Offal

Jun. 5th, 2025 11:22 pm
blueshiftofdeath: Chilchuck looking disturbed. (gah)
[personal profile] blueshiftofdeath

Last month a book I was reading mentioned a case where social psychologist Kurt Lewin was tasked with getting American families to eat more organ meats, aka offal. Great social psychology anecdote, and if I get around to doing a book review I'm sure I'll include it.

But also when I was reading that, I was like-- damn, I should be eating organs! It's just as good for you as regular meat, supposedly tastes just as good, and must be way cheaper. (I've also cooked a whole duck before and ended up just chucking the organs and felt so bad about it, so it's been in the back of my mind for a while....) If the housewives in those studies can make the change, so can I!

I found a cookbook focused on offal (Offal Good) and borrowed it from the library and just flipped through it and--- hnngghghgghghh, the photos of the raw cuts are sooooo 😭 GAH! I can't help but recoil from it.

This reaction is honestly embarrassing since I know there's nothing wrong with it and it's purely my cultural upbringing. (Even though my own mother would have grew up eating it...) But it's still pretty intense and it's hard to imagine right now actually cooking with it, even though I know that, like with almost everything, if I actually just do it it'll be fine.

I was thinking maybe I could try some dishes at a restaurant so I know it tastes good before I actually spend time prepping it, and looking up offal brought up a lot of articles about how it's trendy right now apparently?? (I have seen 0 evidence of this offline but who knows.) But I haven't seen any reliable options in the area, except for tripe which I am fine with but not that excited about and probably wouldn't choose to cook on my own.

My joke with ebaths was that looking at those offal pictures gives me the urge to just go vegetarian. *tries to eat more meat* *eats less instead*

But really, I still want to give it a try. Lmk if you have any favorite, easy/simple offal recipes! And/or any advice for someone trying to eat more offal!

weird power outage, and knee update

Jun. 5th, 2025 09:10 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.

Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.

I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.

* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.

various sizes of joy

Jun. 5th, 2025 11:11 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. On Tuesday, I picked a kohlrabi. The stem itself got eaten at the plot; the leaves I brought home to cook and eat subsequently rather than compost them. I stuck them in a glass of water to keep them going while I work out what exactly it is I want to do, and -- they are stunning. I am enjoying them so much every time I go past them: dark blue-tinged green leaves, pink-purple stems and veins (the cultivar is Azur; I do not currently have photos but will attempt to get my act together tomorrow.)
  2. I have four spikes of ginger, one thoroughly unfurled into leaves, and at least one more thinking hard about it. I do not expect to wind up self-sufficient in ginger but I am very much enjoying the experiment.
  3. a word you've never understood (Prophet, 9k words). I did not read it all in one gulp -- I paused to take notes -- and I'm now on my second read through, which could in theory be more of a gulp but mysteriously I seem to be taking more notes and also remembering that I wanted to shake the internet for more information about the experience termed "aftersensations", for Book Purposes. (Also I think I've lured another person into at least starting the book...)
  4. Asparagus for lunch! Still in season; still delicious.
  5. My house once again contains Large Quantities of hazelnuts and pecans. I Monch.

in the midst of life

Jun. 5th, 2025 04:54 pm
wychwood: people around a "wychwood" roadsign (WW - wychwood)
[personal profile] wychwood
I had plans for my first free evening this week, but then got distracted and lost an hour and a half somewhere. It's weird how often that happens. Catching up with the washing up will just have to wait for tomorrow (...or some later date).

A parcel arrived today! I ordered some of the Diana Wynne Jones books I didn't already have; I have most of them already, but decided it was time to fill in the gaps, so I expect I'll be re-reading these this month. I need to catch up with my booklog; I've only read about a dozen books in the last two months, so it shouldn't take all that long, but I keep getting distracted.

I watched the funeral of one of my primary school classmates on Tuesday; it feels very strange for someone I remember as an eleven-year-old to be dead. Having said that, it wasn't any kind of surprise; he had a horrible genetic condition and had spent the last decade in a care home, and at that he outlived his two younger brothers by nearly a quarter of a century. Some people just get a really raw deal. We were never close, but it's impossible not to feel the unfairness of it - especially for his parents, who brought up four children knowing that three of them were unlikely to make it much past puberty. You know these things happen to people, but it's harder to accept when you see them in your own community.

And now I need to go and assemble tomorrow's sandwiches and go to bed at a reasonable hour. The swimming crew are going for coffee tomorrow, so I definitely can't be late!

.

Jun. 5th, 2025 09:00 pm
cimorene: The words "It don't mean a thing" hand-drawn in black on white (jazz)
[personal profile] cimorene
"I never know what I mean in my telegrams—especially those I send from America."

—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

I did a quick search over past posts and I see that bibliotherapy has been a thing that I have been posting the odd link about for A Long Time, though I see the School of Life's page thereon is now 404. In the way that things are constantly being suddenly NEW, I see I also had a link much more recently on the topic about which was cynical.

But I find this article really quite amusing if sometimes determined to use all the Propah Academyk Speek: Reading as therapy: medicalising books in an era of mental health austerity:

When reading is positioned as therapy, we argue, evaluative intentions intersect awkwardly with the cultural logics of literature, as practitioners and commissioners grapple with what it means to extract ‘wellbeing effects’ from a diffuse and everyday practice. As a result, what might look initially like another simple case of medicalisation turns out to have more uncertain effects. Indeed, as we will show, incorporating the ‘reading cure’ troubles biomedicine, foregrounding both the deficiencies of current public health responses to the perceived crisis of mental health, and the poverty of causal models of therapeutic effect in public health. There are, then, potentially de-medicalising as well as medicalising effects.

We get the sense that the project was constantly escaping from any endeavours to confine it within meshes of 'evidence-based medicine': 'Trying to fit the square peg of reading into the round hole of evidence is where things sometimes get awkward.'

Larfed liek drayne:

In five experiments on how reading fiction impacts on measures of wellbeing, Carney and Robertson found no measurable effects from simply being exposed to fiction: the mechanism, they note, is not akin to a pharmaceutical that can prescribed.

5 June 2025 Thursday

Jun. 5th, 2025 08:55 am
daryl_wor: tie dye and spiky bat (Default)
[personal profile] daryl_wor
 It's a bird!
It's some vases!
Have a blessed day!

Things

Jun. 6th, 2025 12:03 am
vass: Small turtle with green leaf in its mouth (Default)
[personal profile] vass
Books
Finished Jazz Money's how to make a basket. Mostly I liked it. Some of the concrete verse didn't work for me, but that's a me thing, not a problem with the writing.

The book's main theme seemed to be time travel: back before her land's invasion or back to her father's childhood or simply travelling minute by minute; the wish to change the past and the impossibility of doing so.

more )

After reading [personal profile] skygiants' review of KJ Charles' Death in the Spires I remembered that I had bought a copy of that when it came out and hadn't read it yet. Read it.

more )

Games
I hear that Long Live the Queen is getting a followup game, Galaxy Princess Zorana! I'm excited. (Long Live the Queen itself is current on 70% discount on Steam if anyone reading this might be interested in a fun visual novel game. It's pretty and pink and really astonishingly lethal.)

Slay the Spire: I did a few daily climbs. I'm finding them more fun than the regular runs at the moment.

Tech
Still working on the laptop. In the meantime I bought a webcam and plugged it into my desktop so that I could still attend Telehealth appointments. Got complimented on how I looked: turns out that a room with better lighting, and a better-positioned camera, really do make a difference. Go figure.

Household
My laundry area now has a shelf above the washing machine. I took the opportunity to do some decluttering of that area, and it looks much nicer now. So nice that now I want to paint the wall behind it. /o\

Weather
It's fucking freezing.

Links


Cats
Currently headbutting my hand while I'm trying to type.

To-Do List Dysfunction

Jun. 5th, 2025 04:11 pm
cimorene: a collection of weapons including knives and guns arranged in a circle on a red background. The bottommost is dripping blood. (weapon)
[personal profile] cimorene
I have a long-term To-Do list, and last week I got this list down to two items, one of which was oiling the sewing machine so I don't really count it, and took myself quite by surprise. You wouldn't think that would be possible, and yet I found myself unexpectedly with Only One Thing On The To-Do List.

And I said to myself "Wow, this thing won't take that long! I will probably finish it quickly and easily tomorrow!" (I still haven't finished it.)

Only then the next day I woke up with a whole long list of things I suddenly needed to do first: clean the counter, paint my nails, have a bunny photoshoot, sweep the bunny cages, ink my italic pens and photograph sample writing. I thought vaguely in there, "Maybe I won't get it done today, but soon!" Except then I finished all those things in the day and also finished reading the book I was closest to the end of. (If I'd just done the last thing on the list instead of reading, I'd've finished after all.)

And that's when it occurred to me that I've been putting off the tasks on this To-Do list not simply because they are difficult or intimidating, but to avoid finishing my To-Do list.

At the end of the To-Do list lie all the other things that I should do, but don't know how to start! (Like removing a lot of wallpaper, because I've already tried several ways that don't work that well. We probably need to build scaffolding, which isn't something we are at all qualified to build.) Even worse, items like "Find more social activities and make more friends" are down there! They're things with a sense of 'should' but with no obvious first steps or convenient handles for executive function to get hold of.

What's more, I realized that I would never even have realized this (that I was trying not to finish the To-Do list) if I hadn't hurt my shoulder and had to stop knitting.

Because all this winter I've been furiously occupying myself with knitting, knitting itself has been serving me as a bottomless To-Do list.

This To-Do list dysfunction also means that anything I don't urgently or impulsively do at once - anything which then lands on the list - is in danger of being indefinitely procrastinated, even if there's nothing inherently difficult or anxiety-causing about it (like buying another batch of ebooks, so actually the list now has two things besides oiling the sewing machine again).

Scratching Itches

Jun. 5th, 2025 08:37 am
lirazel: Chuck from Pushing Daisies reads in an armchair in front of full bookshelves ([tv] filling up the bookshelves)
[personal profile] lirazel
I have made many a post about how no other writer scratches the same itch that Robin McKinley does, but here is another one, expanded out to talk about other writers who scratch very specific itches.

I am skeptical of the BookTok/GoodReads "readalikes" conversation, because I don't think there are any writers who actually readalike--every writer is distinct--and also I hate the tendency of book copy to compare books to other books/writers ("for readers of...") mostly because the comparisons are usually bad comparisons! Book B is nothing like Book A actually! Why did you even say that it was? Have you, person who wrote the copy, actually read both books? Etc.

However, I do think that thoughtful comparisons of writers can be helpful is the conversation is very specific about what you're actually comparing. For instance: if you ask for writers like Austen and someone suggests Heyer, that could work really well if what you're looking for is "romance set in Regency England written by someone who isn't just writing about Regency England via osmosis of reading a thousand other Regency novels" but it would simply be frustrating if what you're looking for is "gorgeous early 19th century prose and keen-eyed commentary on human foibles and social expectations." See?

So I'd like to have a discussion about what itches particular writers scratch that are difficult to find in other writers' works. That's not elegantly phrased, but maybe examples will help.

I'll probably make several posts about this featuring a handful of favorite writers or perhaps favorite books and I would be VERY interested to hear what itch-scratchers you're always looking for, whether in the comments or in your own posts. And if you can think of any writers or specific books that hit any one of the points I'm looking for below, please, please share recs! Recommendations are my love language!

When I say that I want more books like Eva Ibbotson's (adult) books (and Star of Kazan), what I mean is one or some combination of the following:
+ golden descriptions of pre-WWII Europe (particularly Hapsburg territory, particularly Vienna) with its sense of how diverse Europe was with dozens of different cultures all jostling with each other
+ colorful, eccentric, specific characters (mostly these are supporting characters in her books, not the leads, but I am happy whenever they arise) evoked through amazing details
+ beautiful writing about love for the arts, including moments of transcendence and grace in the midst of sorrow

What I'm not talking about:
+ the romances, which I find only partially convincing most of the time

When I say that I want more books like Robin McKinley's, what I am saying:
+ close attention to the domestic details of life from baking to raising newborn puppies to creating fire-proof dragon-fighting gear
+ an atmosphere that is warm without being saccharine--there's sorrow, pain, loss, etc. alongside the coziness
+ wonderful evocations of magic
+ wonderfully realized female characters (Beagle's Tamsin did this for me, if you want another example)

What I'm not talking about:
+ any particular one of her settings--I like them all but I don't go searching for them
+ fairytale retellings--these can be good! but often are not

When I say I want more books like Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series, what I mean is:
+ vividly evoked specific historical settings, a strong sense of place, settings that are rare and not over-visited (look, I love Victorian London as much as anyone, but sometimes I'd rather have a story set in Central Asia or the Incan Empire or something)
+ close attention to how power affects how people move through the world (without getting preachy)
+ focus on how marginalized people find agency and build lives despite the limits enforced on them by those forces of power
+ depictions of people trying (sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing) to build relationships across those societally-enforced lines

What I'm not talking about:
+ historical mysteries, necessarily (I love historical mysteries when done well but SO many of them just do not work for me)


When I say I want more books like Susanna Clarke's, what I mean is:
+ magic that is beautiful but untamable, wild and fey
+ delightful footnotes or digressions
+ love for scholarship, history, books, etc.
+ a sense of wonder
+ a sense of the writer's deep understanding of the literature and history of the era she's writing about

What I'm not talking about:
+ conflicts between men wielding magic in different ways
+ Regency-era fantasy, necessarily (again, most of this does not hit for me)

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 11:36 pm
metawidget: A "palatable" icon with happy face licking lips and captions in both official languages.. (palatable)
[personal profile] metawidget
I'm writing this from the kitchen table in my new place — I am in the process of moving out from the home I shared with Elizabeth since 2008. We got to a place where we had a big gulf between what each of us thought our relationship should be and I decided I needed some space and concordance between what our relationship had become and what the infrastructure looked like. So here I am, a kilometer and a half away in a little 1940s house with a bedroom for me and each kid, a woodstove (landlords promise to inspect and clean it before it gets cold) and a certain amount of distance. The kids seem pretty positive and practical about moving in; they'll be in on a supply run on the weekend to kit out their rooms while Elizabeth and Doug go to Toronto for a gig. Unless things go terribly, they'll have their first night here then, and then I'll get Vivien to the bus really early for her school trip to Quebec City.

What this all looks like emotionally going forward... is still up in the air. I was pretty unhappy with where things were going. Elizabeth seems to want to go straight to friends and I'm feeling more like getting the practicalities of co-parenting down, being fair while standing up for myself, setting some clear boundaries. I'm lucky to have a broad circle of support and some really good people close to me. Andrea says I'm brave, and has been there for me all through this. My parents are understanding. My peer group is proud I'm taking concrete action. Lots of people are offering help, even the kids (I'll make sure they get some choices about their space and also carry some boxes). It feels weird but maybe I do need to assemble some kind of separation registry and insist that people only contribute things they have doubles of or don't use -- partly to help get over the hump of expenses (and in to paying rents of the current era and child support) and partly so I don't just say "come to the housewarming" when they ask what they can do.

semi-recent reading

Jun. 4th, 2025 10:33 pm
redbird: full bookshelves and table in a library (books)
[personal profile] redbird

Since my last reading post:

Nobody Cares, by H. J. Breedlove. This one is good, but dark: it's dedicated this to Black Lives Matter, and fairly early on I got to the first mention of Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It's also book 3 in the Talkeetna series, with further developments in the friendship-turning-romance of Dace and Paul.

The Disappearing Spoon, by Dan Kean: a history of the periodic table, with a bit about each of the currently-known elements and the people, or groups of people who discovered them. Someone recommended this after I mentioned liking Consider the Fork, but the two books have almost nothing in common.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing, by Katherine May: a memoir, about walking and what happens after the writer hears a radio program about Asperger's and thinks "but that's me." (I don't remember where I saw this recommended

Return to Gone-Away, by Elizabeth Enright: read-aloud, and a reread of a book I read years ago. Sweet, a family's low-key adventures in an obscure corner of upstate New York. As the title implies, this is a sequel; read Gone-Away Lake first.

Beautiful Yetta, the Yiddish Chicken, by Daniel Pinkwater, a short picture book that we read aloud after Adrian and I realized Cattitude hadn't read it before. Conversation in three languages, with translations (and transliterations) for the Yiddish and Spanish. Not Pinkwater's best, but fun.

Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright, because I enjoyed rereading the Gone-Away Lake books. Several months of a girl's life with her family on a farm. The plot and adventures are relatively low-key. I liked it, and am glad I got it from the library.

Also, it looks as though I didn't post about the summer reading thing here. It started June 1, and the bingo card has a mix of kinds of books, like books in translation, published this year, or with an indigenous author; some squares with things like "read outside" and "recommend a book"; and some that go further afield, like "learn a word in a new language" and "try a new recipe." Plus the ever-popular "book with a green cover." (OK, last year it was "book with a red cover.") I do a lot of my reading on a black-and-white kindle, so I don't know what color the covers might be. Therefore, I walked into a library yesterday, looked at their summer reading suggestions, and grabbed a book with a green cover.

followup on the art thing

Jun. 4th, 2025 04:20 pm
ysobel: A man wielding a kitchen knife and making an adorable yelling face (rage)
[personal profile] ysobel
(see tag for details)

I got an email from the art dude announcing that he's temporarily opening registration to his courses.

(Still full price, just you usually can't sign up, just get on the waiting list. Which I had not explicitly done.)

I unsubscribed. Grumpily.

I can understand his logic -- entering a contest to get X indicates interest in X -- but this wasn't opt-in, and it should have been '

mugged by a magpie

Jun. 4th, 2025 11:34 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Picture me: sat on the sofa, opposite the French doors, vaguely paying attention to what was going on at the bird feeder, mildly amused by the extremely ungainly magpie.

The magpie that inspected the water bowl (that someone had thrown off its stand) and the feeder (that was empty) and the me (on the sofa) and Came To A Decision.

It did a tiny hop-skip-flap over and landed, very deliberately, on the workbench just the other side of the glass. It turned its head from side to side to get a good look at me from both eyes.

And then, having glared at me, it started yelling.

And kept yelling until I was up off the sofa and clearly heading for the door, whereupon it retreated to a safe distance, i.e. the garage rooves, and Continued Observing.

I sorted out the water dish. I got the crates of Misc Birdseed out of their cupboard. I sorted out the feeder. I sorted out the other feeder.

I went back inside.

Some time elapsed.

Eventually I got sufficiently puzzled about why the magpie hadn't come back yet to actually notice that I'd left the crates of seed out, and their cupboard door open.

I heaved myself back off the sofa.

I returned the seeds to their cupboard, and shut the cupboard's door. I returned myself to the sofa, shutting the patio door behind me.

Not terribly long after that, the magpie returned, and drank, and nibbled suspiciously (I had changed which food was in which feeder position), and appeared satisfied at least to the extent of not yelling any further...

... right up until the squirrel showed up to claim a portion of the restock.

I am absolutely delighted to have made this neighbour's acquaintance.

flea antics 3

Jun. 4th, 2025 02:54 pm
paperghost: (Default)
[personal profile] paperghost
Cat was at the vet while I was working. Fleas are gone, she has thyroid and bladder issues. Fast metabolism is why she's so skinny. So she's old as fuck but not at death's door quite yet. Also may not have dementia? Apparently her bladder issues just make her uncomfortable and act weird.

Things said to cats

Jun. 4th, 2025 12:21 pm
azurelunatic: Hacker-Kitty (aka Yellface) snuggling with Azz. (Hacker-Kitty)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
Cat: "Me-ow!"
Me: "Me-ow! You-ow! We all ow!"

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 02:14 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Two minor amusing things from a trip downtown this morning:

I saw (and rode) one of the googly-eyed trolleys for the first time.

And on the way back, an ad in a subway car for some AI thing. The headline is something like "offload the busy work." The steps given below that are "AI drafts brief" and "brief accepted." Almost anything would have been a better example, after repeated news stories about lawyers getting in trouble for submitting impressively flawed AI-drafted legal briefs.

The trip was to try on sandals at the Clark's store. There was one that was slightly two big, so I have ordered a pair in my usual style, to be delivered to the store, so I can try them on there and return them if they don't fit.

I stopped to grab some lunch at the Quincy Market food court, and then wrenched my knee while sitting down on some stairs in order to eat it. The trip home was not fun, but I came home, sat down for a couple of minutes, then got out last fall's cane and went into the kitchen to make tea.
pauraque: drawing of a wolf reading a book with a coffee cup (customer service wolf)
[personal profile] pauraque
This is the fifth and final part of my book club notes on The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories. [Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.]


"The Woman Carrying a Corpse" by Chi Hui (2019), tr. Judith Huang

Why doesn't she put it down? )


"The Mountain and the Secret of Their Names" by Wang Nuonuo (2019), tr. Rebecca F. Kuang

Wreckage from satellite launches threatens a rural village. )


"Net Novels and the 'She Era': How Internet Novels Opened the Door for Female Readers and Writers in China" by Xueting Christine Ni (2022) [essay]

What it says on the tin. )


"Writing and Translation: A Hundred Technical Tricks" by Rebecca F. Kuang (2022) [essay]

Kuang discusses translation. )


the end

I was pretty impressed by this collection. The stories spanned a lot of different themes and styles, and while not everything was to my taste, the quality of writing was high and it's hard to think of any entries that didn't at least offer something interesting to think about. There was agreement among the group that it's a good starting point for Chinese SF/F but of course it can only be a small slice of a huge and diverse field. I'd be interested to explore further.

I may need to sit out the next book for scheduling reasons. But even if so, I will return!
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.


*****


Link

scanners vs. divers, again

Jun. 4th, 2025 11:44 am
althea_valara: Icon captioned "a woman bracing herself." (bracing)
[personal profile] althea_valara
I was discussing confidence and job searching with friends the other day, and one of them suggested reading Refuse to Choose: Use All of Your Interests, Passions and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams so I dutifully clicked the link and then went WAIT WHAT A BARBARA SHER BOOK I DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT?!?!

I'm a big fan of Barbara's books, and spent a lot of time on her message board when I was younger. I helped proofread Wishcraft when she was first digitizing it, and had even talked to her on the phone once regarding the project. I was very sad when I heard she had passed away, because her books were very formative and helpful for me.

So yes, I immediately bought the ebook of Refuse to Choose and started reading it, and well, it's basically a how-to manual for scanners.

Hmm.

Okay, let me explain: Barbara says there are two types of people in the world: scanners vs. divers. A diver is someone who finds a subject they are interested in, then dives into it and learns everything about it. Scanners are the opposite: they taste a bunch of different subjects and have a lot of different interests.

In the past, I had considered myself a scanner. Now, I'm not so sure. I mean, it's been TWENTY YEARS and I am still primarily listening to Final Fantasy music. It's been FIFTEEN YEARS and I am still knitting and crocheting happily. And those are primarily my two interests. So that feels more like a diver to me.

And yet: I get bored within 6-12 months at a job. Once I learn what I'm doing and master it, I get depressed and listless. I was also the person in high school and college who took classes just because they sounded fun (like, I was never REALLY interested in acting or the theater, and yet I took both "Beginning Acting" and "Play Production" in high school, and enjoyed the classes.)

There's such a thing as a frustrated diver--that person who hasn't found their niche yet. I do wonder if that could be me. Or flipping things around: am I really a scanner that's masking as a diver right now because of anxiety/depression/whatever? There are so many ways I'm afraid to step out of my comfort zone. I'm trying to be more brave and try new things, but it's going to be a process.

If I think of all the things I have tried in the past... well, let's list them:
* photography
* drawing (when I was a kid)
* digital art (a college class I took that was open to highschoolers)
* journal/memoir writing (took a class on this)
* fiction writing (I subbed to Writer's Digest for several years)
* acting
* play production
* embroidery (I have a kit from the library that I was working on)
* candle making (never did it, but bought a kit when I was younger)
* astronomy (had a telescope)
* piano (took lessons as a kid, had electronic keyboards as an adult)
* flute (played in grammar/high school)
* violin (bought a cheap one off ebay and the Suzuki method books and played around with them)
* marathon walking
* pin loom weaving
* tablet weaving via backstrap method
* bracelet making (as a kid/teen)
* origami
* studying Japanese for fun
* anime/manga
* coding for fun (bot!)
* interactive fiction coding/writing
* website design
* DVD making (I made a simple menu for a DVD of Serenity-related items)
* painting, particularly on windows
* trading card games (MtG and LOTR)

...and probably more... that's quite a list! And I wouldn't say I mastered any of them, with the possible exception of bot. I am proud with what I did with bot. Oh, and I actually succeeded in completely a marathon, so that's an exception too. But all of the others, I dipped into for a bit. Usually, I would get REALLY EXCITED about something, throw my all into it for a bit, maybe succeed in accomplishing something, and then... drop the subject.

One thing I notice is that much of the stuff on the list has a creative element to it. I do very much feel like I'm a creator. I want to produce stuff. I want to create stuff out of nothing. I want to inspire or bring joy to people with my creations. I am happiest when talking about creating things. Also happy when discussing video games, but then it's primarily about the really good stories and characters and not so much the gameplay. I'm a sucker for a good story.

So yeah, maybe I *am* a scanner that hasn't allowed herself to explore lately. Either way, I'm gonna finish reading the book and see what Barbara has to say.
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

KJ Charles, Copper Script (2025): somehow not among my top KJCs.

Finished Bitch in a Bonnet Vol 2, perhaps even better than vol 1.

Angela Thirkell, The Old Bank House (1949): not quite sure why this got to be picked as a Virago Modern Classic: WO WO Iron Heel of THEM i.e. the 1945 Labour Government, moan whinge, etc etc; also several rather repetitious passages of older generation maundering to themselves about the dire prospects that await the younger members.

Finished Dragon's Teeth, the last parts of which were quite the wild ride.

Latest Slightly Foxed, a bit underwhelmed, well, they can't always be talking about things that really interest/excite me or rouse fond memories I suppose.

On the go

Have started Upton Sinclair. Wide is the Gate (Lanny Budd, #4) (1943) simply because I had very strong 'what happens next? urges after the end of Dragon's Teeth, but that gets answered in the first few chapters, and I think that in this one we're already getting strong hints that Lanny is about to head southwards to Spain, just in time for things to start getting violent. I might take a break.

I have just started a romance by an author I have vaguely heard well of and was a Kobo deal but don't think it's for me.

Up next

Dunno: perhaps that Gail Godwin memoir.

***

*Even barely woken up I was not at all sure that this was not all one of those cunning scams that is in fact a fraudster telling you they are your bank/credit card co, but it turned out it was actually about somebody making fraudulent charges - in really odd small ways - on my card, when I got onto the website and found the number to ring - the number being called from with automated menu bearing no resemblance to the one on my card, ahem - went through all the procedures and card is being cancelled and new one sent. SIGH. This is second credit card hoohah in two days, yesterday got text re upcoming due payment for which bill has so far failed to arrive, for the one for which logging into website involves dangers untold and hardships unnumbered and having the mobile app. (Eventually all resolved.)

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 12:10 pm
hera: chel holdin' apple (Default)
[personal profile] hera
Fox is feeling better and back to normal - keeping an eye on him to ensure that when there's behavioral changes, I can notice and get the symptoms treated immediately. But for right now, he does seem fine, which is a relief. He's letting me pick him up again too, which is nice.

Less nice: Domino decided to go and sprain(?) her and it's mildly inflamed. I don't want to haul her into the vet unless necessary, because if it is just a sprain, she gets very excited, wants to jump and leap everywhere, and will instantly make it worse by going to the vet. She's a well-trained girl! But at 93lbs and with her hip dysplasia, when she gets excited, even the mild little "I'm not allowed to jump but I WANT TO" hops in place that I cannot train out of her will make any sort of ankle sprain worse.

So for right now, she's getting the physical therapy treatment. Lay down, sleep it of, routinely icing and heating it in turn with gentle massage on the joint and overall leg, and an increase in her medication for the next week to reduce inflammation. I'll sedate her and bring her in if it doesn't fix up, but here's to hoping. So far, she's gone from being majorly ginger to trying to immediately act as if the leg doesn't hurt at all after one night, so. Joke is on her if it was just a pulled muscle in the first place, she's still getting the week of downtime just to be sure.

I am kind of dourly.. annoyed/amused/self-directed belligerent over the fact I do treat my animals significantly better than myself. The answer is not to treat my animals in the same way that I treat myself - because I would rather kill something, tbh - but instead to invest that same level of interest and commitment to my own health. But it is hard. And to be honest, the very fact this is an assessment I am having to perform and adjust my behaviour over in the first place is very insipid.

All the more reason to correct the behaviours and never have to think about this again, though!

Recommend me something to read

Jun. 5th, 2025 10:45 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Ideally something I can get through the NYPL or the Queens Public Library (I haven't yet re-upped my Brooklyn Public Library card. I ought to go do that this weekend or the week after.)

I suppose I should set a good example and rec something to all of you first. Lemme see....

I did recently enjoy both Long Live Evil and How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying!

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


Read more... )

The Company of Women

Jan. 31st, 2025 05:05 pm
pensnest: clip of Mucha picture, caption A Very Nice Gel (Very Nice Gel)
[personal profile] pensnest
This was my Yuletide story for 2024, a Peter Wimsey story that focuses on Harriet, and her relationships with the women in Peter's family (and one or two others).

If you have come from my website and would like to leave a comment, this is the place!
cimorene: An art nouveau floral wallpaper in  greens and blues (wild)
[personal profile] cimorene


Neve the wild mini phalaenopsis orchid started to bloom! From above you can kinda see the size difference compared to Georges and Ella next to her. She's got so many buds already.

Wax's philodendron Jungle Boogie or Henderson's Pride, if that is in fact the one it is (apparently hard to tell, came without a proper label, on sale after being sadly mistreated at a hardware store), has made a new leaf recently and it's making a branch. I really love the leaves which are very majestic, but I keep trying and failing to get pictures of it. It's just so large and the light is from the wrong direction where it lives.

Nevar Forget (handwashing edition)

Jun. 4th, 2025 05:57 pm
cimorene: closeup of four silver fountain pen nibs on white with "cimorene" written above in black cancellaresca corsiva script (pen)
[personal profile] cimorene
Speaking (as I did yesterday) of calligraphy practice, here's a quote from The Talisman that's funny, but not because it's homoerotic.



transcription )

Final emphasis mine.

Lettered in modified Carolingian (or "Caroline") style in Diamine Jade Green with 1.1-mm oblique stub nib vintage Pelikan 400. Heading in Rotunda (aka southern european Textualis or gothic). Atribution in chancery cursive.

(Knowing Walter Scott's feelings about the famous flaws in medieval Catholic doctrine, I thought at first that this was deliberate. But it's highly unlikely, since The Talisman was published in 1825. That Austrian guy who noticed that deaths after giving birth were associated with doctors delivering after autopsies and famously got hounded out of medicine for advocating handwashing was not until 1847.)

And another calligraphy unrelated to germ theory or medicine:



transcription )

Top: Humanist majuscule+minuscule in Sailor Yuki-akari ink with Lamy Safari 1.1-mm stub nib.
Bottom: Chancery cursive in Diamine Jade Green with Pelikan 400 oblique stub nib.

4 June 2025 Wednesday

Jun. 4th, 2025 06:31 am
daryl_wor: tie dye and spiky bat (Default)
[personal profile] daryl_wor
 So one for th4 plain official...
,,.
...
And a soft spot for camels, here... Cheers!

what i'm reading wednesday 4/6/2025

Jun. 4th, 2025 08:31 am
lirazel: Abigail Masham from The Favourite reads under a tree ([film] reading outside)
[personal profile] lirazel
And we're back with book updates!

What I finished:

+ Lady of Perdition, the 17th (!) Benjamin January book by Barbara Hambly. This is one of the field trip books that's set outside New Orleans, this time in the Republic of Texas, which sounds like it was hell for anyone who wasn't a white dude, even more so than the rest of what would become the southern US later. The inciting incident of the book is so harrowing in concept (though not in actual description) I don't even want to speak of it but is very much a reality of being Black in the antebellum US.

It's also one of the ones where we meet up with a character from an earlier book, and those always make me wish I weren't reading the series so very slowly. The last time we met said character, it was back in book 7! Which I read several years ago! So I had vague memories of her and much stronger memories of the vibes of that book. But Hambly does a good job of reminding us of what we need to know without being heavy-handed.

Lots of good Ben-and-Hannibal stuff in this book, though, as always when we're away from New Orleans, I miss Rose and everyone back home. And as always with every single book in the series, I spend the whole time going, "When will Ben get a bath and a good meal and a full night's sleep?????" Poor guy is in his 40s, won't someone let him rest? If you're into whump, you don't get much better than Ben. I want to wrap him up in blankets (actually, no blankets, since all the places he goes are so very hot) and let him sleep for a thousand years.

All in all a good but not standout entry in the series. A thousand bonus points for a plotline involving stolen archives, apparently based on a real occurrence! THE TEXAS ARCHIVE WAR WAS A REAL THING.

+ The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, which I appreciated a lot but did not love. Tesh is a great writer, and this book has a fantastic premise--one of those dangerous magical schools books, but told from the perspective of one of the instructors. What makes this work so well is that Tesh clearly has a background in education and the book is, in many ways, an exploration of what it's like to be a teacher, both in the basic dealing with administrative tasks and finding time to grade papers and also in the struggle to connect with and inspire students. The book is suffused with real details of what teaching in a British school is actually like, and I always enjoy a take-your-job-to-ficbook take.

Our main character is, as in Tesh's last book, another strength. Tesh writes fantastic flawed characters--Walden isn't as immediately off-putting as Kyr from Some Desperate Glory, but her besetting sin is pride and it's a doozy. She's so well-intentioned and trying so hard and she's way more likeable than Kyr starts out, but also, like, LADY. So realistic in the depiction of an academic with a PhD and a certainty that her understanding of her field (in this case magic) is superior to everyone else's. The book is about her learning her limitations and to appreciate other people's insights and I liked that a lot.

We get a fun outsider pov of the four students who would, if this book was written by anyone else, be the main characters, and I must say that I would absolutely read a fic bout Will pining for Nikki. The magical system is quite fun and distinctive and lends itself well to formal study.

So yeah, I think this is a very strong book, I really liked it, but it didn't scratch any particular itches for me that would bump it up into the tier of books I love. Still, I like Tesh's writing so very much and can't wait to see what she does next.

+ Miss Silver Comes to Stay, the 15th(!) Miss Silver book by Patricia Wentworth. As usual, I don't have a great deal to say; I always enjoy a Wentworth book, but they're always doing loosely the same thing. I do appreciate her commitment to having the victim be someone we really hate.

+ The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. I haven't read this one since my British Gothic Fiction class in undergrad. (This was a summer semester class and there were only four other people in the class, and I think I was the only one who really wanted to be there. But I really wanted to be there, so hopefully I made up for the others' lack of enthusiasm.)

I remembered this as more of a horror story, but I think that's me confusing it with the film adaptation The Innocents, which is a banger of a movie and highly recommended. The book is also a banger, but it feels much more like a psychological thriller than a horror story imo. The fun of it is the perspective of our main character, an example of the gothic governess type, whose mind we're immersed in. Is she crazy? Is she evil and lying to us? Is everything she's describing really happening?

This is a book about suggestion and subtext, and I love that about it. More is not stated than is, which is always really effective in a ghost story. In this case, though, the things that aren't stated aren't related to the actions or appearance of the ghost/monster/killer but instead to the nature of the damage the bad guys are doing to the alleged victims. The book is more chilling than scary, which I'm into.

This was apparently James's selling out book, and I, for one, wish he sold out more often. There can never be enough gothic novels in the world as far as I'm concerned.

What I'm reading now:

+ Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie. I read most if not all of the Poirot books in middle school, but that was...over twenty years ago, so I remember nothing about this particular one. Shoutout to [personal profile] scripsi for mentioning it as one of her favorite Christies!

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 10:04 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] starlady!
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
The usual mess of interesting things I've read, most of them quite out of date, in approximate order of my having read them. Brought to you by my browser crashing twice when I tried to start it after my most recent reboot.

As always, I use Export Tabs to wrangle this. And maybe my current 1,625 tab count will decrease some after I close all these?
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/export-tabs/odafagokkafdbbeojliiojjmimakacil?hl=en

Some good news from the south:
Woman who went on the lam with untreated TB is now cured | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/woman-who-went-on-the-lam-with-untreated-tb-is-now-cured/

Mechanical Watch – Bartosz Ciechanowski
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

How a North Korean Fake IT Worker Tried to Infiltrate Us
https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us

How I Got My Laser Eye Injury - Funranium Labs
https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/07/how-i-got-my-laser-eye-injury/

Read more... )

I just think it's pretty

Jun. 3rd, 2025 09:06 pm
chase_acow: cowboy on a horse against a colorful sunset (cowboy colorful)
[personal profile] chase_acow
I never know if anything or anyone is actually popular, but I saw this Anthony Hurd's art because his book it coming out, and I just love everything. He does some really interesting surrealism in his i was born in a gay bar show and his dark optimism series. Also, he does some really good cacti.

But mostly my attention turned to his most recent work and the content of his book. He arts queer cowboys that include men in dresses, bipoc, and older men. It's really colorful, I love the blocking, and everything feels so tender. You can decide if it's tender like a bruise or not.

Gay Dreaming. There are several galleries if you back out to his main site.



I'd like to buy a print for my birthday.

Vaguely connected things

Jun. 3rd, 2025 04:54 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

In June 1868 the University of London's Senate had voted to admit women to sit the 'General Examination', so becoming the first British university to accept female candidates:

Women's higher education in London dates from the late 1840s, with the foundation of Bedford College by the Unitarian benefactor, Elisabeth Jesser Reid. Bedford was initially a teaching institution independent of the University of London, which was itself an examining institution, established in 1836. Over the next three decades, London University examinations were available only to male students.
Demands for women to sit examinations (and receive degrees) increased in the 1860s. After initial resistance a compromise was reached.
In August 1868 the University announced that female students aged 17 or over would be admitted to the University to sit a new kind of assessment: the 'General Examination for Women'.

***

Sexism in science: 7 women whose trailblazing work shattered stereotypes. Yeah, we note that this was over 100 years since the ladies sitting the University of London exams, and passing.

***

A couple of recent contributions from Campop about employment issues in the past:

Who was self-employed in the past?:

It is often assumed that industrial Britain, with its large factories and mines employing thousands of people, left little space for individuals running their own businesses. But not everyone was employed as a worker for others. Some exercised a level of agency operating on their own as business proprietors, even if they were also often very constrained.
Over most of the second half of the 19th century as industrialisation accelerated, the self-employed remained a significant proportion of the population – about 15 percent of the total economically active. It was only in the mid-20th century that the proportion plummeted to around eight percent.

and

Home Duties in the 1921 Census:

What women in ‘home duties’ were precisely engaged in still remains a mystery, reflecting the regular obstruction of women’s everyday activity from the record across history. For some, surely ‘home duties’ reflected hard physical labour (particularly in washing), as well as hours of childcare exceeding the length of the factory day. For others, particularly the aspirational bourgeois, the activities of “home duties” involved little actual housework. 5.1 percent of wives in home duties had servants to assist them, a rate which doubled for clerks’ wives to 11.7 percent. For them, household “work” involved little physical action. Though this may have given some of these women the opportunity to spend their hours in cultural activities or socialising, for others it possibly reflected crushing boredom.

Though I wonder to what extent these women were doing something, more informally, that would be invisible to the census and formal measures generally that contributed to the household economy - I'm thinking of the neighbour in my childhood who cut hair at home - ads in interwar women's mags for various money-making home-based schemes - writers one has heard whose sales were a significant factor in the overall family income - etc

***

And on informal contributions, Beyond Formal and Informal: Giving Back Political Agency to Female Diplomats in Early Nineteenth Century Europe:

[H]istorians such as Jeroen Duindam show that there were never explicitly separate spheres for men and women when working for the state in the early nineteenth-century. Drawing a line separating ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ diplomats in the early nineteenth-century, simply based on their gender alone, does not do these women justice.

***

And I am very happy to see this receiving recognition, though how far has something which got reprinted after 30 years be considered languishing in obscurity, huh? as opposed to having created a persistent fanbase: A Matter of Oaths – Helen Wright.

3 June 2025 Tuesday

Jun. 3rd, 2025 07:11 am
daryl_wor: tie dye and spiky bat (Default)
[personal profile] daryl_wor
 that's what I would like!

kitty cat!

(no subject)

Jun. 3rd, 2025 09:43 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] pennski and [personal profile] threeringedmoon!

stuff

Jun. 3rd, 2025 01:48 pm
tielan: ant in a line diverges because: bookstore (books - shiny)
[personal profile] tielan
Remember the days in ye aulde fandom when someone would just stop talking to you and you never worked out why?

Ghosting, before it became common.

--

Just put in my expense requests for the start of May.

--

Hockey training has been cancelled because we don't have a coach, and we don't have a game on Sunday (long weekend in Australia: the King's birthday). I'm trying to get people over to the local club for dinner and drinks but...it's always a bit tricksy. Just me and a couple of other women, I think.

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