Yesterday (8 May 2026), Sir David Attenborough turned 100.
May. 9th, 2026 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
full_metal_ox posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
common_natureI’m assuming he’s been a formative influence for a lot of people in this community.
full_metal_ox posting in common_nature
2026 Hugos: Best Short Story
May. 9th, 2026 03:25 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
fromtheheartofeurope_feedIn case you hadn’t noticed, this year’s Hugo Voter Packet is out, with tremendous efficiency; I had however already located a lot of the finalists online, and wrote up this listing of the stories in advance.
1) My top vote goes to “In My Country”, by Thomas Ha. I thought this was a tremendously creepy depiction of a totalitarian society where thought control and euphemism are heavy and omnipresent. Also on the Nebula ballot.
Third paragraph (no internal sections):
Like all neighborhoods, mine has a blue house.
2) “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro was one of my picks for the BSFA Awards, but didn’t make the cut with voters. It is a well imagined story of what happens if your ex gets off with your clone. Second paragraph of third section:
You didn’t know these things about him when he first moved to your city. You’d talked yourself out of the associate’s degree before high school graduation, pragmatism trumping college dreams, and taken an apprenticeship as an electrician with a program specializing in bot tech. You were progressing well, nearing the end of your training. You liked unravelling tricky problems the best, diagnosing a malfunctioning bot like a doctor might a patient.
3) “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days”, by Samantha Mills, is a very short (2000 words) set of effective vignettes about love in times of apocalypse.Second paragraph of third section:
We adopt a pair of cats. We name them Shaun and Liz.
4) “Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim. What do you do if you are a teenager whose mother has been replaced by an AI? Second paragraph of third section:
Rina’s in her late twenties. Before there was Rina, there was Wren, and before Wren, there was Agatha, all of whom were pretty, strawberry-blonde women who Cassie’s father had dismissed before they turned thirty. On the screens, Cassie’s mom is forever twenty-five. Some digital people age in simulacrum. Others stay the same as when they were created, and AMY was made the moment that Cassie’s father had the funds to make himself a wife
5) “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg, about a superhero who is also a wheelchair user. I appreciate the message but I found the prose a bit clunky. Second paragraph of thirdsection:
The union leader, a woman named “Big Dig” with hands like gopher claws, went through the agenda. Most of it was assigning press stuff. But eventually we got to the one real thing on the agenda—the union wanted to defeat Doctor Croc, a green scaly menace who’d been razing buildings, most recently a conference center.
6) “Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson. I didn’t really understand this one, and to the extent that I did, I wasn’t sure if it was sf. Second paragraph of third section:
I work at the high school where I graduated.
Are their minds wiped every night?
May. 9th, 2026 04:12 pmoursinThough I suspect it's more just 'did not bother to do any research'.
Two pieces in today's Guardian Saturday.
The one about blokes being (IMHO) totally scammed over testosterone doesn't appear to be online yet, but I, who have done my time in the noisome pits of sex-related quackery, was going: this is the latest round of what used to be rejuvenation operations of various kinds (HAI! WB Yeats!), the Blakoe energiser, electrical belts, devices to prevent the leakage of the precious manly fluids, pills to restore Lost Manhood, and I wouldn't be surprised if radium tonics had featured at some point.
The placebo reaction is a powerful thing.
And then we get The rise of the literary nepo baby? The children of famous novelists on following in their parents’ footsteps.
Well, maybe in these parlous times it does help getting an agent and one's foot in the door at a publisher? But it is hardly a new phenomenon that there is More Than One Writer In The Family.
Will concede that perhaps I am thinking of those literary families of an earlier era which were perhaps more into churning out more or less hackwork as a cottage industry (e.g. the Allinghams).
Then I bethought me that Angela Thirkell's son Colin MacInnes was also a writer, albeit, as one may see from that Wikipedia entry, a very different article from Mama, wot. (I seem to recall from the bios of her that I read that they were estranged and he was a hostile witness.)
There's also a bit of a reverse pattern in the Drabble family, whereby John Drabble took to novel-writing after his daughters. (Famous Sibling Literary Feuds....)
(no subject)
May. 9th, 2026 09:47 amskygiantsI have succumbed to peer pressure and started rereading Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy -- well that's not true, I have reread the first book, Assassin's Apprentice, and told myself [lying] I PROBABLY won't go on from here, I just want to remember what's what! But it seems I will in fact be going on from here because to my surprise I thought Assassin's Apprentice was better than I expected or indeed remembered it being and now I want to get to the Liveship Traders trilogy, which is the one I actually actively remember as being good [citation: fourteen-year-old Becca, a notoriously unreliable narrator as we have many times established.]
The thing is I essentially remembered nothing about Assassin's Apprentice because at the time I read it I didn't really know the narrative value of the fraught emotional bond between a protagonist and their mediocre-to-bad mentor and Assassin's Apprentice is NOTHING but mediocre-to-bad mentors. This book is chockablock full of problematic adults intensely projecting their various personal traumas and failures on our young protagonist and attempting to extend him care and guidance through these various highly distorted lenses, and unfortunately their best at its best is never very good but you can't say they're not trying: not really appealing to me at fourteen but delicious to me at forty.
Assassin's Apprentice begins with the arrival of our protagonist on a royal doorstep, age sixish: this kid is the illegitimate son of the famously upright, faithful, virtuous, happily married, non-slutty heir to the throne, Prince Chivalry, and his unknown relatives have decided that it's time for the child to be Chivalry's problem. This immediately and publicly blows up the entire political situation in the country, as Chivalry and his wife subsequently remove themselves from the line of succession and retire to a remote country estate without ever interacting with the child in question.
So that's Fitz, a kid with no official status who's a walking Weird Situation For Everyone. As for his various mediocre mentors, we've got:
Burrich, who was Chivalry's overwhelmingly devoted right-hand man, and due to a one-two-three punch of inconveniently timed injury/Fitz's arrival/Chivalry's retirement has found himself demoted from Heroic Hand of the Heir to the Throne to local stablemaster and accidental foster parent to the kid who blew up his life and his boss'
Chade, the king's assassin, who started from a similar position to Fitz and has been tasked by the king with molding Fitz into just as useful a tool for the royal dynasty as Chade has been for all these years
Verity, Fitz's uncle and the new responsible-but-overwhelmed heir to the throne, a pleasant and dutiful man with minimal emotional intelligence, who is always sort of absently nice to Fitz until the Kingdom's Problems start Eating Him Alive and suddenly things become enjoyably fraught as the potential increasingly arises that perhaps the Kingdom's Problems would eat Verity alive a little less if he let them eat Fitz alive a little more, but he is not going to do that! because he has ethics! but they both know that the possibility is there!!
Lady Patience, Chivalry's wife, who shows up midway through the book when Fitz is a teenager like 'oops possibly this child should have been parented by us? who says you can't fix the failures of the past! I'm doing it right now!'
What I find charming about Lady Patience in particular is that it's really obvious that to Chivalry she was his beautiful carefree manic pixie dream girl and to everyone else she is a nightmare. In fact all these people are sort of nightmares, and they all do care deeply about Fitz, and are also all failing him in important ways that have to do with their own deeply personal blind spots. The book's strength is in the evenhanded way it looks at these people and their strengths and their failures, and lets both the love and the mistakes matter equally.
The book's weakness is in that Robin Hobb apparently decided that since she had all these deeply flawed sympathetic characters, she also needed some actual villains that no one could possibly feel sympathetic about. There's an evil prince who wants to usurp the throne, and there are also some evil pirates who are kidnapping people from the kingdom and turning them into Soulless Monsters, or rather whatblotthis accurately describes as video game NPCs that you don't need to feel bad about killing. The fact that Hobb goes to great lengths to explain how everyone is very distraught about the situation and does some failed experiments to ensure that there's no way to turn these people back from being soulless monsters and you really truly don't need to feel bad about killing them really just makes it worse.
Also, I think it's important to note that Robin Hobb really is better than most of her peers at thinking about the practical requirements of domestic animals in a Nineties Eurofantasy environment; the proper care of horses and dogs forms a significant underlying element of the book and occasionally becomes a major plot point, especially since Fitz's Special Secret Skill is dog telepathy [Burrich thinks From Personal Experience this is an evil perversion that will ruin Fitz's life and that he must train out of Fitz as much as possible] [this is definitely not a metaphor for anything] [Robin Hobb wants to know how you could you possibly ask that]. Anyway the flip side of this is that Robin Hobb will Not hesitate to kill a puppy. Never think she won't do it. She has a knife to another puppy's throat right now. ( spoilers )
The thing is I essentially remembered nothing about Assassin's Apprentice because at the time I read it I didn't really know the narrative value of the fraught emotional bond between a protagonist and their mediocre-to-bad mentor and Assassin's Apprentice is NOTHING but mediocre-to-bad mentors. This book is chockablock full of problematic adults intensely projecting their various personal traumas and failures on our young protagonist and attempting to extend him care and guidance through these various highly distorted lenses, and unfortunately their best at its best is never very good but you can't say they're not trying: not really appealing to me at fourteen but delicious to me at forty.
Assassin's Apprentice begins with the arrival of our protagonist on a royal doorstep, age sixish: this kid is the illegitimate son of the famously upright, faithful, virtuous, happily married, non-slutty heir to the throne, Prince Chivalry, and his unknown relatives have decided that it's time for the child to be Chivalry's problem. This immediately and publicly blows up the entire political situation in the country, as Chivalry and his wife subsequently remove themselves from the line of succession and retire to a remote country estate without ever interacting with the child in question.
So that's Fitz, a kid with no official status who's a walking Weird Situation For Everyone. As for his various mediocre mentors, we've got:
Burrich, who was Chivalry's overwhelmingly devoted right-hand man, and due to a one-two-three punch of inconveniently timed injury/Fitz's arrival/Chivalry's retirement has found himself demoted from Heroic Hand of the Heir to the Throne to local stablemaster and accidental foster parent to the kid who blew up his life and his boss'
Chade, the king's assassin, who started from a similar position to Fitz and has been tasked by the king with molding Fitz into just as useful a tool for the royal dynasty as Chade has been for all these years
Verity, Fitz's uncle and the new responsible-but-overwhelmed heir to the throne, a pleasant and dutiful man with minimal emotional intelligence, who is always sort of absently nice to Fitz until the Kingdom's Problems start Eating Him Alive and suddenly things become enjoyably fraught as the potential increasingly arises that perhaps the Kingdom's Problems would eat Verity alive a little less if he let them eat Fitz alive a little more, but he is not going to do that! because he has ethics! but they both know that the possibility is there!!
Lady Patience, Chivalry's wife, who shows up midway through the book when Fitz is a teenager like 'oops possibly this child should have been parented by us? who says you can't fix the failures of the past! I'm doing it right now!'
What I find charming about Lady Patience in particular is that it's really obvious that to Chivalry she was his beautiful carefree manic pixie dream girl and to everyone else she is a nightmare. In fact all these people are sort of nightmares, and they all do care deeply about Fitz, and are also all failing him in important ways that have to do with their own deeply personal blind spots. The book's strength is in the evenhanded way it looks at these people and their strengths and their failures, and lets both the love and the mistakes matter equally.
The book's weakness is in that Robin Hobb apparently decided that since she had all these deeply flawed sympathetic characters, she also needed some actual villains that no one could possibly feel sympathetic about. There's an evil prince who wants to usurp the throne, and there are also some evil pirates who are kidnapping people from the kingdom and turning them into Soulless Monsters, or rather what
blotthis accurately describes as video game NPCs that you don't need to feel bad about killing. The fact that Hobb goes to great lengths to explain how everyone is very distraught about the situation and does some failed experiments to ensure that there's no way to turn these people back from being soulless monsters and you really truly don't need to feel bad about killing them really just makes it worse. Also, I think it's important to note that Robin Hobb really is better than most of her peers at thinking about the practical requirements of domestic animals in a Nineties Eurofantasy environment; the proper care of horses and dogs forms a significant underlying element of the book and occasionally becomes a major plot point, especially since Fitz's Special Secret Skill is dog telepathy [Burrich thinks From Personal Experience this is an evil perversion that will ruin Fitz's life and that he must train out of Fitz as much as possible] [this is definitely not a metaphor for anything] [Robin Hobb wants to know how you could you possibly ask that]. Anyway the flip side of this is that Robin Hobb will Not hesitate to kill a puppy. Never think she won't do it. She has a knife to another puppy's throat right now. ( spoilers )
January 2004 books
May. 9th, 2026 02:20 pmfromtheheartofeurope_feedIn anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
The most crucial event of January 2004 was that little U took her first steps, at 13 months.
My first work outing of the year was to the Liberals’ New Year reception in Brussels, after which I note that I had an awful lot of whisky with MEP Graham Watson. I was on a panel with the Bosnian and Croatian foreign ministers as well. (Fraser Cameron sitting between them.) This was shortly after returning from a conference on Moldova in Munich.
We also did a report for the new Independent Monitoring Commission in Northern Ireland, comparing its mission with Balkan equivalents. This was also the month that I started to seriously strategise about getting a job with the new European Commission due to take office at the end of the year. (Spoiler: I didn’t get a job there in the end.)
I read 9 books that month.
Non-fiction 3
Home Rule: An Irish History 1800-2000, by Alvin Jackson
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin
The Procrastinator’s Handbook: Mastering the Art of Doing It Now. by Rita Emmett
SF 5
1610: A Sundial in a Grave, by Mary Gentle
Looking Backward: from 2000 to 1887, by Edward Bellamy
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
From the Dust Returned, by Ray Bradbury
The Best of Lester Del Rey
Comics 1
Death: The High Cost of Living, by Neil Gaiman
3,900 pages
3/9 by women
none by PoC
The Lord of the Rings is of course one of my favourite books ever, but that was a re-read (you can get it here if you still need to). My best new book this month was Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys, which is superb and made me a real Pepys fanboy (and also a bit of a Claire Tomalin fan). You can get it here.
The one to skip: disappointed by 1610.
Books Received, May 2 — May 8
May. 9th, 2026 09:13 amjames_davis_nicoll
Six works new to me. Three are SF, two fantasy and Fiyah is a mix. At least two of the novels are series. Interesting that SF is such a large fraction. Is SF making a comeback?
Books Received, May 2 — May 8
Poll #34579 Books Received, May 2 — May 8
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22
Which of these look interesting?
View Answers
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Cho-yeop (April 2026)
11 (50.0%)
The Republic of Memory by Mahmud el Sayed (May 2026)
9 (40.9%)
Mortal Things by Marie Lu (October 2026)
3 (13.6%)
Maker of Gods by Maria Z. Medina (October 2026)
0 (0.0%)
Forged in FIYAH: Celebrating Ten Years of Black Speculative Fiction edited by Davaun Sanders (September 2026)
9 (40.9%)
This Crimson Ruin by Rebecca Thorne (December 2026)
2 (9.1%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
20 (90.9%)
Postscript to my previous entry
May. 9th, 2026 12:09 pmrydra_wongImportant things:
* Just as you should not read The Fortunate Fall if you want a romantic Happily Ever After, you should not read What We Are Seeking if you want a book which neatly ties up all its plot threads.
It's not quite in the same league of non-resolution as Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand (my beloved), but.
Assorted important things happen; the initial situation is radically changed; key decisions are made and alliances are formed. How it will play out is something that will clearly evolve over subsequent years and decades, but the book chooses to leave it at that moment of resolve rather than resolution, with the crucial shifts being internal and interpersonal.
* As an author, Cameron Reed may be the most "not aromantic but she believes in their beliefs" I've ever encountered.
Romantic love is a very real thing in her work, but it doesn't sway the moral or narrative universe of her novels in the way we're trained to expect (and the presence of an explicitly aro character in What We Are Seeking is not accidental).
I love this SO FUCKING MUCH.
* John Maraintha and Iren and Laura and Suddharma and Vo and Pirro andBlue Green.
* Just as you should not read The Fortunate Fall if you want a romantic Happily Ever After, you should not read What We Are Seeking if you want a book which neatly ties up all its plot threads.
It's not quite in the same league of non-resolution as Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand (my beloved), but.
Assorted important things happen; the initial situation is radically changed; key decisions are made and alliances are formed. How it will play out is something that will clearly evolve over subsequent years and decades, but the book chooses to leave it at that moment of resolve rather than resolution, with the crucial shifts being internal and interpersonal.
* As an author, Cameron Reed may be the most "not aromantic but she believes in their beliefs" I've ever encountered.
Romantic love is a very real thing in her work, but it doesn't sway the moral or narrative universe of her novels in the way we're trained to expect (and the presence of an explicitly aro character in What We Are Seeking is not accidental).
I love this SO FUCKING MUCH.
* John Maraintha and Iren and Laura and Suddharma and Vo and Pirro and
Interesting Links for 09-05-2026
May. 9th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. A year ago the CDC's cruise ship inspectors were laid off. What could have gone wrong?
- (tags:disease USA republicans OhForFucksSake )
- 2. How a potato-based diet changed the genetics of people for generations
- (tags:potato food SouthAmerica genetics )
- 3. The roleplaying magazine with a 51 year history
- (tags:history roleplaying publishing )
- 4. What even *is* a hundred?
- (tags:language numbers history )
- 5. Poland is a model for economic growth
- (tags:Poland economics growth europe )
- 6. "Hot, sexy, dangerous boys cannot be copyrighted"
- (tags:publishing romance copyright law USA viaLilysea )
- 7. Reform support seems to have dropped from its peak
- (tags:politics uk )
- 8. "No, you can't bring back hanging." A handy guide for newly elected Reform councillors
- (tags:politics funny satire UK )
- 9. Trans youth denied hormones twice as likely to attempt suicide
- (tags:suicide transgender children bigotry LGBT )
- 10. 'Tortured by transphobia': The woman left in pain by the NHS
- (tags:LGBT transgender bigotry NHS pain )
Tags:
- bigotry,
- children,
- copyright,
- disease,
- economics,
- europe,
- food,
- funny,
- genetics,
- growth,
- history,
- language,
- law,
- lgbt,
- links,
- nhs,
- numbers,
- ohforfuckssake,
- pain,
- poland,
- politics,
- potato,
- publishing,
- republicans,
- roleplaying,
- romance,
- satire,
- southamerica,
- suicide,
- transgender,
- uk,
- usa,
- vialilysea
Emotional rollercoaster before 9am!
May. 9th, 2026 10:30 amcosmolinguistWhen I got off the tram and took off my mask, it caught on one of my Bluetooth earbuds.
It made the earbud fall off my ear, bounce across the platform, and fall between the edge of the platform and the just-starting-to-move tram.
A transgym pal was waiting at the station and chose this moment to come over to me and say "How's it going?"
It's going bad! I explained, and he immediately jumped down onto the track to fetch it for me.
Aww! That is a good friend. The tram had just been, and they're like every twelve minutes on the weekend or something, so it wasn't really worrying but still.
And the earbud seems fine, phew.
Batmanchester
May. 8th, 2026 11:52 pmcosmolinguistSometimes the most chaotic person you know and like, who you haven't seen in a dozen years because he's Canadian and lives like six thousand miles away, is having his last day in town before he's off on the rest of his adventures (he's done Iceland and Glasgow and has Cardiff and Somerset left to go) and the beer makes you talk about poetry and astrophysics and the inspiration to be creative and then someone wants to bum a cigarette from him and then she and her partner sit down and we chat for ages before we find out he's called Patrick and she's called Izzy and the drinks flow and the cigarettes are shared and I got home so late I don't know if I'll make it to transgym in the morning which is usually a highlight of my week...
But it's fine, there's transgym (almost) every week and when else could I have seen Bill? Not until next year when he says he's coming back. And when could we have bumped in to Izzy from Cardiff and Patrick from Dudley? Neve!
So it was totally worth it.
Candy bar
May. 7th, 2026 04:04 pmcosmolinguistSo many meetings. And the space between the meetings was taken up by meetings overrunning.
In the middle of the afternoon, when I was propping my chin up on my hand looking miserably at my computer screen because I'd been awake since 3am and couldn't get back to sleep and D asked me if I'd had lunch, and I said no and asked if I wanted a sandwich so I said yes.
And he brought me not just the sandwich and bag of chips like I expected and a can of Coke which was nice of him, but tucked on the plate next to the sandwich was a little candy bar! One of the own-brand Snickers we get from the grocery store.
It made me feel so cared for. I really needed that little candy bar and I didn't even know to request one but then there it was anyway.
some good things
May. 8th, 2026 09:35 pmkaberettOne: the Greens now have five seats on my borough council, up from none. ( Brief further local politics. )
Two: we took ourselves out on a walk this evening; A spotted a deer, we followed it further into the trees, and spent a fun little while following deer (&c) paths through what looked like... they might perhaps once have been greenhouses on half-brick walls? but with proper big trees growing up through them now and zero evidence of any glass or metal frames or anything remaining! Had no idea that was all in there; hurrah for Tiny Explore :)
Three: I have got my bike baaaaaaasically back to working order (I might need to replace the rear brake cable, which is tedious, but braking is actually extant), and am looking forward to taking advantage of the increased mobility it provides!
Four: spent the afternoon inhaling the new Murderbot. That's definitely a Murderbot.
Five: more rye-caraway-poppy bread, including an end-of-loaf with my mother's fig jam and the fancy goats' cheese I got to have with asparagus yesterday. (The nice shop human warned me that it was best before the 11th, and was that okay? I explained that that Would Not Be A Problem. I am very much enjoying causing it to Not Be A Problem.)
assorted updates
May. 8th, 2026 10:19 pmrmc28- I have had a migraine this afternoon and evening, which is the warning sign I'm pushing my sleep schedule too much, again
- I read the new Murderbot book, very hard to put down, enjoyed it very much
- earlier this week fanf and I joined 20th wedding anniversary celebrations for atreic and emperor, who remain lovely people who collect lovely people around them, yay
- last weekend Kodiaks lost to Coventry Phoenix 1-8, but I got my first ever WNIHL point with an assist on that goal. And then the next day we turned a 2-1 lead over MK Falcons into a 4-2 loss in the last ten minutes of the game and that hurt quite a lot. But also it was lovely to see some Hull camp friends on the MK side, both on and off the ice
- I started watching Ted Lasso, currently half way through season 1 and enjoying it very much. The episodes are short enough and the people / plot engaging enough I'm managing to stick with an entire episode at a time without getting distracted
- next week I'm seeing a 40th anniversary screening of Top Gun in the local IMAX screen. I got teased about did I remember seeing it on original release, which no, not quite, but it's very nearly 37 years since I first saw it on a tiny coach TV screen on a school trip to Germany. I still know most of the lines by heart
Assortment
May. 8th, 2026 07:32 pmoursinStory of enslaved boy featured in 1748 Joshua Reynolds portrait emerges in new study - I online attended a seminar the other week about black children in England from the C17th to C19th which leant fairly heavily on depictions in art (and also sounded a bit like the speaker had pulled out a bit at random examples from their 10 or was it more boxes of research materials) and implied that we could not know what happened to them once they were not more or less cute ornamental pets, so this article goes some way to show that sometimes the larger life story can be discovered.
***
This is interesting, given that it is a phase of the parturition cycle that doesn't tend to get that much attention - okay, I have read More Than The Average Person on 'bringing on the menses' and further measures if they were not brought on, and a fair amount about actual childbirth in history: but this is a bit unusual: Anticipating Birth in Early Modern England:
Scholars have described the days leading up to birth in the early modern period as a time when women purchased linens, prepared bedchambers, and called upon the services of a midwife and their gossips. However, manuscript recipe collections reveal that preparations in anticipation of labour went beyond such measures and incorporated the consumption of specific medicines. This article studies remedies that were designed to be taken six weeks before birth to reveal, in new ways, the experiences of late pregnancy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
***
More exciting work from the good people at CamPop, this time circling out from the census records: By linking millions of census records across decades, researchers are turning static snapshots of Victorian Britain into dynamic life histories – revealing how people moved, worked and lived in ways never before possible.
***
‘Live and let live’: Northern Ireland historian uncovers surprising era of tolerance of gay men:
Hulme said tacit ignorance and public silence enabled male queerness to flourish with only rare exposure, condemnation or regulation, with a “live and let live” ethos especially prevalent in the working class.
***
Muttering that this information can be found in the household recipe books at much less elite social levels, still, it's useful work if it gets people aware of just how diverse British food at that period was: The King’s Dinner: Family, nation, and identity on the British table, 1760-1820.
Tags:
Capital Christie, by Agatha Christie
May. 8th, 2026 04:06 pmfromtheheartofeurope_feedSecond paragraph of third story (“The Case of the Discontented Soldier”):
The major took a deep breath and abruptly plunged through the swing door leading to the outer office. A plain young woman looked up from her typewriter and glanced at him inquiringly.
A dozen Agatha Christie stories featuring London – though the main settings of individual stories can wander far beyond the suburbs and into the Home Counties. Includes some of her crazy wannabe political thriller work, notably “The Kidnapped Prime Minster”, and some particularly contrived romances, such as “The Case of the Discontented Soldier” and “The Listerdale Mystery”. But there’s some good classic mystery stuff here too, notably “Witness for the Prosecution”, and “The Case of the Caretaker”. Thanks to whoever at HerperCollins had the idea of finding and assembling all of these. You can get Capital Christie here.
Behind Five Willows by June Hur
May. 8th, 2026 08:58 amjames_davis_nicoll
Shin Haewon's family falls far short of haughty aristocrat Yu Seojun's very reasonable standards, as he is gracious enough to explain to Haewon. How cruel that fate compels extended proximity between Haewon and Seojun.
Behind Five Willows by June Hur
Varsity! (one last time)
May. 8th, 2026 12:02 pmrmc28The last of the Varsity ice hockey games between Oxford and Cambridge universities is tomorrow evening, at Cambridge Ice Arena, at 5pm. I will be playing for Cambridge Huskies B against Oxford Vikings C.
- Will it be high quality hockey? No
- Will it be entertaining? Absolutely
- Will I fall over? Obviously
- Will I get in a fight? Maybe, if someone touches my goalie
My goalie is one of the Men's Blues, who put on goalie pads for the first time on Tuesday. Generally the squad is the people who couldn't play Varsity for Huskies or Women's Blues, plus the aforementioned novice in goal and an experienced goalie skating out. Our attempt at an entire forward line of goalies was regrettably thwarted by people having other commitments.
The results of the other Varsity games this year were:
- Cambridge Narwhals v Oxford Vikings A: won by Cambridge
- Cambridge Huskies v Oxford Vikings B: won by Oxford
- Cambridge Women's Blues v Oxford Women's Blues: won by Oxford
- Cambridge Men's Blues v Oxford Men's Blues: won by Cambridge
So this is both a not very serious game, and vitally important to win the best of five.
I'm still getting used to my new skates so I'll be playing this (and my other game for Kodiaks on Sunday) in the old ones.
Photo cross-post
May. 8th, 2026 03:22 amandrewducker
I haven't been quite this close to a moving train before.
Original
is here on Pixelfed.scot.
Proof of life
May. 7th, 2026 06:49 pmazurelunaticnorabombay is visiting! We hung out yesterday afternoon and had dinner. Additional dinner plans for tonight.Dotted Cloud Sunset
May. 7th, 2026 08:37 pmyourlibrarian posting in common_nature
A recent sunset seemed to be highlighting the dotted clouds in the area, which made the sky look more patterned than usual.
( Read more... )
some good things
May. 7th, 2026 11:37 pmkaberettOne: bread/avocado/scramble breakfast exactly as good as I had been looking forward to, with bonus realisation that we currently have some plum jam open so I got to finish with the rye-caraway-poppy (still mostly white wheat but those were the flavours) + butter + plum jam and this, too, was magnificent. (Bonus food excellence: ASPARAGUS that is now in season; some brownie bar + strawberries.)
Two: gym!!! I made the decision that the traffic was awful enough that buses would be a bad idea so I got bonus admiration of some excellent front gardens I have been otherwise oblivious to, and also observed More Coot Eggs.
Three: Murderbot is apparently managing to occupy a sweet spot in terms of complexity and degree of emotional engagement that means I'm actually managing to read the new one. (Bookshop.org very much does NOT have the ebook in the UK store so I even don't feel bad that I forgot it existed until after I'd given Kobo money.)
Four: post-therapy treat was Completing The Speedrun Achievement for the arcane library game, thereby sorting me out with All achievements, so I am now probably ready to contentedly move on.
Five: spent a chunk of the evening removing labels from the Child's clothing, and it is very very nice to know that his life will be materially improved as a result.
What fascinating timing
May. 7th, 2026 05:38 pmjames_davis_nicollSeen in email:
(QWOP)
Free League Announces Legends of Stormbringer RPG Based On Dragonbane Mechanics
Elric returns to the tabletop in an officially licensed RPG powered by the award-winning Dragonbane system
Hello!
Today, we are thrilled to announce Legends of Stormbringer, a new officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game based on the iconic fantasy works of Michael Moorcock, planned for release in 2027.
Legends of Stormbringer will carry you into the Young Kingdoms – a world of dying empires, warring gods, and doomed heroes – and bring Moorcock’s richly imagined setting to the tabletop using rules mechanics based on our award-winning Dragonbane RPG. The game will feature the same accessible, dynamic, and deadly approach that has made Dragonbane one of our most celebrated titles.
Returning to the Young Kingdoms as setting writer is Richard Watts, whose work on previous Stormbringer RPGs helped define how generations of roleplayers have experienced Moorcock’s world.
“This has been in the works for several months and we’re thrilled to finally share the news,” said Tomas Härenstam, CEO of Free League Publishing. “We are honored to bring Elric and the Young Kingdoms to the tabletop once more.”
Further details – including crowdfunding plans and additional creative team announcements – will be revealed at a later date.
Seen online:
Goodman Games secures official Elric of Melniboné license for 2027 release
(QWOP)
Free League Announces Legends of Stormbringer RPG Based On Dragonbane Mechanics
Elric returns to the tabletop in an officially licensed RPG powered by the award-winning Dragonbane system
Hello!
Today, we are thrilled to announce Legends of Stormbringer, a new officially licensed tabletop roleplaying game based on the iconic fantasy works of Michael Moorcock, planned for release in 2027.
Legends of Stormbringer will carry you into the Young Kingdoms – a world of dying empires, warring gods, and doomed heroes – and bring Moorcock’s richly imagined setting to the tabletop using rules mechanics based on our award-winning Dragonbane RPG. The game will feature the same accessible, dynamic, and deadly approach that has made Dragonbane one of our most celebrated titles.
Returning to the Young Kingdoms as setting writer is Richard Watts, whose work on previous Stormbringer RPGs helped define how generations of roleplayers have experienced Moorcock’s world.
“This has been in the works for several months and we’re thrilled to finally share the news,” said Tomas Härenstam, CEO of Free League Publishing. “We are honored to bring Elric and the Young Kingdoms to the tabletop once more.”
Further details – including crowdfunding plans and additional creative team announcements – will be revealed at a later date.
Seen online:
Goodman Games secures official Elric of Melniboné license for 2027 release
Building 903, by Lois Lowry (DNF)
May. 7th, 2026 12:17 pmrachelmanijaAn advance copy of a new book by Lois Lowry, author of The Giver and other classics. It is unfortunately basically the bad version of The Giver. In fact what it mostly reminded me of was telophase's YA dystopia generator, which produces gems like Tweak: Sickness has been banned and the government controls shopping and Whimper: Cats have been banned and the government controls dancing the hustle. In the case of Building 903, books have been banned and the government controls popsicles. Yes, really.
In a future America ruled by a 200 year old dictator, books (ALL books), fiction, art, music, storytelling, playgrounds, live pets (robot pets are OK), free elections, religion, tattoos, matches and other fire-making tools, congregating in groups, iconoclastic clothing, travel, and eating meat or fish are banned. Old people, marriage, and popsicles are controlled by the government. Yes, really.
She leaned over, pushed the button that dispensed a frozen snack, and made a face when she saw it was green; she liked the orange ones better. But she peeled the covering from the green one and licked at it. I bet anything, Tessa thought, I could get Dad to invent a selector button so they wouldn't come out at random; I could choose orange. Or red: the red ones aren't bad. Then, though, the green ones would pile up, and it would be wasteful, I suppose, because no one would ever eat them.
To be fair, I'm just assuming the frozen snacks are popsicles. For all I know she's licking a piece of frozen broccoli.
Tessa's father and twin brother are supergeniuses. Tessa and her mother are just average. I did not care for this. Anyway, Tessa's brother vanishes and the book goes on and on and ON with nothing much happening. I skipped to the end.
( Read more... )
telophase's YA dystopia generator, which produces gems like Tweak: Sickness has been banned and the government controls shopping and Whimper: Cats have been banned and the government controls dancing the hustle. In the case of Building 903, books have been banned and the government controls popsicles. Yes, really.In a future America ruled by a 200 year old dictator, books (ALL books), fiction, art, music, storytelling, playgrounds, live pets (robot pets are OK), free elections, religion, tattoos, matches and other fire-making tools, congregating in groups, iconoclastic clothing, travel, and eating meat or fish are banned. Old people, marriage, and popsicles are controlled by the government. Yes, really.
She leaned over, pushed the button that dispensed a frozen snack, and made a face when she saw it was green; she liked the orange ones better. But she peeled the covering from the green one and licked at it. I bet anything, Tessa thought, I could get Dad to invent a selector button so they wouldn't come out at random; I could choose orange. Or red: the red ones aren't bad. Then, though, the green ones would pile up, and it would be wasteful, I suppose, because no one would ever eat them.
To be fair, I'm just assuming the frozen snacks are popsicles. For all I know she's licking a piece of frozen broccoli.
Tessa's father and twin brother are supergeniuses. Tessa and her mother are just average. I did not care for this. Anyway, Tessa's brother vanishes and the book goes on and on and ON with nothing much happening. I skipped to the end.
( Read more... )
Thursday reading
May. 7th, 2026 05:17 pmfromtheheartofeurope_feedCurrent
Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution, by James Tipton
Sometime Never…, by Justin Richards
Inventing the Renaissance, by Ada Palmer
The Damnable Question, by George Dangerfield
Last books finished
The Lost Dimension Book 1, by Cavan Scott et mult al
Crooked House, by Agatha Christie
Equinox, by David Towsey
The Raven Scholar, by Antonia Hodgson
The Lost Dimension Book 2, by Gordon Rennie et mult al
Kosovo: The Path to Contested Statehood in the Balkans, by James Ker-Lindsay
Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe, by C.B. Lee
Next books
Jubilee, by Robert Shearman
British Generals in Blair’s Wars, by Jonathan Bailey
Slow Horses, by Mick Herron
Further Le Guin thoughts
May. 7th, 2026 06:02 pmoursinA further trail of thought more or less kicked off by this comment by flemmings on yesterday's post about Ursula as an anthropologist's daughter and the way that inflected her fiction -
- and then I went, hey, wasn't he part of that whole Franz Boas group that I read that book about at the beginning of 2020 (Charles King, The Reinvention of Humanity) and would she not have been aware of Significant Lady Anthropologists and their work (not just her own ma) -
Like, Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict?
(Maybe the forthcoming biography will shine some light there???)
Or was that going on in some entirely different compartment to the requirements of fictional narrative? (thinking of my 1920s gals and the gulf between what they were up to with their affairs and abortions and propagating birth control and what the protags in their novels were permitted to get up to.)
Or was there a whole generational thing going on there, which I sort of touched on in commenting about Mitchison on this post, though I think I could make a larger case about that generation that had had to fight for a lot of rights that were already accepted as given by UKleG's day even if there were still major constraints.
(Seem to recollect that I did not think Julie Phillips in that book on writers and motherhood quite brought out the extent to which she was writing of a very specific generation/time-period. With some exceptions.)
Tags:
fromtheheartofeurope_feedI am enjoying working my way through the BBC Doctor Who audiobooks starting from a decade ago. This is a series of four loosely linked stories, two by one of my favourite Who writers (James Goss) and two by one of my least favourite (George Mann). The linking theme is a family called Winter who possess a card that summons the Doctor and the TARDIS, and is passed through the centuries. I may have missed something, but I didn’t think that the overarching theme was actually resolved, which subtracts from the narrative oomph. Also unfortunately the sequence is not related to Goss’ excellent Eleventh Doctor novel The Dead of Winter.
The Gods of Winter by James Goss, read by Claire Higgins (Ohila of Karn), starts with a little girl who has lost her cat and summons the Doctor to find it. We then gradually discover that there is more going on in the human space colony in conflict with the mysterious Golhearn. I don’t think it is a big spoiler to say that the second half of the story takes us several decades forward to a moment when the little girl is now one of her community’s leaders, in dire straits, and the Doctor exerts diplomatic skills to sort it all out. You can get The Gods of Winter here.
The House of Winter, by George Mann, read by David Schofield (Odin) surprised me in that I actually enjoyed it. Th premise is that the Doctor and Clara are stuck in a house with its creepy owner and two creepy servants, and a bunch of vampire moths. There is one classically awful Mann-ish bit of description: “His expression was serene, save for his eyes which were open and staring, peering up at her as if pleading for help” – so, not actually very serene at all. But apart from that it hung together very well. You can get The House of Winter here.
The Sins of Winter, by James Goss, read by Robin Soans (Luvic in The Keeper of Traken and the Chronolock guy in Face the Raven), is the best of these (and the fact that the linking between the four is weak means that you can get this without having to worry about the other three). Shadrak Winter, the High Cardinal of the Cult of the Prime Self, summons the TARDIS to his space cathedral which is infested by the sluglike Sinful, who love feasting on people’s past sins. The Doctor has plenty of these to go on, leaving Clara to save the day. It’s a theme that has been used before and since i Doctor Who, but executed very well here. I see that fan opinion is divided on this one, but I’m on the positive side. You can get The Sins of Winter here.
The Memory of Winter, by George Mann, read by Jemma Redgrave (who is the best reader of all of these) takes the Doctor and Clara to fifteenth-century France for an adventure with Joan of Arc. There is Time Lord knowledge turning up in the wrong place and giving poor Joan the impression of hearing voices. I thought the story was well enough done, but it doesn’t really tie into the historical events around Joan at all and doesn’t resolve the linking mystery of the series. You can get The Memory of Winter here.
Another seed I will put down to get it out of my head
May. 7th, 2026 09:10 amjames_davis_nicollHumans discover ancient and extremely enigmatic alien relics around the Solar System. On inventing plot-enabling As Fast As Light starships (PEAFAL), humans determine pretty much any system old enough has relics from the Whoever They Were (WTW). The WTW showeed up in the early Proterozoic, did their thing for 300 million years--although not on Earth, as far as anyoe can tell--and then vanished seemingly overnight for reasons that at as yet unclear.
They seem to have been interested in smaller terrestrial worlds, many of which now have life forms whose last common ancestor was six billion years ago. So probably they were xenoforming worlds? But apparently only barren worlds, for some reason. Also, if they used the PEAFAL drive, there's absolutely no evidence of it.
Age is one reason why the WTW are very enigmatic. 2.5 billion years of radiation and micrometeorites has turned all their artificial stuff into scrap. Sometimes, into subtle chemical traces in regolith. Nobody has ever reverse-engineered WTW relics into something novel to us. In fact, nobody is sure what the WTW even looked like (there are a couple of candidate remains of things that might have had big brain analogues). So, they make a nice Rorschach test for scientists to project their issues onto.
Added later:
Opinions on the WTW vary from "they were nigh-gods" to "they weren't actually intelligent at all" to "they are a Satanic plot."
PEAFAL ships interact with the interstellar medium (ISM) in ways that piss off astronomers specializing in the ISM. PEAFAL wakes could be detected at galactic distance but no non-human wakes are visible. The deal with the ISM means the longer the journey, the more likely it terminates in an energetic event somewhere in deep space. Effectively, this means there's a 1% chance per light year traversed of an unplanned terminal energetic event, which can be reduced somewhat by sending ships in pairs: one (presumably automated) trail blazer and one survivor. This is just annoying for robot probes but is an inhibiting factor for crewed starship recruitment.
PEAFAL ships are sufficiently expensive nobody builds huge ones. As well, nobody knows how to make closed cycle life support systems (LSS): the longest anyone has gone before an isolated ISS fell over and died is 20 years. Efforts to establish colonies on other planets have been very educational.
They seem to have been interested in smaller terrestrial worlds, many of which now have life forms whose last common ancestor was six billion years ago. So probably they were xenoforming worlds? But apparently only barren worlds, for some reason. Also, if they used the PEAFAL drive, there's absolutely no evidence of it.
Age is one reason why the WTW are very enigmatic. 2.5 billion years of radiation and micrometeorites has turned all their artificial stuff into scrap. Sometimes, into subtle chemical traces in regolith. Nobody has ever reverse-engineered WTW relics into something novel to us. In fact, nobody is sure what the WTW even looked like (there are a couple of candidate remains of things that might have had big brain analogues). So, they make a nice Rorschach test for scientists to project their issues onto.
Added later:
Opinions on the WTW vary from "they were nigh-gods" to "they weren't actually intelligent at all" to "they are a Satanic plot."
PEAFAL ships interact with the interstellar medium (ISM) in ways that piss off astronomers specializing in the ISM. PEAFAL wakes could be detected at galactic distance but no non-human wakes are visible. The deal with the ISM means the longer the journey, the more likely it terminates in an energetic event somewhere in deep space. Effectively, this means there's a 1% chance per light year traversed of an unplanned terminal energetic event, which can be reduced somewhat by sending ships in pairs: one (presumably automated) trail blazer and one survivor. This is just annoying for robot probes but is an inhibiting factor for crewed starship recruitment.
PEAFAL ships are sufficiently expensive nobody builds huge ones. As well, nobody knows how to make closed cycle life support systems (LSS): the longest anyone has gone before an isolated ISS fell over and died is 20 years. Efforts to establish colonies on other planets have been very educational.
Darksight Dare (Penric & Desdemona, volume 16) by Lois McMaster Bujold
May. 7th, 2026 08:53 amjames_davis_nicoll
Can two intractable problems be mutual solutions?
Darksight Dare (Penric & Desdemona, volume 16) by Lois McMaster Bujold
Interesting Links for 07-05-2026
May. 7th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Why airlines are always going bankrupt (The airline industry can be competitive or profitable, not both)
- (tags:airplanes economics )
- 2. What should be done about pathological levels of inequality
- (tags:inequality economics )
- 3. Surface temperature tops 60°C in parts of north India, satellite images show
- (tags:globalwarming doom India )
Hugos Invitational Opinion Post
May. 6th, 2026 07:20 amradiantfractureHello! Do you have opinions on this year's Hugo nominees? I would enjoy hearing them -- not for any reason other than the sheer pleasure of thinking about books. Comment freely with your opinions, predictions, and recommendations.
The Backstory
sabotabby got me hooked on the Ancillary Review of Books' podcast A Meal of Thorns via her post on the MoT episode about Ready Player One, and I've been traipsing through the back catalogue.
Last year, host Jake Casella Brookins and frequent guest Roseanna Pendlebury hashed through the Hugo short lists book by book in great toothy detail. The episode was a sublime listening experience as I wandered through the wooded trails around Pkols / Mount Doug a few weeks ago, mostly because I agreed with almost everything they said. (At least about the books I'd read.)
(Last year I happened to do pretty well on Hugo reading. Without trying very hard, I read half the books -- 3/6 novels and 3/6 novellas. This year, not so much -- I've only read Amal El-Mohtar's novella The River Has Roots.)
(NB El-Mohtar's episode of MoT on The Traitor Baru Cormorant is also excellent.)
On precedent, I've been eagerly looking forward to the MoT Hugos episode this year, but so far they don't seem to have one planned.
Hence my rough approximation. Let me interview you about the Hugo noms you read and your takes thereon.
I guess I'll go first:
I liked The River Has Roots a lot. I'm shocked to discover it's El-Mohtar's first solo long-form fiction -- her voice has, to my ear, such assurance, both here and in This is How You Lose the Time War. She knows what she wants to do with this story and she does it, piece by piece. For such a small book, the story feels spacious. It's economical but doesn't feel rushed or compressed to me. I would have liked to know a little more about how she was imagining the phenomenon of grammar. I enjoyed the chicken.
Now you! (If you want.) -- Any Hugo short lister is fair game, whether I have read it or not.
§rf§
The Backstory
sabotabby got me hooked on the Ancillary Review of Books' podcast A Meal of Thorns via her post on the MoT episode about Ready Player One, and I've been traipsing through the back catalogue.Last year, host Jake Casella Brookins and frequent guest Roseanna Pendlebury hashed through the Hugo short lists book by book in great toothy detail. The episode was a sublime listening experience as I wandered through the wooded trails around Pkols / Mount Doug a few weeks ago, mostly because I agreed with almost everything they said. (At least about the books I'd read.)
(Last year I happened to do pretty well on Hugo reading. Without trying very hard, I read half the books -- 3/6 novels and 3/6 novellas. This year, not so much -- I've only read Amal El-Mohtar's novella The River Has Roots.)
(NB El-Mohtar's episode of MoT on The Traitor Baru Cormorant is also excellent.)
On precedent, I've been eagerly looking forward to the MoT Hugos episode this year, but so far they don't seem to have one planned.
Hence my rough approximation. Let me interview you about the Hugo noms you read and your takes thereon.
I guess I'll go first:
I liked The River Has Roots a lot. I'm shocked to discover it's El-Mohtar's first solo long-form fiction -- her voice has, to my ear, such assurance, both here and in This is How You Lose the Time War. She knows what she wants to do with this story and she does it, piece by piece. For such a small book, the story feels spacious. It's economical but doesn't feel rushed or compressed to me. I would have liked to know a little more about how she was imagining the phenomenon of grammar. I enjoyed the chicken.
Now you! (If you want.) -- Any Hugo short lister is fair game, whether I have read it or not.
§rf§
dentist: crown
May. 6th, 2026 06:30 pmredbirdI went to the dentist this afternoon, and they did some uncomfortable things as part of creating a new/replacement crown for one of my teeth (which had cavities under the old crown). I currently have a temporary crown, and will be getting the permanent replacement in three weeks; it will be ready sooner, but that's the next available appointment.
I was pleased to see that my Lyft driver, the dentist, and the dental assistant were all masked when I first saw them. I told the driver it was nice to see other people masking, and I tipped extra because of it.
When I checked in, the receptionist told me there would be a $750 copay. I told her that I had been told that the crown was fully covered, and asked her to check. A few minutes later, she confirmed that I wouldn't have to pay anything. I do not understand dental insurance, including this dental insurance, which is an add-on to my Medicare Advantage plan; I would have paid the $750 if I had to, but I'm glad I don't.
I'd been planning to stop and visit some lilac bushes on the way home, but it was raining, which made that less appealing, so I didn't. I did stop at Lizzy's on the way home, and now have a total of five unlabeled pints of ice cream: three today, because a broken freezer meant I had to get the clerk to hand-scoop the ice cream, plus the two from Tosci's. However, I have blank sticky adhesive labels, which should make this easy.
I was pleased to see that my Lyft driver, the dentist, and the dental assistant were all masked when I first saw them. I told the driver it was nice to see other people masking, and I tipped extra because of it.
When I checked in, the receptionist told me there would be a $750 copay. I told her that I had been told that the crown was fully covered, and asked her to check. A few minutes later, she confirmed that I wouldn't have to pay anything. I do not understand dental insurance, including this dental insurance, which is an add-on to my Medicare Advantage plan; I would have paid the $750 if I had to, but I'm glad I don't.
I'd been planning to stop and visit some lilac bushes on the way home, but it was raining, which made that less appealing, so I didn't. I did stop at Lizzy's on the way home, and now have a total of five unlabeled pints of ice cream: three today, because a broken freezer meant I had to get the clerk to hand-scoop the ice cream, plus the two from Tosci's. However, I have blank sticky adhesive labels, which should make this easy.
some good things
May. 6th, 2026 11:00 pmkaberettOne: I have spent much of the day indulging the desire to Quietly Hyperfocus On Game and it has been a very relaxing autism to have.
Two: I have finished the questionable Ryvita we... somehow... came into possession of (I apparently object to things that are not salt & vinegar extruded potato twirls containing potassium chloride) and can now merrily go back to overpriced high protein crackers until such time as I get around to buying vital wheat gluten with which to make my own.
Three: two loaves of bread (because I strained a Lot of whey off the most recent batch of yoghurt), which are a slightly silly set of shapes but also extremely aesthetic. I am very much looking forward to extravagant breakfast featuring avocado and also scrambled egg. (New oven needs less time to do them than old one; new oven also would ideally get them rotated halfway through baking if I want them done evenly. I am trying to work out what the best way to freeze the second loaf is...)
Four: Adam brought me home British strawberries from the supermarket, all with their petals still attached.
Five: new Murderbot purchased. (When I will get around to reading it is another question, but the possibility exists!)
ludicrous question of the day
May. 6th, 2026 05:15 pmjulianMy mom, who is now 86, has vascular dementia, as noted previously.
She's more "there" in the mornings, and is sometimes able to connect up and have actual conversations, though I admit, this is not often. Then once she starts getting tireder, she is just not rooted in reality, meanders verbally, and has some kind of rich inner life to which I am not privy, and which, when she's asked about, she is unable to explain. (Which is more curious to me because she was just in 2026 in the morning, you know? But it is what it is.) This does often lead to problems because she meanders off, physically, to obey the mysterious dictates of her soul, and can't/won't explain what she wants to do, and does *not* take well to re-direction. (Or, in the words of the medical establishment, is combative.)
She's also miserable and seems to have developed actual aphasia at this point -- that is, she has something specific she wants to say but says the wrong words. Which, sometimes is commentary on 2026, but is also sometimes commentary from her inner life, so even if we could understand it, it wouldn't make sense, but the frustration is the same either way, so sympathy is at least called for.
She does recognize me pretty consistently, which is good both for her sake and mine (because the first time I actually knew she didn't know it was me was Not Entertaining), but she also firmly has the idea her parents are still alive and she wants to visit them (in Lancaster, PA), which is... not so good. My dad is very bad at dealing with the latter, and keeps going, in essence, "No, they're dead," which is. Nowhere near the response you want, there.
Also, she has no sense of time, so she's like, "Let's go!" three minutes after we start a thing. Which is one thing if it's at home, but it's more of a problem if she's at, say, her 5 year old niece's birthday party. My brother and I did decode that it's also her telling us she's done with our visits and we should go away, though, so that was good.
And, she is still doing the "taking a walk and then getting lost and getting the police called on her," thing, which frankly by this point is infuriating because why the fuck won't my dad get inside locks for the house, or at least notice that she's leaving. ?!?!??? <-- my internal state.
Anyway, the reason I'm making this post is that she's getting a lot more unstable on her feet, and has fallen a few times lately, though has not, thankfully, broken anything, but she can't get back up again when she does fall. My dad has now, despite their previously having promised each other they would Never Leave Their House, made the decision that he's open to looking into assisted living/memory care facilities, hosanna. (They've had in-house helpers for a bit, but my mom keeps taking against them because they tell her what to do and she hates that, see above re: combative.)
He called me up (I having had warning from my brother) and was like, "Can we get her into an ambulance and have her taken somewhere this afternoon?" and I barely managed not to laugh at him. No, is the answer, no we can't. I said something about it not being feasible. (I mean, if she broke something it would be, but that is To Be Avoided because it would lead to the downslope, and while she is not exactly happy in her life, the "broken bone to pneumonia" pipeline is not the most efficient way of dying, pardon my distancing humor.)
But! I have now scheduled two tours, one for my brother (on Friday) and one for me on Monday, at two different local-to-my-parents places, and we'll go from there.
She's more "there" in the mornings, and is sometimes able to connect up and have actual conversations, though I admit, this is not often. Then once she starts getting tireder, she is just not rooted in reality, meanders verbally, and has some kind of rich inner life to which I am not privy, and which, when she's asked about, she is unable to explain. (Which is more curious to me because she was just in 2026 in the morning, you know? But it is what it is.) This does often lead to problems because she meanders off, physically, to obey the mysterious dictates of her soul, and can't/won't explain what she wants to do, and does *not* take well to re-direction. (Or, in the words of the medical establishment, is combative.)
She's also miserable and seems to have developed actual aphasia at this point -- that is, she has something specific she wants to say but says the wrong words. Which, sometimes is commentary on 2026, but is also sometimes commentary from her inner life, so even if we could understand it, it wouldn't make sense, but the frustration is the same either way, so sympathy is at least called for.
She does recognize me pretty consistently, which is good both for her sake and mine (because the first time I actually knew she didn't know it was me was Not Entertaining), but she also firmly has the idea her parents are still alive and she wants to visit them (in Lancaster, PA), which is... not so good. My dad is very bad at dealing with the latter, and keeps going, in essence, "No, they're dead," which is. Nowhere near the response you want, there.
Also, she has no sense of time, so she's like, "Let's go!" three minutes after we start a thing. Which is one thing if it's at home, but it's more of a problem if she's at, say, her 5 year old niece's birthday party. My brother and I did decode that it's also her telling us she's done with our visits and we should go away, though, so that was good.
And, she is still doing the "taking a walk and then getting lost and getting the police called on her," thing, which frankly by this point is infuriating because why the fuck won't my dad get inside locks for the house, or at least notice that she's leaving. ?!?!??? <-- my internal state.
Anyway, the reason I'm making this post is that she's getting a lot more unstable on her feet, and has fallen a few times lately, though has not, thankfully, broken anything, but she can't get back up again when she does fall. My dad has now, despite their previously having promised each other they would Never Leave Their House, made the decision that he's open to looking into assisted living/memory care facilities, hosanna. (They've had in-house helpers for a bit, but my mom keeps taking against them because they tell her what to do and she hates that, see above re: combative.)
He called me up (I having had warning from my brother) and was like, "Can we get her into an ambulance and have her taken somewhere this afternoon?" and I barely managed not to laugh at him. No, is the answer, no we can't. I said something about it not being feasible. (I mean, if she broke something it would be, but that is To Be Avoided because it would lead to the downslope, and while she is not exactly happy in her life, the "broken bone to pneumonia" pipeline is not the most efficient way of dying, pardon my distancing humor.)
But! I have now scheduled two tours, one for my brother (on Friday) and one for me on Monday, at two different local-to-my-parents places, and we'll go from there.
The arbitrary nature of bigotry
May. 6th, 2026 09:25 pmcosmolinguistSorry I kinda buried the lede amid all my paragraphs of rambling here, so the tl;dr is that I can probably have top surgery after all, in Germany.
I'm really glad that last week my counseling session touched on the difficult feelings that come up when a system that has been arbitrarily discriminating against me stops doing that.
I think it came up when I made some reference to the fact that, in my current workplace I sometimes get a real strong feeling that I know the instances in which white middle-aged and/or middle-class men are treating me better, because they understand me to be one of them, than they would have if I'd had this job while everyone (likely including me) was under the misapprehension that I'm a woman.
I said it made me think of coming back to Manchester Airport, a source of so much trauma for me since 2004, and how much easier it was to breeze through it the first time I had a UK passport which was in 2017. I was shaking and almost crying by the time I got out of customs and down to baggage control. I was angry, I was so angry it felt like my body couldn't hold all of the feeling, which is why it was leaking out of me like that.
We talked about the seeming counterintuitiveness of being angry (or in less dramatic cases maybe annoyed or unsettled would be better words), when "good" things are happening, or when there's also the relief that an experience I would previously have braced myself for is suddenly better. It helped to acknowledge that feeling surprised or shocked by this is something I've probably been trying to suppress because it felt like a bit of a betrayal of all the times I'd heard of this happening (like those men who have to pretend to be women on the internet in order to understand that Being A Woman on the Internet Sucks rather than just listening to the women who say so), or maybe it made me feel like my previous understanding of borders or patriarchy or whatever was somehow incomplete.
I know that being taken aback by something just because it's happening to me doesn't mean that I have to be surprised or making some kind of judgement about my previous understanding of the thing,, but I think I was trying to "skip to the end" or reach the "correct" response, rather than letting my soft animal body feel what it feels.
I'm glad this came up because today I had the video consultation with the German clinic that was personally recommended to me as being both good and explicitly reassuring on social media that they don't care about BMI and it was fine.
(At least, it was fine once we worked around the problem of not being able to log in to the video portal because the computer declared our postcode invalid when it definitely isn't, which greatly frustrated D who was helping me and made me just want to run away, it was fine -- we got all the problems out in that case, and it made us five minutes late, but that didn't present a problem at all once we got started.)
The surgeon was cheerful -- he said they love doing this type of surgery, and I imagine it must be incredible to see people at this stage in their life -- and gave me all the information I expected in a first conversation and I know when and what kind of other info to expect if I pursue this. They're used to people who aren't local so I'm very ordinary and expected to them in that way too.
It is such a relief to be normal.
It's tiring being an edge case all the time.
It's also, of course, infuriating because I have never been treated like my requirement for top surgery has been ordinary or manageable before.
I have only ever been treated like I am a problem, and I have fix that myself. And I have to do it via intentional weight loss, something that I know is basically impossible. I know that weight-cycling (and minority stress from anti-fat stigma) accounts for almost all the negative health effects that are usually, erroneously, associated with being fat. I have inadvertently already been through a couple of "gaining the weight back and then some" cycles (from phenomena such as I'm in college and I'm suddenly walking everywhere and also I'm poor so probably not eating enough) and I know there are people who've done far more so I feel silly treating myself as so fragile but it really upsets me to think about having to subject myself to that again just to access some healthcare.
And here I am, treated as if my requirement is routine, everyday. Because it is for this dude.
And that means (with a lot of money that I only have because of The Economy; it's equity from the house I used to own, and you bet I'm angry about this as well!!), it can be ordinary and respectable and possible for me, too.
The appointment was more than 12 hours ago, and this reality still doesn't feel entirely real to me.
But I'll get there, I guess.
Wednesday had a lot of trouble logging into Official Persona Email
May. 6th, 2026 07:29 pmoursinWhat I read
Finished Tales From Earthsea, The Other Wind and the pendant short pieces in The Book of Earthsea 'The Rule of Names', 'The Word of Unbinding', 'The Daughter of Odren', and 'Earthsea Revisioned'. I don't know quite what it is, I can see how good her work is, but the feeling is more of distant admiration than what I feel for my beloved favourites? Might even cop to preferring her criticism and essays to her fiction? (not the only author to whom this pertains.)
Started a Dick Francis, Bolt (Kit Fielding, #2) (1986)
- and then, feeling all a-wamble and fretted because of the insomnia thing, fell back into Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution, old favourite.
- and then returned to the horsies and the posh owners and the psycho villains.
On the go
Martha Wells, Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries #8) which arrived yesterday.
Up next
No idea, apart from the recently arrived latest Literary Review
Calloo, callay, freezer shelves arrived today!
May. 6th, 2026 05:56 pmaunty_marionI bought a pair of them from Amazon, had them delivered to the PO, thinking I'd collect them on the way back from the dentist, only the dentist cancelled on me. So I went out after the usual Wednesday afternoon Zoom chat, instead. Pretty much exactly what I wanted/needed. I've assembled one and put it in place, and the other one is in storage for if/when I need that.
"
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(no subject)
May. 6th, 2026 12:42 pmaurumcalendulaI so hope Jeannelle M. Ferreira's A Remarkable Rake will be published one day! It and Rose Lerner's The Girl in the Cellar are the historical romances I'm most looking forward to reading!
The Light That Failed: A Reckoning, by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes
May. 6th, 2026 04:00 pmfromtheheartofeurope_feedSecond paragraph of third chapter:
In the previous two chapters, we have examined the culprits co-responsible for the strange death of what we used to call the liberal international order.² We have analysed the resentments, aspirations and chicanery of both the Central European populists and Vladimir Putin. But they plainly did not act alone. Indeed, no Poirot-style sleuthing is required to discover that the current President of the United States has been their willing accomplice.³ His motives for turning his back on America’s allies, disavowing multilateral treaties, and trying to wreck the international institutions created by the US after the Second World War are a matter of controversy. But whatever his motives, he has been an eminent confederate in the gang-slaying of the ‘liberal hegemony’ that characterized international politics for three decades after 1989.
² Graham Allison, “The Myth of the Liberal Order, Foreign Affairs (July/August 2018)
³ David Leonhardt, “Trump Tries to Destroy the West”, The New York Times (Io June 2018); Robert Kagan, “Trump Marks the End of America as World’s “Indispensable Nation”, Financial Times (19 November 2016).
I am conscious that my last couple of books reviews here have been less than positive, so I’m very glad to turn that around and give a glowing recommendation to this short explanation of how western liberal democracy got into its current mess. There are three chapters, one on Viktor Orbán and the other Eastern European populists, one on Vladimir Putin and Russia, and one on Donald Trump, with an afterword on China.
The key argument is that “the future was better yesterday”; western liberals failed to grasp the nature of the task of building and preserving democracy and decent societies in the former Socialist world, and indeed at home in the USA, and that populist politicians, by operating smartly within and outside the new rules, were able to capture the imagination of their own publics and gain and consolidate power. Even now that Orbán and PiS are out, and Trump appears to be struggling, the arguments remain valid.
Indeed, I am sure that the authors would agree that the missing part of the book in retrospect is Western Europe, where we actually have a populist (though relatively well behaved) government in Italy, Nigel Farage seems very likely to win the next British election, the Rassemblement National is not quite as close but close enough to worry about in France, and the AfD is on the rise in Germany.
Their conclusion is that in the end, populism does not present long term stable solutions in the way that liberal democracy does; but that liberals remained complacent for too long, and did not pay attention to the internal threats to the democratic system. They speculate – hope, perhaps – that the rise of China, a a more durable alternative system but one which is not very interested in exporting its societal model, may prove a stimulus to liberals to become more creative.
Nine years on, a lot of this remains just as valid, with the second Trump term proving worse than the first. We have a long way to go.
You can get The Light That Failed here.
This bubbled to the top of three of my lists simultaneously- the top unread book acquired in 2022, the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves, and the shortest book acquired in 2022 on the unread shelf. Next on the first two of those piles is The Damnable Question, by George Dangerfield; next on the third is Kosovo: The Path To Contested Statehood in the Balkans, by James Ker-Lindsay.
Movie review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
May. 6th, 2026 09:05 amrocky41_7 posting in fffridayLast night I watched The Miseduation of Cameron Post, a film about an 11th grader whose aunt sends her away to a Christian conversion camp after she gets caught hooking up with a female friend. The film is set in 1993.
It’s a heartfelt film about Cameron’s resistance to being changed and her developing identity (Asked early on at camp when she started to think of herself as a homosexual, Cameron asserts “I don’t think of myself as a homosexual. I don’t think of myself as anything, really.”), but it doesn’t differ meaningfully from other conversion camp films I’ve seen. Boy Erased made me cry and this one didn’t, if that’s worth anything.
The film swings between the current moment, and flashbacks to Cameron’s relationship with Coley, the friend with whom she was caught, in ways that both show us the line of Cameron’s thoughts and also become somewhat confusing. It was unclear to me for much of the film what actually happened that resulted in Cameron getting caught. Both that experience and the letter Coley sends Cameron later make it seem like that was their first hook-up, but the flashback sections suggest they had been together several times before, which makes it unclear of those are actual memories or just Cameron’s fantasies of what could have happened (further complicated by a couple of actual dream sequences). It was not helped by the actors frequently dropping into whispers and mumbling; I missed entire exchanges because I couldn’t hear.
Either of Cameron’s two buddies at camp—Jane, a Black girl who grew up on a free love commune but whose mother recently married a conservative man whose decision it was to send Jane away (and who has been at this camp for over a year); or Adam, a Lakota two-spirit whose father recently got into politics, converted to Christianity, and demanded his child follow suit—would have made for more interesting protagonists. Cameron comes off pretty nondescript, which is exacerbated by how internalized she is, rarely speaking or expressing herself. It’s not until the end of the film where she really starts saying anything.
One thing The Miseducation of Cameron Post does do differently is that the staff at the camp lack the total, violent conviction of other conversion camp narratives I’ve seen. Some staff have that attitude, but others visibly doubt if they’re doing the right thing, particularly after some exchanges with the campers (and I maintain there’s a scene at the end where one staff member chooses to be passive in a way that helps Cameron and her pals, when he could have done otherwise). This adds an interesting tension, where it’s not just the campers asking themselves if what’s going on here is right or wrong.
The ending is pretty open in a way that’s not totally satisfying (one of those “Okay…but what now?” kind of endings) but it is a sweet final moment and it’s so easy to root for Cam and her friends, even though we just got a reminder of how little the rest of society cares about what’s happening to the kids in these camps.
This film is based off the book of the same name by Emily M. Danforth, which I haven’t read. Turns out it’s a bit of a chunker, at 500 pages, and reviews say Cameron doesn’t go to camp until halfway through, with the first 250 pages just backstory on her relationship with Coley. The film cuts out almost all of this to focus on the conversation camp narrative, which I think is the right choice, because it’s where the real story is.
On the whole, I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t stand out to me in any way.
December 2003 books
May. 6th, 2026 02:20 pmfromtheheartofeurope_feedIn anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
In December 2003 we celebrated little U’s first birthday, and at work I was dealing with the fallout from the previous month’s events, rushing out a report on Georgia on the first of the month (actually most of it had been writen before the revolution on 25 November, but obviously needed updating) followed by one on the Preševo Valley in Southern Serbia. At the end of the month Serbia had an election.
I read 13 books that month.
Non-fiction 3
The Myth of Greater Albania, by Paulin Kola
The Music of the Primes: Searching to Solve the Greatest Mystery in Mathematics, by Marcus du Sautoy
Eats Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss
SF 4
Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
After London, by Richard Jeffries
Carolan’s Concerto, by Caiseal Mór
Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
Comics 6
Sandman V: A Game Of You, by Neil Gaiman
Sandman VI: Fables & Reflections, by Neil Gaiman
Sandman VII: Brief Lives, by Neil Gaiman
Sandman VIII: World’s End, by Neil Gaiman
Sandman IX: The Kindly Ones, by Neil Gaiman
Sandman X: The Wake, by Neil Gaiman
3,500 pages
2/13 by women
none by PoC.
I reread Paladin of Souls last year and am very happy to make it my book of the month in retrospect. You can get it here.
The one I really wouldn’t recommend is the Celtic Misht novel Carolan’s Concerto, but you can get it here.
My Dress-Up Darling, volume 1 by Shinichi Fukuda
May. 6th, 2026 09:30 amjames_davis_nicoll
When a teen schoolgirl stumbles over a classmate's most closely held secret, there is only one course of action open to him.
My Dress-Up Darling, volume 1 by Shinichi Fukuda
Life with no children: Art And Tidiness
May. 6th, 2026 12:31 pmandrewduckerWe've taken this week off work with no children (after Monday's bank holiday) for the first time in 8 years. The idea being that we could spend a bit of time with each other, spend a bit of time decompressing, and do some stuff around the house that was never happening when there were children underfoot
So yesterday we went out and had a relaxed day together at Jupiter Artland, essentially the fields and woods around an old country house with sculptures installed intermittently, so that you can have a lovely scenic walk intermittently punctuated by conversations about whatever you've just encountered. I had been there once before, a decade ago. Jane hadn't been there before at all, so it was a nice morning out.
And then today we had some actual energy to put into making the house nice. The "playroom" has been a dumping ground for kids toys for the last 2 years, since we moved back in. Every bit of plastic nonsense we'd accumulated for the past 8 years, either bought, given to us, or arriving on the front of magazines - sitting in boxes or bags or piled on shelves. Our cleaner Lana had repeatedly done an amazing job of sorting it thematically, only for us to then be too sick, tired, or otherwise incapable of doing anything about it. Turns out what we needed was a few days in a row with no children to let us recharge to the point where we could actually motivate ourselves.
So we just removed 8 bin bags full of stuff from the "playroom" and put them in the bins at the end of the street. And also about 3 bins bag of stuff are in the drive and will go to the charity shops when I pick up the kids at 5pm. And now Sophia's room has a floor and we will be able to put a bed in there.
(Undoubtedly the children will have questions when they get home.)
So yesterday we went out and had a relaxed day together at Jupiter Artland, essentially the fields and woods around an old country house with sculptures installed intermittently, so that you can have a lovely scenic walk intermittently punctuated by conversations about whatever you've just encountered. I had been there once before, a decade ago. Jane hadn't been there before at all, so it was a nice morning out.
And then today we had some actual energy to put into making the house nice. The "playroom" has been a dumping ground for kids toys for the last 2 years, since we moved back in. Every bit of plastic nonsense we'd accumulated for the past 8 years, either bought, given to us, or arriving on the front of magazines - sitting in boxes or bags or piled on shelves. Our cleaner Lana had repeatedly done an amazing job of sorting it thematically, only for us to then be too sick, tired, or otherwise incapable of doing anything about it. Turns out what we needed was a few days in a row with no children to let us recharge to the point where we could actually motivate ourselves.
So we just removed 8 bin bags full of stuff from the "playroom" and put them in the bins at the end of the street. And also about 3 bins bag of stuff are in the drive and will go to the charity shops when I pick up the kids at 5pm. And now Sophia's room has a floor and we will be able to put a bed in there.
(Undoubtedly the children will have questions when they get home.)