A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas (2023)

Well-crafted story with many of our favorite characters from the series.  Fun mystery. I look forward to the next story in the series!  I am also glad that Sherry Thomas is another book in this series. 5/5 Stars.

The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2021)

I did not like this one.  The magic system was terrible and there were too many plot contrivances. 1/5 Stars.

Insistence of vision by David Brin (2016)

I read some of the stories before but I enjoyed this compilation and the author's introductions. 5/5 Stars.

Beyond the Reach of Earth by Ken MacLeod (2023)

I like the continuation of the story and the character arcs.  Fun. 4/5 Stars.

Steel World by B.V. Larson (2013)

I think a 12-year-old version of me may have enjoyed this book; however, the writing is horrible. The politics are awful, I did not like any of the characters, and the story is meh at best. 1/5 Stars.  Reminder to self: do not buy any other books by this author.

The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox (2024)

This captivating, concise, and well-crafted tale follows a crime boss "fence" who ruled the redistribution of stolen goods during the wild, violent 19th century in the USA. The characters burst with color and intrigue, drawing the reader into vivid slices of life across New York's diverse social classes. This historical fiction echoes Amor Towles' style, brimming with authentic dialogue and era-specific slang. 4/5 stars.

The Lindy Effect of public Internet Information and Object Permanence

The Lindy effect aka "Lindy's law" is the theory that the momentary future life expectancy of an idea or technology (object) is a Pareto probability distribution proportional to the current age of the object. So the longer something has existed, the longer its remaining life expectancy.  This idea also applies to some species of life, but subpopulations of animals frequently follow lognormal distributions instead of Pareto.

The short and shrinking lifetime of trending ideas and technology is nowhere more evident than Internet blogs, web sites, AI companies, and memes.  I discovered that jwz published a pair of scripts to make your URLs a little more permanent.  One rewrite URLs to use archive.org and the other crawls your wordpress blog to rewrite all links to point at archive.org.  

archive.org is the prime target for takedowns; in fact, the Lindy's Law link above was taken down!  Luckily, other preservation sites are filling the gap for wayback machine functionality. There are many web sites like archive.ph, stillio, perma.cc, mementoweb, and archivebox that can fill the gaps, but the longevity of these archive sites is also questionable.

Beyond the Hallowed Sky by Ken Macleod (2021)

I think I finally found another space opera series that I really like!  I enjoyed this book. 5/5 Stars.

Die Haarteppichknüpfer von Andreas Eschbach (2021)

Ich habe das Buch wirklich genossen. Die Art und Weise, wie die Welt aufgebaut ist, fand ich spannend und einzigartig. Die zentralen Themen – Macht, Autorität und die Grenzen persönlicher Einflussnahme – sind beeindruckend und regen zum Nachdenken an. Alle Charaktere sind sorgfältig ausgearbeitet und ziehen einen sofort in ihren Bann. Jede ihrer Geschichten trägt auf schlüssige Weise zum Gesamtbild bei. Das Science-Fiction-Setting sorgt für eine faszinierende Atmosphäre voller Staunen, die den Hintergrund lebendig macht, ohne jedoch für die eigentliche Handlung entscheidend zu sein. Insgesamt vergebe ich 4 / 5 Sternen.

The Technological Republic by Alex Karp (2025)

Great book with interesting ideas and a refreshingly new perspective.  Alex Karp is emerging as a new intellectual thought leader among patriotic but rational, civil leaders in the USA.  His ethics and ideas are sometimes overly simplistic; and his expression of win/lose  Realpolitik is harsh. Thought-provoking and worthwhile, 5/5 Stars.