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: 22


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Daughter of No Worlds by Carissa Broadbent (October 2025)
5 (22.7%)

Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey (November 2025)
11 (50.0%)

Champions of Chaos by Calum Colins, et al
1 (4.5%)

Slow Gods by Claire North (November 2025)
11 (50.0%)

The Divine Gardener’s Handbook: Or What to Do if Your Girlfriend Accidentally Turns Off the Sun by Eli Snow (August 2026)
11 (50.0%)

Death Engine Protocol: Better Dying Through Science by Margret A. Treiber (April 2025)
9 (40.9%)

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

Cats!
17 (77.3%)

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.
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[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.

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[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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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A woodcarver's foster daughter sets out to free a maiden from a magical tower prison, just the sort of thing that always works out exactly according to plan, without unforeseen geopolitical complications.

SideQuested by K B Spangler & Ale Presser

(no subject)

Sep. 11th, 2025 09:40 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] daegaer and [personal profile] syderia!

Wednesday went for a walk in the rain

Sep. 10th, 2025 07:16 pm
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished Love at All Ages - think I said most of what I felt moved to say last week, but there was also a certain amount of Mrs Morland whingeing and bitching about the Burdens of Being a Popular Writer (when she wasn't being Amazingly Dotty), whoa, Ange, biting the hand or what?

Sarah Brooks, The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands (2024), which I picked up some while ago on promotion and then I think I saw someone writing something about it. I liked the idea but somehow wasn't overwhelmingly enthused?

Read the latest Literary Review.

Since there is a forthcoming online discussion, dug out my 1974 mass market paperback edition of Joanna Russ, The Female Man - I think this was even before excursions to Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed, somehow I had learnt of Fantast, a mailorder operation with duplicated catalogues every few months that purveyed an odd selection of US books. It's quite hard to recall the original impact. Possibly I now prefer her essays?

Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter (2024) - EngLit teacher meditates over books that she had taught, her own reading of them, their impact in the classroom, general issues around teaching Lit, etc - this came up in my Recommended for You in Kobo + on promotion. Quite interesting but how the teaching of EngLit has changed since My Day....

Lee Child, The Hard Way (Jack Reacher, #10) (2006) - every so often I read an interview with or something about Lee Child who sounds very much a Good Guy so I thought I might try one of these and this one was currently on promotion. It's less action and more twisty following intricate plot than I anticipated with lots of sudden reversal, and lots and lots of details. I don't think I'm going to go away and devour all the Reacher books but I can think of circumstances where they might be a preferable option given limited reading materials available.

On the go

I literally just finished that so there is nothing on the go, except one or two things I suppose I am technically still reading.

Up next

Dunno.

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Otaku Hina is delighted that her Japanese neighbour Kyuta looks just like Hina's favourite anime character. Alas, Kyuta dislikes anime almost as much as vampires like Hina.

Otaku Vampire's Love Bite, volume 1 By Julietta Suzuki (Translated by Tomo Kimura)

(no subject)

Sep. 10th, 2025 09:45 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] major_clanger!

I reactivated Netflix tonight

Sep. 10th, 2025 12:43 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

... so I could watch Kpop Demon Hunters, after half my friends mentioned it, and my child told me it was good, and the songs kept turning up on my instagram feed, and I listened to the soundtrack yesterday.

Anyway, it was a great deal of fun, the music is so catchy, the film absolutely leans into its premise, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I'm not great at watching TV at all, and especially not by myself, but I'm glad I did. (I might put it on again, maybe the singalong version, at some point.)

I watched approx 2/3 of it between skating lesson and uni hockey practice and the other 1/3 after getting home. I'd just turned it off to get changed, when in walked the students with the speaker playing the soundtrack (and one of the songs, Golden, lived on repeat in my head throughout practice).

BATS

Sep. 9th, 2025 09:56 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Between one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.

... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.

It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.

And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.

There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.

Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.

oursin: Painting of Clio Muse of History by Artemisia Gentileschi (Clio)
[personal profile] oursin

For some reason, concatenation of open tabs on this theme.

Sociability was intrinsic to British politics in the eighteenth-century:

Although women were prevented by custom from voting, holding most patronage appointments or taking seats in the Lords (even if they were peeresses in their own rights), politics ran through the lives of women from politically active families — and their political activities largely took place through the social arena, whether it was in London or in the provinces. Like their male counterparts, they used social situations to gather and disseminate political news and gossip, discuss men and measures, facilitate networking and build or maintain factional allegiances, or seek patronage for themselves or their clients.

***

This Is What Being in Your Twenties Was Like in 18th-Century London:

Browne wrote that he needed money to pay rent—and to purchase stockings, breeches, wigs and other items he deemed necessary for his life in London. “Cloaths which [I] have now are but mean in Comparison [with] what they wear here,” he wrote in one letter.
Financial worries didn’t stop Browne from enjoying his time in the city. “Despite telling his father how short of cash he was, Browne maintained a lively social life, meeting friends and eating and drinking around Fleet Street, close to the Inns of Court,” per the Guardian.
According to the National Trust, Browne’s descriptions of his social life evoke the scenes captured by William Hogarth.

***

The Friendship Book of Anne Wagner (1795-1834):

What is a friendship book? As Dr Lynley Anne Herbert relates in her post for us on a seventeenth-century specimen, it is a lot like an early version of social media, a place to record friendships and social connections.

***

This one is actually Victorian (and I think I may have mentioned before?): Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP - notes that he was not even the first Black MP to sit in the Commons.

***

And this is actually a bit random: apparently the Niels Bohr Library & Archives 'is a repository and hub for information in the history of physics, astronomy, geophysics, and allied fields' rather than exclusively Bohring. Anyway, an interview with the staff there about what they do.

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