Author: blablablaandgabbler
[BLA and GB GABBLER are two halves of the pen name behind the CIRCO DEL HERRERO series. Vol. 2, THE PRE-PROGRAMMING out now!]
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: Netflix TV show The OA
The show was released with little promotion, adding to its mystery. The ending might not excite you as much as the buildup, but it is not a let down. It is just as mysterious as the story–open to interpretation.
I also haven’t seen such an organically interesting cast of characters in a long, long time.
Have you seen it? Tell me what you think.
BookTuber Tuesday – Animal Rights Books
Recommend a BookTuber video in the comments and it could make our Tuesday post!
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
On Alchemy:
Alchemy was a proto-science, and in an age when the observation of the universe was limited by the capacity of human vision, the imagination of chemical structures and processes produced conjectural understandings and explanations rooted in beliefs of perfect form and an animate universe. From our contemporary perspective, the “mystery” of alchemy is long since resolved, though words associated with its practices — such as elixir, alembric, essences, and congelation — still resonate with suggestive allure. The practices that formed its core, from late antiquity through the medieval era and Renaissance, were eventually disciplined into separate domains — the many realms of chemistry, including cosmetics, paint and pigment production, pharmacology, metallurgy, and so on. Each of these shares with the others a dependence on transformation of materials into reconstituted form — from solid to liquid, from crude to refined, from dull to brilliant — and, in the mythic formulation of alchemical quests for transmutation, in accord with its specialized vocabulary of terms (calcination, fixation, dissolution, and so on). The processes of heating, titrating, distilling, cooling, and combining through which such transformations were wrought were not understood at the molecular level. Knowledge of chemistry and physics was based on the paradigms of Greek science, the work of Ptolemy and Archimedes and other canonical thinkers of the Hellenistic era.
[Via]
GABBLER RECOMMENDS: ‘Well, Here We Fucking Go’ by N.K. Jemisin
‘For the last few years, I’ve been trying to explain to people outside of SFF that the various dramas playing out here — self-aggrandizing bigots; self-righteous “movements” to make petty, exclusionary gestures with the Hugo Award; discusssion wars in which the fandom finally explained to the establishment that bigotry was unacceptable — were a teapot version of what’s happening all over the world, throughout every medium of expression. And I took heart from the fact that in most places where these battles were playing out, the surge of bigotry was failing.Gamergate drove a few women and PoC out of games criticism, but others dug in and refused to be moved, while new voices have begun speaking up and everyone is now much, much more vocal about representation issues. People complaining about diversity in comics is why we’re seeing more old characters revitalized as PoC — not unproblematically, but still — and a few more women and writers of color finding opportunity in the field. And of course, the Puppies’ latest efforts to take over the Hugo probably contributed in some way to me winning the Best Novel Hugo this year. While they, once again, took home only Noah Wards.’
[Via]
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]