This is a good book. The concepts about crime and treatment and punishment are interesting, but I can't cope with the ghastliness of it all and am stopping reading at about 25%. The Treatment: A mind-bending gripping speculative crime thriller by Sarah Moorhead. 📚
That classic looking over the shoulder pose. Kōtare | Sacred Kingfisher (Through a window.) 🐦
Dana Stabenow's The Singing of the Dead (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 11) was split between a crime on the campaign trail of a state senator and a crime that took place back in 1915.
Eventually the two crimes were shown to be linked, but I'm not sure the book really worked as a whole. 📚
At 5 am I was making a cup of tea and looking at the starry sky when I noticed a weird small column of orange light among neighbouring houses on the hill to the north of us. Maybe a fire in a house? … but it wasn't flickering.
Binoculars revealed … a mere sliver of rising moon.
Biked along the new shared path from Otaki to the cafe at Pekapeka (10 km). All gravel so a bit nervewracking. The cafe’s the best bit. Not in my top 10 of bike paths.
Out at 0520 and the sky was clear, the magpies warbling. Crux Australis was low in the southeast. Then the SkyTrain glided past — beautiful, yet so problematic. You may need to make the video large on screen to see it traverse top right to bottom left. iPhone shots.
Serendipity. 30 minutes to sunset I took a burst of 3 shots of a small plane flying past. But wait, is that a gull or something nearby?
Look at this extreme zoom crop of the middle photo!
I hope this morning's D'oh moment will fill my quota for the next few years:
Oh no! All my photos are blurry!
Checks lens, filter etc.
Aargh! I may need a professional to fix it. My Autofocus is broken!
A few moments later. Hmmm, maybe if I take it off Manual focus…
🤦🏽♀️
Me at the beach: this glare is terrible. I wonder if it's possible to get sunglasses that go over my prescription specs?
After a search: TIL there's a whole category of sunglasses called fitovers
that do just that. Wow.
Note: If I'm taking photos I find sunglasses make everything too hard.
The Spinoff once again demonstrates brilliance! 🤣 Plucky Foodstuffs takes bold stand against children on bikes:
The new route would allow thousands of Wellingtonians to safely cycle to their store, and the retailer simply will not stand for it.
It’s a hard life being a small independent food retailer. Climate change, cost of living, and supply chain failures have wreaked havoc on the industry.
And worst of all: sometimes people ride past your shop on bicycles.
I really enjoyed the first episode of the Korean TV show Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Fortunately I could listen in English, rather than reading subtitles. It was delightful, funny (not at the expense of the lead character) and interesting. 📺
Being different from neurotypical peers, [Woo's] manner of communication is initially seen as odd and awkward, and her strong emotional intelligence remains unrecognized.
I liked Blood and Money (McBride & Tanner Book 1) by Rachel McLean pretty well. It seemed fairly straightforward. Apparently the author has written a couple of other previous series that might have been useful to read first. 📚
It was 2 minutes after sunrise when I arrived on the beach and spotted this end of a rainbow.
Wow! Rarely Glimpsed Shark That Lives For Centuries Unexpectedly Surfaces in Caribbean:
Greenland sharks are the longest-living vertebrates on Earth, with an astonishing lifespan of 250 — 500 years … The sharks live thousands of feet underwater in pitch darkness … they grow, move, and age slowly. Their energy-conserving, slow-paced lifestyle is an essential adaptation to the nutrient-scarce deep sea.
Looked out this morning to see three cows in the neighbour's property. They were supposed to be where the white one is, on the other side of the fence between them. A bit of yelling and encouragement and they crashed through the fence back to the correct side.
Country life.
Hard to believe it's 8 years since we visited Spain, Portugal, Morocco. Fátima was so memorable — a pilgrimage destination with narrow streets, enormous tour buses, gift shops stuffed to the rafters with religious statues, knickknacks and images. The hotel had this enormous poster in the lift.
Even though it's only 10 weeks since I first read the Dana Stabenow book Midnight Come Again (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 10) I had not fully remembered it. 📚
This time round (and with the book in context) I recognised the central role of Kate's emotional journey. Such an excellent author!
First time I've seen the word overtourism
. A very useful concept indeed.
tourism agencies have spoken out against the proposed … airport at Tarras, concerned about "overtourism" it would create.
Crepuscular rays, this morning at 15 minutes before sunrise.
