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Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

An enjoyable book with some interesting action.  It is lacking in grand sci-fi concepts other than the sulfur stuff, which I thought for sure was going to be a cargo ship loaded with iron filings based on some commentary I had seen before reading.  But there is a good amount of near-future envisionings: drone concepts, live streaming, climate impacts, etc.

The climate topics overall are a no for me.  I don't identify with the people who dread climate impacts all day long in real life.  So even though I think it is plausible for such things to happen, I guess I really do not care to read a book about it.  I think I envision all these "dreaders" also reading the book and being like, "yes, see that is what will happen!" and want to roll my eyes so hard.

I wonder what topics I enjoy reading that would cause such eye rolling by others?

Lastly, I am really not sure what to think of the non-lethal border wars!  Is there some kernel of this developing already that I don't know about?

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The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland

The overall premise of magic dying out for the given reasons is pretty clever overall, and the time travel mechanism/effects holds up to some examination.  I find the historical setting to be fun and pretty well detailed in this book.

The "found documents" format is tedious, and especially so for my eBook situation due to some formatting difficulties.  I think quality dropped a bit towards the end as some plot points became less plausible.

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Run Your Own Mail Server by Michael W Lucas

I set up my own mail server about a year before reading this book so the timing wasn't great, but still this was a good read.  And fortunately I had chosen almost exactly the same software stack.

I will probably use this to go back through and fine tune a few things on my server...eventually.  The rspamd config comes to mind.  I don't think it is updating any definitions as I mark new messages as Junk.

This book was great for putting me to sleep.  But that's OK!  It probably isn't great to read something that amps you up and keeps you up.

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