liv | Reading

I started getting a migraine halfway through lift club this morning.

I ignored it of course -- just the aura, at that point -- knowing that I'd have a while before it got, y'know, debilitating.

I enjoyed the rest of the exercises. I did nearly fall both at the beginning and the end of the escalator I took to get from the tram to the train, oops. But also I got home fine, via B&M for medicinal snacks -- mostly sugar, which I often crave during migraines, but also one particular 59p instant ramen thing that I suddenly needed, and enjoyed very much for my lunch.

It was that rare rough day for the whole house: D's IBS was playing up and he had to make his brain work on paperwork so much this afternoon that when he finally emerged I wondered if migraines were contagious (luckily he perked up a little after eating something). V slept through all their alarms and so has been off-kilter all day. I slept for four hours this afternoon and after that reached the point where I felt okay unless I tried to move or even think too hard.

Then we watched a Starfleet Academy episode and as soon as Sam mentioned Our Town I was like ...you come to me, on the day of my migraine, and now I'm gonna have to cry? (Crying is fine but a physically unenjoyable experience for me at the best of times. Which, we've established, today is not.) (I got a tear in my eye, but even that was only at the very end.)

Like I've said here, Our Town is largely responsible for why I write almost every day here. "I can't look at everything hard enough" fucking haunts me (of course we heard that line in the episode), and it's important to me to look at things as hard as I can while they are happening.

tl;dr: People are actually bad at predicting how much they'll enjoy reading back what they've written about their lives! Writing about the ordinary experiences of your life can be even more cheering to you when you go back and read them than the extraordinary ones.

A nice reminder on an excessively ordinary day.

cosmolinguist

I slept like ass again, but if I'm gonna wake up at 6am it was nice to wake up to good news: the obvious bigots of Reform didn't win, and the more normie bigots of Labour didn't win either -- the Greens won!

I don't really care what this means for Labour or Keir Starmer -- it has never in my 20 years of living here made much tangible difference who the Prime Minister is -- I'm just glad to have an MP who might not be totally useless because I've had enough of that the last couple years! We've had a functionally useless MP in Gorton and Denton since Gwynne lost the Labour whip and his ministerial post but kept voting along with Labour anyway. Worst of both worlds: he couldn't really advocate for us any more but still voted like he would've before. Not that he was much use as public health minister: my hopes were high when he first got the position, especially as he was open about his Long Covid (which I think ended up being why he had to resign on health grounds), but he was a real disappointment to people I know who have ME or LC who'd also expected him to help, and he wasn't interested in advocating for clean air in public places or anything that would help with the ongoing pandemic, and my attempt to explain to him the public health implications of transphobia-as-policy (like the totally-predictable spike in teen suicides) didn't get anywhere either.

And more widely, of course, this is making some people feel more hopeful than we have in a long time. My queer and community-defense group chats were full of relief, congratulations to the volunteers we know who knocked on doors and did other thankless work for this (in the rain! even for Manchester it's been rainy lately), and a little bit of giddy meme-making.

There's all kinds of speculation now on what this means for the upcoming local elections in England (and devolved government elections in both Wales and Scotland, but they get to have nationalistic parties to vote for there too), as well as for Labour and Reform and so on.

But for now, there's a lot of hope in a lot of people who didn't have much (I caught a link to this video and watched it before I realized it's Owen Jones, heh), and that is a great gift.

nanila

Watch on YouTube

I spent a lot of the first half of the month travelling, and the second half of the month recovering from the travelling while also working. I feel this video reflects those two halves pretty accurately.

ofearthandstars

From this week's

thefridayfive:

1. What made you happy this week?
I managed to knock out a fair amount of tasks at work, and also achieved some monthly goals (planning for upcoming trips/birthdays). Feeling accomplished is good.

2. What made you sad?
I can't say that I've felt particularly sad over the last week, but I've been doing a lot of continued grieving over work and personal life changes in the last year.

3. What made you angry?
The news—from Kansas, from Minnesota, from EPA, from Iran, from everywhere. I'm so tired of terrible people being terrible.

4. What are you looking forward to in the next week?
My SO has a birthday next weekend, and we'll be celebrating that as best we can.

5. What are you not looking forward to?
My daily work is a bit of a slog right now, and it's hard to stay mentally motivated and engaged.

maju

It's a beautiful sunny day today and feels almost spring-like outside. However, I guess winter isn't quite over - the forecast says it will possibly snow tomorrow. I enjoyed a decent walk outside this morning (6 km/4 miles) but I'm not confident that I'll be able to repeat it tomorrow.

I've decided to try leaving my current puzzle out so I can work on it in short spurts whenever I feel like it. I'm a bit nervous about the girls wanting to get involved and pieces getting lost but hoping they will want to help without pieces going missing. Or that they will just ignore it since it's beyond their current skill level I think. Maybe not Violet's or even Eden's, but definitely Aria's. Anyway, we'll see.

My son in law has taken the girls to a roller skating event this afternoon. I believe it's with Violet's scout group, but all the girls have gone so it's a quieter than usual Saturday afternoon.

marina

So, I am not well.

I've had some really intense days, between work being extremely busy and other responsibilities, and today, a Saturday, was supposed to be my day off. Properly off, off. Sleep in late, zero plans except to wash my hair and tidy up around the apartment. Watch TV, maybe write a little, cuddle in bed. Rest.

Instead I was woken up at 8:26am by a missile siren.

Those sirens haven't stopped so far, it's currently about 7pm. At some point I stopped counting how many there were. On average there have been about one every 20-30 minutes for me, since the first one. Which means in the morning there were about 1.5 hours of quiet, and then there were hours in the afternoon with a siren every 10 minutes.

I say siren, but of course what I mean is I hear massive explosions happening in the air above my building. I can't go downstairs, nevermind for a walk, because of how frequent it's been, and how genuinely scary.

For the past ~six months I've been walking past destroyed city blocks several times a week, on my way to catch a tram to work. Entire streets with houses wiped out completely, apartment complexes reduced to rubble. And then a radius of many more streets with "only" shattered windows, knocked out doors, cracked walls from the shockwaves. Building after building after building. Turn after turn after turn. Until I get to the tram station, and then ride for 30 minutes to the skyscraper where I work, that stands next to the ruins of another skyscraper, that was destroyed by a missile.

I'm not good in the mornings, I don't eat dinner most days, my meals are breakfast and lunch. So I wake up hungry and need to eat something as soon as possible to start functioning.

Because today was planned as slow and lazy, I didn't think I'd need to function quickly at all. I thought I'd lazy about in bed, and then slowly assemble food depending on my level of energy.

Instead I had to hop out of bed and run to a bomb shelter. The bomb shelter that's in my house, that will not actually protect me in any way in case of a direct hit (see destroyed buildings above) but will help in case of a shockwave.

I was so exhausted afterwards I collapsed in bed. And then another siren. After that one I knew I had no choice, I HAD to eat or I was going to start collapsing. But I wasn't capable of cooking. Of course, there's no food delivery, because bombs falling from the sky.

I managed to at least change out of my PJs and make tea, and then the third siren happened.

The tea - green, fresh leaves, the very finest kind I have, from a small company that imports directly from farmers in China, because I knew this was the small effort that would make all the difference today, rather than some emergency teabag - did help me focus a bit, at least. Feel a bit more human.

After the fourth siren I knew cooking was out of the question, and rifled through the mishloakh manot I got from work yesterday (how fortunate we had our work event before the holiday itself) for any sort of candy with substance. There was a chocolate wafer snack, so that's what I ate, and then tried to move on with my day.

Which is to say with trying to do something other than just cuddle in bed and run to the shelter every time there was a siren (as there were a lot).

I felt... bad. Generally nauseous, unfocused, slightly out of breath. Exhausted, even when I was watching stuff on TV from the couch.

I tried to cling to some kind of productivity. I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. I put on laundry. I thanked all the gods above and below that I happened to already have food in the fridge for lunch, even though just heating it up turned out to be a challenge. It took 3 tries, with different sirens.

I only ate lunch when I started to feel like I was about to faint. Before that it was hard to make myself heat up food, or think about eating. Everything is just so scattered in my head.

It's time for dinner now, since I didn't really have breakfast.

Even though I know I should just try to go to sleep. I'm sure there will be endless sirens in the night. If an hour goes by without one, I'll be surprised.

I'm feeling faint and weak again but there's no energy to cook and no food delivery, of course. It took 2 sirens for me to boil a few eggs. Once they cool down I'll do that. I need to think about tomorrow's breakfast as well.

Tomorrow is work. The schools and so on are closed, but I work in tech and the company is global and our survival - my paycheck, my ability to stay afloat - depends on everyone believing our productivity is unaffected by these events.

So, work from home as usual. Half my local coworkers were 100% working from home anyway because Ramadan, so in a way it's all business as usual.

I know I need to take care of myself. Food. Cooking. Seeing people, even though travel anywhere including to a neighboring building is impossible right now. Creating a more or less correct estimation of how functional I can be at work so I can make decisions based on that.

Not doing well, and didn't actually want to write this post. Instead, want to write about the things that make me happy. Media, mostly, but also fic.

But I can't because just writing this, which has seemingly spilled out of me unbidden, has been to much effort and energy, and I need to go rest now.

rmc28

Both finals ended up being USA-Canada. Both finals I expected USA were more likely to win, actually wanted Canada to win, felt it was possible Canada might actually win for a majority of the game, only to have USA win in 3v3 OT. I didn't manage to watch either game entirely conventionally.

The women's final was on at the same time as Women's Blues "strength and conditioning" at the university sports centre. (The team gets an hour a week in term time in the Team Training Room, supervised by a personal trainer who's developed a programme for us to follow that's tailored to the needs of ice hockey. I love it, it's such a great perk of playing for the university.) My friend C and I arrived early and asked Will the PT to get the game up on the big screen, so we could follow it while we trained, and it was very exciting. A hardcore of about six of us then watched the last five minutes or so of the second period on a laptop at the end of the room, and then scattered at speed to bike to our respective destinations before the third period started.

The men's final took place while I was driving a large vehicle full of Kodiaks to Bristol (nine people: eight players with kits, one coach). My phone was paired to the car sound system, and I had the iPlayer coverage playing through it from our last pickup point (because obviously I didn't want to be messing with my phone while on the motorway). We had about half an hour of curling commentary that we only half-listened to, and then I turned up the volume for the game itself. With excellent timing, the game-winning goal was scored when we were a few minutes away from arriving at Bristol ice rink. I would still like to watch back at least the highlights of the game and actually see the bits of skating that had the commentators get especially excited.

oursin

We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe:

In his groundbreaking documentary, We Were Here, Kuwornu shares the diverse African presence in Renaissance Europe that he found: princes, ambassadors, saints, artists, scholars, and knights—all revealed through art from the period.

***

This is an older piece but I don't think I've posted it before: Taking Photos of the First Women’s Liberation Conference

***

Q&A: Bidding farewell to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust:

The Shropshire site, which comprises 10 museums and 35 listed heritage buildings, is transferring to the custodianship of the National Trust on 2 March after a challenging period that saw it grapple with severe flooding and falling visitor numbers.
Supported by a £9m government investment, it is hoped the takeover will secure the site’s long-term future and enable it to benefit from the National Trust’s high profile and visitor expertise.

***

Ultraprocessed food: whaddya know, It's All More Complicated.... People want to avoid ultra-processed foods. But experts struggle to define them - not all are junk foods.

***

Sixty years on, a Star Trek writer is still creating strange new worlds: Diane Duane’s early days writing fan fiction have led to a remarkable career as a novelist, comic writer and screen writer.

oursin

Happy birthday,

ceb,

gominokouhai,

ksghost,

miapatrick and

shark_hat!

$radiantfracture: a gouache painting of a turkey vulture head on a blue background, painted by me (vulture)$

radiantfracture

Did you know vultures are sexually monomorphic? Females and males look so much alike that it's difficult to sex them unless you personally watch one lay an egg (and even then bird genes are delightfully unpredictable). Just another awesome vulture fact I learned from the raptor centre insta.

Further, condors (aka Really Big Vultures) can reproduce via parthenogenesis. Here are some excellent queer bird stickers. I have ordered the asexual condor and the trans kookaburra.

§rf§

sorcyress

Because I do not wish this to be my third consecutive Friday without writing my words (with one bonus missed Sunday, siiiigh)¹, I better get these done before getting *too* cozy on the couch. That way, we know from experience, lies sleepiness.

I rounded out my reasonably good-but-exhausting week with a third day that was good-but-weird. I was worried that I was going to be slightly late to school --I ran into Clayton on the path and we walked the back half together, quickly since we knew we were brushing against our contractual start time. Striding around the corner at 7:47 (two minutes after first bell, but still well before final bell), we were startled to find...everyone. Turns out a fire alarm had gone off right around the time of first bell, and so *no one* got into class before about 8:10. Well then.

A couple hours later, I watched in horror as my clock spontaneously fell off the wall and missed hitting a student on the head by 8-10 inches or so. I think that's when I declared that the day had pretty serious Friday-the-thirteenth vibes, despite being a Friday-the-not.

I was able to finish the day without too many hours of distractions, and determined that I would reward myself for a Productive Week with a trip to Make and Mend to poke around. It's the closest I've ever had two visits there (about two weeks), and I was pleasantly surprised by how much churn had occurred, and how many new things were out. My secret plan to obtain every possible knitting needle is going extremely well.

I walked home while chatting on the phone with Veronica, which meant I got to learn her youngest child has the same favourite dinosaur as me (Triceratops, which I decided was my favourite when I was probably pretty close to the age he is now: almost four). I really appreciate that she has initiated an every-other-week or so Friday afternoon call while she's doing daycare pickup. It's always so good to get to know what's going on in her life!

At home I did some important documentation of knitting supplies (so far I have managed to not duplicate any needle sizes, which is _excellent_) and then sat on the bed and listened to music and worked a bit on some of my projects. Hearing voices downstairs, I went down to hang with Rey and her lovely friend Al, who I'd met a few weeks ago and quite hit it off with.

Now they're off to watch the telly downstairs, and I have, as established at the beginning of this post, curled myself up very comfortably on the couch. I have a warm blanket, I have three different knitting projects in reach, I have good conversations going with my sweeties, all is good!

It's still not guaranteed (my brain has been piss of late), but I'm really hoping I make it out to bells tomorrow, since it's been an age. And then I can spend the rest of the day being lazy and quiet and maybe grading and maybe playing video games and maybe knitting. It's a good plan, bront.

I hope you have good plans for this weekend, be they restful or active.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I don't think I've talked about it. I feel awful. My streak was 1271 days. But right now it is 6 days, and if I finish today it'll be 7, and the way you get to 1271 is by doing 6 or 7 or 8 days in a row, lots of times all strung together. So yeah, "feel awful" but also sanguine.

alatefeline

...is an act of hope, and therefore resistance.

Today I saw: bittercress, henbit, and onion grass are up - yum! Witch hazel bloom is fading, daffodils are coming up.

Today I got: free pears; spendy-but-fair local yarn that was what I had been lowkey looking for (natural gray undyed wool); gluten-free muffins.

Today I was able to: help others during a fire drill; encourage friendship; try my best under the circumstances; take a walk.

Today I read: some old Marvel fic that is comfort reading for me.

Today I gave: time; a fresh start; an opportunity for others to speak; adequate space in traffic; polite greetings; pettings to a kitty.

Today I ask the universe for: rest, first; encouragement therein; and opportunity, thereafter.

Moooooood stressed
Whereaboooouts kerflop
Tuuuuuune purring cats

davidgillon

... had me competing in the Olympics.

Dream-brain seemed somewhat hazy on whether this was summer or winter games, and normie or paras.

I'm not sure of the event either, possibly the Biathlon? Though skis seemed an afterthought and I don't recall any rifle showing up.

However in a firm nod to real life I was late for my race by way of being unable to negotiate athlete registration.

Moooooood Seriously, brain?
Whereaboooouts Milano-Cortina?

kaberett

Got libgourou working ~~(link to follow)~~, with thanks to simont for bringing it to my attention and me_and for making sympathetic and encouraging noises while I stared muzzily at the documentation this evening. Happy to report that I have successfully downloaded Adobe DRMed ebooks from my command line without any Windows install or emulators at all.
I am enjoying A Physical Education so much - SO much - that I have gone out and bought a book it recommends (Starting Strength; very wordy descriptions of which muscles one should be using for what, apparently, i.e. exactly my kind of thing). Acquiring my own copy once I've given the library's back is a definite possibility. It's really interesting in terms of both the pain Project (memoir about embodiment!) and in terms of my own movement-related special interests (e.g. the gulf between my experience of largely self-led Pilates vs the version available via mainstream contemporary classes embedded in diet culture). Lots of content notes but I'm really really liking it. Gratitude to buttonsbeadslace for posting about it ~~(... link to follow...)~~
Stupid Little Walk yielded both very cheap pistachio croissants (MORE BREAKFAST NONSENSE) and a very cheap "cinnamon danish with vanilla fondant icing" I've been vaguely eyeing up but was also very suspicious of. I am glad to have tried it and probably won't get it again, even if it is only 19p.
This evening's tofu was particularly cooperative with being cooked. (Thanks be to evilsusan for the specific combination of courgettes, tofu and garlic that I still make regularly lo these many years later )
I hit refresh on Oxfam Online and discovered that the rotating sale has migrated back around to "30% off 3+ books". Thus now on their way to me I have: the first edition of Explain Pain for an astonishingly reasonable price (I want to do the deeply nerdy thing of a side-by-side comparison with the second edition, and also to revisit its structure while the second edition is on loan to a physio friend...); a book entitled Science of Pilates, which I'd previously eyed up but that time it sold before I got around to it; a book about allotments and cooking; and a probably questionable out-of-print 1980s cookbook...

china_shop

(Solely because they're decommissioning 3G, so my old Galaxy A8 stopped working for phones and texts, grrr.)

*spends hours tweaking and logging into things and all the usual stuff, ugh*

Google: Welcome to Gemini!
me: *kills it with fire*

maju

I was woken out of a deep sleep by the cat batting something around near/under my bed at about 2 am. Grrr. This morning I discovered a pingpong ball near the bed, so I promptly stashed it in a basket full of musical instruments (which the girls never use any more) where the cat will never find it. Violet was also woken up by the cat in the early hours and had trouble going back to sleep, so she was not happy this morning.

Sometime during the last couple of days when Violet has been using my computer to write in a Google document, the " and @ keys somehow got reversed. I meant to try to fix it yesterday but I forgot, so last night when she was trying to write and found it was still happening she took the computer to her father to see if he could do something about it, as I was brushing my teeth at the time. For some reason, up until then the problem had not been happening for me, but after my son in law thought he'd fixed it, it had spread to my ongoing Google doc in which I'm writing right now. I was very annoyed by this, but after I'd done a fair amount of poking around on the internet to try to find some help I decided to just try changing the computer's keyboard language. All the information I had found had suggested that to fix this problem you need to switch *to* US English, but my computer was already set to US English so I changed it to Australian English and viola! The problem disappeared. (I checked both in Violet's document and in mine.)

oursin

This seems somehow to link on to earlier posts this week - a lot of my memories of childhood reading/being read to are associated with episodes of illness!

Posted in a group on Facebook: 'A book you read as a child yet still think about today'.

WOT.

Just So Many.

The various classic works of children's literature that have become culturally embedded in references and allusions - the Alice books, the Pooh books, The Wind in the Willows, the Jungle Books, The Secret Garden, Little Women et seq, the Katy books -

Ones that are perhaps not quite so iconic? like the Little Grey Rabbit books.

A whole mass of girls' school stories and pony books. A fair amount of Enid Blyton though I'm not sure I think about any specifics there.

Various anthologies and collections - some stories still remembered - classic fairytales, myths, etc.

Plus things like Pears Cyclopaedia and The Weekend Book

And I do, in fact think about things like, the attitude towards The Scholarship Girl in The Making of Mara in what is actually the unposh, girls' day school, to which her father sends snobbish Mara. (Only this week when thinking about educational privilege....)

Plus, I will mention yet again being absolutely traumatised by Marie of Roumania's The Lily of Life.

andrewducker

A bit of context - A safe Labour seat switched to a seat where Labour came third (Greens 40%, Reform 28%, Labour 25%).

1) That wasn't as close as polls made it out to be. The polls had Green 7% above or tied with Labour, who were either 3% ahead of or tied with Reform. Instead, Greens walked it by 12%. If we're going to be stuck with making decisions about tactical voting based on the polls then we need polls that are more accurate than that!

2) This is the worst possible result for Labour. If people are going to vote tactically against Reform (which they really want to do), then you *really* want to be able to place yourself as the best alternative to beat them. And now we've had two by-elections where that wasn't the case. One in Wales, which Plaid Cymru won and one in *Manchester*, a Labour heartland, which the Greens won. This makes it look like even where Labour are historically strong they aren't going to beat Reform.

3) What does this do for the Greens in the council elections? Well, presumably it sets them up to claim that they're a strong contender to beat Reform, everywhere where Labour is currently the lead. They might be! They might not be! But it really doesn't look good for Labour any way around.

4) What does it do for the Lib Dems in the council elections? It probably locks them out from any of the Labour heartlands - they'll focus on the Conservative areas of the country. Which, frankly, appears to be their strategy anyway.

5) I have no idea who a bunch of people actually wanted to vote for. It seems likely that at least 28% wanted to vote for each of Labour, Greens, and Reform, but if the polls had shown that Labout was on 30% and Greens were on 28%, who would that extra 12% who voted for the Greens have turned out for?

6) This is a bloody stupid way to run an election system. "I'll vote for whoever has the best chance of beating the party I don't like" is such a fragile way of voting for anything. It "works" in a 2 (or 2.5) party system, as England has been stuck in for decades. It completely fails in a 5 party system (6 in Wales and Scotland).

7) What does this mean for Keir Starmer? Well, I reckon nobody else wants to be PM for the council elections. So I'm not expecting him to resign until the 8th of May.

8) What does this mean for Labour's "Tack rightward to gain votes from fascists" strategy? Your guess is as good as mine, but I really hope it's dead now.

rmc28

for your latest work: Not Pounded By This T-Rex On The USA Men’s Hockey Team Because It Turns Out He’s A MAGA Dork

(I had a full body "you go here TOO?" reaction when I saw that title, haha)

If you've managed to avoid being aware of the latest way men's hockey has been highly disappointing, please continue in blissful ignorance and/or consider watching a PWHL game this weekend, but I'll take this moment of crossover fandom for the comfort it is.

silveradept

The Constitutional requirement for the President of the United States is that "from time to time" he shall "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient[.]" This has become, by custom, a yearly address, with the intention of setting agendas and celebrating victories of the previous year by the President and his legislative allies.

Given who's in the White House right now, I expected self-aggrandizement, I expected deeply partisan commentary, and I expected Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics that would be deployed in service of the other two. I expected the current administrator to be more in his element, since he didn't have to make policy pronouncements or answer difficult questions or any of the other things that generally take him away from the things he likes to do and make him work in our reality.

That it appeared to be more of a session much like the Prime Minister's Questions, rather than a speech on the state of the Union, I probably should have expected, but did not. I suspect many of the things said during the speech would probably have gotten someone censured in Hansard or any other such record of governmental procedure, as the deeply partisan part was very much something that he wanted to make a point of.

Running on the Associated Press transcript of the speech itself, let us dive in and see what horrors lie on the surface and below it. Not in the transcript are the several times in the speech where there are either chants of "U-S-A!" or Members of Congress attempting to fact-check the administrator or call him out on his falsehoods (or chants trying to drown out those checks and callouts) or the applause that followed some lines.

(Why do this, you might ask? Some of it is because the record needs to be set correctly. Some of it is spite and malice against someone who is unqualified and ineligible to hold the office he is currently caretaking. And some of it is because I've been doing this for a while, and I'm not letting this joker put me off it, not when I'll have plenty of low-hanging lies to point out.)

( To spare your list, and also because the material contained within is likely hazardous to your blood pressure and your SAN score. )

And, as has become tradition, after the administrator gives their address, a designee of the opposition policy provides a rebuttal and a counterpoint speech to the address. The newly-elected Democratic governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, was chosen to give the rebuttal, and chose to do so from the house of the legislature in Virginia. This transcript also does not indicate places where there were applause breaks in the speech, but there were only applause breaks in the speech, rather than chants or trying to drown out people who were likely fact-checking him in real time.

( The Democratic response is much more grounded in the reality we are experiencing )

In a much shorter form, the response speech was more relevant, more important, and more accurate than the speech that preceded it. If the Democratic Party is willing to actually say the message, at the level of crudity and honesty that it requires, with the volume it requires, and with the repetition it requires, they should be able to instill in that part of the country that doesn't want open authoritarian and fascist government the necessary will to punch Nazis in the face, as many times as it takes to get them to go away, in as many ways as they present their face to be punched.

If we want to say the state of the union is strong, then fisticuffs, metaphorical and possibly physical, are in the cards for everyone. If we're feeling generous, Queensbury rules.

Moooooood annoyed
Tuuuuuune Professor Elemental - Fighting Trousers

sorcyress

As a small good thing, I ordered two more skirts from Maya Kern while they were having a sale. I was worried the thistles one would be a colour I don't actually like, but it turns out to be a little more muted than the photos, in a way that I really enjoy! So that's lovely, and I am pleased to add a couple more very pockety skirts to my Pinewoods rotation.

I've been having a rough first half of the year at work. It's the fact that It's 2026 fucking me up, but I've also just like...not been as good of a teacher as I would like to be. I am maybe finding new energy and doing a better job these past couple weeks, which is very good, but also extremely frustrating because boy howdy, past me did not do any favours. Recovering from that is gonna keep being rough.

Case in point: Yesterday was 9.5 hours of active work, today was 9. Both with additional 2 hour zoom meetings after I got home. This is me _barely_ keeping up. It remains really _really_ frustrating that the better I do at my job the more time it takes --there is so little that I am able to optimize.

But I have a decent piece of differentiation/extra challenge for my ninth graders tomorrow (since some of them are definitely already finished with the activity that I expect the other half of the class to finish tomorrow). I found all the old reference sheets and made good (filled in!) copies for the special-ed tenth graders taking the midterm next week. I wrote a thoughtful circle activity (with help/inspiration from my coteacher!) for class 2 to do some community building with their extra classtime due to snow day shenanigans. I printed a couple early copies of the midterm for any tenth graders who want to start the midterm early since they won't be here Monday. I emailed the students and parents of every 9th grader who failed the midterm to begin making a tutoring and retake plan. I sorted the papers to return for one (of three, sigh) class so that I can just drop a pile at each person's desk instead of endlessly running around the room.

(to be fair, that last one is explicitly a "goddamn, recovering from being less good the first half of the year sucks" problem, since it's returning basically every paper I'd collected since, I dunno, October? This is very much something I could've been doing better on. Like. Returning things more frequently, yanno?)

((And to be unfair, I still have more grading and things to return, but that's all quarter 3 work at least.))

And while both yesterday and today I did take breaks after my contractual work day ended, they were only 45-60 minutes total. That's a lot better than getting stuck playing shitty phone games for three hours after the last bell and having to suddenly rush my copies so I can go the fuck home. I'm proud of myself for that.

Still though. "Excuse me while I teach your child but first I must" remains _barely_ satire. Rereading it, the phrase "time-wasting professional development" especially stings this week. Also the depressing reminder that this was in 2018 which is the only reason "attend a training for how to best protect my immigrant students from being targeted, deported, or killed by the government that should be supporting them" isn't anywhere on there. You know. Hypothetically.

So I'm flopping now, wearing a cute new skirt, and debating what to do for the last hour or so before I have to go to bed. It's such a delight to have any damn time to myself, maybe I'll waste it by fucking around with unsatisfying video games.

Maybe this weekend I'll have time and energy to make a dint on my grading pile. Or I could try going to bells for the first time in months? Both are good options, I suppose.

I wish you time and energy to do all the beautiful things that excite you.

~Sor
MOOP!

forestofglory

I’ve gotten back into the habit of going to the library once a week on the same day (Monday) to return stuff and pick up my holds. (This is also the best way I’ve found to get myself to return my books on time now that the library got rid of late fees) I keep thinking “this week the stack of new things will be smaller” but it never is. Surely I’ll run out of graphic novels I want to read that the library has at some point? But I’m glad it's not yet.

In other news I have now read more books this year than I did all of last year, which is pretty wild! Like sure they are all short things but I’m just reading so much more than I was few months ago and it’s really nice.

Red Threads by Ila Nguyen-Hayama—A graphic novel about a 15 year old girl in Tokyo who is invited to attend a magical school. This was very cute and charming if a little heavy on the info dumping about Japanese folklore. I really liked the main character's friendship with another girl at school.

Lumberjanes, Vol. 8-14 by N.D. Stevenson and Shannon Watters, et al.— I’d read up through Vol 10 years ago, but now I’m at stuff I haven’t read before. Still very fun!

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy by Chynna Clugston Flores et al. —A crossover between two very fun comics both featuring teams of teens who deal with supernatural mysteries – I enjoyed it a lot! I wish there was more time for cross team interactions but it would be hard to fit in and keep focus on the story

Animated Batman—It’s nice to be into media that my kid also is interested in. She doesn’t watch anything with subtitles, but she likes Batman. So I’ve watched a handful of episodes of the 90’s animated Batman with her. (I started from where she’s gotten to before so not at the beginning) In terms of Bat-fam its not doing a lot, most of the kids/sidekicks aren’t in this and those that are aren’t around much (though I’m told they show up more frequently latter on) However the show itself is very well crafted! I’m impressed with both the animation (the style! The attention to detail) and the storytelling

graydon2

This is a semi-satirical / joking-not-joking post (spun out of a private mastodon post) that I will be taking absolutely no questions or comments about. If it does not amuse you please do not tell me in gruesome well-actually detail why it is a bad idea.

My proposal: Computers should have stopped in 1993.

One might argue that I was an impressionable teenager in 1993 and so probably this is "just nostalgia speaking" but I think it is not true: the technologies I had access to at the time were not, mainly, those I will be discussing here. Instead, I claim that as an adult with more fluency in computers and computing history, I can make the recommendation here on the basis of that broader and more-objective view.

1. CPUs and Systems

The MIPS R4000 existed in 1993 and at 1.2 million transistors, this is about as complex as chips should ever have got. It's got an MMU and FPU, is RISC, is 64 bit, in-order scalar superpipelined. It is predictable and simple and just right. There was a consortium (ACE) that shipped a spec (ARC) for open systems built on MIPS and several vendors were using it as their vision of the future. They should have been right!

(If you needed a portable computer you could have the R4000-based IBM WorkPad Z50 or, if you are a sicko, a Newton MessagePad which was not R4000 but we can allow 1993's pleasantly small ARM6 chips as well, or 1992's charming SH-2. Also you can even have some videogames: the PlayStation was R3000-based and the Nintendo 64 R4000-based, and the Sega Saturn was SH-2. If you really really hate MIPS, ARM and SuperH you can throw in the Alpha 21064 -- the first Alpha, when it was still in-order and 1.6 million transistors -- and I will allow that it doesn't break the mold too much. The Pentium was also in-order but at 3 million I think it's too big. The 68040 at 1.2 million is fine, but of course still just 32 bit like the ARM6 and SH-2. You really want an R4000 or Alpha.)

2. Distributed Operating Systems

In 1993 we had OSF/1 with DCE. This was not the best OS one can imagine, but it had qualities and capabilities that have in retrospect not been meaningfully eclipsed in the years since. A DCE installation had a real distributed filesystem, RPC, locking and time services, single-sign-on (Kerberos) and directory service. Stuff you still can't get reliably in our modern cloud/k8s nightmare. One might argue that Windows NT also got there, but .. sure, fine, you can have that too! Windows NT also came out in 1993, running on R4000. And Plan 9 was released in 1992. So we really were firmly in the "stuff better than we were ever going to get" future.

3. Languages

In 1993 we had Modula 3, Sather and Dylan; but we had not yet been subjected to Java, PHP or JavaScript. The former are all safe, native-compiled and expressive. The latter are .. not. We should have stopped here, or taken a different path at least, but the web came along.

4. Databases and 4GLs

There was also a suite of higher-level languages -- those classified as "4th Generation Languages" (4GLs) as far back as the 60s -- still trucking along making it easy to write database-integrated applications. Indeed what was marketed back then as "a database" was typically a full-featured application programming environment, including UI tools, transactional DB-integrated high level language, report generation system, compiler and re-distributable runtime. Products like the xBases (dBase, FoxPro, Clipper), Paradox, PowerBuilder, 4th Dimension and Access/VB were the standard for zillions of independent developers writing small custom in-house line-of-business / industry-specific applications. This was a much simpler and tidier version of what turned into web development (including "intranet" applications). Again, the web killed most of this with its WAN support and universal client, but at enormous cost and complexity.

5. The Web Was Still Niche

1994 was the year of the first WWW conference, the founding of the W3C, the year Netscape was released .. it was the year "everyone got the web". I believe this was a mistake, and we all would have been better off doing something else instead. So 1993 it is. Gopher existed then too, along with IRC, FTP, NNTP and WAIS; things were fine.

The web did bring an enormous flourishing of creativity, expression, universal access and connectivity. But it also brought with it a model of computing imported wholesale from the magazine industry: software as flashy and visual "content" supported by ads, rather than functionality provided for pay. I argue this has been a net negative to society, despite the subsidy to non-paying users that ad-supported software provides. Nobody was passing laws trying to protect teenagers from the psychological effects of 4GL applications.

kaberett

Ridiculous indulgent breakfast situation (though having now looked up Culinary Strata because A asked, I am extremely unconvinced that pistachio croissants with raspberries)... counts.
Therapy session, spent entirely talking about One Thing (with tendrils), has left me feeling distinctly more settled.
Today's primary Make Numbers Go Down project has been working my way through some of the short fiction I've had open in tabs since [mumble]. Highlight thus far is Naomi Kritzer's The Thing About Ghost Stories (cn parental death, dementia).
The other New Thing I started consuming today is A Physical Education, which is extremely and often graphically about diet culture and disordered eating, but which 11% of the way through the audio file I am Very Much Enjoying. Further updates to follow. (The library only has audio, I apparently put a hold on it seven weeks ago though I can't at this point remember where I came across it, and The First Headphones I Have Ever Tolerated remain excellent. Shokz OpenRun Pro.)
The Child liked the replacement mock cherries; spring flowers are excellent (we are firmly heading into daffodils now); Routine Dinner tonight DID work even though the app initially Frightened Me by claiming first available pickup was tomorrow morning.

maju

The girls went back to school today for a very short 2-day school week.

It's a beautiful mild day, about 5°C/41°F, clear and sunny. If it wasn't for the twelve inches of snow covering everything it would look positively spring-like outside. I did enjoy going for a walk this morning, and I'm hoping walks will become more frequent now that we're getting into March. (I can't believe we're already two months into the year.)

I managed to get my puzzle finished this morning and send my daughter a photo. The other puzzle she gave me is 1000 pieces and I'm feeling a bit daunted about getting it started. I lashed out and bought myself some more 500 piece puzzles so I think I'll start one of those next. Before I can start on a bigger puzzle I need to ask my daughter to save some small plastic fruit boxes for me because those are great for sorting pieces into.

I've been watching a most excellent show on Britbox, "Twenty Twelve", a satirical mockumentary about a team of bureaucrats headed by Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey) organising the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Sadly, I finished it today (it's a very short series) but I found another show with the same cast of characters in a show called "W1A", where they're now in charge of values at the BBC.

oursin

I've posted occasionally about Maria Sibylla Merian, this sounds like an interesting book on her and her art.

***

The funding to save the area surrounding the Cerne Giant for the National Trust has been raised: any further donations will go to habitat creation and increasing access.

***

Exhibition: North Staffordshire Miners’ Wives Action Group Archive (formed in response to the 1984 miners’ strike,members have been actively campaigning for over 40 years).

***

Martyrdom, Misrepresentation and the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ (I was at uni with a Loveless descendant). And I discovered that the Internet Archive has a recording of the BBC Home Service broadcast of Miles Malleson and H Brook's Six Men of Dorset.

***

More rather horrifying reports coming out about the surrogacy industry: Embryo couriers, student egg donors and cut-price surrogates. Journalist Alev Scott investigates northern Cyprus’s booming baby business — where Brits head for cheap treatment, gender selection and lax legislation.

***

Researching Love Letters:

The National Archives is hosting the exhibition 'Love Letters', exploring 500 years of expressions of love. This exhibition captures the voices of paupers and monarchs, reflecting friendships, romance, and more. But why does love appear in government documents?

***

Recovering “Lesbian” Voices in the Middle Ages: Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Germanic Mystics.

***

The Rohonc Codex: Hungary’s Mysterious Manuscript That No One Can Read

***

Yay: Senate House Library secures future of priceless LGBTQ+ collection with support from the Heritage Fund

Boo: County Durham WWI ledger bought at car boot sale for £20 set to sell for over £1k at auction: The museum-quality register lists the names of 900 men who signed up in just three days in December 1915

kiya

Files

( I'm cutting this because maybe you don't want to see Epstein files-related poetry. )

elisem

Whoops! It was John Henry Newman's birthday the other day, and I missed the opportunity to post this again. It can be sung to at least one version of John Henry, though things may have to be adjusted here and there. Here ya go:

When John Henry Newman was an Anglican

He went down to the Holy See

Said I wanna see the Pope 'cause I got a crazy hope

That they're gonna make a Catholic out of me, Lord, Lord,

They're gonna make a Catholic out of me.

When John Henry Newman was a young man

He wrote about a Kindly Light

He called it "Pillar of Cloud," and if you sing it real loud

It'll lead you through the gloomy night, Lord, Lord,

It'll lead you through the gloomy night.

John Henry Newman was at Oxford

He was a deacon and a curate too

He got to be a vicar but decided it was quicker

To scribble down a tract or two, Lord, Lord

To scribble down a tract or two.

John Henry Newman up at Oxford

At St. Mary's chapel on the side

He told them in a lecture that it was his conjecture

The middle way was fine and wide, Lord, Lord

The middle way was fine and wide.

John Henry Newman got in trouble

Reading monophysite lore

"This bit about "securus" -- it doesn't reassure us

I think I better think a little more, Lord, Lord,

I think I better think at Littlemore. "

John Henry Newman had a buddy

Father Ambrose, he liked Rome

They liked St. Philip Neri, so in the vale of Mary

They built themselves a home sweet home, Lord, Lord,

They built themselves a home sweet home.

John Henry Newman got converted

And it made him feel alive

But he lost a few subscribers the day he swam the Tiber

On 9 October '45, Lord, Lord,

On 9 October '45.

John Henry Newman bought a ticket

John Henry Newman went to Rome

But though he got ordained, he did not remain

He packed his bags and headed home, Lord, Lord,

He packed his bags and headed home.

John Henry Newman went to Oscott

To have a little toast and jam

And in a blaze of glory to build an Oratory

They later moved to Birmingham, Lord, Lord,

They later moved to Birmingham.

John Henry Newman took exception

To what he heard Kingsley say

Newman said "I showed ya ; I wrote an Apologia

And it's Pro Vita Sua all the way, Lord, Lord,

It's Pro Vita Sua all the way."

John Henry Newman got promoted

And they gave him a big red hat

They put it on his head, and everybody said,

"Mercy, will you look at that, Lord, Lord,

Mercy, will you look at that."

When John Henry Newman was an old man

He was a little on the quiet side.

He got a telegram from heaven on August eleven

And laid down his missal and he died, Lord, Lord,

He laid down his missal and he died.

John Henry Newman in his coffin

On compost did recline

He said "I have chosen, by completely decomposing,

To leave not a relic here to find, Lord, Lord,

I will leave not a relic here to find."

There. That was written by me some while ago -- September 20, 2010, I guess it was. Enjoy!

sonia

Minneapolis Is Going on Offense Against ICE, interview with Interview with organizer Aru Shiney-Ajay by Eric Blanc, via

cosmolinguist.

Jacobin’s Eric Blanc spoke with Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise Movement’s executive director and a lifelong Minneapolis resident, about Minneapolis’s organizing pushback and how ICE’s opponents can go on the offensive nationwide by pressuring companies like Hilton, Enterprise, and Home Depot to stop collaborating with the agency.[...]

Aru Shiney-Ajay: I don’t think the main barrier in the US is fear. It’s skepticism. Most people don’t believe in our ability to change things. So one of the most important things for organizers right now is to pick campaigns that are ambitious, tangible, and winnable — wins that aren’t so small they feel meaningless but are still actually achievable. Because one of the biggest things we need to prove to ordinary people right now is that we really do have power over how the government operates, and over what happens in our society.

andrewducker

Nice sunset.

(And lovely that the sun is up when I wake the kids at 7am and the sky still looks like this when I get home at 6pm)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

ofearthandstars

"Today, transgender people across Kansas are reporting receiving letters from the Kansas Division of Vehicles stating that they must surrender their driver's licenses and that their current credentials will be considered invalid upon the law's publication in the Kansas Register on Thursday. Should any transgender person be caught driving without a valid license, they could face a class B misdemeanor carrying up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

...In addition to the driver's license provisions, the law bans transgender people from using bathrooms matching their gender identity in public buildings and creates a bathroom bounty hunter system allowing citizens to sue transgender people they encounter in restrooms for at least $1,000 in damages, including potentially in private restrooms."

We ran Pat McCrory out of the governor's seat for a lot less.

andrewducker

1. Probably Hans Zimmer's finest work: (tags:music movies Disney video funny )

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1897060.html

[Content Advisory: info that may be US government classified and controlled unclassified info leaked to news outlets, within. Actual status is unclear to me.]

Cuba has been effectively under siege by the US since at least January.

The US has cut off all Cuba's access to fuel imports. The situation is getting increasingly desperate. And a bunch of things just happened today. Yesterday, by the time I post this.

The US seized Venezuela January 3. Venezuela had been one of Cuba's two primary sources of oil, and once the US had control of Venezuela, the US halted shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba. Cuba's other main supplier of oil was Mexico, and on Jan 27, Mexico announced it was suspending oil shipments to Cuba. The Mexican president was evasive when asked point blank if the Trump administration was pressuring them into it, but Mexico has a critical trade deal with the US coming due for renegotiating, and dare not antagonize Trump.

Two days later, Jan 29, Trump issued an EO threatening any country that ships oil to Cuba with tariffs.

Apparently, there has been, since around that time, an undeclared US naval blockade of Cuba, to prevent oil shipments from getting through. The Trump administration hasn't admitted it, but Jan 23, Politico published a report that three anonymous sources in the Trump administration said that the administration was considering a "total blockade on oil imports" to Cuba, and a few days ago the NY Times published an analysis of ship movements in the Carribean indicating that there was indeed a naval blockade.

Cuba has received no foreign oil since its last shipment from Mexico Jan 9th.

As of Feb 3, the Financial Times was reporting that a consultancy was reporting that Cuba had "15 to 20 days" of oil left. Feb 5, the UN Secretary-General spokesperson issued a statement about a humanitarian disaster looming in Cuba.

Cuba of course did what it could to ration oil, but without enough of it, things began to fall apart. They started running out of fuel for cars, public transit, trucks to ship in food, garbage trucks to take the trash, and tractors to harvest crops. Cuba primarily generates electricity from oil-burning power plants so the electrical grid started failing and they started having blackouts. People have been cooking with whatever they can burn in the streets; there is no reliable refrigeration. Of course, they are also running out of food, and have difficulty accessing water. All elective surgeries have been canceled.

Feb 8, Mexico sent a delivery of humanitarian aid – 814 tons of food and hygeine supplies – to Cuba, to arrive later that week. This doesn't violate the US sanctions. Probably.

Feb 9, Cuba notifies all airlines that fly to Cuba that Cuban airports are running out of fuel and they will no longer be able to refuel in Cuba; Air Canada announces it's suspending flights to Cuba and sending empty flights to rescue Canadians in Cuba. Canada has been the largest source of tourists to Cuba, and the tourism industry is one of Cuba's main sources of foreign currency, without which it basically can't engage in international trade.

Also Feb 9, Mexican president Sheinbaum publically called the US's sanctions on Cuba "unjust" ["muy injusto"] for how they impacted the people of Cuba and pledged to keep finding a diplomatic solution with the US to get to ship Cuba oil.

Feb 13, the Ñico López oil refinery in Havana, Cuba, had a fire. The Cuban government reports that it was swiftly contained, and that the refinery continues to function, but that an investigation was opened into its cause.

Feb 22, shipping analysis firm Windward announced that they'd detected a Russian tanker (subsequently identified as The Sea Horse by Kplr) headed from the Mediterranean to Havana, likely carrying oil, putting it on a track to directly challenge the US Navy's blockade. It is due to reach Cuba in early March.

Feb 23, Canada announced it would be sending some sort of relief supplies to Cuba, but was cagey about just of what those supplies would consist.

Today, Feb 25:

Trump announced a plan to allow US companies to sell Venezuelan oil to Cuban businesses, but not the government.

It has emerged that Marco Rubio (US Sect of State) is in talks of some sort with Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.

There was an exchange of gunfire between Cuban border forces and 10 heavily armed people in a speedboat with Florida tags who opened fire on them when discovered just off the shore. According to the Cuban government, the assailants were all Cuban residents of the US; four were killed, six wounded and taken for medical care. Cuban authorities have accused them of being terrorists. The commander of the Cuban vessel was also wounded in the initial attack from the speedboat.

The commenter VisualEconomik EN on YT argued today that Russia is unlikely to go to the mat for Cuba, for a variety of reasons, including that Russia is economically over-extended by its war in Ukraine; he also contends that Russia and China have no more patience for Cuban mismanagement and despite the tactical military advantage having turf within 100 miles of the US coastline, they're kind of done with dealing with Cuba's government. As to whether this is true, I can't say, but it sounded reasonable. This is good news if true, because otherwise, if either wanted to back Cuba against the US, this could be the match that sets off the powderkeg.

( News sources and further reading below, in chronological order of publication [6,690 words] )

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kaberett

Made it to the plot! Brought home more salad than we actually wanted to eat this evening! Mostly lamb's lettuce but some bonus baby beetroot and spinach leaves :)
Also, the broad beans are starting to emerge (well, the ones that didn't get partly dug up and then abandoned on the surface unmunched, anyway; those have now been reinterred).
In the course of Making An Effort to Close More Tabs I rediscovered Standard Ebooks, and downloaded a bunch of things I'd apparently been interested in for Some Time: Standard Ebooks takes ebooks from sources like Project Gutenberg, formats and typesets them using a carefully designed and professional-grade style manual, fully proofreads and corrects them, and then builds them to create a new edition that takes advantage of state-of-the-art ereader and browser technology.
I spent some of the evening doing minor crafts with supplies A acquired, to make replacement cherries for a children's board game, using red wooden beans and green cotton string. I am mildly concerned that the Child might disapprove of the string being green rather than red, but We Shall See...
Cleeeeeeeeeen hair.

cosmolinguist

I've accrued a simply horrifying number of open tabs, and I'm finally able to whittle them down a bit.

I'm finally able to read a few of those I've accumulated about Minneapolis/ICE. Here's my favorite one so far:

I feel more from Minnesota than I’ve ever felt. is a great quote -- even from four thousand miles away I feel more from Minnesota than I ever have, but this goes on:

But now I know as I’m walking down the street that I have hundreds of people who will swarm to help me if needed, and that I will swarm to help them.... It’s like building a muscle of solidarity across race, across class. It’s something the Left talks about a lot, but I’ve never experienced it like this. And it’s truly ordinary people — it’s not majority organizers or activists. It’s people who’ve never organized a day in their lives but know something wrong is happening and want to do something.

And on dealing with the fear:

it starts really small, and then the small things become more risky, and you don’t want to give them up... So now the people delivering groceries — which, again, is a very low-risk thing — have been trained to know that in case ICE grabs them, they should never write the list of addresses down digitally. You write it on a physical piece of paper, and if ICE grabs you, you eat the piece of paper. ...[D]elivering groceries shouldn’t be high-risk. It violates people’s sense of dignity and basic rights, and that’s what creates courage.

The whole thing is so good, it's well worth a read.

writerlibrarian

Health stuff

Much, much better. I do not want to cut off my right leg. Which is nice.

Teacher stuff

I'm teaching a class later today. We are talking about writing book annotations. For bibliographies, critics, book recommendations, etc. Mostly based on Joyce Saricks' works in Reader's advisory field. Here are two short articles she wrote for BookList on "Annotation writing" and "Writing about books" if you are curious. It's what we do almost every day here on our blogs, book social platforms like Goodreads, Librarything, Listy, The Storygraph. I went with the basic structure: introduction, turning point, climax and conclusion, less than 250 words. I could have chosen less than 150 words but they are novice for most of them in writing that kind of work. It reminded me of the times fandom was on a drabble spree.
100 words, no more, no less .

I'm a product of university studies from the 1980s. I studied French literature with professors that had been teaching for at least a few decades. I learned to write essays, critics, annotation through the structuralism theories and formalist narratology. Hence, Genette, Barthes, Todorov and Vladimir Propp.

I'm still working on my Holmes, greek myths retelling, remix, etc. class with a side trip through Public domain. I got lost into a rabbit hole that opened looking through the journal of Transformative Works. I had no idea Anna Todd's After was originally a RPF about Harry Styles. Consider me surprised and not surprised, LOL

I've played with Adobe Firefly, AI created images and video from text. It's ethically better than the rest of the things available. I want to see if I can remix all the version of Holmes in a short video. I played with an anime style first. You need to be logged in Bluesky to see it.

Reading

Mon très cher F, Le fantôme de l'opéra 2 by Mio Nanao. It took a violent dominator villain twist I did not see coming.

The apothecary diaries V.5 Still addicted. I have to wait like two weeks before getting V.6 in French from my library. Then V.7 is coming out only in May in French. So i'm switching to the English edition (it's volume 8 in English, the French put v.1 and v.2 together), it's coming out early March. I'll have to read the rest in ebook after that.

L'affaire du rideau bleu (Les Quatre de Baker Street #1) by Djian, Legrand and Etien. Comics about side characters in Holmes' universe that revolves around Sherlock's street urchins gang. It's not for children, mature themes, violence, etc. But interesting. I like the collection title : The Baker Street Fourth.

Watching

I'm almost done with Unveil: Jadewind (29/34), the investigating cases were interesting, both leads are good. I'm not sure about the bad guys yet.

Crafting

I'm about a third done with my red fox.

oursin

What I read

Finished Eleven Hours to Murder and went on to Death by the Dozen, which combine the cozy antics of Cat Caliban and her posse with mysteries tending to be rooted in past historical events in and around Cincinnatti. And Cat is after all pursuing a career as a PI, rather than taking up some quirky midlife career and just stumbling over bodies. And her partner is a retired cop who used to work in Juvie, not homicide. So counter to a lot of the recurrent tropes....

Then I realised, oops, that next meeting of in-person book group appears to be next Sunday - though I have not received any further notification since exchange of emails after the last meeting - so I have been reading Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life (2023), which is blurbed as 'genre-bending', meaning it does things I am not that on board with, i.e. the writer's personal stuff/odyssey and b) fictionalising bits as narrative. Though I am marking it up somewhat for her realisation that her Great Hero G Orwell was A Horror. I daresay a lot of his trouble with being basically incapable in managing matters and practicalities was down to class and educational background but you'd have thought he might have cottoned on to some of that? rather than blithely eating up the whole of their butter ration? (fairly minor in the overall marital picture).

On the go

Read a bit more in I Am a Woman but still feeling a bit bogged down, even if Laura has finally had a night of sapphic passion.

Elizabeth George, A Slowly Dying Cause (Inspector Lynley Book 22) (2025). Fortunately this was a Kobo deal. Phoning it in. Also getting rather bogged down. 20% in and only just getting a sight of Lynley, let alone Havers. Includes great chunks of autobiographical reminiscence from the corpse.

Have also made some progress on volume for review.

Up next

Have apparently manifested, in place where I would never have thought to look for it, GB Stern, The Woman in the Hall (1939), which I had been fruitlessly looking for elsewhere, with a notion of maybe recommending for book group, as has recently been reissued for the first time since 1939 by British Library Women Writers.

maju

We thought the girls would be back at school today but no, there was some heavy snow this morning so school is cancelled yet again. (So much for shovelling out my car yesterday…) I can hardly believe this whole area has been blanketed in snow for more than a month. Today FB showed me a memory from 9 years ago - a photo of trees in full spring blossom on this date in 2017 (in Maryland). I believe spring was early that year, but from this vantage point in this state it feels impossible that spring could arrive so early.

I slept well last night but I've had a bad headache all day. I wanted to tough it out but I ended up taking some paracetamol which is just barely holding it at bay.

I have no idea why I haven't received any tax documents from Social Security. I've just sent H&R Block the final 1099 from Schwab, so now SS is the only thing holding up my taxes. I've worked out how much they paid me last year so I've asked the tax agent if that would be sufficient for completing my taxes rather than waiting for the official document from SS. I'm very reluctant to call SS because of possible long hold times.

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