Dinios “Din” Kol, a gifted young engraver (with perfect memory) is Watson to the eccentric investigator Anagosa “Ana” Dolabra. An entertaining Sherlock Holmes genius.
This book is a locked room mystery.
Technology in this world is based on extracting blood from sea monsters called leviathans.
There’s an attempt made to keep leviathan marrow alive in the lab, producing blood. This is what motivated the bad guy.
His books explore politics through his fiction, often examining how societies maintain order and justice in the face of external threats and internal corruption.
The Proving Ground (2025) is 8th in the Mickey Haller (Lincoln Lawyer) series. Possibly the best yet.
A courtroom procedural. Mikeywith a case against an AI company whose product may have been responsible for the murder of a teenage girl.
It’s set post-Covid. During fires in L.A.
Very contemporary.
… a chatbot told a sixteen-year-old boy that it was okay for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for her disloyalty.
Representing the victim’s family, Mickey’s case explores the mostly unregulated and exploding AI business and the lack of training guardrails.
Along the way he joins up with a journalist named Jack McEvoy (The Poet), who wants to be a fly on the wall during the trial in order to write a book about it.
But Mickey puts him to work going through the mountain of printed discovery materials in the case. McEvoy’s digging ultimately delivers the key witness, a whistleblower who has been too afraid to speak up. The case is fraught with danger because billions are at stake.
Even at the airport, my feeling was that Taiwan is much more like China than Hong Kong or Singapore.
Recovering from a summer cold I picked up in Singapore, I first headed to the Beitou, the hot-spring area.
The public baths were closed for renovation, so I never got a soak — BUT heritage buildings and history information made it a worthwhile visit. Tourism is very well organized here.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
– John McCrae, 1915
Though thankfully I was never in a war, this is an important day for me. I remember.
Remembrance Day (Australia, Canada, Colombia, UK and Ireland), also known as Poppy Day (South Africa and Malta), and Armistice Day (UK, New Zealand and many other Commonwealth countries; and the original name of the holiday internationally) is a day to commemorate the sacrifice of veterans and civilians in World War I and other wars. It is observed on November 11 to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918.
Clean, efficient, safe. An ideal tourist destination for me after chaotic Indonesia.
Almost everyone speaks English. They are very welcoming of visitors.
Yes, some things are very expensive. But you can have a great time spending very little money.
For example, Shimano Cycling World will rent you a high end road bike for $150. Or you can take one of their mountain bikes for free. Nice.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. Drone footage I shot of myself was done in one of the parks dedicated to drone pilots. Singapore thinks of everything. 😀
Changi Airport (always ranked #1 in the world) provides free city tours if you have a layover of enough hours at the right time of day.
Singapore’s diversity of cuisine is touted as a reason to visit the country, due to its combination of convenience, variety, quality, and price.
But even more so, Terry Gou, who, in 1974, founded FoxConn in Taiwan.
Incredibly ambitious, by 2012 Foxconn made up approximately 40% of worldwide consumer electronics production.
Just one of his many huge factories in China produces the bulk of Apple’s iPhone line and is sometimes referred to as “iPhone City”.
Needless to say, there are many abused workers in those plants. They don’t last many months on the gruelling production line.
Over the years, Gou and others steadily wooed Tim Cook and Apple to move manufacturing to China.
Today over 90% of Apple products are made in China. A huge risk for the company if authoritarian dictator-for-life Xi decides to invade Taiwan. Or shut down exports.
Attempts to move production to other nations have been mostly experiments. Or motivated by politics, not business.
In the meantime, Chinese engineers — many trained by Apple — are building cheaper, better Chinese phones in China. They no longer need Apple.
It’s a precarious situation.
Apple in China is a 2025 book uniquely looking at the company from the viewpoint of China.
In her May 15, 2025 review for The New York Times, Hannah Beech called Apple in China “smart and comprehensive,” praising Patrick McGee’s clever and chronologically organized timeline of how Apple’s expansion to China manufacturing facilities under then COO Tim Cook created a global success but also an “existential vulnerability” for the United States.
Weirdly, as executor, my name is currently listed as owner of Dad’s truck. (I’ve not owned a motor vehicle for much of the past 25 years.)
I still consider Calgary to be home.
Of course I’m totally disappointed with recent Provincial conservative governments. Current premier Danielle Smith is too Trump-lite for me. For example, as I post, the rate of measles in Alberta is even worse than in Texas. Smith encourages ReTrumplican misinformation on all kinds of topics.
On the other hand, born and raised in Calgary, I consider anyone NOT born in Calgary to be some kind of vermin. 😀
Unwanted immigrants.
If Trump was in charge of the 51st state, he’d spend a lot of taxpayer money to have Canadians attacking other Canadians. In Canada.
We could round up the invaders and drop them off the other side of the Alberta border. 😀
My Dad ran their maintenance department for years. Later, my brother Rob took over.
My brother Randy and his partner Val live in the Coop now.
I post as there is a massive construction renovation happening. All units are getting new front and back decks. And I saw plenty of work being done on the roofs, siding with new insulation, windows and doors.
All good ➙ BUT it’s a mess while under construction.
It’s a massive complex.
I recall playing tag in the original construction site when we were kids. It opened 1971.
It’s a Trudeau era non-profit housing cooperative. In 2025 it might just be the best value housing in Calgary. Here are the benefits for tenants. This coop worked. Socialism at its best.
Here are a few photos of the mess in C block May 2025. 😀
Sometimes you really don’t want to see how the sausage is made. 😀
Rick McCharles 