naath | Reading

kaberett

successfully bought a leek. spent several whole minutes with reduced bad brain. (local combo of prodrome and therapy hangover, I think, not anything persistent or concerning.)
the delay arising from the combination of Difficulty Leaving The House and Emotional Support Leek worked out just fine; we still made it to the wiggles household only a little behind human #1 and very slightly ahead of humans #2 and 3, and still in time for A to sequester themself for Union Meeting. hurrah for things working out.
it has rained on the plants (hurray!) and mostly not on me (also hurray!).
sweet potato slips have perked right back up after being put in a glass of water this morning (having failed to manage to get them in same last night).
orchid continues flowering exuberantly. only three of them but my goodness they are staying.
some fantastic rainbows on way to wiggles; ditto clouds-fraying-into-rain.

andrewducker

On the one hand, I actively think that Burnham would do a pretty good job.

On the other hand it would be hilarious if he lost the by-election.

On the third hand, I'm pretty sure that no matter what happens Labour will find a way to sabotage themselves.

(To be clear, I'd rather that they didn't, and would rather like them to just be competent and decent, if they can work out how to do that.)

rmc28

I'm off this evening to watch Top Gun 40th anniversary screening in the local IMAX. This is probably the very definition of a problematic fave, even before you get into Tom Cruise's cult membership. But also I watched this film for the first time on my twelfth birthday, on a coach trip with school, and will probably never not love it. I think I've seen it once in the cinema, the summer Armageddon came out[1] and our local cinema did a Bruckheimer retrospective[2] leading up to it - that's when I learned I knew every line.

I probably still know every line, there's a couple of friends where we'll casually greet each other quoting the film, or throw lines back and forth in a conversation. Regrettably both of them were unavailable to come see the film with me, but I'll be thinking of them too, as well as the planes.

I'm wearing my Svaha rainbows+planes dress with a very faded Top Gun hoodie I found in a charity shop some years ago.

[1] 1998, huh. I'd mentally assumed one friend was there for this set of films but we hadn't met yet, and bonded over them later. But that summer had a lot of meaningful stuff going on for me and my friendships, it's when I shifted my career ideas from "scientist" to "software", and of course there was DWCon too. Gosh this is even more nostalgic a post than I'd expected.

[2] Beverley Hills Cop, Top Gun, Bad Boys, [one or both of The Rock, Con Air] and then Armageddon on release week. Honestly that was a great summer programme.

ailbhe

I have had my first pelvic physio appointment from the NHS since my traumatic birth in April 2004. It was... a very emotional experience. It was fine, and the physio was kind and respectful, but it was so strange to have this being taken seriously by a medical professional. There's going to be followup. Not just a sheet of exercises.

Afterwards I needed Rob to take the rest of the afternoon off work and we went to the Oxfam music shop and had lunch in Pret and ran some errands in Superdrug and Boots, until I felt kind of normal again, and then we came home and I did some sewing.

I really don't know how to articulate what the experience was like. Banal and life-changing.

kaberett

( Today we were not the first responders to an incident. )

rachelmanija

I have been offline more than usual lately because the internet is off at my house and I've been unable to reach anyone who is not an AI, which went about as well and efficiently as you can imagine. The AI has decided that I need a new router and is mailing it to me with instructions for how to install it myself, because God forbid a human be involved. If that doesn't work, who knows what the next step is. I am beginning to suspect the only humans at the company are the CEOs and shareholders.

Meanwhile, I decided that I am spending way too much time doomscrolling, both intentionally and non-consensually. Not only is everything horrible right now, but the minute you get online you're personally informed of every horrible thing that happened anywhere, big or small or in between. Did some random dude murder his entire family anywhere in the world? You'll be informed of it, complete with heartbreaking photos of the dead kids. Did a child commit suicide anywhere in the world? You'll hear about that too, also complete with the awful story and heartbreaking photos! And that's not even getting into politics and the upcoming end of the world. I don't think humans are mentally equipped to live like that.

So I installed ScreenZen on my phone. It's one of many apps that will block both apps and entire websites. (Sadly it does not have the ability to block words.) I blocked everything I doomscroll on. I highly recommend this! I still get the news, as 1) I get a news digest emailed to me daily, 2) people will tell me the news in person whether I consent or not, but at least I'm not constantly marinating in global misery that I can't do anything about. Also, I now have more time to be useful in ways that are actually possible.

The result is that I have read so many more books than usual. I am completely behind on reviewing, also as usual, but with more books involved now. Perhaps I will post a poll.

rachelmanija

This novel has one of the most off-the-wall premises I've come across. In a near-future world much like our own, women who get pregnant also conceive a "fetal mother." When they give birth to their baby, they also deliver the fetal mother, then fall into a coma-like sleep. The fetal mother rapidly grows into an identical clone of the original mother, then EATS HER. This process is called rebirth. The new mother has the original mother's memories and personality, but is also endowed with superpowers for the first five years of her child's life: she needs almost no sleep, has super strength and fast reflexes, is filled with energy, and finds all child care and domestic tasks endlessly fascinating and enjoyable. In short, the new mother is the woman that mothers are supposed to be.

The main character, Vivi, is terrified of rebirth, and sees it as death. This view is very stigmatized, but might be more widespread than society lets on. She's reluctant to get pregnant because of it. When she finally does, something goes wrong with her rebirth. She didn't get new mother powers. Instead she slogs along, depressed and alienated, trying to care for her infant while she's still physically impaired from the pregnancy and actually needs sleep. She and her husband end up breaking up over this, and Vivi moves to Australia to live with her uncle, who runs a hobbling business.

Remember I mentioned this is near-future? The world has actually decided to do something about climate change, and so drastically regulated energy consumption. Hobbling is altering old machines to make them low emitters. The low-emissions world is less lavish: planes are rarely used, long-distance calls are brief, and only the very rich have unlimited internet. It's an interesting take on a world whose future seems much brighter than ours, but whose present is more similar to our recent past.

Vivi and her family are Indonesian-Chinese, and their cultures (including Australian) play into the book much as the near-future setting does: it's pervasive and interesting and very specific, which makes a nice grounded base for the incredibly weird rebirth stuff.

But Won't I Miss Me is a weird, fascinating, ambitious book with a weird, fascinating, ambitious premise. Great social commentary and issues of identity. I didn't quite love the ending - it felt like it needed either more setup or more payoff - but the book is still excellent and very original.

andrewducker

1. Gaining or losing a Prime Minister between general elections in the norm and not the exception: (tags:politics uk history )
2. Why a slice of Edinburgh is being bought up by overseas owners: (tags:housing edinburgh scotland migration )

lnr

I've got very little of interest to report :) I had a lovely visit to Wandlebury with Becky and Stu with a picnic lunch and photos of dead people. (Very dead, roughly saxon/viking era archaeology, which is interesting given it's an iron age feature). Since then I've mostly been reading and playing minecraft and whinging about my shoulder. I've asked the GP if there's anything else I can do until I hear back from the waiting list for NHS physio/possible hydro-distension and a GP will get back to me on the 21st. I've contacted the Spire to ask how much it is privately and they said they'd call me yesterday morning but didn't.

But I am going to do things next week! Heading to London on Sunday to see Jess, Paul and Emi in the pub (they're visiting back from the US), and then BEER on Tuesday 19th. If the weather co-operates I'll be at the beer festival all afternoon and possibly into the evening. And the week after next is half term and we're off to Whitby for a week, which will hopefully be lovely

Do come join me for the beer!

kaberett

Reading. I am so close to being Fully Up To Date with She's A Beast!!! I have just hit Feb 2026!!! Maybe my brain will let me read literally anything else???

... having said which, I totally managed to take a break from SAB to inhale Platform Decay (Martha Wells), the new Murderbot. Very little of it has stuck with me and also it was a very pleasant way to switch off brain for a few hours.

And I got close enough to the autoreturn on the library loan of another memoir about embodiment -- Run Toward The Danger, Sarah Polley -- that I am actually trying to blitz through it; so far it is not doing a great deal for me but all this really means is that I am not the target audience for everyone!

Watching. In celebration of David Attenborough's 100^th birthday, we have now watched The Year Earth Changed. I had an lot of feelings.

Playing. ... yeah so I completed The Game About Shelving Books, in that I now have all of the Steam achievements including the speedrun achievement (I never normally get speedrun achievements; I never normally even bother trying to get them), and am now Taking Breaks from other things by loading the game back up and wandering around reorganising subject shelving bays according to what makes me happiest (by and large: pick one of "colour" and "thematic grouping"; I am not here for trying to work out how to impose Dewey). At this point, though, that is feeling like a small soothing achievable task that can be A Smol Treet, rather than having the driving urgency of hyperfocus, so that's an extremely welcome development.

Eating. Strawberriessssssss. So many strawberries. I Am Luxuriating. Also: British asparagus! Fancy goats' cheese! The supermarket, having Taken Away the raspberry and passionfruit cheesecake Apparently Forever, has reintroduced it as a seasonal food!

Exploring. We went for one of our normal walks! Adam spotted a deer! We pursuit predated it for a little off amongst trees we had not previously poked around in, and discovered a series of neat rectangular brick walls, all of uniform roofless height, now full of mature trees that had clearly been there for Some Time! We have no idea, OpenStreetMap has nothing to say on the topic, and there is something that has merrily dug setts or dens into and around the foundations...

Making & mending. Bike... works again? Bike works again. Still need to unfuck the rear brake some more but maybe I will manage to take it to see the nice bike shop halfway down the hill tomorrow morning on my way Elsewhere.

Growing. Potted up the lemongrass! Have not potted up the aubergine. Ancho flowering merrily. Maybe I will make it to the plot this week and get some of the things I'm intending to put in the ground into the ground?

Observing. A deer! (Probably muntjac.) The bat! Several excellent front gardens!

dewline

I filled out the questionnaire for this year's Canadian census.

I am somewhat disappointed that my household did not get the long-form edition this time.

Current Mood: disappointed

kaberett

Today I discovered, at approximately 6 p.m., that The Gym is only open until 5 p.m. on Saturdays. We had had a fairly lazy day at home and I had been putting off My Own Gym until after I had talked A through their (second!) Liftoff Phase One workout; I spent the approach going "... this car park is suspiciously empty, I don't think it can possibly be just that the school isn't on today..." and, yep, closed already.

( Read more... )

dewline

Well, missing out on the news that a TV-formatted follow-up to two of my favourite movies has been produced is annoying...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Cop,_Bad_Cop_(TV_series)

Apparently the first two episodes went "live" on Crave on May 7th?

Current Mood: surprised

andrewducker

1. A year ago the CDC's cruise ship inspectors were laid off. What could have gone wrong?: (tags:disease USA republicans OhForFucksSake )
2. How a potato-based diet changed the genetics of people for generations: (tags:potato food SouthAmerica genetics )
3. The roleplaying magazine with a 51 year history: (tags:history roleplaying publishing )
4. What even *is* a hundred?: (tags:language numbers history )
5. Poland is a model for economic growth: (tags:Poland economics growth europe )
6. "Hot, sexy, dangerous boys cannot be copyrighted": (tags:publishing romance copyright law USA viaLilysea )
7. Reform support seems to have dropped from its peak: (tags:politics uk )
8. "No, you can't bring back hanging." A handy guide for newly elected Reform councillors: (tags:politics funny satire UK )
9. Trans youth denied hormones twice as likely to attempt suicide: (tags:suicide transgender children bigotry LGBT )
10. 'Tortured by transphobia': The woman left in pain by the NHS: (tags:LGBT transgender bigotry NHS pain )

kaberett

One: the Greens now have five seats on my borough council, up from none. ( Brief further local politics. )

Two: we took ourselves out on a walk this evening; A spotted a deer, we followed it further into the trees, and spent a fun little while following deer (&c) paths through what looked like... they might perhaps once have been greenhouses on half-brick walls? but with proper big trees growing up through them now and zero evidence of any glass or metal frames or anything remaining! Had no idea that was all in there; hurrah for Tiny Explore :)

Three: I have got my bike baaaaaaasically back to working order (I might need to replace the rear brake cable, which is tedious, but braking is actually extant), and am looking forward to taking advantage of the increased mobility it provides!

Four: spent the afternoon inhaling the new Murderbot. That's definitely a Murderbot.

Five: more rye-caraway-poppy bread, including an end-of-loaf with my mother's fig jam and the fancy goats' cheese I got to have with asparagus yesterday. (The nice shop human warned me that it was best before the 11^th, and was that okay? I explained that that Would Not Be A Problem. I am very much enjoying causing it to Not Be A Problem.)

rmc28

I have had a migraine this afternoon and evening, which is the warning sign I'm pushing my sleep schedule too much, again
I read the new Murderbot book, very hard to put down, enjoyed it very much
earlier this week fanf and I joined 20th wedding anniversary celebrations for atreic and emperor, who remain lovely people who collect lovely people around them, yay
last weekend Kodiaks lost to Coventry Phoenix 1-8, but I got my first ever WNIHL point with an assist on that goal. And then the next day we turned a 2-1 lead over MK Falcons into a 4-2 loss in the last ten minutes of the game and that hurt quite a lot. But also it was lovely to see some Hull camp friends on the MK side, both on and off the ice
I started watching Ted Lasso, currently half way through season 1 and enjoying it very much. The episodes are short enough and the people / plot engaging enough I'm managing to stick with an entire episode at a time without getting distracted
next week I'm seeing a 40th anniversary screening of Top Gun in the local IMAX screen. I got teased about did I remember seeing it on original release, which no, not quite, but it's very nearly 37 years since I first saw it on a tiny coach TV screen on a school trip to Germany. I still know most of the lines by heart

emperor

This is the first of a trilogy, set in Orrun, a fantasy world where people tend to associate with one of 8 (demi-)gods, one of which is the Raven. We see much (but not all) of the action through the eyes of Neema, the Raven Scholar of the title. Hodgson has written murder mysteries before, and it's not entirely surprising then that Neema ends up tasked with investigating a murder.

It's not, though, primarily a murder mystery - that's just one of the things that's driving a pretty twisty plot; and while I spotted some of the plot points coming, it's a cleverly written book that keeps you guessing and only a couple of times did the plot twist feel entirely like it was "cheating". There's a range of interesting characters (although some of them didn't get fleshed out enough to really make an impression), although not all of their behaviour entirely makes sense with hindsight. Without spoiling anything, events of the first part made me reluctant to invest in some of the primary characters in the subsequent book.

Being the first of a trilogy, it ends rather in the middle of things, which is a bit disappointing (if unsurprising). While I enjoyed it, I don't think I'll be seeking out the second book until the trilogy is completed.

rmc28

The last of the Varsity ice hockey games between Oxford and Cambridge universities is tomorrow evening, at Cambridge Ice Arena, at 5pm. I will be playing for Cambridge Huskies B against Oxford Vikings C.

Will it be high quality hockey? No
Will it be entertaining? Absolutely
Will I fall over? Obviously
Will I get in a fight? Maybe, if someone touches my goalie

My goalie is one of the Men's Blues, who put on goalie pads for the first time on Tuesday. Generally the squad is the people who couldn't play Varsity for Huskies or Women's Blues, plus the aforementioned novice in goal and an experienced goalie skating out. Our attempt at an entire forward line of goalies was regrettably thwarted by people having other commitments.

The results of the other Varsity games this year were:

Cambridge Narwhals v Oxford Vikings A: won by Cambridge
Cambridge Huskies v Oxford Vikings B: won by Oxford
Cambridge Women's Blues v Oxford Women's Blues: won by Oxford
Cambridge Men's Blues v Oxford Men's Blues: won by Cambridge

So this is both a not very serious game, and vitally important to win the best of five.

I'm still getting used to my new skates so I'll be playing this (and my other game for Kodiaks on Sunday) in the old ones.

andrewducker

1. Pope Leo called his bank's customer service line. They hung up on him: (tags:pope customerservice banking )

andrewducker

I haven't been quite this close to a moving train before.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

kaberett

One: bread/avocado/scramble breakfast exactly as good as I had been looking forward to, with bonus realisation that we currently have some plum jam open so I got to finish with the rye-caraway-poppy (still mostly white wheat but those were the flavours) + butter + plum jam and this, too, was magnificent. (Bonus food excellence: ASPARAGUS that is now in season; some brownie bar + strawberries.)

Two: gym!!! I made the decision that the traffic was awful enough that buses would be a bad idea so I got bonus admiration of some excellent front gardens I have been otherwise oblivious to, and also observed More Coot Eggs.

Three: Murderbot is apparently managing to occupy a sweet spot in terms of complexity and degree of emotional engagement that means I'm actually managing to read the new one. (Bookshop.org very much does NOT have the ebook in the UK store so I even don't feel bad that I forgot it existed until after I'd given Kobo money.)

Four: post-therapy treat was Completing The Speedrun Achievement for the arcane library game, thereby sorting me out with All achievements, so I am now probably ready to contentedly move on.

Five: spent a chunk of the evening removing labels from the Child's clothing, and it is very very nice to know that his life will be materially improved as a result.

rachelmanija

An advance copy of a new book by Lois Lowry, author of The Giver and other classics. It is unfortunately basically the bad version of The Giver. In fact what it mostly reminded me of was

telophase's YA dystopia generator, which produces gems like Tweak: Sickness has been banned and the government controls shopping and Whimper: Cats have been banned and the government controls dancing the hustle. In the case of Building 903, books have been banned and the government controls popsicles. Yes, really.

In a future America ruled by a 200 year old dictator, books (ALL books), fiction, art, music, storytelling, playgrounds, live pets (robot pets are OK), free elections, religion, tattoos, matches and other fire-making tools, congregating in groups, iconoclastic clothing, travel, and eating meat or fish are banned. Old people, marriage, and popsicles are controlled by the government. Yes, really.

She leaned over, pushed the button that dispensed a frozen snack, and made a face when she saw it was green; she liked the orange ones better. But she peeled the covering from the green one and licked at it. I bet anything, Tessa thought, I could get Dad to invent a selector button so they wouldn't come out at random; I could choose orange. Or red: the red ones aren't bad. Then, though, the green ones would pile up, and it would be wasteful, I suppose, because no one would ever eat them.

To be fair, I'm just assuming the frozen snacks are popsicles. For all I know she's licking a piece of frozen broccoli.

Tessa's father and twin brother are supergeniuses. Tessa and her mother are just average. I did not care for this. Anyway, Tessa's brother vanishes and the book goes on and on and ON with nothing much happening. I skipped to the end.

( Read more... )

kaberett

One: I have spent much of the day indulging the desire to Quietly Hyperfocus On Game and it has been a very relaxing autism to have.

Two: I have finished the questionable Ryvita we... somehow... came into possession of (I apparently object to things that are not salt & vinegar extruded potato twirls containing potassium chloride) and can now merrily go back to overpriced high protein crackers until such time as I get around to buying vital wheat gluten with which to make my own.

Three: two loaves of bread (because I strained a Lot of whey off the most recent batch of yoghurt), which are a slightly silly set of shapes but also extremely aesthetic. I am very much looking forward to extravagant breakfast featuring avocado and also scrambled egg. (New oven needs less time to do them than old one; new oven also would ideally get them rotated halfway through baking if I want them done evenly. I am trying to work out what the best way to freeze the second loaf is...)

Four: Adam brought me home British strawberries from the supermarket, all with their petals still attached.

Five: new Murderbot purchased. (When I will get around to reading it is another question, but the possibility exists!)

jack

So apparently a hundred used to be a hundred and twenty.

According to etymonline "hundred" came from Proto-Germanic "hunda-ratha", ultimately from Proto-Indo-European "km-tom", a shortening of "dkm-tom-", a suffixed form of "dekm-" meaning ten. Latin "centum" (where roman numeral C comes from) came from the same word.

But it sounds like in Proto-Germanic, the word mostly meant *twelve* tens. And then over the whole medieval period in Germanic-language speaking areas, it was used to mean "120" for some goods and "100" for others. Wikipedia says that "thousand" was also used meaning "1200".

Some sources delved through a bunch of medievel documents looking for examples and it sounded persuasive to me. One emphasised that it always seems to be twelve tens, people didn't seem to count twelve twelves. It seems like "120" and "100" were somewhat standardised, but there were also regional variations or a tendency to use similar terminology for any round number around that size.

English eventually started distinguishing these as "long hundred" and "short hundred", and surprisingly late (1800s?) parliament ordered that "hundred" be standardised as 100. Long and short persist in measures like "long ton" and "short ton", being 2200lb or 2000lb. Apparently based on 20 long hundredweights or 20 short hundredweights. Long ton or british ton is conveniently almost exactly 1000kg, which people now use as the metric tonne. North Americans may still use "ton" as a short ton.

I can't find any confirmation where "120" started. I assume that the PIE word meant "100". Does anyone know more?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_hundred (Especially look through the citations to short academic PDFs eg https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/9477)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredweight

andrewducker

We've taken this week off work with no children (after Monday's bank holiday) for the first time in 8 years. The idea being that we could spend a bit of time with each other, spend a bit of time decompressing, and do some stuff around the house that was never happening when there were children underfoot

So yesterday we went out and had a relaxed day together at Jupiter Artland, essentially the fields and woods around an old country house with sculptures installed intermittently, so that you can have a lovely scenic walk intermittently punctuated by conversations about whatever you've just encountered. I had been there once before, a decade ago. Jane hadn't been there before at all, so it was a nice morning out.

And then today we had some actual energy to put into making the house nice. The "playroom" has been a dumping ground for kids toys for the last 2 years, since we moved back in. Every bit of plastic nonsense we'd accumulated for the past 8 years, either bought, given to us, or arriving on the front of magazines - sitting in boxes or bags or piled on shelves. Our cleaner Lana had repeatedly done an amazing job of sorting it thematically, only for us to then be too sick, tired, or otherwise incapable of doing anything about it. Turns out what we needed was a few days in a row with no children to let us recharge to the point where we could actually motivate ourselves.

So we just removed 8 bin bags full of stuff from the "playroom" and put them in the bins at the end of the street. And also about 3 bins bag of stuff are in the drive and will go to the charity shops when I pick up the kids at 5pm. And now Sophia's room has a floor and we will be able to put a bed in there.

(Undoubtedly the children will have questions when they get home.)

andrewducker

1. "Never Just a Period": (tags:menstruation advertising viaLilysea video )
2. Large demographic shifts are upending the social order: (tags:society demographics doom video )

kaberett

The other highlight of the day was my ongoing experiments on myself with respect to movement, which I had intended to witter about, but (1) it got late and (2) when I came to actually look up "neuromuscular/movement patterning" as terms for That Thing about The Process Of Learning Physical Skills I could... only find a bunch of people selling movement coaching services. Working out what the academic terminology for this is: now on my infinite todo list.

(tl;dr I made a back muscle very unhappy a few years ago now; ever since it has been prone to Twinges but not actual dysfunction, which I've been interpreting as Nerves Primed To Go AAAAH; managed to push it past twinge into persistent unhappiness on Saturday, and have spent the past few days playing around with how it responds to various kinds of movement in terms of better/worse/about the same...)

kaberett

( tada )

( tada 05/05 )

( tada 06/05 )

andrewducker

Nice night sky tonight
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

rachelmanija

One day everyone in the world woke up with these words in front of their eyes, somehow inscribed in their inner eye: YOU ARE LIVING IN A SIMULATION. Simultaneously, a number of impossible things appeared on Earth, apparently to prove it: a frozen tornado, windows between continents, etc.

It's now seven years later. Those words still appear before everyone's eyes periodically. And tours have sprung up to take people to see the Impossibles, or at least as many as can be seen on a seven-day bus trip.

This extremely high-concept premise resembles that of The Measure in some ways: a world-spanning event, clearly real and equally clearly done by a more-than-human power, with immense existential implications, and with no one having any idea why it happened or why it happened now. But this is Daryl Gregory and he's very good with bizarre high-concept premises, and this book is excellent.

The other genre of When We Were Real is "set of random people thrown together" story. A number of the characters are, at least on the surface, straight out of a 1930s train story or a 1970s airplane story: two nuns, a rabbi, a pregnant woman, an elderly woman in a wheelchair and her devoted daughter, a set of elderly tourists, a person who's secretly dying, a person with a secret identity, a fugitive from the law. The only stock character it's missing is the cute child.

The many characters are very human and likable, with even the most frustrating of them having reasons for being the way they are; the annoying pregnant influencer's reason for being an annoying influencer turns out to be both sympathetic and heartbreaking. (Yes, it's partly to provide for her upcoming baby, but the real question is "Why an influencer rather than some other job?")

( Read more... )

The Impossibles themselves are excellent. My favorite was the time tunnel, where you can stay an infinite amount of subjective time (you get a home pulled out of your own history or desires, plus fresh-baked bread every morning) and emerge several hundred miles away, only a second having passed outside. But the flock of non-real sheep was pretty great too.

There's serious themes - existentialism, mortality, meaning, God, ethics, love - but delivered with a light touch. It's more plotty than I expected, given the quest/picaresque structure, and the story is very satisfying. You don't get answers to all the questions, but you do get a general outline as to what's going on and why. It's a very human and humane novel, of the moment but in a good way.

Content notes: Cancer. Plans for suicide due to terminal illness. Pregnancy and birthing issues. Violence.

dewline

...pun in the title is definitely intended here...May the Fourth Be With You.

Current Mood: busy

kaberett

Reading. I am up to AUGUST 2025 in my She's A Beast back-catalogue catch-up. Will I be able to read Anything Else At All Soon? Maybe?

Among several library holds that have now turned up (... ulp) I have technically started Run Towards the Danger (Sarah Polley), another memoir about embodiment, which I... suspect was recced via SAB one way or another. By "technically" I mean "I am a couple of pages into the preface, and trying to decide whether the formatting fuckery is worth sticking through".

Writing. So. many. e-mails. about. objects. and I have barely even Started the damn Object E-mails good grief.

Progress on Book also continues (look at me not using qualifiers!). Currently I am slightly going in circles about (1) how much background I need to give on why I think "biopsychosocial" can be a useful frame at least to the extent of providing structure for the first big chunk of the book, (2) what you've got to be very careful you're doing if you want that to be the case, and (3) whether I need to engage in depth with the goddamn philosophy of it all in re e.g. "it's not a model if it doesn't have predictive power" (which I am extremely inclined to sidestep by just......... calling it a frame).

Playing. ... we have tripped and fallen and are playing Librarian: Tidy up the arcane library. Initially we were co-playing with A doing most of the driving and me going LOOK THERE'S A PATTERN-- but then it became apparent that my ideal mode of gameplay (keyboard rather than controller, Manually Shelve Each Book Individually) is not compatible with A's (controller rather than keyboard, Use All The Magic). So I got a second copy. And have been playing through it merrily and slowly. To my amusement it turns out that my specific bullshit here............ gets you the rarest of the Steam achievements. (I am about 2/3 of the way through shelving, and things are speeding up substantially in more or less the same way as they do with jigsaw puzzles. This has eaten my brain and I really really need to do Other Things that are Not This but gosh it gets quiet in here when Allow The Brain To Just Focus. Will I do any further rounds of it? Unclear.)

Cooking. Continue to appreciate braised chickpeas in all their forms (still v keen on Adding A Tin Of Artichokes to the party).

Eating. Had my second hundoburger, which I had deferred until after E1, for the purposes of having an additional day where I didn't need to think about food. Also: STRAWBERRIES; bakery brunch (feat. both the bread pudding and the cardamom bun); ... almost certainly other things but the brain it says no.

Exploring. Bakery brunch featured a detour to visit a red horse chestnut I'd spotted from the bus on my way back from yesterday's hospital appointment, and also pointing out to A the pink bits on some of the flowers on the standard horse chestnuts on the way there.

Technically Finchley Memorial hospital, but mostly I got on a bus I was familiar with and played sudoku to keep myself vaguely calm, and then I managed to NOT panic and get onto a bus going in entirely the wrong direction by dint of it pulling out of the stop sufficiently far ahead of me there was no way I was gonna catch up with it, and then got the unfamiliar bus in the correct direction and... spent significantly more of that panicking quietly. There was definitely A Point at which, it having become apparent that the bus was On Diversion and Not Following Its Usual Route and None Of The Normal Stops Were Happening, I equally quietly Gave Up and decided this was simply going to be yet another hospital service I got discharged from for being disabled, BUT in fact that service TERMINATED at the hospital (and was the only one serving it!!!) so it did get there in the end. I would still prefer to not do that journey again please and thank you, even though I did per the above spot a convenient local red horse chestnut on the return leg, and for that matter several dramatic wisteria hidden from road level but NOT from upper-deck-of-bus level.

Growing. A took me to the allotment this afternoon! The josta is setting quite a lot of fruit and the cherry is even managing some despite my utter failure to water them! I put some marigold seeds in the ground in between rows of broad beans though this is clearly futile because the red ants are already Very Definitely farming on them; the oca in the bottom half of that bed are starting to come up despite the utter lack of watering, as above; none of the seedlings at home died while we were away; ... I did some weeding?

Observing. BABY BIRDS incl. cootlets going WHEEK WHEEK WHEEK all the way up and down the river; the Egyptian goslings are now at the stage of mostly having vaguely competent adult plumage coming in but still managing to turn into balls of ungainly fluff when they sit down; a second batch of coot eggs is being Definitively Incubated. We did not see the duckle again but we did see a very small starling. It was a very pleasant brunch down by the aqueduct.

andrewducker

1. How insider trading from the White House is working: (tags:USA republicans fraud )

kaberett

Today I have:

successfully navigated some unfamiliar-to-me public transport with only the normal amount of panic
MADE IT TO THE GYM post-unfamiliar-public-transport (having been Indisposed this morning, when I had planned to--)
- achievement unlocked: asked to borrow a pair of dumbbells from a much-stronger-than-me human For One Set while they were resting (because warm-up); they were a delight
- achievement unlocked: politely asked the human in the next rack if I could have the yellow plates they... seemed highly unlikely to use
... tripped and fell into Computer Game instead of doing most of the afternoon/early evening things I had grand plans about...
and we UNFUCKED THE KITCHEN SOME, good job us.

(Everything is still very much a post-event disaster, but. Made food ate food made a stand against the forces of entropy. It Is Well.)

andrewducker

Sophia's 8th birthday party went very well. 12 kids, well behaved, lots of climbing, no deaths.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

rachelmanija

This picks up when Danny's been Dreadnought for a while, and is getting a bit too into the violent aspects of the job. This aspect is quite well done - you understand what's going on with her, but it actually is a bit unsettling. Also, Valkyrja reappears, sort of; an evil techbro wreaks havoc; a TERF is threatening the world; and Danny works on her relationships.

I liked this more than the first book. Danny developed as a character and spent a lot less time being abused by transphobes. I'll grab the third book when it comes out.

The sequel isn't as good as the first book, unfortunately. I'd have been happy with more of Zax, Minna, and Vicky exploring the multiverse, but this book is much more plot-driven and Minna and Vicky only show up three-quarters of the way through. Half or more of the book is narrated by a new character whose identity I'll leave out as it's spoilery for the first book. She was fine as a character but her storyline was less interesting. Zax gets a new companion, and I did quite enjoy his adventures with her. I also enjoyed Minna and Vicky when they finally appeared.

But the plot-driven parts were less interesting, and the structure was really odd and not in a way that benefited the book. Instead of picking up where the first book left off, we get a retrospective summary of what happened some time after that point, then we get the entire backstory of the non-Zax narrator bringing her up to the point where she meets Zax in the first book, then it jumps forward and we get what's happening to her now, then we catch up with what Zax is doing now, and then, about three quarters of the way in, we finally get the story of what happened immediately after the first book left off. I think it would have worked better to tell the story more linearly. And also, to have much more Minna.

It's not a bad book and it does have some really good parts, but there are some baffling choices made.

wildeabandon

In today's Coptic homework I've been translating from the Constantine of Assyut's (almost certainly pseudonymous) second Encomium for Athanasius, and came across this absolute gem.

ⲡⲥⲛⲥⲓⲱⲧ ⲙⲉⲛ ⲁⲑⲁⲛⲁⲥⲓⲟⲥ ⲁϥϯ ⲛⲧⲇⲓⲕⲁⲓⲟⲥⲩⲛⲏ ϩⲓⲱⲱϥ ϩⲛ ⲟⲩϩⲃⲥⲱ ⲙⲙⲛⲧⲟⲩⲏⲏⲃ. ⲛⲉⲕⲗⲏⲣⲓⲕⲟⲥ ϩⲱⲟⲩ ⲙⲡⲉⲓⲕⲁⲓⲣⲟⲥ ϯϯ ⲥⲟ ⲉϫⲟⲟⲥ ϫⲉ ⲁⲩϯ ⲛⲧⲙⲛⲧⲣⲉϥϯϩⲉ ϩⲓⲱⲟⲩ ϩⲛ ⲟⲩϩⲃⲥⲱ ⲉⲥⲗⲁⲁⲙ ⲏ ⲛⲑⲉ ⲛϩⲉⲛⲧⲟⲉⲓⲥ ⲛϣⲣⲱ.

"Indeed, the most holy Athanasius clothed himself in righteousness with a priestly garment. As for the clerics of this age themselves, I refrain from saying that they clothed themselves in drunkenness with a filthy garment, like menstrual rags."

And my dude, my dude, that is an abject failure on your part to refrain from saying what you clearly desperately wanted to say.

rmc28

I have slept so much this week. Both Wednesday and Thursday evening I had a miraculous lack of commitments, and both evenings I thought "I could get a bunch of things done now" and instead ... went to sleep. And re-read Ocean's Echo because I needed a comfort reread, apparently.

Anyway, I had Friday off work and Monday is a bank holiday, and I spent my day off going to Woking and back to buy new ice hockey skates from the place my friend works. She's only been telling me since last July I will benefit from new skates, and I have finally reached a point of "ok FINE I will SPEND MONEY then". (In April I bought a new chestpad and a new pair of shorts, both from Bauer's women's range, both on visits to Puckstop opposite iceSheffield when I was there for Nationals, both providing this weird feeling of stuff actually fitting as opposed to simply covering the relevant body areas.) I had a lovely time picking out new skates with friend L: they are very pretty and fit amazingly, but also I am having to relearn how to skate in them and it feels very odd.

Today and Sunday I have the last two Kodiaks 2 "home" games of the season in Peterborough (we have one last game next weekend, away at Coventry). I'm going to keep using my old skates for these games because I'm not solid enough in the new ones yet. On Monday evening I have CUIHC full club formal hall, and a pretty green velvet dress to wear to it, thanks to a charity shop run at the end of January.

dewline

Making a note here:

https://thinkingautismguide.com/2026/05/autinsar-2026-highlighting-autistic-priorities-in-autism-research-prague-version.html

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