Miles Vorkosigan alternate careers

Jul. 16th, 2025 08:46 am
lannamichaels: Astronaut Dale Gardner holds up For Sale sign after EVA. (Default)
[personal profile] lannamichaels


It's not exactly a secret that I hate Miles Vorkosigan being in the military, so for RL reasons I was thinking hmm could Miles instead become a doctor, and then followed up immediately with "absolutely he could not" and in fact I could not think of any position in a hospital that he would be suited for, but then I realized I was overthinking this.

Miles would be a great plumber. It's perfect for him. No boss, just clients, and he can pick the interesting jobs. It's bounded but also a place for creativity. He has to find out what the problem is and fix it. Because of his size, he may even be a better choice for certain jobs than other plumbers. He can pick his hours by picking the clients and the jobs, and then hyperfocus on a problem until it's over. If he wants, he can pack his schedule, or he can relax it. But he's not answering to anyone and people are grateful for his help because it's a problem they can't fix themselves, and it's also necessary: everyone will at some point require the assistance of a plumber.

The only problem is that there's no wonderful recognition and pride from his peers, unless we can get him to value the opinions of other plumbers, and then he can just brag about all the impossible disasters he fixed before breakfast. The sense of accomplishment is built-in, as in the sense of being valuable and needed.

And I feel like even Miles Vorkosigan would not find a way to commit treason whilst doing it.

Two non-fiction books

Jul. 15th, 2025 08:03 pm
lannamichaels: Text: "We're here to heckle the muppet movie." (heckle the muppet movie)
[personal profile] lannamichaels

  • Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell (2023): [personal profile] lirazel posted about the audiobook version of this, which got me to put this on my list, but alas my library only has access to the print version; I feel that the audiobook version is probably superior. There were several parts in the book that were a slog to get through the paragraph, that would be perfectly fine if you were listening to a patented David Mitchell Rant about the subject. In fact, imagining them in David Mitchell's voice is how I got through them. Read more... )

  • Subpar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors by Amber Share (2021): A bookified version of a Instagram account I never followed, a copy of which I read at someone's house who was using as a bookmark something that indicated they had gotten it as a gift when it came out and never got past the first fifth of the book. This book would have been fine if it had not decided it was going to fight the one star reviews, and instead just showed the artwork and mentioned how great the park was. As it was, it positioned itself as an argument between the one star reviewers and the author, and the one star reviewers won.Read more... )
lannamichaels: Brachos 2a, caption: "There's a debate about that" (daf yomi)
[personal profile] lannamichaels


Fun with idolatry and "I'm doing Avoda Zara" jokes! The perek ended yesterday but RL is being busy.

The absolute requisite note on Avoda Zara is one that gets stressed constantly, which is that this is referring specifically to the religious groups amongst whom the tanaim and amoraim were living, and only them. Among the reasons the commentators have said this for a long time is 1) actual real differences between the avoda zarah described in the mishna/gemara and the goysche practices they lived amongst, combined with 2) because if they kept to all of this, there would be many practical problems, because they were a lot more interconnected by that time and working in specific professions, and 3) the outside world thinks it gets a say in Jewish religious texts and would be violently offended if this refers to them.

But definitely there were times when dealing with Artscroll commentary when I had to snap and actually look up when the Meiri lived, and it's like, ah, 13th century France, I understand completely.


Read more... )

Murderbot TV, season the first

Jul. 11th, 2025 01:51 pm
lannamichaels: Astronaut Dale Gardner holds up For Sale sign after EVA. (Default)
[personal profile] lannamichaels


So I hated the first part of episode 10, and liked the last ~8 minutes, those were great, truly great. But I really didn't need what came before that; I liked how Murderbot slipped away at the end of the first novella. Oh well.

In general, overall, I really enjoyed Murderbot The Television Show, although there were parts of it I had to skip or not watch. They did a really good job at translating a novella into a tv show; the changes were understandable and made sense for the medium, even when they were ones I disliked. The show fleshed out the characters very well, and they had just so so so so much fun with the in-universe tv shows.

If this show has one thesis, it is Murderbot = Gurathin, and with my complaints about the first part of episode 10, I did like how it went so, are you not convinced that Murderbot = Gurathin yet? Here, let me show it to you again.

Anyway, I assume five seconds after the end of ep10, ART says hello. (okay that's probably not ART. But it would make sense to begin s2 immediately after s1 ends)

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