![]() I text Peter that I don’t need a ride, because I want to get there early and put the valentine in his locker. My plan is to bring these to the lunch table I know that Peter and Gabe and Darrell will appreciate them. But my turnovers turn out so perfect, right out of a cartoon, each one so golden and homey, with their fork-tined edges and the little holes to let out steam. ![]() Worse than the time I made red velvet cake and got red food coloring in the backsplash tiles. It’s a bloodbath, a cherry-juice bloodbath. ![]() Cherry juice splattered all over the countertops and tiles. ![]() I Still Love You 25 THE NIGHT BEFORE VALENTINE’S DAY, I get it in my head that my card for Peter isn’t enough and cherry turnovers would be a fantastic idea, so I wake up before the sun rises to bake them fresh, and now the kitchen looks like a crime scene. To quickly assess the difficulty of the text, read a short excerpt: ![]()
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![]() ![]() Google drove into our neighborhoods with camera-equipped cars to capture images of our communities and create detailed maps that will be useful for routing their self-driving cars and even planning entire cities where everything will be connected and everyone’s life experience moment by moment can be rendered as data. ![]() That Fitbit your employer paid for? It feeds information to insurers that can use to change your behavior and reduce costs – or charge you more if you don’t comply. ![]() You’re not the product, you’re the site of raw material extraction, and that extraction isn’t just to sell ads, it’s to provide the means of control to anyone who will profit from it. The old saw about free platforms – if it’s free, you’re the product – isn’t quite true. The more engaged we are online, the more these companies know about us, and the more they know, the more they can sell predictions of our behavior for people who want to modify it. What started as search and social platforms without much of a business model were transformed by the accidental discovery that the data trails we leave behind whenever we go online – “behavioral surplus” – is extraordinarily valuable. It’s an impressive work that ties together a lot of trends into a very spooky picture of where we are headed when intimate data about each of us is used as the raw material for prediction and control. I have finally finished reading Shoshana Zuboff’s epic book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. ![]() ![]() ![]() I thought this was going to be a fairly predictable read. ![]() Torn between wanting to save her father from dying to pay their way, and returning to a place which could be dangerous for her, Jules returns to the Gerling estate and finds herself wrapped up in something more complicated than she could ever have imagined. Jules and her father had lived on the estate previously but were forced to leave after an unfortunate accident. Her father is bleeding his life away to pay their debts, and Jules has a way to earn more blood iron than they could ever need, but this means working for the Gerlings. ![]() Jules Ember finds herself in a difficult position. The rich Gerlings tax the poor and seem to live forever, whilst the poor are bled to pay their debts. Blood is extracted and bound to iron which is then used to pay debts or consumed to add time to your lifespan. Set in a world where your blood and your time is currency. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Soon after the accident, a mysterious girl named Brooks appears at Zane's doorstep, demanding that she and Zane meet up at the volcano. One day, while discovering new cracks and creases in the mountain, a small airplane crashes into it, disturbing Zane and his three-legged dog Rosie. Zane Obispo's favorite activity to partake in when he's not at school is exploring the sleeping volcano in his own backyard. A short story by Cervantes about the characters in the book were featured in the anthology book, The Cursed Carnival and Other Calamities. The jacket art was designed by Maria Elias and drawn by Irving Rodriguez. It is the second of many books in the " Rick Riordan Presents" imprint and is about fourteen-year-old Zane Obispo who uses a cane to get around due to a debilitating limp. Cervantes and published in September 2018. The Storm Runner is a novel written by J. ![]() ![]() ![]() I was excited by this book and enthusiastically recommend it to general as well as scientific audiences."-American Scientist"Hellman has assembled a series of entertaining tales. And when it comes to describing the battle, Hal Hellman is a master."-New ScientistGreat Feuds in Science"Unusual insight into the development of science. But Hellman's stories also show how scientific fights bring out sharper formulations and better arguments."-Professor Dirk van Dalen, Philosophy Department, Utrecht UniversityGreat Feuds in Technology"There's nothing like a good feud to grab your attention. The main characters are as excitable and touchy as the next man. Praise for Hal HellmanGreat Feuds in Mathematics"Those who think that mathematicians are cold, mechanical proving machines will do well to read Hellman's book on conflicts in mathematics. ![]() ![]() Not always sedentary many would have had two residences, taking into account seasonal crops, sacred sites and their use of fire. And of villages where many families lived. ![]() He came across many examples of agriculture - sowing crops, harvesting, then storing food, aquaculture and fish traps, of using fire and constructing wells. Saddled with the usual notion taught in schools and believed by mainstream Australia that Aboriginal people were nomadic hunters and gatherers, Pascoe began to look at diaries, recollections and illustrations by early European settlers and explorers with different eyes. ![]() Themes: Aboriginal themes, Aboriginal agriculture, Aboriginal aquacultureĬoming across a reference to Aboriginal agriculture sent Bruce Pascoe into researching a little known area of Australian history. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() I appreciated his books, & only dimly perceived the heartbreak he must have felt when nearly all of his longtime JW companions turned against him.īut I've often wondered - did Ray Franz proactively leave the organization, or was his departure more reactive? Also, although he stated in his book that he was distressed by the decisions of the Governing Body when he was serving as a member, would he have been sufficiently distressed by his pangs of conscience to have left on his own, had there been no witch-hunt for apostates at Bethel prior to his departure? Practically every ex-JW who's read his revealing explanations of the inner workings of the Watchtower Society has benefited from his courageous efforts to speak the real truth about a sect that claims exclusive honors as the single, solitary version of "God's Truth" on earth today. Ray Franz' books have had a major impact upon tens of thousands of sincere JWs. I will also refer to "Crisis of Conscience" as COC, & the Watchtower Society as WT. ![]() In this preamble I refer to him as Ray Franz. ![]() All applicable quotes in this thread are coming from my personal hard copy (paperback) of Ray Franz' "Crisis of Conscience", the Fourth Edition, copyrighted 2008.įor brevity, I will often refer to Ray Franz as RFz through the bulk of the quotes. ![]() ![]() ![]() Others address what happens when someone discovers that he has supernatural powers-the columnist who kills people by writing their obituaries in "Obits " the old judge in "The Dune" who, as a boy, canoed to a deserted island and saw names written in the sand, people who then died in freak accidents. Several stories feature characters at the end of life, revisiting their crimes and misdemeanors. In "Afterlife," a man who died of colon cancer keeps reliving the same life, repeating his mistakes over and over again. As Entertainment Weekly said about this collection: " Bazaar of Bad Dreams is bursting with classic King terror, but what we love most are the thoughtful introductions he gives to each tale that explain what was going on in his life as he wrote it." There are thrilling connections between stories themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past. In this new collection he introduces each story with a passage about its origins or his motivations for writing it. For more than thirty-five years, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. ![]() Henry Prize winner Stephen King that includes twenty-one iconic stories with accompanying autobiographical comments on when, why and how he came to write (or rewrite) each one. ![]() ![]() ![]() The show, created by Sara Goodman, is circled around the same premise, as a group of friends returns home to their small town in Hawaii one year after accidentally killing someone in a car crash after a wild night. ![]() In October 2021, the first four episodes of the series debuted on Amazon. Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze Jr., the horror flick went on to become a cult classic - so much so, that it led to a TV series of the same name. The film, which debuted in 1997 and was loosely based on Lois Duncan’s 1973 novel, follows four friends who are stalked by a killer one year after they accidentally kill a man in a car accident and leave him for dead. ![]() It’s been 24 years since I Know What You Did Last Summer landed in theaters - and now it’s back as a TV series. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() How can one person know so much? Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Most of all the brilliant mind that conceived of and executed this book. I give it the highest marks-over the top-for its brilliant characterization its brilliant sense of place (Manhattan, Las Vegas, Amsterdam) its brilliant plot (quite Dickensian, with one damn thing right after another!) its brilliant description. ![]() Why is it so great? You’re entitled to ask. If you’re not that interested in highly elaborate (but accessible) discussions of art, furniture restoration, what it feels like to be high or in love, to be terrorized, to be saved, to be lost, to be found, to be good, to be bad, to be human–go elsewhere.īut if you want to have a reading experience that may make you wonder if you’ll ever want to read another novel, I recommend The Goldfinch. If you like a clean, simple, cut-to-the-chase style, Finch is not for you. In addition, it’s “wordy.” Full of fulsome descriptions. So if you’re not up for the long haul, step aside But after Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, I suspect it will be a long time before I read another novel that is as brilliant and beautiful as this one. He told me about Rich Bass’s blurb on the back cover of Cold Mountain when it came out: “It seems possible to never want to read another book, so wonderful is this one.” ![]() A friend and I were talking about hyperbole in book blurbs and reviews the other day (I confess I don’t mind a little hyperbole concerning my books). ![]() |