liv | Reading

I've been meaning to write a rec list inspired by all the graphic novels and comics I've been reading recently for a while, but I kept getting sick or distracted. But I've finally finished it so you can go check it out here!

I think I've talked about most of these in my Media Roundup posts but you can think of this as the highlights version.

maju

It's a perfect spring day today, clear and sunny but not too warm. While I was out walking I saw a couple of trees covered with blossom, plus there are a few taller trees starting to show the green haze of new leaves.

My daughter is taking Aria two New York for a couple of nights* this weekend, leaving today after school and coming back Sunday. Aria has been waiting with the keenest anticipation for this trip for weeks, but apparently she is also feeling a bit nervous because of not knowing quite what to expect. My daughter said she can get surprisingly anxious about new experiences for someone who is very feisty and has no physical fear whatsoever.

*She has taken each of the older two girls on short solo trips, and Aria has been waiting impatiently to be old enough to have her own trip with her mother.

I need to motivate myself to sew together all the squares for the crochet blanket I've been working on for some months. So far I've joined a whole two squares, and unfortunately it's rather tedious work. And yet I'm already planning to work on blocks for another (smaller) blanket with some off-white yarn I have on hand.

I have not been commenting on people's posts as much as I'd like to, because both LJ and DW seem to be extremely slow at loading comment pages lately, especially LJ. It's very annoying.

cosmolinguist

I am always surprised, though I guess I shouldn't be, that even blind people who have never driven can be so car-brained.

But it disappoints me nevertheless.

Today at work I watched a video where the head of a U.S. blind org, in his first Waymo, exclaimed something like "this is the first time in history that blind people can travel long distances independently without inconveniencing anybody else!"

I mean...I regularly travel hundreds of miles independently, on trains. I have traveled thousands of miles independently, on planes!

I have a whole rant about what people even mean by "independent."

I might have to add "what do crips mean by inconveniencing someone."

Not only do I not think that I'm inconveniencing assistance staff by "making" them help me get on a train or plane.

I also think that private cars do inconvenience a lot of other people! (Waymos (or other self-driving cars) arguably more than the human-driven cars.) Cars just outsource most of the inconvenience to people you don't know!

Earlier this week, I read the headlines of the Ipsos Mobility survey, and one has been haunting me ever since:

For many, having a car is an essential part of their life.
Forty-three per cent of drivers across 31 countries feel it would be impossible for them to live without their car. This feeling is highest in the US (65%), France (64%) and Canada (59%). Forty-three per cent of drivers say they could live without their car, but would prefer not to.

They would prefer not to because car-centric design ensures that everything is easiest, makes most sense, or sometimes is only possible for people in private cars. Cars end up being an essential part of people's lives when they're essential to everything you might want to do: work, school, shopping, errands, fun stuff... I know it's asking a lot for people to see that a bunch of systemic changes will address this better and more thoroughly than their individualistic solution of just getting another car, or a bigger car, or a car with brighter headlights, or an electric car, or a self-driving car...

cosmolinguist

Last night I dreamed that I lost my glasses, so all day I've been weirdly grateful that they are where they should be.

(In the dream I lost my shoes too. And both in such an obvious metaphor for migration -- on leaving an airport, I had to go through something that was half playground tunnel/slide and half like the brushes in a car wash -- that even in the dream I was like "oh, this is a bit heavy-handed and obvious!")

oursin

Because when I read this, I had Further Questions.

London pub thief sold £2.2m Fabergé egg and watch set to buy drugs

I am going, hello?

Enzo Conticello, 29, took the Givenchy bag belonging to Rosie Dawson as she stood in the smoking area of the Dog and Duck pub in Soho, London, on 7 November 2024.
Inside the £1,600 bag was an emerald-encrusted Fabergé egg and watch set belonging to Dawson’s employers, the Craft Irish Whiskey Company.

So, she had these items in her HANDBAG (going full Flora Robson as Lady Bracknell) and

went to the Dog and Duck pub in Soho. She was outside the premises in the designated smoking area, she put her handbag on the ground in between her legs, and a few minutes later she noticed her handbag was no longer there.

We observe that this was a £1,600 Givenchy bag, and while I do not think London is quite the crime-ridden hellhole some social media depicts, I might hang on to this a bit more carefully in Soho even did it not contain my employer's Fabergé.

Dawson had the Fabergé items because she had taken them for display at a work event earlier that evening.

Surely there ought to have been some kind of security procedure involved, like, 'take a taxi and put them back in the safe'?

(Am trying to think of any circumstances in which, in former days, would have been taking precious unique archival and manuscript items out of the building in the first place. When we had them out on display for visiting groups, they got put away pronto.)

I probably read too much crime fiction, but this reads like 'set-up for heist/insurance scam that went pearshaped'.

andrewducker

1. I took the German or Autistic diagnostic and I'm apparently just German.: (tags:autism germany funny rules )
2. Just how versatile is milk?: (tags:milk )

oursin

Happy birthday,

schemingreader!

pensnest

...was a palpable sense that you, as a vocalist, were—CATFOOD
It was so perfect, I just had to laugh.

Why no, I do not pay YouTube and yes, the advertising can break in at awkward times

But when I came home after chorus last night I happened upon a Richard Marx episode of Stories To Tell, on YouTube, from about five months ago. It's here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyiVEWcVcU

The guests are JC Chasez and Lance Bass, and it is lovely! Really interesting, from both of them, from different perspectives on the early days of Nsync to how Lance really felt about being unable to come out to JC's work on the Frankenstein musical (Playing With Fire), all kinds of stuff. And Richard Marx genuinely likes them both and they like him. It is just a delight to listen to. And it is almost an hour and a half long.

Marx mentioned Candide—okay, Candide? anybody? What did JC do with that?

kaberett

Therapist was Mean and got me to do the thing of substituting "I'm excited about" for "I'm anxious about". I Have Signed Up For The Gym, without first fixing my bike, and might even make it there Tomorrow.
On the one hand Wagamama have dropped my default order from their menu again ('tis the season!), and on the other they have introduced a gochujang-tamarind-sesame corn "ribs" situation that I am very pleased to have tried.
Social wiggles were OUTSIDE because we have achieved LIGHT ENOUGH EVENINGS.
I have almost finished A's gloves??? All That Remains is Weaving In The Second Set Of Ends.
Lebkuchen And A Glass Of Milk.

rachelmanija

18-year-old Evelyn is on a plane, transporting her father's ashes, when there's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive, and everything goes white. Then Evelyn is back on the plane, which is no longer nosediving. There's an announcement of turbulence. A passenger gets up from her seat, then collapses in the aisle. The plane begins to nosedive...

Evelyn quickly realizes that she's in a 29-minute time loop. She tries to figure out why the plane is crashing and how to stop it, but gets absolutely nowhere. She talks to other passengers. She steals their food and eats it. She watches every movie on the plane. She learns everything about everyone, except the handsome sleeping teenage boy who never wakes up during the loop. She goes through 400 loops and almost loses her mind. And then, on one loop, the boy wakes up. And on the next loop, he also realizes that he's in a loop...

Like the last novel I read by Reiss (Out of Air, the one with the teenage scuba divers), this book has a great premise. I enjoyed how Evelyn makes herself free with everything on the plane while trapped, and I also enjoyed how she and Rion, the sleeping boy, work together once he wakes up to figure out what's going on. However, it had an issue that more-or-less ruined the book for me. Rion suggests something that somehow Evelyn failed to try in 400 loops, which is to follow one person on the plane at a time, and observe everything they do. It never occurred to Evelyn to watch the flight attendants, and watching one of them reveals exactly what's causing the crash. They try to prevent it in several ways that don't work. Then Rion figures out a clever plan that saves the plane and fixes the loop.

The author clearly wanted to have Evelyn be alone in the loop for a long time. I can see why she wanted that - we get a vivid sense of her frustration and despair - but it makes Evelyn seem useless when she spends ages watching movies and so forth, and then Rion figures everything out almost immediately. This is exacerbated when Rion also comes up with the plan to fix things. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd been in the loop together much earlier - then they could have bonded while investigating, taken breaks and done the fun stuff that she did alone, and mutually figured stuff out. It would have been more fun to read and felt less sexist, which I'm sure was unintentional but is inevitable when the girl fails at everything for ages, then a boy shows up and both solves the mystery and fixes the problem.

I'll be interested to see if Reiss's third book also has a three word title that rhymes with "care."

cosmolinguist

I got through the latest meeting with my manager this afternoon! I was good and brave and he's happy with how it went.

It's the usual thing he's doing lately where he's like "what DO you do anyway Erik" but this time with an added dose of "and what should you do for the next few months, when both our internal ways of working and the external legislative environment will be different".

Right after this, I got an email that says that as a result of this year's pay ballot my pay has gone up 2.69% (nice). I really can't complain. I'm so glad I'm able to send money to Gaza and Minneapolis and Black trans pals all over the place and whatnot.

And despite being very tired, after I finished work I prepped some dinner, because I wanted to go to the gym and I knew if I didn't do food first it wouldn't happen and I'm very clearly still The One With The Spoon in our household for the second day in a row. (I haven't been doing as ridiculously well since Tuesday, but I'm still feeling that good longer-days energy!)

And then, despite being even more tired, I did actually get changed and go to the gym. It would've been so easy to just flop down on my bed. I'm so proud of myself that I didn't.

maju

A couple of weeks ago I started knitting a hat because I was in between crochet projects and I had this one random ball of yarn lying around. The yarn happens to be purple, so as soon as Violet saw it and found out I was making a hat, she claimed said hat, as purple is her favourite colour. I finished the hat a couple of days ago and Violet wore it to school yesterday. When she first discovered I was making it she was lamenting the fact that spring is coming and she won't get much chance to wear it until later in the year, so I'm happy that the mornings are still cool enough for a hat.

We've had a few cold days with a biting wind keeping the temperature down, but although we had a cold start today, it's not so windy so it feels more pleasant outside, so I went for a run to enjoy the sun. We're starting to see more signs of spring, especially all the low-to-the-ground flowers popping up along with forsythia glowing brightly all over the place. I've also seen one or two trees covered in white blossom, but in general things are still more muted here than they would be back in Maryland by this time of year.

oursin

So dr rdrz will be aware of my recent problems with printer, so I finally bit the bullet and after consulting Which Best Buys and so forth, went for an Epson Eco-Tank from John Lewis.

Which arrived at lunchtime today.

And I had anticipated spending hours if not days whining and stressing and beating my head on the ground and wrestling like until Jacob with the Angel to get the thing talking to my system and actually printing/scanning/copying.

Behold me sat sitting here having achieved getting it connected to the Wifi (the Wizard, though, is crap because it assumes that your password is a word rather than numeric, fortunately there was an alternative route), appearing under printers/scanners in my desktop computer settings, and copying, scanning, and printing.

There was a little hassle with printing which turned out to be due to Advanced Printer Settings turning out to have weird Paper Size as default rather than A4, which given that A4 is supposed to be their standard size, was bizarre.

This is positively uncanny, do admit.

pensnest

Sycamores, now. Sycamores.

The sycamore tree is a glorious thing. It is a handsome tree, tall and straight and with majestic and elegant branches. Its leaves are lovely and, in autumn, spectacular.

And it is evil. It is out for world domination. A sycamore tree's one ambition is to fill the entire temperate zone with sycamore forest. Its seeds sprout everywhere and are relentless. Miss one, and you have a sapling three feet tall which takes enormous effort to extract, or a five foot high growth which must be KILLED WITH FIRE.

I plucked about fifty baby sycamores this morning when I had only gone into the garden to pick some kale. Grar.

nanila

One of the Trieste trip activities selected by Keiki was the Grotta Gigante. Accordingly we booked timed entry tickets, and headed out on the bus on Day 2.

Spoiler alert: It is a gigantic cave. You have to descend 500 damp, steep, slippery steps bounded by damp, slippery metal handrails. As a person with acrophobia, I should have realised beforehand that this was going to test me, but somehow I managed to completely miss that despite it the access parameters being pretty clearly stated on the web site. I am quite proud that through much deep breathing and tight management of the pointing direction of my vision, I was able to cope with the descent and appreciate the visit.

( Many cave photos )

THE END.

sorcyress

I'm back on my Seeming bullshit, or more accurately, I haven't stopped being on my Seeming bullshit basically this entire calendar year so far.

One of their songs is called "Remember to Breathe". I like it, I've been listening to it on repeat a lot. "'cause you're in this for the long haul" it says. I always do like me a song about immortality.

And that's been enough until I started doing a little on repeat and finally clicked into listening, into _hearing_ the bridge.

Like a tall tree
I am pining
To be taken out by the lightning
-Strike me!
I dare you
I dare you
Heaven hear me.

And maybe I shouldn't be cycling that over and over on repeat, if only because at least this morning it's making me cry.
And maybe I should be cycling that over and over on repeat, if only because at least this morning it's letting me cry.

I have to go to work now.

~Sor
MOOP!

(I love you.)

cosmolinguist

Not before breakfast, but also I felt like I was doing the impossible things, not just thinking them...

Work was a lot; I had meetings all afternoon, overrunning into each other, beset by people missing the point. I think another way the power dynamic of people with no (disclosed) disabilities who have to consult disabled people for their work... sometimes someone missed a crucial bit -- we're not just ranking these on their effectiveness but also their difficulty of implementation -- and sometimes one person thinks we need every detail of the specific symbols on the Berlin U-bahn and/or S-bahn maps (this is a breach of the maxim of quantity: as much information as is needed, and no more).

That latter person talked so much at the end that I missed the first train home that I wanted.

And as these meetings were going on, I also had to get something to my manager (artificial sense of urgency!) which I was really unsure of, something I've never done before and am not sure I'm doing right, so that was stressful. I almost think it was easier trying to do it at the same time as the meetings, since it kept me from being able to get too anxious about it; I just had to go "good enough!" and send him the documents at some point.

By the time of the second one, V had put dinner in the oven which meant I didn't have to cook, which was nice (we keep frozen meals around for precisely this kind of day; D was sleeping and V had already used a lot of spoons they didn't really have today and I wasn't home yet).

I just had time to eat that and watch the first inning or so of the Tigers-Twins game (which I didn't have high hopes for because it was a Skubal start, but it apparently went well! (has something happened to the Tigers?? silveradept, you doin' okay?)) before it was time to go help angelofthenorth get two heavy pieces of furniture down two flights of stairs.

I figured it was the kind of thing that would either be pretty quick or pretty grueling, and it was pretty quick. We didn't break anything, including ourselves. I rehydrated a little and walked home because buses are disappointing that time of night; the walk was actually nice: it was still warm even after dark (I'm not used to that yet!), it was clear and quiet, and the exercise was probably good for my muscles. I still struggled to even get myself into the shower when I got home though, heh.

And now painkillers and bed!

china_shop

Previous poll review
In The whooshing sound as they go past poll, 25.6% of respondents said they generally find deadlines motivating, 28.2% want to hide from them, and 64.1% find them manageable in moderation or under specific circumstances. In ticky-boxes, sunbeams dancing brightly on leaves in the breeze came second to hugs, 66.7% to 87.2%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Still listening to The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley, read by Sid Sagar. There's an interesting tension between my being 90% sure the POV character is unreliable, and 10% aware that he is familiar with the ancient world and its mores, while I am not, so what if all his wrong interpretations are right?

I'm up to the second-draft section of Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell, and I am somewhat despairing. In brief, he recommends: discovery write your first draft for raw material, reverse engineer an outline from it, fix the outline, then write the second draft from the revised outline from scratch. Which makes sense if a) you need to discover your characters and worldbuilding along with your story, and b) you can write from an outline. But when I've tried this in the past, I kept editing the outline until it was a completely different story from my first draft. Also, I don't want to rewrite my fics from scratch, and even if I managed to, I'd end up with a differently not-working draft and have to do it all over again. Tl;dr, there is a lot of good stuff in Refuse to Be Done, but it's not the magic bullet for my writing woes that I'd hoped. Oh well.

Maybe I should give the method a try for something shorter.

Kdramas
I'm currently watching four Kdramas, woohoo!

Andrew and I are watching Phantom Lawyer, which is goofy and kind. I would probably enjoy it even more if I hadn't recently listened to a bunch of episodes of Movie Briefs podcast; now I'm very conscious of the rampant unethical lawyering (your client being guilty does not mean you get to turn evidence over to the police, omg; you can't lie to a client about their case to spare their feelings; etc). Anyway, I'm kind of hoping it doesn't develop a romance; I like the leads as a platonic odd couple.

Pru and I are still watching Love Scout. More this evening. (And I showed my brother episode 1 on Friday, though he chatted through it; is that how normal people watch TV?)

I slipped and fell into a rewatch of You're Beautiful, the 2009 "nun undercover as her twin brother in a boyband" drama that was my gateway drug. It is still ridiculous and adorable. Neither of the leads has two braincells to rub together, and I love them. The second lead is still annoying.

spoilers

The lead is arrogant, impatient, and rude, but when he accidentally overhears his new bandmate talking about keeping the fact she's a woman a secret, he immediately confronts her, demands that she go to the manager and confess, and generally engages with her as an (annoying, accident-prone) person. Eventually he ends up helping her and conspiring to keep her secret. Meanwhile, the second lead guesses from Mi-nam's physical attributes that she's female (which reads very differently to me in 2026 than it did to my clueless younger self!). He doesn't tell her he's guessed, just goes out of his way to befriend her and invite her confidence, and he gradually gets jealous of the first lead. He's "nice", but I do not like him.

Hwang Tae-kyeong's reluctant self-embroilment in the deception makes me laugh a lot,and I'm permanently earwormed with the theme song. I feel like in a modern remake, a) the other boyband members would be more androgynous looking too, and b) the management would be all over everything. A.N. Entertainment is one ramshackle operation.

I also started Lovely Runner, starring Kim Hye-yoon (Extraordinary You) as a Kpop megafan whose idol dies by suicide. She time-travels back 15 years to when they were both in school and proceeds to be extremely in-his-face, leveraging her encyclopaedic fan knowledge of him to try and change the course of history. Kim Hye-yoon is always delightful, so I'm enjoying it so far, but it's early days.

Other TV
The Pitt. Ahhhh!!

Rooster (why do writers on TV never actually sit down and write? or read, for that matter?), Scrubs, Cheers, and about ten minutes of DTF [location] which was enough to know it's not for me.

Fringe and Bluey with my sister.

spoilers for Fringe

We've reached the terrible part of Fringe. Wow, I'd forgotten how bad it gets. I mean, why wouldn't you have one of your lead characters choose to give up her entire personality, life history, and all of her friendships and social and family connections for romantic love? I mean, none of that meant anything much, right? Wow. /o\)

Paper Girls and Connections with Andrew and Ed.

Audio entertainment
Bill and Frank's Guilt-Free Pleasures' episode "Crowded House: 'Don't Dream It's Over'". A bunch of relistening to RNZ podcast Conversations with my Immigrant Parents as research for a fic I'm not writing.

Online life
520 Day assignments are out, woohoo! The Slo-Mo Guardian rewatch is kicking back into gear this weekend. I've started a new browser window (window #4) where I'm camping out; it currently only has thirteen tabs. I'm failing at keeping up with Dreamwidth, but hopeful that will change now Writers' Hour is at 8am instead of 10am.

Writing/making things
The last week has mostly been modding, squaring away my Yuletide fic for when I get back to it, making notes for a thing that I'm not going to write after all, and alibi sentences. But sometime in the next couple of days, I'm going to start my 520 Day assignment. This is my resolve face.

Life/health/mental state things
( Cut for length. )

House
I am optimistic that my kitchen windows will be re-puttied next week sometime, weather permitting.

Link dump
Why Greenland is an Island and Australia is a Continent (via

starandrea) | Losing Self-Control (5-minute short film about gay love in a Big Brother-like dystopia (with happy ending), which is actually an official music video for Minute Taker; via

mific) | Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (via

tinny) | London Writers' Salon are having a free 24-Hour Sprint 7pm 24th to 7pm 25th April UK time (you just go to whichever hours you want) | Migaku language-learning app (via

tinny) (note to self: come back to this next time I'm in a language-learning phase).

Good things
Hair! My 520 Day assignment! Kdramas! Social occasions (I guess). My sister mended my favourite slouching-around-at-home trousers and made me Brazilian cheese bread. Halle and Andrew and the fact it's not raining or cold.

Poll #34458 Stoic hurt/comfort

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

View Respondents

When dealing with stoic characters, how do you prefer your hurt/comfort?

View Answers

stoic character stoically/reluctantly/awkwardly receiving comfort
17 (44.7%)

stoic character stoically/reluctantly/awkwardly providing comfort
17 (44.7%)

anyone and everyone hurt!
14 (36.8%)

anyone and everyone comforting!
13 (34.2%)

it depends
12 (31.6%)

none of my characters are stoic/reserved/clams
0 (0.0%)

all of my characters are stoic/reserved/clams
1 (2.6%)

I'm not into hurt/comfort
3 (7.9%)

other / it's more complicated than that
5 (13.2%)

ticky-box of having multiple browser windows open right now
20 (52.6%)

ticky-box full of story structure is my nemesis
11 (28.9%)

ticky-box full of a red panda circus troupe performing for grapes
13 (34.2%)

ticky-box of appreciating being able to breathe through your nose
25 (65.8%)

ticky-box full of hugs
30 (78.9%)

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

What is the name of the hockey team from ancient Uruk?

kaberett

Things I thought would be fine: continuing to use the coffee table as an ersatz bench while I try to source a proper one at less-than-new prices.

THINGS THAT WERE NOT FINE: guess.

(I am unharmed! The coffee table is... not. The previous session was fine!!! ... the previous session was 10-20lb lower in terms of what I was lifting.)

( special interest within )

oursin

What I read

Finished Never Had It So Good, and while I am less whelmed than I was on first reading it 50 years ago (aaarrgh), and consider that as panoramic social novel of provincial life, does not quite reach the level of South Riding, yet, that is the comparison one thinks of. I also mark up Mr Jones in contrast to The Angry Young Men who were his contemporaries over a whole range of issues.

Finished Considering The Female Man by Joanna Russ, or, As the Bear Swore, which was fascinating, and very readable, but has not somehow inspired me to rush off and do a re-read.

Then thought I should really read Adania Shibli, Minor Detail (2017), for forthcoming in-person book group.

In hopes of a change from that - it's grim - read Marion Keyes, The Mystery of Mercy Close (Walsh Family, #5) (2012), a recent Kobo deal, which was itself not entirely the most cheerful read.

On the go

Amazon helpfully alerted me to Kindle-only publication of Alexis Hall, Never After, currently in progress, also not really bringing the delicious froth - opium-addicted Victorian rent-boy rescued from homelessness on the streets by clergyman (unexpected and unwanted 3rd son in aristo family, put him into the church) with his own backstory baggage.

Up next

There's a new Literary Review.

Also I had a mad binge on Kobo the other day, mostly Dick Francises which had come down to promotional prices, but I also finally succumbed to the most recent Edward St Aubyn which has been tempting me. The previous one was so much less gruesome than the Melrose sequence that perhaps this will be the change of pace I'm looking for?

pensnest

It is my LJ 21st anniversary. Amazing. Am still sad about LJ's demise, since DW, while plainly better functioning and better run, was too late to pick up on all the fandoms that fled, and so is less lively than LJ used to be. It transformed my fannish life.

*

I walked four kilometres (plus a little bit) today, to the hairdresser and back. It is a delightfully sunny, warm Spring day, and I regretted even putting on a cardigan to go out. Stuffed it into a bag on the way home.

*

My plantses are growing. Three green courgettes and two yellow (I broke the third, sigh); three pumpkins, a dozen sweetcorn stalks. A sole cauliflower and about four feeble kales, which is disappointing as I got a lot of tasty crunchy cake last year and would like to do more this time. The mange tout I planted in the garden have done nothing at all, but I have put out framework for beans and will plant them this week.

wychwood

( 42. The Return of Fitzroy Angursell - Victoria Goddard ) I really liked this one - both as a view of his history and of his life as he steps away from being emperor. I'd like to re-read it and then follow up with the relevant parts of At the Feet of the Sun to see how they fit together, too.

( 43. Mountains of Fire - Clive Oppenheimer ) An interesting book; more human-focussed than I was expecting, but not in a bad way.

( 44. Something Human - AJ Demas ) Not my favourite Demas, but this was still pretty good.

( 45. Strange Houses - Uketsu ) The first book was weird in a fun way; this was mostly just weird, in the sense that even the characters that weren't supposed to be involved in creepiness are stranger than seemed at all reasonable.

( 46. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain ) Still relatively fun, though full of more horrible things than I'd remembered.

( 47. Irresponsible Adult - Lucy Dillon ) I can't quite call this a soothing read when Robyn starts out making so many mistakes, but it was satisfying and enjoyable.

( 48. Windmaster's Bane - Tom Deitz ) Not a bad example of its kind.

( 49. The Anglo-Saxons - Marc Morris ) A good survey of what we know about the basic history - kings and whatnot - of the era.

( 50. The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green ) A delightful collection of extremely random reviews.

( 51. A Tempest of Tea - Hafsah Faizal ) Maybe it's just me, but I thought this was terrible.

( 52. The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson ) I just don't understand why any of the half-decent folk would stay.

( 53. James - Percival Everett ) I still don't think I really know what Everett wanted to do with this book, but I'm not at all sure it worked.

( 54. Moonstorm - Yoon Ha Lee ) Normally I love Lee's writing, but this just didn't quite work for me somehow.

( 55. Slow Horses - Mick Herron ) Well-done, but I'm just not going to be a spy fan.

( 56. The Republic of Salt - Ariel Kaplan ) I really thought this volume was going to actually finish the immediate story; more fool me.

( 57. Faerie Queene vol 1 - Edmund Spenser ) The first part of this was genuinely fun, but all of the moral / religious underpinnings are so confused. Interested to see where volume 2 goes.

( 58. Swordcrossed - Freya Marske ) This does a good job of earning the resolution; I enjoyed it.

( 59. Chalet School Reunion - Elinor M Brent-Dyer ) A fun chance to see various early pupils twenty years down the line.

( 60. Couple Goals - Kit Williams ) Cute sports romance! With a sapphic relationship as well as a het one.

nanila

Keiki and his espresso.

( +4 photos )

jack

I re-read the 1967 story 9 Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke, where a Tibetan monastery are calculating all possible names of God, which they think will be some sort of culmination of the universe.

When I first read it I hadn't noticed that it was written when using a computer to print all the possible combinations of something was still quite new.

It does feel like all those permutations make sense in a Buddhist monastery, but AFAIK he must have based that on Kaballah and made up the connection to Buddhism.

He wrote it in a long weekend away. But he added a comment that there was something wrong with the maths and he'd needed to fix it later so I guess he didn't QUITE finish it in one go :)

The numbers be gave were 9 billion names, 15,000 years by hand, 100 days by computer printout. A custom alphabet. 9 letters at most. And a few combinations are forbidden. I'm guessing he chose 9 billion as a good sounding title and a reasonable length of time, but that something^something didn't quite come out at 9 billion, so added the forbidden combinations or custom alphabet to adjust it a bit.

goodbyebird

ECLIPSE. April 6, 2026. Totality, beyond Earth. From lunar orbit, the Moon eclipses the Sun, revealing a view few in human history have ever witnessed.

First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon

Following the current Artemis mission + rolling around in art and nature photography is keeping me going atm. Slingshotting in space!

+ The seagulls are napping and grooming on our windowsills a lot and it's been a treat. I often find myself watching Bird TV. With the stains on the glass they don't seem to notice us there, so you get a wild animal puffing up and resting 30cm from your face. Always a delight.

+ If like me you're still enamored with Project Hail Mary and need images to make icons from,

theskyisnew's got you covered 👎

+ Sad Starfleet Academy got cancelled, though I strongly suspected that would be the case. What I didn't expect was that they'd already finished shooting season 2. So that's something. Probably a cliffhanger nightmare but I'll take it.

( Letter from Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau. )

+ Already considering rewarding myself with a purchase after the trip. The Embodied Ecosystems TarOracle is looking like a strong contender, both for the art/theming, and the chunky guidebook it comes with. But then there's the fanmade X-Files tarot I spotted that's calling to me. Hmm. (I finished season 1 btw. Mulder didn't know lycanthropy transferred through bites/scratches?? Press x-files to doubt. S2 will have Scully revert back to not believing in aliens, huh? I remember being extremely annoyed back in the day and surely that can't have been based off s1. Mulder's hot takes have been deserving of a defenestration sometimes multiple times per episode.)

+

3weeks4dreamwidth is coming up, but I honestly feel there's not enough interest to make it work. I'm going to have to give it a think.

+ I'll be home in two and a half weeks so I'll just cling to that for now.

Tuuuuuune Anjimile- Like You Really Mean It

adrian_turtle

A few days ago I heard someone talk about how the warmth of April was so hopeful yet so fragile. This morning we had snow, if only for a few minutes. I hope this will be the last Frost* for a while.

You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still
You're one month on in the middle of May
But if you so much as dare to speak
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch
A wind comes down from a frozen peak
And you're two months back in the middle of March.

*ETA, Robert Frost. The poem has lived rent-free in my head for 50 years but is not mine

kaberett

Today I have had MRI #1 (NHS), booked follow-up appointment #1 (NHS; in June), and also booked follow-up appointment #2 (private; next Thursday).

( feeeeeeeelings )

But. BUT. I made myself put the allotment keys in my pocket before heading out for the MRI (the allotments are right behind the hospital) and then did spend two hours Communing With Plants (by which I mostly mean "weeding", obviously, which is I suppose a kind of Communion) in pleasant weather, and. And. The cherry blossom is out. Only two clusters of it so far, but -- that's two more than a week ago, and the rest of the tree is thinking really hard about it. The unfortunately sited apple I appear to have inherited is also absolutely riotous. The garlic chives are finally Properly Established. I got to graze on allium and spinach. Small fierce joys, and that.

oursin

Personally I suspect Blake Morrison has either not read terribly deeply in memoirs of the past, because I could probably without too much struggle come up with instances which were not at all about being 'a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers)', but one sees that this is a position he has to take up in order to make his case about Ye Moderne Confeshunal memoiring.

‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing

(Harriette Wilson would like a word, just saying, for starters.) (We can so imagine dear Harriette on social media, no?)

I'm not sure he's really got an argument there rather than some vague blathering about published memoirs vs social media and blogs, especially given the, er, thinness of his historical grounding (though in some cases past memoirists prudently arranged for the work to published posthumously).

And as for people being somewhat lax with the truthiness of their memoirs, how about this chap: The schoolteacher who spawned a Highland literary hoax:

The book’s author and narrator, Donald Cameron, describes his early life in Blarosnich, a remote hill farm in the Western Highlands in the 1930s and early 1940s. The book presents a Brigadoon-like spectacle of an agrarian community seemingly little touched by modernity, populated by pious women, elderly aristocrats and lusty farm lads.
....
Donald Cameron was, in fact, a pseudonym of Robert Harbinson Bryans, an itinerant bisexual schoolteacher turned travel writer who was born in Belfast in 1928 and died in London in 2005. Also known as Robin Bryans, his name is now largely forgotten apart from among students of plots and conspiratorial claims.

He is not, I think, the only instance of totally faked autobiography taken as searing insight into a lost way of life.

alatefeline

Committing poetry!

(Along with fiction, demifiction, research notes, and other literary MAYHEM!)

Ahem. Announcing Ysabetwordsmith's Poetry Fishbowl, in which that writer collects prompts, writes like a MANIAC all day/night, and offers funding options to sponsor publicly sharing the goodies.

https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/15422855.html

My /personal/ challenge, for myself and others, based on a recent conversation:
Think of the weirdest science fiction you're read (or watched, played etc) recently.
(Other speculative forms also welcome).
Now think of something WEIRDER.
Now go prompt /that./

Prompt -- for the Poetry Fishbowl, and/or your favorite other author, and/or a fannish kinkmeme somewhere, and/or a patch of sidewalk in need of chalking...anywhere it's going to inspire people (not chatbots) to make things. Please!

You can even give /me/ a writing prompt. Ideas and plot bunnies welcome! But, my response tim,e varies from two minutes to two centuries, overall, and my creative time is quite crunched right now. Ysabet, on the other hand, WILL be writing something, TODAY.

I am ABSOLUTELY making this post for the linkback poetry reveal perk, FYI. But it's a fun event and a good writer and new prompters do get some freebies, so why not take a look?

Moooooood busy
Whereaboooouts April
Tuuuuuune birdsong

maju

My daughter and I had a short meeting with the architect and the contractor about my apartment this morning, and it seems like construction should be starting in about two months. Exciting!

My daughter bought some smash eggs for the girls which arrived already smashed, so she didn't give them to the girls. (They got replacements.) She gave me one (and I assume she and my son in law ate the other two), and I was quite impressed by how chocolatey it tastes considering it is dairy free, gluten free, and vegan. I don't know why smash eggs are a thing, but apparently they are. The egg comes with a small wooden mallet and the kid gets to smash it with the mallet to get at the confectionery inside.

I was out walking this morning in bright sunshine (but cold wind) when big black clouds started to cover the sky. The forecast had said "possibility of icy rain" later today, but I felt a few drops of what felt distinctly icy/sharp. There were only a few drops though, and then the sun came back in full force.

cosmolinguist

I woke up about fifteen minutes before my alarm this morning.

And it wasn't a struggle to get out of bed. Or to have my meds, or get dressed. I checked the weather first, and the predicted high was 69(F, of course), which is nice indeed! So I got to wear a sleeveless top and shorts and sandals.

I started work on time, if not a bit early. It was easy to get my morning chores done, even with a hurty tummy -- I didn't want breakfast yet but I had mint-and-vanilla tea which is my go-to for hurty tummy. I made the regular pot of tea for everyone else, though.

I hung the towels and bedsheets outside -- for the first time this year! -- and was so happy to get to do this, under a bright blue sky, my skin warming in the sun.

I did so many extra little chores during the day! I cleaned my glasses. I cleaned my phone. I refilled the bottles of spray cleaner and toilet cleaner that needed refilling from the 5-liter jugs. I put laundry away. I was able to prepare most of dinner before counseling -- instead of not at all, which is my usual for Tuesdays.

All of this is because the days have gotten longer and the sun has come back out.

Every fall/winter, I worry that I'm just bad at stuff and things will be horrible forever. And every spring, there's a Monday (or in this case a Tuesday) where something in my brain clicks into place when I get a certain amount of sunlight -- not vitamin D from the pills, not lumens from the SAD lamp; I have those things and I'm sure they help but nothing like the fact that the colors are right and the outside is hospitable again.

watersword

Seder was excellent; we actually got all the way through the Haggadah, which I don't think I've ever done before (usually after Shulchan Oreich we just hang out) so it was really nice to get to Miriam and Elijah's cups, and we had some good conversations and I'm so glad this tradition is something I have in my life now. I served snacks of popcorn, crudités with hummus and ranch, steamed shrimp, olives, and pickled red onion and pickled jalapenos; the baked brie with quince jam was a good idea that didn't work great in execution (tiny cast iron did not retain heat and the cheese was hard to put on the matzah, alas. But the vegetarian shepherd's pie and green beans and rhubarb-raspberry crisp were all delicious and doing the mango salsa for charoset is a great choice I am doing forever.

It is still cold and I am extremely tired of it. I am sick of my winter wardrobe. I yearn to drop off my winter coat at the dry-cleaner's and pack it away in storage. When????

mrissa

New poem out today in Uncanny! I wrote The Truth About Wolves for my beloved younger godchild. I hope you enjoy it too.

siderea

This is legitimately one of the most alarming things I've heard about AI. I can see no lie.

2026 Apr 6: Alberta Tech [YT]: "Vibe Coding is Gambling" [56 seconds]:

Watch on YouTube

cosmolinguist

Very sad to realize that I have to start caring about bedtime again.

I've had a pretty great bank holiday weekend though.

Tried to skive off work a bit early to go for a drink with D in the sunshine. It ended up not being that sunny by then, but we had a nice time. And I got us ice-cream cones from an ice-cream van as we walked home!
We did indeed go out for Best Friday, which was lovely if slightly overdoing it for D
I made it to transgym, sent good wishes back and forth between D and the gymgoers, and got my gloves back that I accidentally left in a friend's car when they gave me a lift home...and then proceeded not to see said friend for the last couple of months. I've been thinking about those gloves every so often: I got them in Stornoway so they're nice and warm, fair-isle type colorwork, and most important for me fingerless. I don't need them now but it's very nice to have them back!
our friends Alex and Ian came over that evening, yay. It was so so lovely to see them. We got pizza.
We were invited for afternoon tea at angelofthenorth's yesterday. Little sandwiches and sweets and many pots of tea (and I had coffee), beautifully showed off her new table and chairs!
We bought some more plants, and when we got home I did some dad chores: added air to the car tires that needed it, cut back a tree that's overhanging from the neighbor's yard, started in on the ivy that has already claimed a couple of fence panels, and then sat outside with a book and a cold beer, in shorts and sandals (it's only about 60F, but thanks to testosterone I've become the guy who needs to wear a sleeveless top and sandals and shorts when it's 60F...)

Storm Dave aside, we had good weather this weekend, even great today -- and this is the opposite of what bank holiday Mondays are usually like. And it's not even dark at 8pm now; I'm so relieved.

wychwood

We made it through the Triduum! Actually, in some ways I felt like this year was less stressful than it often is; somehow I just... wasn't as worried about things going wrong. I knew we would cope if they did. And, in fact, nothing really did go wrong, although as ever I have notes for next year. Between that and the free time I did manage to find (taking Maundy Thursday off work so that I have the day free before the service in the evening is the best idea, and I desperately needed that break this year) I have bounced back pretty well already. Although Fr A decided that we were going to kneel down between every single intercession on Good Friday, and my thighs were so stiff the next day! I felt very feeble for it, but also, ow.

Yesterday was family Easter, which is always nice but a bit exhausting just from the sheer volume of people (we had thirteen for dinner this year) (didn't seem unlucky though!). But today I slept in, refused to shower or get dressed, and ended up with enough energy to do the first couple of rounds of moving things back to where they ought to be after several days of dumping bags and pocket contents and so on on the nearest surface; the desperately overdue washing up (I've not been home for many meals, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it wasn't great!); and, unexpectedly, even some of the "I must at some point" tasks.

I washed the net curtains in my bedroom - turns out they're actually white, who knew. They were already up when I moved in here and I haven't taken them down since, so it really was time. I hung them straight back up as the best drying option - it was a lovely fresh day, bizarrely for a bank holiday. I still need to do the spare room net curtains; maybe tomorrow. And I've added a reminder to my to-do list to wash them once a year, although I have no idea whether that's a reasonable length of time... anyone have any opinions?

And I did three of my sewing projects pile - I've had a t-shirt and a hoodie sitting on the blanket chest for at least six months, and I tore the pocket of my new hoodie slightly on Saturday, as well as bringing my horrible sweaty alb home from church to wash again, with the fraying sleeve I meant to fix last time. So the two hoodies and the alb sleeve were all hand-stitching projects and are now done; the alb hem and the t-shirt need the sewing machine really, and I have hopes for tomorrow on that. I'm so bad at sewing, but none of these are really visible and they're better than they were before I started, so that will have to do.

My reading took up most of the rest of the day; I finished the initial ebook collection I'd made on Thursday, and made a new one with 23 books in it which I am very much enjoying working on.

squirmelia

I had imagined that my hundredth day of mudlarking would be spectacular and I would find the most amazing things. In reality, I went to Kew Bridge station and down the ramp at Kew Bridge Draw Dock. The ground was silty and slimy with algae and there were geese who were not keen on me being there. There was little to be found and I picked up one sherd before heading back up.

I walked along a bit and found steps down. I then found a few more pottery sherds but gave up and went up the next set of steps.

It was the day of the boat race, but that was further down the river.

I then walked to Gunnersbury Park and it was an interesting park with a giant wooden Bartmann jug in the garden and the actual one in the museum. There were ruined gothic arches and a bath house. I enjoyed walking around there.

The green and white piece with circles says “ton” on the back, can’t quite make out the letter before, possibly a ‘c’.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

Bartmann jug in the museum:

Giant wooden Bartmann jug in the park:

Liv's pals

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