doire

Say nothing yet about that last post. I appear to have jumped the gun by a week, so PLEASE don't post about it on Big Social Media.

I will unlock it next Tuesday.

Sigh.

Nine

duskpeterson

If you want to see Emor at its best, visit its City Court in session.

Actually, if you are staying with an Emorian acquaintance, it's unlikely you'll be given any choice about this. Emorians assume that everyone in the world is as enthralled with their laws as they are. Thankfully, Emorians are right to be proud of their law system, founded centuries ago by their Chara and council. This law system, known simply as the Chara's law, is one of the bulwarks of civilization in the Three Lands.

The best way to visit a law court is to prepare yourself beforehand by listening to an Emorian explain their law system to you. Any Emorian will do; even Emorian ditch-diggers know a good deal about the law. Indeed, even Emorian women do.

The City Court is not terribly formal, by Emorian standards, and the rules for behavior will be explained to you beforehand by the guards at its door. Wear your best clothes and be on your best behavior; otherwise, you can relax and enjoy the spectacle.

On your way out, be sure to visit the adjoining Law Academy, founded by the City Court in order to give advanced lessons in the law. The Academy does not try to compete with the traditional Emorian methods of learning law: tutoring, apprenticeships, and playing law-based games when one is a boy. Rather, the Academy provides supplemental education for Emorians who plan to apply for high positions in the law, such as at the palace. Most of the Academy students are between the ages of eight and sixteen, though students as young as four are accepted, if they plan to apply for a youth post, such as scribing or paging. On the other end of the scale, a few students are full-grown men who, because of unfortunate circumstances, missed out on the normal training in the law that virtually all Emorian boys receive. In recent years, many of these students have been former slaves. The Academy welcomes them all, even going so far as to pay the fees of any students whose slave service left them penniless.

[Translator's note: Emorians' obsession with the law is on full display in Law Links.]

redbird

I have just been pleasantly surprised by a health insurance company: they aren't requiring "prior authorization" for my Kesimpta prescription. The person I spoke to this afternoon checked whether I had any of the drug left (no), and whether I'd missed a dose, before arranging delivery for Thursday morning. This is the drug whose copay will meet the 2026 out-of-pocket maximum. Yes, I selected a plan in large part based on the prescription drug coverage.

china_shop

After the Waiting (10,195 words, Guardian, outsider POV on the SID & on Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan's new relationship, post-canon)

The Best Thing for Everyone (8,726 words, Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story, Go Hotae/Kim Donghee, bridging the gap between the two canons, angsty ending with hope for the future)

Breakage and Repair (5,247 words, Guardian, Chu Shuzhi/Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan, post-canon, angst --> get-together)

( My 2025 fanworks and modding )

( The Meme (for 2025) )

wychwood

Today I discovered that it is possible to add Too Many new games on Steam! It actually locked me out and I had to wait an hour before I could add the final items from the Humble Bundle I was working on. It did take fifty games in 25 minutes to hit the rate limit, though, which doesn't seem too unreasonable. I think I have now added every game I bought via Humble Bundle to my Steam account, which is a nice (small) milestone.

My cleaner came today for the first time since before Christmas, and my house is so pretty now! Also once she was gone I could start the laundry going again (I try to have all the laundry dry and away before she arrives, so she can e.g. vacuum the floor instead of having to work around the drying racks). I've hung three loads already, there's a hoodie in now and a second to go in when it's done, and the only things left that need washing are the half of the bedding that will need a drying rack. That will have to wait until the weekend. I would say "then I'll be all up to date!" but then I'll be at Mum's and will need to catch up again once I return from there! Still, I'm closer than I was.

There have been workpeople outside my window all day dismantling the next block of garages for replacement, which includes mine; I'm quite excited by this, since at the end of it I will hopefully have a garage with a door that I can open! and close! all by myself! without crowbars and ropes and enough equipment that I could really use three hands. Not that I have much to keep in it; the only thing in there before was my bike. Still, it would be nice to get that out of the spare room again.

nineweaving

Glad tidings! Thanks to the good work of my agents Dylan Haston and Cameron McClure, Lanternfish Press will be publishing my Cloud books as a triptych, bringing out reprints of Moonwise (1991) and Cloud & Ashes (2009) in spring 2027, followed by my new book Lightwards. For those of you new to the older books, Moonwise concerns two friends who tumble from Earth into Cloud, a world they thought they’d created. Cloud & Ashes is three winter’s tales set in that world: a gathering of myths; a tragic tale of love between a god and mortal; and the journey of their daughter from the underworld where she was born to remake star-gazing into science. Lightwards is about a magic college in a post-mythic world, and about the past they study. It contains the greater part of a blank-verse play, a Cloudish late romance. These books are all about language. I began writing the matter of Cloud back in 1982, so I’m ecstatic at the prospect of having all of it in print and pixels. Audiobooks next!

Nine

ETA: Oh dear. Now I'm told I should have held off on the news until Tuesday. We should rejoice quietly. Please don't trumpet this on Big Social Media. 9

brithistorian

Today I finally had sufficient time around lunchtime to try Cincinnati chili. I fixed it according to the article on "How to Eat Cincinnati Chili Like a Local" and then sat down to eat it. I didn't like the first bite. So I ate some more, hoping it would get better with further exposure. By the time I had eaten half of the serving, I gave up and decided I just didn't like it. So I disposed of it, brushed my teeth, then brushed my teeth again because I could still taste it in my mouth. I wish I liked it, because the concept sounded interesting, but I don't.

I think I might try eating "regular" chili on spaghetti, because it wasn't the "on spaghetti" part that I disliked, but in the meantime I'm over here eating peppermints one after another to try to clear the taste in my mouth. (I'm really not trying to be overly dramatic here. It's just very rare that I try something and don't like it, so I'm having trouble coping with it.)

kathleen_dailey

I'm supposed to be worrying about meeting a deadline, but instead I'm faffing around on the internet--a more rewarding pastime than writing at the moment.

January Q & A from the Chicago Manual of Style

What Trump Did to Venezuela Should Terrify Ottawa

Pushing the the Boundaries of the Lesbian Imaginary: Aerlyn Weissman and the Vitality of Visibility

Hunter S. Thompson's Freaks Have Overrun America

The Golden Age of Smut

A review of Genre Bending: The Plasticity of Form in Contemporary Literary Fiction

niqaeli

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

purplecat

A large blanket on a double bed. The blanket is made from various crochet sqares in predominantly purple and orange colours.

This is the 2025 Mooglycal blanket. I was still attempting to use up the stash which, it transpired, had mostly orange and purple wool in it - not the most auspicious combination but there is now at least a lot less of it than there was and all that really bright orange has gone. The general concept was vertical stripes of red/orange and purple/pink with the darker colours at the top and lighter colours at the bottom. It didn't really work, in part because there was just so much of some colours. Anyway, I have decided to actually have a colour scheme next year since the stash is now under control (well at least that bit of the stash that involves the wool I use for making these blankets).

rachelmanija

Ben is on a work trip, away from his wife and three young children, when he decides to take a hike through the woods by his hotel. Ben sees a man with a Rottweiler face disposing of a corpse, and flees into the woods with the dog man pursuing him.

The next thing he knows, he's trapped in a surreal world halfway between a nightmare and a video game. It often involves distorted reflections of his own past - Ben has a scar on his face from a Rottweiler bite and he keeps getting attacked by Rottweiler-faced men, an old lover appears at the age she was when he last saw her, and he befriends a talking crab that knows a suspicious amount about him. He has to stay on the path, or he'll die. A mysterious old woman gives him tasks and tells him the only way he can get home is to find the Producer. Things appear and disappear in a very dreamlike manner, the scene shifting from a cannibal giant's castle to a hovercraft to a desert. After each ordeal, he gets a banquet with champagne.

This extremely weird book is a bit like a dreamlike, horror-inflected Alice in Wonderland for bros. I almost gave up on it halfway through - it was so "one random thing after another and the whole thing is clearly not real" that I got bored - but that's when something happened that intrigued me enough to continue. It doesn't need to be as long as it is - it's a short book that would have been better as a novelette - but the ending, while not explaining all that much, still manages to be satisfying.

I wouldn't re-read this - the actual reading experience often felt like a slog - but it was definitely different and had some good twists, so I'm not sorry I read it. I suspect there's some overlap in readership between this and Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Don't read the spoilers if there's any chance you'll actually read the book.

( Spoilers! )

Probably it's all a metaphor for life.

Content notes: Horror-typical gore and gross-outs.

thistleingrey

Jodi McAlister, An Academic Affair: A Novel (2026): two scholars in Sydney who've been competing since they were undergrads inhabit enemies-to-lovers without doing it, become housemates, and then inhabit sham-marriage (obviously, they're aware of the relevant topoi---he's an early modernist, she does pop fiction) because a job and a family hang in the balance. The Goodreads detail page has a more spoilery summary.

It's a relief to find that I haven't become a fan of romances, only better able to grasp them. This one is fine, like, whatever---but as academic novels go, it's almost alarmingly solid despite the brisk, casual tone. It's not satire when the caricatures resemble people one's met, people one's friends have worked with. Though one could say the same of Lodge (whose character-bases lasted long enough for me to've met a few, glancingly) and perhaps of Smiley and Tartt, Lodge wanted things to seem flash to the uninitiated while he took apart what suited him; all three writers sought to construct various levels of mystique. McAlister knows the world I was in for some years, despite being the other side of it geographically, and her narrative defines "precariat" for the uninitiated.

(Lodge: Changing Places et seqq. Smiley: Moo. Tartt: The Secret History, which I DNFed.)

js_thrill

Today's song is "The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix's Life"

Watch on YouTube

A few days ago, I stopped putting the names of the individual songs for each day in the tags for the posts, because I remembered

ambyr mentioning there is an upper bound on how many tags dreamwidth will let you have, and I wasn't sure I wanted to use up 365 of them on individual Mountain Goats songs.

Brueghel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

The annotations on this piece include a reproduction of text of Auden's poem "Museé de Beaux Arts", and Darnielle's reflections on how his song is a response to that poem. I'm fairly sure I've encountered the poem before, but I didn't really remember much about it. It's worth reading—that's the opposite of a hot take, to be sure—but in the context of this song, in particular.

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

The "they" here is the old masters, who Auden is praising for recognizing that intense suffering (or ecstasy) happens alongside the everyday goings-on of the rest of the world. Did I quote this passage because it says "dogs go on with their doggy life"? Yes. Of course I did. Darnielle's song removes the comparison between subjects (Icarus's suffering vs. the normalcy of the ploughman's day) to juxtapose the same contrast within a single subject. The elements of Jimi Hendrix's last day (in the song) are unremarkable: a hot shower a cold glass of water. This is contrasted with the unstated tragedy of his death.*

Okay, so, moving song, interesting reflections on where it came from. The annotation also mentions his father, which is somewhat rare to see him talk about (compared to his very frequent and unpleasant memories of his stepfather).

Apart from what I've just discussed above, I found myself thinking a lot about the album "Transcendental Youth" (which, push come to shove, is probably my favorite Mountain Goats album). Here's John Darnielle performing a track from that album, talking about and singing "Harlem Roulette" off of Transcendental Youth, and if you watch this video, you'll see why the connection lit up in my brain:

Watch on YouTube

*There is a word that is not the word "synoptic" and not the word "enthymeme" but is in the neighborhood of one of those, for the literary device of not talking about/describing the details of his death in order to make it a focal point of comparison, but I spent about 10 minutes trying to remember the word I was looking for and I cannot, and it is going to drive me nuts.

Current Music: The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix's Life — The Mountain Goats

heleninwales

I said I'd post about books I've been reading, so here we go. Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines.

I really wanted to like this, but having got half way through, I've put it aside. Though the way the magic works is really cool, I had a couple of problems with it.

A libriomancer can use magic to pull items out of books into the real world. The main character, Isaac Vaino used to be a field agent, but now, after burning out on active service, is a librarian with a pet fire spider which originally came from a book. The book starts in media res to the extent that I actually checked that it really was book 1 in the series. There was a lot of back story piled into the first chapters that I don't think we actually needed to know until it became relevant. But my main turnoff was a) the vampires and b) Isaac doesn't seem to be able to meet anyone without ending up in a fight. Unfortunately I just don't like vampire stories. That's a me thing and anyone who was more vampire tolerant might well enjoy this book. However, every interaction ending up as a fight to the death felt like overuse of the "there must be conflict" advice. To say the book was fast paced was an understatement. The plot felt rather frenzied.

Having said all that, I may return to the book and finish it at another time. One reason for putting it aside was that it wasn't suiting my present mood, which at this time of year tends to be a bit dismal. The constant frenzied action felt jarring. Instead I've started reading Still Waters by E. C. R Lorac, a writer I very much enjoy. She writes mysteries and is more or less a contemporary of Agatha Christie, but IMHO write much more interesting stories. More about this book when I've finished reading it.

lb_lee

(EDIT: Sneak: I have updated healthymultiplicity.com with our new email address and also fixed the homepage redirect error. Tomorrow, I will focus on cross-posting all our public DW posts to make them publicly accessible again, and maybe update hm.com with back-up links.)

Rogan: Okay, thank fuck, there were a few snowballing complications, but I finally have a working public-facing email again.

I am using the Dreamwidth forwarding address feature, so in case my new public email gets killed, I can just keep the same address and avoid this kinda chaos again. (I should've done this earlier, but this is one of the many features of Dreamwidth that I never paid attention to, because up until this moment, I never needed or wanted such a thing.)

If you need to get ahold of us, you can now drop us a line at lb_lee at dreamwidth.org. For as long as this site or us are still around, and as long as this feature is part of a Paid account, it should hold.

Working on updating healthymultiplicity.com to update our new address, and then finally getting around the Mississippi blog ban that I've needed to take care of for months. Stay tuned!

Current Mood: busy
Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/1952.html

thewayne

Baby steps first!

This test involved a Cessna turboprop flying at 5,000 meters in cross-winds of up to 70 knots - a bit bumpy! - and it successfully beamed power from the plane to ground-based receivers using wide-field infra-red light. It's low-density energy compared to microwave power, but it also isn't remotely dangerous in case the targeting system of the transmitter is compromised and used to hammer something other than the receiver!

There have been other demonstrations, CalTech did one a few years ago, this is the first using a moving platform against ground targets, which I think was a microwave test. But a really big problem with microwave? Radio spectrum. It's all allocated for 5G wireless and lots of other things. Infra-red light? Doesn't have bandwidth allocation issues.

Interesting stuff.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/wireless-power-movin-airplane

thewayne

It also will not seek any tax abatements or incentives.

Well, that's one heck of a move!

MS has a new "Community First" initiative where it is paying the full costs of its data centers, which will cause no increase in costs for area residents. They have taken tax abatements in the past, that apparently will end. There's a lot of hate for the big tech companies right now, and justly so: "In data‑center hubs such as Virginia, Illinois and Ohio, residential power prices jumped 12–16% over the past year — noticeably faster than the U.S. average, according to U.S. government data — as grid operators scrambled to add capacity for large new facilities."

A certain moron last night spilled the news on his private social media platform and said that his administration is talking to the other major tech platforms about them taking responsibility to eat their own costs, as they should, we shall see what happens. They certainly have the money, but as we've seen so often in the past, it's always been 'privatize the profits, socialize the costs'.

https://www.geekwire.com/2026/microsoft-responds-to-ai-data-center-revolt-vowing-to-cover-full-power-costs-and-reject-local-tax-breaks/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/01/13/146211/microsoft-pledges-full-power-costs-no-tax-breaks-in-response-to-ai-data-center-backlash

oursin

At least, I found a whole foods supplier which had - among other things like wheatbran which looked like it would not be like the sawdusty stuff Ocado have lately been purveying under that name - things like Medium Oatmeal! Wheatgerm! and POMEGRANATE VINEGAR!!! which I have been complaining everywhere were No Can Haz. Also kasha (I did have kasha but on recently examining the package found that its BBF was way back last summer).

And conveyed to me with remarkable expedition even if I didn't pony up for the expedite delivery option.

Slight whinge at DPD for just leaving it on the step and not even ringing the bell.

Also, I discovered that my library card for Former Workplace expired several years ago. On emailing about renewal (as I have a need to Go In and Consult Things) got a next day response saying they can renew if I send in scan of appropriate ID and address verification, and pick up card when I go in.

This somewhat makes up for:

a) the two reviews I did last year which still sit in limbo with the relevant editors.

b) the two feelers put out for books to review, ditto, such that I am hesitant to put out another for a different book to a different journal in case I end up yet again with stack of books for review.

c) local history society which I contacted last year apropos 2 volumes of its proceedings which are Relevant to My Interests and which after some initially encouraging response has gone silent.

Am still miffed about either inadvertently deleting or not being sent Zoom link for the last Dance to the Music of Time discussion.

and am baffled by the ongoing situation 'The server is taking too long to respond' of the Mastodon instance I frequent, which has now pertained for nearly 5 days.

smokingboot

'There's such a thing as chemo hair,' said the hairdresser some time back, despite me repeatedly trying to tell her that what I had was radiotherapy, not chemotherapy. 'Same for your hair, almost,' she said. I don't think it is, but she was on a roll. 'When your hair first grows back, it's going to be strange. Still got the chemo in it you see. Might as well shave it all off, the next growth is better.'

I ignored her because I am not shaving my head for someone who tells me chemo and radiotherapy are effectively the same thing. So it has grown. And I have to admit, it's not great. The trouble is knowing the difference between ageing hair, treated hair, radiotherapied hair, cancer hair and whatever the hell else is going on. Also, it itches, the colour doesn't last, and the last time she coloured my hair it burned my scalp. I had to stop her.

Right now it looks dry, brittle. There is some shine, but not my normal shine. The nurses were a bit more useful. 'It's going to change, they said, 'colour change, texture change, maybe it will start being wavy.' I asked them if I should shave my head. 'That's up to you,' they said, 'but you don't need to.' I told them about the hairdresser. They tried to be polite.

Now I have seaweed shampoo and conditioner. Let's see what happens.

Yesterday I did stuff that needed doing and took effort, today I started one thing, ended up doing two others, more productive than I have been but.. truth is that by 11 I am done. If I am to get anything really sorted I have to get up early in the morning and do it straight away. And yet, how true is this, really? I stayed up late doing the place plan. That wasn't creative as such, it was recording, taxing in a different way and once I finished it I collapsed into near torpor for weeks. Let's be honest, I couldn't do it again.

The whole after cancer thing is driving me mad. I'll talk to the doctor soon. This fatigue is just ridiculous, the depression less insidious because I know its cause but still damaging. All they are going to say to me is that we can try Tamoxifen, but its rep for side effects is worse than Letrozole, and it took me long enough to get used to the latter. Ten years like this? I know, time to be grateful, make the best of it, people are facing much worse. If I can cover my head in kelp I'm doing OK.

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doire

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Network

Jumping the gun

FIC: The City Court and Law Academy (Tempestuous Tours)

Kesimpta prescription

End-of-year wrap-up meme for 2025

my empty halls to echo with grand self-mythology

A little late for Epiphany

Update: Cincinnati chili

Current reading

blah blah update blah I am not that exciting atm

2025 Blanket

The Hike, by Drew Magary

here, take this

This Year 365 songs: January 13th

Book notes

New Email

Researchers did a test for possibly beaming power from space!

Microsoft says it will pay the full energy costs for its new AI datacenters!

Sometimes things actually work

Hair

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February 2024

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