Turns out, in a surprise to only the richest man in the world, if you cut funding for the National Weather Service, storm predictions suffer.

We have a neighbor in one of our closed neighborhood groups who is a meterologist. When everyone (including me!) was complaining about the storm prediction that had "everyone overreacting," she explained some things to us.

Firstly: Garbage in, garbage out.

When budget hatchets come down, fewer things like weather balloons go up. Atmospheric conditions are largely tracked by weather balloons and some states have gone from releasing the usual two a day to ONE a day. Our weather here in Minnesota largely comes from the west. So, that means, on the day leading up to the potential big storm, the weather predictors were depending on data that was last current IN WYOMING, approximately 900 miles (1,448 km) away.

There was no new data between here and there that included upper atmospheric pressures, etc. All that data normally goes into the models they use to run their weather prediction maps. When they don't have data, their predictions are... SURPRISE!!... crap. Garbage in (or nothing at all in); garbage out.

So, if you feel "ripped off" because we got no storm on Monday, then BLAME TRUMP.

I mean, this is where it feels dumb... rather than evil. Like, I expect this current administration to be vindictive against what they call "wokeness," but what the f*ck is "woke" about weather reporting? Did people really feel there was a Big Weather problem, lots of bloat and misuse of funds? (Don't feel the need to answer this, these questions are rhetorical. I know that all government agencies got hit.)

/rant

But, so here it is Wedensay already, and I'd been meaning to write up some notes about what I've been reading. I am currently eighty-some percent of the way through the audiobook of The Mechanics of Memory by Audrey Lee. I will say that I think this book is a little longer than it needed to be, but I'm enjoying the general premise of it. It's about a woman who is basicaly wrongfully sent to a psychatric "spa" in order to have false memories implanted in her--though it turns out she's resistant (or maybe was prepped to withstand the "treatment"), so she's trying to figure out the mystery of why everyone has been sent here and what it has to do with a bunch of hackers known as the Mad Hatters (which, I mean, the name alone gives us a clue that perhaps this psych ward is, in fact, somehow involved.) It's one of those mysteries where you're pretty sure you're guessing ahead, but then another twist is introduced. It feels like it should be closer to the climax than it is right now. I'm at that phase where I would LIKE THEM TO GET AWAY WITH IT, but another complication just dropped. But, despite that, I would recommend it. The audiobook has at least two narrators and, unfortunately, one of them reads like he has never experienced an emotion in his life. But, luckily the majority of the chapters have someone else reading.

Previous to this I had someone read The Sculpted Ship (by K. M. O'Brien) to me, and that was another one where I started out more keen than I finished. The Sculpted Ship was to science fiction what Legends & Lattes is to high fantasy. The place where I ended up growing disintersted in The Sculpted Ship was where it left the formula of low stakes problem solving. There's a whole heist at the end that solves one of the main plot issues of the story, specifically how our heroine will get the parts to finish making her ship space worthy, but it goes deep into characters we only just met and I could have done without it, even though it puts a bow on the whole thing. I was there for the "how will our heroine make enough money to buy this part?" and "Will the heroine pass her etiquette lessons in time for the safari booking?" non-tension conflicts.

We all need a book like this from time to time.

If you pick it up, my only caveat is that K. M. O'Brien is a dude writing about women and I knew that the moment that his point-of-view heroine described another woman as "well-endowed." This wasn't a cardinal sin? I do know some women who might say something like this, but there is later an aborted sexual assault that just didn't quite ring true for me. Mileage may vary, however.

So, with The Memory Mechanic nearly done, I have another list of possiblities.

HOWEVER, if I can figure out how to get the audio files to my phone, the following list may be moot, as the Hugo Award reading packet included audio files for almost all of the books nominated this year. Audiobooks included are: A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, and Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wisewell  (the last of which I listened to some time ago and really enjoyed.)  So, it's missing a couple? But, that's pretty impressive!

The list of things that I have queued up in Libby are:

Nnedi Okorafor's Remote Control (this appears to be a novella, as it's only 4 hours long)
Annalee Newitz's The Future of Another Timeline
Mike Chen's Light Years From Home
Kemi Ashing-Giwa's The Splinter in the Sky
Vic James's Gilded Cage
Jenn Lyons's The Sky on Fire
Christopher Paolini's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

If anyone has recommendations among those (or which Hugo nominee I should start with), I'd love to hear what you have to say.

I THINK I have a plan to get the Hugo nominees over to my phone, but if not, I'll end up listening to those piecemeal on my computer while doing things in the house (which is fine, it's just less convenient than my phone. And now is the weather for yardwork, so! I may actually become one of those people who has two different books going at once!) 

Anyway, I hope you all are doing well. Reading anything fun or different?