eagle | Network

Yesterday, Hinata, my 2018 MacBook Pro was returned to me; I had lent it to a friend. Today, I booted the laptop, and the system informed me that a system update was available to be installed. So I ended up updating macOS from Sequoia v15.7.7 to v15.7.9. Sequoia is the last macOS this Intel laptop can run.

Coincidentally, yesterday, Apple Added my MacBook Pro to the Obsolete Products List. This means that Apple will no longer repair this device.

Hinata still works just fine – well, except for the defective touch bar, which I never bothered to get fixed under recall. I will be using the MacBook to run Intel-only applications (I’m looking at you, Dymo Connect) after macOS 27 has eliminated Rosetta Intel emulation.

mrissa

Jorge Aguirre and Andrés Vera Martínez, Monster Locker: Nine-Tail Trouble. Another graphic novel with middle-school monster fighters and friendship/social dynamics, this time with a kitsune (it's in the title, it's not a spoiler) and a different character embracing their heritage. Very fast good fun.

Albrecht Berger, The Statues of Constantinople. Kindle. Short monograph about exactly what the title says. It was available in a give-away some time ago, and I picked it up on a whim; if you're not interested in the topic it's probably not worth seeking out, but it was interesting to put into the mental mix about worldbuilding.

María Luisa Bombal, New Islands. I don't know if it was the translation style or if this was in the original, but these short stories had a very early-20th feel to me, a bit of Henry James, a bit of Amy Lowell. They were written much later than that, so I'm still mulling over why that would be. They were vividly dramatic if that's the mood you're in.

M.A. Carrick, The Eye of Leviathan. Carrick is two friends of mine, and they have not lost their touch: their prose is still immediately and vividly engaging and propelled me all the way through this one. The setting is not ever going to be my favorite of theirs, I think--the Spanish "Golden Age" puts me in very much of a mind to pick at setting choices when there's an entire faerie realm that is verified and matters quite a lot to world developments, so I never settled into it as much as I wanted to, but I can't think anything the authors could have done to change that once they had that setting and were not really focused on the groups that actually were oppressed by the Spanish Empire of the time. I'll still read the next one for sure.

Rae Carson, Monster Monarch Maiden. This is what I mean when I talk about liking "stitial" fantasy as well as interstitial fantasy: it is absolutely genre-center, it is not the least bit interstitial, and it is really well done right smack in the middle of this genre I like. I also particularly thought the ending was well done, the denouement landed for me. Individual magical gifts and travels through highly varied landscapes and perils! Yes here I am.

Agatha Christie, Curtain, Dead Man's Folly, Dumb Witness, and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. Kindle. The reading project continues. I have now encountered my favorite character in all of Christie so far, Bob the dog in Dumb Witness, who is far more patient with Hastings than Hastings really deserves.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Sanna Valkonen, and Jarno Valkonen, eds., Knowing from the Indigenous North: Sámi Approaches to History, Politics, and Belonging. Interesting collection of essays situating a northernness that is very distinct from westernness in cool ways, very glad I found it (used! for about 5% of what it would cost me to order it!) in this summer when I was taking Sámi cultural classes.

T. Kingfisher, Daggerbound. Second in its series, and I think it would stand alone reasonably well. Good times with people who live in swords! Or mostly bad times for them. Good times for me though. A human likes a gnole so much. The gnoles just continue great. And there is a giant bug--okay, if you're going to drop the book and freakout about a giant bug character, yeah, there sure is one, fundamental to the plot, too, but otherwise go have fun with this, it's one of her better ones.

Yoon Ha Lee, Fox Snare. Kindle. Caught up on the end of this MG science fantasy series and had a lot of fun with it, but for heaven's sake don't start here.

Scott Lynch, Locke Lamora: The Bottled Serpent and The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious. Kindle. Two shorts, both entertaining. "Kaiju Agonistes" sets a high bar for "Scott Lynch's best short work," but I did have fun with these all the same.

Hilary McKay, Saffy's Angel, Indigo's Star, Permanent Rose, Caddy Ever After, and Forever Rose. Rereads. The only reason I didn't reread Caddy's World as well is that I don't own it yet and the library has culled their copy. I love these books so much, and once I started reading one I just wanted to be reading them all the time. They're like a crash course in subtext for the grade school set, an absolute masterpiece of perspective and of understanding different perspectives. I love them so much.

Emmet A. O'Brien, Here Be Dragons. Discussed elsewhere.

Aleksander Pluskowski, The Black Cross: A History of the Baltic Crusades. I'm not sure why other people are willing to tell me more about the Baltic Crusades this year than in previous years, but I'm here for it, tell me more about what weird stuff people were up to around the Baltic, that is my jam. This one is substantially focused south of my main interest (Finland and Sápmi), but I'm still happy to learn interesting things about Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and all the smaller groups that went into them in various ways.

Alex Ross, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. This is a history of Classical music in the 20th. Did you know that the only woman who really mattered in 20th century Classical was Jiang Qing (Mme. Mao)? Yeah, it's that kind of history. There were lots of other pieces of analysis that did not strike me as correct or well-grounded (you cannot! understand Sibelius! without understanding 20th century Finland at least a little! sir! sir!), and I frankly don't recommend this; there were some interesting spots but a lot of ugh.

Neil Williamson and Andrew J. Wilson, eds., Nova Scotia 2: New Speculative Fiction from Scotland. This is a very well-constructed anthology. I kept enjoying stories and thinking, "I wonder if this is the one that's why I knew I wanted this!" until I got to the one that is definitely why I knew I wanted this (it's the one about Lise Meitner, you'll know it a mile off), but the fact that there was any question is a very good sign.

Andrea Wulf, The Traveler: One Man's Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris. Andrea Wulf is very good at her job, so this is entirely readable. If you don't have more than one Andrea Wulf book in you, don't go with this one, it is a side quest. George Forster is moderately interesting and is a great example of how "a man of his time" can mean things much more progressive than we're encouraged to think it can, but at the end of the day he is a footnote in the history of natural science, and even Wulf knows it. I like reading the footnotes. You may also like reading the footnotes. But that's very much what this is.

redbird

I just voted in the Democratic primary, which had contests for four positions out of about a dozen. I actually care about three of those four (Senate, State Senate, and District Attorney). I also filled in the bubbles next to a few unopposed candidates because I like them (Ayanna) and/or wanted to signal support (Bill Galvin, the Secretary of State, whose office is in charge of Massachusetts elections). Galvin has had the job for a long time, during most of which almost nobody had heard of him; it's not a job that gets much attention when things are going smoothly. I voted for Sen. Markey; his challenger, Moulton, is OK on some issues, but he's either genuinely anti-trans or willing to sacrifice trans people to get votes.

I took a Lyft for the short trip to the polling place, because my knee is a bit sore, and stiff, after I stumbled (or something) and fell Sunday, after going with Cattitude to the emergency room (he is OK for now). It could have been significantly worse, but the waiting room was crowded enough that someone caught me, so I didn't hit my head, or break anything. I sat in a convenient chair for a few minutes, catching my breath and considering whether I was in fact OK. Answer: yes. I took the bus home, with a stop at the farmers market.

I had a previously scheduled telemedicine appointment with Carmen today. She is concerned about my falling and not being sure what happened. I told her that my neurologist watches me walk at every appointment, and that I will be seeing him in eight weeks. She sent him a message, including the visit notes, and suggested that I should see him sooner. I now have an appointment Thursday morning.

galadriel1010 posting in

ififitsifics

All assignments are out now, and we have 4 pinch hits looking for homes.

Please comment on this post to claim, or email IfIFitsIFics at gmail.com

( Pinch Hit 1 - 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest, 绅探 | Detective L (TV), 30歳まで童貞だと魔法使いになれるらしい | Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (TV), )

( Pinch Hit 2 - Original Work, The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, Twisted-Wonderland (Video Game) )

( Pinch Hit 3 - Real Cat Fiction (RCF), Bleach (Anime & Manga), Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, Universal Century Gundam, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game), BoJack Horseman (Cartoon), Hunter X Hunter, 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game) )

( Pinch Hit 4 - Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (TV), Real Cat Fiction (RCF), Biggles Series - W. E. Johns )

magid

This morning was one of the ones where everything was just a bit late and/or annoying. Part of it was my own fault: I headed out to vote later than I'd planned. This was the first time my wad/precinct was using a tablet to look folks up, rather than big sheets of paper taped to the table. This worked fine, happily. I believe I had ballot 78 at around 8:35 am (not as useful a datum as previously, now that so many people vote early). (civic duty: completed!)( Read more... )

bloodygranuaile

In my quest to reread all of Jane Austen I reread Persuasion, her novel about an actual full-grown adult woman, Anne Elliott, aged 27. While Persuasion doesn’t get the limelight of Pride and Prejudice, it is immortalized in Cold Comfort Farm as Flora’s metric for the novel she’s going to write when she’s fifty. One can see why.

Persuasion tells the story of the most middle child to ever middle child, who was talked into breaking off an engagement with a young naval officer when she was nineteen or so, and young and pretty. She never really recovered from the loss, and now she’s not even pretty anymore, because she has just been sad for like eight years. She lives at home with her father and her older sister, both of whom are hot and stupid. However, they end up having to rent said home to an Admiral and go take smaller rooms in Bath, because Anne’s hot stupid father is bad with money and they can’t afford to stay home any longer. This results in a sad rigmarole of Anne being shunted off to wherever other people think she will be least in the way for several months, living first at her younger sister’s, then with her friend Lady Russell, then eventually joining her hot stupid dad and hot stupid sister in Bath.

This series of events really shakes up Anne’s small acquaintance, and she ends up making lots of new friends, including some people who actually seem to like her and value her company, which results in making her less sad and consequently less sad-looking. Some of these new friends also know one of her old friends–the man she broke off her engagement with, Captain Frederick Wentworth, who in the interim has made bank taking prizes in the navy. It’s all terribly awkward when he starts showing up again–but of course, nobody can say anything about it; almost none of these people knew Anne had been previously engaged and of course neither she nor Captain Wentworth (whose ego was bruised upon rejection) were going to say anything; that would be embarrassing. So instead Anne has to suffer through Wentworth flirting with her cousin Louisa in an attempt to tell himself that he’s totally fine and ready to settle down and get married with any amiable enough girl who is NOT Anne Elliott. There’s lots of confused matchmaking when Louisa gets a concussion and then gets engaged to Captain Benwick, who a number of people had been thinking might propose to Anne, but EVENTUALLY through the power of eavesdropping and writing letters (talking to each other is not the done thing, please; we’re British), Captain Wentworth is induced to admit that he still loves Anne and that pretending he doesn’t is driving him nuts.

I like this book much better now that I am old and have some experience of the world than I did when I first read it, when I myself was not yet one-and-twenty, and must conclude that Persuasion is a masterpiece. Obviously it’s a bit more booster-y of the British Navy than I strictly agree with but I’m not going to sit here shaking my head to show that I don’t approve of the British Navy. I approve of the bit where they all went home and got immediately into awkward love triangles, apparently. And I suppose I approve of the social message Austen is gently pushing here, where merit is more a matter of actual individual character and doing stuff rather than merely rank and appearance (and if we want to look at the type of stuff the British navy was actually doing, there are other books for that). And, of course, while this book is masterfully romantic, it is also masterfully funny; you really feel for Anne given all these clowns she has to put up with, and I kept stopping to read all the choicest of the cutting little insults that Austen includes out loud to Sam. Just an excellently executed little book.

askerian

TOTAL: 7 674

!!!

IT HAS BEEN A WHILE.

I wish I could do this all year, but this is entirely due to a 2 weeks vacation x friend riding herd on me combo.

POSTED: nothing!

IN PROGRESS
-Bleach suburban ot4 (4 561 words :D ONE CHAPTER AND A HALF and they're very good chapters too i am Happiness.)
-svsss cosplay fic (175 words. one day i will come back to this. once again a chapter attempting to become its own arc. this is my curse.)
-bleach bloodsport (... 93 words... yeah it's still dead. might have to jettison this whole scene and find something else no matter how i loved it once upon a time. it's just, completely dead.)
-Boku no hero academia DabiHAwks post-war crack (2 845 words) (no spoilers because it is COMPLETE and only missing editing and a wrap-up!!!!!!!!!! ;__; omg. ..............omg i need to title it. fml.)

ALSO POSTED:
Bleach suburban ot4 chapter 18.

( teasers thataway )

profiterole_reads

The End of Oak Street was a lot of fun! A neighbourhood is sent back to the time of the dinosaurs.

I stopped watching Jurassic Park after the first Jurassic World because the humans were too dumb. Here, apart from a couple of characters, they're mostly not.

The dinos have feathers! Okay, they sometimes look more like hair than feathers, but points for the attempt. And the creatures are pretty varied, including peaceful giant tortoises.

I also like that the contemporary section of the story takes place in 1982. I hadn't paid attention to it in the trailer.

$radiantfracture: Small painting of Penguin book (Books post)$

radiantfracture

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

* * * * * *

Can't not think of Frost, and then at the end of Shakespeare.

Here is an autumnal poem by the brand-new ancestor Wendell Berry. I found one I like even better, but it is called "September 2", so I will do my damndest to post it then.

I find the "it" here a little bedevilling -- it must be the woods, right? But there are so many referents between the "woods" and "it", and the "it" goes on alone without refreshing its connection to any particular thing, that it seems to become a more transcendent idea.

§rf§

runpunkrun posting in

fancake

Our theme for September is mentors & protégés!

That's teachers and students, masters and apprentices, senpai and kōhai, plus coaches, trainers, tutors, novices, newbies, and neophytes in any and all combinations.

The tag for this round is: theme: mentors & proteges

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance.

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( Posting Template! )

( Promote this round! )

Reblog on Tumblr | Reskeet on Bluesky | Retoot on Mastodon

$radiantfracture: a green house (House)$

radiantfracture

Autumn Day
Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Lord, it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine:
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one
whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening
and wander on the boulevards up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

* * * * * *

I feel it, Rilke. It was a strange huge summer.

(I ran into a former student and their mother at the farmer's market and we spoke of summer; and then I spoke of summer to my hairstylist, and both said they didn't know anyone who'd had a good season.

Of course, someone has, and I am glad. But also glad of the company.)

This year I notice the "write long letters through the evening," which, while done in solitude, speaks after all of a rich communicative life, if at a distance. Alone but not alone. (Also, imagine getting a vast sheaf-like letter from Rainer Maria Rilke.)

§rf§

larryhammer

There’s a saying that came up a few times when I was a baby!writer, and for all I know still does the rounds. I’ve seen a couple formulations, giving slightly different emphases:

Not doing anything wrong is not the same as doing enough right.

It’s not what you don’t do wrong that matters, but what you do do right.*

It most often came up in discussions of bestsellers—or any popular works that have obvious issues of craftsmanship. The ability to tell a compelling tale is not the same as the ability to write good sentences, or create realistic characters, or build coherent plots. Yarnspinning is a different skill entirely. Yes, the yarn will be better for being written with good sentences, characters, plots, but it’s the yarn that draws in the audience.

A tale told with no mistakes can still be boring. A song sung with perfect pitch can still be boring.

And you know? A life lived without fault can still be boring.

* I love abusing the English do-as-auxiliary-verb construction.

---L.

Subject quote from Get Down on It, Kool & The Gang.

oursin

Slice me up that peach and I'll think about daring to eat it.

I will put my hearing aids in and see if I can discern the mermaids singing, each to each, even if not to me.

Because of this:

He and Dench began their friendship at Oxford Playhouse, appearing with Ian McShane in a 1967 production of The Promise.

I saw this after the transfer to the West End on a school trip - possibly we had been to some previous culturally stimulating excursion beforehand? or was this part of generally exposing us to The Theatre and we went up on the train after school?

(And if it was 1967 it was in A-Levels year and it was not a set-text* or anything, they were not actually keeping us interminably grinding at exam materials presumably. Cultural enrichment.)

*Whereas we had got taken to a production of The Winter's Tale, which was, in fact I recollect 2, one that was a production by some girls' school in the area, let us draw a veil, and one in the West End-ish with Laurence Harvey as Leontes and Jim Dale as Autolycus.

duckprintspress

I got my act together to work on a lot of stuff around the house and to do a lot of work, with the result that my reading time was less than it usually is and I didn't get much reading done. I'm hoping to rebound in September, as I have a lot of work travel so I'll be listening to some audiobooks and bringing some books with me to read while I have vending down time. Anyway, as always, my favorites are in bold and queer titles are marked with a 🏳️‍🌈.

Duck Prints Press Titles:

Many Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley 🏳️‍🌈

Novels:

My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin vol. 1 and 2 by Wu Shui Bu Du 🏳️‍🌈
盗墓笔记 vol. 2 by 南派三叔
Ballad of Sword and Wine/Qiang Jin Jiu vol. 1 by Tang Jiuqing 🏳️‍🌈

Manga/Manhua:

天官赐福 manhua vol. 7 by 墨香铜臭 🏳️‍🌈
Daemons of the Shadow Realm vol. 1 by Hiromu Arakawa
I Ship My Rival x Me vol. 1 - 4 by PEPA 🏳️‍🌈
Here U Are vol. 1 - 3 by DJun
I Can't Say No to the Lonely Girl vol. 4 and 5 by Kashikaze
Oshi no Ko vol. 2 by Mengo Yokoyari and Aka Akasaka
Witch Hat Aterlier Kitchen vol. 5 by Kamome Shirahama and Hiromi Sato
Dash! by Isaku Natsume 🏳️‍🌈
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 20 and 21 by Fuse
Golden Kamuy vol. 5 and 6 by Satoru Noda
Our Not-So-Lonely Planet Travel Guide vol. 7 by Mone Sorai 🏳️‍🌈
Twittering Birds Never Fly vol. 4 and 5 by Kou Yoneda 🏳️‍🌈
Pink Candy Kiss vol. 3 by Ami Uozumi 🏳️‍🌈
Marriagetoxin vol. 10 - 12 by Mizuki Yoda and Joumyaku 🏳️‍🌈
Yona of the Dawn vol. 38 and 29 by Mizuho Kusanagi
Gachiakuta vol. 7 by Kei Urana
My Isekai Life vol. 1 and 2 by Shinkoshoto and Ponjea
Waltz Cute by Shuzo Oshimi 🏳️‍🌈
I Cross-Dressed for the IRL Meetup vol. 1 by Kurano 🏳️‍🌈
I Hear the Sunspot: Four Season vol. 3 by Yuki Fumino 🏳️‍🌈

Graphic Novels:

Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden 🏳️‍🌈
Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky 🏳️‍🌈

duskpeterson

( Important changes to my story releases )

ONLINE E-BOOK (html, epub, mobi, and pdf)

Free at my website.

Law of Vengeance (The Three Lands). For over twenty years, Lord Carle has told the heir to the Emorian throne that vengeance is only the other side of mercy, and that disobedience and treachery should never be forgiven. Finally it seems that his message has been received. Which makes it all the more unfortunate that Carle should have chosen this moment to break the law.

New installment:

Side story | Wait. How long is too long?

New omnibus:

Law of Vengeance: Novel and Side Stories.

BLOG FICTION

Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.

New installment:

Walls of Valouse.

( News )

My fiction and fiction announcements are also available by e-mail and feeds. If you'd like to show your appreciation for my stories, you can share my stories, recommend my stories, comment on my stories, create a fanwork inspired by my stories, or give me a prompt for a story you'd like written. For those who are interested, I have accounts at Patreon and Ream.

asakiyume

Well here's a rarity! I can announce a publication, my story "The Road from Windy to Dragonroot," in Luna Station Quarterly no. 67.

It's a story about postconflict pain and healing: two insurgents from different factions of the winning coalition work together to repair the road between their two villages. Oh, and one of them is a mountain spirit.

Unfortunately Luna Station Quarterly isn't free to read, but you can get it for as little as $3.00 from Gumroad if you're inclined ;-)

Here's the link to the page about the issue (many other stories sound interesting!) Same page has links to different buying options.

I think the zine intends to promote a story at a time, maybe, because they asked me for things like my favorite line, which ... what? How do you answer that? But I offered this line:

“Humans listen best to other humans,” said the voice on the other end of the radio. “And it’s easier in human form to talk in ways humans understand, like with words and wars.”

hudebnik

In the aftermath of some minor basement flooding two weeks ago, I looked for things in the basement that are in cardboard boxes directly on the floor. One large box was labelled "Class Notes", so I brought it upstairs to triage. It consists of spiral-bound notebooks from college and grad school. After opening and flipping briefly through each notebook, I put almost all of them into the recycling bin on grounds that I will never need their contents again in this lifetime. There were some mind-blowing proofs of various theorems (linear coding theory, complex analysis, number theory, mathematical logic, computational complexity...), but I know I'll never need them. I kept out a few, on subjects like Combinatorial Algorithms and Parallel Complexity that I could remotely imagine needing, or at least wanting to re-read for real, in this lifetime, but I'll probably recycle those too.

I didn't see any notebooks of outgoing lecture notes from my 20 years as a college professor; not sure whether I've already recycled those, or whether there's another large box of them lurking in the basement. The closest I found were a couple of folders of pre- and post-workshop evaluation forms from my summer workshops for high school computer science teachers. And yes, I recycled those. There was a hand-written note, a week after a workshop, from one particularly impressed high school teacher, but after re-reading it and getting a warm fuzzy feeling, I recycled that too.

There are a bunch of other cardboard boxes in the basement still to be triaged. Some are relatively-safely up on steel shelving units, so those are lower priority, but still legitimate targets. There are at least two boxes of rarely-used cookbooks that we moved to the basement when the kitchen renovation changed our cookbook-storage situation. There are several boxes of miscellaneous decor that we don't have enough wall space to hang up; those will be difficult because some of the contents have sentimental value to one or the other of us.

tcpip

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Visage, Visage 1985

Now I have your attention, a few weeks ago I attended a book launch at Readings "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sex Party" with Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten. Fiona was a Victorian MLC for said party, and in their early days, we had several discussions about various political strategies. Their objective had a strong civil liberties streak, rooted in removing censorship of non-violent erotica. Robbie's speech at the launch included some fairly poignant remarks about contemporary content compared to what they were lobbying for, and the book itself is full of amusing, titillating, and bizarre anecdotes. Despite the snickering that the name brings, they were serious about body politics, and Fiona was a major parliamentary advocate for voluntary euthanasia, drug liberalisation, etc. A side effect of attending the event was being invited to a vlog ("My First Party") by the former Fusion Party candidate for Wills, Owen Miller, for an interview nominally on Australia-China relations, but veered off onto a wide variety of topics.

For the second topic, I attended an event with Derek M., at the Wheeler Centre at the Capitol Theatre, with digital rights activist and SF author, Cory Doctorow on "Enshittification", the deliberate decline in quality of online platforms and services in the quest for customer lock-in and monopolisation through increasingly "damaged goods". The term "Enshittification" itself became the Macquarie Dictionary's 2024 Word of the Year to describe the phenomenon. It was an especially beautiful setting, and Cory's presentation was superb, and naturally enough there was a book signing afterward. Ten years ago, Cory spruiked my own book for the RPG Review Cooperative, "Papers & Paychecks", which got our Kickstarter over the line. It was quite a pleasant surprise for him to present at a booksigning and to receive books. On a related matter, this last weekend, I hosted a little dinner party attended by key members of the Australian Roleplaying Community and the RPG Review Cooperative. I was rather pleased with my culinary provisions for this event: Risotto alle Fragole, Gnocchi d'anatra, Camporelli con Affogato. Delicious food and very smart people in attendance.

elainegrey

My vacation turned to sick-stilled rest. Sunday i had a video visit with the UNC Health virtual practice and have a antibiotic and steroid prescription. While i would love to see my primary care provider, he's so booked. On August 18 i booked my physical at the next available date: February 22. It is so fortunate to have an option where i can go online, late Saturday night, and decide that i can wait until 9:40 and not take the first available appointment at 6:30 Sunday morning. They clearly don't sit around if no one takes early appointments. I'd passed on the 8:30 appointment but got a text on Sunday morning that they were ahead of schedule and ended up being seen at 8:30.

I didn't work but did see my therapist yesterday. Summer disruptions have jostled our schedules and i thought i wouldn't see her for another three weeks. I'd spent some time at the beginning of my vacation reflecting on the "shape" of what i think of as "critical voices" or thoughts. I'd realized i didn't actually perceive a "critical voice" -- maybe once upon a time some conditioned stimulus caused me to frame negative thoughts about myself, but i have stopped much of those self denigrating thoughts. There is still a conditioned stimulus-reaction, though, and i know i have a learned aversion to the unpleasant reaction. I feel my day shaped by this in a way i don't like, don't want.

So, last Friday i took three of the stimuli that occurred in short order. Yes, they are in the "shape" of a "should" but the reactions are not really self critical but are feelings, and different feelings: frustration in one case, a complex of guilt, shame, worry in another, and the third had so much sadness i really couldn't finish writing about it on Friday, and right now i feel the sting of tears and the same tightness at the back of my throat following my esophagus to near my heart as i did yesterday when i talked to MK about it.

We agreed (well, i wasn't discouraged from thinking) that right now, sick, my faculties for feeling will probably spin these feelings into darker places than they will go when i am well. (That hard to distinguish depression-vs-being-sick state so learned in my body and mind has deep ruts i don't need to follow.) So first, i will get well.

Then i want to experiment with experiencing, interrogating, and i guess just feeling these feelings i have been dismissing like snoozing an alarm.

med_cat

(from Action for Happiness FB pg)

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Russ Allbery

Russ Allbery (Eagle)

May 2009

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Page Summary

lovelyangel - Obsolete
mrissa - Books read, late August
redbird - voted, and medical
galadriel1010 in ififitsifics - Assignments out, 4 IPHs
magid - One of those mornings
bloodygranuaile - Declaring myself President of the Sophy Croft Appreciation Society
askerian - Monthly word count - August
profiterole_reads - The End of Oak Street
radiantfracture - Grace - Wendell Berry
runpunkrun in fancake - Round 190: Mentors & Protégés
radiantfracture - A tradition
larryhammer - “how y’gonna do it if you really don’t wanna dance / by standing on the wall? / get your back up”
oursin - Hair - parted behind. Trouser bottoms - rolled.
duckprintspress - (no subject)
duskpeterson - UPDATE: Important changes to my story releases + Wait
asakiyume - "The Road from Windy to Dragonroot"
hudebnik - Getting rid of stuff
tcpip - Of Sex Parties and Enshittification
elainegrey - (health,morning writing, stimulus-response shape)
med_cat - September Self-Care Calendar

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Journals Russ Reads

Network

Obsolete

Books read, late August

voted, and medical

Assignments out, 4 IPHs

One of those mornings

Declaring myself President of the Sophy Croft Appreciation Society

Monthly word count - August

The End of Oak Street

Grace - Wendell Berry

Round 190: Mentors & Protégés

A tradition

“how y’gonna do it if you really don’t wanna dance / by standing on the wall? / get your back up”

Hair - parted behind. Trouser bottoms - rolled.

(no subject)

UPDATE: Important changes to my story releases + Wait

ONLINE E-BOOK (html, epub, mobi, and pdf)

BLOG FICTION

"The Road from Windy to Dragonroot"

Getting rid of stuff

Of Sex Parties and Enshittification

(health,morning writing, stimulus-response shape)

September Self-Care Calendar

Profile

May 2009

Links

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags