liv | Reading

I've done this exercise some past years (2020 2019, I've also written up a few Philcons, I think...), mostly to show how inadequate and silly the treatment of fanfic has been at past Worldcons. But here's the list of all of the fanfic panels at the Seattle Worldcon, and it's frankly incredible. It's such a diverse group of panel topics, covering history, technique, craft, culture, community. I'm excited to be on a couple of these panels myself, and to attend some of the others. The team who came up with them and got them onto the schedule deserves all the kudos.

Full Program for Seattle Worldcon

Fix-It Fic
The “fix-it fic” is a staple of the fanfic community, but why do we write it? What do we get out of it? What tropes are fix-it fic writers drawn to, and how can it be done well? What happens when the fanfic is better than the show, and how do small tweaks in canon lore to “fix” canon mistakes change everything?

Star Trek and Fanfic
The earliest modern fanfic arose in the mid-1960s, while the original Star Trek was still on the air. It’s often called the ur-fandom in fanfic communities, even though the roots of fanfic can be traced to Homer or earlier. What made Trek fanfic different from the earlier stories-about-stories, and what’s made it so enduring?

Filk and Fanfic: Two Great Tastes
Filk and fanfic cover some of the same ground: character studies, missing scenes, genre twists (from dramatic to funny or vice-versa), new stories in an existing universe, adding a sexy twist, or shifting the POV character. Sometimes, they don’t use a single character or event from the original, but everyone recognizes it as specific commentary. Come explore what else these two often-neglected types of fan works have in common.

Is That Fanfic?
Some books that might be “fanfic” aren’t called fanfic: Unauthorized spinoffs (Wicked, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Wind Done Gone), sequels by different authors (most comic books), and authorized books based on TV series. It’s not limited to text: Gaming mods for video games, role-playing games in licensed settings (Middle Earth, Call of Cthulhu), and fan-made games like Jumpchain also put a new spin on existing content. Are they types of fanfic? What else would we call “I made a story about someone else’s story?”

Building Writing Skills Through Fan Fiction
Before we write, we read, and often, it’s our favorite stories and characters that inspire us to be writers in the first place. Whether you stick with fan fiction or not, fan fiction is a place where young writers can play in a familiar sandbox, honing their skills and building their own authorial voice. Which fanfic writing skills translate directly to pro-writer skills—and what fanfic skills don’t connect to commercial markets at all?

ao3 mcu a:aou a.b.o. bdsm ot3 hs au pwp
Do you know what the title of this panel means? Come learn about the specialized vocabulary of fanfic: how and why the abbreviations and other terms get invented, and how that language works to build and sustain fanfic communities. (The kink tomato is not a food; dead dove is not a bird. Does “HS” stand for high school or Homestuck?)

Filing Off the Serial Numbers
Plenty of fanfic authors have “filed off the serial numbers” and republished their fic as mainstream stories. The most famous is Fifty Shades of Grey, but the Vorkosigan Saga began as Star Trek fanfic. What works, and what doesn’t? Is this a reasonable career-starter for new would-be pro writers? Are there any tips to make it work better or any traps to avoid?

What Is the OTW/AO3?
In 2007, Astolat blogged that fanfic writers need an archive of their own, not beholden to corporate interests and censorship. Eighteen years after the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) started it, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) is going strong, with a Hugo Award in 2019, and now over 4 million users and 14 million works. Come find out how it happened, how it works, how you can find what you want to read—and, if you’re interested, how to get involved.

Fanfic as Therapy
Fanfic isn’t just writing practice or sharing ideas about what happens next when the series is over—it’s also used to explore personal emotions and reactions to trauma. Come discuss the therapeutic value of fanfic as both writers and readers in a moderated open discussion rather than a traditional panel.

What *Is* Fanfiction, Anyway?
What is fanfic, and why is it important to science fiction fandom? Panelists will discuss the history of fanfiction and its connections to SFF fandom, what makes it different from authorized spinoffs, and how the fanfic community perceives itself.

Licenced TTRPGs as Fanfic
TTRPGs have a long history of media-licensed game systems: Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Universe, Middle Earth Role-Playing, and dozens of lesser-known games for TV shows or movies. Panelists will explore the connections and differences between “Let’s play a game in this setting” and “I want to write a story in this setting.”

Fanfic Community as Gift Economy
The pros and cons of an artistic community with a strong non-economic, even anti-commercial, bias. How fanfic works outside of writing markets, and what happens when fanfic writers go pro. This will be a moderated group discussion, rather than a regular panel—everyone can participate.

Not Just Training Wheels
Fanfic is often claimed to be “good practice” on one’s route to becoming a professional author, but this is not the only reason people write fanfic. Panelists will discuss some of the others: bonding with a community, exploring story concepts with very niche appeal, enjoying a personal fantasy, and more.

Fanfic on Paper
From mimeograph with staples or comb-binding to small runs of offset printing and artisanal fanbindings with custom covers, fanfic has never been published like other literature. Find out how it used to be done, how it shifted to digital publishing, and how it’s shared on paper now. We’ll look at the history of fanzines and the current fanbinding hobby, the ethics of publishing in a niche community, and the controversies of commercialization.

Making It Gay… or Trans, Neurodivergent, BIPOC, and More
In a media world that too often does not represent women, queerness, BIPOC identities, neurodivergence, or people with disabilities, it’s no wonder we choose to represent ourselves and/or our desires in the fanfic we write. This panel isn’t about why we take cishet characters and make them gay, trans, or a dozen other things; it’s about why we should and the freedom and joy that goes with knowing we can.

The Absent S: (Fem)Slash and Sapphics
When most people hear slash, they think man-and-man (M/M), but in modern parlance the term actually applies to any “ship” that is same-sex. In some fandoms, femslash is the main “ship”! Let’s talk about the differences between F/F and M/M fanfic and fandoms, how femslash is often overlooked or looked down upon in fandom (even when it’s the main “ship” of certain fandoms!), and what femslash means to sapphics in fandom.

Dipping One Toe In: First-Time Fanfic
Have you never read fanfic or are a little interested but are not sure where to start? Come to this panel, where our set of talented and friendly experts will try to give you recommendations—suggestions on which fandoms, authors, and fics might be right up your alley.

Reclamation Through Fanfiction
Fanfiction often ignores the canon setting and relationships to tell stories the original creators never intended. But can it ignore the setting’s creator? From Lovecraft to Rowling to Gaiman, many authors of beloved works are later discovered to be prejudiced or predatory or both. Can fanfiction be used to take back some of these works and put distance between the author and the art?

Smut for Fun, Not Profit
Fanfic erotica is so famous that many believe it’s all of fanfic. Learn how the tropes and styles of kinky and erotic topics change when they are written by and for a shared community. Let’s discuss how kinky writing changes when there’s no potential of commercial activity and it’s all about what gets you hot and what gets your readers hot.

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Companions poll, the emotionally unavailable alley cat and the trivia-obsessed fennec fox came first equal with 42.1% each, followed by the stoic capybara with 35.1%. Hugs won the ticky-boxes with 66.7%, followed by frittered-away time with 38.6%. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
Audio: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, read by Arian Moayed. Full of cultural specificity and lots of wonderful observations about humanity in general, and art, and death. More emotion-driven and theme-driven than plotty. Beautifully written. So good!

Audio: Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, read by Omari Douglas. I just finished this, and oh my goodness, it mashed all my buttons! It's a light, secondary world, urban-historical m/m romance with guild politics and secrets, swordplay and skulduggery, and people being messed up by their rich guild-house families. I hereby declare (for myself, at least) a sub-category of enemies-to-lovers that is "playful-enemies to lovers". You know, when there are compelling reasons not to trust each other, but they like each other enough that they can't help teasing, admiring, and developing inconvenient loyalties, despite the suspicion. (There are tons of other examples, and I would like to read some more of them. In fact, the Guardian drama falls squarely in this category, as does White Collar a lot of the time.) The two leads of Swordcrossed clicked so well -- I laughed out loud at the banter, and again, often, in sheer delight.

Thoughts about depictions of falling in love in fiction.

There was one thing it did particularly well, for the main pairing, that I'm still emotionally and analytically rolling around in. I think it's quite hard to show people falling in love: I've seen it done via one character obsessing about the other's secondary sex characteristics, which I don't find convincing or interesting. Or sometimes an author has a character notice how good-looking the other is, and from that, the reader is supposed to intuit attraction and emotional curiosity/investment -- but it's never quite clear to me if the "good-lookingness" is subjective or objective, and there are plenty of objectively good-looking people that I don't want to even be in the same room as. Other times, what we're shown is physical attraction as a stand-in for emotional connection, followed by kisses and/or sex as a stand-in for a lot of things. (I've done all of these, of course; fandom is particularly rife with all of this because most of the time a fic author and their readers go into the story pre-invested in the ship.) Anyway, in Swordcrossed, Marske teased all these layers out by having the couple acknowledge their attraction and start an intense "casual" thing with an expiry date, semi-independently of catching feelings. The development of loyalties and being on the same side (in cahoots!), and the delicately depicted tenderness, understanding and mutual care were wonderful precisely because they weren't implied just by sexual attraction, and because it was the feelings, not the sex, that disrupted the characters' plans. It was delicious. (Perhaps I just need to read more fuckbuddies-to-lovers, with a side-order of people-in-denial-in-love, lol.)

tl;dr I found the "falling in love" part very satisfying, and it's making me think about how I might be able to do that better in my own writing.

In terms of the audiobook, Douglas's narration was fantastic and very hot for the sex scenes. A++++ (And for people who've already read Swordcrossed, there's an excellent 18k fanfic for a background pairing by

marquis, which works as a supplement to fill in some gaps.) (How is there not more than one other fic for this book, though? I went to AO3 expecting a "Red White & Royal Blue"-sized fandom.)

Audio: I'm two chapters into Meditations for Mortals: Four weeks to enhance your limitations and make time for what counts, written and narrated by Oliver Burkeman, and approaching it, as recommended, one chapter per day for now (though I'm not sure my limitations need enhancement).

Ebook: I'm sort of dithering between The Black Cauldron and getting back to Werecockroach, and consequently not reading anything... and now I've opened The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing for a re-read, but not actually started that either. Also, Guardian -- we're in the home stretch.

Paper: Having reached the end of my third and last library loan renewal period, I finally sat down and read No Rules Tonight by Hyun Sook Kim and Ryan Estrada in about two and a half hours. It's a graphic novel about a university traditional-dance club going on an overnight hiking trip in 1980s Korea. The military regime is a constant looming presence, but it's gently funny and sweet as well as eye-opening. I really appreciate how this and Banned Book Club, by the same authors, depict life, friendship, and resistance under authoritarianism. Also, it made me want to try Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, one of the banned books mentioned.

Btw, does anyone else remember

obsessive24 and her amazing fanvids? Looks like she has a queer fantasy trilogy coming out soon.

Kdramas
I finished My Dearest Nemesis and loved it; an adorable depiction of whole-hearted fannishness and the search for love and acceptance. Am now an episode into First Night with the Duke and still in that "not yet hooked, but willing to be" state of quantum uncertainty. I've also randomly picked up my abandoned rewatch of the Cdrama noona romance, Nothing But Love. (This is a rewatch I started with my late friend J, way back when; he bounced off it because he hated all the male characters.)

Other TV
Finished Murderbot, Poker Face and Étoile, which I enjoyed in that (descending) order.

Just me grumbling about Étoile; please skip if you love it!

My deep loathing of Crispin overshadowed a lot of my enjoyment; they kept making him quirky, and I was worried they might try to redeem him. And lo, by the end, Jack was turning to him for advice, wtf??? I don't super enjoy incompetent management (Jack seemed to have no idea what he was doing most of the time; who hired him?) or artistic people being assholes (Tobias, sit down and let the dancers do their jobs!). Mostly, though, my problem was Amy Sherman-Palladino's tendency to let her characters chat endlessly with no story or drive; the party episode was very rambly. I thought she'd got better with Mrs. Maisel, but this was (fittingly, I guess) more like Bunheads, just on a grander scale.

That said, I loved Mishi and Cheyenne's mother, and I liked Geneviève. Cheyenne was funny some of the time, and I enjoyed her sojourn in the cemetery with her mother (despite it literally not going anywhere), and Geneviève's advice to her about The Slip. And I liked Tobias' breakup.

tl;dr: I should have stuck with the gifset.

More Fringe with my sister. The cases of the week are more interesting than the season arc to the point that we both forgot, in a ten-minute break between episodes, that Olivia was kidnapped.

The Secret Genius of Modern Life with Hannah Fry s02e01, which was fun like always, but with disturbing "look how effective surveillance is" undertones.

And a whole bunch of Bluey, the kids' cartoon, which is omg so adorable and funny. I'm not even into kidfic, and I love it!

Guardian/Fandom
Guardian!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Also,

mific and I are working on an intentionally Dreamwidth-specific comm for people to post or link to meta discussions about writing. Watch this space.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, random episodes of Letters from an American, Midnight Burger, possibly some other things but I'm having technical problems with Pocket Casts atm. (The app controls are obscured by the phone controls, as if the app thinks my screen is bigger than it is; anyone else having this problem?)

Films
Jurassic World: Rebirth -- this was such silly fun. I'm pretty sure the bad guy was built from a template, but the dinosaurs were wonderful. Favourite part:

spoiler

the dozing T-rex -- so tense, yet so funny.

Writing/making things
The glittering ice sculpture of my oomph has become a puddle. Anyway, this was my entry for the Science round of

fan_flashworks:

Title: Winging It (600 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Characters: Ya Qing, Lin Jing, Zhao Yunlan, Zhu Hong, Original Yashou character, Da Qing
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Yashou Renewal, Education, A New Era for the SID, Kidfic, Drabble Sequence
Summary: The Crows need a science tutor.

Life/health/mental state things
The weeks are flicking past at a frightening rate. I'm constantly in a state of "is this just my baseline sore throat, or am I coming down with something?" Note to self: that online Harvard course you signed up for? Do it.

Cats
Cure for ongoing minor cat health niggles: book a vet appointment for later in the week. Within two days she was fine, and I cancelled the appointment.

Korean
I randomly listened to a TTMIK episode (the texting vs phonecalls one) and understood maybe 10% of it? That's not nothing. (Aside: Hyunwoo's theory of why young people take phonecalls on speaker is that the young people were all on FaceTime as babies, so they didn't acquire the "hold phone to ear" habit. I was pleased with myself for catching that, then realised he'd reiterated it in English. ;-p)

Food
My sister brought me a packet of Selena Gomez Oreos, for the laughs; I'm pretty sure those were my first oreos ever. (Selena is mildly cinnamon-flavoured, if you were wondering.) | I made lemon honey last week (10/7/25); I always go through a few rounds of buying lemons and not getting started before they go a bit squishy, but in the end, it never takes as long to make as I think it will. | Also made enchiladas, including the sauce, and a no-recipe beef casserole. Yesterday I made pumpkin and kumara soup. I have plans to try lemon chicken (via

autodach) and to make no-recipe risotto this week. It's hard to fathom that a few years ago I rarely cooked.

Good things
Sunshine! Audiobooks with great narrators. Kids' cartoons. Ginger in everything. Fandom and Guardian. Writing (*presses face against the shop window*). Washing on the line. Dreamwidth.

Poll #33363 Retribution

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12

View Respondents

The best revenge

View Answers

is living well
7 (58.3%)

is sweet
0 (0.0%)

is served cold
3 (25.0%)

requires two graves
3 (25.0%)

leaves everybody blind
1 (8.3%)

other
0 (0.0%)

ticky-box full of writing theory
5 (41.7%)

ticky-box full of brain being empty, but not in a meditation way
4 (33.3%)

ticky-box full of dabbling your toes in a tray of soft, cool, shimmery sand
4 (33.3%)

ticky-box full of the ancient language of shadows and flight
6 (50.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs
8 (66.7%)

lannamichaels

Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell (2023): lirazel posted about the audiobook version of this, which got me to put this on my list, but alas my library only has access to the print version; I feel that the audiobook version is probably superior. There were several parts in the book that were a slog to get through the paragraph, that would be perfectly fine if you were listening to a patented David Mitchell Rant about the subject. In fact, imagining them in David Mitchell's voice is how I got through them. ( Read more... )
Subpar Parks: America's Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors by Amber Share (2021): A bookified version of a Instagram account I never followed, a copy of which I read at someone's house who was using as a bookmark something that indicated they had gotten it as a gift when it came out and never got past the first fifth of the book. This book would have been fine if it had not decided it was going to fight the one star reviews, and instead just showed the artwork and mentioned how great the park was. As it was, it positioned itself as an argument between the one star reviewers and the author, and the one star reviewers won.( Read more... )

kaberett

Specifically I have tracked down a copy of Treatise on Man, which is probably the source of the claim I've seen phrased several ways, most eyebrow-raisingly and also most readily to hand by Steve Haines, attributing to Descartes the idea that pain is

something similar to hearing, it is a fixed signal and measurable response

and it turns out I've got access to a whole entire PDF which turns out to be only 71 pages, including quite a lot of fairly large images, so I suppose I'm going to read Descartes now as a break from working my way through the BBC's Higher revision guides on neurobiology, which is itself a detour from reading the introductory text on nerves aimed at undergraduates...

(The things I've actually been reading today consist of two chapters of Hyperbole and a Half, a partial chapter of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, both as Shared Activities with A, and about half of A Handful of Flour, a recipe book I have owned for quite a while now and am rapidly concluding I might no longer wish to dedicate shelf space to...)

oursin

Have been involved over the last day or so in the discovery and revelation of a hoohah over an esteemed bibliographer having copped to having fabricated a set of letters, of which the transcriptions appear on their website, with, true, a provenance note that might give one to be a tad cautious when citing.

But anyway, someone I know did actually cite something from one of these letters - fortunately not as a major pillar of an argument or anything like that - in their book which is only just published (and copy of which for review I finally received last week). And was informed by the perpetrator.

Cue kerfuffle. The ebook can be readily corrected but not the hardback copies.

But anyway, this led to me (particularly given subject and period) to think upon an instance I had encountered of learning - from the author no less - that a series of supposedly authentic Victorian erotic novels had been knocked up (perhaps that is not the phrase one should employ?) as remunerated hackwork for a paperback publisher in the 1990s.

A few of these are now accessible via the Internet Archive and I discover that they have introductions setting them up as Orfentik Discoveries of the writings of a Private Gents Club.

Anyway, I wrote this all up for my academic blog, and there has been discussion on bluesky about hoaxes and fakes and also I introduced the topic of people being misled by fictional pastiches that were not meant to mislead (or at least, like 'Cleone Knox''s work, have long been known to be made up).

(Ern Malley complicates this like whoa, since it has been claimed that the authors of the hoax actually produced SRS surrealist poetry whether they meant to or not.)

And as a scholar and an archivist I am against hoaxes and fakes and people inserting false documents into archives and so on -

- but I still have the occasional qualm that some naive reader will not read the disclosure of the real origin story right at the back of the volumes and think that the Journals of Mme C-, subsequently Lady B-, actually exist.

Tuuuuuune Paperback Writer

maju

Well, I spent way more than my self-allocated 15 minutes today on clearing stuff away. I picked up my two tech recycling boxes at the post office this morning, then a bit later I started the process of packing up the various computers and cables to go into the boxes. First I had to scan a code (a separate one is included with each box) so I could print a UPS free delivery label, and before I could do that I had to put new ink into my printer. That took longer than it should have because I kept getting error messages from the printer ("Your device is busy" - huh?) when I tried to align the new ink cartridges. Eventually I got the printer working and printed the label for the first box, but I still have to attach the label and seal up the box, and then I have to go through the process again for the second box. It should go much more quickly the second time around though.

Yesterday in the late afternoon/early evening we had a dramatic thunderstorm with a lot of very heavy rain. (We had more than two inches in an hour or so.) The rain was so heavy that it washed some pieces of wood someone had put out for trash collection today some metres down to my car, where they stacked up against the front wheel. At least I assume that's why there were some random pieces of what looked like bed frame wedged against the front wheel of my car.

I went for a run this morning; the humidity at the time was around 95% so I was dripping with sweat after an hour of running.

LJ is *still* being weird for me, taking forever to load my friends feed.

oursin

Happy birthday,

owlectomy and

talking_sock!

sonia

The Back Room by Alicia Adams. A rock shop with a magic back room, and a teenager aching to find her way in.

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being by A. W. Prihandita. A doctor struggling with corporate control as she tries to treat a patient who is a member of an isolated minority.

maju

I'm so over this weather. It's not that the daily temperatures are particularly high (by the standards of what I've lived through in Perth in the past), but combined with very high humidity day after day and particularly night after night, it's very oppressive. This morning I just couldn't muster up the motivation to go out for any exercise so I gave myself a rest day. I did do some cleaning around the house (dusting mainly) and will vacuum later in the week, and I also took some more stuff to Goodwill. I meant to pick up the mail on the way home because I know there's a parcel waiting for me at the post office, but I completely forgot and by the time I remembered I didn't feel like going out again. I know it's a package of mailing boxes for the electronics I plan to send off to the recycling place, and although I do want to get that done it's not really urgent at this point. I might collect it tomorrow.

Yesterday my daughter suggested I go up to Connecticut to spend some time with them in about a month, while the girls are still off school, but I told her, very regretfully, that I don't want to be there while the weather is still hot because I was so uncomfortable in the basement (and in fact in their whole house) last summer. I've decided to go at the end of August, hoping the weather will be starting to cool down a bit by then, or at least that the nights will be cooler. I'll stay into September, but I'm not sure how long I'll stay yet.

maju

10. Excluding romantic relationships, who do you love? My children and grandchildren.

11. What is your earliest childhood memory? I have a memory of being in a strange room, standing at one end of a cot (crib) to get away from something unpleasant at the other end. When I told my mother about this memory a few years ago, she said it was when I was about 18 months old. We were staying with relatives and I'd thrown up in my cot.

12. What book has had the greatest influence on your life? None in particular.

13. What three questions do you wish you knew the answers to? 1. I'm curious about this, but I'm not sure that I really want to know the answer: "What does it feel like to die?" 2. How would my life have turned out if I'd made different choices at a couple of points? 3. I don't think there is a 3.

14. What is the greatest peer pressure you’ve ever felt? Back when I was in my late teens and early twenties I felt very strongly that I had to do what other people expected of me in order to be accepted.

watersword

It turns out that North & South (2004) is not soothing to watch whilst stitching; I am not interested in the 1850's generally, I am in no fit state to be entertained by the Industrial Revolution and labor unrest, and the cinematography is bleak. Richard Armitage's jawline does not make up for these flaws.

The Three Sisters plot has begun giving me peas! It is surprisingly difficult to distinguish between "immature snap pea" and "mature snow pea". I should probably give up this plot next year, as the fee is almost twice as much as the one near my apartment, and getting there & back is annoying, and the plot is weed central ....but the raspberry patch! I got sour and sweet cherries at the farmer's market, which of course means that I made cherry-pit whipped cream to go with the cherry galette; it is now corn and zucchini season, which is one of my favorite seasons; I miss having a grill so much. It is absolutely perfect grilling weather.

Somehow I have three community events at the same time tonight: a embroidery meetup, a constituent outreach meeting with my city councilor, and a meeting of the neighborhood association board. ::facepalm::

silveradept

sunshine_revival posted up their fourth topic, even as the heat continues to hammer the Northern Hemisphere, along with humidity, and many of us hide in our climate controlled buildings against it.

We’re heading towards the middle of July, and I hope the weather is treating you kindly this summer, no matter where you are. Any fun plans so far? I’ve spent this week on the mountain, reconnecting with family and staying in a pretty cool house. And talking about houses…

Challenge #4:

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

Creative: Write from the perspective of a house or other location.

( What makes you happy? )

More laughs and happiness later!

Tuuuuuune Justice - Generator

oursin

Dr rdrz may have noticed that (in spite of the FAIL at getting to the Birmingham workshop in early May) I have gradually been Getting Out Into the World beyond health-related appointments and walks in the local parks.

Am still being possibly unwontedly cautious.

But, anyway, on Saturday went to a BBQ in coughingbear and hano's garden - slightly earlier this year than the usual Mahv'll'ss Pahti of the summer - and it was lovely to see them and other friends after so long being A Hermit.

Still (as found at conference the other week) having issues adjusting to the hearing aids - when there are several conversations happening - I think this possibly depends a bit on where I am positioned in relation to them - a distinct sense of (very dating reference) trying to tune in radio and getting two or more overlapping stations.

But on the whole was, I think, Coping.

kass

1. Murderbot! I deeply enjoyed the whole first season. I think they did a lovely job of translating from book into tv show, and Skarsgard has totally sold me on the role. (It helps that we know he loves the books too -- he wants to do right by them.)

2. Andor! I'm now seven episodes in and absolutely loving it. It feels awfully relevant to our moment. Also I am amused by the fact that this show also relies in part on the acting talent of a Skarsgard, just, y'know, a different one.

3. Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells, published to celebrate the Murderbot S1 finale.

4. Cold coffee with milk and splenda, and a distant patch of blue in the cloudy skies.

5. All of my laundry is folded and put away. This is, as ever, a temporary state of affairs but it's a nice one while it lasts.

oursin

Happy birthday,

swingandswirl!

graydon2

somewhat contrary to the previous post: another pet peeve is people (some classic libertarians, others paleoconservatives) saying that "there is no free lunch".

there are certainly zero-sum, no-win situations that occur in life sometimes. and the phrase is often also used in some fatalistic, eschatological, broad heat-death-of-the-universe sense. sure sure, second law.

but as the great MC hawking put it: the earth's not a closed system, it's powered by the sun. there's an effectively unlimited massive fusion reactor in space we literally all live off of, and for all practical purposes we always have and always will. it is very much a free lunch! concretely: every lunch you have ever eaten and will ever eat is a free lunch given to earth by the sun.

also like .. any technological improvement that increases efficiency of some work is a metaphorical free lunch. if there were no free lunches to be had from R&D we may as well be banging rocks together as using any later developments.

also any positive-sum games or interactions, social relationships, political organization, economic cooperation .. the list of free lunches goes on and on.

enjoy your free lunches!

graydon2

reading some technology reporting today and they're using the term flywheel, a pet peeve of mine. I have written about this before on some ephemeral social media, but I am moved now to repeat my objection in a place of greater posterity.

the word "flywheel" seems to have entered the business-writing lexicon with a book about amazon called "good to great". I have not read this and have no intention of reading it. perhaps the metaphor was used sensibly there. it is no longer used sensibly. here are a couple representative samples I just found via google of the way it is used nowadays (emphasis mine):

By definition, a flywheel is a heavy revolving wheel that is used in a machine to increase momentum and therefore provide greater stability to the machine. Given its weight, the flywheel is difficult to push from a standstill, but once it starts moving it gradually builds momentum, which eventually enables the wheel to turn by itself and create even more of its own momentum through a self-reinforcing loop.

or:

A flywheel is a massive metal disk, or wheel, that often weighs over 2,000 kgs. It takes a lot of effort to get it started, but once it starts to turn there are counterweights around the outside of the wheel that start to take effect and it starts to build momentum almost by itself. From that point, the same effort can be placed on the flywheel and it will start to turn faster and faster.

this is characteristic of the way people use the term now. they talk about "getting the flywheel going" on their business, because once you're over some kind of threshold the flywheel will somehow magically start spinning faster and faster on its own.

that is not what a flywheel is or what it does at all.

a flywheel is a kinetic battery. you put angular momentum into it when you have a surplus and you can take some back out when you have a deficit (assuming friction hasn't lost it all yet). other metaphors that have a similar effect are account balances, or warehouse inventory, or queues. or taking an average of something noisy over time. take your pick.

a wheel that somehow went faster of its own volition would be a perpetual motion machine. a fantastical solution to all the world's energy needs. but also fairly prohibited by .. physics. there is no such thing.

people using the metaphor this way seem to be getting it confused with positive feedback phenomena. which do exist! even in business! here is a classic one: sales volume up => unit production cost down => sale price down => customer demand up => sales volume further up. a.k.a. "economies of scale". great stuff, bravo capitalism. it has some other positive feedback loops that are not so great like "overproduction crisis" or "market panic" but we need not dwell on those.

there are also lots of other non-capitalism examples of positive feedback phenomena. population growth, cytokine storms, even the digital flip-flop circuits storing this post are positive feedback systems.

but: a flywheel is not a positive feedback system. not at all. please, I beg you: for pity sake stop using it as a muddled metaphor for one.

sonia

Soon after I moved to the Bay Area, probably recommended by my knowledgeable housemate, probably at the then-independent Bill's Drugs which is now a CVS, I purchased small metal needle-sharp tweezers in a small plastic tube with a metal cap.

Thirty-mumble years later, the plastic tube is somewhat cracked, but the tweezers were recently as useful as ever to extract first a ceramic splinter from my hand, and then a wood splinter from my foot.

I got curious and looked it up, and there is an old-style website unclebillstweezers.com with testimonials, and they come up as available for purchase on various sites, including Amazon. The Chamber of Commerce says that Uncle Bill's Tweezer Co is located nearby in Albany, CA.

Highly recommended! I don't use them often, but when I do, they are exactly what I need.

forestofglory

Since it's more than halfway through the year I started to write a reflection on my reading goal for the year: "Read Joyfully" But I found I didn't have much to say about it other than it turns out its easier to engage with new to me fiction when I actually get enough sleep.

However I do have some thoughts on things I've read and watched recently to share:

The Truth Season 3cases 9 and 10 — The last two cases, I’m sad that this is over now! This was so, so much fun! The second to last case featured my favorite costumes of the whole show in show with many excellent costumes. This really a fairly frivolous show but I love it so much! (Content note: the final case involved a dead kid)

Mu Guiying Takes Command ep 1-4— I wanted to love this. It is an adaptation of The Generals of the Yang Family, a story dating back to at least the Ming Dynasty that features women in command of the military. The FL is very badass. However I got fed up with how childish both the leads were acting.

Also this was released in 2012 which isn’t really that long ago but it feels like a whole different era.

Medieval Textiles across Eurasia, c. 300–1400 by Patricia Blessing, Elizabeth Dospěl Williams, Eiren L. Shea— This is a novella length overview of the topic. About 80 pages with a lot of pictures. I liked how it tied together such a big area and a long time period. Zooming out helped me put the stuff I know about (Chinese textiles, mostly Tang dynasty) into a larger context. I read it for the FTH biography I’m creating on Liao textiles.

A Song for You & I by Kay O'Neill— My friend Maureen, who is a children’s librarian, recced this graphic novel by the author of the Tea Dragon Society books in her most recent newsletter. And I’m glad she did because I haven’t been keeping up with recent releases and this was really good. It's a very gentle story that’s kind of coming of age with a lot of travel. One of the characters has a flying horse! The art is really good. I kept stoping to admire the color gradients. Just a very lovely book.

Please Be My Star by Victoria Grace Elliott— Reading a A Song for You & I reminded me that my library has lots of graphic novels and I checked out a whole pile of them including this one. Please Be My Star is a YA romance featuring teens putting on a play. It was very cute though once or twice I got a little too much second hand embarrassment.

Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born ep 1-4— This kdrama sounded so exactly my thing. It’s got preforming arts, tons of women, and crossdressing girls! It’s also very pretty and well done. So I’m baffled as to why after four episodes all I feel about it is “meh”

kaberett

Reading. This week I have mostly but not entirely been reading more murdery bot: Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, Rapport, aaaand I've also immediately launched myself into yet another quick reread of All Systems Red because we finished watching the TV series and therefore I want The Murderbot Of My Heart Thank You.

However! I have also continued reading about nerves! I have now read the entire first chapter of Nerve and Muscle, supplemented by a bunch more Wikipedia, and I think I am starting to have a better mental picture of how all of this works? I am going into way more depth than required by The Project, really, I think, but I will be happier if I know what's going on at least to the extent that I understand a little more about what it means, physically, when it is explained that some migraine preventives target Type A nerve fibre and others target Type C (which in turn is why if you get partial relief from something that targets Type C it's worth at least experimenting with adding in something targeting Type A).

And I have also made a tiny bit more progress with The Age of Seeds, but... yeah, mostly Murderbot.

Watching. Murderbot! I will concede that "I need to check the perimeter" did indeed get me Right In The Feels. I still prefer my book-Murderbot but I am beginning to acquire a better understanding of why folk love this Murderbot too.

The fanvid Bohemian Like You, by kuwdora, via sholio, via recessional.

Cooking. Several new things! Aubergine larb with sticky rice and shallot salad, lavender & honey Welsh cakes out of the Welsh cakes tourist tat mini-book, coconut pancakes. Now officially over two thirds of the way through East (with another Several planned for this week coming).

Eating. TODAY WE WENT ON AN ADVENTURE TO SEE ONE OF MY UNIVERSITY FRIENDS. I don't understand how it has been somewhere in the vicinity of ten years since I last got my act together to see this friend in particular given the part where, you know, we live in the same city, BUT we sorted ourselves out to meet up at King's Cross today and in addition to talking solidly for the entire duration we had FOOD including:

Ruby Violet (maxi moo moo with hazelnut crunch & raspberry, rosewater and prosecco on the grass by the canal; hazelnut & hazelnut brittle, salted caramel & almond brittle, hot cross bun, raspberry ripple, and coffee mocha ripple brought home, those last two primarily for A)
for lunch I had a funghi ma po tofu from rice guys, and A had a veg biriyani from somewhere I'm not immediately managing to spot on the Canopy Market trader list
from Bread Ahead we brought home two doughnuts -- pistachio crème brûlée for me, and something involving honeycomb for A; I think this is quite possibly the first custard doughnut I have ever eaten and actually liked (though were I to buy from them again I'd skip the pistachios)

... and upon meeting up with said friend, they reached into their bag with an "oh before I forget--" and pulled out a jar of jam, which conveniently gave me an excuse to reach into my bag and pull out the jar of jam I'd brought to give them, so I have swapped one blood orange + cardamom for one cherry plum + vanilla, and I've not eaten it yet but I am very excited about doing so.

... also raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, jostaberries...

Exploring. We poked around Granary Square a bit to go with Meeting Friends; we came home with lots of stickers (I also got some washi tape from that first one...), a gorgeous bowl (which she was not charging that much for at the market, goodness), and a business card for Creature Crafts by Nat so I could send their details on to Interested Parties.

Growing. ... I spent a whole day at the plot mostly reading Murderbot? (And did also do some weeding, and some harvesting, and some watering, and some general pootling.)

used_songs

Challenge #4

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

1. Ellita
2. Feeling hopeful about work (but also nervous)
3. Watching Ted Lasso with E (y’all were SO right! Thank you for encouraging me to stick with it)
4. My plants/garden
5. Sitting in the hammock with Ellita and talking with E
6. Having the time and energy to read
7. HEB Peach Guava sparkling water
8. Postcrossing
9. Changing up my work wardrobe
10. Having my ear piercings reopened so that I can wear earrings again

nanila

What was the most sick that you've ever been?

I came down with flu when Keiki was about 4 months old. That is the most ill I've been in my adult life. I could hardly get out of bed and my temperature was over 40 C for several days. Runner up would be the ear infection I had when I was 11, which was so bad my teacher found me lying on the concrete floor of the playground because my ear was too hot. It was the middle of winter.
What disease are you afraid of getting?

All of them, but mostly: Dementia.
Are you a big baby when it comes to taking medicine/shots for your illnesses?

No. I am a big fan of medical intervention for illness and pain.
Is going to the doctor really THAT bad?

Not at all, it's just time-consuming, which is why I tend to put it off.
Would you have the flu twice a month if you were paid $1,000 for having it?

Assuming “the flu” really does mean influenza and not a bad cold, absolutely not. Genuine flu is completely debilitating. It took me two weeks to recover from the bout I had in Answer 1. This scenario would mean being continuously sick. No thank you.

maju

For the last few weeks I've been watching an old British show, Waterloo Road, which has something like 250 episodes, so I was hoping it would keep me occupied for many more weeks. However, Amazon has now decided to remove it, so for the last few days every time I start to watch an episode I get the warning that this season will only be on Prime for x more number of days. I'm only up to season 3 so I'm very disappointed to miss out on many more seasons, and I've been binge-watching to get season 3 finishes before it disappears. Only one episode to go now, which I should be able to watch tomorrow. (This morning when I started watching, the time remaining was in hours, not days.)

Today started out fine but humid, then in the late morning it got really dark and there was thunder and very heavy rain in the early afternoon. Now it's clear and sunny again.

oursin

This week's bread: a Standen loaf, 4:1 Strong Brown/buckwheat flour, with maple syrup (last drain from bottle) instead of honey and Rayner's Malt Extract. V nice.

During the course of the week I made Famous Aubergine Dip to take to a BBQ.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe: approx 70/30% wholemeal/white spelt flour, Rayner's Malt Extract, dried cranberries, not bad.

Also made foccacia to take to BBQ.

Today's lunch: sweet potato gratin with black olive tapenade (as there were sweet potatoes left over from last week), served with warm green bean and fennel salad (I did use tarragon vinegar but I think this had rather lost its oomph) and baby green pak choi stirfried with garlic.

cosmolinguist

My parents showed me a picture of their new garden gnomes. They found one playing the drums first and got it, and then my mom found these others to make the rest of the gnome band.

My dad pointed to each one and told me, "Bucky the drummer, and the singer is his brother Benny, and then there's their friend Dwight." He's so funny, such a quiet guy but he comes up with these goofy things sometimes. Mom was mocking him for this. He just went along, telling me the names of "all my gnomes in the backyard, Paul and Tessa together. And I can't remember what the other two names are..."

I didn't know they had any gnomes, and it turns out they have a whole crowd now! With names!

pensnest

Yesterday's all-day singing was woefully underattended—literally half the people who could have shown up were not available, for perfectly respectable reasons—but we did some really good work on our new song and sounded surprisingly good for such a small group. Usually, the fewer singers, the more bitty the sound. Perhaps the more 'individual' voices were those who couldn't make it. But we had our usual good time and a nice chat with a new nearly-member, who seems likely to fit in very well.

*

Poor Beast was among those who could not be there. He's still getting positive Covid tests, and has been busying himself looking up advice on how long one must isolate. Which, naturally, varies from five days to ten. How helpful.

*

We ate half (!) the summer pudding today, with some Oatly cream, and it was very good indeed! Just raspberries and blackberries—well, I say 'just', it's hard to see how adding anything else could make it *better*—and nice white sourdough bread, and a little sugar. And there is more for tomorrow! And the brambles are groaning with blackberries, just as the apple trees are heavy with fruit. And the 'cerryplum'

turlough identified is producing much fruit which is ripening nicely, though may require ladder access. I may not be able to keep up.... sadly, I don't think the sweetcorn is going to come to anything. There are three and a bit stalks remaining, one having been snapped off by a squirrorist (I suspect). Better luck next year.

andrewducker

My primate family.

The exhibition at the museum is very quiet and rather good. Recommended!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

ofearthandstars

From

thefridayfive:

What was the most sick that you've ever been?
It would either be the time I had strep not long after having my Oldest kid, in which case I remember wondering if I might be dying as I couldn't leave the bed and had fever hallucinations, or when I contracted chicken pox as an adult in my late 20s because (surprise!) chicken pox vaccinations were not yet vogue when I was a little kid and I'd never been exposed (because maybe exposing your kid young was still vogue, but we moved around a lot and I was an awkward kid with few friends?). Anyway, if you have ever been covered head to toe in blisters (literally, I can remember crying while trying to find a way to lay my head on a pillow comfortably) while your vaccinated children run around in wildly energetic circles with only a tiny bump or two on their arm from the same illness, you will understand that chicken pox is not benign and actually VACCINES ARE GOOD.
What disease are you afraid of getting?
This has changed over time. Currently I think it's Alzheimer's. I live in my head a lot, and if my head becomes not my head, well then, who am I, exactly?
Are you a big baby when it comes to taking medicine/shots for your illnesses?
LOL, not at all. I give myself 5 shots a month to treat migraines and asthma/allergies. I used to be afraid of it, growing up with a Type 1 diabetic mother who gave herself shots all the time (when auto-injectors and retractable needles were not a thing). But that fear was also probably combined with watching a lot of weird daytime soaps/movies in the 80s in which someone was inevitably killed from an intravenous air bubble introduced by their jealous lover/son/etc. Young me understood that my mom needed the shot to live but also frequently worried if she might accidentally give herself a heart attack.
Is going to the doctor really THAT bad?
Only when they make notes about your dysphoric mood (*grumble grumble*).
Would you have the flu twice a month if you were paid $1,000 for having it?
Nope, nada, nopeapotamus. There's a reason we toast to our health!

wildeabandon

Until this morning I hadn't been to church since getting back from Belgium. I hadn't wanted to go back to St John's for a couple of reasons - firstly the likelihood of taking on responsibilities that I'd rather not have at this stage, and secondly the growing awareness that singing in a choir is an important part of worship for me - but I'd been dithering about where to go instead. My four criteria were catholic, liberal, within 15 minutes bike ride, and has a regular choir, and indecision about which to compromise on combined with a rather erratic sleep cycle meant that each week I'd let inertia take over. This Thursday I had an appointment that was half way to Hornsey Parish Church, which is about 20 minutes away, but meets the other requirements, so I cycled the rest of the way there to make sure I knew the route, which meant this morning required less activation energy.

Regarding the choir the website says "We welcome new members who have a facility with sight reading and a passion for the choral liturgy", but when I spoke to the director of music and said that my sight-singing was shaky but I was happy to note-bash at home if she sent me the dots in advance, and she said that was fine, so I'll be joining them as of next Sunday. They've got a concert on Saturday which I'm going to listen to rather than sing in - if anyone local fancies joining me it'd be good to have company.

oursin

Happy birthday,

kimsnarks!

wychwood

( 53. Beautiful Just - Lillian Beckwith ) I don't love this any more, but I can see why I did.

( 54. The Whig Supremacy - Basil Williams ) Moving into ever more familiar territory...

( 55. A Tale of Time City, 56. Eight Days of Luke, 61. The Game, and 62. Dogsbody - Diana Wynne Jones ) Apparently I have strong feelings about Dogsbody still. But these were all very readable, if in some cases rather slight.

( 57. A Problem for the Chalet School and 58. The Chalet School Triplets - Elinor M Brent-Dyer ) Always a pleasant time re-reading these.

( 59. A Sorceress Comes to Call - T Kingfisher ) Kingfisher is just generally reliable for me, and this is not an exception.

( 60. The Incandescent - Emily Tesh ) I enjoyed this a lot, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Tesh goes next! Recommended to anyone with an interest in pedagogy and school stories; what a great combination that definitely should be more common.

cosmolinguist

I've been camping on the hottest days of this summer. We just got home and I've had a shower and am drying off in front of a fan.

I am so grateful for electricity and indoor plumbing.

Infrastructure is great.

There are ice cubes in this house! I'm lying on a bed that won't deflate under me!

lethargic_man

A little while ago, I read the book Germania by Simon Winder. I was struck by the contrast between England, where one can trace a single thread of history over a thousand years back to Æthelstan, and Germany, which for most of its history consisted of numerous small countries (nominally under the authority of the Holy Roman Empire), and where both the geography and the threads of its history were an all bar untraceable fractal mess, with names looming out of the morass then fading back into it.

Then I read the book Unruly, about the kings and queens of England, and saw how prior to Æthelstan, the same was pretty much true of England. It occurred to me that the British monarchy could be compared to a river system: Downstream it consists of a single wide channel with the occasional tributary flowing into it, but near its headwaters there are a large number of small streams, and no clear indication of which of them is the most important, or the longest.

So I decided to see if I could make a visual representation of this for the monarchs of Great Britain (I decided to leave Ireland out, as it's complicated enough as it is), and here is the result (click through for a zoomable PDF):

( View piccy )

This shows the principal kingdoms only: client kingdoms are omitted (so no Kingdom of Fife, for example). (This also gives me a nice historical cut-off; nothing goes further back than Coel Hen (Old King Cole), since his antecedents were under Roman overlordship.) Even so, there's a lot more kingdoms than I had realised, and a few not represented because none of the names of their kings have come down to us, though I did include Dunoting in this category to show how the Kingdom of Northern Britain kept splitting again and again in the immediate post-Roman period.
Some of the earliest kings were legendary and may not have existed. I tried to stay clear of out-and-out myth, though, which is why you won't see King Arthur (though you will see Vortigern).
I started trying to give names in their original form, but gave up once I realised (for example) I no way had the ability to restore the names of the kings of the Old North from the Welsh forms their names have been transmitted in.
Arrows with closed heads lead from the last king of a kingdom to the king who took over rule of that kingdom, whether by forcible or peaceful means. (The single arrow with an open head was because there wasn't enough space to indicate how East Anglia was at times ruled by kings of Mercia and also show its kings down to the last.)
Names in bold are the historically more important kings you might have heard of.
I had no idea before I started it what a mess Wales (and to a lesser extent the Old North) would turn out to be. Rather than lines of small kingdoms flowing together to form larger ones, as elsewhere in this sceptred isle, kings would divide their kingdoms amongst their children, but you'd also end up with kings reigning multiple kingdoms (which is why Hywel Dda in particular appears multiple times). I had no idea that Wales only reached the state of a unified principality (apart from briefly once or twice beforehand) with its very last ~~king~~ prince, Llywelyn.
It's well known that when Henry I tried to ensure that his daughter Matilda would succeed him, her cousin Stephen, with the backing of many of the country's barons, rose against her and England was engulfed in an extremely bloody civil war (known as the Anarchy) for decades. What I only discovered through making this chart was that there had been a successful queen regnant in England before: Seaxburh of the Gewisse (the earliest name of the West Saxons, whose kingdom, Wessex, would eventually come to unify England).
Tolkien fans might like to amuse themselves searching for the following names on the chart: Meriadoc, Madoc, Caradoc (and various variants of it), and Ælfwine.
I was taught that as the kingdoms of the Angles and the Saxons grew, they displaced the native British kingdoms until they were eventually confined to the north (Scotland) and west (Wales and Cornwall). Since the 1980s, genetic evidence has shown that the picture for much of England is less of displacement rather than absorption. But I was surprised to discover that the first king of the Gewisse (= Wessex), Cerdic, had a Brythonic name (another variant on Caratacos/Caradog), as did one or two of his descendants (Cædwalla). Could the West Saxons have originally been led by a Briton?

redbird

Quoted in the Yale alumni magazine: "You know the world is going crazy when Yale alums are making donations to Harvard!"

(This Yale alum donates to the United Negro College Fund, because they need it more than Yale does.)

graydon2

I just noticed this post from around when I first learned the term "substructural type system" is (almost) 20 years old. That sure was a while ago.

(I knew the space of ideas already but was working my way through more legit treatments of it. amusingly none of the research links in that post are live anymore -- back then arxiv.org was still "xxx.lanl.gov" haha)

redbird

via

oursin, something I found interesting: We still don't understand family resemblance, and some of what we thought we knew is mistaken, or might be.

This article describes research that used data from almost a million people: every Norwegian student who took a standardized test from 2007-2019.

Quoting the article: "The resemblance of twins cannot be reconciled with any model....The resemblance of adoptees cannot be reconciled with any model."

Adjusting a model to account better for twins makes it a poorer match of adoptive relationships, and vice versa. Any attempt to account for one of these moves the model away adopted siblings makes it fit twins less well, and vice versa.
( cut for length )

mrissa

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is a bit like if The Book of Ash had a massively repeating time loop and was explicitly anti-fascist, and clocked in at almost exactly 300 pages.

So...not a lot like The Book of Ash actually. Ah well. It does have a scholar/historian, it does have examination of the legends of the past and how they serve the goals of the present. It does have complicated human relationships, and it does have about as much blood as something this full of swords should by rights have.

There's a love story at the heart of this, possibly more than one depending on how you read it, but structurally it is definitely not a romance. It might be the older kind of romance, with knights fighting for their honor, with strange and wondrous events. Time loops certainly qualify, I should think. But the characters have a real tinge to them--they are explicitly not the stained glass icons some of them see from time to time in the text. If I had one complaint it could be my common one with time loops: that it's hard to get the balance right so that repetition and change are harmonized in just the right way. But I'd still recommend the way Harrow is determined to examine how the stories we tell serve ends that may not be our own--and what we can do about that.

redbird

Cattitude, Adrian, and I are going to be in London for a week, starting Monday July 14th. This trip is partly so my brother and I can sort out my mother's things, including photos and papers, but we should have some free time to see people and/or do tourist things.

We'd like to get together with people. I realize this is somewhat last-minute as well as vague, since we don't know how much time we'll have available.

I have visited London several times, but that trip to see my mother in April was Adrian's first visit to England; Cattitude was three with me for a week in 2001.

We mask indoors, but it's July, so we're hoping for restaurants with outdoor seating.

Liv's pals

Soundbite

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