About 35C (95F) today. Hotter tomorrow.
SO HOT that I went into the ocean for the first time in decades.
Normally I don’t enter water larger than a jacuzzi. 😀
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell
The final book in the Kurt Wallander series was published 2009.
The author dying of cancer while he wrote it, I believe.
For me the story was mostly a look at aging and dying. The meaning of life.
The plot was inspired by the submarine incursions into Swedish territorial waters between 1982 and 1983, which Mankell considered the worst scandal in Swedish political history.
Though slower and even more philosophical than the rest, I still enjoyed the book — sad that it was the end for Wallander and the end for Mankell.
The only story I haven’t heard yet is a novella — An Event in Autumn — not available in audio on my services.
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
In post-Reconstruction United States, Black Buck or “Black Bull” was sometimes used as a racial slur.
Black Buck is also a critically acclaimed debut novel by Mateo Askaripour. (2020)
Askaripour was a successful tech-sales guy. By age-24, he was managing a team of 30 people and earning a six-figure salary.
Had problems turning into a full-time author. No agent. No book deal.
He tried and failed for several years.
Finally he wrote this book about a successful BLACK tech-sales guy.
Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals.
All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor. …
Amazon
Today he’s a literary star, already writing the TV screenplay.
I quite enjoyed the first half of the novel, but QUIT at 50%. Got fed up with the story when things started to go wrong.
Click PLAY or watch an interview with the author on YouTube.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
Though I generally boycott superhero movies, I’d always heard that this one was worth watching for the humour and visual effects.
And it was.
Very entertaining. Also stupid. But entertaining.
This is the one with Jake Gyllenhaal.
I went back and watched Homecoming, the previous in this series. Good — but not nearly as good.
But I’ll watch more if they are this funny.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Recursion by Blake Crouch
I enjoyed the first book by Black Crouch I’d read – Dark Matter. (2016)
Recursion is my second. Another weird and wild science fiction novel.
This time it’s a world where an increasing number of people are suffering False Memory Syndrome.
Some vividly recall their lives differently. Different spouse. Different kids.
It drives some to madness and suicide.
Turns out a scientist named Helena Smith has discovered a way to go back in time to correct mistakes they made in the past.
However — as in the Butterfly Effect — the timeline of humanity changes. Sometimes drastically.
But people can still recall their former live(s).
As a plot device it’s interesting. But makes no real sense.
I enjoyed it and plan to read more Crouch.
Black Space – season 1
Intense.
Very watchable.
A rogue detective with unorthodox means leads an investigation into a massacre committed by unicorn mask-wearing assassins at an Israeli high school.
Guri Alfi is very good as the troubled detective.
Black Space refers to a fictitious Israeli social media text app using phone service.
The plot is not believable, however. It would have been easy to narrow down the list of possible shooters if they had made any effort.
Reviews have been mixed. But there will be a season 2.
Before the Frost by Henning Mankell
In 2002 Mankell published Before the Frost as the first in a 3-book series with Linda Wallander as the main character, rather than her father.
However Mankell abandoned the series after just one novel when the actress playing Linda in the Swedish films, Johanna Sällström, committed suicide in 2007.
Linda Wallander is bored. Just graduated from the police academy, she is waiting to start work at the Ystad police station and move into her own apartment. Meantime, she is living with her father and, like fathers and daughters everywhere, they are driving each other crazy. …
Linda’s boredom doesn’t last long. Soon she is embroiled in the case of her childhood friend Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared. …
Like other Mankell books, this one involves a cult. A survivor of the Jonestown massacre in Guyana 1978 returns to Sweden organizing his own death cult.
Flash Drive Back-up for iPhone
For my purposes, an iPhone X (for example) is better in many ways than a dedicated camera like the Sony ZV-1.
I want 4K video at 60 frames / second. The iPhone does that. The Sony doesn’t.
One BIG downside of using your camera for video is running out of storage.
But I solved that with the purchase of a tiny SanDisk 256GB iXpand Flash Drive Go for iPhone CAD $82.
It works well and quickly to back-up all your photos and videos, freeing space to take more.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Firewall by Henning Mankell
Firewall is the 9th book in the Wallander series, chronologically.
It’s good.
A series of bizarre incidents sweep across Sweden: a man dies in front of an ATM, two young women slaughter an elderly taxi driver, a murder is committed aboard a Baltic Sea ferry, and a sub-station engineer makes a gruesome discovery while investigating the cause of a nationwide power cut. As Wallander investigates, he uncovers a sinister plan …
The major background theme around which the action takes place is the dilemma of the Western economic system versus poverty. …
Wikipedia
Should BILLIONAIRE$ pay less tax than YOU?
Someone in the American IRS leaked to Propublica:
- Warren Buffett ~ 0.10% true tax rate
- Jeff Bezos ~ 0.98% true tax rate
- Michael Bloomberg ~ 01.30% true tax rate
- Elon Musk ~ 3.27% true tax rate
What’s your true tax rate?
American politicians write complicated tax laws which result in loopholes used by the richest donors.
BUT — can it be fixed?
The best summary of the issue I’ve seen is the second podcast in this list.
Rick McCharles 