Persimmon of Leave

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 08:06 pm
[personal profile] ismo
I had a fairy ring of tiny white mushroom caps in my back yard. I was taking pains not to step into the middle of it. Today, the weather took a turn for the warm again, and the summery sun seems to have discouraged the mushrooms. They've turned beige and stopped rising. Belatedly, it occurred to me that maybe I should have hopped in and waited for someone to come and get me!

After an excessively wakeful night, I got more sleep by sleeping late. The down side of that is that then the day starts late. Nothing much happened. I did my homework for the child protection meeting--rereading the endless policy statement to see if it's correct on THIS iteration. We were down to our last heel of bread, so I made a new batch. It was an experiment. We had about a pint of half and half that had soured before we could use it up. That happens when we buy from the farm store, because, I guess, it's not ultra-pasteurized like the dairy products from the store. We are not the kind of people to buy raw milk, so it's not raw, but just a bit less processed. I decided to try putting it in the bread. It seems to have worked fine. I think the bread has a slight tang of cheese flavor, but the Sparrowhawk says he doesn't notice it. I also feel the bread didn't rise quite enough to have satisfied Paul Hollywood. I may have hustled it a bit because I wanted it to be done in time for us to go to church. And then we didn't go anyway. I was coughing again, and I really have developed a bit of a paranoia about going to public places when I'm having coughing attacks. It's just so demoralizing, and I want to apologize to everyone around, because I know that these days, people feel alarm and resentment when someone coughs nearby. Besides, I was not feeling that great. So we stayed home and had dinner quietly instead.

While eating, I got an unexpected call from the desk of Madame's residence. They were calling on her behalf, and turned the phone over to her. She sounded quite agitated and upset. She wanted me to contact Mademoiselle and tell her that Madame wants her phone back. Unfortunately, she couldn't hear me, so I was unable to reassure her. She just kept repeating Mademoiselle's phone number and saying she wanted her phone back. I did try, but Mademoiselle had her notifications turned off, as she frequently does. It's a hard life for people with dementia, but also for those who care for them.

Context and Gratitude

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 06:12 pm
taz_39: (Default)
[personal profile] taz_39
This is kinda random but I've been thinking about it and wanted to write it out.

Lately I've seen a lot of Tiktok videos, and heard commentary from people, shaking their heads over the state of America. A lot of folks seem to think we're now a 3rd world country. 

We're not. 

Our health care sucks, sure. Our politics suck right now. Stuff is expensive. 

But sit with me for a sec and let's consider what we DO have. 

WATER
If I want to bathe myself, I can do it ANY time. There is clean tap water available 24/7 whether I'm home or traveling. I don't have to go to a public space, or wait in a queue to get fresh water, or find a natural source. 
Not only that, I can choose the TEMPERATURE of my water. 
Not only that, I can stay in the shower for as long as I like. 

Do you know how many people do not have that absolute luxury? 
Who get a RATION of clean water, and have to make it last for themselves and their families?
Who have to travel miles to get water at all, and then carry it back?
Who can only bathe sparingly?

FOOD
If I am hungry and don't have food in the house, literally all I need to do is step outside, and there is some kind of food within a mile. Not only that, I have an incredible choice of nearly any type of food at any moment whether in season or not. At this very moment as I'm typing this, if I wanted a pineapple, a whole raw octopus, a Japanese beer, and a hot plate of just-cooked African food, I could have every single one of those things within an hour. The very most I'd have to wait for any of that would be day or two if I had to order some of them. ORDER THEM! I don't even need to find those things myself...I can pay someone to gather them and bring them to me! 

In the context of human history, can we take a moment to marvel at the absolutely stunning privilege, wealth, and economic power of that? 

Meanwhile there are pictures leaking out of children who are skin and bones in Gaza. 
But I can pay someone to drive me to Whole Foods--which at all times has in stock nearly every vegetable, fruit, grain, spice, or meat you could think of gathered from every country around the globe--and from all of that bounty I can select pancake-flavored rice crackers that have almost no nutritional value, eat them, and say, "Meh, they were ok but I wouldn't buy them again."

And I have the GALL to say America is a 3rd world country???

HEALTH CARE
Admittedly we've got terrible health care, and I'm not gonna TOUT our health care. 
However we do HAVE health care.

If you need a doctor, yes, you have to make an appointment or get to a clinic. You might have to wait for hours, but rarely a whole DAY, and usually in a relatively clean waiting room with access to water, snacks, chairs, restrooms, and climate control. When you ARE seen, it might be in a somewhat dated room or with dated equipment, but 99% of the time you can safely assume that the stethoscope is clean, the needle is new, and any medication, equipment, or therapy you're prescribed will be readily available. If you need an additional scan like an MRI, you may have to wait days or months to get it...but you will still get it. 

You don't have to walk miles to see a doctor, and then wait days in a tent to actually be seen. AND THEN be seen but with outdated half-broken equipment, expired medications, or in unsanitary conditions, which any volunteer with Doctors Without Borders can tell you is the reality for millions of people around the world. You don't have to hear that you need an MRI and therefore there's nothing they can do for you because there isn't an MRI machine in that country.

Our health care is not great...but it's THERE. 

TRAVEL
If I want to go to China right now, I can. Do you know how powerful an American passport is?
If I wanted to visit my sister in Colorado 1800 miles away, there is nothing to stop me from being there in either a few hours or a few days. 
Despite the massive size of our country, it is possible to hop in a car and know with certainty that you will be able to find fuel, food, fresh water, and places to rest nearly anywhere you decide to go within the United States. 

Do we have a bullet train, no. Is our infrastructure dated, yes. 
Are we still fully capable of traveling absolutely massive distances with nothing to stop us, thanks to our personal freedoms and that dated infrastructure and the availability of transportation in general? YES. 

---    ---    ---    ---    ---    ---    

I will stop here, but there are MANY other categories where we could stand to sit back and consider how privileged (spoiled) we are compared to MANY other people in the world. 

I have been thinking about this, as I travel throughout the United States on fast and powerful aircraft; as I unpack my bags in hotel after hotel that is clean, with hot running water and a refrigerator and climate control. As I pay someone to take me to specific grocery stores with the most exotic and rare foods, not just the essentials, and how I don't even think for a moment that the grocery store might not have something that I need, because that is UNFATHOMABLE in my very, VERY privileged world. 

As I'm out here doing a dream job, earning and spending money, eating, and meeting people...
...I am thinking about this. Deliberately. 
Because we are NOT a 3rd world country. We are SPOILED and JADED to think so for even a moment. 

It is understandable to be DISGUSTED with the way things are in our country: health care, education, food access, etc. 
It is OK and natural to want things to be better. 
But I wanted to write this out because there is so much complaining, and not enough of that context to open our eyes and make us APPRECIATE the incredible lives we are able to live, because of WHERE we live. 

Hedjog is go flop

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 08:21 pm
oursin: Sleeping hedgehog (sleepy hedgehog)
[personal profile] oursin

Today was the day of the conference at which I had been invited, at rather short notice, to give a keynote.

Not only did I have to get up EARLY especially for a Saturday, I had a rotten night because the lower back decided to kick off and even when it had calmed down a bit it took ages to get back to sleep.

And then as I was doing my final preparations I discovered the battery in one of my hearing aids was flat, which was a bit irksome, because I had been expecting all week for it to do the warning bonging, like the other one did, and had to replace that.

So anyway, I got out, and found that the place I was aiming at was not quite so far distant from the Underground station as had been indicated, and also, even though I was late, so was the start.

Rather few actual in-person attendees - I'm not sure how many there were on the Zoom.

Crisis! there was supposed to be a delivery of sandwiches at lunchtime which Did Not Arrive so we all went out to forage (these later turned up some hours later, what is the point).

So, I think my paper went over okay, and there were some questions, even if some of them got rather off-topic onto more general questions about archives.

Some of the papers were moderately interesting, some of them were a bit hard to hear, and I picked up at least one useful reference (possibly) for one of my own projects.

Met one old academic acquaintance from way back, and a couple of interesting Younger Scholars.

Had already decided that I was not up for going on to meal in restaurant, so came home to flop.

(no subject)

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 12:37 pm
skygiants: Kozue from Revolutionary Girl Utena, in black rose gear, holding her sword (salute)
[personal profile] skygiants
Q: So, did you expect to like Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword?

A: No. If I'm being honest, I did not pick up this book in a generous spirit: I haven't read any Grossman previously (though I watched some of The Magicians TV show) but my vague impression was that his Magicians books were kind of edgelordy, and also he annoyed me on a panel I saw him on ten years ago.

Q: Given all this, why did you decide to pick up his new seven hundred page novel?

A: I saw some promotional material that called it 'the first major Arthurian epic of the new millennium' and I wanted to fight with it.

Q: And now you've finished it! Are you ready to fight?

A: ... well ... as it turned out I actually had a good time ........

Q: Ah. I see. Did it have a good Kay?

A: NO. Kay does show up for a hot second and I did get excited about it but it's not for very long and he's always being an asshole in flashbacks. It has a really good Palomides though -- possibly the best Palomides I've yet encountered, which is honestly not a high bar but still very exciting. Also, genuinely, a good Arthur!

Q: Gay at all?

A: No, very straight Arthur. Bedivere's pining for him but it's very unrequired, alas for Bedivere. There is also a trans knight and you can tell that Lev Grossman is very proud of himself for every element of that storyline, which I thought was fine.

Q: What about the women, did you like them? Guinevere? Nimue? Morgan?

A: Well, I think Lev Grossman is trying his very best, and he really wants you to know that he's On Their Side and Understands Their Problems and Respects Their Competence and, well, I think Lev Grossman is trying his very best.

Q: Lancelot?

A: I have arguments with the Lancelot. Can we stop going down a character list though and talk about --

Q: God?

A: Okay, NOW we're talking. I don't know that I agree with Lev Grossman about God. Often I think I don't. Often while reading the book, I was like, Mr. Grossman, I think you're giving me kind of a trite answer to an interesting question. I don't actually think we need to settle this with a bunch of angels and a bunch of fairy knights having a big stupid fight around the Lance of Longinus. BUT! you're asking the question! You understand that if we're talking about Arthurian myths we have to talk about God! And we have to talk about fairy, and Adventures, and the Grail, and the legacy of Rome, and we have to talk about the way that the stories partake of these kind of layered and contradictory levels of myth and belief and historicity, and we don't have to try to bring all these into concordance with each other -- instead we can pull out the ways that they contradict, that it's interesting to highlight the contradictions. You can have post-Roman Britain, and you can have plate armor and samite dresses and the hunting of the white stag, and the old gods, and the Grail Quest -- you don't have to talk to just one strain of Arthuriana, you can talk to all of them.

Q: Really? All of them?

A: Okay, maybe not all of them, but a lot of them. I think that's why I liked it -- I think he really is trying to position himself in the middle of a big conversation with Malory and Tennyson and White and Bradley and the whole recent line of Strictly Historical Arthurs, and pull them into dialogue with each other. And, to be clear, I think, often failing! Often coming to conclusions I don't agree with! Often his answer is just like 'daddy issues' or 'depression,' and I'm like 'sure, okay.' But it's still an interesting conversation, it's a conversation about the things I think are interesting in the Matter of Britain -- how and why we struggle for goodness and utopia, how and why we inevitably fail, and a new question that I like to see and which Arthurian books don't often pick up on, which is what we do after the fall occurs.

Q: Speaking of the matter of Britain, isn't Lev Grossman very American?

A: Extremely. And this is a very American Arthuriana. It wants to know what happens when the age of wonders is ending -- when life has been good for a while, within a charmed circle, and now things are falling apart; but the charmed circle itself was built on layers of colonial occupation and a foundational atrocity, and maybe that did poison it from the beginning. So, you know. But I don't think any of this is irrelevant to the UK either --

Q: Well, you also are very American and maybe not best qualified to talk about that, so let's get back to characters. What did you think of Collum?

A: Oh, the well-meaning rural young man with a mysterious backstory who wants to be a knight and unfortunately rolls up five minutes after the fall of the Round Table, just in time to accompany the few remaining knights on a doomed quest to figure out whether Arthur is still alive somewhere or if not who should be king after him, in the actual main plot of the book?

Q: Yeah, him. You know, the book's actual protagonist.

A: Eh, I thought he was fine.

Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 04:02 pm
[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

The second section of the third chapter of Prophet Song is long, what with the lack of paragraphing. I count 872 words.

She is distracted at work, pacing within, seeing before her some shadowed obstacle and seeking a path around it, saying to herself over and over, they will not take my son. There are rumours in the company of a blood-letting, of a phased wind-down, none of it can be true. They are called into the meeting room where it is announced the managing director Stephen Stoker has been stood down, he did not come into work this morning, they are told that Paul Felsner will replace him. He comes before them pulling on the tips of his fingers with a small hand and cannot hide his delight. She watches about the room as he speaks selecting for his supporters by the clapping hands and smiles, seeing the wild animal among them, seeing how it has done away with concealment and pretence, how it prowls now in the open as Paul Felsner raises his hand in hieratic gestures speaking not the company speak but the cant of the party, about an age of change and reformation, an evolution of the national spirit, of dominion leading into expansion, a woman walks across the room and opens a window. Eilish finds herself stepping out of the lift onto the ground floor. She crosses the street and goes into the newsagent’s, points to a pack of cigarettes. It has been a long time, she thinks, standing alone outside the office building, sliding a cigarette from the box, fondling the paper skin, running its odour under her nose. The cottony taste of cellulose acetate as she lights and pulls the hot smoke into her mouth, recalling the day she last quit, this feeling of some younger self, perhaps Larry was with her, she doesn’t know. Memory lies, it plays its own games, layers one image upon another that might be true or not true, over time the layers dissolve and become like smoke, watching the smoke that blows out her mouth vanish into the day. Watching the street as though it belongs to some other city, thinking how it is so that life seems to exist outside events, life passing by without need of witness, the congested traffic fuming in the dismal air, the people passing by harried and preoccupied, imprisoned within the delusion of the individual, this wish now she has to escape, watching until she is brought clean outside herself, the light altering tone by tone until it becomes a lucent sheen on the street, the gulls nipping at food in a gutter are dark underwing as they whip up out of the path of a lorry. Well now. Colm Perry is standing beside her tapping a cigarette on its box. I didn’t know you smoked, Eilish. She is squeezing her eyes as if to see an answer to a question she has not been asked and then she shakes her head. I can’t say that I do. Colm Perry lights a cigarette and exhales slowly. Neither do I. She pulls the dark burn inside her and wants the burn some more, studying Colm Perry’s wrinkled shirt, knowing the cerise face of a drinker, the look that rests sly in the eye of a man well in on the joke though he is laughing at them from the outside. He glances behind towards the automatic door. The gall of that man, he says, there will be a purge soon enough, they like their own kind so keep your head down, that’s all I have to say. He looks again over his shoulder and pulls out his phone. Have you seen the latest? What she sees on the phone are images of graffiti on windows and walls denouncing the gardai, the security forces and the state, triumphant scrawls in sprayed red paint. The writing looks like blood, the building looks like a school. St Joseph’s in Fairview, he says, they are saying the principal called in the GNSB who came and arrested four boys, they haven’t yet been released, it’s gone on a few days but the story’s only online now, there are parents and students gathering outside Store Street Garda Station waiting for the boys to be freed. My son has been called up for national service, she says, he is to hand himself over the week he turns seventeen, he is still just a kid in school, and this after they take his father. Colm Perry looks at her and then he shakes his head. Bastards, he says. He cups his hand to his mouth and thinks long upon a drag then extinguishes the cigarette on the smokers’ box. You’re going to have to get him out, he says. Get him out where? She watches him shrug and open his hands and then he puts them in the pockets of his jeans. He is looking across the street to a newsagent’s. Right now, he says, I’d love an ice cream, an old-fashioned cone with a 99, I’d like to be on a beach freezing my butt off, I’d like for my parents to be still alive, look, Eilish, I don’t know, England, Canada, the USA, it’s only a sug-gestion, but you’re going to have to get him out, look, I must go back inside.

I picked this off the shelf in a California bookshop on the margins of last year’s Gallifrey One, knowing that it had won the Booker Prize but incorrectly under the impression that it was a gritty realist slice-of-Dublin-life story. I was of course wrong about this. It’s set very firmly in middle-class Dublin, but in the very near future where an extremist party wins an election and creates a police state, in turn sparking armed resistance, civil war and the collapse of society; it’s told through the viewpoint of a mother of four whose trade unionist husband disappears early in the book and who witnesses her family disintegrating.

Lynch is very clear in interviews that his intention was to bring the horrors of the Syrian conflict home to a local audience, and I think he very much succeeds. The litany of familiar Dublin place names converted into locations of violent convulsion is tremendously effective. The conversion of standard Irish official banter into the language of oppression is chilling. The worst of the violence happens off screen, but its aftermath is vividly realised. And of course it’s not just Syria; I remember Bosnia when I lived there nearly thirty years ago, which had undergone a similar implosion, and today we can look at Palestine, not only Gaza but also the West Bank, for societies being destroyed by violence.

If I had been writing a book like this, I would have also gone into the grand politics of the disaster, looking at bad and evil leadership decisions, and ineffectual international interventions which could have been done better. But Paul Lynch is not into finger-pointing; it’s simply the human experience of state violence followed by violent state collapse, and I find it all the more effective as a result. The non-paragraphed style brings an immediacy to the prose, while of course also being a salute to Joyce’s retelling of everyday Dublin life from a previous century. I am not sure if I could say I actually liked the book, but I do recommend it. You can get Prophet Song here.

I haven’t read any of the other books on the Booker Prize longlist or shortlist for 2023, but I will get to Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors very soon. Oddly enough, Prophet Song is set in the city where one of my parents was born, and The House of Doors in the city where the other was born.

This was the top unread book that I had acquired last year, and also I had thought that it was the top unread non-genre book on my shelf, but I think it is pretty clearly in the dystopian sub-genre of sf. Next on the former pile is Camp Damascus, by Chuck Tingle; next on the latter pile, after acquiring some of my father’s books last month, is East of Eden, by John Steinbeck.

Beijing and Chengdu, September 2025

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 02:42 pm
[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

I went to China last week, for the second time this year and third time in my life, a couple of days working in Beijing and then a couple of days at Galaxycon in Chengdu. Just a few notes here.

I started with a presentation to the European Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, as chronicled in this LinkedIn post by a colleague, making that case that gravity favours an improvement in (already strong) EU-China trade relations. I did this from the 76th floor of the World Trade Centre tower; the view of nearby helipads was impressive.

Later that evening a group of friends workshopped a Chinese name for me. I had previously settled for the phonetic but cumbersome 尼古拉斯·亨利·懷特 – Nígǔlāsī Hēnglì Huáitè, 尼古拉斯 for short. But the dinner group determined that I should instead adopt the Chinese name 白怀珂, Bái Huáikē – 白 means “white”, which is fair enough, and it also looks a bit like a TARDIS; and 怀珂 sounds a bit like “white” but also suggests that I have a heart like a semi-precious stone. I can live with that, and have started trying to sign it when needed.

I also got a tour of the Xiaomi electric vehicle factory, where the new SU7 and YU7 are made, one every 76 seconds; they can go from 0–100 km/h in 3.23 seconds and have a top speed of 253 km/h (157 mph); the battery has a range of 760 km and can recharge 620 kilometres (390 mi) of range within 15 minutes. Robots scurry around the factory floor assembling cars, playing music to themselves. I felt that I had seen the future. (Disclosure: I have been advising Xiaomi since 2021, but on their phone handsets not their EVs.)

In Chengdu, it was a little alarming to be confronted with myself at slightly more than full scale at the convention entrance.

(Will make sure they get the memo next time that I am now 白怀珂 in Chinese.)

The centre was, again, beautifully located beside a lake, this time south of the city (in 2023 it was northwest). This is the view from the hotel; the small white triangles are the tents in the dealers area of the convention.

The Whovians were out in force.

The science fiction museum had some fascinating exhibits, including a battered first edition of Cat Country:

The convention opening ceremony as usual featured a children’s choir:

I took careful note of the Galaxy Awards ceremony in the evening. As far as I understood it, a preliminary nominations list was made by readers of Science Fiction World, and a panel of judges then chose the winners. Twelve of the judges appear to be men, with one woman.

There were 23 categories, including some pretty market-related ones like “Best Distribution Chain” and “Best Electronic Sales Platform”. The loveliest was “Best Student Science Fiction Society”, won by the Parallel Universe Science Fiction Club of Donghua University in Shangha, presented by Liu Cixin (who was made to work hard that evening).

They invited all of the nominated student clubs to join them on stage.

Liza Trombi and Wang Jinkang sitting in front of me.

In more familiar categories, Best Translated Related Work was jointly won by Rob Wilkins’ Terry Pratchett: A Life in Footnotes and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter, Best International Distributor went to Neil Clarke. The Best Novel award went to Golden Peach, by up and coming writer Yang Wanqing. I have not been able to get a text version of the full list of winners, but I can give you graphics in Chinese here and here.

Unfortunately I came down with a stomach bug that evening and missed much of the rest of the convention, struggling in on the Saturday for a symposium on different ways of running science fiction events with Wu Xiankui and Esther MacCallum-Stewart, but otherwise spending the day in bed. The next day was my last day, and I had a very convivial lunch in central Chengdu with the Whovians, but didn’t feel like eating much.

Many thanks to Sara Chen and her team for the organisation of the event. Once again I felt stimulated and enlightened by my visit to China, and hope it won’t be long before I go back.

Bots, Cracker Barrel, & The Daily Mail

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 09:34 am
mallorys_camera: (Default)
[personal profile] mallorys_camera
The news could always be worse.

Like there could be no news! The Internet could destruct, whereupon civilization as we know it would fall apart, and we'd all be left like Kuno, the protagonist of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops, in his one-room luxury cell: For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.

A remarkably prescient story, The Machine Stops.

But lucky us! There is news! The U.S. is preparing military strikes inside Venezuela, Hegseth is summoning every four-star general & admiral to Quantico (To watch them do pushups? Or issue instructions for the upcoming coup? One does wonder!) And every day, more innocent people die in Gaza.

The Machine isn't stopping just yet.

###

Of all the awful news stories vying for my attention right now, the one that actually captured my imagination was a throwaway item in an obscure tech website called Gizmodo: Cracker Barrel Outrage Was Almost Certainly Driven by Bots, Researchers Say.

Because this story really encapsulates exactly what's going on right now.

Cracker Barrel apparently is some kind of restaurant chain. Faux Southern Comfort. Biscuits and gravy play a prominent role in its menu. I don't think I've ever been inside one.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, they changed their logo.



And if reports were to be believed, this immediately launched a tidal wave of Internet outrage from loyal Cracker Barrel customers whose names (apparently) are legion. Donald Trump Jr. himself weighed in on the controversy: WTF is wrong with Cracker Barrel?!

Then The Daily Mail decided to pick the story up. It was a perfect proxy for the culture war whose charge they are leading.

Now, The Daily Mail is the most disgusting media cesspool imaginable, but I scan its headlines regularly (and yes, occasionally click on stories) because I know no better way to track the imaginations and preoccupations of the average Trump voter.

Loyal Cracker Barrel customers will be boycotting Cracker Barrel until the original—rightful—logo is restored, trumpeted The Daily Mail! The people have spoken!

The Daily Mail must have run 20 stories like that.

One assumes that every Daily Mail-reading moron who ever set foot in a strip mall where a Cracker Barrel planted itself eyed these stories dully & mumbled to themselves, Shit, yeah. I ain't eatin' thar till they bring Uncle Herschel back! So, The Daily Mail's campaign was successful. The backlash was enough to sink Cracker Barrel's stock by $100 million.

The news that the original indignation over the Cracker Barrel logo was actually the product of bot farm manipulations reveals a formula for manipulating hearts & minds:

(1) You plant a rumor on TikTok using a dozen or so humans

(2) You program an army of bots to "like" the original TikTok posting & post follow-up comments: Those assholes! The Libtards are at it again! Etc, etc, etc. If the bot farm is doing its job properly, the phenomenon gathers momentum because TikTok algorithms—indeed, all social media algorithms— are coded by volume. Postings with a lot of responses are far more likely to find themselves in your We think you'd like THIS list.

(3) You get the story picked up by some terrestrial media source that has laid off all of its human fact checkers.

Voila!

The moral of the story? Don't trust a single piece of news unless it's confirmed independently from at least five sources.

And maybe not even then.

###

In other news, the weather has been sunny & bright, so I've been, too.

I was tremendously productive yesterday! Finished an enormous chunk of Remuneration and another 1,000 words on the Work in Progress: Neal & Grazia are now sitting in a downtown plaza on a blustery day watching a Funny Walk Festival. Hopefully, today, they will be exploring the dying farm hub that is Middletown & Grazia will give Neal a backrub and realize they have moved past the juncture where any sexual relationship is possible. And that will be the end of Chapter 2.

Sometimes, while I'm scribbling away at the Work in Progress, I am paralyzed by its irrelevance. Who cares? I think. The world these days is so, so dreadful. And I am so, so inconsequential.

And then, I think, Well, you're entertaining yourself, aren't you?

And that's a good thing, right?

Books Received, September 20 — September 26

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 09:10 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Six works new to me: four fantasy, one mystery, one non-fiction (from an unexpected source)... unless you count the fantasy-mystery as mystery, in which case it's three fantasy and two mysteries. At least two are series. I don't know why publishers are so averse to labelling series.

Books Received, September 20 — September 26

Poll #33662 Books Received, September 20 — September 26
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 35


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong
10 (28.6%)

Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst (July 2026)
9 (25.7%)

Following My Nose by Alexei Panshin (December 2024)
10 (28.6%)

The Fake Divination Offense by Sara Raasch (May 2026)
5 (14.3%)

The Harvey Girl by Dana Stabenow (February 2026)
5 (14.3%)

Scarlet Morning by ND Stevenson (September 2025)
15 (42.9%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.9%)

Cats!
26 (74.3%)

(no subject)

Saturday, September 27th, 2025 08:05 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] naryrising!

Mushroom of Leave

Friday, September 26th, 2025 07:13 pm
[personal profile] ismo
I am really majorly disgruntled by a bad night followed by a 9 am doctor's appointment. I was only going in to make sure my home blood pressure monitor was properly calibrated to theirs, but the reading was not good and shenanigans ensued. The PA, who we shall refer to as Dontay because that is not his name, is a very sarcastic individual whose snarky nature is appreciated by me. The whole clinic smelled of BACON! "This is a hell of a thing," I thought but did not say, "for your patients with cardiovascular issues." Dontay said they were making bacon and French toast, as if that was a normal activity for a medical clinic. You learn something new every day. Anyway, he said he couldn't let me go without seeing the doctor. Again I bit my tongue and did not point out that actually he couldn't stop me from leaving any time I wanted. I know his intentions were good. The doc cut my current BP meds, which are currently ruining my quality of life, back to half, but has prescribed for me yet another medication that I don't want either. I'll give it a try, but I'm not sanguine. She also ordered me a chest x-ray for my persistent cough, which, again, I am pretty sure is the medication but oh well. I suppose we'll get it sorted out eventually.

From there I went on to visit Dragonfly. We had lots to talk about, as circumstances have created an opportunity to retire that she doesn't want to refuse. Scary but exciting times for her. We talked and then meditated on her back porch, which has such a lovely view of the sky through a lattice of huge criss-crossing branches. In honor of the beautiful weather, we walked over to a local brewery where she had butter chicken and I had some very tasty chili. I only ate half of it, because I knew I could only tolerate a limited amount of spicy bean concoction. What I really wanted was to go back to the doctor's office and get me some of that good medical bacon.

A little cheering news?

Friday, September 26th, 2025 07:34 pm
oursin: Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing in his new coat (Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing)
[personal profile] oursin

Let's All Remember When We Saved The World:

Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer - signed 16th September 1987 and entering into force on January 1st 1989, [became] the first universally ratified treaty in the entire history of the United Nations....
Much smarter people than I have spent the last 2 decades trying to understand exactly why it was such a resounding success, and let’s be clear here, I am just an idiot with a newsletter. But a couple of details stand out:
The agreement didn’t wait for all the science to be completely firmed up before implementing regulation - which is a good job, because early conclusions about ozone depletion levels were significantly underestimated. Instead, it adopted a “Precautionary Principle” that was enshrined in the Rio Declaration in 1992 - acting on likely evidence to avoid consequences that may be catastrophic or even irreversible if any delay is sought. (This is markedly different from how some politicians seem to think science should work - if their words can be believed, of course.)
Negotiations took place in small, informal groups, to give everyone the best chance of being heard and being understood. More than anything else, this reminds me of Dorsa Brevia, and how utterly exhausting that conference was for all the characters involved. Who knows how many such talks led to Montreal being accepted? But every one of them counted.
There was a clear economic benefit for the industries using CFCs to move away from them - not just on principle or to avoid public backlash, but because CFCs were old tech and therefore out of patent, and shifting to new alternatives would allow companies to develop ozone-friendly chemicals they could stick a profitable patent on.
And so the world was saved - just in time for its next challenge.

Also:

“A remarkable discovery”: Rare fern found in Welsh valley 150 years after being wiped out by Victorians:

The plant's disappearance from Cwm Idwal is thought to have been driven by the Victorian fern-collecting craze known as 'Pteridomania', which stripped sites of rare species.
Its rediscovery suggests that the holly fern may be recolonising from spores carried within the national park, or that a hidden population survived undetected.
“This is a remarkable rediscovery," says Alastair Hotchkiss, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s Wales Officer. "The cliffs around Cwm Idwal are seriously challenging terrain for botanists to explore, but the fact that this species remained undetected for over a century and a half is a powerful reminder of how much we still have to learn about our upland flora – and how much we still have to protect.”

Weather | A cookbook on sale

Friday, September 26th, 2025 03:09 pm
umadoshi: (autumn leaves 3 (oraclegreen))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Woke up to a very classic autumnal bluster that made me just as glad to not have to venture outside, given the humidity. (One local on Bluesky: "It's a rainy day, and VERY warm. Expect individual ecosystems to form in your rain jacket this morning. Un-zipping the armpit holes for ventilation is a MUST this AM" Another local's response: "This is the sort of weather report I want. Not “plan for this temp or that precipitation”. I want “don’t straighten your hair, and make sure you have good armpit ventilation.”")

And our friendly local meteorologist measured 20.5mm of rain overnight--hardly drought-ending, but still very appreciated.

I don't know how widespread this sale is, but at least on Kobo Canada, the ebook of Margaret Eby's You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible is currently $2.99.

I've bought this book twice, when after reading it in ebook I really wanted a hard copy. Have I actually cooked from it? No. (No one is shocked.) But for a second rec, [personal profile] runpunkrun reviewed it in a more informative way last month. (In comments there, [personal profile] jesse_the_k noted that this subset of cookbooks--which includes other excellent books such as The Sad Bastard Cookbook--is called "struggle cooking".)

Short stuff I liked, third quarter 2025

Friday, September 26th, 2025 12:12 pm
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

Thirteen Swords That Made a Prince: Highlights From the Arms & Armory Collection, Sharang Biswas (Strange Horizons)

Biologists say it will take at least a generation for the river to recover (Klamath River Hymn), Leah Bobet (Reckoning)

Watching Migrations, Keyan Bowes (Strange Horizons)

With Only a Razor Between, Martin Cahill (Reactor)

And the Planet Loved Him, L. Chan (Clarkesworld)

Holly on the Mantel, Blood on the Hearth, Kate Francia (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

The Jacarandas Are Unimpressed By Your Show of Force, Gwynne Garfinkle (Strange Horizons)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gorgon, Gwynne Garfinkle (Penumbric)

In Connorville, Kathleen Jennings (Reactor)

Orders, Grace Seybold (Augur)

Brooklyn Beijing, Hannah Yang (Uncanny)

Musings on Mothering, ed. Teika Bellamy

Friday, September 26th, 2025 04:05 pm
[syndicated profile] fromtheheartofeurope_feed

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

Second piece of third section:

I am all

I am food
I am drink
I am comfort
I am security I am warmth
I am love
I am your mother

NIK HARRIS

This is a collection of art, poetry and short prose pieces on motherhood, that I picked up for free at Novacon in 2021. It was sponsored by the British branch of La Leche League,so there’s a not very subtle emphasis on breastfeeding, but in general it’s a nice assembly of pieces of varying quality, speaking to the experience of maternity, which is designed to be an appropriate gift to a new mother. One aspect that is left out is the experience of parents of children with special needs. It is basically out of print, but you can probably get Musings on Mothering here.

Because I picked it up at a science fiction convention, I initially classified it as the sf book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves, but now that I have actually read it, I realise that there is no sfnal content, and I will count it as poetry, which takes up about three quarters of the book.

The next long-unread sf book on my shelf is another that I picked up at that Novacon, Howul: A Life’s Journey, by David Shannon, who is married to Bernardine Evaristo.

Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu

Friday, September 26th, 2025 09:17 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A grieving mother and her best friend break into a ghost museum to conduct illicit but surely harmless Ghost Day celebrations. Revelations await.

Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu

Salinity Points

Friday, September 26th, 2025 09:05 am
mallorys_camera: (Default)
[personal profile] mallorys_camera
Yep, exercise makes the difference to sleep and full-spectrum sunlight makes the difference to jocularity—though God knows, we need the rain: The Hudson's salinity point is now up to Poughkeepsie; they are actually warning people on low-salt diets not to drink tap water. And algae blooms are blossoming on every tidal inlet up through Garrison.

I have been toying with the idea of visiting Jeanna in New Mexico over Christmas.

Christmas is generally the holiday that makes me the most lachrymose. I often spent it with Brian doing the Jew thing, Chinese restaurants & movies. Last year when Brian was off visiting the real-life Daria in California, I moped about & felt very sorry for myself.

Of course, visiting Jeanna might make me feel even more sorry for myself, 'cause you know—I'd be visiting Jeanna! 😀

Anyway, no deep thoughts on tap this morning.

But if I get the next big chunk of Remuneration out of the way this morning, I can spend the afternoon puttering with the Work in Progress. Those boring landscape descriptions of the tiny, historic city of Kingston won't write theselves!

Of Stars and Wolves

Friday, September 26th, 2025 12:35 pm
smokingboot: (stars door)
[personal profile] smokingboot
Even though it's suddenly cold and the the equinox seems to have reminded the trees to get fruitin' or get nekkid, the nights are not clear. I see one or two maybe three stars at a time. Last night it was Vega's turn, shining big and blue and friendly. I could just about see Altair and Deneb too, the Summer Triangle pointing south like an arrow.

I need more starlight.

Meanwhile, a place for some potted research, and another triangle.

The Wold Newton, named after the village at its centre has, at its eastern side the North Sea, running the length of the A165 coast road from Gristhorpe and Filey Brigg along to Flamborough and Bridlington. The southern side runs parallel to the old Woldgate Roman road, which heads out from Bridlington and across towards Stamford Bridge and York. This place has all sorts of paranormal/fairy stories associated with it, but it's the werewolves that capture everyone's imagination.

There's a 1960s story about a lorry driver on his way through some remote part of the triangle, glimpsing a pair of red eyes just before a “wolf-like creature” tried to smash its way through the windscreen. This story had several iterations in the area, often but not always focused on the Flixton-Bridlington Road where people would talk about seeing what looked like the headlights of a car in front, only to reveal itself as the red eyes of a wolf.

But of course, wolf eyes do not glow red in the dark. They are reflective but red? The infamous 'Old Stinker' was seen back in 2016, standing 8 feet tall with a dog in its mouth at Barmston Drain, which I don't think is near the Wold Newton Triangle, but what do I know? The moment I get to Yorkshire I keep travelling north til I reach Whitby in order to swan around in gothic lace and jet jewellery.
taz_39: (Default)
[personal profile] taz_39
**DISCLAIMER** The views and opinions expressed in this post are my own, and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer.
DO NOT RESHARE ANY PART OF THIS POST WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION. Thank you.**

This post covers Wednesday and Thursday.

---    ---    ---    ---    ---    ---

WEDNESDAY

Up at 8 and the usual routine, breakfast and some research about where I might be able to do laundry around here.

And then I explored the hotel!

The first thing to check out was the elevator. This was Greensboro's very first electric, unmanned elevator, and was installed in 1920. Ride it with me!



Pretty cool! You might notice in the video that I was coming DOWN from the 3rd floor. That's because I rode it up to enjoy the experience without a phone in my face first :p The General Manager of the hotel had also told me that the Biltmore had a collection of twelve antique "Oriental" painted silks displayed up there, and I wanted to see them. These two were my favorite (reminder that you can click on images to make them bigger):
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I also noticed these weird little sinks in the hallways on the 2nd and 3rd floors (they look like miniature urinals, don't they?)
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The manager said that these were installed in the 1960s as part of a communal hot water system. Rather than pay the expense of running hot water pipes to each and every room, the owner had these taps put in the halls. Residents (for the upper floors were apartments at this time) would go to the taps to get hot water and bring it back to their rooms. How interesting!

At the ends of the hallways were these old-school light switches. I have seen switches like this before in churches and other old buildings, but still, they are interesting...and very satisfying to push btw! I pushed them and nothing happened; they are probably disconnected.

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The hotel has 26 rooms, 4 of which are suites. I did not see a single light on in any room, or any indication that anyone is staying there currently besides me. My suspicions were confirmed when I asked the manager about the lack of hot water, and he replied apologetically that the water heater is old and heats "on demand"...therefore it only kicks on and starts to heat when a guest turn on the faucet. In other words, the only person here to activate hot water is me. I bet they'll get some guests on the weekend, but feel bad that they don't have more during the week. In 45 days the property will be sold to new management, and I wonder if things will change? Meanwhile, it feels like a special thing, to have this beautiful place with it's creaky floors, lukewarm water, and 113-year history, all to myself.

Explorations done, I walked to the theater to give my trombones a bath.

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It took longer than expected (because there are TWO of them this time) but I was still finished before the 1pm understudy rehearsal. Here they are all shiny and ready for tonight's show :)
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Before leaving I swung by the loading dock to put my voice amplifier in my trunk. This week the band's trunks were left on the truck due to a lack of space. Normally they are brought into the venue and either line the hallways or stay in your dressing room. I've recently learned that they can ship your trunk to your house during a layoff, too!!

On the left is a picture of the theater's loading dock with the truck ramps open, and the trucks backed up to them so people can get inside.
On the right is what it looks like inside the truck. Normally that space would be full of ALL the trunks. Band (and some crew) trunks are there on the left, and there are crew road cases to the right where they can also store belongings.

thumbnail_IMG_2089.jpgthumbnail_IMG_2090.jpg

I walked back to the hotel for lunch, then my Aunt called and we chatted for a solid hour. I love hearing what she's up to! Then I typed this post and texted with a trumpet friend. Somewhere in there my new page-turning pedal showed up but with no charging brick, and I'd left mine at the theater. ARGH. And the new fleece sweater I ordered was supposed to be BLACK but it's actually CHARCOAL, so I'll have to send it back. SIGH.

A simple dinner of rice, chicken, sweet potato, and walnuts, then back to the theater. The pit is very deep here so it's hard to tell how full the house is, but it sounded like we had SOME people there who had a good time. I let my new pedal charge during the show and continued to use the old one, which has served me well for four years (that's VERY good for a $30 piece of equipment that I stomp on constantly.) The timing was very good on the swap, because the old pedal took multiple tries to get it to turn on both before the show and after intermission. After the show it was raining hard, and I cursed myself for not bringing the hotel's umbrella (they put it in the room for god's sake!) Three different lovely humans offered me umbrellas or rain jackets, bless their generous hearts. I took Connor's (key 1) because he truly didn't need it, and will return it tomorrow.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

THURSDAY


Normal breakfast and handling of some company travel/housing buyout options.
Click the below if you're interested to know more about buyouts.


Touring 101: Buyouts Explained )

Anyway that was my morning, and then I pondered the issue of laundry.

I tried calling around to other hotels with laundry services but was turned down...not surprising, but sometimes if they can find you in their Rewards program they'll let you sneak in :) My options, then, were to either walk or Uber 2 miles to a laundromat, or use a service like Poplin. As it was raining on and off I decided the lesser of two evils would be Ubering to/from the laundry on Friday and walking to/from back, or something like that.

Our next Musician's Union meeting was today at 2pm.

I attended under the assumption that our actual Steward would not (he didn't.) Once again I took detailed notes, which won't be useful unless we have to argue about who-said-what later. And once again I shared those notes with the band and I doubt anyone will read them. Most musicians (self included) could care less about the technicalities, they just want their contracts honored and for someone to listen if an issue comes up. That said, I choose to attend these meetings and take careful notes because if I am not advocating for myself and protecting myself, no one is.

Afterward I had a snack, started the 2nd season of Dan Da Dan, had dinner, got ready for the show, and walked (with an umbrella this time!) to the theater. For this evening's show we had an understudy in as Lumiere and he did a terrific job. We also have a "vacation keyboardist" in the pit for the weekend, to audit our show as he'll be the guy to call when our keyboardists need to take days off. He played keys on both Aladdin and Anastasia so he'll certainly be fine. 


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday:
One show in the evening. Laundry, one Foodie Find brunch, and if it's not pouring I want to visit Green Hill Cemetery.

Saturday: Two shows, nothing special planned.

Sunday: Two shows, then picking up my rental car for the drive to Orlando and the 2-week musician's layoff while BATB is in Detroit.

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