Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerBooks I've Given Up On This Week
I regret to admit (or rather admit without regret) that I got deeply bored about a quarter of the way through Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, and have therefore taken it back to the library. Sorry, Jean-Paul! This is simply not a season of my life where I am interested in you.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
While looking for more Penelope Farmer books, as one does, I discovered that the author of Charlotte Sometimes also occasionally moonlighted as a translator from Hebrew. Specifically, she and Amos Oz teamed up to translate Oz’s book Soumchi, a wistful childhood journey through British-occupied Jerusalem between the world wars.
This is an adult book about children rather than a children’s book - the tip-off lies in the prologue, a melancholy reflection about how everything is changing all the time which is very “adult looking back at childhood.” A gentle period piece about a boy with a massive crush on his classmate Esthie and also absolutely zero common sense, as evidenced by the fact that he keeps making trades where he is fairly obviously getting the worse end of the deal.
Also continuing my Vivien Alcock explorations with A Kind of Thief, a contemporary novel about a girl whose father is arrested for theft. But before he’s marched off by the police, he manages to sneak her the information to pick up a bag at the railroad station. Does receiving these presumably stolen goods make her… a kind of thief?
I think Alcock’s work is stronger (or at least more tailored to my interests) when she’s exploring a fantastical premise. This is fun but not something I would suggest seeking out unless you’re an Alcock completist. (If you are an Alcock completist, I do own a copy and I would be happy to send it to a new home.)
Also zipped through Dorothy Gilman’s Kaleidoscope, the sequel to The Clairvoyant Countess, which I probably should have read first as Kaleidoscope is chock full of spoilers for the earlier book. On the other hand, I’ll probably have forgotten all the spoilers by the time I mosey around to The Clairvoyant Countess, so it’s fine.
Always love Gilman’s older heroines. This book is aptly named, a kaleidoscope of different fractured glimpses of other people’s lives, some of which appear once and some of which are threaded throughout the book. No strong through-line but lots of fun little interweaving stories.
What I’m Reading Now
Grace Lin’s Chinese Menu, a lavishly illustrated compilation of the legendary origin stories of many classic Chinese dishes. Just about the embark on the story of spring rolls.
What I Plan to Read Next
I know I keep saying I’m going to read E. F. Benson’s Queen Lucia, but I’m going to read Queen Lucia for real this time.
I regret to admit (or rather admit without regret) that I got deeply bored about a quarter of the way through Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, and have therefore taken it back to the library. Sorry, Jean-Paul! This is simply not a season of my life where I am interested in you.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
While looking for more Penelope Farmer books, as one does, I discovered that the author of Charlotte Sometimes also occasionally moonlighted as a translator from Hebrew. Specifically, she and Amos Oz teamed up to translate Oz’s book Soumchi, a wistful childhood journey through British-occupied Jerusalem between the world wars.
This is an adult book about children rather than a children’s book - the tip-off lies in the prologue, a melancholy reflection about how everything is changing all the time which is very “adult looking back at childhood.” A gentle period piece about a boy with a massive crush on his classmate Esthie and also absolutely zero common sense, as evidenced by the fact that he keeps making trades where he is fairly obviously getting the worse end of the deal.
Also continuing my Vivien Alcock explorations with A Kind of Thief, a contemporary novel about a girl whose father is arrested for theft. But before he’s marched off by the police, he manages to sneak her the information to pick up a bag at the railroad station. Does receiving these presumably stolen goods make her… a kind of thief?
I think Alcock’s work is stronger (or at least more tailored to my interests) when she’s exploring a fantastical premise. This is fun but not something I would suggest seeking out unless you’re an Alcock completist. (If you are an Alcock completist, I do own a copy and I would be happy to send it to a new home.)
Also zipped through Dorothy Gilman’s Kaleidoscope, the sequel to The Clairvoyant Countess, which I probably should have read first as Kaleidoscope is chock full of spoilers for the earlier book. On the other hand, I’ll probably have forgotten all the spoilers by the time I mosey around to The Clairvoyant Countess, so it’s fine.
Always love Gilman’s older heroines. This book is aptly named, a kaleidoscope of different fractured glimpses of other people’s lives, some of which appear once and some of which are threaded throughout the book. No strong through-line but lots of fun little interweaving stories.
What I’m Reading Now
Grace Lin’s Chinese Menu, a lavishly illustrated compilation of the legendary origin stories of many classic Chinese dishes. Just about the embark on the story of spring rolls.
What I Plan to Read Next
I know I keep saying I’m going to read E. F. Benson’s Queen Lucia, but I’m going to read Queen Lucia for real this time.
Justice League Unlimited #18: Villain Amnesty Program
Apr. 22nd, 2026 11:40 amTags:
- char: black lightning/jefferson pierce,
- char: blue beetle/jaime reyes,
- char: blue beetle/ted kord,
- char: giganta/dr. doris zeul,
- char: green arrow/connor hawke,
- char: lex luthor,
- char: plastic man/patrick o'brian,
- char: scarecrow/jonathan crane,
- char: star sapphire/carol ferris,
- char: supergirl/kara zor-el,
- char: wildcat/yolanda montez,
- creator: clayton henry,
- creator: mark waid
Pokémon Go
Apr. 22nd, 2026 10:50 amsettiaiI've been playing Pokémon Go since it was first released back in 2016. The thing is, I've always been fairly off-and-on with my playing.
It's mostly been because I've never had any PokéStops or gyms that I could access from home/work. On the days when I'm out and about, I could walk around and visit them, but that's definitely not something I could do every day. Especially now that my job is hybrid. I only have so much capability to deal with people in a given week, so on days when I'm working remotely it's not unusual for me to avoid all human contact whatsoever.
And, well, the game intentionally punishes you for that. Outside of a brief period during the height of the pandemic where they extended the range of PokéStops and gyms, you miss out on things if you don't actually go outside and spin those regularly as that's where you get a lot of items that can be used in the game to do things like catch new Pokémon.
Anyway, I do have a point! There's a PokéStop that I can access from anywhere in my new apartment. I've been playing the game significantly more the past month or so because it's so much more rewarding when I can easily access new items (including Poké Balls).
It's mostly been because I've never had any PokéStops or gyms that I could access from home/work. On the days when I'm out and about, I could walk around and visit them, but that's definitely not something I could do every day. Especially now that my job is hybrid. I only have so much capability to deal with people in a given week, so on days when I'm working remotely it's not unusual for me to avoid all human contact whatsoever.
And, well, the game intentionally punishes you for that. Outside of a brief period during the height of the pandemic where they extended the range of PokéStops and gyms, you miss out on things if you don't actually go outside and spin those regularly as that's where you get a lot of items that can be used in the game to do things like catch new Pokémon.
Anyway, I do have a point! There's a PokéStop that I can access from anywhere in my new apartment. I've been playing the game significantly more the past month or so because it's so much more rewarding when I can easily access new items (including Poké Balls).
what i'm reading wednesday 22/4/2026
Apr. 22nd, 2026 10:00 amlirazelWhat I finished:
+ Listened to More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker.
WHAT A BANGER! I anticipated that this would be about how fucked up our tech overlords' worldviews are from a moral and public policy perspective, and that certainly played a large part in it. But it ended up being more about why they're wrong about the very tech they're hyping--why the claims they make are not actually possible given, like, physics and the nature of the universe. Which is not an angle I'd seen explored before, and I would have expected it to all be over my head. But Becker is absolutely fantastic at explaining complicated tech and science-y things in a way that I could understand--at least enough to know that these Silicon Valley guys are full of shit.
The moral arguments are woven into all of this; Becker has a lovely humanist approach to the world and a deep appreciation for the humanities. He's clearly repulsed by the perspectives and priorities of the people who are running our digital world (and, increasingly, our physical one as well), so I felt safe in his hands. I often feel alienated from STEM subjects both because math doesn't come easily to me and because the current discourse around it seems so anti-human to me. But Becker reminded me that there's really no boundary between the humanities and STEM and that if you appreciate both, you better serve whichever one you're focused on. Life, nature, the universe is one interwoven textile and needs to be understood as such.
The more I learn about the decision-making class in Silicon Valley, the more I believe that they hate all the things that make us human--art, care, struggle, nature, bodies, again, death, humility, the mutuality of relationships. All of these people are absolutely terrified of death and yet, if they did succeed in their (futile) endeavors to live forever, what would they do with all that time? They're certainly not investing in learning about the world as it is or getting to know other people or creating beautiful things or just enjoying nature. So what would be the point of living forever? They have no answer to this and if they weren't doing such terrible, terrible things to our society and nature, I would feel profound pity for them. As it is, I'm just angry. It's baffling to me that we allow the most morally vacuous people in the world to make consequential decisions about the fate of humanity.
My one complaint is that I wish Becker had read the book himself. Judging by his new podcast Dreaming Against the Machine, he's got the voice for it, and I always, always prefer to have the writer read the book if it's possible. The guy who read it did fine, but there's just no replacing the personality of a writer.
+ Read The House of the Patriarch, the 18th Benjamin January series. You may ask yourself, "Is 18 simply too many books in this series?" And the answer is "NO!!!!" There can never be too many books in this series!
For those of you who are new to my favorite currently-being-written series of books: these historical mysteries follow Benjamin January, a free man of color, in 1830s-40s New Orleans and beyond. The mysteries are good, but they're really an excuse to explore Ben's world: the complicated and colorful people he knows and loves and fears and hates, the vivid and singular and meticulously-researched world of antebellum New Orleans. These are books about power and oppression, about resisting it and not being able to resist it, about building relationships with people who are very different than you are, about how those relationships are really the only thing worth anything in a world of darkness and cruelty. I love them with all my heart.
This is one of the not-in-New Orleans books; Ben is searching for a young white woman who disappeared in upstate New York's "burnt over district" in a time of weird religious groups. A favorite topic of mine! My first thought was, "We're going to get a Joseph Smith cameo!" but no, we're a few years after he left for Illinois, so while he's mentioned a time or two he does not show up. The historical cameo we do get is much more unexpected and made me laugh. The cameos are always such a fun part of the not-in-New-Orleans books, and Hambly's writing is grounded enough that Ben never quite turns into the Forrest Gump of the antebellum US (and Mexico and Cuba and France and wherever else he goes!).
The mystery itself is engaging--I was very invested in Eve Russell, who became one of my favorite one-off characters--and, as usual, Hambly makes fantastic use of a period of American history that doesn't get a lot of fictional attention. I especially appreciated that palpable danger that the non-white characters were in even in ostensibly "free" New York--there are traffickers everywhere just waiting to capture free black people and sell them into slavery down south. No one can breathe easy because everyone is in danger all the time. Of all the fictional media I've encountered, this series as a body of work is one of the best at communicating the totality of the chattel slavery system--how it affected every single thing about life for black people, every moment of every day. How no one was ever, ever safe and how hard people had to fight for even the relative safety that a few were able to find. How it tainted the whole society, how it curdled souls. I always come away with an understanding of just why the Civil War had to happen, why the abolitionist movement probably never would have succeeded without violence. Slavery had to be ripped out at the roots.
Anyway, since we weren't in New Orleans, I missed Rose and Hannibal and Livia and Dominique and Shaw and Olympe and everybody back home, but we did get some excellent Chloe scenes, which are always a bonus! (Chloe!!!) As usual, I spent the whole book going, "When will Ben get to go home? When will he get to have a bath and a good meal and a full night's sleep and see his wife and children???" because nobody whumps their main character the way Hambly does.
But somehow no matter how dark the subject matter of these books are, they never make me feel hopeless. Heavy with the reminder of all the things that people do to each other, yes, but also fiercely grateful for all the ways we find to take care of each other. Gah, I love these books!
+ Listened to Culture Creep by Alice Bolin, a collection of essays at the intersection of feminism and pop culture. Your degree of enjoyment will depend largely on how willing you are to read personal essays that dive deep into things that most people would say "it's not that deep" about (Animal Crossing, wellness tracking, teen magazines, the Playboy Mansion). Most people's eyes would probably glaze over, and honestly I'm not sure if I would have kept up with this if I was reading it, but listening to it while working was enjoyable enough. I don't care for memoir as a genre unless the writer is really freaking fantastic, so when things are too person, I tend to check out, but this managed to be rooted enough in the texts themselves for me to never do that, and Bolin has some really sharp insights throughout. All in all a fine audiobook experience.
What I'm currently reading:
+ Listening to God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn. Well this is a unique book! It's philosophy and technology all tangled up together, at once personal and universal, about the past and the future, meaning and consciousness and nature. O'Gieblyn is incredibly smart and the book is very challenging in a way I appreciate. I also appreciate that she grew up fundamentalist and went to a Bible college before becoming an atheist; there's this one moment where she talks about how a process that took society centuries of bloody struggle (moving from Christian to secular societies) is something that those of us who were raised in rightwing Christianity have to do on our own in the course of a few years, and I have never heard anyone talk about it that way. But yeah, it's really hard to go from "the world is 6,000 years old" to "the universe is billions of years old" and all that those things imply in a short period of time! It's a lot for an individual human being, and she does an incredible job of evoking the disruption of that and also how things linger even when you don't want them to.
+ Reading Hunting Shadows by Charles Todd, 16th in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series of historical mysteries. This series is set in the UK just after WWI and has a shell-shocked Scotland Yard inspector as its protagonist. These are suitably engaging and twisty mysteries for when that's what I want. They kind of all blur together in my head, but that's fine--I don't need everything to be Benjamin January. I don't like cozy mysteries, and these are not, but they also don't lean too far into the gritty darkness either. It's a good balance, well written, and I continue to enjoy this series as I dip in and out of it.
+ Listened to More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker.
WHAT A BANGER! I anticipated that this would be about how fucked up our tech overlords' worldviews are from a moral and public policy perspective, and that certainly played a large part in it. But it ended up being more about why they're wrong about the very tech they're hyping--why the claims they make are not actually possible given, like, physics and the nature of the universe. Which is not an angle I'd seen explored before, and I would have expected it to all be over my head. But Becker is absolutely fantastic at explaining complicated tech and science-y things in a way that I could understand--at least enough to know that these Silicon Valley guys are full of shit.
The moral arguments are woven into all of this; Becker has a lovely humanist approach to the world and a deep appreciation for the humanities. He's clearly repulsed by the perspectives and priorities of the people who are running our digital world (and, increasingly, our physical one as well), so I felt safe in his hands. I often feel alienated from STEM subjects both because math doesn't come easily to me and because the current discourse around it seems so anti-human to me. But Becker reminded me that there's really no boundary between the humanities and STEM and that if you appreciate both, you better serve whichever one you're focused on. Life, nature, the universe is one interwoven textile and needs to be understood as such.
The more I learn about the decision-making class in Silicon Valley, the more I believe that they hate all the things that make us human--art, care, struggle, nature, bodies, again, death, humility, the mutuality of relationships. All of these people are absolutely terrified of death and yet, if they did succeed in their (futile) endeavors to live forever, what would they do with all that time? They're certainly not investing in learning about the world as it is or getting to know other people or creating beautiful things or just enjoying nature. So what would be the point of living forever? They have no answer to this and if they weren't doing such terrible, terrible things to our society and nature, I would feel profound pity for them. As it is, I'm just angry. It's baffling to me that we allow the most morally vacuous people in the world to make consequential decisions about the fate of humanity.
My one complaint is that I wish Becker had read the book himself. Judging by his new podcast Dreaming Against the Machine, he's got the voice for it, and I always, always prefer to have the writer read the book if it's possible. The guy who read it did fine, but there's just no replacing the personality of a writer.
+ Read The House of the Patriarch, the 18th Benjamin January series. You may ask yourself, "Is 18 simply too many books in this series?" And the answer is "NO!!!!" There can never be too many books in this series!
For those of you who are new to my favorite currently-being-written series of books: these historical mysteries follow Benjamin January, a free man of color, in 1830s-40s New Orleans and beyond. The mysteries are good, but they're really an excuse to explore Ben's world: the complicated and colorful people he knows and loves and fears and hates, the vivid and singular and meticulously-researched world of antebellum New Orleans. These are books about power and oppression, about resisting it and not being able to resist it, about building relationships with people who are very different than you are, about how those relationships are really the only thing worth anything in a world of darkness and cruelty. I love them with all my heart.
This is one of the not-in-New Orleans books; Ben is searching for a young white woman who disappeared in upstate New York's "burnt over district" in a time of weird religious groups. A favorite topic of mine! My first thought was, "We're going to get a Joseph Smith cameo!" but no, we're a few years after he left for Illinois, so while he's mentioned a time or two he does not show up. The historical cameo we do get is much more unexpected and made me laugh. The cameos are always such a fun part of the not-in-New-Orleans books, and Hambly's writing is grounded enough that Ben never quite turns into the Forrest Gump of the antebellum US (and Mexico and Cuba and France and wherever else he goes!).
The mystery itself is engaging--I was very invested in Eve Russell, who became one of my favorite one-off characters--and, as usual, Hambly makes fantastic use of a period of American history that doesn't get a lot of fictional attention. I especially appreciated that palpable danger that the non-white characters were in even in ostensibly "free" New York--there are traffickers everywhere just waiting to capture free black people and sell them into slavery down south. No one can breathe easy because everyone is in danger all the time. Of all the fictional media I've encountered, this series as a body of work is one of the best at communicating the totality of the chattel slavery system--how it affected every single thing about life for black people, every moment of every day. How no one was ever, ever safe and how hard people had to fight for even the relative safety that a few were able to find. How it tainted the whole society, how it curdled souls. I always come away with an understanding of just why the Civil War had to happen, why the abolitionist movement probably never would have succeeded without violence. Slavery had to be ripped out at the roots.
Anyway, since we weren't in New Orleans, I missed Rose and Hannibal and Livia and Dominique and Shaw and Olympe and everybody back home, but we did get some excellent Chloe scenes, which are always a bonus! (Chloe!!!) As usual, I spent the whole book going, "When will Ben get to go home? When will he get to have a bath and a good meal and a full night's sleep and see his wife and children???" because nobody whumps their main character the way Hambly does.
But somehow no matter how dark the subject matter of these books are, they never make me feel hopeless. Heavy with the reminder of all the things that people do to each other, yes, but also fiercely grateful for all the ways we find to take care of each other. Gah, I love these books!
+ Listened to Culture Creep by Alice Bolin, a collection of essays at the intersection of feminism and pop culture. Your degree of enjoyment will depend largely on how willing you are to read personal essays that dive deep into things that most people would say "it's not that deep" about (Animal Crossing, wellness tracking, teen magazines, the Playboy Mansion). Most people's eyes would probably glaze over, and honestly I'm not sure if I would have kept up with this if I was reading it, but listening to it while working was enjoyable enough. I don't care for memoir as a genre unless the writer is really freaking fantastic, so when things are too person, I tend to check out, but this managed to be rooted enough in the texts themselves for me to never do that, and Bolin has some really sharp insights throughout. All in all a fine audiobook experience.
What I'm currently reading:
+ Listening to God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn. Well this is a unique book! It's philosophy and technology all tangled up together, at once personal and universal, about the past and the future, meaning and consciousness and nature. O'Gieblyn is incredibly smart and the book is very challenging in a way I appreciate. I also appreciate that she grew up fundamentalist and went to a Bible college before becoming an atheist; there's this one moment where she talks about how a process that took society centuries of bloody struggle (moving from Christian to secular societies) is something that those of us who were raised in rightwing Christianity have to do on our own in the course of a few years, and I have never heard anyone talk about it that way. But yeah, it's really hard to go from "the world is 6,000 years old" to "the universe is billions of years old" and all that those things imply in a short period of time! It's a lot for an individual human being, and she does an incredible job of evoking the disruption of that and also how things linger even when you don't want them to.
+ Reading Hunting Shadows by Charles Todd, 16th in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series of historical mysteries. This series is set in the UK just after WWI and has a shell-shocked Scotland Yard inspector as its protagonist. These are suitably engaging and twisty mysteries for when that's what I want. They kind of all blur together in my head, but that's fine--I don't need everything to be Benjamin January. I don't like cozy mysteries, and these are not, but they also don't lean too far into the gritty darkness either. It's a good balance, well written, and I continue to enjoy this series as I dip in and out of it.
SGA: The Spare by Rachael Sabotini (wickedwords)
Apr. 22nd, 2026 06:38 pmmific posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fancakeFandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Teyla Emmagan, Radek Zelenka
Rating: Mature
Length: 13,319
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: Rachael Sabotini on AO3
Themes: Arranged marriage, AU - royalty, Diplomatic marriage, Politics, Mutual pining
Summary: "It is your duty to the empire to marry Rodney McKay."
Reccer's Notes: This is an interesting romantic romp set in a somewhat steampunk AU where John is married off by his cousin the empress Elizabeth, to Rodney, a leader in the neighbouring nation. John is part of treaty agreements to negotiate peace. Consummating his marriage proves difficult due to Rodney being a workaholic, anxious about never having had sex with a man before, and, that common marriage of convenience trope, as John can end the marriage after a year and a day if he chooses. There are obstacles and pining and inadequate communication, but eventually John makes a place for himself in Rodney's labs, proves his loyalty, and we get the happy ending. A fun read!
Fanwork Links: The Spare
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Teyla Emmagan, Radek Zelenka
Rating: Mature
Length: 13,319
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: Rachael Sabotini on AO3
Themes: Arranged marriage, AU - royalty, Diplomatic marriage, Politics, Mutual pining
Summary: "It is your duty to the empire to marry Rodney McKay."
Reccer's Notes: This is an interesting romantic romp set in a somewhat steampunk AU where John is married off by his cousin the empress Elizabeth, to Rodney, a leader in the neighbouring nation. John is part of treaty agreements to negotiate peace. Consummating his marriage proves difficult due to Rodney being a workaholic, anxious about never having had sex with a man before, and, that common marriage of convenience trope, as John can end the marriage after a year and a day if he chooses. There are obstacles and pining and inadequate communication, but eventually John makes a place for himself in Rodney's labs, proves his loyalty, and we get the happy ending. A fun read!
Fanwork Links: The Spare
New (?) "Spam" button on AO3 comments
Apr. 21st, 2026 08:49 pmbrightknightieI unfortunately got a weird (and inevitably mildly distressing) spam reply on the AO3 today, but the good news is that, between the last time I got one and tonight, the AO3 launched a convenient "Spam" button right there on comments. No fuss, no looking up how to report it. Excellent UI addition. Much appreciated.
As it has turned out...
Apr. 21st, 2026 10:36 pmtwistedchickI am posting from the computer before my present one -- this one dates from the early 2000s, and is a bit slow. My good 2019 computer is in the shop getting a new keyboard -- apparently when one key is busted all of them are and the entire top of the laptop gets replaced. It's the down arrow that didn't work.
And because of that I have about 10 days either with only my phone (I will not describe going through 100+ new emails there; it is tedious) or this elderly one that I have purposely kept on an older operating system because this lappie has really excellent older software that simply doesn't work on the more recent op systems. So I am relaxing, watching old stored movies (Skyfall, anyone?) and doing offline sorting of books and papers and so on.
ETA: The guy at the shop said I could have them do the work in-house, for about 10 days, or they could send it to another shop where they would mail it back after about 5 days. I do not trust the current postmaster, or his cuts to service, or the possibility that it would end up sitting on a shelf somewhere and not come back, so I agreed to the 10 days or so.
I'm also feeling the losses, and letting myself feel them and letting them go through me instead of "braving it out" or trying to ignore them and having everything get worse later. I don't want worse later; now is enough. I can bear now. I am remembering so many little things, and big things, aond old things and it all just works.
It also means I'm sleeping a lot, around my meds schedule, which is less easy than it sounds. Basically, I have a BP pill and a blood thinner, each of which needs to be taken 2x a day about 12 hours apart, but not at the same time because the stress on my heart is too much. So I am carefully scheduling the one for 9 am and pm and the other for 10-11 am and pm, and that is working. Otherwise my heart bangs until it wakes me up, which is not fun.
I'm also handspinning silk roving in various colors; it's one of my favorite things to do while watching tv, because looking from the work in my hands to the set across the room keeps my eyes from getting stuck at the shorter distance. I did maybe 15 yards, three ply, today, which is 45 yards of single ply. You do the 3-ply by putting a big slipknot loop into the end of it, then continue to loop through the loop and twirl the spindle in the opposite direction of the single ply's twist. The result is useful, not so thin that it falls apart, and looks good. I am thinking of crocheting small keepsake bags from them.
That's about what's happening here, give or take a freeze warning or hearing the fox calling in the park half a block away late at night. I'm glad of that fox and its kin; they are welcome to come to my yard to eat mice whenever they wish.
And because of that I have about 10 days either with only my phone (I will not describe going through 100+ new emails there; it is tedious) or this elderly one that I have purposely kept on an older operating system because this lappie has really excellent older software that simply doesn't work on the more recent op systems. So I am relaxing, watching old stored movies (Skyfall, anyone?) and doing offline sorting of books and papers and so on.
ETA: The guy at the shop said I could have them do the work in-house, for about 10 days, or they could send it to another shop where they would mail it back after about 5 days. I do not trust the current postmaster, or his cuts to service, or the possibility that it would end up sitting on a shelf somewhere and not come back, so I agreed to the 10 days or so.
I'm also feeling the losses, and letting myself feel them and letting them go through me instead of "braving it out" or trying to ignore them and having everything get worse later. I don't want worse later; now is enough. I can bear now. I am remembering so many little things, and big things, aond old things and it all just works.
It also means I'm sleeping a lot, around my meds schedule, which is less easy than it sounds. Basically, I have a BP pill and a blood thinner, each of which needs to be taken 2x a day about 12 hours apart, but not at the same time because the stress on my heart is too much. So I am carefully scheduling the one for 9 am and pm and the other for 10-11 am and pm, and that is working. Otherwise my heart bangs until it wakes me up, which is not fun.
I'm also handspinning silk roving in various colors; it's one of my favorite things to do while watching tv, because looking from the work in my hands to the set across the room keeps my eyes from getting stuck at the shorter distance. I did maybe 15 yards, three ply, today, which is 45 yards of single ply. You do the 3-ply by putting a big slipknot loop into the end of it, then continue to loop through the loop and twirl the spindle in the opposite direction of the single ply's twist. The result is useful, not so thin that it falls apart, and looks good. I am thinking of crocheting small keepsake bags from them.
That's about what's happening here, give or take a freeze warning or hearing the fox calling in the park half a block away late at night. I'm glad of that fox and its kin; they are welcome to come to my yard to eat mice whenever they wish.
a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes
Apr. 21st, 2026 08:40 pmmusesfoolI logged off yesterday around 4:30 and started the process of making whipped ganache, and as per usual, the amount of time it takes to get the temperature of the ganache down to 75°F is RIDICULOUS even when I put the bowl on the window sill with the window open (there is a screen) and a cold breeze coming in. I guess the one good part about how long it took was that I was able to make and eat dinner in the middle of it, so I didn't have to do the whole thing hungry. Then I loaded those dishes into the dishwasher and started separating eggs to make vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. And got some yolk in with the whites so had to start over. And then cracked an egg and it was frozen, so unusable for my purposes.
I did eventually get 4 egg whites in a bowl with a cup of sugar and set it over the pot of simmering water so I could whisk it until it heated to 160°F because aside from my own fear of salmonella, the whole point here was to celebrate my pregnant co-worker so I absolutely needed to make sure everything was safe. It's always amazing to me how they double in size as you whisk and heat them and eventually they hit the temp, so I whipped them into stiff peaks (not by hand), which took about twice the amount of time it normally does (physics! always working against me!), but did eventually happen. All was well as I added in the butter, but then I added the vanilla bean paste (gotta have the specks!) and it curdled. So I had to reheat it to melting, chill it, and whip it while adding another 1/4 cup of butter, but it did eventually whip up beautifully. Both frostings piped like a dream, too, since they were not cold. Pics are here. And they were much appreciated by my co-workers! At the end of the day, when I went into the lunchroom to put the leftovers in the fridge, I found someone packing them up to take home. She was like, did you want them? And I was like, no, I was just going to put them in the fridge for tomorrow. I'm pretty sure she did not know I was the person who made them, but that's okay.
Work itself was fine - we spent most of our team meeting eating cupcakes while everyone else talked about their cats - but I was 3/4 of the way there this morning when I realized I'd left my ID badge in my old bag (I got a new bag for work recently, and used it for the first time today, and I think I like it. It is quite large but the strap is the perfect length for a large crossbody, imo), but thankfully they have guest ID cards so I was able to go about my day without interruption. I did make myself a note to remember my ID card next month when I go in. (well, unless there is a LIRR strike, but there probably won't be.)
***
Today's poem:
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
—Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love, 2002.
***
I did eventually get 4 egg whites in a bowl with a cup of sugar and set it over the pot of simmering water so I could whisk it until it heated to 160°F because aside from my own fear of salmonella, the whole point here was to celebrate my pregnant co-worker so I absolutely needed to make sure everything was safe. It's always amazing to me how they double in size as you whisk and heat them and eventually they hit the temp, so I whipped them into stiff peaks (not by hand), which took about twice the amount of time it normally does (physics! always working against me!), but did eventually happen. All was well as I added in the butter, but then I added the vanilla bean paste (gotta have the specks!) and it curdled. So I had to reheat it to melting, chill it, and whip it while adding another 1/4 cup of butter, but it did eventually whip up beautifully. Both frostings piped like a dream, too, since they were not cold. Pics are here. And they were much appreciated by my co-workers! At the end of the day, when I went into the lunchroom to put the leftovers in the fridge, I found someone packing them up to take home. She was like, did you want them? And I was like, no, I was just going to put them in the fridge for tomorrow. I'm pretty sure she did not know I was the person who made them, but that's okay.
Work itself was fine - we spent most of our team meeting eating cupcakes while everyone else talked about their cats - but I was 3/4 of the way there this morning when I realized I'd left my ID badge in my old bag (I got a new bag for work recently, and used it for the first time today, and I think I like it. It is quite large but the strap is the perfect length for a large crossbody, imo), but thankfully they have guest ID cards so I was able to go about my day without interruption. I did make myself a note to remember my ID card next month when I go in. (well, unless there is a LIRR strike, but there probably won't be.)
***
Today's poem:
The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
—Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love, 2002.
***
Daily Check-In
Apr. 21st, 2026 06:01 pmstarwatcher posting in fandom_checkinThis is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, April 21, to midnight on Wednesday, April 22. (8pm Eastern Time).
Poll #34508 Daily Check-in
This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 28
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 28
How are you doing?
I am OK.
14 (50.0%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
14 (50.0%)
I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single.
11 (39.3%)
One other person.
12 (42.9%)
More than one other person.
5 (17.9%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Book Review: The Empire Must Die
Apr. 21st, 2026 02:43 pmosprey_archerI know I’ve read Mikhail Zygar’s The Empire Must Die: Russia’s Revolutionary Collapse, 1900-1917 before, because my ebook is spattered with my own highlights all the way to the very end. However, I have no memory of the book, and also apparently never posted about it, both of which are baffling because it’s an enjoyable and fascinating read.
The Empire Must Die is telling the intertwined stories of many different prominent figures in late tsarist Russia: not just the prominent political figures (both in the government and in the varyingly legal levels of opposition), but also figures in the arts, Chekov, Diaghilev, Tolstoy, Nijinsky. It is both painting a picture of Russian high society and exploring the events that led to the downfall of that society.
Zygar is telling a story more than he is advancing a thesis, so he doesn’t advance the idea that this or that thing is the root cause of the ultimate Bolshevik takeover. And obviously any complex historical phenomenon has many causes: autocracy, the Russian orthodox church, a highly class-stratified society with huge income inequality, etc. etc.
However, it ultimately seemed to me that any of these problems might have been overcome were it not for Nicholas II, Russia’s weak-willed, vacillating, but also stunningly pigheaded final tsar. He’s like the guy in the parable who is sitting on top of a house roof in a flood, turning away a neighbor in a boat and a helicopter and what have you because he’s convinced that God will save him, except in Nicholas’s case he’s ignoring warning signs like “we just lost a war with Japan because of our antiquated military, so perhaps we should modernize before we get embroiled in a larger war?”
Or, rather, he repeatedly sees the warning signs, he agrees to direly needed reforms, and then he backtracks the next day after he’s had a chance to talk to his wife. Absolutely a case where both halves of an adoring couple made each other exponentially worse. Nicholas believed that any attempt to amend the autocracy was a violation of the oath he made to God at his coronation, and his wife Alix not only agreed wholeheartedly but remained steadfast in this belief when the weak-willed Nicholas wavered.
So much for the collapse of autocracy. After Nicholas abdicates, why do the Bolsheviks end up in power? Well, you’ve got three main parties vying for it.
The Kadets: the liberal democratic party. In favor of a republic or a constitutional monarchy. Popular among Russia’s middle class, which is not very large. Just can’t pull the numbers they need. Ideologically opposed to shooting people for political reasons.
The Socialist Revolutionaries (also known as SRs): in favor of peasants and the political assassinations of tsarist officials. Despite this history of violence, excited to work non-violently within the new state system that everyone is trying to patch together after the revolution of February 1917. Unfortunately, their two most charismatic leaders recently died, and also they discovered that Azef, the guy who organized most of their high profile political assassinations, was actually a police agent. Awkward. The SRs fail to kill him.
The Social Democrats (also known as the SDs; split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks): Marxists, in favor of the industrial proletariat; hate peasants, but canny enough to promise to distribute land to the peasants anyway. The Bolsheviks are ideologically in favor of shooting people for political reasons, which gives them a decisive edge while their opponents are fretting about whether it will fatally undermine their attempt to build democracy if they shoot political opponents who threaten to violently overthrow democracy. As it turns out, the answer is “probably yes, but do you know what will undermine democracy even more decisively? Being violently overthrown.”
The Empire Must Die is telling the intertwined stories of many different prominent figures in late tsarist Russia: not just the prominent political figures (both in the government and in the varyingly legal levels of opposition), but also figures in the arts, Chekov, Diaghilev, Tolstoy, Nijinsky. It is both painting a picture of Russian high society and exploring the events that led to the downfall of that society.
Zygar is telling a story more than he is advancing a thesis, so he doesn’t advance the idea that this or that thing is the root cause of the ultimate Bolshevik takeover. And obviously any complex historical phenomenon has many causes: autocracy, the Russian orthodox church, a highly class-stratified society with huge income inequality, etc. etc.
However, it ultimately seemed to me that any of these problems might have been overcome were it not for Nicholas II, Russia’s weak-willed, vacillating, but also stunningly pigheaded final tsar. He’s like the guy in the parable who is sitting on top of a house roof in a flood, turning away a neighbor in a boat and a helicopter and what have you because he’s convinced that God will save him, except in Nicholas’s case he’s ignoring warning signs like “we just lost a war with Japan because of our antiquated military, so perhaps we should modernize before we get embroiled in a larger war?”
Or, rather, he repeatedly sees the warning signs, he agrees to direly needed reforms, and then he backtracks the next day after he’s had a chance to talk to his wife. Absolutely a case where both halves of an adoring couple made each other exponentially worse. Nicholas believed that any attempt to amend the autocracy was a violation of the oath he made to God at his coronation, and his wife Alix not only agreed wholeheartedly but remained steadfast in this belief when the weak-willed Nicholas wavered.
So much for the collapse of autocracy. After Nicholas abdicates, why do the Bolsheviks end up in power? Well, you’ve got three main parties vying for it.
The Kadets: the liberal democratic party. In favor of a republic or a constitutional monarchy. Popular among Russia’s middle class, which is not very large. Just can’t pull the numbers they need. Ideologically opposed to shooting people for political reasons.
The Socialist Revolutionaries (also known as SRs): in favor of peasants and the political assassinations of tsarist officials. Despite this history of violence, excited to work non-violently within the new state system that everyone is trying to patch together after the revolution of February 1917. Unfortunately, their two most charismatic leaders recently died, and also they discovered that Azef, the guy who organized most of their high profile political assassinations, was actually a police agent. Awkward. The SRs fail to kill him.
The Social Democrats (also known as the SDs; split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks): Marxists, in favor of the industrial proletariat; hate peasants, but canny enough to promise to distribute land to the peasants anyway. The Bolsheviks are ideologically in favor of shooting people for political reasons, which gives them a decisive edge while their opponents are fretting about whether it will fatally undermine their attempt to build democracy if they shoot political opponents who threaten to violently overthrow democracy. As it turns out, the answer is “probably yes, but do you know what will undermine democracy even more decisively? Being violently overthrown.”
Aliens: Havoc
Apr. 21st, 2026 01:00 pmcyberghostface posting in scans_daily
"One incredible story. Forty amazing creators. A hive of deadly aliens. That's what we call Havoc. Some of the biggest names in comics -- including Art Adams, George Pratt, Kelley Jones, Kevin Nowlan, and Kent Williams -- illustrate Eisner Award winner Mark Schultz's story of a haunted space station infested with aliens." -- Dark Horse
( Scans under the cut... )