This month the queen died, pretty much as I got on a plane to Peru. So I spent the mourning period on Peruvian adventures instead of stuck at home with nothing on the TV but Mourn-Hub. Nice timing!

Me

Some stuff from my microblog on the fediverse:

Twelve days in Peru

I flew all the way to the pacific ocean and found Lima full of a rainbow of types of cops, checking out a monastery filled with bones.

Another flight over the mountains to the interior filled with lifeless desert.

Looked around Arequipa viewing some volcanoes and a monastery that housed nuns, pondering on the nature or religious war.

Drove up a mountain looking at smoking volcanos and stopping to watch the llamas.

Hung out with some condors and saw the tops of some mountains before stopping at a beautiful hotel on the shores of Lake Titicaca

There are people who have been living on floating islands on that lake for 500 years since they fled the Spanish invasion. Went to visited them, and they were very welcoming.

There’s an archeology site on the borders of the old Inca empire. Was it a temple? A trading post? Nobody really knows but I visited and admired the long corridors that weren’t lining up with the sunrise coz it was the wrong time of year for that.

A day in Cusco visiting Saqsaywaman, a temple dismantled by the Catholics to build their less-earthquake-proof cathedrals, and the museum of pre-Colombian art.

Went to a little farm to feed the Llamas and for a walk up a terraced mountain in Ollantaytanbo to walk across the sky-walk.

Went through the jungle to Machu Picchu an amazing old temple up a mountain.

And there endeth the holiday.

You can view the photo gallery here on my website

Back Home

Meanwhile in the UK the queen is dead and I learn a lot about respect for wealth and power rather than for human dignity.

I released the software I use to read Twitter/Masto/Etc as RSS feeds. though nobody seemed very interested. Extended it to do Rumble channels this month too.

I did some thinking about thinking as I thought about solving a programming problem. How essential to thought is language? Does it merely describe the brain’s thoughts, or does it construct them?

Releases

Starting next month and through all of November I will be running a Kickstarter to launch a new tarot deck drawn by Happy Toast.

So I used that deck to do a tarot reading on new prime minister Liz Truss

Next newsletter we’ll be mid way through the launch / fund-raising campaign!

Reading

Project Hail Mary

Listened to the audiobook of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary which is amazing.

Like his earlier “the Martian” it’s about a guy stuck alone in space using science to get himself out of scrapes. Brilliant aliens. Brilliant scrape to be gotten into.

Narrated by the same guy who did the “Bobiverse” books, so it feels like an extension of that excellent series too. He does a really great job of narrating with voice and emotion.

A Brief History Of Everyone Who Has Ever Lived

Read Adam Rutherford’s Brief History Of Everyone Who Ever Lived which is a book about genes and science and history.

Interesting review of the things we know about the genes and the things those genes tells us about the history of mankind, the differences and similarities between us.

Don’t think I learned much new, but that’s more about me than the book.