Sainte Chapelle

I revisited the royal chapel today with my favorite PhD tour guide. The usual flair for historical detail and neat technical observations was continued. My photos from inside the chapel were too blurry to convey its awe-inspiring, towering sheets of intricate stained glass, rising up to the heavens, but the outside stonework detailing was also nice.

Stonework on a lower wall panel, exterior of Sainte Chapelle.

And extremely French. They love that fleur-de-lis, it's on everything.

This post's theme word is hagiarchy, "a government by holy persons." The lifelong grooming of a royal saint should not be confused with a hagiarchy; this instance was certainly a helicopter-parent-iarchy.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant tells the story of Baru Cormorant, a child of an island nation which is absorbed, subsumed, oppressed, and culturally homogenized into the Masked Empire. She is trained in the colonial schools, taught the language and culture and norms and rules of the conquerors. (SJW alert: the Masked Empire is pro-vaccination but violently homophobic, and her parents' culture is pansexually open and free but doesn't have basic sanitation or medicine. Lots of subtle and not-so-subtle social conversations could happen around this book. I won't examine any of them here.)

Like many protagonists, Baru Cormorant is brilliant. And, despite the accuracy and predictive power of the novel's title, she is a reliable "narrator" (limited 3rd person). Her treachery is contained within the book, and it is comprehensive, pervasive, and exhausting. Exhaustive, too. Even warned by the title and by the giant flags dropped everywhere, the thoroughness of betrayals, reversals, and interpersonal stratagems that she executes is impressive. (Especially because, as a "savant" accountant, her real gift is supposedly with numbers; playing the people and systems around her is just the frosting atop what must be a truly Byzantine accountancy problem.) Baru Cormorant is more devious than Ender or Darrow,* in her self-determined navigation as a child within an oppressive regime of adults and their arbitrary strictures. Clever. Thorough. Analytical, defensive, and perfect in her delicate subversions. Always just balancing on the knife-edge of failure, but just just pulling through with wild success.

The story of The Traitor Baru Cormorant is compelling and deeply emotional, even with (or especially with) a main character who suppresses most emotion. (More compelling than similarly-suppressed characters like Vyr Cossant (of Iain M Banks' The Hydrogen Sonata) or Avice Benner Cho (of China Miéville's Embassytown). The middle part of the story dragged a little for me, with endless chapters of military tactics and movements when I'd rather have jumped to the result. (This was compounded by reading the entire novel in airports and airplanes this week, waiting to get to the other side of the ocean.) The end landed exactly where it was forecast, but nevertheless was narratively-charged and compelling.


This post's theme word is procrustes, "a person imposing conformity without concern for individuality." The procrustian dystopia is rife with smart, subversive urchins; however, most grow up to be procrustes themselves.

*I couldn't think of a third child-protagonist-of-psychologically-controlling-regime-who-subverts-it-from-the-inside to complete this list. Or any female characters. Many are like Katniss Everdeen, and central but ultimately powerless over their own destinies.

March retroblogging

The planet slowly orbits, the axis tilt bringing more arc/degrees of sun exposure to this land-heavy hemisphere. We warm.

Here is this month's list of things you definitely missed, because I retro-dated them and your RSS almost certainly did not pick them up.

Photographic documentation --- with light commentary --- of things I saw, places I went, and interesting visual phenomena I experienced:

• Shipwreck of the Annie C. Maguire
• Mirabelle pie
• Reims cathedral (very cool computer-mediated art)
• Valet umbrella parking
• Chocolate, chocolate everywhere --- and a moderate amount to eat
• Accessibly tactile art
• The texture of water
• Thatch texture
• Pi(e) day (observed)

Other stuff:

• ... actually, I never got around to retroblogging other stuff this month.

Enjoy.


This post's theme word is pangloss, "blindly or unreasonably optimistic." I automatically published this retroblogging post, but it was still in draft form: pangloss mistake.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet tells the story of the motley crew of a wormhole-constructing spaceship, as they navigate their interspecies cultural differences, galactic-civilization-scope politics, and (of course) the weird wibbly-wobbly non-Euclidean subspace through which they construct spaceship bypasses.

It's fun and it moves along at a clip. In terms of comedic-dramatic romps taking place mostly on spaceships, it is much closer to Iain M Banks'  Culture novels than Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice. There are many species, with different physical and societal structures, but at least a few of them can see eye-to-eye[stalk]. enough to form a conglomerate civilization. Bureaucracy, treaties, the careful social and political leeways given and adjustments made for aliens --- these things are important and hard but mostly tractable in this universe. They come to the forefront because one of our protagonists is an office clerk... but being the clerk on a wide-travelling, alien-filled, wormhole-constructing spaceship makes the paperwork, accounting, border declaration forms, etc. cool.

Also like an Iain M Banks book, there's not one single crescendoing plot, but instead a series of interesting events with no special signposts for readers. Life, in all its banalities and stresses and joys. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet manages to be a fun, quick space opera; a sweet novel about interpersonal relationships and the values of small tight communities; and a sad story of loss. It could also be read as a screed about basic universal rights, or what constitutes sentience, or how to be a good neighbor. Or the importance of snacking between meals, and continuously drinking non-caffeinated tea.

I liked it.

It didn't sparkle with the sheer perfection of Pride and Prejudice ("too light, and bright, and sparkling" -- Austen herself), or The Hydrogen Sonata, or Ancillary Justice, but I recommend it, especially if you already like space opera. It's a great first novel, and I'll keep Becky Chambers on my radar.


This post's theme word is praxis, "customary practice or conduct", or "exercise of a skill," or "practical application of a theory." This alien praxis is bizarre, but it makes sense for those with neither opposable thumbs nor bones in their bodies.

Radical daylight savings

Daylight savings time is some kind of entrenched, slow-motion mass hysteria. Why do we all agree to lose and gain an hour? And, if we do all conform to this clock standard, why don't we all do it at the same time? Like leap seconds? I don't know of any country choosing to opt out of leap seconds, or Europe taking its leap second a few weeks after North America takes its leap seconds.

I protest.

Yes, it's springtime. Undeniably. Birds are chirping, tentative green nubs are emerging from the extremities of plants. Rain is abundant but less lethally freezing. But I refuse. You cannot take this hour from me!

In protest, I have chased my stolen hour across the ocean. Haha, take that! Instead of losing an hour, I have sneakily regained several. Clawed back time from the inevitable rotation of the planet. Bwa ha ha, etc.

I am tired from this pursuit, and will now attempt to use my extra time to sleep.


This post's theme word is wakerife, "wakeful, alert." I'm not jetlagged, I'm inappropriately wakerife.

Computer-augmenting stickers

Forgive the poor lighting conditions, I snuck this photo in a darkened airplane. My neighbor had a delight-inducing sticker on the back of his laptop.

Is this a reference, or just a usual tentacled one-eyed cartoon sneaking around the edge of the iconic fruit?


This post's theme word is tragus, "the small fleshy projection at the front of the external ear, slightly extending over the opening of the ear." The tentacles unfurled and tickled his tragus.

Courtship tokens

My desk already had fun math puzzles, as decoration and to occupy my hands and mind while I spin my brain-wheels on research problems.

To these I now add recently-received wooing tokens, these two octopuses.

As far as romancing goes, I cannot think of a more attractive feature than access to a 3D printer and willingness to print tiny, creepy cephalopods.


This post's theme word is cumshaw, "a gift or tip." This cumshaw octopus collects scrimshaw.

Beautifully-arranged patisseries

I appreciate these single-serving, perfectly-aligned tidbits of dessert.

The colors are great. And I'm sure that each one has its own special vocabulary word. I'd identify them by pointing, probably, or secondarily by color and shape and weird hand gestures.


This post's theme word is larruping, (adv) "very," or (adj) "excellent." What larruping, sweet desserts! What larruping sweet desserts!

Tomatoes

Many thanks to the nameless supermarket designers and employees whose choices in lighting, display baskets, and arrangements of tomatoes resulted in this delightful spread.

Anyone for some sphere-packing practice?

The addition of other vegetables for variety in color and visual texture serves to emphasize the red, rounded, Platonically-ideal tomatoes.

This post's theme word is bleb, "a bubble," or "a small blister or swelling." If your rash of blebs resembles this pile of tomatoes, seek immediate medical attention.

Buttons on chickens

In further developments on the Easter-season chocolate window-display front: chocolate chickens? Check. Covered in buttons?

Check.

I'm not sure if the buttons are also edible, or if they're just... buttons... that the window-dresser had in surplus. (Manager: "Add more color!" Employee: "All the chocolate is brown or white." Manager: "It needs to be more colorful!" Employee: *shrugs*)

Other seasonal displays of sweets: previously, previouslier.

This post's theme word is temerarious, "presumptuously or recklessly daring or bold." The temerarious chicken wore buttons without any clothing!