The Last Shadow:

The conclusion to the Ender's Game universe came out a year ago.  I finished reading it today, and I can't say anything in its favor, except that at least now I've read the ending to Ender's Game.  The problem at the ending of Children of the Mind, that there was some sort of virus world that communicated only in viruses, was resolved through a series of highly unlikely misunderstandings and coincidences.  Actually there is no virus world, and the people of the world they communicated with speak normal English, they just happened to lead off with a virus by pure chance.  Oh and the descolada is not a sentient species, nor a bioweapon, just an innocent mistake due to cosmic radiation.  Meanwhile, let's talk about all these cool sentient birds we met on the planet Nest, and these smart grandkids of Bean who can teleport around the universe freely, and basically completely change the nature of the series from one thing to another -- bait and switch.

Clearly the author was not thrilled with the idea of continuing down the plotline that Children of the Mind set forth.  So he just wrote a different book and called it a wrap.  We're all human, we have limits to our imagination and creativity, so these things happen.  But I don't have to praise a failure as anything but a failure.

Next I'll read Shadows in Flight and see the ending to the Ender's Shadow series.  Then I'll be all caught up on the series and never have to worry about it again.

Meanwhile, I upgraded 'One Day Like This,' a Sarah Brightman song, to 5-star, demoting 'Somber Memories,' a Lunar 2 song, to make room.  Like usual it's a vocal going up and an instrumental going down.  Vocal songs tend to be more emotional.  It's the first time in a long time I promoted a western song at the expense of an eastern song, though, so that part is rather remarkable.

I completed my survey of 4-star songs and found 23 worth demoting, but only that one worth promoting.  There were hundreds of great songs in the 4-star category, but compared to the 5-star songs above them none of them could make a compelling case why they were better.  That's the curse of relative ratings.

Now if I find 23 new good songs I can accurately demote the worst songs from my 4-star list instead of picking on the longest for no good reason.  But there's no reason to stop the project here.  Next up I need to scan the 3-star list for demotable songs, and then the 2-star list.  Only then will I have an entirely merit-based rating system.

With all the bowl games being played I'm overwhelmed with things to do.  There isn't much anime this time of year but football is going gangbusters, so it all works out.  I of course enjoyed the ending to Utawarerumono (and Nekone's new look) and Bleach (until it returns July 2023).  The anime of 2022 was really good, and 2023 is looking as good, with more Love Live!, Spy x Family, Bleach, DanMachi, Eminence in Shadow, Kamitachi, KonoSuba, Idolm@ster, Vinland Saga, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, SAO, all you could ever ask for.

I believe Russia is winning the war, but the great thing about questions like these is you can just wait and the answer will provide itself.  If Russia successfully conquers the new territory it claims and defangs Ukraine so they can never threaten said territory again, it won.  If it doesn't it lost.  Reality will inform us who is right and who is wrong as objectively as a sports scoreboard says who won the Super Bowl.  Unlike vaccine injuries, which people can say is due to global warming or the virus or whatever instead of the vaccine, Russia will observably, definitively win or lose this war.  There will be no way to squiggle out of this fact-finding.  Those of us who sided with Russia from the beginning will be proven smarter and wiser than the fools who sided with Ukraine, definitively.  There's evidence that 1/3 of the 5.5 billion people who took the vaccine on Earth have been permanently heart damaged by it, so the vaccine is actually far more evil than any other event in human history, making Ukraine a little footnote in world history, but the same people who are anti-vaccine are pro-Russia, so being right on one thing that's provable means we're likely right on the other which is unprovable.  It shows we approach logical questions and problems better than our opponents, and thus inevitably come to the truth on all things, because we use correct epistemology, the one thing necessary to discover everything else.

And it isn't just vaccines I'll be proven right about by Russia's victory.  My opinion about every single thing on Earth will be validated by this one testable question of fact.  I took the vast minority view on Russia, an unpopular and unrewarding view.  I also took that same minority, unpopular, unrewarding view on LGBT+, women, Jews, blacks, the genetic basis of IQ, etc., etc.  If I'm right on Russia, it proves I was right on everything else too, because the same people who disagree with me about Russia disagree with me on all these other points too.  It's the exact same debate, because it's based around the same method of inquiry -- I look at reality and come to obvious conclusions, they look at their feelings and decide what they want to be true.  This is their method of argument when it comes to Ukraine, vaccines, and everything else on Earth.  So if my method is proven to be more accurate vis a vis Russia, it will simultaneously prove itself better on all other questions as well.

I think the war will be over in 2023, but who knows, we can just wait and see, so there's no rush.  I still have plenty of video games left to beat while I eat popcorn on the sideline.