There are some really funny moments, and some genuinely touching ones. But, besides the great artwork and flawless execution, this comic is really, really charming. I didn’t think I’d particularly like TJ and Amal, since I’m a straight lady who doesn’t go for yaoi stuff, and I also don’t go for sex scenes of any orientation. (Can a lady write that story, too? I mean, I assume a woman could write a story about two gay guys, but since I am neither gay nor a guy, maybe I’m not qualified to make that judgment.) The reason I thought this was that the story deals with two gay guys – free spirit TJ and just-out-of-the-closet Amal. My exact reaction was: “WHAT THE F– it’s a woman? I thought it was a man!” Just a week ago I discovered that the author & artist, E.K. Way after I bookmarked it, I somehow found my way to the TJ and Amal comic and started reading. I started reading TJ and Amal because I’d come across the author’s Cowboy Bebop page, Somewhere Down the Crazy River (which coincidentally has a photo of Bette Davis on it!). (NSFW warnings are in the comic’s drop-down menu.) First off, I must warn you that The Less-than-Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal is not safe for work.
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He is perhaps best known as John Christopher, author of the seminal work of speculative fiction, The Death of Grass (today available as a Penguin Classic), and a stream of novels in the genre he pioneered, young adult dystopian fiction, beginning with The Tripods Trilogy. Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies … In all he published fifty-six novels and a myriad of short stories, under his own name as well as eight different pen-names. Samuel Youd was born in Huyton, Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable snowstorm.Īs a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: ‘In the early thirties,’ he later wrote, ‘we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.’ 5/13/2023 0 Comments Book the flight attendantAnd blood, a slick, still wet pool on the crisp white sheets. She quietly slides out of bed, careful not to aggravate her already pounding head, and looks at the man she spent the night with. When she awakes in a Dubai hotel room, she tries to piece the previous night back together, counting the minutes until she has to catch her crew shuttle to the airport. She lives with them-and the accompanying self-loathing. She's a binge drinker, her job with the airline making it easy to find adventure, and the occasional blackouts seem to be inevitable. Now a limited series on HBO Max starring Kaley Cuoco and Rosie Perez, a powerful story about the ways an entire life can change in one night: a flight attendant wakes up in the wrong hotel, in the wrong bed, with a dead man-and no idea what happened.Ĭassandra Bowden is no stranger to hungover mornings. Chapter 5 especially highlights that agent design is not just a matter of specifying a reward: often, rewards will do ~nothing, and the main requirement to get a competent agent is to provide good shaping rewards or a good curriculum. While the connections aren't always explicit, a knowledgeable reader can connect the academic examples given in these chapters to the ideas of specification gaming and mesa optimization that we talk about frequently in this newsletter. It then moves on to agency and reinforcement learning, covering from a more historical and academic perspective how we have arrived at such ideas as temporal difference learning, reward shaping, curriculum design, and curiosity, across the fields of machine learning, behavioral psychology, and neuroscience. The neural net that thought asthma reduced the risk of pneumonia The COMPAS controversy (leading up to impossibility results in fairness) The failure of facial recognition models on minorities This book starts off with an explanation of machine learning and problems that we can currently see with it, including detailed stories and analysis of: This is an extended summary + opinion, a version without the quotes from the book will go out in the next Alignment Newsletter. The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, by Brian Christian, was just released. Read all the Hairy Maclary and Friends books by Lynley Dodd! She worked as a teacher before beginning to write her own books in 1974. She is enormously popular for her rhyming stories of the unforgettable HAIRY MACLARY and his friends. Lynley Dodd is an award-winning author/illustrator who lives in New Zealand. Here every dog-from big-as-a-horse Hercules Morse to Schnitzel von Krumm with the very low tum-tries to have his day with HAIRY MACLARY'S BONE, but guess who triumphs! With cumulative rhymes and sunny ink and watercolor illustrations, this international favorite chronicles the escapades of our hero Hairy and his crew of five kooky canines. Hairy Maclary's Bone is a hilarious rhyming story by Lynley Dodd. Madoka hasn’t turned into a magical girl yet at this point She’s always the last to turn into a magical girl, at least in every version of the series I’ve read so far. At the same time, Homura seeks Kyouko’s alliance against Mami and Sayaka after they refuse to join her. Soon however, Kyubey brings Sayaka and Madoka to her as apprentice magical girls. Mami, who previously lost her parents in an accident, is now alone as she feared. Mami and Kyouko end up going their separate ways after Kyouko’s family is killed as a result of her being a magical girl. The story is still incredibly dark, as all versions of the Madoka series have been (that I’ve read or watched). Mami and Kyouko mistakenly believe that they are saving humanity from the destructive powers of the witches. Kyubey is still evil and tricks all of the girls into making contracts with him that will ultimately seal their fate. It’s the same premise from the original story in that the witches are still fallen magical girls. This miniseries answered the question: “What if Mami survived the battle in chapter 3 of the original series?” Mainly these three books follow Mami and Kyouko (pictured on the cover above), as they become magical girls and learn to fight witches. This review contains spoilers for the whole series (volumes 1-3). 5/13/2023 0 Comments Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio MarshAccording to Marsh's biographer Margaret Lewis, despite the author's conventional insistence that all the characters are fictitious, the book drew on an actual cult in 1890s Christchurch, NZ: Arthur Bentley Worthington's Temple of Truth. Discovering how the fatal prussic acid got into the wine is but one of the perplexing riddles that confronts Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn, when he is called upon to discover who poisoned this wealthy cult member.ĭeath in Ecstasy' centers around a dubious spiritual cult in fashionable 1930s London, with an even more suspect charismatic cult leader. When lovely Cara Quayne drops to the floor dead after drinking the ritual wine at the House of the Sacred Flame, she was having a religious experience of a sort unsuspected by the other initiates. Death in Ecstasy is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh, the fourth to feature her series detective, Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard. 5/13/2023 0 Comments All in the Cards by Rebecca CohenYou can track your delivery by going to AusPost tracking and entering your tracking number - your Order Shipped email will contain this information for each parcel. Tracking delivery Saver Delivery: Australia postĪustralia Post deliveries can be tracked on route with eParcel. NB All our estimates are based on business days and assume that shipping and delivery don't occur on holidays and weekends. Order may come in multiple shipments, however you will only be charged a flat fee.ġ-2 days after each item has arrived in the warehouseġ The expected delivery period after the order has been dispatched via your chosen delivery method.ģ Please note this service does not override the status timeframe "Dispatches in", and that the "Usually Dispatches In" timeframe still applies to all orders. Items in order will be sent via Express post as soon as they arrive in the warehouse. Order may come in multiple shipments, however you will only be charged a flat fee.Ģ-10 days after all items have arrived in the warehouse Items in order will be sent as soon as they arrive in the warehouse. Swimming pools, back yard barbecues, children riding bikes along neighborhood streets, Scenic Hills is a place where people go to escape the fast and dangerous pace of city life. When she teams up with a rookie hustler, the trail leads them to a quiet suburb outside of St. From seedy strip joints to private upscale men’s clubs, there’s no part of the city where Colette won’t go while tracking the killer.Ĭolette relies on the unheard, and often ignored, voices of the city to lead her one step closer to solving the case. Having escaped the clutches of a small town years ago to become her true self, Colette yearns to tell the stories of minorities and under-represented people just like her. The Ebook edition is live and available now on Smashwords. Click here to purchase The Kindle edition will be available this coming Tuesday Click here for the Kindle edition. Paperback editions are already available at Amazon. She’s also an award-winning investigative journalist for the New York City Tribune. The pub date of A SCENIC HILLS SUMMER has been bumped up to this week. She’s intelligent, provocative, and a proud trans woman. Unable to resist putting herself in front of a story as it unfolds, Colette Birzhan races to the Midwest to report on the case. The police have been slow to respond, and a local reporter suspects a serial killer might be stalking the city’s streets. Shannon Yarbrough 124 people named Shannon Yarbrough found in Texas, Georgia and 33 other states. Louis LGBTQIA community grows restless while searching for a missing bartender. When the bodies of three male sex workers show up on the banks of the Mississippi River, the St. 5/13/2023 0 Comments Oliver charles dickensAND IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS. IN WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF THAN HE EVER WAS BEFORE. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE AND FURNISHES A SLIGHT SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE BEING A SHORT, BUT VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER, IN THIS HISTORY OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS NEW ASSOCIATES AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A STRANGE SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMANĬONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD GENTLEMAN, AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES INTO ACTION, AND RATHER ASTONISHES HIM GOING TO A FUNERAL FOR THE FIRST TIME, HE FORMS AN UNFAVOURABLE NOTION OF HIS MASTER’S BUSINESS OLIVER, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS FIRST ENTRY INTO PUBLIC LIFE RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE WHICH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN AND OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVER TWIST *** Oliver Twist OR THE PARISH BOY’S PROGRESS by Charles Dickens |