She was an excellent governess and a most respectable woman
2025-09-18 23:48![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sovaySOTD: Say My Name, "Goldilocks Water"
2025-09-18 22:07brithistorianThis popped up on my playlist today while I was doing some yardwork and I loved it. When I came in, I watched the video, and I loved it more: They were apparently copying Weeekly's aesthetic, which I fine with me: I can always use more of Weeekly's aesthetic, especially now that Weeekly has disbanded. Enjoy!
So I did a thing...
2025-09-18 21:59hudebnikNot One of Us issue 84
2025-09-18 19:18asakiyumeLet me share a little (and then a lot!) about my own story first, and then some about the other contributions. Mine is called "The Moon in His Eyes," about a young woman who marries a water buffalo, only to fall in love with the moon on her wedding night. Curious about what happens? Well, you can buy a copy of Not One of Us here.
... or, if you don't mind being read to... I read it aloud here. It's literally just me sitting in my study reading into my desktop computer's camera and microphone all in a single take because I know nothing of video editing and am much too lazy, at present, to learn.
And now let me say a few words about the rest of the zine.
( I really enjoyed this issue! )
So yeah! Get your hands on a copy of the zine here, and listen to me read "The Moon in His Eyes" here. ;-)
Report: FBI to designate trans people ‘violent extremists’
2025-09-18 18:07solarbirdI would like to wish all the people who fought with me and sneered at me about how Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris were no better than Donald Trump and sat out the election and encouraged others to do the same a very happy DRINK SOME FUCKING BLEACH:
FBI Readies New War on Trans People
“We’re looking at the entire web”
Ken Klippenstein
Sep 18, 2025
The Trump administration is preparing to designate transgender people as “violent extremists” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, two national security officials tell me.
…
Under the plan being discussed, the FBI would treat transgender suspects as a subset of the Bureau’s new threat category, “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” (NVEs).
This is, yes, OBVIOUSLY, a duplication of Putin’s moves to designate target groups as “extremist organisations,” whether there’s an organisation or not, as “LGBT” was designated a couple of years ago, leading to the de facto re-illegialisation of LGBT people and large scale prosecutions.
Every other kind of queer is probably gonna be next.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
A Day at the AWS Show
2025-09-18 15:45canyonwalkerAt the show · Wed, 16 Sep 2025. 5:30pm
Today has been the trade show. AWS Summit - Los Angeles. The show's now winding down for the day. People started disappearing around 3pm, presumably to try to beat the traffic home, though the show formally goes through 6pm. This has been my first chance today to catch my breath.
I only got to the show just after 10am. I was busy with other tasks, time-sensitive ones, working in my tiny hotel room on the children's chair at my combination nightstand/desk. I had intended to get to the show at 9 but that didn't work out. So at about 9:55 I zipped up my bag, rode the elevator down to the ground floor, and... walked across the street.
That's right, my morning commute today was a walk across the street. Okay, it was kind of a walk across two streets because I had to get to the diagonally opposite corner. 🤣 This is the entire reason why I booked that tiny hotel room knowing it was tiny— and paid a pretty penny for it. Because it's Right. Here.
Minutes later I'd picked up my badge and registration and was ready to hit the show floor.
Traffic at our booth was steady across the day. That was frankly a relief— from a value-for-our-dollar perspective— from last week's trade show, where we had stretches of an hour or more with no meaningful conversations in the booth.
Things did get busy for me in the middle of the afternoon when I had three scheduled demos in a row with different customers. One brought a group of 9-10 people, ranging from devops engineers to a devops lead, to a manager and a VP. And they kept me busy, firing tough questions at me from all sides. I think I did pretty well, though. I look forward to us moving to the next stage with them.
Throughout the day I also saw, and chatted with, a few customers I've been working with for years. It was great to see them "in 3D" again... especially because some of them I've been working with for over 4 years and don't think I've ever met f2f. Plus a few people who stopped by the booth recognized me from portraying Jenkins at the other trade show last week even though I was "Clark Kenting it" today.
Well, the show's winding down now, but the day's not over. My company is sponsoring an after-hours reception at a bar a few blocks away. "Grab a drink and some snacks with us and wait for the traffic to die down before going home," we've been encouraging people all day.
It's a nifty way of framing the event. I don't know, though, how much of a turnout we'll get. Many people have already left to beat the traffic. And I don't blame them. I know if I were on the other side of the table today, I'd value getting home by 5pm to have dinner with my family over having a free drink of two on some company's dime and then getting home at 8:30.
Thursday at a glance
2025-09-18 18:09rolanniInstallment ONE: So, I got up, had breakfast, carried my tea to Steve's office, and was at work by 9:15. Surfaced at 11:55 to go down to do my duty to the cats and take a walk. Now need to figure out if I'm going to order in or just zap a Lean Cuisine.
I need to do a couple things in the business office, from which location I write to you. Those include finishing making a list for my PCP visit tomorrow, researching where the new office actually is, and downloading the Word Book from this computer to take back to the writing computer, which had redlined every other word in the manuscript because it hasn't been brought up to date.
Firefly kept me company in the writing room all morning, and Rookie popped in and out. He was clearly a little concerned about me sitting in Steve's chair -- was I actually allowed to do that? Apparently, he went off and checked the paperwork, because he has clearly accepted that, yes, I can do that.
Hope everybody's having a good day. It's lovely and sunny here, warm, but not hot.
Installment TWO: Everyone who asked after the keyboard. It is a Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard. I've been using them for at least 20 years; started when my wrists went bad and I bullheadedly refused to give up typing, because speech recognition did not work for me at all. This is what happens when what you actually do instead of pronouncing words correctly is fake people into thinking you talk good by a combination of inflection and body language, neither of which translates into computer programs.
The Kinesis Advantage2 helps because your wrists are in a neutral position and your fingers can hang down in a neutral position, rather than being Poised! To! Strike! as is the case with a standard flat keyboard.
Yes, the learning curve was vile. And, also yes, the trade off is that I now can't type on a flat keyboard, so if I'm taking my laptop on a trip, I either have to also take a keyboard almost as big as the laptop, or Accept that I'm going to be reduced to two-fingering it for as long as I'm away.
This is always a difficult choice because typing is my mode of expression of choice, right after interpretive dance.
Installment THREE: OK, fun game!
First question: Do the Liaden books have any "tropes"? Examples given "grumpy sunshine," "found family," "the chosen one"? (What on earth is "grumpy sunshine" and do people really push the "tropes" in their books?)
Second question: Can you give us a 1 sentence (30 words) quote form one of your books? ("Yes," which is my go-to, is not in this case a Valid Answer.)
In other news, the Lean Cuisine won, because I made the mistake of checking my mail. My plan is to eat, and then go back and write for another couple hours.
Installment FOUR: OK. I have written to the originators of the Survey which included the Fun Questions.
So far today, I have Scrutinized the chapter-by-chapter, identified holes in the narrative and sketched in a couple of ideas to fill them. I finished writing a scene, for a total of more-or-less 1250 new words, and did more research. At this point, I might as well open my own noodle shop (no, I haven't watched the movie yet; I'm a little leery of spillage, since I'm actively working on this situation for the book). I hoped to write more today, but that's probably not going to happen? Because mail, and also I really ought to wash the dishes so I can find the sink. And see if, one! more! time! I can find LibreOffice's Word Book.
Tomorrow is the much-complained about trip to Bath and the PCP. I suppose I might as well declare a Writer's Day Off at this point, hit the bakery and tour the kitchen store, and plan on getting back to work on Saturday.
It looks like next week, I have, with the exception of Tuesday evening needlework, nothing scheduled, so that's like a whole uninterrupted week of work. Fingers crossed that nothing comes up to force a change of plans.
So, that's it. I feel like I had a very successful test-drive of separating the mundane and the writing work spaces, and I hope this continues to prove out.
Everybody have a good evening; I'll check in as I can.
thought in the chair
2025-09-18 14:17calimac
Link Salad, End of Summer
2025-09-18 12:21lovelyangelAnd, admittedly, I’ve been scanning/avoiding lots of news – keeping some distance from depressing writeups. But I couldn’t resist two somewhat political links I got via kottke.org:
How to Tell the Difference Between a Lone Wolf and a Coordinated Effort by the Radical Left (McSweeney’s)
Charlie Kirk’s Legacy Deserves No Mourning (Elizabeth Spiers)
And then, the rest:
Beautiful Journals by José Naranja (via MetaFilter)
The Day Return Became Enter (aresluna.org)
Things You’re Doing But You Don’t Want to be Doing. Also: Advice on (Internet) Writing, For What it’s Worth (dynomight.net)
Moss & Fog
ADHD research
2025-09-18 12:12firecat(Content note: The article uses language that frames ADHD as a problem)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/adhd-advantage-hypercuriosity
greg gutfield’s fascist rant
2025-09-18 10:41solarbirdI do not believe it’s a minor thing that Greg “let’s reclaim the word Nazi” Gutfield is repurposing Hitler’s “Jewish hypnotism” libel against trans people to transfer guilt from a cis white boy from a conservative family:
“[The shooter] was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct to consumer nihilism – the trans cult.”
Greg Gutfield on Fox
There are plenty of other full-on-fascist declarations in this rant, too, not the least of which being the open declaration that they “don’t care” about “what-abouts,” which is to say, the overwhelming share of violence being from the right, or, in this case, the literal assassination of two Democratic state officials earlier this summer by a MAGA supporter with an extended list of targets. Those don’t count, because Democrats. Only MAGA are people, only MAGA have rights, only Trump can be king.
But it’s still important, and the one I think people may miss. This is, again, literally Hitler libel from a many who proposed “reclaiming” the word “Nazi” this summer.
If he wants the word so much, let’s apply it to him.
Greg Gutfield is a Nazi.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Assorted things and stuff
2025-09-18 18:00oursinDept of, inventing the city: Fake History: Some notes on London's bogus past. (NB - isn't Nancy murdered on the steps of a bridge in the 1948 movie of Oliver Twist? or do I misremember.) (And as for the Charing Cross thing, that is the ongoing 'London remaking itself and having layers', surely?)
***
Dept of, smutty puns, classical division: Yet More on Ancient Greek Dildos:
Nelson, in my opinion, has made a solid argument for his conclusions that, while “olisbos” was one of many ancient Greek euphemisms for a dildo, this was not its primary meaning, nor was it the primary term for the sex toy. Rather, this impression has been given by an accident of historiography.
***
Dept of, not silently suffering for centuries: The 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse.
***
Dept of, another story involving literacy (and ill-health): Child hospital care dates from 18th Century - study:
"Almost certainly she was taught to read and write while she was an inpatient."
He suspects just as part of the infirmary's remit was to get its adult patients back to work, by teaching children to read and write it would increase their employment opportunities.
***
Dept of, I approve the intention but cringe at certain of the suggestions: How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction:
Active engagement is crucial. This doesn’t mean turning every book into an interactive multimedia experience. Rather, it means ensuring that children are mentally participating in the reading process rather than passively consuming. With toddlers, this might mean encouraging them to point to pictures, make sound effects, or predict what comes next. With older children, it involves asking questions that go beyond basic comprehension: “What do you think motivates this character?” “How would the story change if it were set in our neighborhood?”
Let's not? There's a point where that become intrusive.
***
Dept of, not enough ugh: Sephora workers on the rise of chaotic child shoppers: ‘She looked 10 years old and her skin was burning’
The phenomenon of “Sephora kids” – a catch-all phrase for the intense attachment between preteen children, high-end beauty stores and the expensive, sometimes harsh, products that are sold within them – is now well established.... The trend is driven by skincare content produced by beauty influencers – many of whom are tweens and teens themselves.... skincare routines posted by teens and tweens on TikTok contained an average of 11 potentially irritating active ingredients per routine, which risked causing acute reactions and triggering lifelong allergies.
Breakage by Mary Oliver
2025-09-17 13:11conulyHow everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.
Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.
Link
Fun with autocorrect
2025-09-18 10:39brithistorianI was trying to type the information for an art exhibition into the to-do app on my phone. I had typed "University of," and the three options that autocorrect offered me were "Nature," "Art," and "Style."
Obviously none of these were correct, but they're all universities I would have considered attending if I had known about them earlier in my life. ;)
solarbirdThe grim times we’ve been expecting are here.
Congressman Ronny Jackson (R-TX) calls trans people a virus and a cancer that must be censored, isolated, and imprisoned en masse. It’s a call for genocide, or – as they said during the election – for “eradication.”
Laura Loomer, an important Trump confidante and aide, calls for a Trump dictatorship and mass arrests and prosecution of “leftists” (which for her absolutely includes liberals):
Trump and MAGA are following Putin’s playbook on the media, pushing it either into the hands of ideological compatriots or into silence:
Correct commentary from Mastodon:
Kimmel is about as controversial as a goldfish here. They aren’t serious about it being a problem; the whole •point• is that it’s obviously •not• a problem.
They are using something extremely benign to test the waters of government repression of speech, to see just how much they can get away with — and ABC caved like 3rd-grade toothpick bridge.
It’s relevant that there are mergers in process and it’s clear that Trump would fuck with them if they didn’t pull Kimmel down:
Nexstar Media Group, which is seeking FCC approval for a multi-billion-dollar merger with Tegna, said its ABC affiliates would not air Kimmel’s show before ABC announced its own decision.
Even Karl fucking Rove thinks they’ve gone too far, but that won’t stop them, or even slow them down:
‘They’ Didn’t Kill Charlie Kirk. It insults his memory to blame political opponents for one man’s heinous act.
Meanwhile, Trump demands federal investigations into ‘organized’ Trump protesters – this is also out of Putin’s playbook:
Earlier this week, responding to a conservative reporter who said that anti-war protesters near the White House “still have their First Amendment right,” Trump replied, “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure.”
It’s against this backdrop that Politico reported [that] the Justice Department’s No. 2 official said Tuesday that people noisily protesting President Donald Trump could face investigation if they’re part of broader networks organizing such activities.
Worth reading: Keep An Eye on What We Know (And Don’t) – 15 September 2025 – TPM:
In the current environment I think it’s fair to say there’s really no reason to believe anything we’re hearing from federal law enforcement, either formally or on background to reporters.
Worth reading: Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause – 16 September 2025 – Vanity Fair / Ta-Nehisi Coates:
It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry.
Finally, an article and a concept that’s been gaining traction: It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About “Soft Secession”:
Not the violent rupture of 1861, but something else entirely. Blue states building parallel systems, withholding cooperation, and creating facts on the ground that render federal authority meaningless within their borders.
See also: In the disunited states, conflict and uncertainty rule, which also brings up “Soft Secession,” and I’ve seen people holding signs up about it at protests since the original column came out.
I feel I don’t really have to say, “shit’s bad, folks,” but, well – shit’s bad, folks. If there’s a protest near you, find it, and join it.
They can’t arrest literally everyone, and Trump does chicken out – the only response you can have to him is push back as hard as you can, every time.
And that means right now.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
Missing trumpet slide on bike path
2025-09-18 10:09bettyw posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
davis_squareThanks!
Wow, this is a Tiny Room. And a Poor View.
2025-09-18 06:24canyonwalkerDowntown · Tue, 16 Sep 2025. 9:30pm
I'm at my hotel in downtown Los Angeles. It's the Moxy hotel, in one of the newer high-rises downtown. Actually a lot of the high-rises downtown are new to me. The last time I stayed in downtown LA was in the early 00s, and there's been a building boom since then with new hotels and residential towers.
I knew when I booked the Moxy that the rooms here are small. Like, tiny by US standards; and more like what I saw at salaryman hotels in Tokyo. But still I didn't expect it to be quite this small....
I have to squeeze past the foot of the bed to get to the other side. The only furniture in here is two tiny nightstands and a kid-sized chair. One of the nightstands is meant to double as a desk— and that's what the tiny chair is for.
Also, the gal at the front desk who checked me in gushed about my elite status (Marriott Titanium) and the upgrade they had for me. It's an upgrade to a City View room. Except the city view is a view of the convention center, two major freeways, and a freeway interchange.
One big plus, though— and this is the primary reason I booked at the Moxy— is that the convention center is right across the street. I won't have a long trek tomorrow to/from the show, which will especially be good if I need to make the trip twice.
Update: The longer I spend in this room the worse its design gets. It's like the designers didn't even spend 2 hours trying to stay in this room, even as a solo traveler, for even a few hours, let alone a full night. In addition to the problems I identified above, there's pretty much no horizontal surface onto which to place things. Need to lay out clothes to change into? Lay them on the bed. Need to open a briefcase to find something? Have to lay it on the bed. I do not like using my bed as a workbench, but here I have to! Hanging clothes is silly. The only places for hangers either (a) leave my clothes dragging on the ground because they're so low, or (b) have my clothes hanging over the front of the TV because, yes, that's where the hanger hooks are. And the lighting in this room is terrible. It's like living in a dive bar.
james_davis_nicoll
A selection of Dozois' best, from the first half of his half century career.
Geodesic Dreams: The Best Short Fiction of Gardner Dozois by Gardner Dozois
Responding to violence
2025-09-18 06:52hudebnikWhenever there's a high-profile act of violence, anywhere in the US, prominent Democrats have a simple, standard response: "this shouldn't have happened, this didn't need to happen, this doesn't happen nearly as often in any other developed nation, what can we do to prevent this happening again?"
Prominent Republicans have a more complex response, depending mostly on the victim(s). If the victims were innocent children, the answer is "We send our thoughts and prayers to the friends and families. Now is a time for unity and mourning; it's too soon to politicize it." If the victims were associated with the political right, the answer is to politicize it within hours, before anything is known about the perp's motives: "The radical left did this; we have to take revenge against the left." If the victims were associated with the political left, the answer is either to blame the victims (e.g. the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings), make fun of the victims (e.g. Paul Pelosi), or forget the episode ever happened (e.g. the shootings of Melissa and Mark Hortmann, John and Yvette Hoffman in their homes, the arson attempt on Josh Shapiro's home, the kidnapping attempt on Gretchen Whitmer).
Interesting Links for 18-09-2025
2025-09-18 12:00andrewducker- 1. Ukraine is hitting Russia where it hurts - and it's working
- (tags:ukraine russia war economy )
- 2. 'Erosion emergency' at Edinburgh's Calton Hill after grass cut too short
- (tags:edinburgh nature )
- 3. 'Forgotten' royal castle uncovered on Herbidean Scottish island
- (tags:scotland castle )
- 4. What's changing for trials in Scotland?
- (tags:scotland law )
- 5. Renewables do unambiguously reduce wholesale power prices
- (tags:renewables electricity economics )
- 6. There Are Too Many Video Games (and songs and books and TV shows)
- (tags:media economics society )
silveradeptOrganizations that fail to consider intersectionality in their diversity, equity, and inclusion will create things like employee resource groups that only capture a part of someone's experience and that elide the places where the intersectionality is unique and important. Which should make you unsurprised, but also horrified, that the Institute for Museum and Library Services budget is being given directly to propagandists for a project that will present a white man-centric view of history and demand that we all believe it as the sole and only truthful narrative of the United States.
James Dobson, creator of such abominations unto his God as Focus on the Family and the Family Policy Alliance, has gone to receive judgment at 89 years of age. Our world is far better off without him, and the damage that he has done to the world would take generations to heal if he were the only one doing his kind of damage. But like so many others, he has disciples and followers, and they will continue to perpetuate his damage into the world for generations to come.
A man who believed that violence was an answer, and who aggressively sowed the wind wherever he went, has reaped the whirlwind, killed by the violence he promoted, by a gun that he believed should have more rights than the people killed by it. He is no longer able to use his organization to promote and encourage harm to others.
( The fallout from such, and plenty of other things, inside )
Last out, Bohemian Rhapsody translated and performed in Zulu and with the visual and singing styles of several other African traditions. It's worth a watch and a listen, absolutely.
The concept of Queer Time, where the signifiers of "adulthood" like marriage, children, and houses are not achieved on any kind of regular time, if at all, and therefore queer adults have to find their own ways of demonstrating to the community that they are full grown-ass adults.
And the iconic Atari CX-10 joystick as a decanter for drinking, along with a couple of Atari-logo glasses.
(Materials via
adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
elisemSomewhere in some book or other, a character said something about the phrase for having a hangover in a certain language was "my eyes are not opposite the holes." It's not a hangover, but when my sleep schedule is deeply out of synch and I'm trying to do stuff connected to the outside world's schedule, I kind of feel like my life is not opposite the holes.
How's your life matching your hours of access lately?
As Big as the Sun
2025-09-17 20:36l33tminionThe Somerville primary election was yesterday, so we have the pretty exciting news that we're going to get a new mayor. The current mayor got absolutely wrecked in the primary and didn't manage to make the cut to top-two. The general will be between two challengers who are both current city councilors. It will be really interesting to see how they present their ideas as they campaign head-to-head, much more interesting than if the general were mostly a referendum on the incumbent.
I finished (the first season; apparently it's renewed for a second and I can't wait, but the first season also feels like it stands on its own) watching Common Side Effects, that show is spectacularly great. It's an animated sci-fi story centering around a mushroom that can cure anything. Reminds me a hair of King of the Hill (no coincidence, Mike Judge is a producer and one of the voice actors) and Scavengers Reign (Joseph Bennett is also one of the creators), but also reminds me a lot of Pulp Fiction and Paranoia Agent. It's not a comedy, but it is quite funny in addition to dramatic. It has a somewhat caricature-esque sketch-artist style for the character designs, in addition to some lush scenery and creative psychedelia and a bit of surreal horror. Apparently a good way to do comedy drama is just have all of the characters be huge weirdos in one way or another. There are lots of interesting ways to be weird, and no one is really normal, after all.
Om nom: food combinations, or, playing with what's here
2025-09-17 20:28elisemToday was a future use. There wasn't a fresh vegetable in the house, but I wanted something with both softness and crunch, and wanted it to be in something that had umami plus. The last of the bread gave me toast. There was some braunsweiger (liver paste, Nueske's in particular) which went onto the toast, cut pretty thinly. (I am from people who like thick slices of braunsweiger on toast or bread, and normally I do too, but this was a special application, part flavor and part structural adhesive.) Then I spooned out some of the fragments from the bottom of the bag of salted egg and salmon skin crisps, laying them on top of the liver paste and pressing them in with the back of the spoon, and had it open-faced.
Big win. Big tasty win. Especially the way the curry leaves went with the braunsweiger.
Must remember this and make it again.
Part of the idea for this one was looking at the braunsweiger and wishing I could magically make a banh mi from the place in Global Market appear. So some of the taste combo came from that. Lettuce or bok choy or other green or variously colored thinly sliced vegetables, with vinegar or not, would have been great, but there was no such suppy in the house, alas. Although hey, there is a little new kraut in the back of the fridge which should get eaten up. Hmmm. Although we are out of bread now. Hmm. I wonder how it would be on top of ramen noodles. Pity that the boiled eggs are all et up.
Do you have any tasty kludged-together food that you are fond of? What gave you the idea?
(My term for kludged-together food is "cream of refrigerator soup," which explains the tag. No actual soup was generated in this particular instance.)
Wednesday night report
2025-09-17 20:38rolanniThe new writing digs are open for business, and I'm all set up to get started tomorrow, and to work uninterrupted. Pursuant to that point, I'll need to go out in a couple minutes and put gas in the car so that I may drive to and from Bath with dignity on Friday morning.
Likewise pursuant, I may not be around much tomorrow, or Friday, either, ref Bath, above. I'm not avoiding you, I'm just ... busy.
Hopefully.
Everybody stay safe. I'll pop in as can.
Extraction Zones and similar lingo
2025-09-17 19:33selki- *It Could Happen Here*: Neoliberalism Part 3: Where Is Paul Volker (Dec. 2021): In part 3 of our series on Neoliberalism we look at the coup in Chile, the Volker shock, the collapse of the G77, Venezuela's failed industrialization campaign and the conversion of the Third World into debt colonies.
- *The Outlaw Ocean*: Waves of Extraction (October 2022): It's the podcast and episode titles that grabbed my attention, but the episode description is A trip to Gambia to learn how fishmeal is meant to slow the depletion of fish from the seas but is actually accelerating the problem.
- *A Matter of Degrees*: The Tongass: A Way Forward for the Forest (Mar. 2023): Marina and Richard describe the boom-and-bust extractive economy of the past [in Alaska].
I do listen to some fiction and review podcasts, not only history/analysis. :-)
Wednesday is indulging in a spicy margarita
2025-09-17 19:37oursinWhat I read
A little while ago Kobo had an edition of CS Lewis's 'Space Trilogy' on promotion, so I thought, aeons since I read that, why not? It turned out to have been not terribly well formatted for e-reader but I have encountered worse, it was bearable. Out of the Silent Planet, well, we do not go to CLS for cosmological realism, do we? But why aliens still so binary, hmmm? (okay, I think there is probably some theological point going on there, mmmhmm?) (though in That Hideous Strength there is a mention of 7 genders, okay Jack, could you expand that thought a little?) I remembered Perelandra as dull, at least for my taste - travelogue plus endless theological wafflery - and it pretty much matched the remembrance. However, while one still sees the problematic in That Hideous Strength (no, really, Jack, cheroot-chomping lesbian sadist? your id is very strange) he does do awfully well the horrible machinations of the nasty MEN in their masculine institutions, and boy, NICE is striking an unexpected resonance with its techbros and their transhuman agenda. Also - quite aside from BEARS!!! - actual female bonding.
Possibly it wasn't such a great idea to go on to Andrew Hickey, The Basilisk Murders (Sarah Turner Mysteries #1) (2017), set at a tech conference, which I think I saw someone recommend somewhere. Not sure it entirely works as a mystery (and I felt some aspects of the conference were a little implausible) - and what is this thing, that this thing is, of male authors doing the police in different voices writing first-person female narrative crime fiction? This is at least the second I have encountered within the space of a few weeks. We feel they have seen a market niche.... /cynicism
Apparently I already read this yonks ago and have a copy hanging around somewhere? I was actually looking for something else by Dame Rebecca and came across this, The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose (2010), which is more, some odd stray pieces it is nice to have (I laughed aloud at the one on Milton and Paradise Lost) but hardly essential among the rest of her oeuvre.
At the same time I picked up Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West and the God That Failed: Essays (2005), which apparently I have also read before. It's offcuts of stuff that didn't make it into his biography, mostly talks/articles on various aspects that he couldn't go into in as much detail as he would have liked.
On the go
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918), on account of we watched a DVD of the movie recently. Yes, I have a copy of the book but have no idea where it is. I was also looking for Harriet Hume, ditto.
Up next
Not sure.
Massachusetts has updated covid vaccine guidance
2025-09-17 14:42redbirdEveryone aged 65 or older should receive two doses, six months apart.
All healthcare workers "should" receive the vaccine, as should anyone who is pregnant, contemplating pregnancy, or has recently been pregnant, and a few other groups.
Everyone else "may receive" it.
https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-2025-2026-respiratory-illness-season-covid-19-vaccine-recommendations/download
What I saw is Massachusetts-specific, but it says it is aligned with the recommendations of the new Northeast Public Health Collaborative, which includes New England except for New Hampshire, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
musical chairs
2025-09-17 11:06calimacAnd this after only 14 months in office! What will they do next? Oh, yeah, host Trump.
Whining about online t-shirt purchases.
2025-09-17 17:36andrewduckerExcept no, it's £24 plus £6 tax plus £7 shipping *that takes up to 6 weeks*.
And this for an item that's print on demand. Which means, theoretically, they could print it in the UK in the first place and not have to presumably ship it to me by alpaca from Kazakhstan!
Shame, really, it's a nice t-shirt. But not £37 nice.
I have had the call
2025-09-17 17:17rmc28Or rather the text message to book my covid & flu vaccinations. "For 75+ and immunosuppressed". I just double-checked and "have had a blood cancer" is still top of the NHS list of qualifying conditions, so that's my armour when the GP surgery gatekeepers are like, you're too young and you might be DEPRIVING someone of this vaccine who NEEDS it. (This has been the conversation the last three times I got invited to get vaccinated, sigh, and then they get a manager to look at my medical record, and then they grudgingly admit that maybe I can has jabs.)
Date is the Saturday when all the Cambridge undergraduates arrive, so just in time. I'll mostly be avoiding students for the first couple weeks of term to let the freshers flu play out, but I will be playing ice hockey so not entirely. Also getting in and out of the city centre that day may be entertaining, probably best done on foot.
To Live and Dine in LA
2025-09-17 09:00canyonwalkerBurbank · Tue, 16 Sep 2025. 7:30pm
My flight down to LA this afternoon was uneventful. We did leave late as I predicted. It's funny how I can look at a few simple facts in the public record and predict such things with more accuracy— or perhaps more honesty— than the airline itself. Anyway, once we started taxiing I nodded off to sleep and then slept for most of the flight. That was surprising as I never used to be able to sleep, at all, while flying, let alone on a flight in the middle of the afternoon.
Landing at Burbank airport instead of LAX provided exactly what I expected it to. I mean, aside from the novelty of exiting the plane onto the tarmac. And enjoying a beautiful, mostly not-smoggy view of the San Gabriel Mountains just north of us as I did so. Tiny, outdated, hole-in-the-wall Burbank airport is fast. I walked into the terminal at gate three and didn't have far to go to get out to the curb to catch an Uber.
My first stop this evening has not been my hotel downtown but rather dinner with a colleague, Sandi. She suggested Smoke House in Burbank. It was a short ride from the airport— though with afternoon traffic and surge pricing the fare was almost $40. 🥵 (Sandi later said she could've picked me up on her drive over there. I told her I could've tipped her $40. 🤣)
I'd looked up the Smoke House online when Sandi suggested it last week. From their website it looks like a modern, concept oriented restaurant. Y'know, the kind of place that serves a messy food that used to be cheap— i.e., barbecue ribs— but does so in a pretentious, upscale environment with a bunch of microbrews on tap at the bar... and two-thirds of them are IPAs.
Well, I was wrong. Smoke House is not a 2020s era concept restaurant repackaging old fashioned food. It is a genuine old school steakhouse that's been there for decades. It's all 1950s inside, with dark wood paneling and overstuffed red vinyl booths. Black-and-white photos of movie stars and producers line the walls. This is a place where movers and shakers in film & TV have been coming to make deals over martinis for decades.
Was I impressed by any of that? No. But standing beneath a portrait of Walt Disney in one of his impeccably tailored dark suits starting glancing down at me with his typical half-sneer— I mean, he even had the courtesy to stub out his cigarette before this photo was taken— I did suddenly feel underdressed. As I arrived a few minutes before Sandi and had my suitcase with me I gave serious consideration to dodging into the men's room and changing from shorts and sandals into trousers, black leather shoes, and a sports coat.
Meeting at 4:30 for dinner was a bit early. Sandi and I agreed to go at a leisurely pace so we'd be hungry by the time our entrees arrived. We started with chatting up the waiter since the place was dead at 4:30, then had a couple of drinks, ordered a small appetizer to share, then finally our mains— we both chose the prime rib, though she wanted hers well done 😣 and settled for medium-well when the waiter politely told her "No" 🤣— and finally dessert.
It's weird going out to a restaurant with a woman who enjoys all the same stuff I do (except for that well-done nonsense) and can put it away. Man, if Sandi were younger, and we were both single, I might ask her out on a date. Except for that well-done nonsense. Red flag right there. 🤣
You are old, Father William
2025-09-17 10:42rolanniWhat went before ONE: This afternoon, I took a first step in an Adaptation of Household Systems that I've been considering for some time.
The way the household worked in the Before Time was that I ran the business office, and my writing projects, out of my desk and computer. Occasionally, this got Stoopid, because the piles of business stuff would overwhelm the piles of writing stuff, or business correspondence would come in while I was writing and I would feel constrained to stop writing and do business. And, less occasionally, bills would get lost between the printouts of Chapter 6 and 11.
More than once in my career as coauthor/office manager of the Lee-and-Miller Writing Empire, I bemoaned the fact that I didn't have a separate office where I could just leave the business stuff and only deal with it during, err, Office Hours.
It came to me a few months ago that I now have that opportunity.
I let the idea languish, because, What if Steve comes home and is (rightly) corked off because I've appropriated his office?
To which the answer is, obviously: Well, yanno, Miller? You've been gone with nary a word nor a postcard for Five Hundred and Seventy-Four Days. You should expect some changes when you get home. Fight me. Also? Dammit, Steve, I've missed you.
So, today, as I say, I took my first step in separating my writing work -- which will go into Steve's office -- and the business/pr/NOT-WRITING aspect of things. That first step was to move his Windows machine from the desk to the floor between the desk and the wall,* thus opening up valuable desktop space.
And as I was doing this, I made a discovery, and that discovery is that AlbaCon was (probably) right. The connection was (probably) better from Steve's office. Because he had an ethernet cable plugged in from the Fidium-provided booster into the Windows machine.
The above paragraph was the point of this post, by the way.
Steve also has/d a perfectly good System 76 Meerkat desktop back on his desk, so writing can go forth without any more investment in technology.
________
*I've long since put this machine to sleep (yes, it's still plugged in), and disconnected from the internets because Windows kept trying to download whichever its latest and greatest is/was, which -- the machine in hand would blow up; there's simply no way it has enough Oomph to take the new OS.
What went before TWO: So, I got more accomplished in Steve's office than I expected. I still can't figure out where to plug the speakers into the (Dell) monitor. But, arguably, having music isn't necessary to writing.
But! It's a big(gish) desk; half taken up by the computer, and the other half will be for writing ... STUFF.
This will work...
Time to get myself undusty and go to needlework.
Everybody stay safe; I'll see you tomorrow.
Wednesday. The sun has finally burned off the fog, and it's said it will be warm for the rest of the day. Windows around the house are open.
Breakfast was rice cakes, cream cheese, and red grapes. I have no idea about lunch.
WARNING: Long ramble follows
So, I've been thinking about Quality of Life -- partly because of our recent discussion regarding pre-diabetes, partly because I'm reconfiguring Steve's office, partly because of a story I heard a while back, and partly because of an article about marketing I read a couple days ago.
Let's start with that.
The problem the article was addressing is that the marketing Old People Stuff to Old People ... was hard. Very few Old People seemed to want even useful safety devices. And this was baffling to The Industry. The article went on to point out that The Industry actually had very little concept of the group -- Old People -- that they were trying to sell these things to. If they had bothered to ask even the most basic questions, they would have, for instance, discovered that Very Few Old People think of themselves as old. Witness that I have to be continually reminded that I'm 73, not 42, the age at which you have all the answers. I talk about the Old Woman Who Lives With Me, and that's an apt metaphor -- unless I'm looking in a mirror, I am 42. My brain apparently lives according to far different calendar.
And it's not just me: The target audience for, oh, say, the cellphones with the big keypads? Most look at the device, and think, "Well, that might be useful for somebody who's old, but I have my smartphone, after all." They may download safety-feature apps, but clearly the Safety Phone is for somebody else.
The article went on to relate that even among the population of people who have and wear the buttons that you press when you fall (I don't know the proper name, I call them Panic Buttons -- and you see here a illustration of the problem) -- even among the population who had agreed that this device might be useful For Them, and wore them -- after a fall, a disturbing number did not trigger the button for as long as five minutes. Not because they were unconscious, or couldn't reach the device, but because they wanted to solve it themselves.
It is of course Legend that among the many who are prescribed, far fewer actually wear their hearing aids. My father didn't -- more trouble than they were worth, didn't cut out the background noise, too loud, not loud enough -- whatever. The article was ... optimistic that the new law that allows over-the-counter assisted hearing devices -- opening the market to innovation -- will improve the technology, make it cheaper/more affordable, and thus more people would use the devices, as they see fit, and to improve their lives according to their definitions and needs.
We did a lot with moderation. I mentioned somewhere yesterday that, when the cancer ladies insisted that I become Less Thick in order to not give a return cancer an edge, I lost 20 pounds, but I did it by just eating less. You can't tell people -- well. You can't tell ME that I can never have ice cream again, no matter how bad it is for me. But I can, really, get by with one scoop, instead of two.
The key here is, of course, self-determination: choosing or maintaining the quality of one's own life and experiences.
Steve and I talked a lot about Quality of Life as the medical mandates began to accumulate -- blessedly few in Steve's case -- there was no years-long, ever-more-desperate illness, but a slow, inevitable decline to a sudden finish. Still, the drugs, and the side effects, and the don't eat/drink/DO that. We -- I say "we" because I was part of the conversation, though Steve ultimately made his own decisions -- we researched, and talked about each new stricture, and measured it: utility against loss of joy.
Example: heart surgery to install an ICD. Short term unhappiness, followed by years of pursuing one's proper life. ICD is a Go.
The key was that one should use one's life, because that's what it's for, but that one should not come to the point where one either feared or hated one's life, nor forgot oneself.
I don't, by the way, say that we were wise; I'm only saying what we did.
. . . my, how the woman does go on.
So, the story I read backaways had to do with an -- oncology, perhaps? -- doctor who was becoming frustrated and hopeless, on the edge of giving up medicine, because they had realized that no matter what they did, what medicines they prescribed, their patients were going to die, and most of them quite soon. Finally, in desperation, instead of prescribing, they asked. "What do you want me to help you do?" And the patient they asked said, "I want to stay in my own home, I don't want to be in so much pain that I can't process, but I don't want to be so drugged up that I can't recognize my wife and kids. Can you do that for me?" And the doctor stared at him for a long minute, realizing, with a kind of rekindling of their own interest in their calling ... "Yes," they said. "I can do that for you."
And what, you ask, does this have to do with Steve's office?
I don't know and I can't ask him, if he did it for me or for him, or JIC -- but Steve left ... many ... wonderful gifts: He took hundreds of pictures of just daily scenes around the house, that come up on my cellphone as memories and reminders. The house is decorated with cover art, as well as the house itself, which was arranged to serve our necessities. And Steve's office was arranged to serve Steve's necessities. It's crowded with Stuff. Steve Stuff, because he liked to have far more things around him than I do, and even though I've had to get rid of some things so I could move without tripping, it still has a cozy, writer's cave vibe to it. It's probably still a little bit of a risky situation for the Old Woman Who Lives with Me, but for the me who lives in my head, it's a good space.
So! that went on too long. Thanks to everyone who got this far.
What've you been thinking about lately?
Today's blog post title is of course from Lewis Carroll, "Father William"