odd countries. I find it equally sad and equally hilarious that the Indian media whose job is to share news and opinion on this topic is being instead of being shared more by MSN. Although, I would be bereft of my duty if I did not share the editorial on the same topic by the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle. Also, an interesting question to ask is, are there only 10 countries in the world that have sedition laws? AFAIK, there are roughly 200 odd countries as recognized by WTO. If 190 odd countries do not have sedition laws, it also tells a lot about them and a lot about the remaining 10. Also, it came to light that police are still filing laws under sec66A which was declared null and void a few years ago. It was replaced with section 124A if memory serves right and it has more checks and balances.

Danish Siddiqui, Pulitzer award-winning and death in Afghanistan Before I start with Danish Siddiqui, let me share an anecdote that I think I have shared on the blog years ago about how photojournalists are. Again, those who know me and those who follow me know how much I am mad both about trains and planes (civil aviation). A few months back, I had shared a blog post about some of the biggest railway systems in the world which shows that privatization of Railways doesn t necessarily lead to up-gradation of services but definitely leads to an increase in tariff/fares. Just had a conversation couple of days ago on Twitter and realized that need to also put a blog post about civil aviation in India and the problems it faces, but I digress. This was about a gentleman who wanted to take a photo of a particular train coming out of a valley at a certain tunnel at two different heights, one from below and one from above the train. This was several years ago, and while I did share that award-winning photograph then, it probably would take me quite a bit of time and effort to again look it up on my blog and share. The logistics though were far more interesting and intricate than I had first even thought of. We came around a couple of days before the train was supposed to pass that tunnel and the valley. More than half a dozen or maybe more shots were taken throughout the day by the cameras. The idea was to see how much light was being captured by the cameras and how much exposure was to be given so that the picture isn t whitened out or is too black. Weather is the strangest of foes for a photojournalist or even photographers, and the more you are in nature, the more unpredictable it is and can be. We were also at a certain height, so care had to be taken in case light rainfall happens or dew falls, both not good for digital cameras. And dew is something which will happen regardless of what you want. So while the two days our gentleman cameraman fiddled with the settings to figure out correct exposure settings, we had one other gentleman who was supposed to take the train from an earlier station and apprise us if the train was late or not. The most ideal time would be at 0600 hrs. When the train would enter the tunnel and come out and the mixture of early morning sun rays, dew, the flowers in the valley, and the train would give a beautiful effect. We could stretch it to maybe 0700 hrs. Anything after that would just be useless, as it wouldn t have the same effect. And of all this depended on nature. If the skies were to remain too dark, nothing we could do about it, if the dewdrops didn t fall it would all be over. On the day of the shoot, we were told by our compatriot that the train was late by half an hour. We sank a little on hearing that news. Although Photoshop and others can do touch-ups, most professionals like to take as authentic a snap as possible. Everything had been set up to perfection. The wide-angle lenses on both the cameras with protections were set up. The tension you could cut with a knife. While we had a light breakfast, I took a bit more and went in the woods to shit and basically not be there. This was too tensed up for me. Returned an hour to find everybody in a good mood. Apparently, the shoot went well. One of the two captured it for good enough. Now, this is and was in a benign environment where the only foe was the environment. A bad shot would have meant another week in the valley, something which I was not looking forward to. Those who have lived with photographers and photojournalists know how self-involved they can be in their craft, while how grumpy they can be if they had a bad shoot. For those, who don t know, it is challenging to be friends with such people for a long time. I wish they would scream more at nature and let out the frustrations they have after a bad shoot. But again, this is in a very safe environment. Now let s cut to Danish Siddiqui and the kind of photojournalism he followed. He followed a much more riskier sort of photojournalism than the one described above. Krittivas Mukherjee in his Twitter thread shared how reporters in most advanced countries are trained in multiple areas, from risk assessment to how to behave in case you are kidnapped, are in riots, hostage situations, etc. They are also trained in all sorts of medical training from treating gunshot wounds, CPR, and other survival methods. They are supposed to carry medical equipment along with their photography equipment. Sadly, these concepts are unknown in India. And even then they get killed. Sadly, he attributes his death to the thrill of taking an exclusive photograph. And the gentleman s bio reads that he is a diplomat. Talk about tone-deafness On another completely different level was Karen Hao who was full of empathy as she shared the humility, grace, warmth and kinship she describes in her interaction with the photojournalist. His body of work can be seen via his ted talk in 2020 where he shared a brief collage of his works. Latest, though in a turnaround, the Taliban have claimed no involvement in the death of photojournalist Danish Siddiqui. This could be in part to show the Taliban in a more favorable light as they do and would want to be showcased as progressive, even though they are forcing that all women within a certain age become concubines or marry the fighters and killing the minority Hazaras or doing vile deeds with them. Meanwhile, statements made by Hillary Clinton almost a decade, 12 years ago have come back into circulation which stated how the U.S. itself created the Taliban to thwart the Soviet Union and once that job was finished, forgot all about it. And then in 2001, it landed back in Afghanistan while the real terrorists were Saudi. To date, not all documents of 9/11 are in the public domain. One can find more information of the same here. This is gonna take probably another few years before Saudi Arabia s whole role in the September 11 attacks will be known. Last but not the least, came to know about the Pegasus spyware and how many prominent people in some nations were targeted, including in mine India. Will not talk more as it s already a big blog post and Pegasus revelations need an article on its own.

Review: Demon Lord of Karanda, by David Eddings

Series:	The Malloreon #3
Publisher:	Del Rey
Copyright:	September 1988
Printing:	February 1991
ISBN:	0-345-36331-0
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	404

This is the third book of the Malloreon, which in turn is a sequel trilogy to The Belgariad. Eddings, unlike most series authors, does a great job of reminding you what's happening with prologues in each book, but you definitely do not want to start reading here. When we last left our heroes, they had been captured. (This is arguably a spoiler for King of the Murgos, but it's not much of one, nor one that really matters.) This turns out to be an opportunity to meet the Emperor of Mallorea, the empire from which their adversary Zandramas (and, from the earlier trilogy, the god Torak) comes. This goes much better than one might expect, continuing the trend in this series of showing the leaders of the enemy countries as substantially similar to the leaders of the supposedly good countries. This sounds like open-mindedness on Eddings's part, and I suppose it partly is. It's at least a change from the first series, in which the bad guys were treated more like orcs. But the deeper I read into this series, the more obvious how invested Eddings is in a weird sort of classism. Garion and the others get along with Zakath in part because they're all royalty, or at least run in those circles. They just disagree about how to be a good ruler (and not as much as one might think, or hope). The general population of any of the countries is rarely of much significance. Zakath is a bit more cynical than Garion and company and has his own agenda, but he's not able to overcome the strong conviction of this series that the Prophecy and the fight between the Child of Light and the Child of Dark is the only thing of importance that's going on, and other people matter only to the extent that they're involved in that story. When I first read these books as a teenager, I was one of the few who liked the second series and didn't mind that its plot was partly a rehash of the first. I found, and still find, the blatantness with which Eddings manipulates the plot by making prophecy a character in the novel amusing. What I had forgotten, however, was how much of a slog the middle of this series is. It takes about three quarters of this book before there are any significant plot developments, and that time isn't packed with interesting diversions. It's mostly the heroes having conversations with each other or with Zakath, being weirdly sexist, rehashing their personality quirks, or shrugging about horrific events that don't matter to them personally. The last is a reference to the plague that appears in this book, and which I had completely forgotten. To be fair to my memory, that's partly because none of the characters seem to care much about it either. They're cooling their heels in a huge city, a plague starts killing people, they give Zakath amazingly brutal and bloodthirsty advice to essentially set fire to all the parts of the city with infected people, and then they blatantly ignore all the restrictions on movement because, well, they're important unlike all those other people and have places to go. It's rather stunningly unempathetic under the best of circumstances and seems even more vile in a 2021 re-read. Eddings also manages to make Ce'Nedra even more obnoxious than she has been by turning her into a walking zombie with weird fits where she's obsessed with her child, and adding further problems (which would be a spoiler) on top of that. I have never been a Ce'Nedra fan (that Garion's marriage ever works at all appears to be by authorial decree), but in this book she's both useless and irritating while supposedly being a tragic figure. You might be able to tell that I'm running sufficiently low on patience for Eddings's character quirks that I'm losing my enthusiasm for re-reading this bit of teenage nostalgia. This is the third book of a five-book series, so while there's a climax of sorts just like there was in the third book of the Belgariad, it's a false climax. One of the secondary characters is removed, but nothing is truly resolved; the state of the plot isn't much different at the end of this book than it was at the start. And to get there, one has to put up with Garion being an idiot, Ce'Nedra being a basket case, the supposed heroes being incredibly vicious about a plague, and one character pretending to have an absolutely dreadful Irish accent for pages upon pages upon pages. (His identity is supposedly a mystery, but was completely obvious a hundred pages before Garion figured it out. Garion isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.) The one redeeming merit to this series is the dry voice in Garion's head and the absurd sight of the prophecy telling all the characters what to do, and we barely get any of that in this book. When it wasn't irritating or offensive, it was just a waste of time. The worst book of the series so far. Followed by Sorceress of Darshiva. Rating: 3 out of 10