lsanderson | Reading

But I will have a lot to report from Gaylaxicon.

My favorite thing, however? Thanks to the rain this morning, we got an honest-to-god rainbow over Gaylaxicon's last day this morning.

Image: photo taken from the hotel by attening professional, Kyell Gold.

calimac

Most of my recent adventures would have been inconvenient to describe, but I can tell you about this one.

I set off this morning to drive to the City for the Tachyon Books party. But I didn't get there. A few miles up the freeway, one of my tires shredded itself. I pulled over with caution and some difficulty and called AAA, figuring the guy could put on my temporary tire from the trunk - I wasn't going to try that myself, still less with a freeway immediately at my back - and I could limp to a tire store.

But when he arrived, he reported I had no temp. What? I did the last time I had to do this. But that was probably not this car. The man told me that temps are not standard equipment on Hyundais, and I didn't even get this one new, but surplus from a rental company.

So I had to wait again for a tow truck, first having a difficult colloquy with the first guy over where he was going to request the tow truck to take me. I hadn't had much need for a tire store lately, but I'd been pleased with the place I'd taken B's car a couple years ago when it needed a thorn removed from its paw. Guy didn't want to take me there. My free towing limit distance was 5 miles, and this was 9 miles; I'd have to pay $15/mile. I said I knew that. He went away to call it in and then came back and said he'd found a place closer than 5 miles. It was called Super Cheap Tires. I said I wasn't going to a place with a name like that; it sounded like a ripoff joint. He argued further but I insisted and repeated I was ready to pay.

When the tow truck driver arrived I told him also that I was ready to pay, but instead he pulled out his device and calculated a shorter route along local streets. It was 5.6 miles, he said, which made me wonder what route could possibly have been 9 miles. Furthermore, he said, he wouldn't charge me for the .6 mile.

I wonder if there's some reason other than desire to save the customer money to avoid tows that charge by the mile. Maybe there's paperwork they hate to fill out. Anyway, he took me there by an intelligent route. (I know this area; I've lived here since 1959.) He knew where the store was; he'd towed cars there plenty of times.

The store guys did their expected good and not-too-expensive job (see? Super Cheap, phooey) and I was on my way. But by now I wanted lunch more than to drive an hour to the City, and was pretty tired after all this, so I just went home.

kevin_standlee

Surprise! It's a post about the house.

In the summer months, we rarely use the clothes dryer because it's so warm and dry here that we can just hang stuff on a drying rack upstairs and it will dry out pretty quickly. But it's starting to cool off, and on a rare rainy (and thus more humid) day, I had cause to want to dry something more quickly. I went to put it in the dryer, pushed the start button. Nothing. Everything seemed to be connected. I hung up the jacket to dry and decided that I'd deal with it later.

This morning, when Kayla came back from breakfast, she had an idea. While we had already checked the circuit breakers on the main box and on the sub box located in the laundry room, we remembered that there is yet a third box located in the garage. Going out there, we discovered that two breakers were off. Not in the tripped position, but actually off. I turned them back on and went back into the house and upstairs where the dryer is. Sure enough, the dryer worked. I'd forgotten that for reasons that doubtless made sense to the owner of the house at the time, the electrical wiring for the garage (which is a separate building from the main house) and the upstairs floor of the main house go through a conduit that branches from the main house, goes to the garage, and then back to the main house and upstairs.

This screwball wiring works, but it's something we keep forgetting. Fixing it would be part of a much larger electrical rebuild that would probably cost many thousands of dollars, because step one would probably mean upgrading our too-small electrical service, which means a new drop from the pole and lots and lots of rewiring. We could afford it, but I'm not sure we'll ever do it, just due to the massive hassle it would involve.

Current Mood: relieved
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

oursin

Last week's bread had a mould episode, chiz, so I made a loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, crust sprung a bit while baking, I think due to age of yeast, but otherwise okay.

Friday night supper, penne with sauce of roasted red peppers in brine whizzed in blender + chopped Calabrian salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple, strong brown flour, maple syrup (also new batch of yeast): v nice.

Today's lunch: tempeh stirfried with sugar snap peas and a sauce of soy sauce, maple syrup, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, cornflour mixed in water, crushed garlic and minced ginger: am not sure the tempeh was supposed to crumble like that during cooking?? served with sticky rice with lime leaves and chicory quartered, healthygrilled in pumpkinseed oil and splashed with lemon and lime balsamic vinegar.

brithistorian

Today's quote of the day is actually three quotes, all on the practice of writing history, come from Bruce W. Dearstyne's "The Progressive President and the AHA: Theodore Roosevelt and the Historical Discipline," published in the September 2025 issue of Perspectives on History from the American Historical Association.

The first two are from early 20th century historian Allan Nevins[^1] (1890-1971):

"The world at large will sooner forgive lack of scientific solidity than lack of literary charm. The great preservative in history, as in all else, is style." — from his 1938 book *The Gateway to History

"With the demise of the romantic, unscientific, and eloquent school of writers, our history ceased to be literature." — from his 1959 AHA presidential address

Dearstyne shows that these issues are still relevant by following these quotes with a quote from contemporary historian Jacqueline Jones:

By making stories about the past available to all sorts of publics, scholars seek to counter mythmaking and contribute to a broader educational enterprise — one that is essential to the future of history and, indeed, democracy itself." — from her 2021 AHA presidential address

While I agree with these quotes as to the necessity of making history entertaining so that people will want to read it, I don't think that this has to come at the cost of accuracy. If fact, I think it must not come at the cost of accuracy. If only Jones had deleted the words "stories about" when writing this sentence — thus making it clear that accuracy is required when writing history — then I could agree with it wholeheartedly.

[^1] I found it interesting to note that Nevins had only an MA in history, the same as me, and yet he was able to become president of the AHA in 1959, whereas today an MA in history is (in my experience) basically useless.

james_davis_nicoll

Pacifist Dorsai, space forts, duelling reviews, a rant about that mean Mr. Einstein and more in this issue of Destinies.

Destinies, February-March 1980 (Destinies, # 6) edited by Jim Baen

oursin

Happy birthday,

foxinsand!

andrewducker

Just had to ask what was going on.

Sophia told me "There's a spider in the bathroom"
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

calimac

I've been to two stage productions in the last two days.

The musical one was South Bay Musical Theatre's production of The Sound of Music. Advertising for this heavily emphasized how the stage show is not sappy like the movie. And it was a good show, consistently interesting all the way through, fine singing, acting enough to give the impression those were the characters, not people playing them. Maria (Lauren D'Ambrosio) looked rather maternal, a bit disconcerting at the beginning, highly appropriate by the end; the Captain (Brad Satterwhite) kept from melting his emotions just long enough; Mother Abbess (Kama Belloni) thrilled everyone by belting out the end of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain"; the children (all but Liesl were double-cast) were amazingly good, in movement as well as voice; the Nazis were effectively sinister. The favorite songs - the title song, "My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi" - were delivered with fresh energy, renewing appreciation of what remarkably good songs they are. A real winner.

The non-musical one was Theatre Works delivering their section of the rolling world premiere of Lauren Gunderson's new adaptation of Little Women. This did not work: it was too stagy, and the cast could be seen working their butts off rather than embodying the characters. Much of this was due to Gunderson's inept framing: the story is framed as Alcott writing it, and even within the frame half the dialogue is delivered in the third person, the actors describing what their characters are thinking or doing. This distanced the characters from the audience, destroying any illusion that the actors were the characters. The zippy condensation, in which events vanish in a flash, didn't help either. A real snore.

catherineldf

So the big personal news for this week is that I finally got a job interview to wrap up last week...back at the same company I've been contracting at for most of the last three years. Different manager though, and more interesting-sounding position. Seeing as I know the ropes pretty well, I'm getting the second interview this coming week and we'll see how it goes. If I get the offer, I have to take it since my former contracting company is paying for my unemployment and frankly, I'm not very up for eyeing the abyss of "what happens if unemployment ends/savings have to be burned through/the entire social safety net finishes unraveling." I've been through enough of that over the last 5 years.

Apart from ageism, sexism, the economy and so forth, the main obstacle to me getting at least up to the interview stage is that my kitty Shu requires shots on a very regular schedule a couple of times a day, plus regular feedings--the cats are on a raw meat diet due to being allergic to chicken and somewhat delicate tummies so I can't just pop food in a feeder and let them fend for themselves. Paying my catsitter to come in a couple of times a week just so I can go into an office to make a manager feel more secure isn't particularly viable, not to mention the costs of gas and commuting. So it has to be full WFH and those IT gigs in my skillset are few and far between right now. Given all that, please wish me luck!

What's the backup plan? Well, I'm doubling down on publisher meetings, trainings related to book production and marketing and whatever I can glean from startup support/culture that is somewhat relevant to Queen of Swords Press. Today, for instance, I went to an Entrepreneur Expo at the Central Library and got some useful thoughts from one of the folks I talked to (from the county's Elevate program for small biz startups). I think she will probably be more useful for immediate advice than the guy I spoke to at St. Thomas a couple of weeks ago, and she did say that she wanted me to touch base with her soon. Last week was a couple of marketing workshops and a publisher meetup. Monday is a meetup for the the queer small business app we're now underwriting, Everywhere is Queer. Oh, and I added some events. And we're putting out a new book this month - Running Dry by M.Christian (gay vampires with a twist!) is up for preorder now. I'm also starting to add Jana's boxes to my Ko-fi shop, along with sundry services you can hire me for.

I've got some writing and teaching plans that I'm working on as well, including, you know, books. Unfortunately, some of the teaching venues I taught at before are no longer viable the way they were before or have shifted directions in ways that do not play to my strengths. So more research, more pitching, more work all around. But next month, there's paid grant vetting and I just turned in another article so I can start pitching more of those.

On the bright side, I'm making progress on patching concrete around the house foundation and almost succeeded in patching the leaking pipe. I've managed to clean out and shift some stuff in the house so that none of the heating vents are blocked any more and there's a bit more space to move around. Next up, tripping hazards and things that make it harder to clean (like books in weird places, etc.). Shu is relatively stable, Ma'at is great and I've been vaxxed and all that good stuff. I'm doing a lot of cooking from scratch and some preserving and such. All in all, as long as I don't look at the news, I'm doing reasonably well, under the circumstances.

Fingers crossed that it's the same for all of you right now!

brithistorian

"Inspiration is merely the reward for working every day."

— Charles Baudelaire (in Curiosites Esthetiques [1868])

Certainly not the first or only person to say some variation on this, but I think it's an aesthetically pleasing statement of the concept.

oursin

When I turned on my clock radio - which I do on Saturdays to ensure that the time is co-ordinating with the radio time-signal - Radio 3 was playing the finale to Brahms Violin Concerto.

Joy!

Well, this has been an up and downy year as ever, but I am beginning to poke my nose out of my hole. I am still Doing Stuff, even if various projects seem to have got bogged down (not just on my side ahem ahem).

Anyway, in accordance with tradition, I pass round virtual rich dark gingerbread (and also gluten-free, diabetic-friendly, etc, versions), sanitive madeira (eschewing Duke of Clarence jokes) and other beverages of choice, and lift a glass to dr rdrz.

james_davis_nicoll

Twelve books new to me. Four fantasies, one horror, one non-fiction, and six (!) science fiction works, of which at least four are series instalments.

Books Received, September 27 — October 3

Poll #33688 Books Received, September 27 — October 3

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 56

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Children of Fallen Gods by Carissa Broadbent (December 2025)
3 (5.4%)

Enchanting the Fae Queen by Stephanie Burgis (January 2026)
8 (14.3%)

The Language of Liars by S. L. Huang (April 2026)
22 (39.3%)

We Burned So Bright by T. J. Klune (April 2026)
20 (35.7%)

We Could Be Anyone by Anna-Marie McLemore (May 2026)
7 (12.5%)

These Godly Lies by Rachelle Raeta (July 2026)
3 (5.4%)

The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural
15 (26.8%)

Every Exquisite Thing by Laura Steven (July 2026)
4 (7.1%)

The Infinite State by Richard Swan (August 2026)
6 (10.7%)

Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (June 2026)
24 (42.9%)

Moss’d in Space by Rebecca Thorne (July 2026)
19 (33.9%)

Platform Decay by Martha Wells (May 2026)
41 (73.2%)

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

Cats!
39 (69.6%)

marthawells

I don't think I posted about this yet: https://us.macmillan.com/tours/martha-wells-queen-demon/

There's more info at that link, but here's a brief list of the tour stops and dates:

- Mon. Oct. 6 at 7:30pm: Brookline Booksmith with Holly Black, offsite at Arts at the Armory (Brookline, MA)

- Tues. Oct. 7 at 7pm: Politics & Prose (Union Market location) moderated by Leigha McReynolds (Washington DC)

- Wed. Oct. 8 at 7pm: The Strand, with Meg Elison (NYC, NY)

- Fri. Oct. 10 at 6pm: Let’s Play Books, with Chuck Wendig, offsite at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA)

- Tues. Oct. 14 at 7pm, Third Place Books (Seattle, WA)

- Wed. Oct. 15 at 7pm, Iron Dog Books, with Nalo Hopkinson offsite at Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island (Vancouver, BC, Canada)

- Thurs. Oct. 16 at 7pm, Powell's (Cedar Hill location) with Jenn Reese (Beaverton, OR)

- Mon. Oct. 20 at 7pm: Bookpeople, with Ehigbor Okosun (Austin, TX)

- Tue. Oct. 21 at 6:30pm: Murder by the Book (Houston, TX)

- Thurs. Oct. 23 at 6pm: Nowhere Bookshop (San Antonio, TX)

- Saturday Nov. 8-9 Texas Book Festival, Austin TX

- Sat. Nov. 15 at 2pm: Hyperbole Bookstore, offsite at Ringer Library (College Station, TX)

bruce_schneier_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/10/friday-squid-blogging-squid-overfishing-in-the-southwest-atlantic.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=70881

Article. Report.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/10/friday-squid-blogging-squid-overfishing-in-the-southwest-atlantic.html

https://www.schneier.com/?p=70881

pegkerr

I had two Year of Adventure meetings this week, both dedicated to teaching me how to make something new.

I met with my sister Betsy, who showed me how to make an apple pie from scratch, including the pastry. The secret, I was duly informed, is the use of lard (which makes the pastry light and flaky) and tapioca to thicken the apple filling. Okay, I will admit that the pastry cover was placed a little crookedly, but I can assure you that it was delicious.

I also got together with

carbonel, who invited me to her home to give me my first lesson on spinning wool into yarn. I had some experience with a drop spindle many years ago, but spinning on a spinning wheel takes a degree of coordination that I obviously did not master in the time we were working together. First, the treadle must be worked in the correct direction at a steady rate--I kept hesitating on the pedal, and the wheel would aggravatingly start turning in the wrong direction. And the hand coordination was another thing: I kept holding the rover (the combed wool) in the left hand too tightly ("hold it lightly, as if were a baby bird"

carbonel kept chanting in my ear with only a hint of exasperation), and my clumsiness with the drafting (feeding the wool with the right hand) meant that the yarn kept overtwisting.

But at least I have my first effort of spun wool sitting on my dining room table, and I keep glancing at it with an interesting mix of pride and embarrassment. It is very, very bad, but at least I can now say that I have tried spinning.

This collage is not one of my favorites, being both too busy and too monochromatic, but hey, that's what I have.

Image description: Center: a smiling woman (Peg) stands at a counter with a rolling pin and an unbaked apple pie. Top left: hands cut a pastry cutter through pastry dough in a bowl. Top right: hands work pastry dough in a bowl. Below that: various apple pie ingredients. Lower left: a hand holds unspun wool. Lower right: a spinning wheel. Lower center: a butterfly of (badly) spun undyed wool.

Making

39 Making

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: accomplished

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3150/

Progress on getting shipwrecked sailors to adopt ICMPv6 has been slow.

https://xkcd.com/3150/

oursin

In case this has passed dr rdrz by, it is now possible for ordinary people to register for access to JSTOR's massive collection of scholarly resources.

***

This month's freebie from the University of Chicago Press is Courtenay Raia, The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle on psychical research.

***

Okay, I know I was going off at people getting all up in the woowoo about the Pill, but this is a bit grim about Depo-Provera: Pfizer sued in US over contraceptive that women say caused brain tumours. I was raising my eyebrows at this:

Pfizer argues that it tried to have a tumour warning attached to the drug’s label but this was rejected by the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company said in its court filings: “This is a clear pre-emption case because FDA expressly barred Pfizer from adding a warning about meningioma risk, which plaintiffs say state law required.”

and going hmmm, because there was a huge furore in the 70s in the UK about Depo-Provera and what sections of the population were actually being put on it, i.e. there was a whole ethnicity/discrimination pattern going on, and I would not be entirely astonished to find out that there were programmes in certain US states which were maybe no longer sterilising 'the unfit' (though I'm not sure I'd bet good money on it) but blithely applying long-acting hormonal contraception instead.

***

And also in the realm of reproductive control: Of embryos and vaccines: If you REALLY want to protect the unborn... on rubella. Abortion historian notes that one reason (apart from thalidomide) for resurgence of abortion activism in UK in early 60s had been a German measles epidemic.... Also recall that my sister - who like me was not of a generation that routinely got this vaccine in childhood - when she fell pregnant with her first getting tested in the antenatal clinic to see if she needed to get the jab stat (in fact, she had high level of antibodies, so maybe we'd all had German measles among all our other many childhood ailments and barely noticed....)

***

Something more agreeable: the Royal School of Needlework's Stitch Bank:

RSN Stitch Bank is a free resource designed to preserve the art of hand embroidery through digitally conserving and showcasing the wide variety of the world’s embroidery stitches and the ways in which they have been used in different cultures and times. Now containing over 500 stitches, each stitch entry contains information about its history, use and structure as well as a step-by-step method with photographs, illustrations and video.

***

Asking good questions is harder than giving great answers: this so resonated with my experience as an archivist: 'often when people ask for help or information, what they ask for isn't what they actually want'.

***

Many years ago I used to go to a restaurant- Le Bistingo in South Ken, as I recall - that had a cartoon pinned on the wall depicting a chef bodily ejecting a diner. Waiter to observers: 'He Attempted To Add Salt'. This was rather my reaction to this particularly WTF 'You Be The Judge': Should my partner stop hankering after salt and pepper shakers?

Why do you need salt and pepper on the table, haven't you seasoned the food adequately? (oh, and btw, Gene, as a comment remarks, salt has naturally antiseptic properties*).

*I remember some historical drama of Ye Medeevles on the telly in my youth about dousing somebody's flogged back in salt water (?or rubbing it with salt) to stop it festering.

james_davis_nicoll

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lsanderson

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Page Summary

lydamorehouse - About to Crash
calimac - not going anywhere today
kevin_standlee - Simpler Than Expected
oursin - Culinary
brithistorian - QOTD: On historiography
james_davis_nicoll - Destinies, February-March 1980 (Destinies, # 6) edited by Jim Baen
oursin - (no subject)
andrewducker - Photo cross-post
calimac - one has music, the other doesn't
catherineldf - Moving into October
brithistorian - QOTD: Charles Baudelaire on regular work
oursin - Surprise Birthday Brahms!
james_davis_nicoll - Books Received, September 27 — October 3
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 04-10-2025
marthawells - Book Tour Starting Next Week
bruce_schneier_feed - Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Overfishing in the Southwest Atlantic
pegkerr - 2025 52 Card Project: Week 39: Making
xkcd_feed - Ping
oursin - Omniumgatherum
james_davis_nicoll - Here Is Your Periodic Reminder that Stars Move

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Page generated Oct. 6th, 2025 06:54 am

D'oh! Running late ...

Again

Reading

About to Crash

not going anywhere today

Simpler Than Expected

Culinary

QOTD: On historiography

Destinies, February-March 1980 (Destinies, # 6) edited by Jim Baen

(no subject)

Photo cross-post

one has music, the other doesn't

Moving into October

QOTD: Charles Baudelaire on regular work

Surprise Birthday Brahms!

Books Received, September 27 — October 3

Interesting Links for 04-10-2025

Book Tour Starting Next Week

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Overfishing in the Southwest Atlantic

2025 52 Card Project: Week 39: Making

Ping

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Here Is Your Periodic Reminder that Stars Move

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July 2025

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