Read part of another Hugo best novel contender, Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor, which is about a writer getting suddenly famous for an original novel of (voluntarily) rusty robots, but this was too much of an infinite mirror (and too little speculative fiction) that I gave up a third of the way, before anything speculative happened…. And the Hugo (hopeful) novella The Summer War by Naomi Novik, nice tale à la Grimm if not particularly deep. And another Hugo nominated novel The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, a magical boarding school à la Harry Potter, enjoyable enough if missing in villeins besides demons! However, the constant whine of the head teacher about her duties, the glorification of the English boarding school model, and the fixation on the A levels and on getting to Oxford are weighting down my vote… And the Hugo novelette The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed, with little appeal. Lots of books, thanks to this long-lasting spell of jetlag!
Cooked cold soba noodles for the week in Nagoya, And (alas!) enjoyed eels in the local histumabashi format. Alas because I discovered afterwards that eels are dramatically threatened to extinction. Given that the fisheries rely on wild eels for the most part.
Watched the whole season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in the plane to Tokyo, set in the Game of Thrones universe and quite engaging, even though the (edge) knight’s naïvety is exaggerated, while the scenario shifts suspend belief way too much and too often. The absurd brutality of medieval jousts and tournaments is rendered in strongest terms (but I did not faint!). Reminding me of Scott’s Last Duel.
The noon break was the last opportunity to sample one of the food stalls in the fish market nearby, with a spicy curry udon bowl. Cutting the eel addiction!
After a pleasant run under the pouring rain (noisy rain that had not helped with my sleep or lack thereof), I attended both morning episodes of Calibrated Bayes, with a range of interesting, mostly novel, questions and solutions. And rekindling my interrogations about overparameterised models and model misspecification within a Bayesian framework. And the elusive notion of outliers.
