Hm, my oh-so-clever plan to fix coverage checking by modifying the way evar spines are created will have to be modified somehow, since the way subordination information leaks into coverage checking is subtly different from the way world information needs to --- since the latter needs to interact with unification a bit first. Maybe around abstraction time is the right time to do it. Anyhow, most of the necessary code is already written, I just need to call it at the right moment.

Lunch break reading has shifted away from J. G. Ballard's "Vermillion Sands" because I got tired of its unrelenting bittersweet mopeyness (however lovely the style) in favor of gwillen's recommendation of "Permutation City" since he (by way of platypuslord) certainly didn't fail me on "A Fire Upon the Deep". A hundred pages into it, "Permutation City" is SO so so of its time (which is the mid-90s, which means a lot of "nnngnggngngfractals cellular automata bottom-up computation virtual realityngngngng") but it has the same quality as Charlie Stross's writing in "Halting State" that I just find it fun and want to keep reading. A nice mix of passably well-staged philosophical dilemmas, enjoyable characters, and momentum-of-mystery. I hear the ending's wacky, so we'll see how that goes.