kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-07-16 10:49 pm

some good things

  1. Really enjoying the redcurrant cake I finally managed to make the other evening.
  2. First of the clothes-for-me from the latest Oxfam order showed up and is in fact more or less Perfect, hurrah. (Cargo shorts. Two pairs of linen cargo trousers due tomorrow...)
  3. Mulberries! [personal profile] ewt informed me that they were starting to come ready, so I took a detour via the local tree and did indeed manage to munch a token handful.
  4. I made a batch of mostly-white-some-rye caraway-and-poppyseed bread, and it goes spectacularly well with the cherry plum and vanilla jam a friend gave me at the weekend. I have been having some Very Happy Breakfasts.
  5. My extremely late-into-the-ground squash are starting to produce female flowers!
  6. And I found some more lurking long bamboo to install for the late-sown beans to maybe make their way up.
  7. AND I might actually break even on peas-for-sowing-next-year if the second flush on one of the plants does what it's threatening to, which I would be extremely excited about because I had been mildly regretting eating (instead of saving for seed) the handful we did eat, when my original intention had in fact been to Just Save Seed this year... (... but they were very tasty.)
  8. We are reading Hyperbole and a Half (the book) together a chapter at a time! They are an excellent short Shared Activity.
  9. I have this evening spent a pleasant ten minutes playing around with the dragons game and enjoying getting some very pretty possible dragons out of it. Yes good.
  10. Read about three elephants graduating to the Reintegration Unit run by the Sheldrick Trust and cried a lot. (Also at the accompanying video.) (Good crying.)
the cosmolinguist ([personal profile] cosmolinguist) wrote2025-07-16 10:11 pm
Entry tags:

Danger-wee

Today was just one thing after another: work, with chores like laundry interspersed, then tidying the shed and putting the camping stuff back in it, then getting a haircut, then getting back just in time to help with the second half of dinner-making, then going with D to his girlfriend's house where we ended up going on a trek to find a new light bulb for her bathroom.

Her other partner overhearing the conversation about the need for a new bulb and coming into the room with us saying "We've been danger weeing for a few days now, haven't we love?"

We were able to find a light bulb of the correct size and fitting, and D sorted it out before we came home. The two of them were so grateful.

So for all my accomplishments of the day, the best might be that I've played a small part in preventing people from having to wee in the dark. Which is especially valuable when P is still on crutches!

mrissa: (Default)
mrissa ([personal profile] mrissa) wrote2025-07-16 02:24 pm
Entry tags:

Books read, early July

 

A. S. Byatt, Still Life. Reread. I freely acknowledge that "4, 1, 2, 3" is an eccentric reread order for this series. (This is 2. Stay tuned for 3 in the next fortnight's book list.) It's also the one that, in my opinion, stands least well alone, mostly because of the ending. The ending is very cogent about the initial blurred, horrible phases of grief, but what it does not do is move through them to the next phases, to what happens after the first shock--which is an odd balancing for one book but fine for part of a larger story. I also find it fascinating that Byatt exists in this book as an authorial "I" in ways that she does not for the other books. "I wrote this word because of that," she will say, and it seems that if the I is not Antonia, it's someone quite close, it's not anything near to a character and not really much like an in-book narrator. It's just...our neighbor Antonia, who makes choices while writing, as one does, as we all do.

Linda Legarde Grover, Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year. If you have a relative who is a person of goodwill but has been paying absolutely no attention to Native/First Nations culture, this might be a good thing to give them. It's lots of very short (newspaper column or newsletter length) essays about personal memories and cultural memories through the turning of the year, nothing particularly deep and nothing that assumes that you know literally the first thing about Onigamiising (Duluth) or Ojibwe life or anything at all really. Not probably going to be very memorable if you do, but not offensive.

Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting. Discussed elsewhere.

Reginald Hill, Death Comes for the Fat Man, Midnight Fugue, and The Price of Butcher's Meat. Rereads. And here we're at the end of the series, and as always I wish there was more and am glad there's this much. I don't think I'll need to return to The Price of Butcher's Meat; the email format conceit ("this is a person who doesn't use apostrophes, that means it's informal!" Reg stop) does not improve with time, and the rest of the book isn't really worth it to me. But the others are still quite solid mysteries, hurrah for Dalziel interiority.

Grady Hillhouse, Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment. I picked this up because it was already in the house, and because I'm writing a thing about a city planner, and I thought it might spark ideas. It did not: it's very focused on the immediate 21st century American largely urban constructed environment. But what a neat book to be able to give a bright 10yo, or really anyone who can read full text but likes careful pictures of what there is and how it works.

Naomi Mitchison, Among You Taking Notes: The Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison. Kindle. I found this to be a heartening read because Mitchison is clearly a person like us, someone who values art and human rights and a number of good things like that, a person who is doing the best she can in an internationally stressful time--and also she's flat-out wrong a number of times in this book. A few times she's morally wrong, several times she's wrong in her predictions...and the Allies still won WWII and Mitchison herself still wrote a great many things worth reading. It is simultaneously a very friendly and domestic diary from someone Getting Through It All and a reminder that perfection is not required for progress.

Malka Older, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses. More Mossa and Pleiti mystery adventures. The two spend a large chunk of the book in different locations. Don't start with this one, start with the first one, but also: events continue to ramify and unfold, hurrah events.

Deanna Raybourn, Kills Well With Others. The sequel to the previous "older women assassins attempting with not a great deal of success to be retired from killin' folks" book, it has similar appeal. It could be that you're ready to be done after one, which is valid, but if you weren't, this is more of that, and reasonably enjoyable. There's less of the dual timeline narrative here, about which I have mixed feelings: on the one hand it's often good for authors to let go of that kind of device when it has served its purpose, and on the other I liked the contrast. Ah well.

Cameron Reed, What We Are Seeking. Discussed elsewhere.

Tom Sancton, Sweet Land of Liberty: America in the Mind of the French Left, 1848-1871. This is not just about what people thought of the US at the time but also how they used images and references to it in their own internal propaganda, which is kind of cool. A lot of it was not particularly deep thought, and that is of itself interesting--in what ways do people react to large dramatic events for which they have limited context (but no small amount of possible personal use). If you like this sort of thing this is the sort of thing you'll like. A few eccentric views of, for example, Susan B. Anthony, or the Buchanan presidency, but within the scope of what one would expect for a few lines from someone whose main expertise is not those things.

Leonie Swann, Big Bad Wool. This is the sequel to Three Bags Full, and it is another sheep-centered mystery novel that stays in semi-realistic sheep perspective (except in the places where it goes into goat perspective this time! there are goats!). If you had fun with the first one, this will also be fun; if not, probably start with the first one, because it does have references to prior events. I really appreciate the sheep having sheep-centered theories, it's a good exercise in perspective.

Nghi Vo, A Mouthful of Dust. Discussed elsewhere.

Faith Wallis, ed., Medieval Medicine: A Reader. This is a compendium of translated documents from the period, with very small amounts of commentary between for context. If you want to know how to examine a patient's urine or what humors linen enhances, this is the book for you. Also if you want a window into how people thought of bodies and health over this long and diverse period. I think it's probably going to be more useful to have as a reference than to read straight through, but I did in fact read the whole thing this once (which I hope will help with my sense of what to check back on when using it as a reference).

Martha Wells, Queen Demon. Discussed elsewhere.

oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-16 07:35 pm

Wednesday has socialised enjoyably

What I read

Finished Long Island Compromise, and okay, didn't quite go where I was expecting but didn't pull a really amazing twist either.

Alison Espach, The Wedding People (2024), which somebody seemed enthusiastic about somewhere on social media while mentioning it was at 99p. Well, I am always there for Women's Midlife Narratives but this struck me as a bit over-confected plotwise and I was not entirely there for that ending.

Latest Literary Review (with, I may as well repeat, My Letter About Rebecca West).

Simon Brett, Major Bricket and the Circus Corpse (The Major Bricket Mysteries #1) - Simon Brett is definitely hit and miss for me and some of his more recent series have been on the 'miss' side, come back Charles Paris or the ladies of Fethering. But this one, if not quite in the Paris class, was at least readable.

On the go

I have got a fair way in to Jonny Sweet, The Kellerby Code (2024) but I'm really bogging down. It's an old old story (didn't R Rendell as B Vine do a version of this) and for someone who cites the lineage Sweet does, his prose is horribly overwrought.

I started Rev Richard Coles, Murder at the Monastery (Canon Clement #3) (2024) but found the first few chapter v clunky somehow.

Finally picked up Selina Hastings, Sybille Bedford: An Appetite for Life (2020), which is on the whole v good. Okay, blooper over whether Sybille could have become a barrister: hello, the date is post Sex Disqualification Removal Act and I suspect Helena Normanton had already been called to the bar. However, the actual practicalities might well have presented difficulties. And wow, weren't her circles seething with lady-loving-ladies? And such emotional complications and partner changes! there's no 'quiet spinster couple keeping chickens/breeding dachshunds' about what was going on. Okay, usually conducted with a fair amount of discretion and probably lack of visibility, though even so.

Helen Garner, This House of Grief (2014), which I actually started a couple of weeks ago at least, and picked up again for train reading today, as the Bedford bio is a large hardback.

Up next

I am very much in anticipation of the arrival of Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb (The Trials of Gabriel Ward Book 2)

oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-16 09:57 am

(no subject)

Happy birthday, [personal profile] gallimaufri!
nanila: me (Default)
Mad Scientess ([personal profile] nanila) wrote in [community profile] awesomeers2025-07-16 08:03 am
Entry tags:

Just One Thing (16 July 2025)

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-07-15 10:01 pm
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today I have been dragged kicking and screaming into maybe reading some Descartes

Specifically I have tracked down a copy of Treatise on Man, which is probably the source of the claim I've seen phrased several ways, most eyebrow-raisingly and also most readily to hand by Steve Haines, attributing to Descartes the idea that pain is

something similar to hearing, it is a fixed signal and measurable response

and it turns out I've got access to a whole entire PDF which turns out to be only 71 pages, including quite a lot of fairly large images, so I suppose I'm going to read Descartes now as a break from working my way through the BBC's Higher revision guides on neurobiology, which is itself a detour from reading the introductory text on nerves aimed at undergraduates...

(The things I've actually been reading today consist of two chapters of Hyperbole and a Half, a partial chapter of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, both as Shared Activities with A, and about half of A Handful of Flour, a recipe book I have owned for quite a while now and am rapidly concluding I might no longer wish to dedicate shelf space to...)

oursin: Painting of Clio Muse of History by Artemisia Gentileschi (Clio)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-15 07:49 pm

Feeling just slightly disingenuous

Have been involved over the last day or so in the discovery and revelation of a hoohah over an esteemed bibliographer having copped to having fabricated a set of letters, of which the transcriptions appear on their website, with, true, a provenance note that might give one to be a tad cautious when citing.

But anyway, someone I know did actually cite something from one of these letters - fortunately not as a major pillar of an argument or anything like that - in their book which is only just published (and copy of which for review I finally received last week). And was informed by the perpetrator.

Cue kerfuffle. The ebook can be readily corrected but not the hardback copies.

But anyway, this led to me (particularly given subject and period) to think upon an instance I had encountered of learning - from the author no less - that a series of supposedly authentic Victorian erotic novels had been knocked up (perhaps that is not the phrase one should employ?) as remunerated hackwork for a paperback publisher in the 1990s.

A few of these are now accessible via the Internet Archive and I discover that they have introductions setting them up as Orfentik Discoveries of the writings of a Private Gents Club.

Anyway, I wrote this all up for my academic blog, and there has been discussion on bluesky about hoaxes and fakes and also I introduced the topic of people being misled by fictional pastiches that were not meant to mislead (or at least, like 'Cleone Knox''s work, have long been known to be made up).

(Ern Malley complicates this like whoa, since it has been claimed that the authors of the hoax actually produced SRS surrealist poetry whether they meant to or not.)

And as a scholar and an archivist I am against hoaxes and fakes and people inserting false documents into archives and so on -

- but I still have the occasional qualm that some naive reader will not read the disclosure of the real origin story right at the back of the volumes and think that the Journals of Mme C-, subsequently Lady B-, actually exist.

jazzyjj ([personal profile] jazzyjj) wrote in [community profile] awesomeers2025-07-15 09:39 am
Entry tags:

Just one thing: 15 July 2025

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-15 10:04 am

(no subject)

Happy birthday, [personal profile] owlectomy and [personal profile] talking_sock!
oursin: Coy looking albino hedgehog lifting one foot, photograph (sweet hedgehog)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-14 03:05 pm

Poking my prickly nose out into the world....

Dr rdrz may have noticed that (in spite of the FAIL at getting to the Birmingham workshop in early May) I have gradually been Getting Out Into the World beyond health-related appointments and walks in the local parks.

Am still being possibly unwontedly cautious.

But, anyway, on Saturday went to a BBQ in [personal profile] coughingbear and [personal profile] hano's garden - slightly earlier this year than the usual Mahv'll'ss Pahti of the summer - and it was lovely to see them and other friends after so long being A Hermit.

Still (as found at conference the other week) having issues adjusting to the hearing aids - when there are several conversations happening - I think this possibly depends a bit on where I am positioned in relation to them - a distinct sense of (very dating reference) trying to tune in radio and getting two or more overlapping stations.

But on the whole was, I think, Coping.

fred_mouse: a small white animal of indeterminate species, the familiar of the Danger Mouse Evil Toad (startled)
fred_mouse ([personal profile] fred_mouse) wrote2025-07-14 08:08 pm
Entry tags:

Albany Folk'n'Shanty festival

Artisanat and I have made a short visit to Albany, coinciding with the annual Folk'n'Shanty Festival. I gather that this year was more heavily shanty and lighter on folk than previous; I was certainly exposed to more shanty singing than I'd see in an average decade.

Friday we left relatively early, took the short route (Albany Highway), with a stop in Williams to charge the car and find a light lunch (cafe off the highway, recommended alternative to the Woolshed), stop in Mount Barker (Plantagenet Wines, acquisition of two bottles, plus more lunch), and arrival in Albany with enough time to check in to hotel, charge the car, quick shop at the IGA, and make it to a venue (Wesley church) for the first act.

Lots of rambling details )

jazzyjj ([personal profile] jazzyjj) wrote in [community profile] awesomeers2025-07-14 06:47 am
Entry tags:

Just one thing:: 14 July 2025

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-07-14 09:46 am

(no subject)

Happy birthday, [personal profile] swingandswirl!
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-07-13 10:30 pm
Entry tags:

vital functions

Reading. This week I have mostly but not entirely been reading more murdery bot: Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, Rapport, aaaand I've also immediately launched myself into yet another quick reread of All Systems Red because we finished watching the TV series and therefore I want The Murderbot Of My Heart Thank You.

However! I have also continued reading about nerves! I have now read the entire first chapter of Nerve and Muscle, supplemented by a bunch more Wikipedia, and I think I am starting to have a better mental picture of how all of this works? I am going into way more depth than required by The Project, really, I think, but I will be happier if I know what's going on at least to the extent that I understand a little more about what it means, physically, when it is explained that some migraine preventives target Type A nerve fibre and others target Type C (which in turn is why if you get partial relief from something that targets Type C it's worth at least experimenting with adding in something targeting Type A).

And I have also made a tiny bit more progress with The Age of Seeds, but... yeah, mostly Murderbot.

Watching. Murderbot! I will concede that "I need to check the perimeter" did indeed get me Right In The Feels. I still prefer my book-Murderbot but I am beginning to acquire a better understanding of why folk love this Murderbot too.

The fanvid Bohemian Like You, by [archiveofourown.org profile] kuwdora, via [personal profile] sholio, via [personal profile] recessional.

Cooking. Several new things! Aubergine larb with sticky rice and shallot salad, lavender & honey Welsh cakes out of the Welsh cakes tourist tat mini-book, coconut pancakes. Now officially over two thirds of the way through East (with another Several planned for this week coming).

Eating. TODAY WE WENT ON AN ADVENTURE TO SEE ONE OF MY UNIVERSITY FRIENDS. I don't understand how it has been somewhere in the vicinity of ten years since I last got my act together to see this friend in particular given the part where, you know, we live in the same city, BUT we sorted ourselves out to meet up at King's Cross today and in addition to talking solidly for the entire duration we had FOOD including:

  • Ruby Violet (maxi moo moo with hazelnut crunch & raspberry, rosewater and prosecco on the grass by the canal; hazelnut & hazelnut brittle, salted caramel & almond brittle, hot cross bun, raspberry ripple, and coffee mocha ripple brought home, those last two primarily for A)
  • for lunch I had a funghi ma po tofu from rice guys, and A had a veg biriyani from somewhere I'm not immediately managing to spot on the Canopy Market trader list
  • from Bread Ahead we brought home two doughnuts -- pistachio crème brûlée for me, and something involving honeycomb for A; I think this is quite possibly the first custard doughnut I have ever eaten and actually liked (though were I to buy from them again I'd skip the pistachios)

... and upon meeting up with said friend, they reached into their bag with an "oh before I forget--" and pulled out a jar of jam, which conveniently gave me an excuse to reach into my bag and pull out the jar of jam I'd brought to give them, so I have swapped one blood orange + cardamom for one cherry plum + vanilla, and I've not eaten it yet but I am very excited about doing so.

... also raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, jostaberries...

Exploring. We poked around Granary Square a bit to go with Meeting Friends; we came home with lots of stickers (I also got some washi tape from that first one...), a gorgeous bowl (which she was not charging that much for at the market, goodness), and a business card for Creature Crafts by Nat so I could send their details on to Interested Parties.

Growing. ... I spent a whole day at the plot mostly reading Murderbot? (And did also do some weeding, and some harvesting, and some watering, and some general pootling.)

silverflight8: watercolour wash with white paper stars (stars in the sky)
silver ([personal profile] silverflight8) wrote2025-07-13 06:16 pm

Vorkosigan Saga - Memory - Lois McMaster Bujold

In a series where I love almost every book, it’s usually hard to pick a favourite, but Memory is unquestionably my favourite. It’s just emotionally so satisfying, the culmination the emotional investment as well as character development in the past 10 books. It’s so, so good!

Memory )
nanila: (Bush Fire Hazard)
Mad Scientess ([personal profile] nanila) wrote2025-07-13 09:08 pm

The Friday Five on a Sunday

  1. What was the most sick that you've ever been?

    I came down with flu when Keiki was about 4 months old. That is the most ill I've been in my adult life. I could hardly get out of bed and my temperature was over 40 C for several days. Runner up would be the ear infection I had when I was 11, which was so bad my teacher found me lying on the concrete floor of the playground because my ear was too hot. It was the middle of winter.

  2. What disease are you afraid of getting?

    All of them, but mostly: Dementia.

  3. Are you a big baby when it comes to taking medicine/shots for your illnesses?

    No. I am a big fan of medical intervention for illness and pain.

  4. Is going to the doctor really THAT bad?

    Not at all, it's just time-consuming, which is why I tend to put it off.

  5. Would you have the flu twice a month if you were paid $1,000 for having it?

    Assuming “the flu” really does mean influenza and not a bad cold, absolutely not. Genuine flu is completely debilitating. It took me two weeks to recover from the bout I had in Answer 1. This scenario would mean being continuously sick. No thank you.