manish vij

Druish-American princess

“Hounded,” Iron Druid book 1 by Kevin Hearne: Fun urban-gods pulp fantasy based on Irish myths. Goes down easy.

The modern setting deflates the pompousness of the genre, turning each old god into a fish out of water. Each one’s an immigrant comedy on legs.

Key ally in this tale is a Tamil witch, Laksha Kulasekaran, who’s dreadfully Orientalized. Written thinly with all the Kali tropes (demonic, unclean) as well as bud-bud dialogue: “I am not knowing,” “I was not thinking so.”

I’ve never heard any desi misuse continuous tense that way. Feels like concocted exotica, like Johnny Carson’s Carnac.

Extremely formulaic: each chapter is a cut scene with a different mythical creature, mostly fights, a little sexytime. Each ends on a cliffhanger. Every female is a goddess, most literally. Gets old fast.

A Druid version of “Reacher,” where he takes down all attackers cleverly and surgically describes each kill like the slo-mo “Fallout” VATS.

Way too in the weeds on low-level plot mechanics, stuff that doesn’t matter.

There’s a running gag where gods from all mythologies hate Thor for being an a-hole. But he’s even harder to kill after Marvel creates comic and movie avatars :)

Compulsively readable until you tire of the formula.

Steer-by-wire

Steer-by-wire gives you variable ratio turns, which eliminates hand-over-hand wasted motion. It also lets you control multiple parts (front and rear-wheel steering, plane aero surfaces) without complex mechanicals. Used on Cybertruck.

Accelerate- and brake-by-wire are already common. EVs smoothly blend physical and regen braking, and let you set different driving profiles like chill or sport.

You need a lot of power to steer large craft like ships and planes. Simpler to apply that directly to the part than to inject it at the controls and transmit it all the way back.

Steer-by-wire de-links the controller. Turning the Cybertruck steering wheel doesn’t turn the wheels when power is off. So the autopilot no longer pointlessly spins the steering wheel.

(I wonder whether the steering wheel position is misaligned with the wheels when you take over from autopilot.)

Steer-by-wire requires more power than the old 12V system can practically deliver, so Cybertruck switched to 48V, a multiple of 12 and around the limit of what’s safe to touch.

Steer-by-wire on Cybertruck is rumored to use a consensus voting system like planes, where 2 of 3 redundant sensors must agree.

Love to see this trickle down to mainstream #EVs.

My Big Fat Norwegian Wedding

“Christmas As Usual”: fun Nflx fish-out-of-water rom-com with comedian Kanan Gill 🇮🇳, actress Ida Ursin-Holm 🇳🇴. “My Big Fat Norwegian Wedding,” basically, with built-in sequel in India. via RS

It’s like Chhoti [Small] Diwali, yaar

Flips a desi-Am trope: the white gal’s the one from a more conservative family, rural Norwegians

White people with their funny customs and smelly food

Awkward namaste

Norway only has around 5M people

Sipahi mutiny averted

Indian snowman 👳🏽‍♂️

Rom-coms treat the airport dash like a mandatory checkoff, like cup holders in a car

Hindu-Norway bhai bhai [are brothers]

Merry Xmas to all, and to all a good night

Trailer:

Streaming here.

Vegas burbs

Vegas burbs: plentiful land converted from desert. The new development I stayed in was semi-rural with pickups, paddocks and horse trailers. Many parcels had a compound wall and gate.

Felt jogger-hostile: no one walking, big trucks speeding, 8-lane roads, hard to cross. Finally saw a couple of joggers in a park, but not on the streets.

It’s too hot to walk around much of the year, of course. Thus the cars are heavily tinted, which makes backing up an adventure if you don’t have a reverse cam.

Red state vibes. A lot of obese folks. Didn’t see any solar panels in a place flush with both cash and sun. Saw only one EV besides Uber drivers in the strip. Lots more guns. Mass shootings a lot more common (UNLV, Mandalay Bay and randoms).

Casino-themed stores like Jackpot Joanie’s liquors, like surf-themed biz in Santa Cruz. Slot machines at the liquor store, grocery and airport. Even the microwave made slot machine sounds.

Like E. Coast basements, houses come with casitas, subdivided into in-law quarters with separate entrances.

Saw a Jewish cemetery and temple which got most of its business from Latino and Asian families, judging from the headstones.

Many strip mall restaurants had wine-mom sayings on walls as cute but vapid corpo art.

Nevada is like an internal American Jersey (UK), a tax haven, no personal income tax. Rich folks flock there, like they put factories in anti-labor states.

Quite funny because they’re then living in a lower quality of life state, except for sun and plentiful desert land.

Are we the baddies?

The militaristic Cybertruck, used to pick up kids at school, marks it a truck for bed-wetters and guys anxious about their masculinity. It’s Joe Keery in Fargo. It’s open-carrying a rifle to a bagel shop: a cry for help.

Elmo launched his Cybertruck Kickstarter on a day in 2019 when Blade Runner takes place. Its dystopic message went over his head: the angled, bladed designs are the villains.

Elon does not understand movies, like right-wingers don’t understand songs (“Born on the Fourth of July”).