ckd | Reading

The plaque beside this painting says that it was created by students at Easthampton High School in 2019.

Nice job, students! Very evocative painting you've made.

The stars that were seen as bears in parts of Eurasia were also seen as bears among North American and Siberian peoples, and the brightest stars in the Great Bear have also been seen as a ladle (or dipper), a plough, a wagon, a rudder, a shrimp, and a crocodile, among other things. (These facts brought to you courtesy of Wikipedia.)

An earthly bear is gazing up at a spirit bear. The earthly bear made of fur flesh bones blood seems completely at ease near the spirit bear made of earth water sky, not abashed or frightened in the least. The spirit bear is looking up and away, maybe at the stars, but grows from the sunlit grass the earthly bear is sitting on. Maybe the earthly bear can teach the spirit bear something about daylight life that the spirit bear wouldn't otherwise know. Maybe the spirit bear is the earthly bear's dream.

Lots of possibilities. Meanwhile, close by, there's Corsello Butcheria--Italian Beef!--Every Day! and sunlight catching the ripple of the bricks.

kiya

Mama

There was in me
A trailing reluctance
To let go
Of what nurtured you—

Even though
It now fed
Neither you
Nor me.

But—

When you tucked your head
Against my chest
To cling again,
I don't think
You even
Noticed
It was gone.

Current Mood: tired

rolanni

The moon is gorgeous tonight, big and yellow.

So, now I have glass and the means to cut it, though I am strictly forbidden from doing so until next class. What I do have to do is finish cutting out my pattern and affixing the pieces to the appropriate pieces of glass so that I can begin cutting my glass next class.

Excuse me: "Seymour Glass. Do you See More Glass?" Thank you, J.D. Salinger. Honest to Ghod how long do I have to pay for that English project?

So! I'm feeling, actually, better about the glassworking after this evening's class. Maybe because I have a better feel for how the moving parts fit together. Possibly because the instructor did not faint dead away when she saw my pattern, but said, "Oh, that's nice, did you get that out of one of my books?" and then helped me modify that big swodge of "ocean" that some of y'all were so worried about.

I see that I'm going to have to be moving the portable radiators into The Foosball Room (so called because there was a Foosball table in that room when we looked at the house, and for a time it was a question whether or not we would be adopting), aka The Cold Room aka The Workshop, so I can cut glass (permission will apparently be given to cut glass at home eventually) without my supervisors getting paws on, not to mention glass in their fur.

For tonight, my glass and assorted Stuff is in the car. I'll need to move it down to The Foosball Room before I head for the ocean tomorrow.

Fans of Firefly will wish to know that she is having the Zoomies. Apparently, she DID SO TELL the kids that I would be home and that I would feed them, first thing I got inside, and as this has come to pass, her stock has gone up.

That's all I've got to report. The rest of my evening will be reading today's chapter of A Night in the Lonesome October, and getting something to eat.

Everybody stay safe. Writer's Day Off Tomorrow. I'll check in as I can.

Oh, wait! My bats came:

Tonight's blog post title brought to you by U2, "She Moves In Mysterious Ways"

madgastronomer

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

conuly

First, when I was pulling up my panties my thumbnail got stuck somehow on the cotton and ended up half ripped off - ouch! - in what is both the dumbest and most painful injury ever. Then the next day I managed to slip on some clothing on the floor and fall flat down on my face. Fortunately, I landed on my laundry, but still, I can take a hint. My own laundry wants me dead.

(I mentioned this to Jenn and she suggested that if I was wearing my panties they weren't laundry but simply clothing, but this obviously arrant nonsense. They weren't on my body yet, they were just halfway up my thighs, so they were still at least liminally laundry, caught in that weird spot of paradox in between Schrodinger's cat and Xeno's arrow. Also, the salient feature is that they were trying to kill me, not what arbitrary category they fall into while they do so!)

*************************

( Read more... )

irilyth

Bliiiiiiip.

Oof, I sort of knew that I hadn't been writing every night, but somehow a week slipped by. There's been a bunch of havoc at work, just more stuff than usual not working like it should. I played some pokego (but not as much as I needed to in order to hit Level 50 by next Tuesday, so that's probably not happening at this point, I guess we'll see). Did a bunch more driving with Juniper, including some highway time, which I continue to find surprising despite having been right there in the car at the time. :^ ) Didn't go to the Eggplant Party, in favor of pokego and general exhaustion. Got a bunch of XP on Tuesday and Wednesday, but still not enough to be on track to hit Level 50, but I guess we'll see.

calimac

Some time ago I wrote of my delighted discovery of Taylor Swift's Tiny Desk Concert, in which she played her songs in simple arrangements I found agreeable, unlike the overproductions of the Eras Tour which was Not For Me.

A few commenters gave suggestions of other TAS numbers I might find agreeable, but they didn't mention what turned out to be the gold mine. DGK sent me links to a couple videos extracted from a documentary film called folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is on Disney+. The songs are a bit much of a sameness for me to want to listen to all at once, especially with the documentary natter in between, and the songs are more immediately impressive than they are lovable, though the ones I heard first are growing on me rapidly - but only in these versions; I listened to other performances and, nah. Any one or two of them - not just those two - are in this version very much the kind of popular music I want to hear.

Apart from the addition of a guest vocalist on one song, it's just her and two guys, variously on piano and acoustic guitar, occasionally a little light percussion or a soft electric guitar which only once threatens to get even slightly loud. Very soft and gentle and intimate, and quite sophisticated and complex songwriting.

Here's the two songs DGK sent me. The rest can also be found on YouTube with a "long pond studio sessions" search.

Watch on YouTube

davidgillon

The new hate crime figures are out, apparently disability hate crime is slightly down. Am I being cynical in assuming that's probably because some of the haters are too busy committing hate crimes against muslims and/or jews and/or anyone who doesn't look like them?

Trans hate crime is also slightly down, but I'd presume that would be people feeling even less safe to report it, rather than an actual reduction.

The figures exclude the Met, the biggest force in the country because they're busy adopting a new crime reporting tool - so give us their figures as a separate entry, don't just exclude them entirely. *headdesk*

Somewhat embarrassingly for the police/Home Office, the Office for Statistics Regulation is still insisting they include a caveat to say their data is actually pretty crap.

What comes through when considering that the figures cover the period of the Stockport-related race riots is that the figures, even if recorded as intended, are utterly incapable of recording mass events like riots. If 300 people are chanting racist slogans and throwing bricks, but the police only arrest 3 of them, then only 3 crimes would be reported. It's definitely working as intended, but is working as intended what they actually intended?

Current Mood: *sigh*

sovay

It is my birthday. I am forty-four years old, the age some fictional character must be. I woke to a pair of packages, one from

nineweaving that proved to be Vaughn Scribner's Merpeople: A Human History (2020) and from my parents which was a DVD of The Sea Wolf (1941). Hestia was a small black round of purr like an extra present at the foot of the bed. It is bright and brisk and cloudless as all the classical autumns outside.

Current Music: Jealous of the Birds, "Pendulum"

oursin

I see estimates differ: I was working from the Sturgeon's Law that '90% of anything is crap' -

- whereas Ridley Scott is prepared to claim that '60% of films made today are “shit”, and of the remaining 40%, “25% … is not bad, and 10% is pretty good, and the top 5% is great”. and that this is pretty much so for the history of the movies over time (a fairly nuanced judgement I suppose) (though we should probably factor in the extent to which film, especially from the nitrate era, was a very frangible medium and there is a survival issue....)

From the Wikipedia article on Sturgeon's Law, some confirming opinions by other thinkerz:

'Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense' (Disraeli, 1870)

'Four-fifths of everybody's work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake. (Kipling, 1890)

'In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be "This book is worthless...'(Wot a grump George Orwell was, eh, 1946)

A 2009 paper in The Lancet estimated that over 85% of health and medical research is wasted.

(The trouble is you cannot tell in advance what is going to be, can you.)

On reflection I rather like Scott's 'not bad - pretty good - great' because one can, in fact, get enjoyment out of those levels.

solarbird

I’ve been calling for people to post pictures, video, whatever, of their towns when Herr Fuckface describes them as war zones, as hellholes, as whatever he pukes up this time. Particularly Chicago, and now, extra particularly Portland. But any blue city or state he lies about.

Post the truth.

On Wednesday night, Jimmy Kimmel requested people do that too, using the hashtag #ShowMeYourHellhole. They’ll look for and highlight some of those videos and contact you if they want to use it, so only use it on video you specifically want seen by as many people as possible.

Post your reality; use the hashtag to help other people see it, if you’re okay with the one in a million shot that they ask you to let them use it on Kimmel.

In reality, of course, they’ll mostly be checking YouTube and maybe other corporate social media, not cooperative spaces like the Federation. But he’s famous enough that if he calls for a hashtag, a lot of people will use it, and in this case, that’s no bad thing.

So – Portland. Chicago. Los Angeles. Memphis. DC. You in particular, but not just you…

…mods are asleep. Post your reality.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

rolanni

What went before ONE: Oh. Here's something amusing.

Someone had suggested yesterday that I go to Aldi for grapes.

I typed "Aldi near me" into the search bar, and I am offered!

Newington NH (250 miles RT)
Dover NH (250 miles RT)
And! My favorite: Port Orange, FL (3,000 miles RT)

So, that's why I'm not going to Aldi for grapes.
#
What went before TWO: Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-ish new words written, bringing the WIP entire into the vicinity of 94,050.

"Frogging" is a knitting term that I believe Brenda Clough introduced into my vocabulary. It comes from "rip it, rip it" which is what one does when one makes a mistake.

Tomorrow will not be a writing day. I have some layout to complete and a couple phone calls to make before I hit the road to Glass Express, where the class is to meet our instructor "directly after work." I wonder what that means. Class officially starts at 6. I guess if I arrive at 5, the time won't be wasted. I mean, really, I'm going to be in a glass shop. It's not like there won't be stuff to look at.

Checking the weather, I see that we are now under a Freeze Watch tonight. Looks like I'd better go out and cover up the rose bush.

Aaand, back. Rook saw me heading for the front door and threw himself at my knees, yelling. It is almost Happy Hour, but jeez, kid.

In addition to the freeze warning, the weatherbeans tell me that it will be sunny and 60ishF/16ishC on Friday. Rain starting Sunday evening and that's most of next week, right there. So! Friday Will Be a Writer's Day Off.

I do believe that's all the news &c.

Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe. I'll check in tomorrow.
#
Thursday, sunny and cold. Ish.

I did turn on the oil heat to warm us up at floor level, while the heat pumps do their thing overhead.

I did cover the rosebush last night, but something disagreed with my design decision, be it wind or be it beast, and the blanket was off the rose this morning.

Today! I really hope to get the November echapbook up for preorder. Fingers crossed. I also have some phone calls to make. Including a call to make an appointment to have my hair cut. I'm still liking it longer, except for the part where my bangs fall in my eyes -- see haircut, above.

I find a note from Adult Ed in my mail this morning informing me that our instructor expects to meet us at Glass Express at 5 pm, so that's one question answered.

I also see in my inbox that! my bats will arrive today. That's awesome. The last best guess for delivery that I saw was October 15 or something. Early delivery FTW.

Yes, I bought bats. I like bats.

What else? Oh. Just got a "Hello, this is a cold call for Steve Miller. Is he --" Sigh. I really miss being able to slam down a receiver.

I had the house phone forwarding to my cell, so that the cellular robot could stop that stuff before it even got recorded. It was doing a good job, too. Then, a couple days ago, the house phone started ringing again -- one call from the hospital and four calls for Steve. I need to look up again how to forward the landline.

So! That's my day pretty well laid out.

Who's doing something that's fun?

Today's blog post title is from The Beach Boys, "Fun, fun, fun" -- which is also a formative song. First, there's the Interesting Truth of:
Well the girls can't stand her
'Cause she walks, looks, and drives like an ace now

And also -- granting that I'm probably the only one who ever put this spin on it, welcome to my brain -- that Our Narrator is a hero because he's going to let her drive his car. Because, I mean, yeah, what else would he want to do?

Rosebush, uncovered:

For those who are still with me, here's the link to this morning's cat census.

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

james_davis_nicoll

A hapless minister is drafted into international intrigue.

The Cool War by Frederik Pohl

cmcmck

The City was fortified by the great military designer Sebastien le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban.

It was always a frontier city with the results you might expect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9bastien_Le_Prestre,_Marquis_of_Vauban

Not an awful lot survives but what is left is pretty impressive.

One of the several remaining fortified towers designed to protect bridging points:

( Here be pics! )

andrewducker

1. How to weigh an octopus in only 8 wriggly steps: (tags:octopus weight video )

ffutures

...that thinks of the guards in Castle Wolfenstein whenever I see these in a supermarket?

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/315239766

oursin

Happy birthday,

serriadh!

oyceter

Thank you to everyone for your kind thoughts, sharing experiences with international medical situations, and translation help! The hospital says CB can be discharged this weekend, yay! His facial paralysis has gotten a little worse in the past few days, though the doctors say this can happen. Right now we're trying to figure out how to get him home. Our travel insurance seemed like they might help, but now it sounds like nothing is covered, and the other private air ambulance service wants him to have a hospital bed ready back in California, but that is also proving difficult to get. From what the doctor said yesterday, he is probably okay to fly commercially but would need a medical escort, so we are figuring out how to get that arranged. Fingers crossed...

sovay

Most of the Draconids we saw tonight were short flashes like Morse in the mind of the dragon, but even through the faint haze and the half-sky shine of the harvest moon just past, we saw two true long-tailed fireballs like dragon-stars, streaking through Lyra and Boötes. Their radiant stands in Eltanin and Rastaban, the dragon's eyes. Meteors, too, feel like a gift for an erev birthday. I still dream one will earth itself in a field while I am watching.

Current Music: Crystal Eyes, "I'm Nature"

azurelunatic

My immunotherapy infusion yesterday may have been my last!! I have a scan on Monday that will probably say that. Belovedest celebrated by cracking into the Strategic Redpop Reserve. This will mean much more leeway to leave town and such.

Colonoscopy results: mostly normal, one pre (not sure how many pre-s to put here) cancerous "lesion", and all of them removed. Repeat in two years, this time with Extended Prep. (My understanding of "lesion" and the medical definition may not align entirely well.)

Started the new injectable after the colonoscopy. I can definitely feel the impact. It remains to be seen exactly what kind. One of my friends has a new injectable too; she's getting some sinus clearance from it. Of all the random effects.

After the infusion, Belovedest and I trekked up-city to pick up a package for

alexseanchai. All Pampered Chef, and a high proportion of likely goodies vs. likely duds. There were some varying scrub brushes. The utensil/knife scrub brush looks like dentures that are actually a scrub brush, but I can see that coming in handy. There was also a quarter-sheet pan with two eighth-sheet pans. And then we trekked back down when Belovedest realized they'd left their tablet at the cancer center. Freakin' ADHD. We're on The Assassins of Thasalon in our progress through Penric.

I have a smallish makeup hobby. Part of that is sometimes going all Weird Barbie on my face with eyeliner or whatever. Tonight I've convinced myself (via iridescent green eyeliner) that some kind of moon phase forehead jewelry might really slap.

brooksmoses

Chris Hallbeck posted a cute little short that involves the Monty Hall Paradox at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/At_LNDO1eq0, and it includes an explanation of the result that has a lot of people saying "I finally understand it!" in comments. And, after watching it and reading some comments, I think I have an even more intuitive explanation.

The paradox is this: In front of you is a game show host, and three doors. Behind one of the doors is a Shiny New Car, or some other great prize that you may win. Behind the other two doors are goats. You select a door. The host then opens one of the doors that you didn't select, revealing a goat, and then offers you an choice: Do you keep the door you selected first, or do you switch to the other door that they didn't open? If the door you select (either by keeping your first selection or switching to the other one) is the one with the prize, you win the prize!

If your door contains the goat, my understanding is that you do not actually get to keep the goat.

(A key datapoint -- often omitted from the descriptions! -- is that this is how the process always goes, and you know that fact. The host will always open a door with a goat, and will always offer the opportunity to switch. This is not a case where the host is being devious and only trying to get you to switch away if you start out choosing the prize.)

The paradoxical result is that switching will lead to the prize twice as often as not-switching, even though it looks like a random choice between two doors that you have no information about.

( Explanation behind cut.... )

sorcyress

Work was a lot because work was always a lot. Bonus lots for today: did some graphic design on the performance task so people are able to hand it out tomorrow. Sent the big NEML email to all the coworkers and began gathering data there. Ran a circle for the department meeting, because when my boss does it, she skips over a bunch because she doesn't take it seriously.

So between all that, and normal work stuff, I was slammed right up until the bell rang, and then we had an hour of department meeting (solidly okay) and an hour of Geometry team meeting (quite good, very productive) and then Clayton and I (plus bonus Rachel) had like half an hour of talking about grand ideas for making the curriculum better and then I threw everyone out of my room because it was 4:30 and aaah.

But I managed to keep going, and then I prepped my lessons for tomorrow and ran several billion copies (more NEML stuff) and left the building by about 6:15 or so. Was home at 7:30ish, checked in with Ezri, sent a plan to Tuesday, and flopped into the bed to play a bit of Necrodance just to do _something_ mindless with my day.

(being Mindful all the time forever sucks. I am trying to do more of it because a lot of my mindless is the kind where I can't transition out of it again, and despite what the hypnokink people would have you think, it's not as sexy when you're a mindless phone-games machine. But being real aware and Mindful of what I am doing and trying to make conscious choices about it is differently hard.)

Then, pleasant shock (see above paragraph), I actually transitioned out of Necrodance around the time I told Tues I would, and did some brainwork and then turned the phone off for a POWER HOUR. Dishes, dinner, wash hair were the three goals. They were all completed? This is wild and I don't know how to cope.

The next plan is to again check in with Tuesday --I like having partners who I can mutually do things with, even when we are far apart-- and then Iunno. Rest? Sounds fake.

~Sor
MOOP!

green_knight

I’ve not had the best, err, months.

( The not-so-great adventures of green_knight )

I've handed in my last mss, which was a mess, slept myself out, ordered a new phone, and found a few brain cells; I'll be ok and I try to do better: read DW more often, finish all the half-written entries or dump them completely and free up my stack.

One thing I want to do more of is play RPGs, but again I haven't had the spoons to actually look for a group. So I started to look into SoloRPGs to just broaden my horizons a bit.

I love DnD. I want to play DnD properly again, but even with two people, scheduling is a problem.

So I've started to play solo, and read a lot of materials, and watched a lot of YouTube, ad poked at numerous systems and came to the conclusion that if I want to get anywhere with this hobby, I need to be more systematic about it.

To avoid cluttering up this journal and make it the SoloRPG ALL THE TIME channel, I've created

solo_knight, and to avoid that feeling of emptiness I've waited until I had several entries polished and a format that I think will work.

It's a mixture of play reports and reviews, with the odd deeper delve into mechanics. Right now, my goal is to explore the space as a whole, so I am willing to play a certain amount of games that I would not have picked voluntarily – I mean, science fiction horror survival? Does not sound like fun. (Wasn't fun. Was an experience I wouldn't want to have missed.)

And I'm writing down my experiences so they don't fall out of my brain immediately, I have a modest goal of two games a month, and a stretch goal of processing all of my Indie games by this time next year. (A lot of them are one-page or close to; things I'm going to play once for a couple of hours if at all, but I also have a number of long form games, and on top of that, I have numerous proper RPG systems I'm curious about that can be played with a GM emulator, but in order to do that, I need to be comfortable with emulators first so this will keep me occupied for a while.

So there you go.

solo_knight briefly turns up, bangs on his shield, and vanishes again.

And for a bonus task when my to-do list is shorter, I'll have to see how to link the two accounts so I can switch more easily between them.

Current Mood: accomplished

sovay

a_reasonable_man thought I could use a talisman and brought me a 1923 Peace dollar that belonged most likely to his grandfather's second wife. It's as old as my grandmother would be. I have buttoned it inside my coat. It's a treasure.

Current Music: Alex G, "Afterlife"

cmcmck

We had good weather for our first three days in Strasbourg.

And I do like a nice reflection!

( See more! )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: ici

rolanni

What went before: I think I may have wrassled a working book outta The System. I'll check again when I get home after needlework.

In the meantime, the hospital decided it had been coy enough and decided to Reveal that it had the orders for the xray of my spine, which -- three weeks in the making! -- took 15 minutes.

It is, however, done, and I now have tomorrow, most of Thursday, all of Friday to do writing and other needed tasks here at the Confusion Factory. That is, of course, unless I decide that I really have to go to the ocean on Friday. Because a drive to the ocean is always in order.

It is very warm outside in the world. While I was out, I filled up the car and bought nine! dollars! worth of California grapes. I gotta start watching prices closer.

So, I'm checking out for the day.

Y'all stay safe. I'll see you tomorrow.
#
And the work day commences. The goal is 1,000 words. My supervisor is skeptical:

#
Wednesday. Rainy, cool, and gloomy.

Had to frog a scene and rewrite. New material is up for this afternoon. Did a load of wash, because I could.

Taking a break now to make ham and bean soup for lunch -- ref rainy, cool, gloomy -- and glare at my email.

Got the results of my spine xray and my bloodwork back. I would like to talk to my doctor about what these things mean -- remember when you could talk to your doctor on the phone? -- but I guess I'll wait until December.

In slightly better news, I do have a PT appointment in mid-November -- in Oakland! (aka 3 miles from my house; 6 mile RT). I was pretty sure I was going to have to drive to Augusta (aka 40 miles RT) for PT, so that was a nice medical surprise. I'm hoping that the therapist and I can put her heads together and get a long-term fix that doesn't require surgery, because we're avoiding surgery, we are. With bells on.

The cats have each checked in with me this morning, and Rookie did an hour of supervision at the beginning of the shift, but apparently rewriting is boring.

It looks like, if I'm going to the ocean, Friday is my bet, before next week's nor'easter. Friday drive to the ocean is therefore inked in for Friday.

So! For those reading along: How 'bout that Bubo? Pretty dern bold, I thought him. Or perhaps I mean foolhardy.

What's the weather where you are?

mrissa

New story! What a Big Heart You Have is out in Kaleidotrope. The more I thought about the Red Riding Hood story, the more I thought that the grandmother/granddaughter relationship was pretty sketched-in...and it's been one of the most important ones in my life. Hope you enjoy.

james_davis_nicoll

Welcome, visitor, to Mystery Flesh Pit National Park: The RPG, the Cypher System tabletop roleplaying game rulebook from Ganza Gaming about the Permian Basin Superorganism.

Bundle of Holding: Mystery Flesh Pit

ffutures

I have just listed a box of genuine IBM 3.5" floppy disks on eBay and said, without any attempt at irony, that they might be useful for "collectors or for period film and TV". It took me a few minutes to realise just how strange and/or pretentious I would have thought that say 20 years ago...

ffutures

This is the Mystery Flesh Pit RPG Special bundle, featuring "Mystery Flesh Pit National Park: The RPG," the Cypher System game of cosmic horror and bureaucratic satire from
Ganza Gaming.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/FleshPit

This one is simultaneously strange, horrific and very silly, based on a web site that has developed the idea over several years. It's cheap, and if you want to use this setting it's well worth a look, even if you have to convert it to your preferred system. Definitely recommended.

elisem

Today does not need to be a trigeminal neuralgia day. It really doesn't.

Where is it happening? It's on the right side this time.

How bad is it? Three instances so far, so I am braced for more, since that's usually how it goes. Wait, four. And it's not super-bad, just the little dungeon map of tiny passages filled with pain, leading outward and upward from my right upper jaw. Much of the upper cheek is involved, with what feel like lines curving downward from the outer right eye, and this time it's also doing the Monocle of Pain trick, where my eye is ringed in a weird hybrid sensation of ache/pain/coldness/tightness/tickling. That last bit is even more annoying than it sounds.

What set it off this time? Temperature differential (cold). One accidental touch of cold against the right spot was all it took.

We shall see. Meanwhile I am going off to look again at the pattern of the trigeminal nerve in the face, so as to check whether the stuff on the cheek and the lines from the outer corner of the eye match where the nerves are.

Got a decent rest since the last wave, so maybe it will get bored and wander off.

Silly body.

Anybody else deal with this nonsense? Several people in my family have.

solarbird

Pamela Bondi went before Senate Oversight on Tuesday determined not to testify to Democrats, and to help Republicans deflect and defend the Trump regime’s fascism. That’s obvious; it happens fairly regularly.

But usually, people doing this routine at least pretend to answer the questions. They don’t provide answers, no, of course not. But they pretend and follow forms.

Bondi wasn’t even pretending. Her responses were unrelated, spurious – and as Senator Schiff put it, “pre-canned” – attacks on and insults of Democratic questioners, over and over again. We couldn’t be entirely sure of it at the moment, but Reuters managed to photograph her notes during her “testimony”, and now we absolutely know for sure they were prewritten.

Later, she started launching these prewritten lie clusters during questions, while Democratic senators were speaking. Here’s an example of her interrupting Senator Schiff over and over again with literal unrelated whatabouts and insults.

Eventually, I guess she ran out of pre-installed lie clusters, because she ran out during a response to a question from Senator Whitehouse and froze up. She literally couldn’t seem to talk.

It’s quite the clip. Watch her, she just shuts down. Here’s the moment she realised she didn’t have anything left so couldn’t come up with another lie cluster attack and just sits there, stalled out:

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) posting "has anybody ever been more obviously full of shit than Pam Bondi is at the end of this 20 second clip?" over a video of Pamela Bondi not saying anything with "An error occurred" superimposed over the image below her face.

(I swear to you – I swear to you – I did not add that caption over the video. It was a player issue. But I couldn’t not keep it, now could I?)

But I do think there was a point here, and it wasn’t just not answering questions while giving Republican Senators time to lie and deflect on behalf of the regime. That’s all too normal.

No, I think the intent was to show their utter contempt for the legislature. I think this a stupid version of Caligula’s expression of contempt for the Senate, when he said he was going to appoint his favourite horse as a member.

(He didn’t actually do it, legend aside. The record is reasonably clear on that. He just mocked them with the idea.)

At least Caligula’s version was funny. This, by contrast, is just sad. But sad or not, I do think there was a point, and that point was to display contempt for representative government and to metaphorically blow a horse’s fart in the faces of elected representatives.

And I think that’s something people should understand.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

oursin

What I read

Finished This Real Night and went straight on to Cousin Rosamund (1985).

Then a change of pace: Simon R Green, Stone Certainty (Holy Terrors Mystery, #2) (2025): less about the Horrors from another dimension than the horror of being stuck in a remote stone circle with a bickering TV crew.... not bad.

Angela Thirkell and CA Lejeune, Three Score and Ten (The Barsetshire Novels #29) (1961), in order to be completeist. This was at least less all over the place than Love At All Ages, which one suspects was down to CA Lejeune, undervalued film critic of the day who was apparently a neighbour and pal of Ange from the War years but the 2 bios I have just mention that they were friends and not much else (not that they did movie nights together or whatever, only that Lejeune was massive Barsetshire fangirl), barely that she got this into publishable condition.

KJ Charles, All of Us Murderers (2025). I have been a bit less whelmed by Charles' more recent work - maybe just me, or maybe because the bar is set so very high?

On the go

Simon Goldhill, Queer Cambridge: An Alternative History (2025) - having been there and done that, lo, these many years, about what do we mean, to talk about queer or homosexuality historically, found the intro a bit woffly, but now we are on to Oscar Browning and JK Stephen things are moving a bit more.

Up next

A bit spoilt for choice with my birthday books.