liv | Reading

This book starts with a shark attack on a teenager. After she sees a doctor, she continues to have symptoms, but her parents brush her off as things get more serious. Wynn-Williams uses this point as her origin story for why she persisted through mess.

She worked at the United Nations and saw how powerful Facebook could be, and there were some thorny international policy implications so she pitched people at Facebook on creating a job for her. Early on, she would take Mark Zuckerberg to events with heads of state, and no one cared. No one wanted to meet him. Mark was also uncomfortable with the idea of dealing with world leaders.

Wynn-Williams drags Sheryl Sandberg and Lean In for the entire book. People discuss the part about Sandberg asking people to go to bed with her on a private plane because that sounds prurient, but the whole story about Sheryl Sandberg just not really caring about women or their issues comes up repeatedly.

I think the book explains Zuckerberg's supervillain story arc well. She was not close enough to him to see it happen at first; but the road he is going down can be seen as Zuckerberg grapples the influence of Facebook in the 2016 election.

I felt like the most important chapters of the book were Chapter 44 that had to do with Facebook allowing companies to advertise to kids 13-17 when they were in an emotionally vulnerable state and Chapter 45 that had to do with the genocide in Myanmar.

There were also some juicy bits about how Facebook was trying to mislead Congress about various issues. She highlights a piece in the book where Marco Rubio was asking some good questions.

jesse_the_k

Someday I may again add to the cornucopia of excellent reading reports available here on Dreamwidth. In a previous life, enjoying these posts would also add to my teetering TBR pile. Now I get vicarious thrills from how folks’ reading made them feel. In particular:

chestnut_pod
https://chestnut-pod.dreamwidth.org/?tag=books+are+the+meaning+of+life&skip=30

dhampyresa
https://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/tag/reading+wednesday

rivkat doesn’t tag and does post many, many great reviews
https://rivkat.dreamwidth.org

runpunkrun
https://runpunkrun.dreamwidth.org/tag/book+report

Any recent DW entry with the tag "books" https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest?tag=books

Self-rec: mostly reviews, but also about the mechanics of reading https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/tag/reading

Reading-focused communities
readingtogether
booknook

Let me know whose reading reviews you enjoy....

maju

12. What are you sure of in your life? That I'm not getting any younger. Almost nothing else is set in stone.

13. When you think of ‘home,’ what, specifically, do you think of? The place where I spend most of my time and where I sleep at night.

14. What’s the difference between settling for things and accepting the way things are? I'm not sure that there is any meaningful difference, except in the mental/emotional state of the person either setting or accepting. In both cases you make a decision to continue with things as they are without struggling to change anything.

15. How many of your friends would you trust with your life? All of them.

oursin

Why, why O why, would anybody choose a 'sperm donor' (and it looks as though he made his donations very up close and personal, we are not talking test-tubes?) whose pitch was - on Facebook! - 'recipients did not have to “have a weirdo in a lab coat look at your hoohaw”. (The service was also free.)

Do we think that anyone asked for a recent STI check? The whole thing sounds ick to the max.

No, instead you got involved with this deeply odd and controlling bloke who claims he fathered more than 180 children and far from just vanishing over the horizon, in several instances has tried to gain custody of the resulting children.

In the US, where he was offering sperm donor services until 2017, there is a warrant for his arrest over unpaid child maintenance amounting to thousands of dollars.

I was going to comment, so, not one of these billionaires who is trying to breed his own master-race out of his own loins, but then I seem to recollect that there has been a certain amount of outing them for not paying up as they had said they would.

I suppose at least this guy has been seriously spreading it about ('dozens of children across South America, Australia and the UK' and presumably USA), unlike the Dutch guy most of whose 100s of offspring are in the Netherlands.

andrewducker

1. Labour doesn't believe British people should be allowed to live here with their families: (tags:family migration UK OhForFucksSake Labour )
2. Crossness Pumping Station: seduced by symmetry: (tags:art design architecture history London UK )
3. Dammit. I'm going to have to get a babysitter so I can go see Superman: (tags:superman movies trailer comics video )
4. Would you like to see someone have their dream come true live on stage?: (tags:musicals video singing impressive )
5. Scottish Water warning after driest period in 60 years: (tags:Scotland water )
6. What it's like being a nanny for the super-rich: (tags:wealth children childcare )
7. EU ruling: tracking-based advertising by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, across Europe has no legal basis: (tags:europe advertising privacy law )
8. How to Sniff Out 'Copaganda': When the Police and the Media Manipulate Our News: (tags:police propaganda media journalism )
9. Audible to use AI narrators and translators: (tags:books audio ai translation )
10. South Korea's robot chefs worry human workers, disappoint customers: (tags:food cooking robots )

oursin

Happy birthday,

auroramama and

mummimamma!

kaberett

Item the first: I totally failed to mention, yesterday, but one of the things we Observed the teenage coots doing -- okay, well, one of them was successfully managing to invert itself, Köpfchen in das Wasser, Schwanzchen in die Höh' -- but we only observed this after having already spent Quite Some Time laughing (delightedly) at its sibling, which was making great big determined accelerating shoulder-shrug motions, and separately managing to put its head and only its head underwater, but had not yet quite managed to work out how to combine the two movements so as to rotate itself around its axis. I realised while trying to describe this earlier that the reason for my feeling of Great Affinity is just how much it looks to have in common with learning to do a wheelie.

Item the second: cake of the day.

Item the third: the tomatoes I planted out and then abandoned for a couple of days seem to be none the worse for wear for it (and I established this on the trip where I took the water condensed in the dehumidifier from the latest round of laundry up to the plot, in an empty milk flagon, for the purpose of watering the blueberry, on the basis that the water butt is running low and there's still no rain forecast...).

Item the fourth: I am continuing to greatly enjoy Owl Facts. Favourite so far, which I am utterly failing to track down a specific reference for: apparently owl chicks start vocalising before they emerge from the egg, at the point at which they breach the air cell in their Containment! which you need a very sensitive microphone to pick up. The second favourite is a long shaggy dog story that I might manage to type up tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.

Item the fifth: I am now at two nights running for "watch thinks my sleep quality is significantly better if I spend ten minutes listening to wave recordings after lying down and lights out". If it continues to hold I will be both very pleased (about having a way to improve energy levels) and mildly irritated (about not being able to replicate this effect some other more convenient way). We Shall See.

mrissa

New story out today in ebook format! Print copy to follow for those who want that. "The Things You Know, The Things You Trust" appears in If There's Anyone Left, vol. 5. It's a look at life's constants in the face of great change, which are sometimes where we hope they are and sometimes...other places.

cosmolinguist

According to this, and a new book I maybe have to read now, a gay pioneer in the UK was blind.

In 1960, seven years before the law in the UK changed to permit sex between men, he had written to the national press declaring himself to be gay. Roger believed that the only way to change public opinion about homosexuals was for them to take control of the gay rights movement – and this required them to unashamedly identify themselves on the national stage. But nobody else had been willing to do it.

It's because of his blindness that this person had to come in to his life: an Oxford student, also gay, who could be trusted to read his papers and write and generally be a kind of personal assistant.

To gay when it was illegal, and then to be blind, required a lot of access intimacy when everything was still on paper.

The article ends:

In the years since, it has often led me to wonder how many other quiet revolutionaries live among us, ready to share their stories, if only we knock on their doors.

So many. I'm sure of it.

oursin

What I read

Finished Dance and Skylark, which was a bit slight (felt there was a certain unresolved slashy subtext going on between Stephen and his former Greek-American wartime comrade in arms, hmmm) though I marked it up for the women characters looking as if they might be a bit one-dimensional and then revealing other facets.

Katherine V Forrest, Delafield (2022) - Kate Delafield, still retired, dealing with a stalker who is a woman who her poor handling of a case way back in her career led to being falsely imprisoned, and now released through the Innocence Project, also her PTSD issues, etc, also old relationship stuff.

Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood - Persephone edition, 2016, initially published in limited edition 2012 - her memoir written when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy in the 1940s, for her family, edited with some supplementary material by her daughter. Said a bit about it here.

Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon (2024) - v good.

KJ Charles, The Henchmen of Zenda (2018), re-read because not feeling up to much.

On the go

Still dipping into Melissa Scott, Scenes from the City.

Have started the other book for review - wow there is a lot of insider baseball stuff about the Parliamentary toings and froings over the legislation in question, or maybe I mean, how the sausage got made - and maybe my general state at the moment is not quite in the right space.

Just started, Kris Ripper, The Life Revamp (The Love Study #3) (2021) because it was on offer in my Recommended for You on Kobo today.

Up Next

New Literary Review.

Otherwise, not sure.

redbird

I had a CT scan of my lungs this morning, then saw the pulmonologist. The CT scan looks OK, considering: "Again seen is diffuse bronchiectasis with tree-in-bud opacities seen in the right upper lobe, right middle lobe and lingula. The areas in the right upper lobe may have improved in the interval."

The low-tech exam was also reassuring: the doctor used a stethoscope to listen to my chest, and had me cough while listening. She heard no wheezing (or other problems), which is good. So, she told me to keep using the flutter valve twice a day, and come back in six months.

And, some non-medical notes:

I discovered that it's possible to accidentally cancel a Lyft ride by putting your phone in your pocket after the driver has picked you up. The driver suggested I text Lyft to tell them I hadn't meant to cancel, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. After a minute or two of frustration, I asked the driver if he would take cash instead, and he said yes. So I handed him $25, and repeated the destination address so he could enter it in his GPS. I try to carry some cash on general principles, but this isn't something I was expecting to need, or be able, to pay cash for.

Mount Auburn was also having some trouble with their medical information system: the doctor could see the CT scan, but only on the machine in her office, not the one in the exam room. Fortunately, I didn't need to see the images. Given their computer problems, I was particularly pleased to have a list of my current medications on my phone, to show the doctor's assistant. I don't yet have my follow-up appointment, but that's not because of today's computer problems, but that they aren't set up to book follow-up appointments that far in advance.

I took transit home, which is cheap and makes sense to me, from many years of practice. I stopped at Flour to get something to eat, 7-11 to use their no-fee ATM to withdraw some more cash, and CVS to pick up a prescription, and was home in time for lunch. It was effectively two stops rather than three, because the 7-11 and drugstore are both near the bus stop where I was changing from the bus to the trolley.

jesse_the_k

Calcium Carbonate

Is everywhere in my life! It’s always underneath since Wisconsin was a seabed for billions of years. It’s usually under my wheels when I’m traveling because I like to stay on the sidewalks. It makes my toothpaste gritty to help clean my teeth. It’s a pretty yellow stone in my jewelry (aka aragonite or calcite). For better tea I filter it out of my hard water, then I take three capsules a day (with magnesium) to help my bones stay strong.

My Subconscious Was On It

I slept poorly last night—waking up every 90 minutes, and diving back in to the same dream: it was Saturday, I had to make up my seven pillboxes, and there wasn’t a drug in the house. Of course I forgot to take my bedtime meds.

maju

We've had a fair amount of rain over the last few days - a total of something like 200 mm/8 inches - and everything is looking extremely lush. However, for a short time I had a beautiful display of irises in full bloom and now I don't. We must have had some extremely heavy rain last night because this morning many of the plants have been flattened and most of the flowers are looking very sad.

It's supposed to be rainy with possible thunderstorms today and tomorrow, but so far today has been fine although cloudy, and I was able to go for a good walk this morning without getting wet.

I fail to understand the US medical/insurance system. Over the last 11 months, every so often I receive a random letter, an "Explanation of Benefits", from some insurance company or medical provider or other, all of which have set out some expenses to do with S's hospitalisation or hospice care and all of which (so far) have said "this is not a bill" (to which I breathe a sigh of relief). The one I received this morning, which is very similar to if not identical to others I've received, has a column headed "Amount Charged" and then a column headed "Amount not Eligible", both of which have identical figures in them, and then several other columns, all of which have zero in them. At the bottom it says the provider has not submitted the appropriate documentation, and my obligation is pending, so possibly I will get a bill at some future date although I've heard nothing more from the various similar notices I've received. It puzzles me that I'm *still* receiving these notices after all these months have passed. It seems very inefficient to take such a very long time to process these claims. (Even if I end up having to pay this bill, I won't go bankrupt as it's for under $1500. I'm extremely grateful that S had such amazing health insurance through her employer that I don't think I've had to pay anything yet, although she did pay out of pocket part of the cost of some of her medications during her treatment.)

green_knight

So yesterday I gave my bank login to a scammer. I should have known better. I know better. This is a post where I analyse why things went wrong anyway and what I can do so this will never happen again.

( Long list is long )

I got away lightly, but not without cost. Right now, I'm a bit scared to sign up for online banking again, however necessary it may be.

I am very embarassed about the amount of muppetry that could have cost me a considerable sum of money, but I am trying to forgive myself. Every now and again, humans make mistakes. Sometimes costly ones. Closing my laptop around the power cord and needing a new display was costly. A small misjudgement while parking my car was costly. And, and, and. Sometimes it only takes a small slip, and afterwards you kick yourself, but that is life. We wish it wasn't, but it is.

Moooooood embarrassed

andrewducker

1. Texas Bans Being Different Around Children: (tags:children usa politics satire )
2. Scottish assisted dying bill passes first vote at Holyrood: (tags:scotland death euthanasia )

azurelunatic

I now have an 8x8 case of tiny drawers. It arrived Monday. Some drawers are labeled, some are not. Labels include:

( Read more... )

The effort has taken most of my day, organized several drawers, and made my desk completely incoherent. Good times.

oursin

Happy birthday,

sibyllevance!

kaberett

A persuaded me to make the ridiculous stale pistachio croissant breakfast. This was absolutely the right call and I am very happy about it.

It is definitely the weather for linen. Went out to meet A and acquire dinner ingredients; bimbled home via watching baby birds (two sets of teenage coots! two batches of Canada gosling!) and eating pastries and collecting a pile of drugs for me.

And then this evening I got myself onto the mat! Did a sequence! Full of happy chemicals about it! (Laughing at my brain for trying to pull the "nooooooooo if you get on the mat you'll want to do the whooooole seeeeequence and that would be baaaaaaad".)

Sleep now? Sleep now.

fanf

https://dotat.at/@/2025-05-13-if-is.html

About half a year ago I encountered a paper bombastically titled "the ultimate conditional syntax". It has the attractive goal of unifying pattern match with boolean if tests, and its solution is in some ways very nice. But it seems over-complicated to me, especially for something that's a basic work-horse of programming.

I couldn't immediately see how to cut it down to manageable proportions, but recently I had an idea. I'll outline it under the "penultimate conditionals" heading below, after reviewing the UCS and explaining my motivation.

( Read more... )

china_shop

Everything else is on hold while I work on my 520 Day fic. (I'm on an extension!) In the meantime:

Poll #33120 this only got political-adjacent by accident, I swear

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

View Respondents

Eggs

View Answers

hard boiled
33 (61.1%)

soft boiled
24 (44.4%)

sunny-side up
21 (38.9%)

over easy
28 (51.9%)

poached
24 (44.4%)

meringue
15 (27.8%)

none
2 (3.7%)

other
22 (40.7%)

ticky-box full of deadlines
13 (24.1%)

ticky-box full of the road to Hell is paved with broken handcarts
14 (25.9%)

ticky-box full of starfish constellations on an empty beach at dawn
24 (44.4%)

ticky-box full of tuning a guitar to match gibbon hoots and seeing where that takes you
9 (16.7%)

ticky-box of how do we feel about the hyphen in "sunny-side up"?
18 (33.3%)

ticky-box full of much hugs
40 (74.1%)

lannamichaels

If you think defending your right to use a common name as a pejorative is more important than listening to everyone with that name saying "please stop, this is causing us actual real harm", then just let me know right now and I can ban you from my blog and you can ban me and then we'll all live happily ever after: you with your moral superiority that you can hurt whoever you want as long as you feel you have a good enough reason, and me without having to endure this right now or ever.

Like, I thought we all got over this in middle school, using someone's name as an insult because, tee hee, teacher, I'm not really calling them a bad word, I'm just turning their name into a bad word, that's totally different!!!!

I am so incredibly serious. I have limited ability to cope and this shit has already ruined two days within the last seven entirely by triggering mental health problems and making me literally actually cry with frustration over why so many people are so keen on hurting people even when they've asked them repeatedly to stop.

This is not a victimless term. You need to fucking stop or get out of my life and I'll get out of yours and we'll both move on.

maju

My ENT appointment went without a hitch today. The doctor thoroughly examined various parts of my head: my neck, my throat, my ears, and my nose, and found nothing wrong apart from some wax which he removed from my ears. He couldn't find anything in my nose that could be causing nose bleeds, but as I haven't had one for a few weeks he says whatever it was has healed up. (Plus of course warmer weather helps.)

It was raining heavily when I got up and continued to do so for a while, but around the middle of the morning it eased off. I had been thinking I'd have to drive to the doctor, but I decided to walk because the rain was so light that I wasn't even sure it was still raining by the time I had to leave. Unfortunately the amount of heavy rain in the hours before I left meant there were large puddles to be skirted on my route, but I managed not to actually step right into one. My feet still ended up wet, but it could have been worse.

oursin

Since we are hoping to get to the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at Dulwich before it closes, I have finally got round to reading Long Live Great Bardfield: The Autobiography of Tirzah Garwood (Persephone 2016).

I think my original interest was because I thought her arty circles would intersect a bit more with my fubsy progressives, but although a few familiar names surfaced less so than I had anticipated.

However, in an episode rather counter to the kind of narrative one expects in arty boho circles of the period, in 1942 she had a therapeutic abortion in the local hospital, which is a thing I have never come across among all the tales of pills, backstreet operators, sleazo Harley street docs, dodgy nursing homes, etc, pre the 67 Act. She had just had a mastectomy - this was in fact what led her to start writing the autobiography for her family - and became pregnant only a few months later (!!!???). This was deemed entirely grounds for a termination, but even so, doing ward rounds with medical students, the surgeon remarked that it was 'illegal' but that provided medical opinion agreed that continuing pregnancy and childbirth would be dangerous, No Jury Would Convict. This was very few years after the high-profile Aleck Bourne case, that docs were justified if the woman would be left a 'physical or mental wreck'.

I also find this rather resonant, in view of the current situation with women getting charged under the 1861 Act.

The other thing that struck me was that Garwood and her circles could easily be hanging out on the periphery of Dance to the Music of Time - every so often they get invited to a country house or interact with the local gentry, and at one point have to do with a socialist peer who has an encampment of Basque refugees on his estate....

swaldman

I just got back from a lunchtime tour of the D/S Hestmanden, a Norwegian freighter built in 1911. In honour of the 80th anniversary of VE day, she and a small flotilla are outwith Norwegian waters for the first time since 1946, visiting ports in Northern Britain.

It was fascinating to tour this vessel, especially the engine room - because she still has her original steam reciprocating engine, now 114 years old. It was converted from coal to oil in 1947, but everything otherwise (aside from some modern safety items) works as it did.

The cargo spaces have been converted to a museum covering the experience of Norwegian sailors in WW2 and since. It's fairly brutal, without being hyperbolic - something that I admire. The Norwegian merchant fleet was split during the war: vessels in port and unable to escape at the time of the German invasion were put to use by the Nazis, while those elsewhere in the world - the majority - ended up part of the Allied war effort, as freighters under attack in convoys. I'd never really considered before the experience of being a civilian seafarer in this scenario, being on the far side of the world when you learn that not only are you suddenly in a war, you also can't go home.
The museum doesn't stop with the end of the war, but continued following the survivors, who mostly arrived home in 1946 and 47, after Norway had finished celebrating peace, and so far as I understand it got pretty much ignored. It gets into PTSD and lack of understanding of such at the time, and the relationship between the wartime seafarers and the Norwegian state up to when they got an official apology in 2013.

It was a fascinating, if at times saddening, way to spend an hour. It reinforced what I'm feeling quite a bit at the moment: the world is sliding back towards facism, but I have papers to grade.After this week in Orkney the Hestmanden is sailing to Aberdeen, then Edinburgh, then Newcastle, before returning home. If you get the chance, go see her.

View through a porthole showing volunteers and visitors on the outside deck. The ship is painted wartime grey.

View through a porthole showing volunteers and visitors on the outside deck. The ship is painted wartime grey.

Moooooood pensive

andrewducker

1. How Gandalf Proved Mightiest: Spiritual Power in Tolkien: (tags:lotr Tolkien magic viaDanielDWilliam )
2. ScotRail trials wi-fi using Elon Musk's Starlink satellites: (tags:Scotland trains internet )
3. Continuous glucose monitors reveal variable glucose responses from the same people to the same meals: (tags:insulin sugar eating food )
4. The charts showing the big flaw in Starmer's immigration plan: (tags:migration economy uk doom )
5. Moderna's combo Covid and flu mRNA shot outperforms current vaccines in large trial: (tags:vaccine pandemic flu )
6. Despair at Starmer's divisive language as he channels Enoch Powell: (tags:bigotry immigration UK Labour OhForFucksSake )
7. US Copyright Office head fired after reporting AI training isn't always fair use: (tags:ai copyright USA politics )
8. Edinburgh traffic bans in city centre to be made permanent following trial: (tags:traffic transport Edinburgh )
9. Top UK Special Forces general oversaw blocking of Afghan war-crime witnesses to Britain: (tags:UK military crime war OhForFucksSake Afghanistan )
10. How the news feels right now: (tags:news satire doom )
11. Mass vote losses to Lib Dems and Greens would cost Labour twice as many seats as mass Reform switch: (tags:labour libdem green )
12. Getting to know 'Reform curious Labour voters': (tags:Labour politics UK )
13. Zodiac Killer Revealed by His Love of Comic Books, Author Says: (tags:comics murder usa history )
14. London, Brighton, Birmingham and Manchester Prides suspend political parties from taking part (over trans rights): (tags:lgbt transgender protest uk politics )

oursin

Happy birthday,

caulkhead!

azurelunatic

I'm not sure if I actually shared the Saga of the Three Infusion Recliners, so: an infusion center was upgrading, and had three chairs that they needed to get rid of. Preferably quickly. Preferably for free. So their admin made a Craigslist post. I managed to fit two into my Toaster simultaneously, then came back for the third once I'd unloaded them at home.

One is out front, and is the perfect spot for Lounging. Which I have been doing a lot of during this whole knee crisis. The position is perfect for not putting stress on my knee in a way that staying in bed isn't.

I now have various Implements (bought, scrounged, repurposed) to make the Lounge go better/more smoothly.

( List )

What happens is I tend to refill my water bottle, prepare snack and drink, then put those out. Those tend to require more dexterity. Then I haul out the bag and unpack what I need. I put the chair in lounge mode. (On bad days sometimes I have a hard time getting out of it, if pain has decided to borrow all my strength.) Often enough I will set an audiobook going while I play clicky-games, or work on whatever craft. Or I'll read an ebook. Or chat with

norabombay, since Lounge Time tends to overlap with Phone Time.

Currently my reading lineup is:
Celia Lake's magical romance/mysteries
An audiobook just for myself: Downbelow Station (2/2)
Bird pun humorous mystery series in audiobook (bedtime Please Don't Be Awake All Night distracting noise, rotating through the series about 1.5 times per year): currently on Lord of the Wings
Penric: saving this for with Belovedest
Audiobook of Murder with Peacocks, with

alexseanchai so the weird radio noises in my bluetooth-to-car setup aren't as much Nope (first book in the bird pun mystery series)
Something suitably free on my e-reader

Occasionally I will hop inside, to refresh my iced drink and the ice cup, avail myself of the facilities, and maybe re-ice the spray jar.

Eventually, when the black-eyed juncos start trilling continuously, I start thinking about going back in. (Guess who just got the Merlin app specifically to identify the heralds of twilight)

I am working on getting to know the local crows. The other day one sat on the top of the Big Umbrella. I got a selfie. I'd long ago decided on my carefully species neutral greeting to them: "Hello, corvids!" -- there are both crows and ravens in the area, though more crows. Probably some Rrows and Cravens too.

Moooooood ouch

sonia

clean it like you mean it by

WynterSky. "When Gotham's crooks have to scrub down their lairs, who do they call? Jason Todd, Gotham's first and only underworld crime scene cleaning specialist. He's spent his life dodging the Bat, but after a chance encounter he saves Robin's life.

Tim Drake finds himself drawn to the conflicted rogue, and soon Jason becomes Robin's street informant. But they can only stay on opposite sides of the law for so long before something breaks."

This novel-length story is more violent than most things I read or rec, but at the same time it is steeped in kindness. The characters have traumas that affect them, but don't stop them, and some traumas are satisfyingly resolved. The writing is layered like a work of art, and rewards rereading with gradual reveals of information.

I know of Batman and Robin's existence, but don't know canon beyond that. I bet there are even more layers of meaning if you do know canon.

sorcyress

I am le tired.

But I think I am happier when I actually write my words, all artisinal like, and I also think I simply have not been doing that lately --I've been getting wordcount, but it's been a lot of collections of notes from meetings, or emails home to parents, or significant bits of chatlog, or comments to other people. I'm not really...writing, mostly.

I think I think "Blues Clues" is twee, but also jegus fuck, what else am I supposed to call the repeated mounting evidence that I'm only just surviving right now, and nothing close to thriving. I am so tired, and so burnt out, all the time. It sucks, and yes there's a light at the end of the tunnel when which I get to recover, but it's called summer vacation, and I have a huge amount of stuff to get done Before Then.

(And as summer approaches I need to be Making Summer Plans, like visiting my mom in June (and maybe going on an adventure to NY with Tues's family?) and visiting MD again in late July/early August, and that thing I'm doing in mid-August, and also HELLO I HAVE WRITTEN MY PINEWOODS PROGRAMS BUT I AM NOWHERE NEAR READY TO TEACH MY CLASSES YET.)

So here's some assorted updates on assorted aspects of my life:

*Dance is obviously busy as hell. (I say obvious, but like, I'm not posting here so who is supposed to know anything?). I am teaching at Cambridge Class this month, which is...fine. It's nice to have a big crowd, and I'm very good at what I do, but it's disheartening that last week basically the first thing that happened was someone crankily requesting that I not use "bird words". I told them "nope, I'm gonna try and call mostly positional, but if I need role terms, that's what we use" and then found something else to do with my energy, but it still set the month to be emotionally costly.

I called the Highland Ball welcome dance this past Friday, and that went surprisingly well --I say surprising because it was a hell of a program, written by not-me, and I was very anxious it would be Too Complicated. Certainly it was a lot of words. But the words disguised dances that all flowed very very well, and I think I felt good about things ultimately. I got some compliments, and that was good, I think.

And I'm still running my class. Oh, I need to write a program for our party in June, crap. And I need to email exec to ask for a music subsidy. And at some point I need to write a report for the AGM. Huzzah.

*Work is also busy as hell, as we approach the MCAS tests and the end of the year. I am very very burnt out, which is making me a less good teacher. This turns out not to matter very much, because all the children are also very burnt out, which is making them less good students. We are all trying to be patient with each other and it's mostly working.

I got my assignment for next year today. Similar to what I've been doing, all Geometry again, but now I will be co-teaching the inclusion 10th grade geo, for students who require higher-than-usual numbers of supports. I am actually looking forward to this, which might be a horrible mistake. We'll see. At least all Geometry again means I shouldn't have any (many) repeat students.

*Separate from work is union stuff, and jegus, that has been _busy_ as hell. I shouldn't say a lot more in a public post, because I continue to pretend that it's a secret which district I work in, but yeah, I'm on the bargaining team, and that's been 3-5 hours of work every week since December. We're part of a whole little coalition with a bunch of the other local districts, which is keen, but our particular city is ~not interested in funding education~ which is significantly less keen. Ping me if you wanna hear more specific cussing.

*I have lost absolutely all motivation for general life maintenance, which is bad and just going to continue to be bad. My room is a fucking catastrophe and I don't know how to make it not be, because any time I go to be in it, the general malaise and burn-out from the rest of my life slam against the freeze-in-place overwhelm of looking around at my disaster area, and nothing gets done.

I have finally started reading dreamwidth again? For like, three days in a row now, over breakfast, like I'm supposed to. So that's nice, it's nice to find out what y'all are up to, a thing I haven't actually known since mid-April or so.

*Partners are good and I love them, but I don't feel like I'm doing a good job at being present for any of them because busy and _fucking busy_ and burnt out. I am maybe seeing Tuesday this upcoming weekend, but we haven't made proper plans yet. Austin and I are trying to do weekly dates, but teaching dance is throwing it all off, and this week I have a TMC meeting and blahahhhhhhh. mek and I have like seven episodes of OFMD to watch.

And then like, I completely slept through my weekly taskmaster-watch with Tailsteak last week. Like, was asleep, woke up at 9:15 to be all "shit, sorry I'm running late, lemme log on", immediately fell back asleep. Woke up at 10 at least to be able to be like "yeah, I'm not dead, and I am so sorry". Sigh.

***

I dunno, there's maybe other things too, but they're mostly video games. Gonna post this and go put my dance shoes on so I can teach a class and stuff.

~Sor
MOOP!

rmc28

I managed to kick my cold enough to play the ice hockey tournament Saturday and Sunday afternoons. One of my teammates gave me a lift from Cambridge rink to Romford each day. It's an easy drive and we get on well, and the tournament itself was great fun. Exhausting, but fun and definitely great for developing and improving play. The other four teams playing were pretty friendly and we made some connections and enthusiasm for playing more games against each other as individual teams.

Unfortunately my ride home got injured in the last few seconds of the last game of the tournament on Sunday evening, a "needs A&E and good drugs" level injury. So I went with him to the local A&E on the grounds they'd probably want a responsible non-drugged adult to get him home, and it'd only be a few hours, right? Ahahaha, it was 16 hours before we got out and it was not a good experience.

I got no sleep at all but at least got plenty of rest sitting on terrible waiting room chairs and plenty of time to stretch and loosen up as my body started to notice all the ways it was sore after playing the tournament. My injured buddy was left in serious pain for over 6 hours, but when he was finally treated he was able to sleep a fair bit in the hospital bed while we waited in assorted places to get assorted scans and tests done that were apparently necessary to discharge him, but not necessary to do with any urgency or information about how long each step would take. Beds in corridors everywhere, a "ward" that was simply a closed off section of corridor where beds were stashed holding people waiting for scans and tests, not a lot of dignity and just no urgency at all about pain management. My buddy was very stoic but shouldn't have had to be.

Also neither of us had showered between "playing lots of ice hockey" and "showing up at A&E", so very sorry to anyone who had to sit too near either of us.

I got a very minimal amount of work done today on my phone from the hospital, but went to bed for a few hours as soon as I finally got home and feel more human now. I will have to figure out whether I take leave for today or make up the effort elsewhere in the week. But that is a problem for tomorrow; tonight I'm hoping to reset my sleep schedule by going to bed on time.

cosmolinguist

It's ME Awareness Day, and my train is running 39 minutes late last I heard, so I took the opportunity to finally read this piece in a tab I've had open so long I cannot remember where it came from. It's a really incredible read about chronic illness and narratives as necessary for access to care, and what hearing from ill people does to those in a position to offer care.

( long quotes, from a much longer article )

azurelunatic

Tuesday I had an appointment with a physician assistant about my left knee. I'm apparently screamish about the details when I'm in that much pain, so I asked to skip a lot of the explanations I would have otherwise found fascinating.

I got ( an injection )

PA Fox warned me not to overdo things on the lidocaine, but the steroid should be taking effect over this past week. And it has! It's down to a normal sort of ow, and I don't have to use a cane to go from bed to the bathroom. I've still been lounging outside quite a bit (the only position that didn't hurt previously) but for pleasure, not from necessity.

Edit: And then I managed to stumble within the last half hour and it hurts badly again. I was lucky to have a cane nearby. We'll see what it does over the course of the afternoon.

maju

Well, somebody screwed up, and I don't think it was me. I was supposed to see the ENT doctor this afternoon; some weeks ago he had told me he would get his nurse to set up an appointment for me and then somebody contacted me, I think by text, and told me I had an appointment this afternoon and at that time, I dutifully entered it into my calendar and set myself a reminder, but either I was supposed to confirm and they never informed me of that, or they completely neglected to put the appointment in the doctor's schedule. I was starting to get a bit worried yesterday when I hadn't received the usual email about checking in ahead of time and pre-paying my co-pay, so I checked my Kaiser portal and didn't see any appointments, either today or in the future. I thought maybe the doctor had a diary separate from the main Kaiser system, so I decided I'd just walk over to Kaiser anyway, and see what was going on.

When I got there, the receptionist told me there was no appointment for me but she would get the nurse to check because she (the receptionist) couldn't access my chart. I could hear the nurse in the next room talking about what had happened (that my January appointment had been cancelled because my Kaiser coverage was cut off), so she obviously had complete access to my record. Anyway, she came out and said she could make me an appointment for tomorrow morning, which I gladly accepted. As I was about to leave, she came back out and said the doctor had had a cancellation for 4 pm today if I wanted to wait, but as it was then only 2 pm, I didn't want to wait around and neither did I want to go home and come back later, so I chose to take the appointment tomorrow.

Just now I received the usual email about checking in and paying the co-pay ahead of time and after I had done that I received a confirmation code, so I know this appointment is in the books.

While I was over that way I went into Safeway and bought some antacid, as I've been having some heartburn/acid reflux lately. I don't know if it's because I've started eating fruits I don't normally eat (lots of blackberries and raspberries, plus the blueberries in the muffins), but it's very uncomfortable. I had also ordered some antacid from Amazon which should be arriving tomorrow, but it was convenient to drop into Safeway while I was out this afternoon. (I was on foot.)

cosmolinguist

I had a dream that I missed my train to London today and it was fine.

Almost disappointed to wake up with my alarm, in plenty of time.

I was briefly tempted to just stay in bed...

Now, on my train back to Manchester 12 hours later, with two hours left to go before I get home, I can say with certainty that I could've stayed home and it would have been fine.

lannamichaels

I am unfortunately being taken in by the Murderbot TV Show promo campaign and am starting to think this might actually be good and I might enjoy it.

Oh no.

(it seems like it's WELL LIT!!!!!! And has bright colors!!!! And I'll be able to tell characters apart, possibly, which I could not do in the book except for like two of them!!!! So I'll be able to see what's going on, follow the plot, and identify the characters!!!!!) (my standards are low but also frequently unachievable.) (guess it remains to be seen if the camera movement makes me sick.)

oursin

(Larfs liek a hysterykle drayne.)

Life and work of Thomas Hardy to be performed at Stonehenge: Readings and performances will be staged at the ‘misfortune of ruins’ that long fascinated the writer.

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was fascinated by Stonehenge, using what he described as “the temple of the winds” both as a setting for one of his most striking scenes and as a lifelong inspiration, a pathway back into ancient times.
In what is being billed as a unique performance, the life and work of Hardy is being showcased at the great stone circle in Wiltshire as part of Salisbury international arts festival.
....
An orchestra will play music, ranging from the sort of folk tunes Hardy may have been familiar with to pieces by Gustav Holst and Peter Warlock.
....
It is believed to be the first time that a performance incorporating Hardy’s life and work has been staged at Stonehenge.
Lesser said: “Hopefully* it’ll be lovely weather and you’ll have this marvellous atmosphere as the evening develops with the light changing and these wonderful words of Hardy.”

*Cue: Thunderstorms! Torrential rain! Unseasonal snow! First earthquake ever recorded in Wiltshire!

I don't suppose they are going to represent Hardy in his lighter and realistic vein:

Watch on YouTube

I.e. successful ruined maids who go and live a profitable life of vice in Dorchester.

oursin

Happy birthday,

shehasathree and

themis1!

nancylebov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXNIgHov0Nk&ab_channel=BenSyversen

The rather hectic story of a manuscript copying Archimedes' letter about his "method", a socially unacceptable way of using infinitesimals to calculate areas.

The ancient Greeks didn't like them, the counter-Reformation Church didn't like them. (Let me know if that's true.) Fortunately, Newton didn't have to please the Jesuits. I feel like there's a whole conversation about gatekeeping and Damned Things* in the topic.

The text barely survived. There's one known copy, and it was bleached out for a prayer, but some of it was barely visible in the margins. A scholar copied what he could see-- recognizably lost Archimedes-- but a lot of it wasn't visible, and then the manuscript was lost and getting moldy, what with being hidden from the holocaust.

Fortunately, it was found, and modern scanning was able to recover the text. Watch the video for details of the method and animated diagrams.

*Damned Things-- Robert Anton Wilson's term for things people seriously don't want to think about

watersword

The launch happened! I spent all day Saturday being an extrovert! OMG it happened and now it's over!

So today I spent some time sowing the last of the front-garden seeds (purple poppies, rudbeckia, and the annual mix) and put parsley in the nearby community garden, more in hope than expectation, and watched some Dropout, and napped, and baked bread. Dinner is jammy eggs and sautéed asparagus on aforementioned bread; I can't tell if my dislike of asparagus tips are because of the texture or if I think they taste different because of the texture.

Rhubarb pie is very tasty, even once the crust has softened; making the dough in the stand mixer is actually quite fun, although it took forever to brown.

Liv's pals

My Subconscious Was On It

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