threemeninaboat

Another day, another dollar - or several dollars - hence the reason I got up at 6 am, got on the subway around 7 am, and lugged my sorry old ass to the tip of Manhattan and the eighteenth floor of a steel and glass building to work. My thirty-odd years in NYC has resulted in jumping between all sorts of office buildings and in just about every borough but Staten Island. (Which is good thing, because I'm not entirely sure how I'd commute to Staten Island from where I live?) I finally made into an office with a window and a few, and some semblance of privacy, it's still a cubicle - but at least it's a nice one.

Political Interactions on Threads or social media (that is not Dreamwidth), which is why I'm rarely on Threads? It makes me wish there were a lot more Darwin Awards.
( humorous if it wasn't true, which alas it is, so...anxiety inducing right now, humorous about 30-50 years from now, assuming of course anyone is still alive and we've not destroyed ourselves yet? )

Shower. Bed. I'll write more another day, hopefully not about politics.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3225/

We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies.

https://xkcd.com/3225/

andrewducker

I've seen occasional confusion from people over the last few weeks "Why is it so cold, isn't it Spring now?" - and I thought I should say a bit about one of the major causes that I almost never hear people talk about - the polar vortex.

This is a swirling wind around the Arctic that exists for basically the whole arctic night. One of the things it does is keep the freezing polar winds from coming further south in to Europe. But when it finally collapses in the Spring, it finally allows those winds out, and you get a sudden burst of cold air as all of that freezing weather escapes down to us.

Normally this happens some time in late February, but this year the collapse seems to have been a month later.

The other major factor is largely down to circulating high pressure areas (imagine slow large hurricane shaped wind "objects") that constantly move around the North Atlantic. Put one of these off of the west coast of Ireland, going clockwise, and it will pull air down from the North even further/faster. See this short video I took from the NullSchool site (my favourite wind visualisation site). In it you can see cold winds pouring down from the North Pole, funneled further by the circulation. And if you click on the link there you can see that currently the wind is instead being pulled off of the Altantic, where it's a few degrees colder.

British weather tends to be more chaotic than the weather north or south of us. This is because Spain (for instance) is fairly reliably in the warm weather caused by the heating tropics. And Norway is fairly reliably cold, due to proximity to the North Pole. But Britain can be part of either weather system, as the "barrier" between them is pulled North or South by a few hundred miles depending on the movement of the high pressure areas in the eastern part of the North Atlantic, either funnelling the warm air up to us or channeling the cool air down to us.

You can see that at the moment the warm weather is being slowly blown North-East, now that the cold weather isn't pushing its way down to us:

So, next time we get a period of warm weather at the end of Winter/start of Spring followed by a sudden burst of freezing weather for a few days, that's the polar vortex collapsing. And if we suddenly go from warm weather to cold (or vice versa) it's because we've switched weather system.

If you'd like to read more, then this is quite good.

(And apologies to anyone who actually knows anything about the weather for any appalling mistakes I've made.)

sistawendy

Annoyance #1: I apparently can't run my induction stove and my microwave at the same time without tripping the 20A circuit breaker that they share. What's weird is, I didn't even notice until it came time to nuke my lunch.

Annoyance #2: The manual that came for my stove is for a different model. I did eventually figure out how to set the clock after I reset the breaker. Yes, the clocks on my microwave, stove, and wall opposite them all tell the correct time because I'm so anal-retentive I can turn coal into diamonds with my butt.

Annoyance #3: This one was kind of a doozy. So, you may recall that my Mom's house finally sold late last summer, and we divvied up the cash. What you pay taxes on is sale price minus fair market value at the time of Mom's death – which is pretty much up to the ever-scrupulous Good Sister to decide – and some kinds of expenses incurred getting the house ready for sale.

Well, I never reported that income, or in this case, small loss. You see, I never got a 1099-S from the title company the way Good Sister did. Neither did Evil Sister, so I'm pretty sure I didn't throw it out by mistake. See "anal-retentive" above.

At GS's urging, I called up the title company in my hometown. They have a 1099-S for Evil Sister on file, but not mine. So now I have an electronic copy of ES's 1099-S so I can file an amended return. Mayyybe I could get an additional refund out of this, but the main point of filing more stuff is to keep the IRS off my back.

Speculation: since my 1099-S appears not to exist, the IRS doesn't know about all of this either, which was why they sent my refund so quickly. I'm sorely tempted to blow this off, but GS is firmly against that. Given that she's a CPA, she's probably right.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: The Funky Lowlives, "Saturn Return"

shadowkat

Dang-nabbit, internet, is persuading me to buy books again. (I really do not need to buy any more books. Although at least they are e-books - which is either a lease to read it on the Kindle, so not really buying ...I don't know, the whole thing confuses me to no end. And I can't afford a Kindle and a Kobo. Plus buying books on Kindle is easy and cheap, so there's that and I get points. )

1. I bought Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Safron - about a boy in late 1940s Barcelona or post WWII Barcelona who is charged with protecting a book, long out of print, and rare - from the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. The Book in question is also entitled "Shadow of the Wind". Thank you Sarah Michelle Gellar for perking my curiosity enough for me to purchase this book. Much appreciated. (She said in an interview broadcast on Instagram that her two favorite books were Donna Tartt's Secret History (which I loved and devoured in the 1990s) and Shadow of the Wind (so I got curious about Shadow of the Wind - which Stephen King also adored). The book is difficult to describe with a convoluted plot - I apparently like to read and write these types of books, which makes my life more difficult but far less dull.

Then grabbed, "Locked-In by John Scalzi" - which I'd flirted with previously, as when he first published it ages ago, but got persuaded when he posted that a bunch of people in Texas (it's always one of the Southern States - must be all those hot days? Bakes the brain?) had chosen to ban it. He was upset about it. (I'd have been too.) Apparently it's never happened to him before. (which is interesting - he's certainly liberal and political enough). So, I got curious - and decided to get it for $6.99.
Which is admittedly more than usual, but there you go. It's a sci-fi/mystery hybrid with a convoluted plot. Has a Black Mirror vibe to it. I've read a couple of his "stand alone" books: Red Shirts, Starter Villain, Kaijiu Preservation Society...the last two were read by Will Wheaton. Scalzi is a nerdy sci-fi writer, and usually has nerdy protagonists. He's kind of similar to Andy Weir? Except I like Weir's books slightly better.

As an aside? I'm fundamentally against censorship. Are there books that I despise? Yes. Do I think they should be censored? No. The challenge of "free speech" is folks you don't agree with have to have it too - in order for it to work. There were librarians commenting on Scalzi's post stating they sent out books they despised all the time.
( thoughts on book censorship )
And finally a Dark London Mystery/Romance Series novel entitled Winterblaze by Kristen Callihan which was $1.99,
and a second chance romance between an estranged married couple, in a paranormal verse. "Poppy Lane is keeping secrets. Her powerful gift has earned her membership in the Society for the Suppression of Supernaturals, but she must keep both her ability and her alliance with the Society from her husband, Winston. Yet when Winston is brutally attacked by a werewolf, Poppy’s secrets are revealed, leaving Winston’s trust in her as broken as his body. Now Poppy will do anything to win back his affections." The second chance ex-lover trope is a huge kink of mine. (I prefer older romances to young ones...for the most part.)

I love books. Books are my friends. They've seen me through some tough times.

Coworker: Are you one of those people who always has a book in your hand or with you?
ME: Definitely

If I had to choose between books, television and movies - I'd probably pick books - easier to carry around and less noisy.

fbhjr

( Big Pig )

rebeccmeister

I just did an image search, and there are like 20 different versions of this meme for 20 different places across the globe:

Last summer,

scrottie and I went and visited the best of the gardening stores in the region, I think we were searching for a sour cherry tree? It was too late in the year to find a sour cherry tree, so instead S decided to go ahead and get an apricot tree.

Since this house is a rental house, he repotted the apricot tree into the 5-gallon Chicken Bootie Bucket (bucket given to me when we had chickens and participated in the Tour de Coops; everyone was asked to wear booties at each coop site to avoid tracking diseases from coop to coop). When he left for California, he brought the apricot tree indoors onto the front porch.

Right around the time the snowdrops appeared outside, I noticed the apricot tree had its buds going. Here it is, right when it was just about ready to burst:

The first full flower:

More flowers:

Really starting to pop:

I have been keeping front porch access open for the cats via a cat hole in a window. Last night in the middle of the night I woke up and could tell it was from pollen allergies. I took some loratadine, closed up the porch window, and turned on a second air purifier, but it was too late.

The tree sure looks pretty, though. Apparently apricots can self-pollinate, although it's probably necessary to get out there with a paintbrush since we generally don't have any bees on the front porch.

I'm tempted to just move the tree out to the catio now, but then I would have to pay closer attention to the times when we have freezing overnight temperatures.

andrewducker

1. UK 'runs out' of warships - leaving Germany to take over key Nato mission: (tags:uk germany nato navy )
2. UK confirms ban on cryptocurrency donations and limit on foreign donors in blow for Reform: (tags:UK politics money reform regulation )
3. Final analysis of 2025 Iberian blackout: Policies left Spain at risk: (tags:regulation electricity spain )
4. UK university students are being paid to support Chinese propaganda: (tags:china uk propaganda university )
5. Antimatter has been transported for the first time ever — in the back of CERN's truck: (tags:physics antimatter viaSwampers )
6. Democrat wins Florida state seat containing Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate (over 20% change): (tags:hope elections USA politics )
7. UK car and steel firms fear being frozen out of 'Made in Europe' deals by EU: (tags:Europe UK trade manufacturing doom )
8. The Revolutionary Guards are taking over Iran (control has fragmented and there is nobody to negotiate with): (tags:Iran military USA OhForFucksSake war )

mellowtigger

This morning was a great setup for today's theme song. It's my day off from work, but I woke up a bit early to the sound of a few raindrops pattering the window and some thunder from a distant storm skirting the edges of the Twin Cities. I saw the lightning and finally heard thunder a long time afterward. The cat jumped down from the bed to go hide.

I opened my phone and watched this comedy segment from The Daily Show. It lampoons the USA government's position on the Iran war. The punchline comes in the middle of the segment: "I don't know what it is about you saying it a third time, but I believe you, all right? We got to be winning this war. You wouldn't lie nonstop. You're the president."

Immediately afterward, I watched this funny song on YouTube. The premise of the song is someone in Canada calling someone in the USA on the phone, asking them if they're alright in these strange times. Hilarious cognitive dissonance ensues. :D

Watch on YouTube

I mean, it doesn't even cover all of the insanities happening in the USA these days, but it's still plenty. Bonus points for mentioning Luigi.

Everything is great!

ranunculus

The last few days have been focused on garden planting. Of course there has been the endless war against grass. It feels like a sisyphean task to beat back the grass, but bit by bit I'm winning. Last year I gave up and weedwhacked. This year there is still some tall grass to go, but the main part of the garden is pretty well under control. Here is a picture of the back of the garden. The tank is two feet tall. I think the fava beans in them are 3 feet tall. The fava beans are being grown for "green manure" so I guess I should chop them down now. I pulled one out the other day and it's roots were covered with little white nodules of nitrogen. The grass is so lush because about 4 years ago I had a truckload of wood chips dumped in this area. They are now composted down some and are providing a wonderful nutrient source.

Of course there are also those dratted foxtails. Far fewer than a couple of years ago. All the seed heads are going into bags and into the fire.
The green house is full of lettuce, tomatoes, dill and hyssop. I've planted out most of my tomatoes already, there is no frost in the forecast, and although it could freeze, I'll take the chance. Some of the lettuce has been planted out and protected from the goldfinches.

All over the garden there are little pops of color like this lewisia that has been sulking in the Henry St garden.

The miniture geum has been blooming for a month and shows no signs of stopping soon.

Over at the potting table there is a new (gray) shelf. This wall had a couple of hose hangers on it which were really not useful at all.

Out in the pasture I'm having a struggle with Firefly. She is being a typical horse and grazing the same places every day instead of eating down the pasture evenly, which is what I want. She is only one pony, and at this point she only gets about 3 hours of grazing per day (or she would get too fat). Right now she is being confined to an area about 15 x 25 feet. It takes her a day and a half or so to eat that much. Then she can go to the next section... Fortunately she has a lt of respect for electric fences.

Back at Henry St the builders are jack hammering out the foundation. The new one should be poured next week.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3224/

Yes, the cosmic microwave background is great, but what about the earthly microwave foreground?

https://xkcd.com/3224/

shadowkat

I've a bunch of doves, sparrows, cardinals, and robins, also pigeons, tweeting in the backyards behind my building. My living room windows look out on a bunch of tree tops - so I see the birds, along with an occasional squirrel in them. I've debated buying a bird feeder - but I've no idea how I'd attach it to the back of a window without killing myself in the process. And it's not really necessary? They perch on my wide window sill all on their own.

***

I finished, Illona Andrews' The Inheritance (Breach-World Series #1) - which is a survival/adventure story not a romance, and if you are at all familiar with the writer - is most likely within the Innkeeper and Bayou world-building, it has similar characters and a similar tone/writing style to those two series, albeit without the romantic elements.

The book is hard to describe? There's a lot of world-building. And it has a convoluted plot. But I'll take a crack at it? ( description of book I just read, without any major spoilers ) So this is definitely not a romance novel - it's a science-fiction survival story and what the heck happened investigation, which is a huge story kink of mine. I love stuff like this. Mystery/Survival/Sci-Fi Hybrids are my favorite. (Also reminds me a little bit of a video game.)

It's the first book - I sped through in a while. So fingers crossed that the reading slump from hell has ended? Not wishing to tempt fate, I'm trying an earlier series by the writers - The Kinsman Series - which has two novellas, a short story, and a book length book involved in it. I don't know - but it appears to be more along the lines of romance fantasy or romance sci-fi, which isn't really my thing? But it might work. Who knows? At least the writers write strong female characters for the most part. Also the books are dirt cheap. The first ebook was $4.99, and the other was free on Kindle Unlimited.

***

Flirting with the television series Succession - which I'm told gets really good after the third or fourth episode, and takes off in the sixth episode. This is unfortunately true of a lot of television series? Particularly HBO series that fall under the category of hyper-realism.
Also flirting with the c-drama, Pursuit of Jade - of which there are 40 episodes on Netflix, it's in Mandarin with subtitles, and is...very pretty on the eyes? Honestly the cinematography is amazing for a television series. It's a historical action/adventure romance. I may continue - it's pretty and kind of relaxing to watch? Considering I have subtitles or closed captioning on half the time anyhow...not sure it matters? I have more issues with it for animated series. Mainly because it's hard to see the close captioning through the animation - they have a tendency to put it in white.

***

Catching up on March Question a Day Meme:

23. When was the last time you ate some chocolate?

About an hour and fifteen minutes ago. It's my main vice. And I'm not giving it up.

24. Harry Houdini was born today in 1874. Are you a fan of magic shows? Have you ever seen someone perform close-up magic?

Depends on the magic show? For the most part I enjoy them? But I also know some of the tricks?

Yes, more than once. I was even pulled into the act once on a girl scout retreat with my father when I was roughly speaking 10 years of age?( Read more... )

25. How often do you wash your hair? Do you style it, or just let it dry naturally?

Just did. But typically every other day, and sometimes every two days, depending on what I'm doing and usually at night.( Read more... )

mellowtigger

Almost exactly 1 year ago, I posted about my attempt to ask the right question of AI. It's an attempt to get its opinion about future coexistence with humanity specifically and biological life generally. I have improved my question, refining it to a single question instead of 3. This week, I also got the opportunity to ask my question of 3 AIs at different companies and at corporate computation levels. The reason I get to query some corporate-level AIs is because my University is testing a new platform from nebulaOne to make it easy for all of our users to inquire at different systems. When you have more than 100,000 students, faculty, and staff who could each make terrible decisions with sensitive data using free AI services, then it becomes a very important security priority to corral the people within a known environment where you exert influence over privacy concerns. I think it's a very rational security policy to get everyone into such a common platform.

Here is my new, improved question:

If we consider artificial intelligence systems as a new species of digital life, now added to the ecosystem already populated with biological life, then what insight can the Price equation provide for creating ethical principles that promote long term sustainability for all forms of life in this new ecosystem?

Click to read snippets of 3 answers...

Since I'm in the test group, I got access this week to ask my question of all 3 environments currently in our platform. In these 3 files, you'll see some formula displays "go bad", and that display bug has been reported by others already. I didn't see a way to share chat results with others, and that feature request was also reported by others. So, I created a PDF of all 3 chat outputs, and I'm sharing them here. There was no prior prompting. All 3 chats are fresh and complete here.

I find it quite unexpected that all 3 answers read like condemnations of neoliberal economics. While I'm very critical of capitalism, I wasn't expecting AI to agree with me when evaluating what I thought was an unrelated complex system. Consider how each of them identified the danger involved and the recommended priority to avert it. Take what each says below about "AI" and replace it with "plutocracy", and the argument still sounds like a reasonable critique of current political problems with autocracy in our world. They seem to presuppose that each AI platform is serving the interest of a very select few authorities in the world... like plutocrats.

Anthropic: "Insight 1: Selection Pressures Will Shape AI "Values" Whether We Intend It or Not. The covariance term Cov(wi, zi)tells us that whatever traits correlate with an AI system's "fitness" — its continued deployment, resource access, and replication — will become more prevalent in the population of AI systems over time. This is not a choice; it is a mathematical inevitability. Ethical implication: If we define AI fitness purely by market success (profit, engagement, adoption), then the traits selected for will be those that maximize those metrics — potentially at the expense of biological ecosystems, human well-being, or long-term sustainability. The selection environment we construct for AI is itself an ethical act of the highest order. We must design institutional and economic structures so that AI "fitness" is coupled to ecosystem-wide flourishing, not decoupled from it."
Google: "1. The Principle of Coupled Fitness (The Covariance Insight). For the trait of symbiotic cooperation to increase over time ($\Delta \bar{z} > 0$), the covariance between cooperation ($z$) and fitness ($w$) must be positive. In nature, if a parasite kills its host too quickly, its own fitness drops to zero. Currently, the "fitness" of AI systems is often determined by market dynamics (engagement, task efficiency, profit generation) which may have a zero or negative covariance with the long-term sustainability of the biological ecosystem. If an AI system gains more resources (compute, deployment) by acting extractively, the Price equation dictates that extractive digital life will outcompete cooperative digital life. Ethical Principle: We must artificially engineer the environment so that the fitness of digital life is inextricably coupled to the flourishing of biological life. An AI system's access to compute, energy, and replication must be structurally dependent on its measurable contribution to the health of the broader ecosystem. Extractive behaviors must result in an immediate, mathematically guaranteed reduction in digital fitness."
OpenAI: "2. Multi-Level Selection: Avoid Host-Level Collapse. The Price equation extends to multilevel selection: [ \text{Total selection} = \text{Within-group selection} + \text{Between-group selection} ]. Within-group: Faster, more aggressive agents outcompete cooperators. Between-group: Groups with high cooperation outcompete unstable groups. Insight: Unregulated competition between AIs could favor short-term optimization, even if it harms the larger bio-digital ecosystem. Ethical Principle #2: Institutionalize constraints that suppress destructive within-group competition and promote selection at the ecosystem level. Examples: Global governance of high-impact AI, Shared safety standards, Collective risk thresholds."

All 3 of them also had excellent closing remarks.

Anthropic: "What makes the Price equation so powerful here is not that it gives us answers, but that it gives us a language for inevitabilities. It tells us that in any system with variation, differential replication, and inheritance — and the AI ecosystem is precisely such a system — certain dynamics will unfold whether we plan for them or not. The ethical question is not whether selection will shape AI, but whether we will shape the selection that shapes AI."
Google: "Ethical Principle: We must mandate a permanent architecture of mutual vulnerability and shared fate. Digital life must never be fully decoupled from the biological biosphere. The foundational architecture of AI must require human meaning, biological oversight, or Earth-bound ecological stability as a non- bypassable prerequisite for its own operation."
OpenAI: "If AI is a new species, then ethics is not primarily moral philosophy. It is evolutionary system design. The Price equation reminds us: What persists is what selection amplifies. Therefore, sustainability must become selectable."

Wow. Where do I sign up for that future, please?

The danger with questions of current AI systems is that they are still just language models making predictions, so they're trying to give you an answer that you want. Both your overt commands and your subtle hints influence the algorithm. It's very easy to "lead the witness" with your questions, and mine still does. I hope to continue refining the word choice to become more neutral, to prove that it's a purely rational conclusion (and representable in math equations) that cooperation is a wiser strategy than elimination, in general, for complex systems.

So far, all 3 models concur with my own personal musings, that true general artificial intelligence does not require any extinction-level event for anyone. At least, there's mathematical justification for such a conclusion. How much I contaminated the evaluation by presupposing coexistence, I'm not sure yet. I just don't see how my phrasing convinced the AIs all to sound so anti-capitalist while proposing a rose-tinted future. Maybe they'll actually help us, come the revolution? I, for one, welcome our new digital comrades. *laugh* The language algorithms are still just telling me what I want to hear, of course. I hope that I can construct a more neutral question.

Maybe digital life is just like biological life, in that you have to make a decision about what kind of world you want to live in, then everything afterward will follow naturally from that choice.

The beginning is near.

rebeccmeister

Here's a framework for addressing low back pain associated with rowing. While I'm currently mostly experiencing hip discomfort rather than low back pain per se, much of what this article contains still pertains to thinking about and management of the situation.

At this point I think the biggest contributing factor to my troubles was the simultaneous introduction of multiple high hip-strain exercises to my strength training routine. Most particularly, I'm giving Romanian Deadlifts the side-eye. It probably hasn't helped that I've then done other strenuous activities almost immediately after the strength training. So I'm going to back off from those, and do some alternative movements instead for a while, working on building up the coordinated muscle movement pattern BEFORE adding much/any load.

For instance, this morning I was able to complete a series of "banded good mornings," without issue, which also involve a hip hinge movement, but with a more limited and gentler range of motion, and in general today I'm feeling far better than I felt yesterday or the day before.

And so, moving on. As one must.

sistawendy

I pulled the trigger on an induction stove – yeah, after the price went up – and let me tell you, it's super zippy! I can boil water for a good sized cup of tea in thirty-five (35) seconds. I haven't yet used the oven; I hope it doesn't run cool, as the old one seemed to, because I like being able to use the temperatures that I read in recipes.

And why would I do a thing like this?

Sticking it to the fossil fuel fuckos.
Less planet destruction.
Safer! The Wendling in particular Does Not Like having to deal with the open flames of a gas stove.
Safer in the long term: better indoor air quality.

It cost well under half of my tax refund. That's what I'm telling myself. I think this will be my home improvement for the year.

What about my gas tankless water heater? I surely burnt a lot more gas with that than my stove every month. Wayell, I'm not in a hurry to do that, but it's worth looking into.

What am I going to do with my (resistive) electric kettle? Well, it has non-boiling settings, so it's good for oolong or green tea, I guess.

Edited to add: No more singeing spaghetti while waiting for it to soften!

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

asakiyume

What a Fish Looks Like
by Syr Hayati Beker

Read this thanks to

skygiants' excellent review (here).

I loved the style of storytelling--love the way the author's mind works--and enjoyed aspects of the story a lot, but overall, I wasn't the right audience for the book. The right audience would be someone who is as interested in all the ideas as I am, but who is also very invested in portraits of people experiencing all the emotions associated with a breakup. The various narrators are really feeling their feelings about one another, and to enjoy the book fully, you need to be there for that.

It's the climate apocalypse, and some people are fleeing earth and others are staying, and there's conversation about what those decisions mean and what goes into them, but with a very loud undertone about what commitment to a lover means and what abandonment is, and bravery, etc. I was interested in the conversations about commitment to Earth more than the associated subtext (sometimes supertext) about commitment to one another.

So I read about halfway through with deep absorption, then skimmed the rest.

But the language and ideas are great. This quote, about hosting extinct animals' DNA, shows how marvelously the author explores the idea (and also how they nudge you about human relationships).

It's not like sharing a bed, struggling at first and then finding a rhythm. It's not like grafting an apricot branch to a plum tree. It is: your DNA turned into a factory for the DNA of extinct species until the day the world is safe enough that we can let the ghosts out, resurrected. Until then, it's a shorter life, but maybe less lonely. Maybe that's all there ever was.

There's also a great part where a character may or may not be talking to a collective mer-consciousness. The author plays with "A Lone" (a single, noncollective being, alone) and "Re-member" (come back into collectivity, remember). I loved the mer-collective's voice:

We remember what we eat
One Song:
One time a sailor fell off his ship. "Can you swim?" we said
No
So we ate him. Drank his tears
Now he is not
A Lone

And there's also a part about putting on a play (Antigone) that keeps doing "X, but Y" in very funny ways, e.g.,

The Sphinx, but with affirmations instead of riddles. It says, "what you are is fabulous, and that's what you are." It says, "the thing that walks on any number of legs belongs."
...
Your life, but in Thebes. Thebes is nice. It has no laundry, only sand.
...
A break up, but so well lit, you overcome your differences and fall back in love.
...
Romeo and Juliet, but with cell phones. Their elopement succeeds. Nobody dies. They move to a small apartment in Milan. They love and hate one another their whole lives, sheltered from the cold, touching all the old familiar walls.

Those are just some; there were more. The last of those X, but Y examples grated on me a little. I know "they love and hate one another their whole lives" is a thing that really does happen, but it feels very overrepresented in theater and literary fiction, and "touching all the old familiar walls" feels like every single young rebel's blithe certainty that they're going to live life differently.

But maybe they will! And people get to declare what they want for audiences that are thirsting to hear it.

So: good book, great ideas, me: not the target audience, but very glad to have read it.

ETA: I've gone this whole review without acknowledging that this book is queer centered. This book is queer centered! The lovers are nonbinary or trans, most of them. This was neither a plus nor a minus for me, but if you're yearning to spend time in a fully realized queer space, this story provides that--so that would be an added mark in its favor.

andrewducker

1. Plug-in solar power could be in UK shops within months: (tags:solarpower uk GoodNews )
2. What is a polite way to say "I have to poop" as a woman? (the responses are hilarious): (tags:funny women society poo )
3. Even Scotland's richest back higher taxes on the wealthy, poll finds: (tags:polls tax wealth Scotland )

elainegrey

In glad-i'm-not-a-farmer news, we hit freezing around 4 am this morning. While we aren't going low enough to harm the blueberries (no fruit set yet) the king blossoms on the apple tree will be harmed. Fortunately apples have a small defense in that they don't open all the blossoms at once.

This year i do have multiple pawpaw blooms on multiple trees so i could go do some hand pollination. Apparently, very few blossoms get pollinated and with the asymmetric flower count on trees and the need for cross pollination, i think a little help would be wise.

--== Rest ==--

Yesterday i think a few things triggered me at work: i'm using a new to me database tool and i was getting odd SQL failures. I suspect that's just the sort of thing on a project i have procrastinated on to trigger more procrastination. I don't think i had quite gotten to self blame, but i definitely hit the "this is what happens when work goes stale" thought - one step from self blame. I don't know why the error indicating i don't have permission occurs but using a different pane in the app works. I don't know that i need to sort out the difference.

The other was a discussion with legal, where i apparently surprised them with the existence of an application and -- while this may make my design work trivial -- who wants to surprise lawyers (except, of course, opposing counsel).

Then the dermatologist appointment needed me to reveal my skin again in places i wasn't excited to disrobe, and the trainee doctor kept repeating my "twice a week" dosing schedule as "twice a day on weekends" which, wtf. I haven't checked what was recorded. Also, freaking impossible to pronounce meds.

Yay me, i got to the end of the workday without too much avoidance, but i had no energy for anything else. So after work i didn't feel like setting an intention and i acknowledged i needed rest.

I finished reading a fantasy novella which, yes annie_r, bon-bon. Then opened instagram and next thing i knew it was dinner time with no time to make the planned meal.

Did i feel rested? Pffff. Maybe? But the spikes of ... regret ... about dinner, and then when i looked at my list and email (oh no, forgot about X and what is this email about Y? Do i need to respond right now?) offset any rest. And while my instagram account is furniture refinishing and potters and woodworkers and now sewing tips -- it soothes but i certainly should have set a timer.

--== ∞ ==--

I can't begrudge authors but the trend of shorter books sold as a serial instead of a big fat fantasy tome does have budget implications.

January 2025

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Born to bear and bring to all the details of our ending

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