Dictation Report

The world is on fire and I now have both wrists in strappy black braces which are either cool and Matrix-like or fetish gear. So I have been looking into dictation software, to rest them and in case I need surgery. The gold standard is Dragon, which does not run on Macs.

Here are my experiments with Word and Apple's built-in dictation. The texts are a random movie review from FFA, and some excerpts from my Zoe books.

Original: 2017 Icelandic horror-ish movie where a guy gets a weird phone call in the middle of the night from his ex-boyfriend. This was really well-made, great acting, beautifully shot. There is not a single straight man in it.

Apple: 17 Icelandic Forest no where a guy gets a beer bottle in the middle of the night from his ex-boyfriend this really really work well name great acting beautifully shot curious. There is not a single straight man and Saturday, June 25, 2022 wow

They were all coming out like that, so I thought I would try it with a mike and AirPods, and fix my AirBook's refusal to load the new OS while I was at it. This turned out to be a day-long odyssey in which I had to expose myself to a covid superspreader Apple store, got stuck at a horrible mall in 96 F/35.5 C heat, and nearly had to threaten an ADA complaint to get a California Pizza Kitchen to seat me in its outside plaza for outside eating rather than either inside or nowhere.

Here are my results with mike and AirPods:

Original: He couldn’t stop wondering about his new client. What sort of woman was brave or reckless enough to agree to testify against the crime boss who practically ruled the city?

If she’d been a shifter like himself, he could maybe halfway understand it. But she was a human: a working woman, a paramedic on the late shift. She must be terrified.

Dictation: He couldn't stop wondering about his new client. What sort of woman was great or reckless enough read to testify against the crime boss to practically route the city?

Yes in a shift or like himself he could maybe halfway understand it. But she was a human: a working woman, a paramedic on the beach. She must be terrified.


Original: He had been taught that dragons always knew their mates at first sight. He’d imagined it as the difference between seeing a stranger and seeing someone you know.

Oh, he’d imagined thinking. Oh, I know that person.

Dictation: He had been taught that dragons always knew their mates at first sight. He didn't mention it is the difference between seeing a stranger in seeing someone you know.

Oh, heater mentioned thinking. Oh, I knew that person.

Then I tried Dragon Anywhere on my phone. Without a mike, since it's a Samsung so the AirPods are incompatible. I tried it on the same text, and got ONE error.

Dragon on phone it is. If the phone gets too annoying, I will try running Windows on my Mac or buying a cheap used Dell desktop. But for now, you will get to experience my dictated book reviews.

Hardest part? Getting Dragon to recognize me saying the word "this," which is surprisingly hard to spell phonetically when you think your phonetic pronunciation is in fact "this."

No, wait. The hardest part is actually going to be returning the goddamn AirPods.

The Molly Southbourne trilogy, by Tade Thompson

Molly Southbourne's parents taught her four simple rules:

"If you see yourself, run.
Don't bleed.
Blot, burn, bleach.
Find a hole, find your parents."

For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she’s been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction.

Molly knows every way to kill herself, but she also knows that as long as she survives she’ll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

This set of three cross-genre novellas has one of the most intriguing premises that I've ever come across. I don't want to give away more than the blurb, because half of what is so fun and compelling about these novellas is learning along with Molly exactly what's going on and why.

I read the first novella in a single gulp, and would have continued if it hadn't been late at night. The next day I immediately bought and read the next two.

The first novella stands on its own and comes to a reasonable conclusion. The second two do not stand alone; they're just as good as the first, but different in tone and themes. The first novella gains a lot of power from the inexplicable mystery of how and why Molly's power exists and works the way it does. The second two provide unexpectedly satisfying solutions to many of the mysteries, but sometimes an unsolved mystery has a haunting quality that the solution lacks.

( Read more... )

Any story about clones and doppelgangers will be about identity, but Molly Southbourne is also about generational trauma and the inflection point where people have to choose to do what's always been done, or commit themselves to doing things better even when they don't know if that's possible.

As far as I know these novellas are a complete trilogy. I really hope Tade writes more of them though, however, because I would love to read more in this world and about these characters.

Content notes: body horror, violence. Tade is a psychiatrist, and his medical knowledge makes a plotline in the second book particularly extra-horrifying.

(I know Tade via the internet, hence the first name. I'd have written the same review if I didn't, though, only I'd have used his surname.)