noughtnaut

This is such a strange phenomenon to me. In all the countries I’ve lived in, all but a few select stores have a dongle on each cart that takes a coin to unlock it from the chain of other carts. It’s perhaps the cost of a back of toilet paper, but that seems to be sufficient for it to be exceedingly rare to see an abandoned cart. One can only imagine that any such carts are quick prey for enterprising teens looking for a quick boost to their candy fund.

I thought this would be more like MARS, but turns out to be bare-metal MARS Core War where I’m the scheduler. I’m not saying it a terrible experience, but I am grateful that my day job in IT is more higher-level.

What are you reading? Here are a couple of novels that I’ve grown quite fond of. Common to all of them are that they are freely (and legally) available online; I am not in any way affiliated with them; and they strongly feature female lead characters.

• Worm - An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life. Her first attempt at taking down a supervillain sees her mistaken for one. […] Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons. (Warning: this is longer than LotR and has a wi(l)der array of superpowers than Marvel.)
• Ra - Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There’s magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It’s what’s next after electricity.
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - In the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, four teenagers defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security’s attacks on the Bill of Rights. (Note: This is a contemporary analogue to Orwell’s 1984.)