Reading

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[food] breadferences

At the weekend we made a mildly unusual detour to a fancy local bakery; one of the things they had on the shelves about which I went "oooh" was fig, hazelnut & anise bread. So that flavour combination (plus some spelt) was went into the oven this morning!

The way bread normally works around here is that I make it, via the Ritual Question of Do You Have Any Breadferences (Bread Preferences). To facilitate this call and response, A List of our Usual Options, doubtless to be added to. Suggestions welcome. :)

( Read more... )

Current Mood: Confuzzled
Current Location: In the still of the night

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weird

Well that was weird

4AM-ish I wasn't asleep, and heard something which I couldn't work out if it was an aircraft or thunder.

So I popped open the bedroom window to see if it was any clearer that way, just caught the very end of it, and still couldn't tell.

I stood listening for a while, as it's rarely that quiet, and I could hear a freight train going past in the cutting down the hill - you can only really hear the trains at that time of night as otherwise they're drowned out by the traffic noise.

And then, for about 10 seconds, I heard the distinctive clip-clop, clip-clop of horse's hooves. WTF?

If you hear hoofbeats, suspect auditory illusions?

I have no idea what it actually was, but it sounded like hoofbeats. At 4AM.

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: Yeld 2E

This new Yeld 2E Bundle presents the 2024 Second Edition of The Magical Land of Yeld, the all-ages tabletop fantasy roleplaying game from Atarashi Games about young heroes (called Friends) finding their way home.

Bundle of Holding: Yeld 2E

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Wednesday there was SNOW

What I read

Finished The Golden Notebook - had a few comments about Lessing and blokes and plus ca change and allotropes of excuses in yesterday's post.

Decompressed with a Dick Francis, Slay-Ride (1973), which is the one set in Norway - period at which The War, resistance, Quislings etc still hangs heavy over them - not a top specimen of his, I spotted Dodgy Person very early on (but maybe protag does not read thrillers....).

Then got a jump on the next volume in the Dance to the Music of Time reading group, Temporary Kings (#11), which is the one set at some kind of cultural conference in Venice.

Also the latest Literary Review.

On the go

Continuing to dip in to Some Men in London 1960-1967.

Was agreeably surprised by the arrival of my preordered Cat Sebastian (had forgotten it was due), After Hours at Dooryard Books, which is being v good so far.

Up next

Latest Slightly Foxed.

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The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, volume 2 by Haruo Iwamune (Translated by John Neal)

Civilization has crashed, humanity may be virtually extinct, but library books must be returned to their proper facility!

The Color of the End: Mission in the Apocalypse, volume 2 by Haruo Iwamune (Translated by John Neal)

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

frumiousb!

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[embodiment] ... ha

"Ugh," I thought, "why am I feeling weirdly migrainey? My Next Phase Of The Menstrual Cycle is very much not due for like another week? I've been weirdly super regular basically since it reasserted itself post-surgery?"

... TURNS OUT that I had lost track of time a bit and I'm not a solid week early at all, it's a whole two days. This Means Some Things:

... still super regular by my pre-surgical standards,
I will not be at the worst stage of my cycle during Significant Travel next week, and LAST BUT VERY MUCH NOT LEAST
the migraine is still in fact very clearly associated with hormonal changes even when I'm not expecting them, take THAT Headache Is The Second Most Common Form Of Psychosomatic Pain ~statistics~ (and ongoing anxiety).

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And lo, the song of the Mybug was once more heard in the land....

Not OK? Booker winner Flesh ignites debate about state of masculinity

No, really, you don't say? Can it be that - once again, or perhaps, still MASCULINITY IS IN CRISIS?

Does it not sound as though the author goes in for 'dumb, dark, dull, bitter belly-tension'? (Sigh.)

I am sorry to discover that an excoriating retrospect on John Fowles with particular reference to The Magus by DJ Taylor in the latest Literary Review does not appear to be fully accessible online, chiz, chiz -

[E]ach of his novels when stripped of its fashionable appurtenances - The Magus, for example, is rife with Jungian animas - is ultimately about male entitlement.... the books are all about men expecting to get the things they want and being mortified by their absence.
....
[A] series of exercises in what Maurice Bowra called 'the higher bogus'.

I recently had the apercu, following my re-reading of The Golden Notebook, that besides being about the themes that Lessing found readers took from it - The Woman Question, the crisis of the Left at the period, mental health - surely it was also about Crisis of Masculinity/Men R Terribly Poor Stuff (I think Dame Rebecca remarked on that in her critical essay on younger woman writers). Which they were expressing/excusing largely in Freudianism terms (so many of them in analysis or had been). Wonder if current deployment of The Neurodiversity Plea is the current allotrope of He Couldn't Help It Because Reasons Beyond His Control (I suppose at least these do not blame Mummy, unless you are into to the What She Did That She Shouldn't When Pregnant narrative....).

I note that there was a BBC programme last night on the 'manosphere': young men who have drifted towards misogynist influencers – and finds them lonely, heartbreaking and on ‘semen retention journeys’ to control their sex drives. They sound rather sad and confused. (And historian is appalled at the persistence of a panic drummed up by an early C18th quack....)

Am trying to think of period when one could reliably say that masculinity was not in (some kind of) crisis.

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The Queen Bee by Randall Garrett

Castaways are trapped in a terrible Randall Garrett story!

The Queen Bee by Randall Garrett

I know my site is down

Along with a lot of the interwebs...

No election

Not over this budget, anyway.

It boggles me that Canada had to endure 13 days of ambiguity about the budget vote. What next, an election cycle that lasts five whole weeks? The suspense would be palpable.

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: Salvage Union

Scrappy scavengers in scrap-metal mech robots

Bundle of Holding: Salvage Union

Current Mood: confused

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Medicare questions/decisions

I just had a phone appointment with someone, funded by the state of Massachusetts, to help decide between basic Medicare plus a Medigap plan, or a Medicare Advantage plan. I have gotten some useful information, but am going to double-check everything, because in at least one case what she told me contradicts what the official Medicare.gov site says. It's a relatively minor point--the existence of a roommate discount for some Medigap plans--but I asked about which plans it applied to, and she said it doesn't exist.

The new and interesting information is that apparently, because I am under 65 and disabled, I'm eligible for a Medicaid plan, without an income limit. It's called CommonHealth, and seems to be part of the state's "Commonwealth Care." If I understand correctly, after Medicare paid 80% of a bill, it would cover the rest, but only at providers that take MassHealth.

If I got basic Medicare (parts A and B), a part D drug plan, and a Medigap plan, I could see any provider that takes Medicare, without worrying about what's in-network. However, a Medigap plan would cost significantly more than this CommonHealth thing.

Or, I could sign up for another Medicare Advantage plan. The advantage there is there are some that would cost no more than the Medicare Part B premium. The disadvantage is being limited to in-network providers unless I'm willing to pay significantly more for that service.

I thought the question was, is it worth $250-$300/month (Medigap + prescription coverage) more to not have to worry about being in-network and prior authorization. It sounds like this CommonHealth plan would cost significantly less per month, but if the provider doesn't take MassHealth, I'd be paying 20%. Which gets back to the larger problem that there's no way to find out what number that will be 20% until after the visit.

If I understood correctly, all these options have copays for some things, and CommonHealth may require prior authorization for some things.

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All fun and games until

Are they going to eat me alive?’: trail runners become prey in newest form of hunting:

Would you like to be chased by a pack of hounds? It’s a question often put to highlight the cruelty of hunting, because the answer would seem to be no. Or so you would think.
Yet increasing numbers of people are volunteering to be chased across the countryside by baying bloodhounds in what could soon be the only legal way to hunt with dogs in England and Wales, rather than pursuing animals or their scents.

I seem to recall that the pursuit of children with bloodhounds featured in the Mitford children's childhood (or was this just one of Nancy's fictional artefacts?) but as I recall that did not involve pursuing them across country on horseback.... (and presumably the children were already acquainted with their father's bloodhounds).

Maybe this would have struck differently - jolly countryside japes? - if this had not been the same week in which there was

a) a review of the new remake of The Running Man:

Ben signs up for a top-rated reality TV show called The Running Man; he has to go on the run across the US, hunted by professional killers, and if he can survive for 30 days, he gets a billion dollars. But all too late, he realises that these shark-like fascist TV execs aren’t going to play fair.

(pretty sure I have come across similar scenarios set in nearish future dystopias) and

b) this creep-making report: Italy investigates claims of tourists paying to shoot civilians in Bosnia in 1990s:

[J]ournalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who describes a "manhunt" by "very wealthy people" with a passion for weapons who "paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians" from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo.
Different rates were charged to kill men, women or children, according to some reports.

I'm really not sure it's a great idea to start this sort of thing.

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arctic ice

update from the scientists on Arctic Sea Ice Forum

Here's a couple of updates on this year's Arctic freezing season:

09/16 Glen Koehler:

The graphs show that while we were carefully discussing how far the wind would spread the sheen of remaining Arctic Sea Ice rubble for the September 2025 Extent minimum, the ice is dying.

09/17 The Walrus:

Based on Glen's post, thickness must have decreased from an average of 1.46M in 2012 to 1.01M this year.

11/01 binntho:

Refreeze has been below average, and this year is now 4th lowest in the satellite era for the date. Extent is currently almost 300k below the average of the 10 previous years.

The 3 day median concentration animation from Polar Python shows how the Siberian side is almost completely frozen, but there is still a narrow band of open ocean on the Alaskan side and the Atlantic front is still further north than usual.

But what is usual? The 10 year animation showing the University of Bremen concentration maps on October 30th shows that there is quite a lot of variability in how freezing progresses. Remember that we are now past the peak freezing period as shown by the 10 year 7 day average.

The years 2016 and 2020 clearly stand out, 2020 was 732k lower than 2025 on this date, and 2016 was 545k lower. In third place, 2024 was 112k lower than 2025

11/02 uniquorn:

Can still see ice melting in the warmer water north of the Voronin Trough oct28-nov1

11/5 Jim Hunt:

The minimum modelled sea ice volume was 3.87 thousand km³ on September 12th. (edit comment, this is 2nd lowest in historical record)

11/17 binntho:

JAXA extent 16-Nov is 8,573,901 km2, an increase in extent of 39,516 km2
which is 20,921 km2 less than the 10 year 7 day running centered average of an increase of 60,437 km2

Extent is second lowest in satellite record, 109k above 2016 in #1 and 193k below 2020 in #3

(my emphasis)

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Five Reasons to Leave the House and Go Explore a Used Bookstore

The sights, the smells... the savings!!!

Five Reasons to Leave the House and Go Explore a Used Bookstore

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clarke award

Clarke Award Finalists 2022

2022: The British are heartened by Partygate revelations that the Tories celebrated in trust the gatherings barred to the rabble during Covid, the UK teaches the world a thing or two about political stability by going through three Prime Ministers in less than two months, and Queen Elizabeth II escapes the prospect of discovering how exactly the UK would continue its downward political arc.

Poll #33843 Clarke Award Finalists 2022

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

View Respondents

Which 2022 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles
0 (0.0%)

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
30 (93.8%)

A River Called Time by Courttia Newland
0 (0.0%)

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
3 (9.4%)

Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley
2 (6.2%)

Wergen: The Alien Love War by Mercurio D. Rivera
1 (3.1%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2022 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
A River Called Time by Courttia Newland
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley
Wergen: The Alien Love War by Mercurio D. Rivera

If I say I did not hear of something, it means that it is new to me. Did I not at least glance at the Clarkes in 2022?

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

masqthephlsphr!

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running to stand still

Forwards and backwards

I ran the Berkeley Half Marathon 10K again today. Contrary to my ambitions, my time this year was even slower than last year, although still more than 30 seconds/mile better than my worst-ever showing in 2022. I think part of it is that I really didn't put enough training in over the last month for various reasons. And yet my split times actually came down by nearly 10 seconds/mile over the course of the run per the tracking, which does seem to show that I've gotten better at the downhills.

So yeah, I'm not particularly satisfied with this result, but on the other hand I was once again physically pretty okay afterwards, not completely destroyed like I used to be. I haven't done a great job at integrating 8K or 10K runs into my training plans over the past year, so I think a clear goal is to start doing an 8K run regularly and ideally aim for a 10K once a month or so. And I've also bowed to the inevitable and acknowledged that my shoes really only last eight months at the outside--I bought a hardly used pair of shoes on eBay the other day so I'm looking forward to new ones.

I haven't gotten a race shirt since 2019 because I have more than enough running shirts, and amusingly now that's apparently old enough to qualify as vintage--one woman in the corral was asking me about the shirt, and another dude gave me a fist bump mid-race because we were both wearing the shirts. Pleasingly enough, the "loyal runner" gift this year was actually useful: a running hat that I wore in today's race. Previous gifts have been mostly...more T-shirts...which seems to defeat the purpose of not getting a race shirt.

One final bit of shenanigans: I left the bike station after parking my bike and the keypad went dark behind me. I figured I would deal with that after running the 10K, and the eventual answer (after "Someone else called about this earlier!") was "I dunno, no one's answering because it's Sunday." "Yes, a day of the week." (The entire premise of the bike station is 24/7 access to cardholders.) The dude swore up and down I would get a call back about the keypad status, which of course I didn't, so tomorrow I will have to call them because a) it's not difficult to get back down to the bike station, but I'm not making the trip unless I know I can retrieve my bike; and b) I want a refund of the money I've unwillingly spent on it being locked in there. Overall BikeLink is great! But the edge cases where there's a problem have, in my experience, been extremely annoying. Luckily I was able to call my roommate to come pick me up, so at least that worked out.

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vital functions

vital functions

~~... has done so many things and is Going To Bed and will fill in this placeholder Tomorrow.~~

Reading. ( Descartes, Gouldercourt et al., Clifford )

Forgotten Fruits (Christopher Stocks) got auto-returned to the library for a second time while I was still, like, a third of the way into it. I am going to try to take the DNF with grace this time, but the Completionist Itch is still there...

Writing. Grumpy e-mails to HMPO. Grumpy e-mails to uk.bookshop.org (on the plus side, the book I bought from them now has a shiny wee DRM-free tag! on the downside, I can download it in neither of the browsers I've tried so far.) Mental drafting of context-setting on movement and sleep, which really need to get out of my head and onto the page.

Playing. Inkulinati! We have Completed All Three Journeys. In the second stage we achieved an absolutely bullshit strategy that made things astonishingly easy; the third stage (with SEAL) was much harder work.

Little bit more I Love Hue.

Cooking. Two things of particular note, of which the first was ridiculous parsnip risotto with thyme pesto from The Modern Vegetarian, extremely good, would very happily eat again but I'm more dubious about the prospect of cooking it again, though I will concede it would probably go faster now I know what I'm doing.

Item the second was THE MEDLAR STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING. I am not entirely convinced I can actually detect the, you know, medlar, but it is very tasty.

Elsewise I have two batches of medlar jelly on the go (first batch did not set properly, BAH, I have not made enough jam recently, so I'm going to need to redecant and reboil that before I move on to the spiced) and some ridiculous quince sorbet that needs forcing through the sieve before churning.

And I have still not touched the apples.

Eating. Saturday lunch at Holtwhites Bakery :)

Exploring. Stupid little walk on Sunday revealed unto us, among other things: a pair of cyclamen in a bit of the verge outside our house we don't normally walk past; a discarded fork; a local bush of Purple Metallic Berries; a secret holly hedge.

Growing. SEEDS arrived. Jalapeños (at least at home) turning red.