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I managed to kick my cold enough to play the ice hockey tournament Saturday and Sunday afternoons. One of my teammates gave me a lift from Cambridge rink to Romford each day. It's an easy drive and we get on well, and the tournament itself was great fun. Exhausting, but fun and definitely great for developing and improving play. The other four teams playing were pretty friendly and we made some connections and enthusiasm for playing more games against each other as individual teams.

Unfortunately my ride home got injured in the last few seconds of the last game of the tournament on Sunday evening, a "needs A&E and good drugs" level injury. So I went with him to the local A&E on the grounds they'd probably want a responsible non-drugged adult to get him home, and it'd only be a few hours, right? Ahahaha, it was 16 hours before we got out and it was not a good experience.

I got no sleep at all but at least got plenty of rest sitting on terrible waiting room chairs and plenty of time to stretch and loosen up as my body started to notice all the ways it was sore after playing the tournament. My injured buddy was left in serious pain for over 6 hours, but when he was finally treated he was able to sleep a fair bit in the hospital bed while we waited in assorted places to get assorted scans and tests done that were apparently necessary to discharge him, but not necessary to do with any urgency or information about how long each step would take. Beds in corridors everywhere, a "ward" that was simply a closed off section of corridor where beds were stashed holding people waiting for scans and tests, not a lot of dignity and just no urgency at all about pain management. My buddy was very stoic but shouldn't have had to be.

Also neither of us had showered between "playing lots of ice hockey" and "showing up at A&E", so very sorry to anyone who had to sit too near either of us.

I got a very minimal amount of work done today on my phone from the hospital, but went to bed for a few hours as soon as I finally got home and feel more human now. I will have to figure out whether I take leave for today or make up the effort elsewhere in the week. But that is a problem for tomorrow; tonight I'm hoping to reset my sleep schedule by going to bed on time.

cosmolinguist

It's ME Awareness Day, and my train is running 39 minutes late last I heard, so I took the opportunity to finally read this piece in a tab I've had open so long I cannot remember where it came from. It's a really incredible read about chronic illness and narratives as necessary for access to care, and what hearing from ill people does to those in a position to offer care.

( long quotes, from a much longer article )

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/05/12/songs-by-debussy-and-messiaen/

azurelunatic

Tuesday I had an appointment with a physician assistant about my left knee. I'm apparently screamish about the details when I'm in that much pain, so I asked to skip a lot of the explanations I would have otherwise found fascinating.

I got ( an injection )

PA Fox warned me not to overdo things on the lidocaine, but the steroid should be taking effect over this past week. And it has! It's down to a normal sort of ow, and I don't have to use a cane to go from bed to the bathroom. I've still been lounging outside quite a bit (the only position that didn't hurt previously) but for pleasure, not from necessity.

Edit: And then I managed to stumble within the last half hour and it hurts badly again. I was lucky to have a cane nearby. We'll see what it does over the course of the afternoon.

isostone posting in

little_details

Hello! I'm currently working on a project for a character who is a amateur (but enthusiastic) cartographer. They exist in the world of Outer Wilds, a game with multiple simulated planets(none more than a few kilometers in diameter). The simulated planets each have their own gimmicks (i.e Brittle Hollow, a hollow planet with a black hole in the center. Its crust falls into the black hole during gameplay, and most of what you can explore is under the crust).
How might I go about mapping these places in a way that'd be accurate and believable in the sense that my character could have drawn them up while exploring? What sort of notes should I be taking?

cosmolinguist

I had a dream that I missed my train to London today and it was fine.

Almost disappointed to wake up with my alarm, in plenty of time.

I was briefly tempted to just stay in bed...

Now, on my train back to Manchester 12 hours later, with two hours left to go before I get home, I can say with certainty that I could've stayed home and it would have been fine.

james_davis_nicoll

Essentials for Shadowrun, Sixth World, the current (sixth) edition of the tabletop cyberpunk-fantasy roleplaying game from Catalyst Game Labs.

Bundle of Holding: Shadowrun Sixth World Essentials (from 2022)

fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-novellas-2025/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61258

Now that I have been unexpectedly liberated to discuss my Hugo votes, here they are in the first category that I completed. These are all good, by the way, and I found it quite difficult to rank them. (This is not the case for every category.)

6) The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Okay,” said Dr. Marjorie. “That’s it. You’re on your own.”

Generation starship where slaves v masters plays into a brutal take on academia. Get it here.

5) The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“People report different things. Some say they feel nothing at all. Others say the scan brings up memories. That it somehow brushes up against them and brings them back to consciousness. They see their lives. Memory by memory, before them.”

Mammoth researchers upload the mind of a long-dead mammoth expert into the brain of a resurrected mammoth. Get it here.

4) What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher. Second paragraph of third chapter:

It occurs to me that you may think that I am making a great deal of nothing about traveling, granted that I had spent much of my youth gallivanting across Europe, sometimes while being shot at. Possibly you’re right. All I can say in my defense is that while I was in the army, no matter where we went, we had a routine. We got up, we ate bad food, we complained, we tended the horses, we were extremely bored, we ate again, we went to sleep. Occasionally we would go somewhere else and be bored there. Once in a very great while, we would spend an absolutely nerve-wracking few hours, and afterward we would be shaky and bored, but in general, the routine reigned supreme.

Haunted holiday cottage in fictional but richly realised European country. Get it here.

3) The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Oh, get up, get up, please,” Nhung begged.

Something sinister is up with the arranged wedding that Cleric Chih gets involved with. Get it here.

2) The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed. Second paragraph of third chapter:

“No,” Veris said, glancing back at the handful of guards waiting silently in the front garden. A few had also crept to the back, she knew, to guard the door in case she still, unthinkably, tried to escape.

Only the heroine can rescue two children who have been kidnapped by a monster. Get it here.

1) Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard. Second paragraph of third chapter:

As to the others… Bảo Duy was endearing but reckless, and Lành was extremely difficult to deal with or protect, which added to the annoyance.

A lovely dark story about four young women thrown together to ward off the unspeakable. In space. Get it here.

I intend to do these collages of covers for each of the relevant Hugo categories. I do them by hand using PowerPoint and Paint, without use of AI.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-novellas-2025/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61258

oursin

(Larfs liek a hysterykle drayne.)

Life and work of Thomas Hardy to be performed at Stonehenge: Readings and performances will be staged at the ‘misfortune of ruins’ that long fascinated the writer.

The novelist and poet Thomas Hardy was fascinated by Stonehenge, using what he described as “the temple of the winds” both as a setting for one of his most striking scenes and as a lifelong inspiration, a pathway back into ancient times.
In what is being billed as a unique performance, the life and work of Hardy is being showcased at the great stone circle in Wiltshire as part of Salisbury international arts festival.
....
An orchestra will play music, ranging from the sort of folk tunes Hardy may have been familiar with to pieces by Gustav Holst and Peter Warlock.
....
It is believed to be the first time that a performance incorporating Hardy’s life and work has been staged at Stonehenge.
Lesser said: “Hopefully* it’ll be lovely weather and you’ll have this marvellous atmosphere as the evening develops with the light changing and these wonderful words of Hardy.”

*Cue: Thunderstorms! Torrential rain! Unseasonal snow! First earthquake ever recorded in Wiltshire!

I don't suppose they are going to represent Hardy in his lighter and realistic vein:

Watch on YouTube

I.e. successful ruined maids who go and live a profitable life of vice in Dorchester.

james_davis_nicoll

1996! The UK's prompt, effective efforts to prevent another Dunblane Massacre confuse, anger American observers, Dolly the sheep's cloning points way forward for unfuckable Royals, and the Tories now only slightly less popular than Myra Hindley.

Poll #33115 Clarke Award Finalists 1996

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53

View Respondents

Which 1996 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley
9 (17.0%)

The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod
21 (39.6%)

Happy Policeman by Patricia Anthony
5 (9.4%)

The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
46 (86.8%)

The Prestige by Christopher Priest
24 (45.3%)

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter
14 (26.4%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 1996 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley
The Star Fraction by Ken MacLeod
Happy Policeman by Patricia Anthony
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The Prestige by Christopher Priest
The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

rydra_wong

a word you've never understood on AO3 (Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald, M, Sunil Rao/Adam Rubenstein, 9K words)

Additional Tags: post-canon, Adam Rubenstein is not fine, angst about a happy ending, “fuck off” is a love language, sex recollected but not actually occurring in this fic, fluff with CPTSD and metaphysics, alexithymia, came back exactly the same, Sunil Rao’s arguably-canonical grey-aromanticism, touch starvation, Adam's parasympathetic nervous system has not been heard from since the mid-80s, sometimes you get what you want more than anything in the world and then your brain breaks a little bit

Summary: He’s been starving for so long. He thinks he’s never not been starving.

Note: massive spoilers for canon. Read Prophet, everybody.

tamaranth

2025/070: Hy Brasil — Margaret Elphinstone

Sometimes I seem to recognise things, as if I’d dreamed it all already. Like ... this road through the orchards. The apple trees. Meeting you like I just did. The way the sun makes patterns on the gravel.I keep having the feeling that it isn’t new. People say autumn is melancholy, but I find it’s the spring that feels so old. [p. 153]

Hy Brasil is a group of volcanic islands in the mid-Atlantic: a former British colony, a former NATO base, a former pirate kingdom. It's hard to find due to magnetic and meteorological anomalies, and for centuries its actual position was a matter of debate.( Read more... )

Current Mood: happy

oursin

Happy birthday,

shehasathree and

themis1!

ysabetwordsmith posting in

common_nature

I took some pictures around the yard today. These are from the house yard.

( Walk with me ... )

Current Mood: accomplished

kaberett

Reading. SEVERAL.

( Read more... )

Next up is... probably skim-rereads of a couple of books on pain I've already read, making notes this time, and then onward to the stack I haven't actually read before. (One of these is Mindfulness for Health, which I expect to be middlingly annoyed by (the last time I tried it I put it down in frustration fairly early on, at the point at which it became clear that both authors were fundamentally healthy people who'd had An Accident; this time round actually assessing the impact of that perspective on the advice is kind of the point). Then there's Hurts So Good, and finally Touch, which I acquired from Oxfam on the basis that if nothing else its chapter on pain is actually titled "Pain and Emotion".

(I am not going to get through all of these next week, but I will make some progress. I also maybe slightly searched the library ebook catalogue for "pain" and thereby added yet more recent-ish things to my reading list; Abdul-Ghaaliq Laikhen's books are a fairly high priority.)

Writing. Quite a lot of PIP submission (for someone else, at least!). Not done yet. This remains the priority for the next week.

Watching. The new Old Guard 2 trailer!

Playing. I Love Hue: The Alchemy now COMPLETE, and... so is The Ascension/Earth.

Cooking. A was away. Consequently, two recipes from East that they expected to dislike: black rice congee, of which I am definitely a fan, and a kimchi fried rice I had no objection to but no particular plans to ever make again.

Also the caramelised onion and chilli ramen, about which we were both meh although!!! I did! get to use choi sum THAT I HAD GROWN, which is still novel enough to be exciting; a recipe for tinker's cakes from a tiny cookbook I bought for EYB indexing purposes -- Welsh cakes with grated apple, which I liked enough to probably make a note of; and a slightly underwhelming "saucy Japanese greens with sticky sesame rice" that did at least use up some of the spring greens in last week's veg box. (I then made something up the next day to use up the other half, and that worked much better for our tastes: ginger/garlic/mushroom stir-fry sauce/little bit of mirin.)

Eating. CHOI SUM FROM THE GREENHOUSE (I am extremely excited about this, in case you couldn't tell). I think my great excitement about my first British asparagus of the season was last week? And also first British strawberries of the season yesterday, as the greater part of my treat for Anti-Migraine Stabs.

I have also been very much enjoying apple and pear juice + angry water + ice + a little bit of fresh (garden/field) mint.

Making & mending. Actually dug some trenches and started moving the railway sleepers around??? I have a whole entire outline of a raised bed in a place I've meant to have one since I got the plot in the first place?????

(First layer needs screwing together and then I need to sort myself out corner posts to attach next-layers-up to, and also I need to decide whether I want to have it two deep or three deep, but feeling v positive about this.)

Growing. Choi sum!!!

Also: despite my earlier misgivings the redcurrant is actually doing astonishingly well compared to the last several years, so good job me on that particularly vicious pruning??? Gooseberry also looking extremely promising; jostas I am much less surprised about looking good.

( Read more... )

Observing. A saw a slow worm at the plot today! Also the allotment fox; also, on my way home from the allotment the other evening, the previously mentioned Gawky Teenage Fox. At home, we've seen the bat! Also there is Yelling coming from a portion of the hedge that very notably has a pair of robins shuttling back and forth to it at fairly high frequency. I'd rather it weren't so dry, but the fact that it is means I've had the wood pigeons and the corvids balancing in deeply ungainly fashion on the water dish in order to drink, which has been fun to watch.

We are less happy about the local outdoor cats having decided that they too wish to take up birdwatching on our patio.

qatsi

Yesterday we went to the British Museum's Hiroshige exhibition. Like pre-Raphaelites, I tend to think that Japanese prints are a money-spinner for museums and galleries. This one was reasonably busy but hardly packed. For the most part, the pictures are enchanting landscapes, townscapes, birds and flowers. There's a fair amount of background and technical information included, such as the reuse of woodblocks with different colourations to produce prints from the same master indicating different times of day or season, or simply to cater for changing tastes. I found the depiction of rain particularly interesting, a heavy diagonal overlay that sometimes almost looks as if it has been scratched into the print. One or two prints of actors or courtesans reminded me of the Edo Pop exhibition from last year, and in the section on Hiroshige's legacy there was also a reference to the Yoshida dynasty.

Mount Fuji and Otodome Falls

Cherry Blossoms on a moonless night along the Sumida river

Pheasant and Chrysanthemums

First Shono from Fifty-Three Stages of the Tōkaidō

Portrait of Hiroshige by Kunisada

oursin

Last week's bread held out very well, right up until the point when it did something quite spectacular in the mould department, fortunately there was still a roll left from the weekend.

Friday night supper: (I had been hoping it would hold out for frittata, sigh) ven pongal (South Indian khichchari).

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 Marriage's Light Spelt Flour (end of the bag), and Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour, which worked rather well.

Today's lunch: sweet potato gratin, shallots rather than onion as I had some left from the other week, and kalamata olive tapenade; served with spinach sauteed more or less according to Dharamjit Singh's recipe in Indian Cookery (really doesn't need added water), and gingery healthy-grilled baby courgettes (teriyaki rather than tamari, and I really didn't think marinade needed extra salt).

andrewducker

Lovely afternoon today, so the kids grabbed their water shoes and we headed for the river.

They were too small two years ago and last year the weather was mediocre at best. But today it was 20 degrees and sunny, so off we went.

Gideon fell on his bum about 8 times. The first 2 times he cried, but by the fourth time he was saying "Brrrrrr", giggling, and then carrying on to investigate the next bit of the river.

And by the end they were demanding more time to fish big rocks out, crossing the river to wave to me from the far side, and working out between them how to avoid the clouds of midges over the calmer bits of the river.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-best-known-books-set-in-each-country-cote-divoire/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61296

See here for methodology. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in Côte d’Ivoire, also known in English as Ivory Coast (personally I take the position that you call people and countries by the names they wish to be known by).

I have not been to Côte d’Ivoire myself, though I have advised its government on a couple of occasions.

Title	Author	Goodreads raters	LibraryThing owners
Aya	Marguerite Abouet	6,986	664
The Bitter Side of Sweet	Tara Sullivan	3,646	277
Aya of Yop City	Marguerite Abouet	2,421	260
Too Small to Ignore: Why Children Are the Next Big Thing	Wess Stafford	1,142	505
Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village	Sarah Erdman	1,784	312
Aya: Life in Yop City (Aya #1-3)	Marguerite Abouet	1,683	166
Aya: The Secrets Come Out	Marguerite Abouet	1,331	154
Aya: Love in Yop City (Aya #4-6)	Marguerite Abouet	885	127

So, I confess I had not heard of the popular graphic novel sequence by Marguerite Abouet about her heroine Aya, set in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1970s, but I’ll have to look out for them now. It’s also nice to see a success for the bande dessinée genre.

If I count correctly, this is the sixth country where seven of the top eight books are by women, joining Canada, South Korea, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Iran.

I disqualified eleven books. For about half of them, this was because they were set in or about a number of countries including Côte d’Ivoire, but much less than half set there. This knocked out Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert, The Fortunes of Africa by Martin Meredith, Dictatorland by Paul Kenyon, Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus by David Quammen, and Africa Is Not a Country by Margy Burns Knight.

I really hesitated with The Suns of Independence by Ahmadou Kourouma, which is set between two fictional countries, the Socialist Republic of Nikinai and Ebony Coast. Kourouma himself was firmly Ivoirian, but in the end I feel he deliberately set the book in a fictional place which is as closely related to Côte d’Ivoire as, say, the Shire is to England.

There were a couple with very little Ivoirian material, and I fear that people tagging them on LT / GR get mixed up between West African countries. Tété-Michel Kpomassie, author of An African in Greenland, is from Togo. Allah Is Not Obliged, by Ahmadou Kourouma, does start in Côte d’Ivoire but is mostly set in Liberia. The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by Wayétu Moore is set in Liberia and the USA. Standing Heavy, by Gauz, is set among Ivoirians in Paris. Arab Jazz, by Karim Miské, is set among Arabs in Paris; Miské was born in Côte d’Ivoire, but identifies as Mauritanian-French.

Next up are Cameroon, Nepal, Venezuela and Niger.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-best-known-books-set-in-each-country-cote-divoire/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61296

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/05/11/elephants-and-circuses/

james_davis_nicoll

Quebec riding of Terrebonne flips to Liberals after recount shows candidate won by single vote

james_davis_nicoll

How did Professor William Waterman Sherman, late of San Francisco, end up floating in the North Atlantic on a raft composed of the wreckage of a flotilla of balloons?

The Twenty-One Balloons by William Sherman Pène du Bois

rydra_wong

Denise (

synecdochic of this parish) has been moved to provide a long, LONG and fascinating Bsky thread providing an inside-baseball exegesis of the new Pope's first sermon and why, she argues, it represents Shots Fired in relation to significant portions of American Catholicism.

It is deep geeky fun regardless of your personal beliefs (and maybe especially for those of us who are outside Pope fandom and want to know what's going on).

Start here: https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3loqsfhswjk2r
Or: https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3lorjh7mrzs2d (links if Bsky is making it hard to just keep clicking through on "continue thread")

Important contextual N.B.: The Pope is Catholic. You do not get to be pope unless you are operating broadly within the current framework of Catholic orthodoxy.

I personally am an atheist! I believe it is fine to be an atheist, and that atheists are capable of just as much moral goodness!

HOWEVER. THE POPE IS CATHOLIC.

Thus it is not a big surprise that he is going to maintain that Christianity is the right and proper religion and the source of moral goodness. I seem to recall it's been something of a shift in doctrine to acknowledge that non-Christians (who have heard of Christianity and thus cannot be excused on grounds of ignorance) might be saved.

But the idea that Christianity is still the superior religion to which ideally everyone would be brought -- that is kind of baked in to the whole Catholic Church deal. If you are in fact fully committed to recognizing all religious traditions as of equal value, you miiiight get to be a very radical priest, but you are definitely not going to progress within the hierarchy to the point of being Pope.

So I am not expecting the fucking Pope to come out and say "actually being an atheist is just as good as being Christian." I am approaching this with the assumption that he is going to be working within the current doctrine of the Catholic Church. Because, again, Pope.

And it's all sorts of interesting to look at where he is situated within that doctrinal framework, and speculate about in what directions he might develop it or how he is using it to make particular points. But the framework comes as a given.

So when Pope Bob preaches that certain Christians are "living in a state of practical atheism" -- the interesting takeaway, to me, is not "oh noez the Pope is referring to atheism like it's a bad thing," it's "what groups of Christians is he potentially referring to and chastising here."

Also: Strickland. The reveal that Pope Bob played a key role in the decision to remove him is when I went "oh shiiiiiiit, no wonder the tradcaths hate him and the MAGA-ites have decided that he's a WOKE MARXIST POPE."

Basically, if they wanted to pick a Pope as the most crushing rebuke possible to J. D. Vance specifically, this is the guy they'd pick.

paulkincaid

Another milestone, literally, achieved. When I started seriously exercising last November, the most I could achieve was twice round the park (not much more than half a mile). But as I got fitter I extended the walk. For the last month I've been hovering just short of ten miles. The route I thought would take me over ten miles ended up just short, and every slight variation of it I tried also ended up just short. But today I added in a diversion I've only just discovered, and it was enough to push me over the ten miles. This will be my regular weekend walk for the next few weeks until I start looking for ways to push it up to 11. Meanwhile I'm about to book a new blood test, and I am confidently expecting that the results will show I am no longer prediabetic. But whatever the result the walking will continue, there's a bit more weight I want to lose first.

andrewducker

1. Building a "free energy" engine and showing how it really works: (tags:fraud energy video )
2. Why running just two minutes a day will help you live longer: (tags:exercise health )
3. Analysis of the Cass report finds it presents claims without evidence, misrepresents quotes, has significant methodological problems, and applies a double standard.: (tags:bigotry lgbt transgender uk research )
4. In the wake of tariffs, cargo at the Port of LA is down 35% (will take 4-6 weeks to filter through to shops): (tags:usa china trade doom )
5. 'It cannot provide nuance': UK experts warn AI therapy chatbots are not safe: (tags:uk ai counselling doom )
6. London's Low Emission Zone reduces sick leave by 18%: (tags:pollution cars London health )
7. Ireland given two months to begin implementing hate speech laws or face legal action from EU: (tags:bigotry Ireland law Europe )

skygiants

I read K.J. Charles' Death in the Spires more or less in the course of a day, which happened to be the same day that I was reading comments on/responding to

blotthis' post about aesthetic satisfaction in Genre: Mystery and Genre: Horror.

Death in the Spires is a really useful case study for genre: Mystery because Charles' usual Genre is Gay Romance. As this book was coming out she made a number of posts and announcements along the lines of: hello Readership, please be aware, this one's not Romance, it's Mystery, which does not mean there won't be romance in it, but please go into it with Mystery expectations rather than Romance expectations.

So already I was going into it expecting to pay attention to the rules of genre and how they worked or did not work in this book. And, having finished it feels really clear that the exact same fabric of characters and plot, tailored into a different shape, would form a standard Charles Romance, but because of the pattern being used the finished product is undeniably a Mystery, no question about it. And quite a fun one! I read it in a day!

The premise takes inspiration from Gaudy Night and The Secret History, among others: at the turn of the 20th century, a clique of golden youths forms at Oxford that's shattered by interpersonal romantic drama culminating in a mysterious murder; ten years later, having just received a particularly vicious poison-pen letter, one of the golden-youths-that-was decides it's finally time to figure out which one of his best-friends-that-was is a killer. The youths all seem likeable and the loss of the trust and friendship among them as important to the plot as the murder itself, which is one of the things that makes the book work, IMO.

Because of blot's post, I've been thinking a fair bit about what I want mystery-as-genre to do. P.D. James said very famously that the mystery novel is the restoration of order from disorder: a murder happens, but by the end we understand why and how, and something is done about it to bring justice. Or not done about it; occasionally the detective decides that the just response is to not do anything about it. I do like it when that happens, even if I disagree with the detective on what the just response is. I like it when justice is legitimately a problem, in mystery novels; I like it when the solution is not just the solution to a puzzle (though of course it is pleasant when a puzzle is good) but an attempt at answering the question of 'how do you repair the world, when something terrible has happened that broke it? Because every death is something that breaks it.' I say an attempt because of course this is not really a question that can be answered satisfactorily, but it is nonetheless important to keep trying. So, really, I suppose, I think a mystery novel has succeeded when it has, a little bit, failed: the puzzle is solvable, and solved, but the problem is unsolvable, and the tension between those two things is one of the things that most interests me in a mystery book.

'I want to be a little uncomfortable at the end because of how we as human beings have to keep trying to answer a question that has no good answer by answering questions that do have answers' is probably not a fair thing to ask of mystery novels, which are also, famously, comfort reading. Nonetheless it is what I think the great books in this genre achieve and I think I am right to ask it. I am not saying that Death in the Spires is a great book of the genre, but it is asking the kinds of questions that I want a mystery to ask, and it satisfied me in that, in a way that many modern mystery novels don't.

( a brief detour into spoiler territory )

kaberett

Even I am ... mostly moved in.

I need to copy some e-mail data over from the one account I can only access via POP, and Mate is not behaving... brilliantly... in terms of "the touchpad doing what I tell it to" or "letting me have All the screen resolution" or for that matter "doing sensible things with system themes and program icons", but it's not yet annoyed me enough to cause me to seriously consider switching away from it.

I have not yet applied stickers but thankfully A's is already covered with stickers so it is possible to tell the two of them apart while closed.

It is as ever an enormous relief to not be stuck with the Sad Dell as my primary machine. Long may it continue.

(The delay in getting all the way set up -- it arrived on Thursday -- was in no small part that I had blithely trusted A when they told me they'd got the hard drive out of the previous laptop. I had not gone digging around in it myself and I was not in great brain day-of so when I hit the point where New Laptop wouldn't boot off Old Drive, and the partitions made no sense to me, so I put it to one side to be an A problem when they got back from away-for-work.

... they stared in utter perplexity for A Bit, in a "this surely could never have possibly worked" way, and eventually went "... I'm going to check whether there's another hard drive in the old laptop, because that's the only way I can think of that this could have worked, ever."

... they had indeed ADHDed an entire hard drive.)

cosmolinguist

I talked to my parents last night (a Friday instead of a Sunday since they've got plans this weekend).

My dad mentioned the new pope. My parents both said approvingly that he's "pretty progressive, pretty similar to Francis." Which was a big change after the previous 24 hours of social media being all shitposts and "uh guys did you know this guy sucks and actually the catholic church is problematic, can't believe no one has mentioned this yet."

My dad mentioned something the new guy has said, I just got a garbled version from my dad but I think it was something about him saying it's not his place to judge humans that God has created to be gay. Regardless of the accuracy or veracity of that, it was something my parents were repeating approvingly, which feels like a very big deal to me.

On the topic of same-sex marriages, my dad said "I see these pictures of people and...they just look so happy. If they want to get a piece of paper, fine!"

"And it isn't hurting anyone else!" my mom chimed in. It's true! (In a few weeks my parents' mixed-sex marriage will have existed for fifty-three years. Unbothered by the existence of gay marriage for like the last 15 or whatever of those years.)

Then my mom said "And those homosexual..." but she kinda swallowed the word like she was thinking wait, that's not the right one, then she said "lesbian" in a way I thought might be about disgust but I later realized was more "trying to carefully say a new foreign word" but then she still struggled to get her sentence out and then my dad had sufficient context clues to say "Do you mean trans gender?" And again it was definitely a new word, with a big space between the two parts like it was foreign (reminded me of those people who hyphenated "bi-sexual" for such a long time) and I had time for just a moment of oh, here we go... dread before they went on to say something I can't remember word-for-word but basically, they're being told trans women are too manly to play sports but also not manly enough to serve in the military, and they're not having it.

Even my parents can see that transphobia doesn't have any internal logic.

It was a stressful call for other reasons, and I had a huge headache by the time it was done, but I hung on to my dad saying "They just look so happy" about queer couples getting married. It warmed my heart. As did the fact that, even not knowing the words for trans people, they know that you can't decide they're whatever gender allows them to be punished the most.

Telling the others about this afterward, I mentioned that I remembered, by chance, being at my parents' when the Obergefell ruling came down legalizing marriage across the U.S. and watching TV news with my dad, with some of those photos of beaming newly-married couples. I remember my dad saying something similar then (I know I wrote about it here, but search doesn't seem to be working for me right now sadly), about how happy the people looked.

D sent me a link to a song, "City Hall" by Vienna Tang saying it's his "favorite 'queer people being happy about getting married' song." I wasn't familiar with it, but just reading the lyrics gave me goosebumps.

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

The annotation on that Genius link for those last two lines says

Those who were married at the City Hall in 2004 knew that their right to do so remained in jeopardy– and unfortunately, it was in fact taken away; in August of the same year, the state courts ruled against the city and voided all licenses it had issued to same-sex couples.

I remember those times, I remember people driving sometimes across the country, people who'd been together for decades sometimes. People lining up at night to be ready when a city or state or federal law was about to come into force. The eagerness and the desperation. And all the businesses and volunteers that gave them food, drinks, treats, people wanting to do whatever they could to support this, to celebrate, to whatever limited extent felt possible.

It feels so long ago now and it really wasn't. And I remember the first time Trump was elected hearing Lib Dem friends, who treated U.S. politics like a series they were binging, blithely talk about Obergefell being overturned. Nothing can be taken for granted.

But it's still there. And my mom is saying it isn't taking anything away from anyone else. The world really has moved on. I have hope.

oursin

This week's You Be The Judge column in Guardian Saturday: My dad wants to track my location on his phone. Should he leave me alone?:

My dad and I disagree about whether he should follow me on the Find My Friends phone app, which lets you track people in real time. He used to, but when I went to university I removed him as a follower. I don’t think he needs to know where I am all the time.
I’m 27 now, but it’s still a bone of contention. Dad says I don’t call him enough – I think that’s why he’s being so persistent about being re-added. He says: “I would know what you were up to if you let me follow you on Find My Friends.”
But I don’t want him tracking me, as he used to take it too far when I was younger. Once, when I was in a coffee shop, he texted me saying: “Hope you enjoy your coffee.” It’s nosy and I felt like I was under surveillance. It was funny for a bit, but then I thought: how often is he looking? That sort of thing happened several times as a teenager.

Okay, I will concede that I come at this as someone From A Different Era, who was traveling in distant parts of the world (parts where the folks at home might, actually, have had some reason for concern about me) and communicating by airletter &/or postcard with my family. By the 1990s I did make the occasional landline phonecall to partner and parents when I was on research trips etc, partly because there were various wheezes of special numbers to call via designated credit card which were not ruinously expensive.

But honestly. She's just going about her usual normal daily business. We think Father needs to get a hobby, and to reconsider the claim that 'it’s not stalking, it’s love' (surely what all stalkers think/say?).

Am having visions of Victorian Papas putting Airtags in daughters' crinolines.... wouldn't they have been all over it, eh?

fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/rosemary-sutcliffs-indian-uncle/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61276

Content warnings: racism, spousal abuse, child marriage

Rosemary Sutcliff notes that her aunt Edith married

…Archie, weak-willed and amiable, who did not tell her beforehand that he was a quarter Indian — his mother being the product of an Indian Army colonel and a rajah’s daughter — what would have happened if he had told Aunt Edith before it was too late, there’s no knowing. Maybe she would still have married him, but I very much doubt it. As it was, finding out afterwards, she refused to have children — I very much doubt if she even allowed him into her bed! — and set out to make his life a cold hell to his dying day. I have been there at some family gathering myself, puzzled as a dog may be by stresses in the air, the electric discharge of things I did not understand, when he came into the room…

For many years, the family were quite seriously prepared for Uncle Archie to murder her one day, and prepared, if he did, to go into the witness-box on his behalf and swear that he did it under unendurable provocation.

This is an uncomfortable passage about the racism of her aunt, and the readiness of the rest of the family to turn a blind eye to both the aunt’s racism and the potential for her to be murdered by her husband. Sutcliff attempts to play both for laughs, but I doubt if it went down well in the 1980s when the book was published and it certainly doesn’t work for today’s reader.

‘Race’ is a social construct anyway, but NB that if Uncle Archie’s grandmother was a rajah’s daughter, but had a European mother (as is implied), Archie himself would have been an eighth of Indian heritage rather than a quarter.

I decided to check up on the details of the story, and found some interesting data. “Aunt Edith” is Edith Fanny Sutcliff (1871-1960), who in 1897 married “Uncle Archie”, Archibald Gordon Selwood Langley (1872-1943), son of Charles Archibald Langley (1841-1877) and Sarah Elizabeth Hewett (born 1850, married Charles on her 20th birthday, lived to at least 1901). Sarah is reported as being the daughter of Colonel William Selwood Hewett (1824-1889) and Frances Elizabeth Hall (1835-1865). All were born in India. Sarah’s birthdate is recorded as 5 December 1850, and her parents’ wedding as 30 October 1849. Frances’ birthdate is recorded as 14 September 1835, so she was married six weeks after her 14th birthday and gave birth to Sarah a couple of months after her fifteenth birthday. Errm…

Frances herself was the daughter of James Frederick Hall (1809–1837) and Ann Clifford (1816–1865). She was the third of her parents’ four children, born between 1832 and 1837, and her mother then had another seven children with her second husband. James and Ann married in 1831, when Ann was still 14, so errm once more. Again, this is all happening in (British) India. But this doesn’t fit Sutcliff’s story, which is that Archie’s maternal grandmother (Frances) was a rajah’s daughter; unless the suggestion is that Ann had an extramarital relationship with a rajah in her late teens, a couple of years after her marriage to James.

But maybe the story got confused down the generations. James Fredrick Hall’s parents were born in England, but I note that the records of Ann Clifford’s parents are sparse; her father John Clifford is known to have died in 1830, a year before her early marriage, and the only information we have about Ann’s mother, Archie’s great-grandmother, is her first name, Elizabeth. It could have been Elizabeth who was begotten by an Indian father in the closing years of the eighteenth century. This would have made Uncle Archie technically only a sixteenth Indian rather than a quarter or an eighth, but prejudice is rarely interested in the facts. (Or indeed Elizabeth herself might have been the daughter of two Indian parents, and then become known by an English name.)

And Aunt Edith still sounds horrifying, no matter what her husband’s ancestry was.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/rosemary-sutcliffs-indian-uncle/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61276

anna_wing

I seem to recall that in my distant youth the process of preserving fruit or vegetables in sealed glass containers was called 'bottling'. There was also Richard III, the bottled spider (I remember wondering as a child why anyone would want to put a spider in a bottle, it seemed a rather cruel thing to do). When did it become 'jarring', a word with a useful existing meaning of its own that didn't need another one?

oursin

Happy birthday,

lisajulie and

luzula!

andrewducker

1. British Property Management Firms Are Helping Russians Avoid Sanctions: (tags:uk russia OhForFucksSake )
2. Amazon's warehose robots can now stow items faster than most humans: (tags:robots amazon )
3. Trans Labour councillor quits and accuses Starmer of 'throwing transgender people under a bus': (tags:transgender lgbt labour )
4. Why the rich paid less tax in the 1970s - despite 98% tax rates: (tags:tax uk history )
5. "Letting AI make up cases" hits the UK legal system: (tags:law ai fraud OhForFucksSake uk )
6. The House of Lords wants opinions from autistic people (diagnosed or undiagnosed), or people who care for them.: (tags:autism houseoflords )
7. Scientists turn lead into gold at the LHC!: (tags:materials gold lead )
8. Always, always check the answers the AI gives you.: (tags:comic genocide funny ai )
9. Video Essay Condescendingly Reads Wikipedia at You: (tags:funny satire videos )
10. American men who refer to themselves as 'moderate' or 'centrist' score basically the same on values and opinions as people who identify themselves as 'conservative': (tags:USA politics )

andrewducker

The weather is nice enough that the children are having lunch outdoors.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

white_hart

I was prompted to re-read this by the news of Gardam's death a couple of weeks ago (and discovering that she was a colleague's mother-in-law). A Long Way From Verona was her first novel, published in 1971 but set during the Second World War, and it is so good on just how it feels to be an awkward, unpopular teenager surrounded by people who are preoccupied with their own stuff. (It was published as a children's book, though I think that it's much more that it is a book about someone who happens to be a child. I understood the ending better now than I did as a teenager, where quite a lot of it went over my head rather.)

selenak

The third season of Foundation is only two months away! And here I was beginning to doubt it would exist. I am thrilled, because I love the show and all the interesting things it did with the premise, and when it does get broadcast I hope I will find time for write the Byzantium - Asimov - Show writers meta brewing in me.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Munich

used_songs

sunshine_challenge is dead; long live

sunshine_revival

rmc28

Goodness having a cold is dull. I spent most of yesterday resting/asleep, felt able to work today, but did it from home and definitely favoured the easier tasks from the todo list. I skipped indoor cricket this afternoon, and TriBase scrimmage tonight, in favour of continuing the recovery curve enough to play an ice hockey tournament this weekend.

I have successfully wrangled a car pool for the Kodiaks B to go to Gosport next weekend, which includes me driving a hired 9-seater, whee. Car pooling has been wrangled, mostly not by me, to get Warbirds to Romford tomorrow and Sunday. (The women's team and the mostly-men's team living up to stereotypes about planning, not for the first time.) The weekend after Gosport is playoffs in Sheffield, where we see if Kodiaks A can win promotion to the next division, and as a bonus I can meet up with my mother-in-law.

A couple of weeks before my Czech holiday I started taking all the morning school runs while Tony took the afternoons, after a long period where it was mostly the other way around. It is suiting me much more than I had expected, and has also led to me going to the office a lot more. Essentially, once I've cycled to school, it's as easy to go to the office as to go home, and usually I'll go to the office. Partly because my role and personality make "useful spontaneous in-person conversations" more likely to happen. Partly because once I'm on site, it's easier to take advantage of the university's Active Staff programme. I'm generally only working from home now when not-quite-well (as today) or if my schedule is All Online Meetings All The Time. The downside of the office is I have no privacy at the hotdesks and need to use a pod for meetings. I quite like the pods, but not for hours on end.

Active Staff is a recent initiative of the University Sports Service. Through it, I can get two exercise classes a week for free (mostly yoga, pilates and similar) and additional ones at the Sports Centre on a PAYG basis. While the most popular classes often book out really fast, people seem pretty good about cancelling if they can't make it, so a space often pops up the night before or morning of. I can also join the indoor cricket and table tennis "Give It A Go" sessions which are shared with students, which is how I've ended up playing cricket again for the first time since I was a teenager. It's not helping my workload problem but it's not making it worse, and it is bringing me a fair bit of joy, so I'll call it a win.

bluerosekatie posting in

little_details

Hello!

I have been looking into chocolate toxicity as it occurs in birds, since I want to write a scene where a human character with significant amounts of bird DNA tries chocolate and regrets it. I'm not planning on killing her, but I do want to figure out an accurate amount of chocolate to give her for it to make sense. Looking at the treatment methods, I would probably want a milder case of theobromine poisoning but enough to be a close call, if that makes sense. How much chocolate do you think she'd need to have, and what would be the proper course of treatment?

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

The weather has clearly turned when we have to turn on the AC to sleep at night, but finally seeing most of the trees in bloom was also high on the list.
( Read more... )

Additionally as part of

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Please also promote this offer in your account and communities if you're not interested in paid features yourself! People must comment by May 14.

kaberett

( Snip for boringness to people who aren't me! )

chickenfeet

https://myscena.org/john-gilks/review-asitha-tennekoon-interrogates-the-immigrant-experience-at-wmct/

cosmolinguist

"Any thoughts about dinner?" D texted me, a usual question at the usual time (quarter past six or so). I was in the unusal location of sitting outside the Corn Exchange, in the sunshine, having an after-work drink with a friend I'd met in town. We do this every month or so. We'd actually both surprised ourselves by how much work we'd gotten done, after what has been a stressful, high-pressure week for us both.

She said it would be just one drink after work. She had plans this evening.

That's fine! I worry I'm a bad influence, because I always go along with this, she always diligently checks her train and plans to get the one that's at 5:29 or something like that.

I don't think it's happened in the three or four times we've done this. It definitely didn't today. As you can tell when I was still there at a quarter past six.

"Afraid not," I texted back to D. "I've had three beers."

Or so I meant to say. It's only after I saw his replies -- "Bad three beers!" "You should good three beers!" -- that I noticed I hadn't said that at all.

Autocorrect had helpfully ensured that I had indeed said I've bad three beers.

oursin

Dr Johnson on card-playing.

Thoughts and reminiscences evoked by liv's post on board-games, which are not so much about that specific issue of 'games all the family can play' across generations, although some of these we must have done.

Not sure there was always generation of kindness, because there was a certain degree of e.g. sibling competitiveness in play with certain recreations.

These would be played within family and sometimes also with family friends.

Various pencil and paper games - my maternal grandfather was very into these and as I recall even had duplicated blanks made up.

Board games such as Sorry, Monopoly, Scrabble, Scoop, which I have never come across anyone who has played - there was also a very old Snakes and Ladders board, where you went up a ladder for doing a good deed, and down a snake for committing A Sin, but I'm not sure we ever played on it. And later on, Trivial Pursuit, well, we would, wouldn't we. (Original classic edition, I guess? it had only recently come out.)

Mainline, a card game which is now a rare vintage item, apparently, in which you had cards with bits of railway line and had to fit these together within certain rules, and honestly I can't remember what the ultimate outcome was meant to be.... the description there says to get rid of all the cards in one's hand.

On a less cerebral level, Pit - as I daresay is common, the Bear got very tatty and had to be very carefully concealed when trying to pass.

wychwood

Well, it's been a very exciting 24 hours for church things! I'm delighted with the choice, although surprised - Prevost was mentioned as papabile, but he didn't seem like a top candidate.

( From a church perspective )

( From a personal perspective )

We also had some discussion about the name choice - Leo XIII was, apparently, very favourably disposed towards the Augustinians; he's also, as everyone else has mentioned, someone who did a lot to reorient the Church towards the then-modern world and who was overtly supportive of, for instance, labour unions!

liv

I missed my anniversary of moving to DW – this has been my online home since 3 May 2009, a slightly astonishing 16 years. Anyway, the

3weeks4dreamwidth annual fest is ongoing, and I am not doing any particular posting challenges or anything, but I generally think having more content here is good. Some people don't agree, they really dislike those times in early January and April-May when everybody makes resolutions to post more and the site gets busy. I'm kind of a hypocrite because I love when people commit to posting more frequently or regularly, but I never really do so myself.

But talking about random things when I happen to have time and brain is also useful! Inspired by a discussion in

agonyaunt I was interested in people's thoughts about playing board games including both adults and children. ( experiences and questions )

Please tell me what you think! Did you play with your caregivers as a child, and if applicable do you play with the kids in your life now? What works to have a calm, enjoyable game when there is a big difference in skill levels?

Current Mood: content

oracne

I saw Sinners last night with my friend L. at The Bourse, and wow wow wow.

Generic description: set in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, the story revolves around a pair of twins (both played by Michael B. Jordan) returning home from Chicago to open a juke joint in an old, empty sawmill with an ominous stain on the floor. Their young cousin, whose preacher father tells him playing the blues is unholy, is going to perform there for opening night. Things don't go well, which is clear from the opening scene, one day after the rest of the movie.

The music in this movie is absolutely sublime and there's some great dancing as well. Also, this is a dark fantasy/horror movie, so expect gore.

It was filmed in Louisiana. Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish stood in for the Mississippi town in the midst of cotton plantations, and they also did some filming in Bogalusa.

Spoilers below the cut.

( Read more... )