Java 15 though 25 Catchup

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

Continuing my previous post, let’s pick up the Java story where we left off…

Java 15 (Sept 2020)

Sealed Classes

A nice organizational tool. Not very handy for my personal projects but definitely useful across a large org.

Java 16 (March 2021)

Stream.toList()

Not much else in this release besides this minor but more readable improvement.

Java 17 (Sept 2021, LTS)

Nothing really new here just polish and finalizing things. It looks like this might be the dominant stable version in many enterprises and the baseline for open source right now.

Java 18 (March 2022)

Simple Web Server

This might be very useful for my prototypes. It wasn’t hard to do before but if this works with whatever is a good basic HTTP/API framework these days then it’s great that it’s built-in.

@snippet in Javadoc

I do actually comment my personal code fairly well (if I’m submitting it, even to a private repo) so this seems nice.

Java 19 (Sept 2022)

Record Patterns

I’m only reading some examples of this and definitely want to try it but it seems like it could be pretty clean. It’s kind of like Go interfaces, which I’m a fan of (though I wish they had a different name since they’re flipped backwards in some regards to older language’s interfaces).

Virtual Threads

Very interesting. I do tend to do a lot of concurrency in my projects so I’m definitely going to be spending some time with this one.

Java 20 (March 2023)

Scoped Values

ThreadLocals aren’t difficult per se but they are weird and easy to misuse. Streamlining the easiest usages of them seems like a win.

Java 21 (Sept 2023, LTS)

String Templates

This syntax seems like it might be a little too streamlined for readability, especially on review, but that seems solvable with tools so I’ll wait and see if I like these.

Structured Concurrency

I’ve rolled my own versions of this very useful concept many times so it would be great if this could standardize that.

Sequenced Collections

On the one hand this seems like a nice taxonomic update, but it also seems like it could be easily confused with Sorted Collections, but maybe that’s just me.

Java 22 (March 2024)

Statements before super(…) / this(…) in constructors

Ooh, this seems like it’s a bigger change than it appears on the surface. I have vague recollections of some significant class-layout workarounds for this limitation, but I’m also getting a Chesterton’s Fence vibe here in why this limitation existed in the first place.

Stream Gatherers

A few projects in my queue are data/statistics-based so this might come in handy, if third-party libraries don’t already handle this well enough.

Java 23 (Sept 2024)

Implicit classes & instance main

I never really had any issues with this boilerplate because the IDE always wrote it and it never really changed after that, but it’s cool that it got streamlined.

Java 24 (March, 2025)

Key Derivation Function API

Figuring out how to get signed APIs working almost always feels like it’s harder than it should be, so I’m all in favor of standardizing it. I’m not sure what the long-term impact is here because I’m sure the next great crypto approach will have some structural reason you can’t use this…

Java 25 (September 2025?, LTS)

The next LTS, nothing really major on the menu but a number of finalizations which will be nice.

Final Thoughts

I started this mini research project thinking there were going to be more things like lambdas which I thought were going to maybe take the language away from what I always liked about it, but that definitely doesn’t seem to be the case. There are a ton of streamlined features that work well within the same mental model and “spirit” of the language. I’m really looking forward to digging in and using almost all of them.

Java 8 though 14 Catchup

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

After a long hiatus, I’ve been increasingly motivated to do a few tech side projects. Working at Google everything there is Google-specific, or at least Google-flavored, and even if I wanted to use the same stuff I mostly couldn’t. My primary language there is Go, which is fine, but I’m going back to Java, at least for the backend/offline stuff, for now. I’m in the process of picking a stack, and starting with the language.

The last real Java project I did was Java 7, which was already aging at that point but we were going for stability and Java 8 was only a few months old when we started. Java 24 just came out, so I’ve missed 17 versions! I could just jump in but I haven’t really followed the language at all aside from some tinkering over the years and I was probably not really taking advantage of anything new. I think it would be fun to roll forward and read up on each version, seeing the highlights of what each version added or changed.

I’m mostly interested in the language aspects and the core libraries. I’m not that concerned with things like GC versions and improvements. Those are very important but for my hackery it’s unlikely I’ll need to get that far into the internals. Also, I’m going to discuss preview features mostly where they first appeared, not the iterations and finalizations in subsequent releases.

Java 8 (March 2014)

Lambdas

Now I remember why we didn’t upgrade, lambdas seemed a bit daunting and I don’t know if the tooling (Eclipse + Lombok at the time) had really caught up yet. I’m still not a huge fan of lambdas in any language, I think they are nice shortcuts but I’d prefer cleaner-delineated blocks. In JS where I use them the most I almost always define a function separately and then reference that, unless it’s just a line or two.

Type Annotations

I love annotations when used judiciously, @NonNull seems cool but I could see it getting out of control so I’ll have to wait and see how it’s used in the real world.

Optional

I’ve used this a lot in C++ and it definitely fits my be-explicit style.

Streams

A companion to lambdas, these will look strange at first but i use this pattern a lot in JS so it will probably feel right eventually.

Java 9 (Sept 2017)

JDK Modularization

This looks like a big deal, but probably more on the enterprise level than personal projects.

Collection factory methods (List.of, Set.of, Map.of)

Very nice ergonomics, looking forward to that especially for hacky prototype stuff.

Java 10 (March 2018)

Local-variable type inference (var)

Lombok had this but I didn’t use it too much. It’s really dependent on your tooling, as it adds complexity to refactoring which is one of the things I loved most about Java (and hopefully holds up!). I’m curious how this looks in real code.

Unmodifiable collection copies

More ergonomic polish that I’ll likely be using for hacking things up where hardcoding is common.

Java 11 (Sept 2018, LTS)

Looks like this was the first true LTS vesrion? Nothing groundbreaking on a language level, just some ecosystem cleanup.

Java 12 (March 2019)

Improved switch

Kind of cool. Looks like a strictish lambda variant.

Java 13 (Sept 2019)

Text Blocks

Pretty good, basically parity with most other languages at this point.

Java 14 (March 2020)

Records

Interesting. I always preferred a pretty clean “bean” structure and used Lombok for the boilerplate so this probably wouldn’t make my code look that much different but it’s always nice to be able to build on core concepts instead of just conventions.

Pattern Matching for instanceof

Makes sense. I found that needing to introspect/cast (since generics) was almost always a failure of the APIs involved but sometimes they were still unavoidable. I used them when trying to make things more magical and automatic and bury complexity behind a clean interface.

Helpful NullPointerExceptions

OMG how did this take 14 versions to happen.

Thoughts So Far

So that was about 6 years and some pretty decent improvements overall. I don’t want Java to go the way of C++ and just get more and more complex with a never-ending stream of new ways to do things, even if they are probably better. I like my Java to be boring and predictible, very easy to read, very easy to refactor, and very easy to hand off. Not all of these are great for that, notable lambdas and type inference but we’ll see how it goes.

Media Diet: July 2025

Posted on by Eric F. Savage
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Media Diet

Books

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry – I enjoyed this, as did my book club. It was both creative and coherent which can be tough to pull off together. The ending was a bit soft but the story and world building were great. My favorite fantasy stories are the ones that really explore a truly new idea (“What if all words had real power?”), and this did that.

Games

The Planet Crafter – In Progress – I love factory/automation games, and also enjoy base-building/colony games. Planet Crafter has elements of those as well as some things I don’t usually prefer like exploration and even avoid like survival (environmental, not enemies). There are things in the game that would normally be a dealbreaker such as excessively constrained inventory, mission time, and resources, and minimal creative freedom, but I’m still enjoying it. I think the peaceful vibe of bringing a planet back to life is strong enough to make this immersive and rewarding.

Blacksmith Master – In Progress – Another ~automation game, though moreso about optimizing supply and throughput. I’ve only put a couple of hours into it but it’s been fun so far.

Music

Glass Beams – Another discovery in the gap since my last post, this trio is more live-played chill beats than traditional songs but still manages to be more than background music. Pairs well with Khruangbin and a night-time drive.

Theater

Blue Man Group – The whole family went on the last day they were playing in Boston, and it was enjoyed by all. I saw them 20+ years ago and some of the show is unchanged but it still all felt fresh.

Television

Murderbot, Season 1 – A good and faithful adaptation of All Systems Red. Skarsgård plays the title role very well, and the rest of the cast was also great and supported by beefed-up roles for the humans. The production had a sparseness that was reminiscent of a theater play and it fit very well.

Department Q – A decent but not very innovative detective show. Riddled with well-executed cliches like the grumpy detective, plucky assistant and secretly masterful sidekick, it fit my mood when I started and I probably wouldn’t have finished it if it wasn’t a short series, but it wrapped things up cleanly.

Sports

Savannah Bananas – Frequently compared to the Globetrotters (who are also great), but for baseball, I think one thing the Bananas do better is stay truer to the sport. A very kid-friendly environment with music, dancing, pranks, trick plays and a fast-paced game, but it’s still a nominally competitive game at it’s heart.

Sanford Mainers – Our local summer college-level team, heading into the playoffs. Good baseball in its purest form: wood bats, talented players and a local crowd that’s watching every pitch.

Red Sox – They’ve stepped up a bit since last month, highlighted by a 10 game win streak. Postseason chances are looking better. I’m glad they apparently aren’t going to trade Duran, he’s a great player on a number of fronts and having 4 outfielders isn’t a bad thing in today’s injury-plagued game.

In Progress

Lego Masters, Season 5

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers Book 1) by Becky Chambers

Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure

AI

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

It’s been a long time since my last post about technology, and in the meantime AI happened (again). It’s dominated the conversation, even beyond the tech crowd, since ChatGPT was released. Budgets and strategies at many companies have been massively disrupted echoing earlier booms and bubbles but adding its own unique attributes as well. I’ve got a number of things I’d like to share here and in the future, but I’ll start by saying I’m generally optimistic on this, especially long-term, for a few reasons:

It’s Exciting

I started my career in the “dot com boom”, when the Internet left universities and infiltrated almost every nook and cranny of the economy and people’s lives over the next 10-15 years. There were new developments daily, for years on end, even after the stock market blew up. Disruption and innovation was constant. It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing, even in the moment. Nobody expected it to last forever but nobody knew when it would end either.

The AI boom isn’t quite at the same level, but it’s closer than I thought I’d see again. There are new tools and techniques coming out very frequently. There are vast sums of money being invested in many areas. There are new skills to learn, new toys to tinker with, new styles of craft being developed.

One big difference is that during the Internet boom most of the money was going into people. Anyone remotely employable could get a job writing web pages that paid far more than anything else they could do. This time, far more of the money seems to be going into power and compute, in part because that’s an important part but also because there’s a pernicious fixation on automation and displacement rather than the focus on leverage that the Internet fostered. This makes it more of a high-stakes kind of excitement but it’s still excitement.

It’s Important

Since the Internet we’ve seen a number of hype cycles of all sizes offering varying combinations of transformation, enchantment and value. Mobile, social, crypto/blockchain, big data, voice assistants, IoT, VR, 3D printing, smart homes and so on. Most of these are durable but a generation from now they will all be distilled in a few turning points at a cultural level, and the rest will only be remembered as significant within specific industries. I think mobile & social have been truly transformative culturally; they’ve deeply affected politics, friendships, families, and communities. With that one exception I think all of the other trends could be eclipsed by AI’s impact on our lives, economies, and future.

The key vector for that statement is agency. And not in a buzzwordy “agentic” way, but in the sense that vibe coding a TODO app is a tiny taste of the direction things are going. More people are going to be able to do more things, and in a rare violation of deeply held beliefs, they’re going to be able to them better, cheaper and faster. Distributed agency is a massive threat/shift for a global economy that’s been shifting towards services for decades, and it’s going to be a bumpy ride but I think in the end it’s going to be a huge boon. Once more people start to really push boundaries and leave the routine work behind for the robots, we could see an improvement in innovation and new ideas.

This is where the “pernicious fixation on automation and displacement” I mentioned above seems short-sighted and wrong to me. If you have a tool that makes your employees more productive, and you choose to do the same thing with fewer employees, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re running your business properly, your employees should now be making you even more money, so why would you lay them off? I’m not saying this is a trivial change and of course there are lots of details and nuances, but I see far fewer people thinking about growing the metaphorical pie than those who think it’s a fixed size.

It’s Inevitable

This is not the “use AI or become obsolete” pitch that many are making, but more about the fact that it’s here to stay. While the latest and greatest models require billion and trillion dollar companies, the trailing edge of self-hosted/open-source models and systems is keeping up at an impressive pace. Even if OpenAI and Google and Anthropic disappeared tomorrow, we’d still have a large fraction of the capabilities available to us.

“This is the worst it will ever be” is a mantra you might hear from AI fans and I think it’s mostly true. LLMs and RAG and “agents” and whatever FotM we’re excited about now may not be relevant in 10 or 20 years but the thing that will exist will almost certainly be better. We don’t have to use it, and we don’t even have to like it, but we can’t ignore it. If you work with any kind of information and are anywhere but the very end of your career, you should have a plan that addresses, if not includes, AI.

It’s Interesting

Finally, it’s personally relevant to me because it’s just something I think about a lot. Suck.com’s “shiny vs. useful” chart is one I come back to again and again, and AI is both. Not Sun/fire level but still very positive on both of those axes. The fact that it has a huge overlap on my own work in software and tech, and the points I made above, mean this is just too good of a topic to not geek out on. I hope to share more thoughts here in the future on both the positive and negative aspects.

Media Diet: June 2025

Posted on by Eric F. Savage
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Media Diet

Books

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (Audiobook) – A fairly lightweight blend of monsters and romance, two genres I rarely read, but it was well-written and enjoyable except for the saccharine ending/epilogue.

DragonLance Tales, Volumes 1-3 (The Magic of Krynn, Love and War Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes ) edited by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman – A re-read from many years ago. I always enjoy visiting Krynn and these stories add color to the world and well-known characters. These were all pretty good, but none of these stories really stood out to me as especially bad or great.

Movies

Jaws – Probably the first time I’ve watched the whole thing since forever ago. It holds up fairly well after 50 years and the well-executed simplicity is in stark contrast to modern movies that feel like they often struggle under the weight of self-inflicted complexity. The Wikipedia page has a lot of details on how difficult the production was, even Spielberg tried to get out of directing it.

Pacific Rim – A favorite of mine and another rewatch, but this time with my son, who is finally old enough to enjoy these types of movies, and he loved it. The level of detail in Del Toro’s movies make them very rewatchable, and Djawadi’s soundtrack is a gem on its own.

Games

Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure – In Progress – If Nintendo made a factory game it would look a lot like this with cute characters and a pretty gentle learning curve. Within the genre it has some interesting ideas, especially around logistics that require and reward thinking and tinkering.

Tower Wizard – Completed – A short (~6 hours) “clicker” that is well-structured. It strikes a good balance between allowing idleness but not requiring it. Fun and definitely worth the few bucks it cost.

Music

Stephen Wilson Jr. – A discovery in the gap since my last post, but Wilson blends outlaw country and 90s alternative with a massive amount of talent to create a lot of great songs. His cover of Stand By Me is nothing short of epic.

Also, since my last update, I’ve started taking guitar lessons with my son! It’s been a fun experience so far.

Sports

Red Sox – This year’s team is interesting in that they appear to be a much better team than last year, but the results don’t back that up. They have a remote chance at the postseason if they can avoid more losing streaks, but given their feast-or-famine rhythm so far that seems unlikely.

In Progress

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

Murderbot, Season 1

Lego Masters, Season 5

Media Diet: April 2023

Posted on by Eric F. Savage
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Media Diet

Books

Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson – A decent, light fantasy story set in an interesting world. I haven’t read Sanderson since Mistborn (and haven’t gotten to where he took over Wheel of Time yet) but my assessment of him as a someone in the model of Stephen King (prolific, reliable, mild) holds up.

Movies

Morbius – Wasted opportunity.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie – Exceeded my high expectations.

Games

Dyson Sphere Program (continued) – I’ve keep chipping away at this, going far beyond I have in the past and chipping away at achievements. The end game isn’t terribly strong, but in the game’s defense, they haven’t finished it yet. I’d love to see them close the loop with technology and development and bring it around to where you’re working towards some kind of infinite loop or singularity.

Television

Slow Horses, Season 1 – I generally favor single-threaded stories that focus on craft, details, and execution rather than checking every box, and this show was very much that. Despite being slightly awkward and somewhat slow for a spy “thriller”, I enjoyed it.

Mayor of Kingstown, Season 2 – The first season was kind of a mess, but hinted at a clearer “now that we got that settled (with copious violence of course, because Taylor Sheridan)” second season. Instead, it just got messier. This is a world that is both implausibly violent and implausibly ordered, and draws a connection between those two things that feels more like fascist fantasy than storytelling. I bailed after a few episodes.

The Mandalorian, Season 3 – A disappointing but fortunately conclusive end to arcs started in prior seasons. The charm and adventure of the earlier episodic stories was forgotten in service to a grand arc that it was hard to really care about.

Sports

Red Sox – Expectations are low this year for the Red Sox for a number of reasons, so it was fun to watch them outperform for most of April.

Boston Bruins (playoffs) – I’m not a hockey fan, but my son is interested in playing, so I figured I’ll get interested in watching. To my untrained eye, the heavily-favorited and record-breaking Bruins just didn’t look like a better team than the bottom-seeded Florida Panthers that they ended up losing to, but I at least got a sense of hockey’s unique flavor of drama and tension.

In Progress

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan – Grind. Grind. Grind

Media Diet: March 2023

Posted on by Eric F. Savage
This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Media Diet

I spent more time on fitness this month than I have in a long time, and that left less room for media, which is fine by me!

Books

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky – I wanted to like this book more than I did because it was innovative (spiders as main characters?!) but it took a bit of an effort to finish it. The writing is dry and heavy, sometimes boring, the characters were pretty shallow, and the ending was a poor return on the time invested.

Games

Dyson Sphere Program (replay)– In what has become an annual tradition, I played through one of my all-time favorite games for the third time, which is probably a record for me. There weren’t a lot of improvements over last year, just some tweaks, but each time I’ve gone further and faster. If they release the big “combat” update this year I may not wait until next year to do it again.

Television

Ted Lasso, Season 2 – It’s always great to see a good show get better, and Lasso did just that. With one exception (Episode 9, which completely missed it’s mark) it was improved and refined. The excellent casting paid off as previously lesser characters stepped up and new characters fit in seamlessly.

Sports

World Baseball Classic – This is the first time I’ve watched any serious amount of the WBC, in large part thanks to friendly time-zones, and it was fantastic. I’d love to see better pitching, most of the MLB’s top players weren’t allowed to participate, but it was still great baseball.

Red Sox (Spring Training) – Prior to the WBC, I also watched more of this than perhaps I ever have, and it was nice in a very casual way. I’m not terribly hopeful of the Red Sox chances this year, but I’m generally more excited about baseball than I have been in many years.

In Progress

Didn’t finish these in March so I’ll update when I do.

  • Mandalorian, Season 3
  • Crossroads of Twilight
  • Mayor of Kingstown

Upcoming

Some things I’m hoping to read/watch/play soon:

  • Succession, Season 3
  • Ted Lasso, Season 3 

Media Diet: February 2023

Posted on by Eric F. Savage
This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Media Diet

Books

Ghost Pirate Gambit by Jessie Kwak – A fun space heist book. Nothing terribly surprising or disappointing, just a nice easy reading adventure.

Winter’s Heart by Robert Jordan – I suffered through this one in service of trying to complete the series. Way too many characters and way too little story.

Movies

Ant-Man: Quantumania – OK

Bullet Train – A hyperviolent but well-built and fun “on a train” movie.

Games

Stacklands – A great little village builder for only $5. It lets you play enough cards that it gets unwieldy, but I suspect that’s not an accident and wants you to adapt your play style to desired tidiness.

Sons of the Forest – A popular survival craft game that just couldn’t get me interested enough to deal with the lack of guidance. Personally I find games that think it’s fun to figure out how to play rarely deliver, so I returned it after 2 hours.

Television

1923, Season 1 – A stunted epic that lacks the grace of 1888 and the spirit of Yellowstone. For a show with a scheduled two season run, it also didn’t end as far a long as I’d hoped, so the next season will likely feel a little rushed and end in a violent spectacle.

Ted Lasso, Season 1 – A good show that is trying to do a “meaningful” comedy but just missing the mark. The foundation is good though, and it is pleasantly more like a tightly-edited hour-long show than a half-hour show.

Upcoming

Some things I’m hoping to read/watch/play soon:

  • Mandalorian, Season 3
  • Children of Time
  • Succession, Season 3

52 Word Review: Ant-Man: Quantumania

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

A decent but not completely satisfying superhero movie with a promising and novel villain but lacking superheroism. Thankfully lacking in multiverse nonsense (mostly), the interesting Star Wars vs. Saga setting felt wasted on a tropey and predictable story. Majors’ second turn as Kang was good but Rudd brought little new to Ant-Man.

Media Diet: January 2023

Posted on by Eric F. Savage
This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Media Diet

Inspired by Kottke’s media diet posts, I’m going to try and collect my own thoughts here. Also, the holidays is always a good time to catch up on watching/reading so there’s quite a bit to cover here!

Books

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers – A light second book in the series, I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first, which wasn’t amazing, but left the reader with some nice thoughts to dwell on. This book hinted that it was trying to do that again, but didn’t manage to pull it off.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport – I’ve resolved to read more non-fiction this year, and enjoyed this one. It’s very typical in the thesis/data/example mixture but is short and well-paced and makes a good case, especially to someone early in their career.

Kindred by Octavia Butler – My second reading of Butler after being disappointed in Xenogenesis, and I enjoyed this much more. Excellent prose and pacing, a single-threaded story that doesn’t lose track of itself, time-travel book that doesn’t get lost in the details, just a solid book all around. It certainly could have dug a little deeper on the hypothetical social issues or the other characters, but then it would have been a different book and been far less likely to pull it all off.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis. – A decent fantasy adventure. Not quite as charming as other entries in the series, but also somewhat (though not entirely) less allegorical.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis. – Underwhelming though satisfactorily final conclusion to the series. It started with a lot of promise but quickly stumbled into a predictable and rushed dash to wrap things up.

Artemis City Shuffle by Jessie Kwak – A fun, short and sweet intro to the series. Seems optional but if the rest of the series is similar it should be a fun ride.

Movies

Black Adam – Meh.

Pale Blue Eye – Decent.

Glass Onion – OK.

Games

Marvel Snap (mobile/Steam) – I started playing this a few months ago and it’s a solid addition to the digital card game genre. Fast-paced, highly variable but deep enough to stay interesting even after hundreds of games. The progression mechanism still feels a little rough but the game itself is fantastic. The meta is pretty good for a card game, I regularly see an assortment of decks, but it is has converged on a few mechanics, so hopefully they’ll stay ahead of that. They recently tuned (nerfed) a card that risked tanking the game (Leader) which was nice to see, so hopefully they’ll also tune a few of the dumber locations (District X) and keep the game fresh.

Dwarf Fortress (Steam) – I’ve only logged a few hours on the new version, but I played it years ago in the text-based interface. It’s a great game if you’re looking to be rewarding for committing to a long learning curve (which I’m not, at the moment), and the new graphical UI makes it much more appealing by shorting that curve.

Outpath: First Journey (Steam) – A demo for a future game, it feels promising as a blend of casual/survival/crafting genres. The low-res graphics are tiresome, the novelty of retro “8 bit” graphics has long passed, and requires a level of expertise to pull off these days, and this game lacks that.

Television

Yellowstone (Season 5, Part 1) – This show has always been kind of dumb but also kind of fun, albeit in a lazily violent way. Lately it’s been trying to be less dumb and as a side effect is becoming less fun. It’s safe to say that politics and intrigue are not Sheridan’s strong suit. The barometer of the show has always been Rip, and he’s transitioned very rapidly from a skilled gangster enforcer to … a dad.

Andor (Season 1) – An exceedingly well-constructed show, with several story arcs in series as well as an overarching one. The heist was cliché but sets everything else up and we get a whole bunch of new and detailed perspectives on the Empire and Rebellion that add more details to Star Wars canon than anything else since the movies.

Jack Ryan (Season 3) – Despite a credible star and decent marketing, I feel like this show always flies under the radar. It’s a good spy/action thriller that doesn’t necessarily stay true to Tom Clancy canon, but certainly does to the spirit of his books. I lump this in with the Mission Impossible movies as engaging, well-crafted , brain-not-quite-off action thrillers.

Podcasts

The Rest is History is a recent discovery and highly recommended. Their recent episodes on the origins of Nazism show how so many factors, some outside Germany and others even before it existed, played into such a terrible event.

Hardcore History is also always highly recommended. Similar to the The Rest is History’s series but in far more detail, “Supernova in the East” covers what led Japan into World War II. It filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge and presented a far more complete picture than most Americans (and possibly Japanese) students would get at school.

Upcoming

Some things I’m hoping to read/watch/play soon:

  • Bullet Train
  • Winter’s Heart
  • Ghost Pirate Gambit