(no subject)

Jun. 7th, 2025 12:32 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] sally_maria and [personal profile] spiffikins!

(no subject)

Jun. 6th, 2025 08:18 pm
skygiants: Autor from Princess Tutu gesturing smugly (let me splain)
[personal profile] skygiants
A while back, [personal profile] lirazel posted about a bad book about an interesting topic -- Conspiracy Theories About Lemuria -- which apparently got most of its information from a scholarly text called The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories by Sumathi Ramaswamy.

Great! I said. I bet the library has that book, I'll read it instead of the bad one! which now I have done.

For those unfamiliar, for a while the idea of sunken land-bridges joining various existing landmasses was very popular in 19th century geology; Lemuria got its name because it was supposed to explain why there are lemurs in Madagascar and India but not anywhere else. Various other land-bridges were also theorized but Lemuria's the only one that got famous thanks to the catchy name getting picked up by various weird occultists (most notably Helena Blavatasky) and incorporated into their variably incomprehensible Theories of Human Origins, Past Paradises, Etc.

As is not unexpected, this book is a much more dense, scholarly, and theory-driven tome than the bad pop history that [personal profile] lirazel read. What was unexpected for me is that the author's scholarly interests focus on a.) cartography and b.) Tamil language and cultural politics, and so what she's most interested in doing is tracing how the concept of a Lemurian continent went from being an outdated geographic supposition to a weird Western occult fringe belief to an extremely mainstream, government-supported historical narrative in Tamil-speaking polities, where Lost Lemuria has become associated with the legendary drowned Tamil homeland of Tamilnāṭu and thus the premise for a claim that not only is the Lemurian continent the source of human origins but that specifically the Tamil language is the source language for humanity.

Not the book I expected to be reading! but I'm not at all mad about how things turned out! the prose is so dry that it was definite work to wade through but the rewards were real; the author has another whole book about Tamil language politics and part of me knows I am not really theory-brained enough for it at this time but the other part is tempted.

Also I did as well come out with a few snippets of the Weird Nonsense that I thought I was going in for! My favorite anecdote involves a woman named Gertrude Norris Meeker who wrote to the U.S. government in the 1950s claiming to be the Governor-General of Atlantis and Lemuria, ascertaining her sovereign right to this nonexistent territory, to which the State Department's Special Advisor on Geography had to write back like "we do not think that is true; this place does not exist." Eventually Gertrude Meeker got a congressman involved who also nobly wrote to the government on behalf of his constituent: "Mrs. Meeker understands that by renouncing her citizenship she could become Queen of these islands, but as a citizen she can rule as governor-general. [...] She states that she is getting ready to do some leasing for development work on some of these islands." And again the State Department was patiently like "we do not think that is true, as this place does not exist." Subsequently they seem to have developed a "Lemuria and Atlantis are not real" form letter which I hope and trust is still being used today.
musesfool: samira mohan from the pitt (live your life filled with joy & wonder)
[personal profile] musesfool
The Mets lost a game yesterday they should have won, but I guess it doesn't matter that much because they took the season series from the Dodgers, which means if they are both divisional winners and meet in the NLCS in October, the Mets will have home field advantage. I mean, it would have been nice for them to win on a day when both Atlanta and Philly lost, but I guess you can't have everything.

Anyway, staying up for the previous games in the series (they were out in LA) caught up with me and I couldn't keep my eyes open last night, so I ended up going right to bed at 8:30. It wasn't even fully dark yet! But I slept through till 4:15, got up to use the bathroom, and then slept through again till my alarm went off at 8:15, so I guess I really needed it. I had a lot of dreams, but the one that stuck with me was something where I was already in the hospital visiting someone, and the doctor was like, "we need to talk about your appendix, it needs to come out!" And I was like, "that's news to me since I haven't had an appendix since 1976!" (truth!) And she was like, "what?" and I was like, "what?" and then the dream moved on - I don't remember anything else.

There's really not a whole lot else going on. Work is busy - our CFO keeps trying to steal me away from my boss, but like, there's nothing in Finance for me to do? My main job is board support, and that belongs either in legal or the CEO's office, so...*hands* I guess if something ever happened to my position I might consider trying to transfer, but I just don't see how that would work. No one is indispensable, but no one else in this organization does what I do (and frankly, no one else wants to). If a new CEO comes in and has different ideas, that could be a problem, but I'm trying not to think about that too much. There are closer threats to my job right now. *gestures at everything*

*

Nostalgic Music Party!

Jun. 6th, 2025 07:07 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

After a few distinctly less than summery days, today has been quite sunny.

Okay, I think I've had some of these before.... maybe.
Summer Nights


The downside: Summertime Blues:


Not sure if Summer Wine is for drinking then, or made then, with sinister summer herbs:


Obligatory Lovin' Spoonful


Kinks chilling on a Lazy Sunny Afternoon:


Carole King another one wanting it to be over:

PSA

Jun. 6th, 2025 09:35 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
I'm on hiatus here generally; if you've emailed me and haven't heard back, I'm triaging due to work/other commitments. (In one case, there's someone with, I think, a name starting with C who emailed me a lovely note the week after my concussion and I can't find the email; I'm convinced I accidentally concussedly deleted it because my hand-eye/focus were so shot I kept hitting random keys; if that's you, I'm very sorry!) I will try to catch up when work/life permit. :]
meivocis: (pic#17887307)
[personal profile] meivocis posting in [community profile] vidding
Title: Because I Promised You
Fandom: Arcane
Music: Dawn, The Front by Talos
Summary: Two sides of the same coin. Inextricably bound.
Notes: Premiered at [community profile] vidukon_cardiff

DW | AO3 | Tumblr | Bluesky | Youtube
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

I did a quick search over past posts and I see that bibliotherapy has been a thing that I have been posting the odd link about for A Long Time, though I see the School of Life's page thereon is now 404. In the way that things are constantly being suddenly NEW, I see I also had a link much more recently on the topic about which was cynical.

But I find this article really quite amusing if sometimes determined to use all the Propah Academyk Speek: Reading as therapy: medicalising books in an era of mental health austerity:

When reading is positioned as therapy, we argue, evaluative intentions intersect awkwardly with the cultural logics of literature, as practitioners and commissioners grapple with what it means to extract ‘wellbeing effects’ from a diffuse and everyday practice. As a result, what might look initially like another simple case of medicalisation turns out to have more uncertain effects. Indeed, as we will show, incorporating the ‘reading cure’ troubles biomedicine, foregrounding both the deficiencies of current public health responses to the perceived crisis of mental health, and the poverty of causal models of therapeutic effect in public health. There are, then, potentially de-medicalising as well as medicalising effects.

We get the sense that the project was constantly escaping from any endeavours to confine it within meshes of 'evidence-based medicine': 'Trying to fit the square peg of reading into the round hole of evidence is where things sometimes get awkward.'

Larfed liek drayne:

In five experiments on how reading fiction impacts on measures of wellbeing, Carney and Robertson found no measurable effects from simply being exposed to fiction: the mechanism, they note, is not akin to a pharmaceutical that can prescribed.

gwyn: (pussypad kerry beary)
[personal profile] gwyn
Ugh, there's nothing like having to get a new roof on your house. Just the whole thing: the heinous cost, especially at a time when tariff bullshit/supply chain/tanking economy makes that 100 percent more devastating, the having to get multiple bids, then the having to tell people you went with someone else when they're awesome too...it's like something specially designed to make me miserable. I ended up getting bids from some great roofers, and it came down to two and it was so hard to make a decision, they were within a few hundred dollars of each other and they both had 4-star ratings everywhere and lots of good references. But I'm such a coward, the part where you have to tell the one company that you went with the other one is just excruciating omg.

Anyways, in about a month to six weeks, I'll be getting a new roof on the house. Poor Blues will be a wreck, but I don't know where I can really take him so he doesn't have to deal with the noise. I didn't have him when I did the kitchen remodel/addition, and Olive was the chillest cat you could ever have and she was fine with the construction (she literally slept through jackhammering my old concrete back stairs out), but my little sick, decrepit old man Blues will NOT do well in this situation. Home ownership sucks sometimes, so much.

I've been doing small things sporadically here and there--a tiny bit of writing, a bit of reading, lots of watching things. It doesn't feel like I ever accomplish much of anything; some days, the side effects are just awful enough that I don't really have the wherewithal to get much done. I'm trying to do accountability buddies with [personal profile] belmanoir to force myself to walk at least a few days a week, but if I'm having a lot of side effects, even that can be hard to make myself to do.

I *have* been watching things on TV, though--I signed up for a couple months of Disney and Max so I could watch a couple shows there, even though I couldn't really afford it. But the most important one to me was Andor, and so I can't regret spending the money.

Andor season 2 was just...wow. Holy crap. SO FUCKING GOOD. I mean, I can always find things to quibble with or critique, but when something is that amazing, it's just easy to handwave the details. What an incredible series, what an incredible season, what an incredible showcase for good writing and real production values instead of plastic manufactured crap filmed in that giant egg thing they call the volume. The costumes, the sets, the acting, it's all astounding and adult in the best way. I want to talk more at length about it, but I'm still digesting it all, and I need to sit down and rewatch it again, really take it in now that I know where it's going.

While I had HBO Max (or just max or whatever the fuck it's called), I figured I'd try The Pitt, even though I swore off hospital/medical shows a long time ago (I think anyone who knows my history, especially with regards to my sister's death, knows why). But I couldn't escape it on tumblr, and so somehow ended up deciding to give it a whirl, and...well, it is definitely as good as most people say. I do hate the medical show thing where everything has to be ramped up to 11, like, regular medicine in an emergency setting isn't dramatic enough, no, we have to have a mass casualty event. Okay.

I liked most of the characters, and while I've never cared about Noah Wyle, I will say that as Dr. Robby, he was much more appealing to me: I simply can't resist the broken, damaged, compassionate, competent guy who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, fuck my life. And also, *of course* I fall for the piping hot mess of a dude that is Langdon--he has a total WWII Bucky thing going on with his looks (tell me he couldn't be Bucky's double in First Avenger), so it just figures. I *had* to go for the guy with Big Problems who's a little bit of an asshole underneath the really good doctor veneer. I absolutely loathe Santos, every minute with her was torture, and I couldn't stand Javadi, either, with her perpetually wide eyes and grimaced mouth. They are both awful. Lest this sound like I just hate women characters, everyone else I loved, especially Mohan and McKay and Collins and OMG Dana. I adore Dana, I am really hoping she's coming back. And Dr. Ellis, I think was her name? at the end there, please tell me she's going to be front and center next season. It's funny, too, that I despised Shawn Hatosy after Southland, like, he was just the *worst* character ever and so obnoxious that it seemed like it had to be because of the actor, so color me shocked that I kinda...love him? on this show as Abbot. Very weird.

After Andor, I went over to Netflix to find something mindless and soft to watch, and checked out Mike Shur's latest show with Ted Danson, A Man on the Inside. It was very cute, but I couldn't get over the fact that this retirement center, which was very much like my dad's luxurious retirement center (in that it had the same apartment-->assisted living/memory care-->nursing facility progression structure), had only 100 residents and all those incredible amenities. Like, there is just no way to run something that incredible (it made my dad's place look like a dump) with so few residents, especially in the middle of downtown San Francisco. It would cost like $10,000 a week. It's a charming show, but I just could not stop thinking about the financial structure the whole time I watched. But if you're looking for something soft and short, it's a good show, especially if you enjoyed The Good Place.

And as so many people are, I'm enjoying the hell out of Murderbot. I really side-eyed the casting of ASkars as SecUnit, but I have to say, his inherent weirdness and goofiness is really turning out to be an asset. Some of the changes to the stories threw me a bit, but when I went back and rewatched the eps knowing what the changes were, it felt a little less jarring, and now the show really feels like it's hitting its stride. I am excited about Friday nights! I love the casting for Dr. Mensah and of course, the glimpses of Sanctuary Moon are just the fucking best. And anytime John Cho is on my TV is a good time.

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 08:47 pm
skygiants: Jane Eyre from Paula Rego's illustrations, facing out into darkness (more than courage)
[personal profile] skygiants
Over Memorial Day weekend [personal profile] genarti and I were on a mini-vacation at her family's cabin in the Finger Lakes, which features a fantastic bookshelf of yellowing midcentury mysteries stocked by [personal profile] genarti's grandmother. Often when I'm there I just avail myself of the existing material, but this time -- in increasing awareness of the way our own books are threatening to spill over our shelves again -- I seized this as an opportunity to check my bookshelves for the books that looked most like they belonged in a cabin in the Finger Lakes to read while I was there and then leave among their brethren.

As a result, I have now finally read the second-to-last of the stock of Weird Joan Aikens that [personal profile] coffeeandink gave me many years ago now, and boy was it extremely weird!

My favorite Aiken books are often the ones where I straight up can't tell if she's attempting to sincerely Write in the Genre or if she is writing full deadpan parody. I think The Embroidered Sunset is at least half parody, in a deadpan and melancholy way. I actually have a hypothesis that someone asked Joan Aiken to write a Gothic, meaning the sort of romantic suspense girl-flees-from-house form of the genre popular in the 1970s, and she was like "great! I love the Gothic tradition! I will give you a plucky 1970s career girl and a mystery and a complex family history and several big creepy houses! would you also like a haunted seaside landscape, the creeping inevitability of loss and death, some barely-dodged incest and a tragic ending?" and Gollancz, weary of Joan Aiken and her antics, was just like "sure, Joan. Fine. Do whatever."

Our heroine, Lucy, is a talented, sensible, cross and rather ugly girl with notably weird front teeth, is frequently jokingly referred to as Lucy Snowe by one of her love interests; the big creepy old age home in which much of the novel takes place is called Wildfell Hall; at one point Lucy knocks on the front door of Old Colonel Linton and he's like 'oh my god! you look just like my great-grandmother Cathy Linton, nee Earnshaw! it's the notably weird front teeth!" Joan Will Have Her Little Jokes.

The plot? The plot. Lucy, an orphan being raised in New England by her evil uncle and his hapless wife and mean daughter, wants to go study music in England with the brilliant-but-tragically-dying refugee pianist Max Benovek. Her uncle pays her fare across the Atlantic, on the condition that she go and investigate a great-aunt who has been pulling a pension out of the family coffers for many years; the great-aunt was Living Long Term with Another Old Lady (the L word is not said but it is really felt) and one of them has now died, but no one is really clear which.

The evil uncle suspects that the surviving old lady may not be the great-aunt and may instead be Doing Fraud, so Lucy's main task is to locate the old lady and determine whether or not she is in fact her great-aunt. Additionally, the great aunt was a brilliant folk artist unrecognized in her own time and so the evil uncle has assigned Lucy a side quest of finding as many of her paintings as possible and bringing them back to be sold for many dollars.

However, before setting out on any of these quests, Lucy stops in on the dying refugee pianist to see if he will agree to teach her. They have an immediate meeting of the minds and souls! Not only does Max agree to take her on as His Last Pupil, he also immediately furnishes her with cash and a car, because her plan of hitchhiking down to Aunt Fennel's part of the UK could endanger her beautiful pianist's hands!! Now Lucy has a brilliant future ahead of her with someone who really cares about her, but also a ticking clock: she has to sort out this whole great-aunt business before Max progresses from 'tragically dying' to 'tragically dead.'

The rest of the book follows several threads:
- Lucy bopping around the World's Most Depressing Seaside Towns, which, it is ominously and repeatedly hinted, could flood catastraphically at any moment, grimly attempting to convince a series of incredibly weird and variably depressed locals to give her any information or paintings, which they are deeply disinclined to do
- Max, in his sickroom, reading Lucy's letters and going 'gosh I hope I get to teach that girl ... it would be my last and most important life's work .... BEFORE I DIE'
- Sinister Goings On At The Old Age Home! Escaped Convicts!! Secret Identities!!! What Could This All Have To Do With Lucy's Evil Uncle? Who Could Say! Is Their Doctor Faking Being Turkish? Who Could Say!! Why Does That One Old Woman Keep Holding Up An Electric Mixer And Remarking How Easy It Would Be To Murder Someone With It? Who Could Say That Either!!!
- an elderly woman who may or may not be Aunt Fennel, in terrible fear of Something, stacked into dingy and constrained settings packed with other old and fading strangers, trying not to think too hard about her dead partner and their beloved cat and the life that she used to have in her own home where she was happy and loved .... all of these sections genuinely gave me big emotions :(((

Eventually all these plotlines converge with increasingly chaotic drama! Lucy and the old lady meet and have a really interesting, affectionate but complicated relationship colored by deep loneliness and suspicion on both sides; again, I really genuinely cared about this! Lucy, who sometimes exhibits random psychic tendencies, visits the lesbian cottage and finds it is so powerfully and miserably haunted by the happiness that it once held and doesn't anymore that she nearly passes out about it! Then whole thing culminates in huge spoilers )

Anyway. A wild time. Some parts I liked very much! I hit the end and shrieked and then forced Beth to read it immediately because I needed to scream about it, and now it lives among its other yellowing paperback friends on the Midcentury Mysteries shelf for some other unsuspecting person to find and scream about.

NB: in addition to everything else a cat dies in this book .... Joan Aiken hates this cat in particular and I do not know why. She likes all the other cats! But for some reason she really wants us to understand that this cat has bad vibes and we should not be sad when it gets got. But me, I was sad.

Oregon Trip, Day 1

Jun. 4th, 2025 12:23 pm
yourlibrarian: Merlin sleeps (MERL-SleepingMerlin-adsullatta)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) Just returned from a road trip from Portland to L.A. Almost had a hitch at the very start when it turned out my partner couldn't take me to pick up the car until 12:30 and the pickup had been scheduled for noon. I figured, not a big deal, right, to move it to 1 PM? Tried doing so with the 800 number since I couldn't seem to alter the reservation (and the local office usually can't be reached). I was told that if the car wasn't picked up by soon after 12 it would no longer be available. That sounded ridiculous, so I went to the office in person. Yup, no problem at all to move it to 1 PM. They told me I couldn't prepay for the pickup since it had to be tied to a specific vehicle.

I then asked if I could add the pre-paid fuel and tolls since the Chicago dropoff meant it wouldn't even cost me much more than if I did it myself. No but I could do that online. In fact, I couldn't. I was never offered the option.

Despite all this had no trouble with the pickup on the day, nor the drive up other than rain all the way. And I did rather like the light that would flash if someone was coming up on my left or right side to alert me to possible blind spots. The other thing was that as soon as I'd sat in the rental the service agent let me know to ignore the constantly signaling "maintenance warning" light. They had just gotten it back from the dealership and nothing could be found wrong with the car. Read more... )

The flight was definitely unfun. I had a middle seat and was very tired from a poor night's sleep followed by a 3 hour drive. I tried resting for an hour but gave up and watched Wicked on the in flight panels. I thought it was fine, certainly big budget, some nice dance routines and performances. I was surprised to realize it was only Pt. 1 of the story. I guess it was a good spot to end it to get the audience back in for the sequel. Read more... )

2) It took me a while but I did catch up on Pillowfort posts. Here at Dreamwidth though one can't scroll back longer than 2 weeks, which was skip=350. So there may be posts from from the 21st I can't see.

That said I'm having to skim through a lot because it's a ton of posts and I have things to catch up on now that I'm home again. More on that later.

3) Yesterday was unpacking, laundry, and refrigerator triage before today's weekly shop. I thought I was shockingly tired yesterday given that Monday night I had the most sleep since before the trip and the general stress was over. I even wondered if I was coming down with something but I feel ok today too, just...tired.

4) One nice bit post-trip is that I still had some of K's curry pretzels which she gifted M and me with. People love them so much she was urged to make it a side hustle but she said she didn't have the time for that, and preferred getting to relax rather than have a second job when she came home. She made some to order for Christmas sales a few years ago and said she didn't want to go through that twice.

5) Usually my partner complains that he never has time to watch his TV stuff because he has so little viewing time, and when he does have it we watch things together. My being away is clearly helpful on this front as he's looking forward to some of our joint viewing again 😉

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oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

KJ Charles, Copper Script (2025): somehow not among my top KJCs.

Finished Bitch in a Bonnet Vol 2, perhaps even better than vol 1.

Angela Thirkell, The Old Bank House (1949): not quite sure why this got to be picked as a Virago Modern Classic: WO WO Iron Heel of THEM i.e. the 1945 Labour Government, moan whinge, etc etc; also several rather repetitious passages of older generation maundering to themselves about the dire prospects that await the younger members.

Finished Dragon's Teeth, the last parts of which were quite the wild ride.

Latest Slightly Foxed, a bit underwhelmed, well, they can't always be talking about things that really interest/excite me or rouse fond memories I suppose.

On the go

Have started Upton Sinclair. Wide is the Gate (Lanny Budd, #4) (1943) simply because I had very strong 'what happens next? urges after the end of Dragon's Teeth, but that gets answered in the first few chapters, and I think that in this one we're already getting strong hints that Lanny is about to head southwards to Spain, just in time for things to start getting violent. I might take a break.

I have just started a romance by an author I have vaguely heard well of and was a Kobo deal but don't think it's for me.

Up next

Dunno: perhaps that Gail Godwin memoir.

***

*Even barely woken up I was not at all sure that this was not all one of those cunning scams that is in fact a fraudster telling you they are your bank/credit card co, but it turned out it was actually about somebody making fraudulent charges - in really odd small ways - on my card, when I got onto the website and found the number to ring - the number being called from with automated menu bearing no resemblance to the one on my card, ahem - went through all the procedures and card is being cancelled and new one sent. SIGH. This is second credit card hoohah in two days, yesterday got text re upcoming due payment for which bill has so far failed to arrive, for the one for which logging into website involves dangers untold and hardships unnumbered and having the mobile app. (Eventually all resolved.)

Something to distract you

Jun. 4th, 2025 02:59 pm
selenak: (VanGogh - Lefaym)
[personal profile] selenak
I think now I must have read all the published work of the estimable Ms Tesh. In reverse order, as she published these two novel(la)s first, and once more demonstrating her bandwidth, being different yet again from both Some Desperate Glory and The Incandescent. (Not solely because in this duology, the two main characters are male, though there are very memorable female supporting characters.) What it reminded me of was fanfiction to some earlier canon, though I could not say which canon, in the way it focused on the central m/m romance. Which isn't to say said romance - which is thoroughly charming - is all it has going for itself, by far not. The books do a wonderful job with its vaguely 19th century AU England which has Wild Men in the woods, dryads, some (not many) fairies, folklore-studying researchers and female vampire hunters. In all her books, Tesh proves she can create beings that feel guinely different, not like humans in costumes, be they demons or aliens or fae, and the while the heart of the duology is in the romance between stoic and brawny Wild Man Tobias Finch and geeky and cheerful gentleman scholar Henry Silver, it's by far not the only interesting relationship going on. There's also Henry's mother, Mrs. Silver the enterprising non-nonsense slayer hunter, with the way she and Tobias come to relate to each other being a welcome surprise, in the first novel Tobias' creepy ex of centuries past and in the second Maud Linderhurst, who is something spoilery ).

One can nitpick (for example, it's not clear to me what the difference between what Bramble the Dyrad is by the end of the duology and what the fairy servant is, to put it as unspoilery as possible), but nothing that takes away from this thoroughly enjoyable duology of stories. And given the daily news horror, they were very welcome distractions indeed.

Speaking of entertaining distractions: Sirens on Netflix is a five episodes miniseries based on a play, both written by Molly Brown Metzler,), which strikes me as unusual (plays usually ending up as movies), though some googling after watching the series which brought me to reviews of the originial play (titled Elemeno Pea), I found the review descriptions of the play made it clear there were enough differences for the play now to feel like a first draft. The miniseries stars Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock and Julianne Moore, and a lot of gorgeous costumes. (Also Kevin Bacon as Julianne Moore's husband.) At first I thought it would be another entry in the "eat the rich" genre, but no, not really. The premise: Our heroine and central character is Devon (Fahy), who is overwhelmed with work, an alcoholic father in the early stages of dementia, and her own past alcoholism (she's barely six months sober), and when after an SOS all she gets from younger sister Simone is an basket full of fruits, she impulsviely goes to the island for the superrich where Simone now works as PA for Michaela (Moore) to have it out with her sister. However, once she's there her anger is soon distracted by the fact Michaela/Kiki (as Simone is allowed to call her) comes across like a cult leader to her, and Simone's relationship with her boss has zero boundaries. The general narrative tone of the entire miniseries is black comedy, though as the Michaela and the audience discover both Simone and Devon have horroundous backstory trauma in their childhood and youth, said backstory trauma isn't played for laughs. The three main performances are terrific, with Julianne Moore having a ball coming across as intensely charismatic and creepy without technically doing anything wrong (so you get both why Devon is weirded out and why Simone seems to worship her), while Milly Alcock, whom I had previously only seen as young Rhaenyra in House of Dragon, also excells both as Simone in Devoted Lieutenant mode and with what's underneath showing up more and more. Meghann Fahy I hadn't seen in anything previously but she's wonderful here, no matter whether chewing someone out or trying to hold it together while things around her get ever more bizarre. Of the supporting cast, the most standout is Felix Solis as Jose, the house manager and general factotum. The fact that the staff hates Simone (who hands down Michaela's orders and is therefore loathed as the taskmaster) is a running gag through the series and gets an ironic pay off at the end, though again, this is not another entry in the "eat the rich" genre. Most of all it strikes me as a comedy of manners, and of course the setting - the island which in the play is Martha's Vineyard but in the miniseries has a fictional name - allows for some great landscaping in addition to everyone dressed up gorgeously. All in all, not something that will change your life, but immensely entertaining to watch, and everyone's fates at the end feel narratively earned.

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 10:04 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] starlady!

Rambling post about many things...

Jun. 3rd, 2025 07:49 pm
shadowkat: (Default)
[personal profile] shadowkat
Today, I wandered through the Urban Farm at the foot of Manhattan, in Battery Park. I also sat in the park on a chair on the grass beneath the trees, watching children play. It was a beautiful day, with a slight haze, most likely from the Canadian Wild Fires in the North.




It was a frustrating day, so I needed a break from it. As tempting as it is to regale you all with the details? I'll refrain.

Some bad news? Dochawk, you may or may not remember him from the ATPO_BTVS and ATS Fan Discussion Board? His two female cousins were victims of the flame-thrower attack in Boulder, Colorado. Read more... )

I'm trying to ignore the news for the most part - but keep stumbling upon it, whether I want to or not. Thank you, information age.

Been comforting myself by watching and listening to James Marsters Q&A's on youtube. I have a serious crush on that actor. I have crushes on several actors. Cillian Murphy is another one, so too is Hugh Jackman, Robert Downy Jr, David Tennant, Claudia Black, also Juliet Landau, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Viola Davis, Angela Basset, Jonathon Groff....I am notorious for actor crushes.

Marsters said something interesting in regards to a question about Whedon and separating art from the artist. Read more... )

Been rewatching Buffy as a comfort show - and it still holds up, and rather well at that. I just saw I Only Have Eyes for You - it's an episode that airs late in S2. I'd forgotten most of it. And forgot how good it is. The first few times I'd seen it - I hadn't thought much of it, but now, it resonates in a different way? The writers are commenting on multiple things - and it subverts various tropes. It's actually surprising the network let them do it - back in the 90s.
spoilers for those who never saw it, is there anyone? )

***

I didn't sleep well last night. Ached. And I ache now. Digestive issues, I think? Although did many things in the hopes of counter-acting them. My failing was giving in and having ice cream (Malawi Coffee and Rose Almond both Indian flavors and locally made). I did everything else right - baked salmon with zuccini and summer squash, and lots of water.

Oh well, it is what it is. Hopefully I can get the restless legs to calm down enough to sleep.

Here's a nice photo to round out this long rambling post.



Vaguely connected things

Jun. 3rd, 2025 04:54 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

In June 1868 the University of London's Senate had voted to admit women to sit the 'General Examination', so becoming the first British university to accept female candidates:

Women's higher education in London dates from the late 1840s, with the foundation of Bedford College by the Unitarian benefactor, Elisabeth Jesser Reid. Bedford was initially a teaching institution independent of the University of London, which was itself an examining institution, established in 1836. Over the next three decades, London University examinations were available only to male students.
Demands for women to sit examinations (and receive degrees) increased in the 1860s. After initial resistance a compromise was reached.
In August 1868 the University announced that female students aged 17 or over would be admitted to the University to sit a new kind of assessment: the 'General Examination for Women'.

***

Sexism in science: 7 women whose trailblazing work shattered stereotypes. Yeah, we note that this was over 100 years since the ladies sitting the University of London exams, and passing.

***

A couple of recent contributions from Campop about employment issues in the past:

Who was self-employed in the past?:

It is often assumed that industrial Britain, with its large factories and mines employing thousands of people, left little space for individuals running their own businesses. But not everyone was employed as a worker for others. Some exercised a level of agency operating on their own as business proprietors, even if they were also often very constrained.
Over most of the second half of the 19th century as industrialisation accelerated, the self-employed remained a significant proportion of the population – about 15 percent of the total economically active. It was only in the mid-20th century that the proportion plummeted to around eight percent.

and

Home Duties in the 1921 Census:

What women in ‘home duties’ were precisely engaged in still remains a mystery, reflecting the regular obstruction of women’s everyday activity from the record across history. For some, surely ‘home duties’ reflected hard physical labour (particularly in washing), as well as hours of childcare exceeding the length of the factory day. For others, particularly the aspirational bourgeois, the activities of “home duties” involved little actual housework. 5.1 percent of wives in home duties had servants to assist them, a rate which doubled for clerks’ wives to 11.7 percent. For them, household “work” involved little physical action. Though this may have given some of these women the opportunity to spend their hours in cultural activities or socialising, for others it possibly reflected crushing boredom.

Though I wonder to what extent these women were doing something, more informally, that would be invisible to the census and formal measures generally that contributed to the household economy - I'm thinking of the neighbour in my childhood who cut hair at home - ads in interwar women's mags for various money-making home-based schemes - writers one has heard whose sales were a significant factor in the overall family income - etc

***

And on informal contributions, Beyond Formal and Informal: Giving Back Political Agency to Female Diplomats in Early Nineteenth Century Europe:

[H]istorians such as Jeroen Duindam show that there were never explicitly separate spheres for men and women when working for the state in the early nineteenth-century. Drawing a line separating ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ diplomats in the early nineteenth-century, simply based on their gender alone, does not do these women justice.

***

And I am very happy to see this receiving recognition, though how far has something which got reprinted after 30 years be considered languishing in obscurity, huh? as opposed to having created a persistent fanbase: A Matter of Oaths – Helen Wright.

(no subject)

Jun. 3rd, 2025 09:43 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] pennski and [personal profile] threeringedmoon!
musesfool: orange slices (orange you glad)
[personal profile] musesfool
Work was nuts today, especially since I was out on Friday and some of my cow-orkers apparently just waited around for me to come back instead of sending an email themselves. Plus I had 2 committee meetings (unusual - we try not to do that unless we absolutely can't avoid it) but luckily 1 only lasted 15 minutes, so I was able to knock out the minutes in about a similar amount of time. *g*

Yesterday I roasted some ears of corn, and ate 2 for lunch and then scraped the other 3 into a big bowl and the added some crumbled up bacon, 2 pints of really beautiful grape tomatoes, some little pearls of fresh mozzarella, a sliced vidalia onion, and some salt and pepper, oregano, basil, rosemary, and thyme, and dressed it all with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Delicious! I will make some orzo to add to it for lunch over the next couple of days and I am looking forward to it.

I also finally hit upon a good way to cook hotdogs without a grill - in the broiler. I don't eat them very often but a couple times during the summer I get a craving, so when they go on sale, I sometimes snag a pack and some soft, cheap buns to eat with them. Of course, since I have the palate of a 5-year-old, I still prefer ketchup on my hotdogs, but since I live alone, there's no one here to judge me. *g*

*The Dodgers, not the Mets. Sigh.

***
shadowkat: (work/reading)
[personal profile] shadowkat
Yes, it's that time again - for the weekly Good News Report from the American Resistance and it's Global Allies in the War against Fascism, Cancer, Disease, and Climate Change, or just trying to fight for kindness and general well-being overall.

As always, mileage may vary on what is good news, or good news may well be in the eye of beholder. You can also call it the Hope Report if you prefer.
Whatever floats your boat, as my father used to say.

the Good News Report )

***

Reading: When Leaders Attack Judges as Enemies, the Global Authoritarian Play Book and How to Stop It


umadoshi: (lilacs 02)
[personal profile] umadoshi
It was not a productive weekend for me--awkward, because I had great intentions of getting an initial dent into my next rewrite. I did at least make it as far as reading through the translation and making some notes, but that was very much it.

The one thing I managed was a fair bit of reading:

I finished Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice (a fun read, and I'll probably move along with the series at some point--I think I may even already have the second book--but I don't feel any urgency about it) and followed it up in rapid succession with Copper Script (KJ Charles) and Titan of the Stars (E.K. Johnston), both of which only came out last week. (Two books within a week of their shared release date probably isn't actually a record, but it's certainly not my norm.) Both were great, in very different ways. I knew Johnston had two books coming out in pretty quick succession this season (Sky on Fire releases next month) and that one of them has a planned sequel, but somehow I assumed right up to the end of this one that it was the July book. But no! It's this one! (Unless they both do.) I expect it'll be a fairly different book, and will be very interested to see how things play out.

I'm also still picking my way through The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. (Kobo thinks I'm 78% done.)

Watching: [personal profile] scruloose and I saw the S2 TLOU finale last weekend, and at some point I'll probably ask around for broad and specific spoilers for the game, and that may impact how I feel about it. (Bella Ramsey knocked it out of the park, though. What a fantastic cast all around.)

We're also up to date on Murderbot. My inability to remember any plot specifics at all from All Systems Red (given that it's the only book in the series I've read more than once) is both a bit funny and annoying.

Eating: The Zuni method of dry-brining and roasting a chicken was a success again. Unrelatedly, I got [personal profile] scruloose to pick up an extra-dark maple syrup from a local producer, and we tried and enjoyed it last weekend. (This jug doesn't explicitly say "extra-dark" or anything like that, so it's possible it's not actually the one I heard mentioned, but it is very dark and they acquired it at the store that had been named, so I'm kinda assuming.)

Growing/Weathering: The lilacs have bloomed! It was windy enough yesterday, and rainy before that, that I was a little scared all the blossoms would blow right off, but that doesn't seem to have happened. I hope I remember to actually go outside and get some to bring inside.

The Sensation lilac [see icon, although that's not a pic of ours] is in pretty dire need of pruning, poor thing. The thought of actually making a(n approximately-)dated list of when to do specific garden things has passed through my mind, and if I'm lucky I'll actually try to assemble it. I think at least the last couple of years running we've looked up when to prune lilacs and then I've been thrown by the fact that our other one is a Bloomerang and presumably follows different rules.

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