vital functions

Sep. 14th, 2025 11:59 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Tiny bits of Solutions and Other Problems and The Painful Truth.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac.

Exploring. Chester, including Chester Zoo!

Eating. Almost all of my favourite field foods, including raspberry and lemon curd toasties, noodle pots with the addition of the prepped salad bits (spinach! red onion!), the giant lemon and sugar crepes, and flapjack. ("Almost" because the cake options CHANGED.)

Observing. The Milky Way. Something that might have been some kind of satellite or might have been some kind of shooting star. CHESTER ZOO, etc. At least one field bat.

Transit

Sep. 14th, 2025 06:38 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
So, yesterday, the wheelchair ramp on the Rt 8 bus I was on developed a bug. Or the system that detects if it is deployed did. The ramp retracted correctly but the bus thought it had not, and would not move.

Ha ha! I pick my routes to maximize alternatives in case of break-downs. I just disembarked and talked over to the LRT. Which, I discovered, was having a minor service delay.

My contingency plans can handle two delays, but not three. Good for me there were just the two. It did mean I was only a little early for work.

On the way home, just after I disembarked from the LRT, an SUV cut the LRT off so the SUV could reach the parking lot ten seconds earlier. If the train had not stopped, I'd have had to stick around, both as a witness and because the accident would blocked the sidewalk between me and the stop I needed to get to.

Less than five minutes after the LRT near-miss, three SUVs tried to turn into the same lane at the same time. I don't think they hit each other but there was a short discussion between the drivers before they all left. I'd have had to stick around for that as well, because it would have blocked the route my bus uses.

Culinary

Sep. 14th, 2025 06:40 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

This week's bread: the Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/pinhead oatmeal), turned out nicely if perhaps a little coarser than the recipe anticipates (medium oatmeal has been for some reason a bit hard to come by).

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South Indian khichchari), v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, texture seemed a bit off, possibly the dough could have been a bit slacker?

Today's lunch: the roasted Mediterranean vegetable thing - whole garlic cloves, red onion, fennel, red bell pepper, baby peppers, baby courgettes and aubergine (v good), served with couscous + raisins.

City Mapper

Sep. 14th, 2025 09:37 am
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[personal profile] adrian_turtle
There’s a transit app called City Mapper, that I used to use. (For values of “used to” ending very emphatically this morning.) It showed a variety of transit routes based on where you were, comparing them with each other and with biking and walking. It plans a route based on the schedule and then uses GPS to say how far away the next buses are coming. Useful for “this bus is crowded, I’ll take the next one in 5 minutes” or “the next one won’t be for half an hour.”

This morning I got up early to get to Somerville because there were things I wanted to do in the attic before meeting people at 11. Thanks to City Mapper, I just wasted an hour trying to make a bus connection that does not exist. The bus is not going through that neighborhood today. That’s fine, I hope it’s enjoying itself at the block party on the other end of town, but I want the transit app to know where it is. It is not fit for purpose.

Milestone

Sep. 14th, 2025 02:28 pm
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Cambridge Kodiaks B played our first WNIHL game yesterday, against Invicta Dynamics in Gillingham. We had seven players making their WNIHL debut, including me. As team manager I'm delighted, as newbie player I had pre-game nerves for the first time in months, and the biggest smile on my face afterwards.

We lost, but that's almost not the point. Here's a team I didn't even think would exist three months ago, and we've made it happen, creating opportunities for players to grow and develop. One game down, 19 to go (and a playoff game against the North division next May to aim for ...)

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Bureau of Sabotage agent Jorj X. McKie is assigned a legal and ethical trap: a planet of victims, who, whether rescued or left to their impending doom, present a danger to the ConSentiency.

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency, volume 2) by Frank Herbert

The Friday Five on a Sunday

Sep. 14th, 2025 01:30 pm
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[personal profile] nanila
  1. What is your favourite fruit?
    Guava. Close behind are mango, papaya, and sweet sop. I will never turn down a lychee, a peach, a plum, a satsuma, or any berries. Basically, all the fruit.

  2. What is the last book you read?
    Alan Tribble’s “The Space Environment: Implications for Spacecraft Design”. It was a real page-turner. Some good example problems, anyway.

  3. Do you like any of your school photos?
    No, not really. My smiles in them are all pretty fake.

  4. Do you ever blow-dry your armpits to get the deodorant to dry quicker?
    I’m pleased to announce that this has never, ever occurred to me.

  5. What was the last film you watched?
    No, shan’t (tell you).

(no subject)

Sep. 14th, 2025 01:01 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] brewsternorth!

We need to talk

Sep. 13th, 2025 05:04 pm
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[personal profile] firecat
The New Yorker is trying to convince me that Bluesky has become annoying and everyone’s back on Xitter. Not linking because it’s paywalled. True or false?

I never got the hang of Twitter. I have similar problems with Bluesky. I don’t need a social site to deliver me more links. I want conversation. Is conversation dead? Where is it? (I know there’s some here…)

I miss Usenet, lol

Rubbish

Sep. 13th, 2025 04:34 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Seem to have been seeing a cluster of things about litter, and picking it up, lately, what with this one Lake District: Family shouted at for picking up litter, and the thing I posted recently about the young woman who was snarking on the Canals and Rovers Trust about what she perceived as her singlehanded mission to declutter the local canal bank: "Elena might feel alone in tackling London's litter waste", and then this week's 'You Be The Judge' in the weekend Guardian is on a related theme:

Should my girlfriend stop picking up other people’s litter?

(She is at least throwing it away in a responsible fashion: I worry about the couple whose flat is being cluttered up with culinary appliances where one feels maybe the ones that aren't actually being used anymore could be rehomed via charity shops before they are buried under an avalanche of redundant ricecookers etc).

As far as litter and clutter goes, National Trust tears down Union flag from 180-year-old monument. Actually, carefully removed, and we think there are probably conservation issues involved: quote from NT 'We will assess whether any damage has been caused to the monument'. See also White horse checked for any damage caused by flag. We do not think respect and care for heritage is uppermost in the minds of people who do these jelly-bellied flagflapping gestures.

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Six works new to me: two fantasy (one a roleplaying game), four science fiction. The roleplaying game is part of a series but otherwise, they all seem to be stand-alone.

Books Received, September 6 — September 12


Poll #33608 Books Received, September 6 — September 12
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Daughter of No Worlds by Carissa Broadbent (October 2025)
6 (15.0%)

Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey (November 2025)
16 (40.0%)

Champions of Chaos by Calum Colins, et al
1 (2.5%)

Slow Gods by Claire North (November 2025)
19 (47.5%)

The Divine Gardener’s Handbook: Or What to Do if Your Girlfriend Accidentally Turns Off the Sun by Eli Snow (August 2026)
19 (47.5%)

Death Engine Protocol: Better Dying Through Science by Margret A. Treiber (April 2025)
11 (27.5%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
27 (67.5%)

oursin: George Beresford photograph of the young Rebecca West in a large hat, overwritten 'Neither a doormat nor a prostitute' (Neither a doormat nor a prostitute)
[personal profile] oursin

Okay, my dearios, I am sure all dear rdrs are with me that tradwives are not trad, they are deploying an aesthetic loosely based on vague memories of the 1950s - and meedja representations at that - and some very creepy cultish behaviour - they are not returning to some lovely Nachral State -

And that as I bang on about a lot, women have been engaged in all kinds of economic activity THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF HISTORY since economic activity became A Thing.

Why tradwives aren’t trad: The housewife is a Victorian invention. History shows us women’s true economic power

I have a spot of nitpickery to apply - it rather skips over and elides the move from the household economy into factories e.g., leading to 'separate spheres' with wife stuck at home (and even that was a very blurry distinction, I mutter); and also the amount of exploitative homeworking undertaken by women of the lower classes (often to the detriment of any kind of 'good housekeeping').(Not saying middle-class women didn't also find ways of making a spot of moolah to eke out household budget.)

And of course a lot of tradwives are actually performing as economically productive influencers: TikTok tradwives: femininity, reproduction, and social media - in a tradition of women who made a very nice living out of telling other women how to be domestic goddesses, ahem ahem.

pegkerr: (That may be an encouraging thought)
[personal profile] pegkerr
Sometimes it's easy to pick what I'm going to do my collage about each week. Sometimes I have to scrounge around a bit for a subject.

There was a moment this week when I started mulling, "Well, what has this week been about?" and it occurred to me that at that exact moment, I was stirring my coffee with a sterling silver spoon.

I have inherited a significant amount of sterling silver from my grandparents, and my mom has passed along some of hers to me early. Even before that, I have often delighted in fine things that gave my life a luxurious touch. When the girls were young, I occasionally would serve what we called formal dinners, where we practiced eating with elaborate place settings and talked about proper manners.

I've been experiencing a bit of a cash flow issue lately. Nothing serious; I don't mean that I can't pay my bills, but with some recent medical and car repair expenses, I have had to cut back on some things. I've stopped eating out for the time being, and sometimes I have to wait a few days, until after pay day, to pick up the next set of groceries.

Recently, I decided to pull out a set of small sterling silver espresso coffee spoons I inherited from my grandmother. I went out looking for a lovely crystalline receptacle to keep them in on my counter by my coffee pot, and I found one, touched with gilding at the rim, at a vintage store, for $5. I bought a bottle of lavender syrup, and I will sometimes put a small amount in my coffee.

My sister bought me some luxury hand soap for my birthday, and I have decided that I like it so much better than the soft soap I had been picking up at the grocery store.

When the belt has to be tightened, it helps to indulge in a few small luxuries.

Image description: Background: A luxuriously painted vaulted ceiling at Versailles. Bottom center: a miniature sterling silver spoon rests on a counter. Behind it: a coffee cup with a small glass jar with more miniature silver spoons. Right: a bottle of lavender coffee syrup. Behind the coffee cup: a bottle of luxury hand soap and a house plant.

Little Luxuries

36 Little Luxuries

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


I'd been posting reviews to LiveJournal since April of 2014 but on September 12, 2014, James Nicoll Reviews went live, with a review of Robert A. Heinlein's Between Planets.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


It's time for Bo to leave doomed San Francisco behind... just as soon as she completes one final task.

Awake in the Floating City by Susanna Kwan

(no subject)

Sep. 12th, 2025 09:42 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] davidgillon and [personal profile] surexit!
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


11 sourcebooks that range across the shattered Earth of the Rifts tabletop roleplaying game from Palladium Books.

Bundle of Holding: Rifts Worlds 1




More World Books for the cross-dimensional tabletop roleplaying game

Bundle of Holding: Rifts Land and Sea (from 2022)

Mingled yarn of life

Sep. 11th, 2025 08:20 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Text today from my general practice to book Covid + flu jabs - actually in a months time, but I now have a slot booked.

***

Having been moaning on over at bluesky about scholars these days not acknowledging existing (older) historiography, Dept of Preening Gratification was coming across footnote cite to 30 year-old co-authored work as 'A key starting point' for certain 'productive considerations' within the field.

***

On the other prickly paw, I am still failing to get up to a proper swing at the essay review - keep niggling and picking at the bit I've already done.

Partly due to Interruptions happening.

Also partly due to not sleeping terribly well this week for some reason.

***

Discovered today that I had somehow acquired an ebook of recent work on subject I have had far too much to do with and had totally forgotten about it. Looking up an area of Mi Pertikler Xpertize, o dear, a number of niggling Errours.

***

Attended a webinar the other day where someone claimed that a certain class of records did not survive in respect of the lower orders on account They Could Not Write, and I was more, no, it's an issue of preservation, what about those postcards that I spoke about on a TV programme once - but that is such an annoying story, what DID happen to the cards after the filming? - apart from the flaunting of Being Meedja Personality, so decided not to raise my virtual hand.

redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
[personal profile] siderea points out that you probably have >a href="https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1882720.html">"at least one underlying condition" for which the covid vaccine is (still) recommended by the US government, because most people do: the list includes being overweight, high blood pressure, depression, former smokers, and "physical inactivity." She speculates that the list may have been drafted to be as inclusive as possible, by someone who didn't have the authority to say "just give it to everyone."

The current official announcements, widely echoed, sounds as though most people can't get the vaccine, because the FDA is now being run by anti-vaxxers. That is almost certainly not an accident: if you think you can't have the vaccine, you won't ask for it.

Siderea also points out that even if you aren't on that list, a doctor can prescribe this, or almost any approved medication, to anyone they think it's appropriate for. In other contexts, this is what they mean by "off-label" use of a drug.

Note, however, that this may affect whether you have to pay for the vaccine yourself, rather than it being covered by insurance.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that you can always lie to them: nobody has a complete list of former smokers, for example.

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serene

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