Check out today's Metacurity for a comprehensive run-down of crucial cybersecurity developments you should know, including
--Yanluowang initial access broker faces up to 53 years in prison following guilty plea,
--CBO breach is considered 'ongoing,'
--Asahi's shipments are at 10% following attack and ahead of holiday season,
--Payments by British insurers for cyber incidents have tripled,
--Chinese national faces UK sentencing this week for money …
I was looking into the #DANDI archive, following a post of @… that mentioned it as a possibility for #Neuroscience data storage.. It looks like it could be useful i…
Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading
Moody Urbanity - Relations V 🪢
情绪化城市 - 关系 V 🪢
📷 Minolta Hi-Matic AF
🎞️ Shanghai GP3 400 Pan
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
Have a joyful #DayOfDionysos here at Erotic Mythology! 🍇
"Liber [Dionysos], falling in love with her, took her [Ariadne] from there [the island of Naxos] as his wife."
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 43
🏛 Dionysos and Ariadne crowned, Etruscan Red-figure pottery, 4th century BCE, Krater from Civita Castellana, ancient Falerii, Rome province, Italy
#Upcoming Framed around the language of filmmaking, “Achlys” finds Jon Porras (aka Barn Owl) moving further into texture, erosion, and weight. Available via #ShelterPress, October 24th.
yimbys keep calling it misinformation that #SB79 allows demolition of rent-controlled duplexes and telling others to read the bill. it's right here, plain as day!
If you set limits for a scale (e.g. x-axis) in ggplot, how would you like data outside of that range be handled? There is the oob parameter for that and a set of functions to use with it: https://scales.r-lib.org/reference/oob.html