liv | Reading

Sorry I kinda buried the lede amid all my paragraphs of rambling here, so the tl;dr is that I can probably have top surgery after all, in Germany.

I'm really glad that last week my counseling session touched on the difficult feelings that come up when a system that has been arbitrarily discriminating against me stops doing that.

I think it came up when I made some reference to the fact that, in my current workplace I can't prove that I know the instances in which white middle-aged and/or middle-class men are treating me better because they understand me to be one of them than they would have if I'd had this job while everyone (likely including me) was under the misapprehension that I'm a woman.

I said it made me think of coming back to Manchester Airport, a source of so much trauma for me since 2004, and how much easier it was to breeze through it the first time I had a UK passport which was in 2017. I was shaking and almost crying by the time I got out of customs and down to baggage control. I was angry, I was so angry it felt like my body couldn't hold all of the feeling, which is why it was leaking out of me like that.

We talked about the seeming counterintuitiveness of being angry (or in less dramatic cases maybe annoyed or unsettled would be better words), when "good" things are happening, or when there's also the relief that an experience I would previously have braced myself for is suddenly better. It helped to acknowledge that feeling surprised or shocked by this is something I've probably been trying to suppress because it felt like a bit of a betrayal of all the times I'd heard of this happening (like those men who have to pretend to be women on the internet in order to understand that Being A Woman on the Internet Sucks rather than just listening to the women who say so), or maybe it made me feel like my previous understanding of borders or patriarchy or whatever was somehow incomplete.

I know that being taken aback by something just because it's happening to me doesn't mean that I have to be surprised or making some kind of judgement about my previous understanding of the thing,, but I think I was trying to "skip to the end" or reach the "correct" response, rather than letting my soft animal body feel what it feels.

I'm glad this came up because today I had the video consultation with the German clinic that was personally recommended to me as being both good and explicitly reassuring on social media that they don't care about BMI and it was fine.

(At least, it was fine once we worked around the problem of not being able to log in to the video portal because the computer declared our postcode invalid when it definitely isn't, which greatly frustrated D who was helping me and made me just want to run away, it was fine -- we got all the problems out in that case, and it made us five minutes late, but that didn't present a problem at all once we got started.)

The surgeon was cheerful -- he said they love doing this type of surgery, and I imagine it must be incredible to see people at this stage in their life -- and gave me all the information I expected in a first conversation and I know when and what kind of other info to expect if I pursue this. They're used to people who aren't local so I'm very ordinary and expected to them in that way too.

It is such a relief to be normal.

It's tiring being an edge case all the time.

It's also, of course, infuriating because I have never been treated like my requirement for top surgery has been ordinary or manageable before.

I have only ever been treated like I am a problem, and I have fix that myself. And I have to do it via intentional weight loss, something that I know is basically impossible. I know that weight-cycling (and minority stress from anti-fat stigma) accounts for almost all the negative health effects that are usually, erroneously, associated with being fat. I have inadvertently already been through a couple of "gaining the weight back and then some" cycles (from phenomena such as I'm in college and I'm suddenly walking everywhere and also I'm poor so probably not eating enough) and I know there are people who've done far more so I feel silly treating myself as so fragile but it really upsets me to think about having to subject myself to that again just to access some healthcare.

And here I am, treated as if my requirement is routine, everyday. Because it is for this dude.

And that means (with a lot of money that I only have because of The Economy; it's equity from the house I used to own, and you bet I'm angry about this as well!!), it can be ordinary and respectable and possible for me, too.

The appointment was more than 12 hours ago, and this reality still doesn't feel entirely real to me.

But I'll get there, I guess.

china_shop

(Photo credit: Andrew.)

oursin

What I read

Finished Tales From Earthsea, The Other Wind and the pendant short pieces in The Book of Earthsea 'The Rule of Names', 'The Word of Unbinding', 'The Daughter of Odren', and 'Earthsea Revisioned'. I don't know quite what it is, I can see how good her work is, but the feeling is more of distant admiration than what I feel for my beloved favourites? Might even cop to preferring her criticism and essays to her fiction? (not the only author to whom this pertains.)

Started a Dick Francis, Bolt (Kit Fielding, #2) (1986)

- and then, feeling all a-wamble and fretted because of the insomnia thing, fell back into Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution, old favourite.

- and then returned to the horsies and the posh owners and the psycho villains.

On the go

Martha Wells, Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries #8) which arrived yesterday.

Up next

No idea, apart from the recently arrived latest Literary Review

maju

I gave up on phoning Costco or hearing back from them and drove over there this morning to make an appointment in person. The earliest appointment I could get during my preferred time (morning) was 28th May. It's really annoying having to drive so far (20 km round trip) just to make an appointment. I was able to walk to and from my audiologist in Maryland as it was under a half hour walk. Everything here is way more spread out and therefore far more car-dependent than I'm used to and would like, although there is at least a supermarket and a library I can walk to.

While I was over that way I went to WholeFoods to treat myself to some of their breakfast sausages and fried potatoes with peppers and onions, enough for lunch today and lunch tomorrow.

When I went to the dermatologist last November she prescribed a couple of creams for me (which turned out to be quite expensive) - one, which I think was a steroid, for some dry and occasionally painful skin on my buttocks and one for some redness on my nose which she diagnosed as rosacea. The one for the dry skin didn't work and in fact made the skin more painful, so I returned to using Cetaphil, which works much better. After that bad experience I didn't bother using the cream for rosacea at first, but a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd give it a go. Well, I've been applying it religiously twice a day for about 10 or 11 days so far and my nose looks exactly the same as it did before I started. I believe I'm going to look for a new dermatologist.

When I talked to Eden about possible yarns for her octopus she decided she would like a burgundy octopus, but then she said we could use the pale blue head I've already made and just give it burgundy legs, so I'm working on burgundy legs now. However, when I've done the legs I'll offer to make a burgundy head too if she thinks it would look better.

I went for a very satisfying 7 km/4 mile run before breakfast this morning while it was clear and sunny. Now it's cloudy and there is rain forecast for this afternoon, but it should ease off before tomorrow morning.

writerlibrarian

Rain all week. My wish is for some sun and warmth.

Health

My acupuncture treatment did work wonders. I've slept all through the night for 2 nights now.

Teaching stuff

One term paper still missing. She has until noon today. I will transfer the final grade by Friday. Then, I'm done.

Blogging

I'm going back to blogging 2-3 times a week starting this week. Also going back to playing around and testing AI platforms and widgets.

Reading

I decided on my summer reading list. Some rereading of Agatha Christie, finishing Catton's Luminaries and the new Vargas out today.

I've started rereading The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Wow, isn't Hastings annoying as hell? Really. I just can't help wanting to slap him hard again and again. What a jerk.

I did read Guy Delisle's Shenzhen. A quick read during the week of the Metropolis Bleu literary festival where Delisle received a prize.

Watching

I did finish Coroner's diary rewatch. I also finished Medical Examiner Dr. Qin, the 2016 original with Zhang Ruo Yun and Li Xian. I went back to The Truth Within with Luo Yun Xi. I'm on a forensic quick I guess.

Crafting

I am knitting for the past two weeks. I untangled a yarn mess of silk and seacell I bought ages ago at Laines Biscotte. Knitting with this yarn is heaven. Really. I'm knitting the Vertisol Shawl, that yarn makes lace easy.

mrissa

Hello, friends. I've got something to show you

It's a book cover! In fact it is my book cover! Because...you can preorder my novella, A Dubious Clamor, directly from the publisher or from an assortment of bookstores of your choice! In ebook or hardcover editions! Isn't it pretty? Isn't it appropriate for the book?

Okay, so you can't know whether it's appropriate for the book yet. But you can trust Naomi Kritzer, friend and multi-award winner, who describes this book as, "No war but class war; also, harpies!" (She also says it's "delightful, unique, and frequently hilarious," in case you were wondering.) Some other awesome people describe it as things too! Wonderful people like authors Ruthanna Emrys and Davinia Evans and critic Paul Weimer! Do you want to know what those things are? You can see them on the pre-order page!

But wait! there's more. (You did the right voice in your head for that, right?) If you preorder, you can not only get this lovely novella (ooooh! aaaaah!), you can also get a really cool sticker of a skeptical sword! You can put this on your laptop, phone, water bottle, small child, or other sticker-bearing device! Be the envy of your friends and neighbors, or at least those of your friends and neighbors who are cool enough to like sword stickers. (As for the other kind, who cares what they think? You are a discerning individual who knows the value of sword stickers, and that's what matters.)

Don't go yet! There's still more. Sadly we currently live in the timeline that has class war but no harpies. (I have improved on this in the novella! Which you can read on September 15 if you preorder it now!) But do you know what our timeline does have? It has harpy eagles. Harpy eagles are so cool. And the lovely people at the World Wildlife Fund allow you to donate to support their habitat. Every person who preorders will be entered into a drawing (subject to sweepstakes laws in your jurisdiction) to win a harpy eagle plushie that also supports harpy eagles in real life! For each hundred pre-orders, we will add another harpy eagle plushie (and its attendant habitat support) to the drawing, so your odds of winning an awesome harpy eagle plushie to be your new cuddly pal and mascot will never be less than 1 in 100. Or you can pass it on to be the cuddly pal and mascot of someone else you know, that part is up to you. Similarly you can also preorder copies of the novella and not read them, if for some reason you're opposed to opinionated weaponry, fictional operetta, and cake in your reading life. I will warn you, there is much cake.

So here it is! Pre-order today! or also other days, that's fine too!

jack

So apparently a hundred used to be a hundred and twenty.

According to etymonline "hundred" came from Proto-Germanic "hunda-ratha", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European "km-tom", a shortening of "dkm-tom-", a suffixed form of "dekm-" meaning ten. Latin "centum" (where roman numeral C comes from) came from the same word.

But it sounds like in Proto-Germanic, the word mostly meant *twelve* tens. And then over the whole medieval period in Germanic-language speaking areas, it was used to mean "120" for some goods and "100" for others. Wikipedia says that "thousand" was also used meaning "1200".

Some sources delved through a bunch of medievel documents looking for examples and it sounded persuasive to me. One emphasised that it always seems to be twelve tens, people didn't seem to count twelve twelves. It seems like "120" and "100" were somewhat standardised, but there were also regional variations or a tendency to use similar terminology for any round number around that size.

English eventually started distinguishing these as "long hundred" and "short hundred", and surprisingly late (1800s?) parliament ordered that "hundred" be standardised as 100. Long and short persist in measures like "long ton" and "short ton", being 2200lb or 2000lb. Apparently based on 20 long hundredweights or 20 short hundredweights. Long ton or british ton is conveniently almost exactly 1000kg, which people now use as the metric tonne. North Americans may still use "ton" as a short ton.

I can't find any confirmation where "120" started. I assume that the PIE word meant "100". Does anyone know more?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred (Especially look through the citations to short academic PDFs eg https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/9477)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredweight

andrewducker

We've taken this week off work with no children (after Monday's bank holiday) for the first time in 8 years. The idea being that we could spend a bit of time with each other, spend a bit of time decompressing, and do some stuff around the house that was never happening when there were children underfoot

So yesterday we went out and had a relaxed day together at Jupiter Artland, essentially the fields and woods around an old country house with sculptures installed intermittently, so that you can have a lovely scenic walk intermittently punctuated by conversations about whatever you've just encountered. I had been there once before, a decade ago. Jane hadn't been there before at all, so it was a nice morning out.

And then today we had some actual energy to put into making the house nice. The "playroom" has been a dumping ground for kids toys for the last 2 years, since we moved back in. Every bit of plastic nonsense we'd accumulated for the past 8 years, either bought, given to us, or arriving on the front of magazines - sitting in boxes or bags or piled on shelves. Our cleaner Lana had repeatedly done an amazing job of sorting it thematically, only for us to then be too sick, tired, or otherwise incapable of doing anything about it. Turns out what we needed was a few days in a row with no children to let us recharge to the point where we could actually motivate ourselves.

So we just removed 8 bin bags full of stuff from the "playroom" and put them in the bins at the end of the street. And also about 3 bins bag of stuff are in the drive and will go to the charity shops when I pick up the kids at 5pm. And now Sophia's room has a floor and we will be able to put a bed in there.

(Undoubtedly the children will have questions when they get home.)

andrewducker

1. "Never Just a Period": (tags:menstruation advertising viaLilysea video )
2. Large demographic shifts are upending the social order: (tags:society demographics doom video )

lovingboth

Into the Woods (Bridge Theatre)

This is one of those occasions where I acknowledge that I am in a minority here. As I left, immediately after it finished,* a large chunk of the audience were starting to give a standing ovation.

The material is obviously fabulous.

The set is very good, and I am slightly annoyed that there's no opportunity to photo either the first act trees or the second act devastation - it must have been a very strong 'wind'!

The costumes and lighting** are good, even if by the end I was going "this looks like one of those over-processed HDR photos, doesn't it?" to myself.

The cast are probably fine, and there are a couple of nice touches with the direction (along with some misses).

As with the 'David Thomas and Two Pale Boys' version of Shockheaded Peter exactly 24 years ago, the issue is with the sound. It's not as painful as that was, but it's bad: particularly with the female roles, the sound balance makes them sound like they're squawking when they're singing. It doesn't ruin the show, but it doesn't do any of the actors any favours whatsoever and I have no doubt that they're all better than this makes them sound.

Oh, there is an exception: anyone not in sight of the audience - think Cinderella's mother - has the echo etc turned up to eleven, just to emphasise that they're not really there.

There is doubtless some artistic reason for having a sound mix that makes your cast sound worse than they are, but I can't think of one. Do a better one, and I'd have liked the show a lot more. As it is, it's towards the bottom of the Woods productions I've seen.

* I wasn't going to hang around in any case: it went about 12 minutes over the advertised runtime meaning getting to the station was getting tight given I needed to do some stuff once I got there.

** I'm including the video projection silhouette of the giant in this.

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Search engine recs poll, 49% of respondents use Google, 46.9% use DuckDuckGo, and 10.2% use StartPage. There were two write-ins for Kagi, a paid search engine that apparently works like it's 2004.

In ticky-boxes, apocalypse fatigue came second to the inevitable winner, hugs, 42.9% to 69.4%. Clumsy parrots came third with 42.9%. Hugs to you all, and thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Andrew and I finished Bujold's The Vor Game, and I've downloaded Cetaganda but we haven't started it yet. I've also grabbed the new Murderbot, which might save me from my swamp of easy-listening podcasts.

Still dipping into Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell. Really need to pick up a novel and devour it with my eyeballs sometime, but I accidentally filled my spare moments with something else (see Language Learning below).

Kdramas
Finished Phantom Lawyer, which was enjoyable enough. I wasn't invested in the romance, but the general vibe was good-hearted and cosy.

The Red Sleeve is heavy on the palace politics, so I don't know how long I'm going to last. Ot1h, Junho; otoh, a hundred scheming ministers and princesses. Maybe I should rewatch The King Loves instead?

Absolute Value of Romance is on a collision course with my DNWs, so I have my fingers crossed that it isn't going where everyone seems to thinks it is.

Other TV
We finished Dark Winds season 4 last night. It is a great show with very charismatic leads.

Still watching Rooster, Fringe, Bluey, Deadloch season 2 (no spoilers, please!) and People of Earth. Also original flavour Scrubs, though the comedy is wearing thin on the workplace bullying and constant misgendering, hmm. (Does the reboot keep those elements?)

Not sure what we're replacing Dark Winds with -- probably the latest season of The Lincoln Lawyer.

Audio entertainment
Like, just way too many episodes of Bill and Frank's Guilt-free Pleasures. /o\ Writing Excuses and half an ep of Cross Party Lines, which is diminished by the loss of one of its hosts to offline politics.

Online life
I'm really enjoying

polyamships' prompts for

3weeks4dreamwidth and, similarly,

maevedarcy's memes. Continuing to struggle with keeping up with my reading page, but that's probably the new normal.

The Slo-Mo Rewatch on

sid_guardian has quietened down a little, but it still absorbs about a quarter of my fannish/writing time, and I love it.

Writing/making things
I'm being incredibly slow to make beta edits to my 520 Day fic. Where do the hours go? Never mind, I'm working reasonably steadily, and that's more important to me than output rates.

Life/health/mental state things
Sleep is improving, but my shoulder's been sore for a week... since I downloaded certain apps. Hm.

I have a number of political submissions on my to-do list, each of which require me to think coherent thoughts.

For those following the saga of my car, we called NZAA on Monday 4 May, took it for a long drive (and finished The Vor Game while we were at it), and it's now snuggled against the bank at the bottom of my path, with the trickle charger theoretically doing its thing. I've only driven it once for non-battery-recharging reasons since the oil crisis started, and that outing was at least partly motivated by keeping the battery charged. I'll see how the Warrant of Fitness goes on Monday.

House
The reputtying is complete, and the builders have decamped with the scaffolding, hooray! The next big job will either be [paint upstairs, replace the 1960s gas oven with electric, and refloor the kitchen] or [replace the toilet with a non-cracked, less water-hungry model, and refloor the bathroom]. Neither of these is super urgent, and both require research, decisions, and expenditure, blah, so I'll catch my breath first.

In the meantime, Andrew is filling some gaps in the kitchen wall, and I've ordered an IKEA shelving unit for the built-in wardrobe in my spare room. Which means soon there'll be less random clutter around the living-room, woohoo! In theory, it won't all go into the cupboard; I'm hoping to dispose of some of it while tidying away the rest.

Language Learning
I've spent the last eight years in a Chinese drama fandom, going, "Sunk cost, sunk cost, Korean is my One True Asian Language Love ♥ ♥ ♥" and "I wouldn't have the first clue how to even start with Mandarin" and "argh, tones! argh, characters!" Now, thanks to

starandrea's inspiring/encouraging post about starting their Chinese-learning journey, I have nine-day streaks for both Duolingo and Hello Chinese.

I prefer Hello Chinese: it has a good mix of speaking/listening/reading/writing, a variety of practice options, and occasional audio lessons about usage. I like its focus on teaching grammar-adjacent words like "to be", "this", "possessives", etc, rather than Duolingo's noun clusters (though of course you need both). But I've finished the free portion and am now wrestling with whether I'm actually doing this ~~and whether tracing characters on my screen is what's messing up my shoulder~~. Also, I had a moment of extreme outrage about stroke orders yesterday, lol.

Idk. I'm not sure how much of this I can cram into my aphantasic little head. *dithers with finger hovering over the "one month" (ie, lowest commitment, least cost-effective) option*

Good things
The re-puttying is complete! My sister's coming over tonight. My lemon tree is singing a song of a hundred lemons. My 520 Day fic is nearly done. Guardian, fandom, Dreamwidth.

Poll #34569 Sailing the seas

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29

View Respondents

For ship fic, I prefer to:

View Answers

get straight to the romantic smooshing
3 (10.3%)

untangle a thicket of character issues first...
19 (65.5%)

... and/or during...
18 (62.1%)

... and/or after
16 (55.2%)

I don't care for ship fic
3 (10.3%)

other
4 (13.8%)

ticky-box full of giant bumble bees playing trombones
13 (44.8%)

ticky-box full of bananas, nuts, crackers, and fruitcake
11 (37.9%)

ticky-box full of language-learning apps
10 (34.5%)

ticky-box full of baking
17 (58.6%)

ticky-box full of hugs
22 (75.9%)

sorcyress

I spent Sunday scrobbling in the dirt, because my friend Apollo had a backyard work party! Another friend there described it as "well, we're really being Tom Sawyered right now" and that was a both charming and accurate way to sum it up. Apollo said "wouldn't it be fun if y'all came over and helped me move rocks and dig up weeds and shovel mulch" and you know what? It super was!

Also there was a fire going pretty much the whole time, and when we pulled especially obnoxious bittersweet or tree-of-heaven out we could go and put it on the fire in triumph and that was very satisfying! After we worked, we ate snacks and sang sad folk songs --it wasn't intentionally, sad, just wound up that way-- and it was a really lovely afternoon all around!

But the thing that's really standing out, was somewhere in the middle of dealing with the tree-of-heaven, after we'd gotten some of the bigger root clusters out but still had plenty to go, I wound up spending like...ten or fifteen minutes just digging increasingly deep and pulling out the rocks from the old rock wall the roots appear to have grown through, and trying to get one of the remaining big pieces out. And I just couldn't do it. I made lots of progress, but the roots were still in there.

So I wandered to Apollo, ready to switch tasks, and said "I give up." "I'm proud of you!" they replied, and when I tried to tease about it, they continued "both for trying and for giving up". That felt. Honestly real good. It feels nice in the way I hope it feels nice when I thank people for saying no to me. It felt nice in a recognition that setting boundaries and taking care of yourself is good. It felt like a kindness, being told that not only was it okay to give up on a frustrating task that wasn't working out, but a point of pride.

I like having the friends I have.

~Sor
MOOP!

ofearthandstars

I am way behind on everything, but I am happy to report that our trip to the mountains was in fact very lovely and a huge success. The weather held and so we were able to complete our planned hike from the Grandfather Mountain Extension Trail to Calloway Peak, as well as go out the next day to check out trails on the east side of the park.

I am having troubling finding the weight of words to describe how amazing the hikes were. The trail to Calloway Peak is an advanced trail with lots of exposed ridgeline, slippery runs supported by cables, soooo much boulder scrambling, a "chute" that is a steep slide of rockface that involves hand-over-hand scrambling (that I failed to get photos of because I wanted to not die), and 17 ladders that help climbers along the trail and access the various peaks (MacCrae, Attic Window, Calloway), tunnels, and viewpoints along the way. Sometimes the ladders are vertical, sometimes they are horizontal, sometimes they have fun angles in the middle. Sometimes you are basically scrambling on hands and feet across the edge of a rock face with nothing between you and the wild glory of the Blue Ridge. (Side note: a very large number of rocks required hiking my feet well above hip height to scramble, so I am very glad for mobility exercises.) ( +4 )

The trail is breathtaking, but the work to get up it will teach you something about yourself. I have always loved climbing (trees, rocks, fences, you name it) but there were even moments here where I wondered briefly if I was in over my head. ( +2 )

My photos do not do it justice. There is so much fir that parts of the trail smell like Christmas, while early blooms of mountain laurel, bluots, sand myrtle, and jewelweed, among others, sprout around and through rocks. ( +1 )

We ended up climbing 2,191 feet of elevation to arrive at Calloway, which is 5,946 ft about sea level. We stopped to have lunch on MacCrae peak along the way, so it took us about 4 hours to reach Calloway - luckily we were able to scramble down at a much faster 2.5 hours, and we opted on that route to take the Underwild trail to avoid having to retreat down a few of the more challenging ladders in reverse. However, even the Underwild is its own beast of navigating trails that are little more than an assortment of rocks to pick through.

The view from Calloway Peak

The full album of photos from the Grandfather Trail is here.

The next day we had been expecting rain and cold temperatures. The cold temperatures remained but the chance of rain dropped to zero, so we headed out to the pick up the east side trails via the Asusti and Tanawha trails, cutting over to the west on the Nuwati, south along the ridgeline on the Cragway until Flat Rock, and then looping back on the Daniel Boone Scout and Tanawha trails. The Asusti, Tanawha, and Nuwati trails reminded me very much of the creekside trails of Stone Mountain, but once we reached the Cragway we were in for another strenuous climb along a rocky ridgeline. That day was partly overcast, and as we climbed we would get warmer, then pause to bundle up as the winds picked up and the clouds cleared out. But the Cragway views looked almost autumnal, thanks to the early color of budding trees. It was hard to believe we were only about 2 miles from Calloway Peak.

A view from the Cragway - I love all the budding tree color!

A view of the colors of the Cragway.( +1" )

While this was a significantly easier hike (only about 700 ft of elevation gain), we still had lots of good opportunities to run around on rocky peaks, interspersed with groves of rhodendron and azalea. We stopped to have lunch along a Crag, before making our way to the next vista.( +1" )

The Cragway eventually takes you to Flat Rock, which is, as promised, a large, flat rock overlooking the valley. Trees have grown up around it, but if you find the right spots you can still get a decent view. ( +2" )

The full album of photos from the Nuwati-Cragway-Tanawha loop is here.

We eventually made our way back to our cabin (which was also lovely, it sat on 12 acres and had a lovely little creek, many beautiful trees, including my favorite tulip populars, and even a perfect rock ledge of its own), where we were able to soak back in some warmth.

All in all, we felt very accomplished. For myself - I can't explain, but being in the mountains, surrounded by the wild...it always feels like coming home. The beauty there brings me to tears every time, and I just feel more a part of everything. There is also something to just soaking up nature and clean yummy mountain air and stretching your body in fun and challenging ways under the sun and clouds and sky. Especially with the one you love. We were sad to leave, but are still thinking about it and already thinking about our next big excursion. I may be talking about it a while.

May you be well, may you be loved, may you be at peace, may you find beauty in any given moment. ♥

marginaliana

Things:

--Today I learned that the only Hollywood film on the Vatican-approved movie list is Ben-Hur.

--I have once again fallen into the trap of continuing to come up with new shiny WIPs before finishing old WIPs. Inevitable peril of fandom.

--Having recently watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I've been thinking about the category of Movies About Aliens That Aren't Actually About Aliens, but then I ended up thinking about movies about aliens that actually are about aliens and I'm honestly struggling to think of any.

Because movies about aliens are, in general, actually about the human response to aliens. The aliens are just a vehicle for whatever thing someone wants to say about humans.

Is there an alien movie that's about aliens? Convince me.

china_shop

#mybooks meme via

maevedarcy, adapted by me to suit myself.

This week I'm reading: The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold, read by Grover Gardner; Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell; and a bunch of Kdrama subtitles... ;-p

My favorite book of all time is: What kind of question is this? Completely impossible! I can't even name a favourite author.

My current favorite book (read or re-read in the last 3 months) is:

Since February, I've read a bunch of new-to-me Bujold in audio, narrated by Grover Gardner (from the Vorkosigan and Penric series), some Courtney Milan in ebook (Wedgeford series), The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman (hardback from the library), The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley in audio, narrated by Sid Sagar, Refuse to Be Done by Matt Bell in ebook, Good old-fashioned Korean spirit by Kim Hyun Sook (paperback from the library), and half of Siren Queen by Nigh Vo in audio, narrated by Natalie Naudus.

Of those, my favourite was The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman, mostly because I chose it fairly randomly, and it was delightful, enjoyable, thoughtful, and unexpected. (I love random library finds!) Runner up goes to The Hymn to Dionysus (thanks to

profiterole_reads for the rec).

If we went back another six or eight weeks, it would be Swordcrossed by Freya Marske (secondary-world high-society m/m, with guilds).

The last book I bought was: The Earl Who Isn't by Courtney Milan, in ebook.

The first book I bought with my own money was: LOL, no idea. At all.

The first book I received as a gift was: We're talking 50+ years ago. I do remember having an older (20-something?) penpal who would send me books when I was in my early-teens. In particular, she sent me I Am David and The Hobbit.

The last book I received as a gift was: Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, in audio.

The last book I borrowed from the library was: Hine Toa: a story of bravery by Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku. I only read the prologue before I had to return it. /o\

The book physically closest to me right now is: assuming ebooks don't count, it's Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals from Around the World, edited by Robyn Ochs and Sarah E. Rowley, which is at this end of the bookshelf behind me, in the queer section natch.

This or that:
Physical book, e-book, or audio: ebook or audio, depending on the book, the narrator, and my mood.
Used, new, or fell off the back of the internet: Any.
Fiction or non-fiction: Mostly fiction, but I go through NF phases.
Read at a coffee shop or at the park: In ebook, mostly on the couch at home or while I'm stretching after exercise; in audio, while I'm doing dishes, stretching after exercise, walking, folding dumplings, etc.
Paperback or hardcover: physical books can be pretty hard on my hands/wrists/arms/neck, so if I'm reading in hard copy, anything that will lie flat on its own.
Romance or Crime: Romance.

Yes or no:
Literary fiction? Sure.
Sci-fi/fantasy? Yes, please.
Poetry? Not as much as I used to, but sure.
Memoirs? I'm not opposed to them, but rarely pick them out.
Philosophy? Yep. Also, science and pop psych.
Thrillers? Only if there's another aspect to draw me in.
Chronicles? I don't know what this is.
Travel logs? No.
Dialogue heavy? Sure.

Also, I thought I'd add a note on what makes me try a book:

I have a google doc of recs from offline friends and my reading page; I'm definitely influenced by recs. There are some authors and audiobook narrators that will lure me in. I am predisposed towards SF/F and romance, often in combination. I enjoy narrations with a sense of humour and queer rep, and I will generally try Korean books in translation, if I encounter them. As mentioned above, I love browsing the library, semi-randomly choosing a book, and discovering something unexpected and great. But I don't do it very often, because hard copy...

kaberett

The other highlight of the day was my ongoing experiments on myself with respect to movement, which I had intended to witter about, but (1) it got late and (2) when I came to actually look up "neuromuscular/movement patterning" as terms for That Thing about The Process Of Learning Physical Skills I could... only find a bunch of people selling movement coaching services. Working out what the academic terminology for this is: now on my infinite todo list.

(tl;dr I made a back muscle very unhappy a few years ago now; ever since it has been prone to Twinges but not actual dysfunction, which I've been interpreting as Nerves Primed To Go AAAAH; managed to push it past twinge into persistent unhappiness on Saturday, and have spent the past few days playing around with how it responds to various kinds of movement in terms of better/worse/about the same...)

cosmolinguist

We need a new front door, and one of the people who came around to do a quote also gave us a catalogue of door options.

Ever since then I've been paying a lot of attention to front doors that I see when I'm on the bus or a passenger in a car! So many boring ones. Ours is pretty boring (except for all the gay stickers and signs saying "disabled people live here, be patient about us coming to the door" and the one from a fedi friend of mine in the style of those old-fashioned signs you'd get at diners or whatever that say "Sorry, we're closed!" except this one says "Sorry, we're dicks!").

Paging through the catalogue, mostly enjoying the paper quality, I did find a bright pink door which delighted me because I thought it was the gayest option available. No one else seems to have stronger feelings about colors, so we're going with that! And we all agreed on what kind of window we want in it: it's just important that it lets in light.

V texted the guy back tonight (it boggles my mind that companies WhatsApp these things rather than email then, but apparently they do!) and Dale the door guy has already said he'll get that ordered for us. Nice to have it sorted out!

maju

I had planned to go for a run early this morning, but last night I couldn't get to sleep (and I also took a long time to get to sleep the previous night) so this morning I really didn't feel like going out early - so I didn't. And now I'm not going out later either. The sky probably won't fall in if I miss a day.

Yesterday I looked up Costco's phone number for their audiology department and carefully saved it in my phone. This morning I tried to call the number to make an appointment to get my hearing checked and just got this blaring sound which I think means the number is not a real number. So I went back to the website, looked up the number there, and dialled by using the phone keypad, and this time the call went through. The only difference was the in the saved contacts, the number was saved with the +1 at the beginning (and I can't find a way to save it without that), but when I dialled the number myself I left off the +1. Annoying.

However, I still haven't got an appointment because although I called at 10:09 am, I got an answering service which just listed each day's opening hours (which are from 10 am to various times depending on what day it is), and told me to leave a message since they weren't open yet. I left a message and I'm now in suspense waiting for a call back. I could make another call myself, but I don't want to. I really really wanted to make the booking online, but there doesn't appear to be any way to do that.

=========

It's now several hours later and I'm still waiting to hear from Costco.

I'm having problems with Eden's octopus. Not the actual crocheting; that's going fine, but I'm running out of the blue yarn she chose. I think my options are to let her choose more yarn from Amazon, or show her the burgundy yarn left over from the throw I've been working on and see if she likes that. I forgot I had it the other day when she chose the blue because the blue was sitting in my knitting bag and the burgundy is stashed away in a cupboard. Whichever option she chooses will mean waiting an extra few days for her octopus to be finished, but she has to like it.

oursin

Have not been sleeping terribly well lately, thus the blahs.

Not sure why this is, because it is not lower back kicking up etc (yay physio) but more that annoying thing of Morpheus seeming very skittish.

Possibly the whole life-admin stuff that going on at the moment? (2nd appt with our Person of Law next week, also appt to Register Our Intentions.)

Perchance the Even Tenor of Our Ways is just a leeetle disturbed.

Still, am doing my best to pull together Something Entertaining and Instructive on Condoms and related matters, which is largely remixing stuff which I do already have, but not entirely.

Am a bit annoyed that I was informed that I could anticipate proofs of a review today but so far no can haz, would have liked to get that out of the way.

sorcyress

One of the many charming moments about the like, 90 minutes I stood around post-dance in a little cluster of seven of us, sharing stories and chatting, was when Alexander and Willow, both here from Philly, said something lamenting the lack of Rita's in Massachusetts. "At some point we're going to go on an Adventure to visit the one currently open in like, Walpole" one of them said, and immediately I am grabbing Thrantar with one hand and Alexander with the other and near-shrieking "take us with you!"

The four of us then had to explain what on earth a Ritas is and why it matters so to the three New England natives. We almost managed? Maybe we'll let them join on our Adventure and then they can see what it's like.

~Sor
MOOP!

oursin

Happy birthday,

catvalente!

redbird

I saw Carmen (my PCP) this afternoon, in person. I couldn't remember why we'd scheduled this in person, but assumed we had a reason at the time, but when I asked, Carmen didn't know either.

She wrote the next Ritalin prescription; listened to my heart and lungs as long as I was there; and had me provide a urine sample for a once-a-year toxicology screening. In theory, that screening is to make sure that the patient is actually taking rather than selling their Schedule II drugs. The thing is, the standard/required test panel is for about a dozen things, not including Ritalin. There is a test for that, which she didn't order because the sample would have to go to a different lab, and she trusts that I'm taking the medication as prescribed.

I'm also supposed to schedule a mammogram.

It's a nice day, so I went to Tosci's afterwards, and now have a pint each of sweet cream and lime vanilla ice cream.

kaberett

( tada )

( tada 05/05 )

( tada 06/05 )

cosmolinguist

I got to see my Canadian friend Bill today! I haven't seen him in like 15 years. I hadn't even heard from him in a while (which would be fair enough, he was Andrew's friend before he was mine, but then he started emailing me again! and now he's here!).

We went around town, eating and drinking and talking, and ended up eating McTucky's in Sackville Gardens, looking over the canal at the lights of the Village as the sky went dark, and some guy all on his own walked down the street shouting "fuuuuck yooooour muuuuum!" at the top of his voice. Repeatedly.

D and I agreed it was a particularly Mancunian experience to offer our visiting friend.

andrewducker

Nice night sky tonight
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

rachelmanija

One day everyone in the world woke up with these words in front of their eyes, somehow inscribed in their inner eye: YOU ARE LIVING IN A SIMULATION. Simultaneously, a number of impossible things appeared on Earth, apparently to prove it: a frozen tornado, windows between continents, etc.

It's now seven years later. Those words still appear before everyone's eyes periodically. And tours have sprung up to take people to see the Impossibles, or at least as many as can be seen on a seven-day bus trip.

This extremely high-concept premise resembles that of The Measure in some ways: a world-spanning event, clearly real and equally clearly done by a more-than-human power, with immense existential implications, and with no one having any idea why it happened or why it happened now. But this is Daryl Gregory and he's very good with bizarre high-concept premises, and this book is excellent.

The other genre of When We Were Real is "set of random people thrown together" story. A number of the characters are, at least on the surface, straight out of a 1930s train story or a 1970s airplane story: two nuns, a rabbi, a pregnant woman, an elderly woman in a wheelchair and her devoted daughter, a set of elderly tourists, a person who's secretly dying, a person with a secret identity, a fugitive from the law. The only stock character it's missing is the cute child.

The many characters are very human and likable, with even the most frustrating of them having reasons for being the way they are; the annoying pregnant influencer's reason for being an annoying influencer turns out to be both sympathetic and heartbreaking. (Yes, it's partly to provide for her upcoming baby, but the real question is "Why an influencer rather than some other job?")

( Read more... )

The Impossibles themselves are excellent. My favorite was the time tunnel, where you can stay an infinite amount of subjective time (you get a home pulled out of your own history or desires, plus fresh-baked bread every morning) and emerge several hundred miles away, only a second having passed outside. But the flock of non-real sheep was pretty great too.

There's serious themes - existentialism, mortality, meaning, God, ethics, love - but delivered with a light touch. It's more plotty than I expected, given the quest/picaresque structure, and the story is very satisfying. You don't get answers to all the questions, but you do get a general outline as to what's going on and why. It's a very human and humane novel, of the moment but in a good way.

Content notes: Cancer. Plans for suicide due to terminal illness. Pregnancy and birthing issues. Violence.

oursin

Syphilis cases in expectant mothers have dramatically risen since the pandemic (in the USA) and there is consequently a rise in congenital syphilis:

can result in a range of negative outcomes, the most serious of which is miscarriage or stillbirth. If the fetus survives, long-term developmental delays, blindness, hearing loss, permanent teeth and bone malformation, heart defects and rashes can occur. Symptoms of congenital syphilis can happen immediately at birth, or they may not be recognized until the child is over 2 years old, when molars erupt, or as bones grow and the changes become more pronounced.
Congenital syphilis is treatable with antibiotics, which will stop progression of the disease but cannot reverse any negative outcomes that have already occurred.

***

And will this once more become a common tale? Telling abortion stories: The life of Florence P. Evans (1913–1935)

***

This is well creepy: ‘It ruined my night’: photographers accused of targeting women at St Andrews May Dip: 'Students taking part in university’s annual ritual say images of them in swimwear are being published without consent in national newspapers':

In recent years this quirky ritual has become a target for agency and freelance photographers looking to cash in on images of students in bikinis, including some who camp out overnight on the East Sands dunes near the Fife coastal path.

maju

LJ is being extremely frustrating today. No page loads on the first try; I get the message about the page not being able to load and have I checked various settings? Then I try again and sometimes it loads immediately but other times it's very slow or won't load - again. It makes it very hard to first, read my friends page, and second, comment on an entry.

This computer (pixelbook) is also being annoying today. Once again it swapped the @ and the " (quotation marks) keys so I had to change which keyboard I use. I've been using the UK keyboard since the last time this happened; now I've changed back to the US keyboard. I assume at some point this will happen again, and again I'll have to do the keyboard shuffle.

A few weeks ago I was excited to discover a (very small) British section in my local supermarket, and I bought some Irish tea there because it was slightly cheaper than the Dilmah tea I normally buy from Amazon. Today I opened the box and found that these are tagless teabags, which I'm not fond of because they're harder to get out of the hot tea. They taste perfectly good, but I might just stick to buying Dilmah from Amazon from now on.

I started Eden's octopus yesterday afternoon but she wasn't happy with the colour (a fairly dark green), so she chose some blue yarn I happened to have in my knitting bag and I've started again this morning. The blue yarn isn't as soft or easy to work with as the green (the green is mostly wool whereas the blue is 100% acrylic). Because so much of my stuff is in storage, I have limited amounts of both yarn and fabric to choose from for projects for the girls and I'm unwilling to buy more if I can avoid it knowing that I do have stuff in storage.

wychwood

( 61. The Water Outlaws - S L Huang ) a fun adventure, and I did enjoy all the warrior ladies.

( Four late Chalet School books - Elinor M Brent-Dyer ) My beloved Chalet School, always a pleasure.

( 63. The Song of the Cell - Siddhartha Mukherjee ) More than I ever knew there was to know about cells; this was a really interesting overview.

( 64. Bang Bang Bodhisattva - Aubrey Wood ) I think this was well done, but I didn't enjoy it very much? I do want more cyberpunk, though, so I'm not sorry I tried it.

( 65. Death of the Author - Nnedi Okorafor ) I had a lot of thoughts about this book but I'm not sure how much I liked it.

And that was the last of my batch of books! I picked a whole new set and started all over again.

( 67. Valor's Choice - Tanya Huff ) Huff is a good writer, and I feel like she could have done something much more interesting. This is competent but... a bit dull?

( 68. The Science of Racism - Keon West ) This is brilliant and I wish there were more books taking this approach of just absolutely drowning the reader in facts until it becomes impossible to overlook them.

( 69. Tempests and Slaughter - Tamora Pierce ) Not her top work, but very enjoyable; I'm sorry the sequels haven't come out.

( 70. Reflections - Diana Wynne Jones ) DWJ was an interesting person who thought in interesting ways about her work, and I really enjoyed all of that; the rest was at the very least entertaining.

( 71. Grave Secrets - Alice James ) On one level this was quite fun, but on another I just had... far too many unanswered questions. Don't think I'll be reading further.

( 73. The Complete English Poems - John Donne ) I like Donne much less than I did before I started reading the entire collection instead of just some of the good bits!

( 74. Smokescreen - Dick Francis ) I didn't find this nearly as propulsive as usual, but it was still definitely enjoyable.

( 75. The Apex Book of World SF - ed. Lavie Tidhar ) Overall a disappointing collection; I'm hoping the later volumes will be better.

( 76. Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford ) Mitford seems like an interesting person, but really I think we should abolish aristocracy.

( 78. Starcruiser Shenandoah: Division of the Spoils - Roland J Green ) I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about this series, but also determined to find out how it ends!

( 79. Where We Left Off - Roan Parrish ) I kind of feel like this happy ending is a disaster waiting to happen, but also neither of them is going to let go for long enough to really end the relationship, so... I guess this is the best result available?

( 80. The Husbands - Holly Gramazio ) This was an interesting book, but it had a lot of different things going on, and I wasn't entirely convinced that it fully cohered. I did enjoy it, though!

( 81. Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin ) Really well-done but miserable! Rosemary deserved better.

( 82. Fairy Cat - Hisa Takano ) The tiny cat is super cute, but I kept waiting for something to actually happen, and nothing ever does, really!

( 83. The Legends of the Jews volume 1 - Louis Ginzberg ) An interesting exploration of some of the folklore that accreted around the Torah, but mostly rather depressing on human nature.

( 84. This Rough Magic - Mary Stewart ) Solidly enjoyable.

( 85. Dragonflight - Anne McCaffrey ) Surprisingly enjoyable, despite the... everything! I can see why I liked these books so much as a teenager.

( 86. The Children of Ash and Elm - Neil Price ) Really outstanding overview of Viking history, deliciously crunchy but also very approachable.

( 87. Quentin Durward - Walter Scott ) I used to enjoy Scott; this one didn't feel as much fun as I remembered, though.

( 88. Choices - LA Hall ) I'll keep reading these as long as she cares to keep writing them, honestly.

goodbyebird

It's May 4th, how about an impromptu icon pass it on?

+ Reply to a comment that has an image with the icon made from that image plus a new image for the next person to work with.
+ You can also start your own comment thread, supplying your own starter image.
+ Only one starter thread per person, but you can answer as many image prompts as you want (you leave an image yourself every time you post an icon).
+ It doesn't matter if someone else has already made an icon for an image, make your own, let's create a sprawling comments section of pretties! (want to icon an image you supplied? Once again, go for it!)
+ All Star Wars canon welcome, be it movies, shows, comics, games.
+ We'll keep it going for a week, until end of Sunday May 10th.

You can find various images here.
I'll post the first image in the comments below to get us going ♥

Tuuuuuune Sarah Brightman - Tu

oursin

Happy birthday,

thinkum!

redbird

The timing of spring is being weird in the Boston area. The lilies of the valley have started to bloom, while some of the forsythia bushes still have a lot of bright yellow flowers.

We still have daffodils, the rhododendrons are being exuberant, and the violets have been looking good for a week or two.

I will look for lilacs sometime in the next few days. The most convenient would be to see what's in bloom along and near Mount Auburn Street near Ash Street, on my way home from the dentist on Wednesday. (I'm also considering a side trip to Sophia's Greek Pantry for good oregano, but stopping at Sevan Bakery or Arax would be more convenient.)

kaberett

Reading. I am up to AUGUST 2025 in my She's A Beast back-catalogue catch-up. Will I be able to read Anything Else At All Soon? Maybe?

Among several library holds that have now turned up (... ulp) I have technically started Run Towards the Danger (Sarah Polley), another memoir about embodiment, which I... suspect was recced via SAB one way or another. By "technically" I mean "I am a couple of pages into the preface, and trying to decide whether the formatting fuckery is worth sticking through".

Writing. So. many. e-mails. about. objects. and I have barely even Started the damn Object E-mails good grief.

Progress on Book also continues (look at me not using qualifiers!). Currently I am slightly going in circles about (1) how much background I need to give on why I think "biopsychosocial" can be a useful frame at least to the extent of providing structure for the first big chunk of the book, (2) what you've got to be very careful you're doing if you want that to be the case, and (3) whether I need to engage in depth with the goddamn philosophy of it all in re e.g. "it's not a model if it doesn't have predictive power" (which I am extremely inclined to sidestep by just......... calling it a frame).

Playing. ... we have tripped and fallen and are playing Librarian: Tidy up the arcane library. Initially we were co-playing with A doing most of the driving and me going LOOK THERE'S A PATTERN-- but then it became apparent that my ideal mode of gameplay (keyboard rather than controller, Manually Shelve Each Book Individually) is not compatible with A's (controller rather than keyboard, Use All The Magic). So I got a second copy. And have been playing through it merrily and slowly. To my amusement it turns out that my specific bullshit here............ gets you the rarest of the Steam achievements. (I am about 2/3 of the way through shelving, and things are speeding up substantially in more or less the same way as they do with jigsaw puzzles. This has eaten my brain and I really really need to do Other Things that are Not This but gosh it gets quiet in here when Allow The Brain To Just Focus. Will I do any further rounds of it? Unclear.)

Cooking. Continue to appreciate braised chickpeas in all their forms (still v keen on Adding A Tin Of Artichokes to the party).

Eating. Had my second hundoburger, which I had deferred until after E1, for the purposes of having an additional day where I didn't need to think about food. Also: STRAWBERRIES; bakery brunch (feat. both the bread pudding and the cardamom bun); ... almost certainly other things but the brain it says no.

Exploring. Bakery brunch featured a detour to visit a red horse chestnut I'd spotted from the bus on my way back from yesterday's hospital appointment, and also pointing out to A the pink bits on some of the flowers on the standard horse chestnuts on the way there.

Technically Finchley Memorial hospital, but mostly I got on a bus I was familiar with and played sudoku to keep myself vaguely calm, and then I managed to NOT panic and get onto a bus going in entirely the wrong direction by dint of it pulling out of the stop sufficiently far ahead of me there was no way I was gonna catch up with it, and then got the unfamiliar bus in the correct direction and... spent significantly more of that panicking quietly. There was definitely A Point at which, it having become apparent that the bus was On Diversion and Not Following Its Usual Route and None Of The Normal Stops Were Happening, I equally quietly Gave Up and decided this was simply going to be yet another hospital service I got discharged from for being disabled, BUT in fact that service TERMINATED at the hospital (and was the only one serving it!!!) so it did get there in the end. I would still prefer to not do that journey again please and thank you, even though I did per the above spot a convenient local red horse chestnut on the return leg, and for that matter several dramatic wisteria hidden from road level but NOT from upper-deck-of-bus level.

Growing. A took me to the allotment this afternoon! The josta is setting quite a lot of fruit and the cherry is even managing some despite my utter failure to water them! I put some marigold seeds in the ground in between rows of broad beans though this is clearly futile because the red ants are already Very Definitely farming on them; the oca in the bottom half of that bed are starting to come up despite the utter lack of watering, as above; none of the seedlings at home died while we were away; ... I did some weeding?

Observing. BABY BIRDS incl. cootlets going WHEEK WHEEK WHEEK all the way up and down the river; the Egyptian goslings are now at the stage of mostly having vaguely competent adult plumage coming in but still managing to turn into balls of ungainly fluff when they sit down; a second batch of coot eggs is being Definitively Incubated. We did not see the duckle again but we did see a very small starling. It was a very pleasant brunch down by the aqueduct.

maju

After a couple of rather chilly days for the time of year, it looks like a warming trend for the next couple of days - into the low 70s/20s. I waited for it to warm up slightly before going for a walk this morning, but it was still quite cold because of the brisk breeze. (Quite cold for the time of year, not really cold as it was a few weeks ago obviously.)

I haven't done much today except work on my current puzzle, which is proving quite challenging, finish off Violet's crochet octopus, and start on Eden's octopus. Violet's octopus took a bit longer because her chosen yarn was finer than what I used for Aria's and am using for Eden's, and because I had to adjust the pattern as I went along to account for that so all the octopuses (octopi) would end up more or less the same size.

oursin

Last week's bread held out remarkably.

Friday night supper: penne with Peppadew roasted red peppers in brine whooshed in the blender and heated.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla.

Today's lunch: diced lamb shoulder casseroled in white wine with baby carrots, chopped leeks, bay leaf, thyme, white peppercorns and salt, with a sliced potato topping (blanched in boiling water for 5 mins, brushed with melted butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper, put on for the final 45 mins or so), served with white-braised fine green beans and baby courgettes.

oursin

Happy birthday,

forthright!

andrewducker

1. How insider trading from the White House is working: (tags:USA republicans fraud )

silveradept

The 2025 Most Banned and Challenged List for the American Library Association is out, and the most telling statistic in the report is not what books are there, or what justifications their censors gave for the censorship, but that fully 92% of challenges recorded by ALA originated in pressure and political groups, lawmakers, and administrators. Less than 3 percent of challenges were issued by individual parents. What brings all these boys to the yard? Well, think about it: Capitalists want to enclose the commons and turn it private, so they can control it and force it to their will, and the United States Public Library is a commons.

Billionaires and the wealthy who want to say that their superintelligent AIs will eventually go rogue are also trying to genetically engineer humans to be smarter than those superintelligent AIs, and just about everywhere you look that they've put their money into, it isn't into things like trying to make healthier people, it's trying to make the children of the wealthy into having all the genetic advances and traits, and the rest of us will just be left behind by their super-genius statuses.

Given that these are people who like to post manifestos about they are already the superior people in the superior culture and we all have to bow down to them and let them do whatever they want, I think this is definitely one of those situations where trust is less than the distance someone could throw.

The public bench seems humble and ubiquitous, and yet it is neither, with a long history and significant amounts of contention involved about public seating and which members of the public are allowed to be seated. When benches aren't being removed, they're often having their architecture turned hostile to try and prevent people from sitting for long or for using a bench as a place to catch a nap or to sleep off the ground for a night. Because the cause of the problem is placed in the bodies of the people who might not have a house to go home to, or whose life activities are related to crime and vice because they have no other opportunities to make a living. Those doing the placing, of course, do not believe they are doing anything wrong, or worse, callously believe that they are not obligated in any way to any other person but themselves, and therefore, they are allowed to dictate who they want to see and what they want to be reminded of in their public spaces.

The goal of liberalism is to make all bodies invisible in the eyes of the law, but the way that people are liberated from oppression and bindings often imposed by law is through mutuality. Law has a role to play in this situation, and often that role is in highlighting and making highly visible the bodies that it considers to be illiberal. Law can lay foundations for others to implement toward mutuality, but as we have seen, and as the article-writer points out, law cannot require anything by itself, and those who have been chosen to interpret and enforce law are often the ones deciding for or against mutuality.

( More of men behaving badly, and the repercussions of having let men behave badly in the past )

Last out for tonight, a reminder to put accessibility into your social media as much as possible, so please provide transcripts, describe your images, and the like, so that everyone who's on your social media or enjoying the content can access it..

And A project that is offering clinicians and others guides on thinking of seemingly disparate conditions in people as constellations because of the likelihood of their co-occurrence with autism or ADHD. And to think of them as constellations because trying to treat one of them well might exacerbate another.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Moooooood cranky
Tuuuuuune MEUTE - What Else Is There?

kaberett

Today I have:

successfully navigated some unfamiliar-to-me public transport with only the normal amount of panic
MADE IT TO THE GYM post-unfamiliar-public-transport (having been Indisposed this morning, when I had planned to--)
- achievement unlocked: asked to borrow a pair of dumbbells from a much-stronger-than-me human For One Set while they were resting (because warm-up); they were a delight
- achievement unlocked: politely asked the human in the next rack if I could have the yellow plates they... seemed highly unlikely to use
... tripped and fell into Computer Game instead of doing most of the afternoon/early evening things I had grand plans about...
and we UNFUCKED THE KITCHEN SOME, good job us.

(Everything is still very much a post-event disaster, but. Made food ate food made a stand against the forces of entropy. It Is Well.)

elisem

It's nice to have good news to share.

As of May 1, I have health insurance again! In all directions available! (Medicare is complicated that way, and explaining it takes more words than I have time for, but the TooLong,Didn'tRead of it is: if your Medicare lapses, any supplemental insurance is also voided until you get the Medicare back. Which took from January 25th until now, in my case.)

Anyhow, yay health insurance. My doc will be pleased, as will my other providers.

Social Security also told me that the lapsed time period (for which I had paid, because they don't do reinstatement until you've paid for the part you didn't get -- I AM NOT KIDDING) will include reimbursements, which will mean I can close the pay-in-installments agreement with the providers for the three over-$500-each appointments I had before I was notified that I had lapsed already. Or if not close the arrangement, I can keep paying the providers knowing that someday SocSec/Medicare/whichever will reimburse me someday. So that's good too. Complicated and more paperwork, but good.

Sorry, I'm tired just thinking about more paperwork. Am going to go do the next thing, which is cycling laundry, and then go to my workbench and Make Something.

But still, good news!

How's your May going so far?

P.S. Heh. My phone notification just reminded me to go to my workbench. I'd better get the laundry moved and get to the bench!

Liv's pals

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