(no subject)
May. 1st, 2026 05:15 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
apod_feed
Have you ever thought about surfing on an alien world?
The Enforced Hypocrisy of Life in a Big Society
Apr. 30th, 2026 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seawaspOne of the common tactics in debates-- on both right and left sides -- is to point out some inconsistency on someone's stance with respect to their actual behavior.
This is sometimes absolutely valid -- if someone claims to support one thing but then clearly is doing the opposite, this is certainly an indication that they aren't serious about their initial claim (or possibly they're flat-out lying).
However, in many cases, especially larger political or economic stances, the very facts of existence and the rules and requirements of society and one's business within it puts people in a position where it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to avoid participating in various activities that may in specific elements contradict your personal stances or preference.
I, for instance, am against exploiting and mistreating workers. This means I have a LOT of dislike for many large corporations, if not all of them, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and so on and so forth. Yet I'm sitting here typing on a machine that was undoubtedly to one degree or another made by underpaid, mistreated workers. My books are on Amazon, and if I want them to have any chance of selling halfway decently they had BETTER be there because that's the biggest single market for books anywhere, making up the vast majority of ebook sales and a huge chunk of physical book sales.
Similarly, someone can be a full-on Taxation is Theft libertarian, but if you have a family and the only support you can get to keep them going is Social Security, then you bloody well take it, because you have a much more direct and personal responsibility to keep your family safe and fed than you do being a purist.
Politicians are in some ways more subject to this than anyone else. You may sincerely, like Bernie and AOC, want to fight against the entrenched elitism in the society, to address global warming and other environmental concerns, and believe firmly in reining in spending on various areas while increasing spending in others that you believe will help the most people. But in order to do that job, you have to talk WITH the elites -- civilly -- and maybe even concede something in one area in order to get something you think is more important. You have to go to meetings with other politicians and such that may be widely separated but close in time -- and so, like everyone else in your business, you will be getting in a jet and flying there when you'd pollute much less if you went by car or train. You will even likely prefer to take a charter rather than a standard commercial jet because you can get a lot more work done, and done privately, on the way.
None of these mean that the beliefs are insincerely held. They mean that even if you want to fight the system, you're still IN the system, and unless you're already at the point where you can step outside of it -- so rich and powerful that you need not accommodate anyone else -- you will have to do what the system requires even while you're trying to change it.
You can use the system to support you while fighting it, and indeed, for almost everyone, you HAVE to.
This is true of, say, celebrities who are trying to promote social or political change. The fact is that their power to change anything is directly dependent on the wealth and exposure OF being a celebrity -- and so the common "gotcha" of "if you were serious you'd have given away all YOUR money" is directly ignoring the fact that in our society, that would mean giving up the strongest lever you have to try to affect change.
In that situation, we're all apparent hypocrites by necessity.
The important thing is to avoid DELIBERATE and OPTIONAL hypocrisy -- when one reasonably can. That's where you see whether people actually believe what they say.
meme sheep say baa
Apr. 29th, 2026 01:25 pmwychwoodrmc28Film I watched: in the cinema I think it was The Choral; otherwise, Miss H and I watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy between finishing M*A*S*H and starting B5, which I hadn't seen for 20 years and enjoyed revisiting.
Series I finished: M*A*S*H season 11!
Book I finished: Choices, by LA Hall, which was the "fun" book in my "currently reading" collection.
Book I bought: I bought half-a-dozen Terry Pratchett ebooks on 99p sale yesterday; paper would have been An Immense World by Ed Yong, which I'm halfway through and enjoying a lot.
Book I received as a gift: I asked for tokens in the last rounds of present-giving, so it's been a little while... according to my journal, I got some for my birthday last year but the only one I mentioned specifically was House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones, from my singing lesson buddies.
Food I ate: I had porridge for breakfast, but have eaten some bacon-flavour Wheat Crunchies and four Lindor truffles since then (white, milk, salted caramel, coconut).
Meal I cooked: Porridge, if "pouring boiling water on it" counts as cooking! If not, uh... I've had mostly cold food, couple of boiled eggs, uhhhh, pasta with pesto and cheese for lunch on Monday is the last actual cooking, I think.
Drink I had: Water! I did have some deeply mediocre fizzy lemonade as part of a sandwich meal deal a couple of weeks back if you don't want to count that, which is useful because otherwise I'd have been going back a year or two...
Song I listened to: If that means "track", I'm just listening to the end of Bach's variation 12a in the Art of Fugue! If actual singing, apparently "You Got the Car" by Kasey Chambers, according to my mp3 player, which lives on shuffle.
Album I listened to: I bought a couple of organ CDs at the concert I went to on Monday, so those.
Playlist I listened to: I think I listened to one of my playlists at work the other day, maybe the Space Songs one?
Concert I went to: For once I have a recent answer! I went to a lunchtime organ recital on Monday, performed by a friend from youth chorus who I hadn't seen in 25 years; it was lovely to see her, and the music was fun.
Game I played: Another level of Terra Nil on Monday
Person I talked to: I said good morning to a couple of people in the sprint review this morning before muting; with my actual face, the supermarket delivery person who brought my groceries on Monday night and had just seen a fox running down the site drive.
Person I texted:
toft, if WhatsApp counts; Miss H, if I count Teams; literal text message goes back a couple of weeks - I got a scam email from someone at church, and messaged her to let her know.(no subject)
Apr. 29th, 2026 04:42 amapod_feed
They're like mountain peaks, but they are forming stars.
Things I oughta post and what I actually will post
Apr. 28th, 2026 08:13 pmcatherineldfA bit more about the kitties: my late wife, Jana, and I adopted them from Feline Rescue back in 2009. They are/were rescue Egyptian Mau mixes so we named them Shu (Egyptian god of dust storms) and Ma'at (goddess of justice). They were bonded and absolutely gorgeous with white under fur and patterned black tips and random spotted patterns on their tummies. Shu was the smartest cat I've ever lived with (Ma'at is a smart kitty too, of course) and clocked in at an impressive 20 pounds. He adored pets and belly rubs and play time and liked to sleep wrapped around my ankles. He made it to 17 before his health began to fail and I had to send him over the Rainbow Bridge.He went out purring and content, but I am still bereft. Here's hoping Ma'at and I are able to adapt to the new normal soon. She is trying, poor little tyke, in her own way.
I lost another friend, this time to cancer, a couple of weeks ago. Rebecca Hranj was one of Jana's students and I met her after I moved Jana into assisted living. She helped me organize and clean out a lot of Jana's studio stuff and we got to hang out a bit around the time she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She fought the good fight and we went out to dinner, chatted on line occasionally and a few months back, I picked her up from an appointment and plied her with cardamom coffee and treats. I really, really wish we'd had more time to get to know each other. 2 years was way too short a time and she deserved better, as did her family and other loved ones, than to go out right before her 44th birthday. RIP to a good one.
What else is going on? I'm starting the spring grant review cycle this week (one of my side gigs) and am working on some stories and articles I have due later this year and of course, the novel. Everything this moving along, if not as zippily as I would like. I've done two bookselling events this month, hosted a yard sale and worked Independent Bookstore Day at DreamHaven. So it's been a very full month, One of my best friends is moving out of the country so I need to tackle mountain of paperwork (she's my emergency contact, among other things) as well as being sad that I won't see her much in a few weeks. I am working on making some new friends and meeting new people so not sitting around weeping into my tea or anything, but it would be nice if everything wasn't always literally or emotionally on fire at the same time. On the bright side, still pretty healthy and on year 2 of Not Being PreDiabetic. Or Diabetic, for that matter.
And, ack, just realized that I forgot to post that Queen of Swords Press has just released Joyce Chng's terrific Sailing the Golden Chersonese! This includes 4 stories about a trans masc pirate and his/their lady love sailing on a fantastical version of the South China Sea, complete with magic, Naks and romance. The cover is by the amazing Dhiyanah Hassan and the interior work is by Terry Roy, who has done most of our interior designs. It is the most beautiful little book!
And with that, back to work on sundry projects.
Tuesday 21 April 2026 to Tuesday 28 April 2026
Apr. 28th, 2026 03:19 pmmousetrapplingBooks
- “Understanding Early Civilizations” Bruce G. Trigger
Finished the introduction & taking a pause for some fiction before I move on to the meat of the book. The final chapter of the introduction set out what evidence he used & how he interpreted it, so the “methods” section of the book. Essentially he went through the literature for all seven civilisations and compiled a list of their features so far as we know – from archaeological data and from documentary evidence. A lot of the chapter talked about how the data is of necessity incomplete, there’s a lot we don’t know about any of these cultures but the missing parts aren’t consistent so you can still do comparisons of the ones where you do have good data. He also spent time on talking about the biases of scholarship in the various fields, and noting that he can’t claim to be unbiased either. - “The Mercy of Gods” James S. A. Corey
This is a new book by the authors of The Expanse series. Quite some mental whiplash reading this after a couple of Adrian Tchaikovsky books that made me think of The Expanse, coz this book made me think of Tchaikovsky. It’s a far future non-Earth setting with aliens (and the humans don’t remember how they got to the planet, there’s some sort of catastrophe in their history, but they know they’re alien coz of the different biology).
Podcasts
- The Rest is Politics Leading
- Interview with Ai Weiwei.
- Interview with Sarah McBride.
- Talk 90s to Me
- Interview with an actress who played a long running character on Eastenders, which I’ve never watched. She was a kid in the 90s when she started on the show.
- another episode about something I’ve never watched – a TV drama called This Life which I don’t think I’d even heard of.
- The Rest is Politics
- More on the Mandelson scandal, where they both have clearly lost respect for Starmer. Plus more on the Iran war, and a short bit of a reminder about the atrocities happening in the Sudan civil war.
- Q&A episode, covering stuff including Trump v. the Pope and how weird it is to be telling the Pope he’s doing theology wrong if you’re a Catholic (which Vance is, not Trump)
- an episode from a month ago plugging Dominic Sandbrook’s new podcast about books, with a bit of chat with Alastair then an excerpt from their episode about 1984.
- The History of Egypt
- Interview with Campbell Price about Khaemwaset.
- Brief overview of the history of the GEM and what museums are left in Cairo.
- Empire
- Back to the Mao series. This episode covered the disastrous famine caused by the Great Leap Forward.
- and the next episode was the Cultural Revolution (which tied in well with the Ai Weiwei episode of The Rest is Politics Leading), and then through to Mao’s death & legacy.
- Starting a series about the Arab-Israeli wars in the 60s, 70s & 80s, as a useful background to the current war.
- The Rest is Science
- an episode about infinity, paradoxes involving infinity, and calculus.
- an episode about cancer, and cutting edge research that is being done on new ways to treat or prevent it (like there’s a vaccination in development for lung cancer, and there’s methods in development for taking someone’s T-cells out, inserting new instructions for what to target, then putting them back in the body, basically vaccination done in vitro with someone’s own cells)
- another episode about infinity, mostly focusing on different sizes of infinity and the work of Cantor.
- The History of Byzantium
Some counterfactuals about how the history of Byzantium could’ve gone differently, and some listener questions. - The Bunker
- An episode about Canada, MAGA and the Albertan Seperatists, and how worried Canada should be (the interviewee was a bit on the fence between very and not so much so long as you start to do something to push back).
- An episode about Orwell & things being “Orwellian” prompted by a new film called “Orwell: 2+2=5” which is part documentary part biopic about Orwell & his work (1984 in particular).
- Weekly Wrap Up, obviously focusing a lot on the Mandelson scandal, but also a bit on the Iran war.
- Start the Week, a bit on the Trump assassination attempt (dwelling mostly on how deadened to it all we seem to’ve got), and a bit on whether or not Keir Starmer lasts much longer as leader (they thought post locals at least).
- Oh God What Now
- More on the Mandelson scandal from the perspective of what happens next in the Labour party, also a section with a guest who has written a book about how to prompt AI better (I was pleased to hear one of the panel say she was an AI refusenik, and also pleased to hear the guest say that the point of the book was that he doesn’t think people realise how little you can rely on the answers you get, but less pleased that he seems to’ve bought into the idea that these things have some sort of agency (e.g. referring to them being manipulative)).
- The Trump assassination attempt, and the King’s state visit, plus a look at Reform’s promise to make school history lessons patriotic again.
- The Rest is Politics US
- Obviously about the Iran war, and also about the sackings of a variety of senior military people. And a bit about the Democrats redrawing constituency boundaries in a particular state (this whole redistricting/gerrymandering thing feels weird as a non-US person, and like cheating).
- The History of Philosophy in China
An interview episode, also with the co-writer of this series (Karyn Lai), as a celebration of reaching 50 episodes of the series. Looked at the schools of thought they’ve covered so far as a whole – Daoism, Confucianism & Mohism – talking about things like how much they were schools, how they overlapped or did not, and also about how looking at philosophy from other cultures not just one’s own broadens the mind even of a professional philosopher. - The History of England
After the Treat of Dover Charles II takes England into war against the Dutch again on the behest of the French, it goes poorly and not only do the English lose the war but Charles loses the respect of his people. - Origin Story
Recording of the live event they did a week or so ago – first half was a takedown of Matt Goodwin, both his career & his most recent book (which Dorian reckoned wasn’t completely written by ChatGPT as it would’ve been blander then which isn’t a compliment). Second half was films that have similar themes to the overall themes of the podcast & then a Q&A.
TV
- Egypt with Dan Snow
- Travelogue rather than Egyptology, and really rather shallow even taking that into account. But pretty enough that we’ll watch more than just this episode (which was about Luxor & environs).
- A bit of Nile cruise, and a bit around Aswan including going south to Abu Simbel, it remains rather shallow but pretty. Of particular amusement was them highlighting a cartouche while talking about the Emperor Hadrian as if it contained his name … it did not. It said “per-aa” which is the Egyptian word that has turned into Pharaoh in English, so not a specific king’s name at all!
- Arts Most Satanic
Devils in art, and the evolution of the representation of the devil from fallen angel to demonic presence. A little taken aback by him using the Egyptian deity Bes as one of his examples of devils from other cultures, as Bes isn’t coded evil in ancient Egyptian religion.
Games
- Diablo IV
Opened up Torment II, and got ourselves up to a Tier 26 Pit. Ticked off a few low hanging bits of the Season Journey but we were too busy & this season was too short for us to’ve got far. Think I enjoyed it more than J as I’d lucked into a character type that suited the season gimmicks.
Talks
- “The Arabic Excavation Archive from Qift: Digitization, transcription, and translation of the Arabic Diaries from the Harvard-MFA excavations in Egypt and Sudan, 1913-1947” Arabic Diaries project team
The Egyptian foremen who worked for Reisner whilst he was excavating in Egypt and the Sudan in the early 20th Century kept extensive records in Arabic of the excavations they led. These diaries were rediscovered in the early 21st Century and this team is working on making them available to the public & other archaeologists as a resource and on getting what information they can about the workers etc that is recorded in these diaries.
Weird dream channel — The Japanese Navy
Apr. 27th, 2026 11:31 ambrithistorianI'm still here. The antiseizure medicine crosstaper has been wreaking havoc on my energy levels, so I haven't been able to do as much as anything as I would like, which including posting and reading here, but the dream I had last night was so strange I wanted to be sure to tell you all about it:
I dreamed I had enlisted in the Japanese Navy. I was going to be serving on a submarine. I was going to be. . . *drumroll please*. . . a cake decorator!
Unfortunately, I woke up before I got to see how myself in action, but I'd like to take a moment to thank my recruiting officer, Bonnie, for believing in me and convincing me to sign up.
Also, oddly, in my dream the Japanese Navy didn't have boot camp or anything like it. You signed the forms with your recruiting officer, you walked down the hall to a place that looked like a cafeteria, where you were handed a paper bag containing your uniforms and sundries, and then you walked through a door and down a ramp onto the ship. Apparently everything after that was on-the-job training.
And one thing we absolutely HAVE to do...
Apr. 27th, 2026 10:21 amseawasp... is HOLD EVERYONE ACCOUNTABLE for this absolute disaster that has been foisted on the world.
Every single perpetrator involved in the Epstein trafficking network needs to be arrested, tried, and if convicted put away for a long, long time. (I do not support the death penalty for a number of reasons, but if I did...) This is first in my list because it's absolutely GOBSMACKING to me that this hasn't already brought down dozens if not hundreds of people. It should, and it must.
Trump and his entire administration need to be impeached (if possible after the midterms) or arrested afterwards, tried, and if convicted also put away for life. These people haven't just screwed the USA, they've hurt most of the world -- even our supposed allies AND our supposed enemies -- in inexcusable ways.
Elon Musk and his DOGE boys need to be brought up on charges of data theft and espionage, at the least, for their vandalizing and thieving ways in their illegal "DOGE" activities. (Musk also probably needs a lot of treatment for bad drug use)
A large number of those in Congress need to be investigated for their activities that have supported the criminal President and his people.
The Supreme Court Justices who've been clearly working against the very CONCEPT of justice need to be impeached and kicked out of office and then put on trial for corruption.
It's hard to FATHOM the degree and extent to which the current administration and its people have corrupted and damaged our institutions, and ALL of that needs to be fixed.
We need to re-instate AND make more clear and powerful the regulations that prevent companies from casually damaging our environment.
We need to revoke any Trump-derived licenses to exploit our national forests and parks and monuments and re-establish the protections on those invaluable resources.
We must strip away all of the Evangelical-inspired changes to our health, education, and general welfare supporting agencies.
We need to do all this, and a lot more -- while, as I posted earlier, also GOING BEYOND -- PLUS ULTRA! to make the USA a GOOD place to live, and not a Bad Example for the rest of the world.
"We can't do all that!" Actually, we can.
Apr. 27th, 2026 08:38 amseawaspBehind the cut...
We need to explicitly, in law, make it clear that ANY organization -- commercial, nonprofit, government -- has its FIRST responsibility to the people and region in which it exists. Its SECOND responsibility is to its CUSTOMERS -- the specific people or organizations that its products or services will be used by. Its THIRD responsibility is to its WORKERS -- the employees who do all the work. (I'm not sure if that shouldn't be the second, but I think this is the best setup). The FOURTH responsibility, then, is when we reach the investors, the stockholders.
There are currently data centers being planned which will take up a vast amount of the water and energy resources of the area they'll be built in -- enough to seriously impact the hundreds of thousands of people living in the area, making such resources more scarce, and more expensive, perhaps even seriously restricted in availability. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. This should be ILLEGAL. A company that wants to build something with so great an impact should FIRST have to demonstrate how they will INCREASE the carrying capacity of the region -- how they will generate more power, how they can bring in more water, etc. -- without damaging the environment OR putting the burden of their operations on the general populace. Expenses of a company should be ON the company.
There are many companies whose employees often require public assistance just to survive. This, ALSO, should NEVER happen. A company whose employees take X billion dollars in public assistance should have to pay that X billion dollars straight back to the government. Plus a penalty for making people jump through hoops just to live (see "Basic Human Value" below).
*Universal healthcare. Every other civilized country on Earth has this. Yes, you can find horror stories of waits or mistreatment or whatever for all of those countries, but -- no surprise here -- you can find worse ones in job lots HERE. I can tell you some of ours, and ours haven't been nearly as bad as many other people have experienced. In actuality, people in comparable countries with universal healthcare are paying less for better care and are healthier. The USA's life expectancy is LOWER than that of most of the first world, because most of us are afraid to go to the doctor unless we're deathly ill or in some kind of major accident. This will NOT result in "unpaid doctors" -- the bloated healthcare costs in the USA are almost entirely due to the parasitic insurance industry. The taxes I'd have to pay for additional universal healthcare would be TRIVIAL compared to what I currently have to pay just to insure me and my wife (fortunately, NYS has programs that have generally covered my kids). You could (and probably should) double nurses' and doctors' salaries and STILL drastically reduce the costs of healthcare here. While NOT reducing the quality -- likely improving it.
*Universal bodily autonomy. The sad thing is that this is an assumed fact in a LOT of law. It's just that there are specific areas that a relatively small, but very vocal, group of people keep insisting that bodily autonomy shouldn't apply to, and of course most of this gets put on women and other minority groups. The right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy is one of the most obvious, but this issue also applies to trans people, and also to the general ... well, shocking APATHY that seems to apply to the abuse of women and girls in general. The basic principle needs to be explicitly and universally written into law so that there's literally no BASIS for people to deny others control over their own body.
*Universal Human Value. We have this stated in various documents, in different ways, most obviously in the Declaration of Independence ("...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."), but the LAW has been rather patchwork about this, and because of that an awful lot of people suffer who shouldn't.
Specifically, we need to directly, and forcibly in law, recognize that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING has these rights that we declare above, and that these are not PASSIVE rights, but ACTIVE ones. Every human being has the right to live. Every human being as the right to liberty. Every human being has the right to be able to pursue their own happiness. AND THIS MEANS EVERY HUMAN BEING MUST HAVE THE RESOURCES TO MEET THESE RIGHTS.
There is no "right to life" if your ability to LIVE is at the mercy of someone else. If you have the right to life, you have the RIGHT to eat. You have the RIGHT to be sheltered from bad weather. You have the RIGHT to healthcare to keep you from dying or suffering.
There is no "right to liberty" if your existence is so constrained that you literally have no choice but to spend all of your time surviving. There is no liberty in a grinding bare existence. You have the RIGHT to a life that gives you choices beyond "suffer and live" and "suffer and die".
There is no "right to the pursuit of happiness" if you have neither time nor resources to apply to the pursuit. You have the right to a life that allows you leisure, that allows you pleasure, that allows you, in short, to LIVE FULLY as a human being. Happiness ITSELF cannot be guaranteed -- that's partly due to our own natures and choices -- but there's a big difference between existing hand-to-mouth and actually LIVING in a way that might give you a chance to be happy.
*Explicit separation of religions and government. We've had too much trouble from having to argue whether that provision is actually in the Constitution; it needs to be put in specifically. This includes not merely eliminating the use of religion as a justification or framework for how government should act, but also explicitly eliminating any assumptions that any one religion is superior inherently to any other and therefore able to be used as a tool to oppress others. The Heritage Foundation and their apocalyptic Evangelical associates have made it clear that this is a necessary change.
It is absolutely possible for us to ACHIEVE ALL OF THIS, and not in decades. And we need to be TRYING to achieve it, and a number of other goals, from this very moment onward, not talking about maybe, someday, after we've slowly dragged things back to the very unsatisfactory way they used to be ten or fifteen years ago.
We need to follow Mamdani's example, and work on changing things at the local and state, as well as the Federal, level. Local social support programs can be invaluable; my own Rensselaer County has a number of services that help a lot of people maintain their basic living dignity. This isn't something that HAS to be dumped entirely on the Federal government. It is something that can, and should, be supported from the local through county through state level up to the Federal level.
Yes, of course, there's a lot more to write on all of the above, and a lot more to write on other important subjects we need to address, but I think for now that's more than enough to chew on!
(no subject)
Apr. 27th, 2026 05:50 amapod_feed
Inside the head of this interstellar monster is a star that is slowly destroying it.
they must have some sort of SAD lamp lighting on b5, right
Apr. 26th, 2026 10:04 amwychwood![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
3weeks4dreamwidth time! I'm not sure how much I have to contribute (and I already know that I'm never going to succeed at any sort of "post every day" routine), but I'm enjoying seeing other people's posts about it.This has been an entirely delightful weekend of doing basically nothing; I did a handful of one-off tiny tasks, which is always very satisfying (e.g. Tesco finally brought me the funnel I had ordered, so I decanted shower gel from the big tub I used to capture the contents of the leaking shower gel refill packet a few months back into saved and washed-out shower gel bottles) and the laundry, but that was about it. I do need to get back into doing the washing up more-or-less every day, though; after three days of avoidance I forced myself to do it this afternoon, but only had space for half on the draining board, so it's all to do again tomorrow...
But the weather has been beautiful (I've had all the windows open except when I was out at church) and I have done some pleasant reading, including some fanfic and most of the Tablet backlog, and I've done another grocery shop because I suddenly realised that my entire fruit and veg stock was down to two-thirds of a cabbage and some apples, and I played some more Terra Nil, and I have not touched any of the obligations I might have done, and sometimes that is just what I want from a weekend.
And then tonight it's "Signs and Portents" and shit is about to get real on Babylon 5. Excited to see it!
3W4D: Found poetry
Apr. 27th, 2026 03:21 pmmerrileemakes
3weeks4dreamwidth is celebrating Dreamwidth's anniversary!Come join in for fun, memes, activities, and more ♥
Here's a meme from this post over at
3weeks4dreamwidthPut your
I'm not a huge fan of memes, or poetry, but I do want to post more during 3W4D and I do occasionally indulge in found poetry, so here goes. Here's the first 20 songs with lyrics from my 'Liked music' playlist on YouTube Music.
( Read more... )
liminal
Apr. 26th, 2026 03:13 pmjazzfishMidway, aka Not O'Hare, is a perfectly decent little airport. I seem to be the only person I know without at least one O'Hare horror story, but then it's been over a decade since I've gone through there. Regardless, Midway's probably nicer. Also it seems that all airport wifi now has "watch a thirty-second ad before we let you connect," which both irritates me and makes me a little sad. And the glory of the world is less than it once was.
My iPad's charging port is dead yet again. The Enter key on my keyboard is failing to register sometimes. Bah, technology.
I'm in Midway for another couple of hours and then I fly to Minneapolis for a week. And on Friday I have an interview for a "document analyst" position, which sounds like "tech writer with extra steps." The interview is in-person, which I wasn't expecting; I'm just glad it's coming at a halfway convenient time. Sometime this week I shall have to go out and acquire Interview Clothes. This is less annoying than it might be since I don't actually own much in the way of Interview Clothes, at least not that fit.
I'm trying not to think too much about the interview. Not til I'm someplace where I can relax a bit more, anyway. It's with the Twin Cities Metropolitan Council, so it's an In to Local Government which is where I'd like to be. Per the job description it's got some GIS-esque stuff going on; and by my back-of-envelope calculations it pays enough to live on and save a bit. It would be nice, I think. It would certainly be nice to have one of my two Big Immediate Problems solved.
My fingers have been vaguely itchy for the viola the last several days. This is... it's new. I'm enjoying it. I left my violin at Steph's last time so I'll have some outlet / ability to practise, at least, and I've got a flashcard app so I can see how many tunes I can actually remember.
I wish I'd realised sooner how... how good musicking is for me? How it's something that can actually call to me? Something like that. I'm honestly a bit startled that anything does, let alone music. I'd just sort of assumed that Feeling Drawn To A Thing was yet another thing about me that doesn't work like everyone else.
And I don't know how I could have possibly gotten here, not just from where I was but from any plausible diversion from that. If my folks had let me take bass instead of cello, like I wanted to, I'd probably wind up playing bass guitar, which would be pretty cool but not really the same. If one of my early cello teachers had offered something outside of Standard Classical Repertoire... I might have gone somewhere with that? I really don't know. Water under the bridge, regardless. I wish I'd gotten to "here" sooner; I'm pretty happy with where I've gotten to.
Ann C--, a violinist who shared a teacher with me for several years in Fayetteville, pinged me last month to let me know that our teacher had died. I'd been vaguely intending to reach out to Dr Boyce and let her know that I'd picked up viola, but never got around to it. Every so often I try to look up Ms West née Wiley, the bassist/cellist that Dr Boyce handed me off to once I'd gotten past her level of expertise on cello, and I never manage to find anything on her. Tegen, my pre-plague viola teacher, has gotten married, moved down south, and started cranking out babies, Jesus aphorisms, and MLM crap, which is disappointing but not surprising. Musicians: just as human as everyone else. (Ann, incidentally, is also Jesusy, but she appears to at least be the kind of Jesusy that's appalled by the current mask-off Republican party.)
No real resolution to this, which seems fitting for something written in a liminal space. I think I shall go and try to find some tea, and sit and think and zone out for awhile.
My centre is collapsing,
my right is in retreat.
Impossible to manoeuvre.
Situation excellent.
I am attacking.
--Marshal Ferdinand Foch, First Battle of the Marne
Pieces of my past, part 1 (long)
Apr. 26th, 2026 12:14 pmjim_pI think I first got this feeling when I was in a Boy Scout storytelling circle, and realized I had pretty much nothing to share. The reason for this was at the time my life was pretty limited. Other boys were talking about the time they went fishing, or went out on their dad's boat, that sort of thing. I had school (which nobody in the circle wanted to hear about) and the rest of my life was taken up by the family business, which I was forbidden to talk about.
The reason I could not talk about the family business was because my parents operated from home in violation of zoning laws. They were paranoid that somehow word would filter back to the authorities and they'd be shut down (they were the original "Laws for thee but not for me" folks).
So now I'm going to spill the tea with a vengeance. My parents, Ronald and Norma Paradis of 607 Harbor View Boulevard, Somerset, MA operated a business with machinery out of their home in violation of zoning laws. They were in the direct mail business, and our basement was full of 1960s-vintage machinery for addressing and stuffing envelopes.
Here is one of the machines: a Phillipsburg Inserter. It could automatically stuff up to four inserts into an envelope, seal them, and count them. Stacks of outer envelopes and inserts went in, and stacks of stuffed envelopes came out.
Being a homebased business started on a shoestring, my dad bought used equipment and tinkered with it to get it working. Boy, did he tinker. This thing was constantly jamming and acting up, and so he had to twiddle with various adjustments to get it to behave. I still own the very screwdriver he used to do the tinkering. He was constantly angry, on edge, and cursing up a storm about this.
One day when I was maybe five years old, I had a friend over, and I told her "We have an inserting machine. It's always broken". My mom overheard this, dragged me aside, and laid into me about how we were never to talk about this to anyone. I was just trying to make conversation and mom shut that down. The message was clear: don't try to make conversation in case you accidentally spill the tea.
Being a small family business it consumed our lives. I was frequently dragged in to do various tasks for the business, from hand-stuffing envelopes for small jobs, to operating the addressing machine, to operating this very inserting machine, to operating even bigger machines that I'll talk about later. Of course, having an underage child operating industrial machinery like this was its own brand of illegal, which my parents emphasized was yet another reason to not breathe a word about it to anyone. I didn't get an allowance, I got paid for the hours I worked in the business.
So here it is, the inserting machine that I was forbidden to talk about, for everyone to see (this picture is not the actual machine; it's a newer model for illustration purposes). If you want to see one in action take a look at this short video. This is the kind of story that *could* have made me interesting back then, if only I was allowed to tell it. Which I'm doing now.
Part of me wishes I could go back and drop a dime on my parents...
Booklog 40/26: Sebastien de Castell: Our Lady of Blades - Court of Shadows Series (Greatcoats).
Apr. 25th, 2026 09:13 pmjacey
Kindle edition. Due for publication May 2026.
Set in the world of the Greatcoats, and featuring some peripheral characters from earlier stories, Rijou's infamous judicial duels are often just a method of legalised murder. How can a mild-mannered jeweller protect himself from a champion duellist who deals death for fun? The Court of Blades has become corrupt and cruel. Enter a mysterious duellist, calling herself Lady Consequence. Once she had another name, and a wealthy and influential family well-known in Rijou, until betrayal struck them down. Now, seven years later, all she has left is a desire to save her younger brother. But there is another - a sister of sorts - also raised to the sword. Each sister believes the other dead, but each has a part to paly. This is a novel of betrayal, corruption, family, identity, and mind games perpetrated by a master. I love the world of the Greatcoats, and though this is perhaps not my favourite, it's still well worth reading.