links, etc Mystery Drones Swarmed a U.S. Military Base for 17 Days. The Pentagon Is Stumped. - WSJ wait, wut? i suppose this should be less surprising to me than it is. it just goes to show that we now have an incredible flattening in technological superiority in the military domain.

links, etc Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years - The New York Times on the heels of the recent discovery of a string trio arrangement by mozart this is pretty neat news. we can only really have these “discoveries” if there’s a durable medium for preserving creative outputs. in this case paper and pen. with everything being hidden on personal hard drives and in proprietary software/file formats these days, i do find myself wondering what creative bits (no pun intended) we’re going to lose to the ravages of time and bit rot....

links, etc in any other time, it strikes me that we’d be looking very much askance at the notion of a billionaire owning so much infrastructure that we’re increasingly collectively dependent upon. that the billionaire in question has exhibited so little regard for core western values has been (but shouldn’t be) shocking to me. that he seems to see himself as an agent independent of the government of his country of citizenship should make a lot of brows furrow....

notes bookshop link there’s not a lot to say about this. it’s a fun, quick read and apparently the first installment on a much longer series. there’s all sorts of interesting stuff swirling around in here and stephenson is doing a great job of “world buliding”. the initial character, dawn/aurora, straddles two worlds between the wars and during the rise of soviet communism. there are historical figures (neils bohr makes a sidebar cameo), events (a world’s fair) interesting digressions (polo being played by cowboys/girls in montana, etc....

links, etc Ta-Nehisi Coates and the Temptations of Narrative a pretty solid review of the message some additional food for thought.