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conulyJenn related everybody's lack of sleep, ending with a hopeful "So, you're not working tonight, right?"
Ah, no, I am working, and under no circumstances will I call out on the grounds that my dog is crazy.
Other than dementia, which she shows no signs of (the dog, not my sister... I mean, not her either, but that's not what I'm talking about), what could cause this sudden barking spree in an otherwise pretty quiet doggie?
****************
( Read more... )
Ah, no, I am working, and under no circumstances will I call out on the grounds that my dog is crazy.
Other than dementia, which she shows no signs of (the dog, not my sister... I mean, not her either, but that's not what I'm talking about), what could cause this sudden barking spree in an otherwise pretty quiet doggie?
( Read more... )
Fucking fuck
2026-03-11 21:54conulyLink to a sample letter/email
A friend let me know about a new Bureau of Prisons guideline for treatment of inmates with gender dysphoria, which you can read in its entirety here. The short form is that they're denying trans inmates gender-affirming care despite medical consensus, and substituting conversion therapy, which has been proven to be harmful and does not in any way "cure" gender dysphoria
A friend let me know about a new Bureau of Prisons guideline for treatment of inmates with gender dysphoria, which you can read in its entirety here. The short form is that they're denying trans inmates gender-affirming care despite medical consensus, and substituting conversion therapy, which has been proven to be harmful and does not in any way "cure" gender dysphoria
Wednesday Reading Meme for March 11 2026
2026-03-11 18:41kitewithfishWeekly reading journal for march 11 2025
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
Wednesday Reading Meme for March 11 2026
2026-03-11 13:38kitewithfishWeekly reading journal for march 11 2025
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
I am! On! Vacation! Muahahahahaha.
(Happy 11th of March to the few, the happy few, Due South fans out there!)
What I Have Read
Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers - I finished this is a fevered rush on a plane, so take my review with a grain of salt. This was fun, it was sincere, it was unpretentious, it was a good time! I wish there had been a little more substance to the ending as the emotional core of Cameron's journey, but I am not upset by it! I did call the main revelation but not all of it! And I'm not sure what I would recommend this book for, exactly, but I had fun.
Chivalric Academia by OldShrewsburyian This fic! Is a delight! The writing is just a pleasure to read - funny and clear, gently ironic and sincere by turns. It's a Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth modern day academic AU where they are both new faculty at a small college. She hates him, he gets his handcut off, they fall in love. Brienne is written with such absolute conviction and commitment, Jaime is always dancing between hiding in the shadows and baring his soul in stupified awe of her. Wonderful, go read it especially if you like Dorothy Sayers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/57674458
Daniel Molloy's Incredible Showstopping World-Famous Model Train Extravaganza for Children and Easily-Awed Vampires (Please Knock) by
Ariaste - I read this bc Ariaste is now posting the sequel as a weekly fic. Its wonderful and porny and like Chivalric Academia, involves people who want to be together figuring out how to make it work.
What I'm Reading
Sword Heart is still slow because it is so so sweet and tender.
What I Will Read Next
The grief of stones
My real children
recent reading
2026-03-11 19:09redbirdFinished recently:
These are all parts of ongoing series, and all fantasy (in significantly different styles)
Testament of Mute Things, by Lois McMaster Bujold (a Penric novella)
Apt to be Suspicious, by Celia Lake
To Ride a Rising Storm, by Moniquill Blackgoose: this doesn't just leave room for a sequel, it ends on a cliffhanger. Strongly recommended. Definitely start with her first novel, To Shape a Dragon's Breath, for world-building and if you care about spoilers. (I think the Bujold and Lake books would both work as starting points for reading those series.)
I am currently partway through Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance, which is chewy nonfiction.
We just finished our latest read-aloud book, Half Magic by Edward Eager. Adrian and Cattitude had read this before, I hadn't, we all enjoyed it.
These are all parts of ongoing series, and all fantasy (in significantly different styles)
Testament of Mute Things, by Lois McMaster Bujold (a Penric novella)
Apt to be Suspicious, by Celia Lake
To Ride a Rising Storm, by Moniquill Blackgoose: this doesn't just leave room for a sequel, it ends on a cliffhanger. Strongly recommended. Definitely start with her first novel, To Shape a Dragon's Breath, for world-building and if you care about spoilers. (I think the Bujold and Lake books would both work as starting points for reading those series.)
I am currently partway through Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance, which is chewy nonfiction.
We just finished our latest read-aloud book, Half Magic by Edward Eager. Adrian and Cattitude had read this before, I hadn't, we all enjoyed it.
mrissa(This silly site would not let me fit both of their whole names in the title. It's Jo Walton and Ada Palmer.)
Review copy provided by the publisher. Also I've been friends with both authors for a good long while.
Which makes this a very weird book for me to read, honestly, because I met both Jo and Ada through SFF fandom and conventions, through all writing and talking and thinking about genres, and so a lot of the first third of this book is, for me, "the obvious stuff people talk about all the time." Well, sure. Because Jo and Ada are people, and I am around them talking about this kind of thing all the time (or at least intermittently for more than twenty years in one case and more than fifteen in the other, so it adds up), so naturally their points of view on genre theory are in the general category of "stuff I would logically have been exposed to by now." It's a bit "Hamlet is just a string of famous quotes strung together," as reactions go: kind of the cart before the horse. And it means that there are a few things that are in the category of "oh right, there's the thing I always disagree with Jo about; look, she still has her own idea about it rather than mine, go figure." This is to be expected given the long and winding discussion it's been, but it makes it a bit harder for me to say useful things about what it will look like to most readers.
So the first third of the book is the part that most obviously fits the title--it's the section that has the largest-scale thoughts about the nature of genre qua genre. The second third was the most satisfying to me: it was thoughts on disability and pain. I think a too-casual reader might mistake it for random padding to make this book book-length without requiring Jo and/or Ada (some of the sections are co-written and some are written solo by each author) to write more entirely new material. But no. Absolutely not. The way that Jo and Ada process disability is strongly shaped by each of their perspectives as SFF writers and readers, and the way they process SFF is--sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly--shaped by their lived experiences as disabled people. Some of our personal stories are about the project of science fiction and fantasy. Jo's and Ada's are. And they're useful--powerful--to see on the page like this. This is where knowing people for a quite long time doesn't give me a "yes I have already been here" reaction, because three disabled friends do not talk about disability and personal history and its place in the speculative project in the same way as two of them would write about it for a general audience. It's a view from a very different angle, which is great to have. The last section is more miscellany, still related to the title but more specifics, less sweeping theory. It's labeled craft, and this is true, but in a broad sense--there are pieces about The Princess Bride and optimism and censorship as well as about protagonists and empathy in a structural sense.
I wonder if people who come to this book from reading mostly Ada rather than both but by the numbers more Jo would see how Jo has influenced Ada's prose voice in the joint pieces. For me, the stylistic commonalities with Inventing the Renaissance were really striking, but if you'd come directly from reading that I wonder how much you'd be saying, oh, that's got to be Jo Walton because it's not really what I'm used to from Ada Palmer solo! Co-authorship is an interesting beast, and I feel like there's a difficult balance here that's partially achieved by having pieces by each person solo as well as the two together. I'm not sure I can immediately come up with another thing like it that way.
The Luminous Dead, by Caitlin Starling
2026-03-11 15:53rachelmanija
Gyre explores the tunnels of an alien world in a mechanical suit, her only connection to the outside world the voice of Em, her handler who she’s never met, who may or may not have her welfare in mind, and who definitely has boundary issues.
Gyre has less experience caving than she claimed, and caving is extremely difficult. There are sandworm-like creatures called Tunnelers that will kill multiple parties of cavers for unknown reasons, so cavers go in alone, unable to take off their suit for weeks on end, with their handler as their only link with the outside world. Em can literally take control of Gyre’s suit/body, can inject her with drugs, etc - and not only has little compunction about doing so, but won't tell Gyre what the actual purpose of the mission is.
Spoilers! ( Read more... )
This is a type of story I don’t see very often, in which there’s one main science fiction element – in this case, the mechanical caving suit – which is explored in depth and is essential to the story, and it’s also set on a (very lightly sketched-in) other planet. Generally the “one science fiction element” stories are set on Earth. Apart from the Tunnelers, this novel actually could take place on an Earth where the suit exists.
The Luminous Dead, like The Starving Saints, has a small cast of sapphic women and takes place almost entirely in the same claustrophobic space; if it was on TV, we’d call it a bottle episode. I normally like that sort of thing but unlike The Starving Saints, it outstays its welcome. It has about a novella’s worth of story, and while it’s very atmospheric and any given portion is well-written and interesting, considered alone, as a whole it’s very repetitive and over-long. I would mostly recommend it if you like complicated lesbians with bad boundaries.
apparently we also need a new oven
2026-03-11 22:40kaberettVia divers alarums and excursions we have established that the oven seems to trip All The Electrics... when it hits A Certain Temperature. ( Read more... )
But. BUT. Today I SAW THE BAT for the first time this year (having been doing a questionable job of actually managing to watch for it at bat o'clock over the last several weeks); and my Special Interest In Moving My Body went surprisingly well; and A curled up on the sofa and did some more Reading About Special Interest with me; and I am actually doing alright.
If I were you, I'd be out on the town
2026-03-11 18:27sovayWhatever passes for my health these days has tipped over onto the sidewalk, but my afternoon which contained far too much communication with doctors on far too little sleep was measurably improved by the discovery of Avalon Emerson's "Don't Be Seen with Me" (2025). I think of Oppenheimer Analysis as so extremely niche in appeal that it almost never crossed my mind that anyone would cover one of their songs, much less drench it in heart-racing, echo-dragged dream-pop like a night drive high on the endless windshield slide of light. I still prefer the colder, dryer original with its relentlessly weird garbage-can drum programming and glitteringly nervy columns of synths against which the vocals sound even more paranoid and plaintive, but just the fact that someone else went for their own version makes me happy. I suppose electronically unsettled meditations on the Manhattan Project and the Cold War have come back around into fashion.
Ymlaen i Gymru!
2026-03-11 20:33cosmolinguistI'm in south west Wales now, helping angelofthenorth get her stuff from storage so her nice flat will finally have her nice furniture and books and etc.
We're here with a church friend of hers who drove the rented van, and we'll get to meet local friends of hers tomorrow as we tackle it.
We had a little look when we got here and I can see why she's intimidated by the task at hand: there's a lot of stuff and while we don't want much of it, some of what she does want will be way at the back so everything else might have to get moved. I brought tape and scissors and a sharpie so boxes that have to be opened can be re-packed and labeled.
It's nice to have a few days off work, and to be only needed as a henchqueer. I've had a nasty headache most of the day, so my two wishes for tomorrow are that it fucks off and that we don't get the rain that is forecast here (the storage containers are open to the elements).
Wednesday refuses to be an AI 'subject expert' perish the thort
2026-03-11 18:08oursinWhat I read
Finished Death in the Palace - was not sure at first about the introduction of the actual Marx Brothers into the cast, but felt this had meta-textual resonance as there was something very Marxiste about the whole making-a-movie shenanigans (especially when it's this dreadful costume epic) + murder mystery going on.
Then went straight on to Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped, which was fine but perhaps didn't quite reach the high bar set by After Hours at Dooryard Books among her recent history/contemporary set works.
Returned to TonyInterrupter, which had perhaps lost some momentum from the hiatus, but nonetheless, I may try more Nicola Barker at some time.
Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck (1935) came up as a Kobo deal, and I realised it had not featured in the Heyer re-read binge a few years ago. Gosh, it shows a certain early style, what? with the massive amount of Mi Research, I Show U It, re prize-fights, phaeton-racing to Brighton, the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, the members of the House of Hanover (how right Mme C- was in advising to keep well away, no?). Also, this cannot be, can it, the first outing of the Apparently Dangerous Alpha Male vs the Civil and Sympathetic Beta Male who turns out to be a conniving sleaze? (not unique to Heyer.)
Also finished the book for review.
On the go
Also picked up as a Kobo deal, Fern Riddell, Victoria's Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen (2025). I have considered the author, as a historian of Victorian sexuality, sound on the vibrator question, if perhaps a bit too much in the 'Victorians were cool sexy beasts really' camp (It's All More Complicated), but I was interested to see where this would go. It's very good on the way things are with the Royal Archives, for which 'gatekeeping' seems too loose a term. But I'm still not entirely persuaded. It's a bit repetitive. Okay, it's quite good on the tensions within the actual Royal family (though can it really be that Kaiser Bill-to-be had Oedipus issues?). But still have a way to go.
Up next
Maybe the latest Literary Review. Otherwise, dunno.
Wednesday Reading Meme
2026-03-11 14:17sinealaWhat I Just Finished Reading
Still nothing. I mean, okay, I read The Superia Stratagem for the 616 server book club but I'm not counting that because I have dignity.
What I'm Reading Now
Comics Wednesday!
( 1776 #5, Doctor Strange #4, Imperial Guardians #1 )
What I'm Reading Next
Don't know. Still trying to figure out how to medicate my migraines. I clearly shouldn't try to write these posts while in the middle of migraine prodrome.
Still nothing. I mean, okay, I read The Superia Stratagem for the 616 server book club but I'm not counting that because I have dignity.
What I'm Reading Now
Comics Wednesday!
( 1776 #5, Doctor Strange #4, Imperial Guardians #1 )
What I'm Reading Next
Don't know. Still trying to figure out how to medicate my migraines. I clearly shouldn't try to write these posts while in the middle of migraine prodrome.
Stone and Sky, by Ben Aaronovitch
2026-03-11 17:03![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
fromtheheartofeurope_feedSecond paragraph of third chapter:
‘Also in the springtime,’ he said. Then, after a pause, ‘And the autumn, of course.’ Another pause. ‘Once or twice during the summer.’
Latest in the successful Rivers of London sequence, this takes Peter Grant and his cousin Abigail, along with Indigo the talking fox, to Aberdeen rather than their usual haunts, to investigate the disappearance of a human scientist and the discovery of a mysterious dead humanoid with gills. By about half way through, it becomes clear what the story is really about, but the whole thing has very enjoyable attention to detail and some great character moments, and sometimes a bit of entertainment is all that is needed. You can get Stone and Sky here.
This means that I have finished the Rivers of London books, at least as they stand for now. For my next trick, I’m going to work through Mick Herron’s Slow Horses books, on which the TV show is based.
Freedom of speech
2026-03-11 14:18livThere's been a rant I have been meaning to turn into an essay for a while, but Ken White (Popehat) has done it better, so I direct you to his really well-written and referenced (though US-centric) article: The Fashionable Notion of 'Free Speech Culture' Is Justifying State Censorship, Ironically. Criticism. Is. Not. Censorship, and
This is important in Europe too, not just in the US, because it's a deliberate, specific Russian infowar tactic to promote far right events at UK universities and claim censorship if anyone objects. A
( shorter version of my original opinion, building on White's piece )
“Free speech culture” has a natural tendency to discount the speech rights and interests of people who criticize speech.
This is important in Europe too, not just in the US, because it's a deliberate, specific Russian infowar tactic to promote far right events at UK universities and claim censorship if anyone objects. A
network based at [Cambridge] University and backed by Thiel, which it said was using the issue of free speech to “normalise white nationalism on UK campuses”.Neither Putin nor Thiel has anyone's freedom at heart, and they're all too successful at distracting people with a toddler-like notion of "freedom" where you get to say the naughty words without being told off.
( shorter version of my original opinion, building on White's piece )
The eleventh of March!
2026-03-11 08:59sinealaIt's the one post I remember to make every year!
They have called this day The Eleventh of March! And whom-so-ever of you gets through this day, unless you are shot in the head or somehow slain, you will stand at tiptoe when e'er you hear the name again, and you will get excited!...At the name March The Eleventh!
We happy few, we few, we band of brothers...our names will be as like...household names. And those who are not here, be they sleeping or... doing something else...They will feel themselves...sort of crappy. Because they are not here to, to join the fight. On this day, the Eleventh of March!
(Okay, I remember it because it's also my LiveJournal's birthday and I still haven't deleted it and so they send me an email every year. My LJ is now 25.)
They have called this day The Eleventh of March! And whom-so-ever of you gets through this day, unless you are shot in the head or somehow slain, you will stand at tiptoe when e'er you hear the name again, and you will get excited!...At the name March The Eleventh!
We happy few, we few, we band of brothers...our names will be as like...household names. And those who are not here, be they sleeping or... doing something else...They will feel themselves...sort of crappy. Because they are not here to, to join the fight. On this day, the Eleventh of March!
(Okay, I remember it because it's also my LiveJournal's birthday and I still haven't deleted it and so they send me an email every year. My LJ is now 25.)
Interesting Links for 11-03-2026
2026-03-11 12:00andrewducker- 1. The neurons playing Doom are actually testing a theory of intelligence
- (tags:doom games intelligence ai )
- 2. Stay Classy (a history of the awfulness of Prince Andrew)
- (tags:royalty UK OhForFucksSake corruption )
- 3. How good are you at spotting colour differences? (I scored 0.006 - see if you can get yours lower)
- What was particularly interesting was that on some of them I had to let my eyes "settle". They'd see a wall of colour, get overloaded, and then after about 10 seconds I'd easily see the line.
Oh, and I'm much better with shades of green than with shades of blue.
(tags:colour viamybrothermike )
Tags:
The Orphan of Zhao
2026-03-11 11:03rmc28This is an 800 year old play based on events 2,500 years ago in China, the first Chinese play to be translated into any European language (about 300 years ago). The Royal Shakespeare Company commissioned James Fenton to adapt it for a production about 13 years ago, and a student theatre group are putting that adaptation on at the ADC in Cambridge this week.
I went to see it last night with Charles, and also Olivia, one of my friends from Womens Blues. (We then found two of my Huskies teammates in the audience so it became an accidental hockey social.) We saw a little first-night talk beforehand from the director and some of the actors, about why they chose this play and some of their favourite lines and aspects of the characters they play. The play itself was very good, very gripping, a revenge tragedy with a very high body count and an ending I didn't quite expect.
The kind of evening that makes me remember how much I like living in this weird little city in the fens.
(and, in further "wow I love living in walking distance of the ADC" news, here's what I'm hoping to get to between now and early May:
- Into The Woods (famous musical)
- Olympus Unscripted (improv show on greek myths theme)
- Chekov's Four Farces (what it says on the tin)
- Next to Normal (musical about mental illness)
- The Ferryman (play about the Irish Troubles)
- Medea (musical adaptation of Euripedes play)
)
Hiding from stellar radiation behind an asteroid
2026-03-10 22:52lizvogel posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
little_detailsOkay, I thought I knew science, but after several days of researching this, all I've got is indecision and a headache.
Original fiction, unspecified not-too-far-future time.
My character is the pilot of a small cargo ship in the asteroid belt. (No FTL, no artificial gravity.) Said ship has sufficient radiation shielding to be safe under normal conditions. My idea is that there's an unusually strong solar event (solar flare? coronal mass ejection?), and he has to survive by positioning his ship on the shadowed side of an asteroid (rocks are good shielding), and use his excellent piloting skills to stay there until the storm passes.
1. Does this, theoretically, actually work?
2. I'd like the solar event to be a Coronal Mass Ejection, because some CMEs move relatively slowly, and that gives my character time to make a narratively interesting choice. But is it the CME itself that's hazardous to human life, or a sort of "bow wave" of radiation that precedes it? And if the latter, is that radiation moving at the speed of the CME, or the speed of light? (I keep thinking I have a grasp on this, and then the next source I read contradicts it.)
Guidance appreciated, fellow space enthusiasts!
Original fiction, unspecified not-too-far-future time.
My character is the pilot of a small cargo ship in the asteroid belt. (No FTL, no artificial gravity.) Said ship has sufficient radiation shielding to be safe under normal conditions. My idea is that there's an unusually strong solar event (solar flare? coronal mass ejection?), and he has to survive by positioning his ship on the shadowed side of an asteroid (rocks are good shielding), and use his excellent piloting skills to stay there until the storm passes.
1. Does this, theoretically, actually work?
2. I'd like the solar event to be a Coronal Mass Ejection, because some CMEs move relatively slowly, and that gives my character time to make a narratively interesting choice. But is it the CME itself that's hazardous to human life, or a sort of "bow wave" of radiation that precedes it? And if the latter, is that radiation moving at the speed of the CME, or the speed of light? (I keep thinking I have a grasp on this, and then the next source I read contradicts it.)
Guidance appreciated, fellow space enthusiasts!
another big swing from a young hitter
2026-03-10 22:08musesfoolI don't love that Nolan McLean gave up 2 home runs in the same inning in this game, but I do love that Team Italia celebrates with an Armani blazer and an espresso (they literally have an espresso machine in the dugout and if someone hits a homer, he gets a shot) and then the team captain kisses the guy while everyone else does this: 🤌
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Work is currently bananas. Listen, I have a whole document I wrote on how to change/streamline board stuff to foster discussion and engagement, but we were supposed to do it methodically and not implement it until the June meeting, except now we are doing it NOW, and everything got upended in the stupidest way possible. I maybe kind of couldn't control how irritated I am about it because it is basically making me do double the amount of work and is seems to me like it is just going to achieve the exact opposite of what we want it to, but apparently this is coming directly from the new board chair. I told my boss that if I am right, and that this doesn't do what they think it is going to, I might not say it, but I will be thinking the world's biggest "I told you so." And she was like, that's fair. Sigh.
*
*
Work is currently bananas. Listen, I have a whole document I wrote on how to change/streamline board stuff to foster discussion and engagement, but we were supposed to do it methodically and not implement it until the June meeting, except now we are doing it NOW, and everything got upended in the stupidest way possible. I maybe kind of couldn't control how irritated I am about it because it is basically making me do double the amount of work and is seems to me like it is just going to achieve the exact opposite of what we want it to, but apparently this is coming directly from the new board chair. I told my boss that if I am right, and that this doesn't do what they think it is going to, I might not say it, but I will be thinking the world's biggest "I told you so." And she was like, that's fair. Sigh.
*
Counts the waves that somehow didn't hit her
2026-03-10 20:55sovayNot only is 42 °N a lousy latitude for radio astronomy, it does jack most of the year for the photosynthesis of vitamin D, but I was inspired by the summerlike spike in temperatures to walk out for groceries in a T-shirt and whatever it may or may not have done for my metabolism, it was worth the pitching over onto the couch when I got home.
No introduction to an actor may be as misleading as discovering Peter Lorre with Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), but spending much of last night sacked out in front of my longtime comfort movie of Robert Aldrich's The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) reminded me that I should probably count Richard Attenborough in a similar vein, all those weak links and bad influences his panicking debut in In Which We Serve (1942) and his nihilistic breakout in Brighton Rock (1947) set him up for. Never mind that I saw him first as the briskly competent ringleader of The Great Escape (1963), he looks much more in his ambivalent element as Lew Moran, the middle-aged navigator who may have his moral compass screwed on straightest of the sun-blistered survivors of what will become the Phoenix but little authority between his uneasy position as peacemaker and his diffidence as a drying-out drunk, even if his stammer doesn't after all stop him from going off like a firecracker on some blatantly bullheaded display of stupidity on the part of one or more of his co-leads. It would have been the second way I saw him, after which the time-shock of Jurassic Park (1993), jovial and grandfatherly and scientifically short-sighted. I'd give a lot for a record of his Sergeant Trotter in the original run of The Mousetrap. The time machine bureau is going to cut me off.
No introduction to an actor may be as misleading as discovering Peter Lorre with Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), but spending much of last night sacked out in front of my longtime comfort movie of Robert Aldrich's The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) reminded me that I should probably count Richard Attenborough in a similar vein, all those weak links and bad influences his panicking debut in In Which We Serve (1942) and his nihilistic breakout in Brighton Rock (1947) set him up for. Never mind that I saw him first as the briskly competent ringleader of The Great Escape (1963), he looks much more in his ambivalent element as Lew Moran, the middle-aged navigator who may have his moral compass screwed on straightest of the sun-blistered survivors of what will become the Phoenix but little authority between his uneasy position as peacemaker and his diffidence as a drying-out drunk, even if his stammer doesn't after all stop him from going off like a firecracker on some blatantly bullheaded display of stupidity on the part of one or more of his co-leads. It would have been the second way I saw him, after which the time-shock of Jurassic Park (1993), jovial and grandfatherly and scientifically short-sighted. I'd give a lot for a record of his Sergeant Trotter in the original run of The Mousetrap. The time machine bureau is going to cut me off.
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
2026-03-10 19:50renay posting in ladybusinessA collection of thoughts about Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman: ( Read more... )
Weekly reading
2026-03-10 18:48troisoiseauxRead a couple of books that unexpectedly ended up pairing well, tone/vibes-wise: The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, a novel loosely based on a real-life 17th century Danish witch trial, from the perspective of one of the accused women's omniscient wax doll/poppet, and I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid, in which a young woman's road trip with her boyfriend to meet his parents for the first time (and probably last, given her doubts about the relationship) gets weird. I probably wouldn't actually have considered these similar if not for the accident of reading them back-to-back, but there's an aspect of a Greek chorus in both— in The Wax Child, a number of passages are packed-together snippets of conversations (e.g., women trading jokes and complaints over communal work like carding wool or gutting fish); in I'm Thinking of . . ., the first person POV narrative is interspersed with oblique, anonymous community gossip about a shocking local tragedy— and they're both just kind of... narratively unsettling? The Wax Child has the unhooked-from-time-ness of a story told more or less chronologically from the POV of a character who, basically, Sees All; Reid's novel takes a frog-in-boiling-water approach, the narrative peeling back layer by layer until it hits ( spoilers )
In War and Peace, since separating from his wife, Pierre has had an existential crisis and joined the Freemasons, because sure, why not. I had vaguely remembered his induction into the Masonic rites as a dramatic scene but this time it mostly struck me as unexpectedly funny, what with Pierre being the embodiment of tomorrow I'm going to lock in and turn my entire life around! it will definitely work this time!
(Also funny, at least to me: the guy explaining the concept of hieroglyphs while Pierre stands there blindfolded thinking yes, I know what hieroglyphs are, and how "{a}s he was being led up to some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet.")
In War and Peace, since separating from his wife, Pierre has had an existential crisis and joined the Freemasons, because sure, why not. I had vaguely remembered his induction into the Masonic rites as a dramatic scene but this time it mostly struck me as unexpectedly funny, what with Pierre being the embodiment of tomorrow I'm going to lock in and turn my entire life around! it will definitely work this time!
Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's temple, which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These virtues were: 1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. Love of mankind. 5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
. . . But five of the other virtues {besides "love of death"} which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and especially obedience—which did not even seem to him a virtue, but a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it.
(Also funny, at least to me: the guy explaining the concept of hieroglyphs while Pierre stands there blindfolded thinking yes, I know what hieroglyphs are, and how "{a}s he was being led up to some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet.")
[books, movement] A Physical Education, Casey Johnston
2026-03-10 22:34kaberettBack at the beginning of January beadsbuttonslace wrote up some reflections on this book, which interested me enough that I put in a hold on my library's only digital copy, which was an audiobook, and then I managed to listen to it in under a week, and now I am subscribed to Johnston's newsletter (and reading its archives) and also trying to work out whether I want to buy a physical copy or a digital copy for my own library.
Which is to say: I liked it. A lot.
( Read more... )
And some final notes:
- it was only earlier today that I realised that an article that did the rounds a little while ago, The new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life... is BY THIS SAME PERSON
- at least two of you will be delighted to know that in the Epilogue, she ( spoilers... )
in which i take a deliberate moment to appreciate art
2026-03-10 21:25wwdn_feedI am making a deliberate effort to leave my phone as far away from my attention as I can, whenever I am able. I’m not looking at the news, I’m not scrolling the feeds, I’m not posting. I’m leaving it in my pocket, my car, in the kitchen, just … not in my face.
This fits into my efforts to slow down and be more present. It’s creating space I desperately need to decompress, get bored, let my mind wander and come back with a fun and creative idea.
Today, I was out for a minute and saw this little art installation on a telephone pole. It was weathered quite a bit; it’s been here for awhile. And it was beautiful to me. It was a few moments better spent than they would have been looking at anything on my phone, or anything I could have been listening to. It wasn’t dysregulating, it didn’t increase my internal DEFCON level.
I chose to experience and appreciate this thing that someone made when they were very much not thinking about me, because it was exactly where I needed it to be, exactly when I needed it.
I took some pictures (using only the camera and nothing else on the phone) so I could remember the moment, and share the art. They’re pretty big, so I’m gonna put them behind a jump.
Art is so important, y’all. Make time to experience it. Allow it to inspire, comfort, and challenge you.
I love public art, and I love the artists who create and install it. Please support your local arts community.
I’m glad you’re here. If you’d like to get my posts in your email, here’s the thingy:
It's a 15 minute presentation, dammit, in a fortnight's time
2026-03-10 20:25oursinSo really, there isn't a lot of point in going diving into the rabbit-hole that's just opened up.
I.e. I am revising my old piece of work for the Fellows' presentations session, and I thought, why not just see if name of author of obscure feminist work cited appears in British Newspaper Archive, which at time I was writing was less in habit of habitually consulting on odd points (did not, I think, have a subscription, for one thing). As otherwise I had no info on her at all.
And, blow me down, she may only have written one book but seems to have committed the odd journalistic opinion piece, and furthermore, is listed as being one of the founders of an organisation set up by Old Suffragettes (or possibly -ists).
Which I find someone has Has Writ A Book About, as one of those women's orgs that have been condescended to by posterity as about the little dears getting together to chat, bless the ladies, and turns out to have been rather more activist in its sphere than one reckoned.
Library to which I have access has copy, but will not let me have online access to ebook for some reason, sigh.
And really, I do have other things to do (thesis to read, book to review, have been solicited to do a podcast, must try and put together a powerpoint for my talk) than dash off down to LSE to look at the archives of the org, right?
Because given the limitations on what it's for, at the moment - however the work in question will develop - it will be a sentence at best, because of time constraints.
Frustration.
Cloud Eight, by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle
2026-03-10 17:30fromtheheartofeurope_feedMy resolution for 2026 is to be a bit more consistent about recording the non-book entertainment that I consume. I have been listening to the Big Finish series of audios with Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston, but not always remembered to blog about them. This is the fourth in the series; I enjoyed the previous three as well. This is the trailer for Cloud Eight:
Fan reaction to this story seems to have been a bit meh, but I really liked it. The Doctor and Rose find themselves in High High Wycombe, a city in the sky in the 47th century; and it rapidly becomes apparent that something weird is going on, with the steadily decreasing number of inhabitants doomed to repeat their every waking hour a la Groundhog Day. There’s a single excellent concept behind it all, with extra chrome and detail, the small cast (four guest actors, one of whom is written out early and another half way through) portraying an entire metropolis of unwitting residents. The Doctor and Rose are also affected by The Thing That Is Really Going On, and the Eccleston/Piper chemistry remains strong. I think it’s one of the good ones. You can get Cloud Eight here.
This Rough Magic: chapters 4 and 5
2026-03-10 17:07shewhostaples posting in girlmeetstroubleIn chapter 4 we meet another Spiro. This one's definitely dead:( Read more... )
Chapter 5 begins awkwardly, but Julian turns on the charm. ( Read more... )
Well! Discuss Julian Gale's theories, Lucy's, or your own, in comments.
Chapters 6-8 for next week.
Chapter 5 begins awkwardly, but Julian turns on the charm. ( Read more... )
Well! Discuss Julian Gale's theories, Lucy's, or your own, in comments.
Chapters 6-8 for next week.
The Doors of Midnight, by R.R. Virdi
2026-03-10 17:06fromtheheartofeurope_feedSecond paragraph of third chapter:
I reached deeper then, to the folds of my mind. I had nothing to fill them with but longed for their old familiarity, and hoped they would help me figure out what to do next.
One of the books from last year’s Hugo packet, this turns out to be the second in a fantasy series in which the protagonist is a professional story teller and also under suspicion of political murder. I bounced off both the prose and the structure and put it aside after fifty pages. If you want to, you can get The Doors of Midnight here.
This was my top book by a writer of colour. Next on that pile is Rebellion on Treasure Island, a Doctor Who novel by Bali Rai.
This Rough Magic: whole book post
2026-03-10 17:04shewhostaples posting in girlmeetstroubleThis is your space to discuss the book as a whole, talk about running themes, and post spoilers to your heart's content!
Today's poem
2026-03-10 09:00radiantfractureThe raccoons are fight-dancing, upright,
with outraged, horrible noises.
The night is illegible,
the streetlights dead staves.
You move into each orbit of darkness
like an extinction.
Time the storyteller is tired.
She begins many stories
but loses track of the endings.
What will happen to the angry raccoons?
In the morning, count the cats,
count the birds, count the worms,
count the earth.
No doubt we will find all the endings
in the end.
with outraged, horrible noises.
The night is illegible,
the streetlights dead staves.
You move into each orbit of darkness
like an extinction.
Time the storyteller is tired.
She begins many stories
but loses track of the endings.
What will happen to the angry raccoons?
In the morning, count the cats,
count the birds, count the worms,
count the earth.
No doubt we will find all the endings
in the end.
we may not have much...
2026-03-10 08:47muccamukkbut at least the Alexander brothers are going to jail, possibly forever (content warning on that link: semi-graphic descriptions of sexual assault).
(Yes, I know, carceral feminism, etc, let me have this.)
(Yes, I know, carceral feminism, etc, let me have this.)
Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday
2026-03-10 08:11osprey_archerI’m posting Wednesday Reading Meme a day early this week, as tomorrow I am heading out on my Massachusetts trip! Not planning to take my computer with me so probably will not post until I return, bearing news of a Katherine Hepburn film festival, fancy tea at the Boston Public Library, and (if all goes well) a visit to a maple sugaring operation.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Eliza Orne White’s I, the Autobiography of a Cat, a charming book from 1941, with adorable illustrations by Clarke Hutton (one features a cat batting at an ink pen; cats never change). A cat tells us about his life with a lovely old lady in her beautiful home, where our cat accompanies her on her daily walks around the veranda. (She is blind so uses the veranda rail as a guide, and he walks ahead so she can stroke him from time to time.) Delightful. Always happy to read another book in cat POV. My main contemporary source is Japanese works in translation, but there was clearly a boom in this sort of thing in mid-century American children’s publishing.
I also finished E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, which perhaps suffered very slightly because I didn’t read The Treasure Seekers first (mostly because I spent the entire book wondering “Who is Albert and why are the Bastables staying with his uncle?”) but overall a pleasant read about children getting up to shenanigans in Edwardian England. Loved the bit where the children decide to walk to Canterbury like the pilgrims of old.
What I’m Reading Now
Zipping through Sarah Tolmie’s The Fourth Island, which is a delight! There is a fourth (magical) island of Aran, where lost people wash up from time to time, and the locals help them build houses and fit into the local community. A little bit Dinotopia although without the dinosaurs.
What I Plan to Read Next
Plotting my trip reading! I have four books on my Kindle: Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal, Andrea K. Host’s Stray, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, and Kaje Harper’s Nor Iron Bars a Cage.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Eliza Orne White’s I, the Autobiography of a Cat, a charming book from 1941, with adorable illustrations by Clarke Hutton (one features a cat batting at an ink pen; cats never change). A cat tells us about his life with a lovely old lady in her beautiful home, where our cat accompanies her on her daily walks around the veranda. (She is blind so uses the veranda rail as a guide, and he walks ahead so she can stroke him from time to time.) Delightful. Always happy to read another book in cat POV. My main contemporary source is Japanese works in translation, but there was clearly a boom in this sort of thing in mid-century American children’s publishing.
I also finished E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, which perhaps suffered very slightly because I didn’t read The Treasure Seekers first (mostly because I spent the entire book wondering “Who is Albert and why are the Bastables staying with his uncle?”) but overall a pleasant read about children getting up to shenanigans in Edwardian England. Loved the bit where the children decide to walk to Canterbury like the pilgrims of old.
What I’m Reading Now
Zipping through Sarah Tolmie’s The Fourth Island, which is a delight! There is a fourth (magical) island of Aran, where lost people wash up from time to time, and the locals help them build houses and fit into the local community. A little bit Dinotopia although without the dinosaurs.
What I Plan to Read Next
Plotting my trip reading! I have four books on my Kindle: Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal, Andrea K. Host’s Stray, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, and Kaje Harper’s Nor Iron Bars a Cage.
Interesting Links for 10-03-2026
2026-03-10 12:00andrewducker- 1. Grammarly Is Offering 'Expert' AI Reviews From Your Favorite Authors—Dead or Alive (without their permission)
- (tags:ohforfuckssake ai writing )
- 2. Google proposes an AI training datacenter that would use up to 8 million gallons of water *per day*
- (tags:water google ai )
- 3. NHS England continues attacks on trans kids
- (tags:uk transgender lgbt ohforfuckssake )
- 4. It is likely that the UK is still under-diagnosing ADHD
- (tags:adhd uk )
Tags:
- adhd,
- ai,
- google,
- lgbt,
- links,
- ohforfuckssake,
- transgender,
- uk,
- water,
- writing
What even are bodies?
2026-03-10 09:43lnrIt's looking increasingly like a have a Frozen Shoulder. It's been getting more stiff and painful since around Christmas, my range of motion is decreasing, and neither physio nor Naproxen (from the GP last week) is making much difference. I am trying not to think too much about the fact this can take 2-3 *years* to resolve, and have now asked for a referral for a steroid injection, which I understand is the next phase of treatment. Though I may been to ring up and ask again. The webpage says to ring for urgent requests, or use the form. The form for non-urgent requests says after you've posted it that it can take up to 3 weeks to respond and if you need a response more quickly to ring. I think we have different ideas of urgent. (I'd class this as being non-urgent myself, but more urgent than 3 weeks given the Naproxen runs out tomorrow, and has no repeat option.)
https://www.cuh.nhs.uk/patient-information/frozen-shoulder/
Edit: Yup, I have a text message saying they'll review my form on 26th March - the Naproxen runs out on the 11th. Tried calling, and got the automated message which wants to know which of their practices I want to speak to, and then got stuck because I don't know! I'm based at Shelford, but the doctor I spoke to last week is based at Sawston.
Relieved edit: Called reception at Shelford, and they checked my notes, apparently Dr Hasan who will look at my form on 26th will probably ring to speak to me, but can do the steroid injection, so will probably arrange it then. And the receptionist will request some more Naproxen for the meantime. (Ring back in a couple of hours and ask how that's going). The SMS doesn't even specify which doctor it was! The receptionist even said she had it done and it was amazing :)
Where'd the time go
2026-03-09 20:33cmk418Immersed myself in reading a bunch of Starfleet Academy fanfics and lost the last hour and a half.
Watched the latest episode of "Paradise" tonight. This season is so disjointed. They're formatting it to cover just one part of the story in an episode which is a choice, but I'd rather they at least touched base with the rest of the cast just so we know what's going on with them. And I can only take so much of certain characters so if we're waiting for a full episode devoted to them, it's going to be no fun.
Hockey game with Dad tomorrow night. They'll have a tribute video for the Captain (who has technically only been gone since Friday.) I'll need to grab a handful of Kleenex to take along.
Still haven't heard anything about choir, so I guess they still may be deciding.
That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!
Watched the latest episode of "Paradise" tonight. This season is so disjointed. They're formatting it to cover just one part of the story in an episode which is a choice, but I'd rather they at least touched base with the rest of the cast just so we know what's going on with them. And I can only take so much of certain characters so if we're waiting for a full episode devoted to them, it's going to be no fun.
Hockey game with Dad tomorrow night. They'll have a tribute video for the Captain (who has technically only been gone since Friday.) I'll need to grab a handful of Kleenex to take along.
Still haven't heard anything about choir, so I guess they still may be deciding.
That's it for now. See you all tomorrow!
Sit and watch my TV set
2026-03-09 20:00sovayI have been made the unexpected recipient of an unbirthday scarf. It is patterned as if with fossil leaves and irresistibly striped.
My day
2026-03-09 22:43cosmolinguistI had a lot to do today: a kinda tricky day at work, walking Teddy, making dinner, visiting a friend, and I wanted to go to the gym.
And I did all of it! And some chores like moving heavy things around, finalizing the grocery delivery that'll come tomorrow, and doing laundry.
Feels good.
Crafting hangout
2026-03-09 15:24unicorndukeHey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!
Video encouraged but not required!
Topic: Crafting Hangout
Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763
(no subject)
2026-03-09 20:11angrbodaIn January, Bookscorpion over on Pillowfort recommended an app for doing pilates exercises at home. I have today finished Day 43 of the beginner's program.
It continues to humble me. Today I learned I am incapable of 60 seconds of jumping jacks. A full minute is a surprisingly long time!
I'm sticking with it quite well, though. There have been some breaks here and there due to illness and travelling, but I've been doing it every day as much as possible. It's not difficult when it's only ten to fifteen minutes.
I'm going to keep adding days to the beginner's program for as long as possible. It's plenty difficult thank you very much. I don't feel at all ready for intermediate, and I am downright frightened of advanced!
It continues to humble me. Today I learned I am incapable of 60 seconds of jumping jacks. A full minute is a surprisingly long time!
I'm sticking with it quite well, though. There have been some breaks here and there due to illness and travelling, but I've been doing it every day as much as possible. It's not difficult when it's only ten to fifteen minutes.
I'm going to keep adding days to the beginner's program for as long as possible. It's plenty difficult thank you very much. I don't feel at all ready for intermediate, and I am downright frightened of advanced!
Sidetracks - March 9, 2026
2026-03-09 13:30helloladies posting in ladybusinessSidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.
( Read more... )
fromtheheartofeurope_feedSecond paragraph of third chapter:
At the moment, Magee was on a break from the war and living in Shannon in County Clare on the west coast of Ireland, a world away from Belfast, 250 miles to the north. Shannon was a collection of housing estates built on reclaimed marshland next to an airport and factories. It was Ireland’s newest town, but poor design gave it no center, no heart, and exposed residents to wind and rain. Magee had moved here several months earlier under instructions to lie low and take it easy, but that plan, too, had design flaws. He was on edge, restless, and gazing north.
In September 1996, I attended the Liberal Democrats’ party conference in Brighton, wearing several hats – I was the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland’s Party Organiser and an aide to their delegation in the talks which resulted in the Good Friday Agreement, but I was also the Chair of the vestigial group of Liberal Democrat party members in Northern Ireland. An earnest BBC radio reporter sat me down for an interview in the Grand Hotel at breakfast time. “The situation in Northern Ireland is rather a distant concern for us here at this conference, isn’t it?” she asked me.
I looked back at her. “This building, where we are sitting right now, was blown up by the IRA twelve years ago.”
I know Rory Carroll, and have occasionally given him quotes. In this book he goes in depth into one of the IRA’s most audacious operations, the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in September 1984. She narrowly escaped; five party activists were killed; others suffered life-changing injuries. I vividly remember the coverage of Thatcher’s lieutenant Norman Tebbit being dug out of the rubble.
The book goes into intense detail of how the Brighton bomb, and the bomber Patrick Magee, fitted into the IRA’s overall strategy. The leadership were not immediately convinced of the return on investment of such a high risk act, in the wake of the Mountbatten murder. But in the end they were persuaded and the plot went ahead, with Magee planting the bomb with a slow but precise timer weeks in advance.
Magee himself was one of the IRA’s top bomb-makers, but had a complex personal life. I was interested that at one point, while on the run, he found accommodation and work at Venray in the Netherlands, which is where my cousin Gerard Ryan died and is buried. Carroll also gives vivid details of the police side of the story; the forensic investigation of the fragments of the bomb, the identification of Magee’s handprint from his hotel registration, the mixture of chance and preparation leading to his finally being arrested in Scotland in June 1985, while planning more action with a team including Martina Anderson, who I got to know decades later when she was a Member of the European Parliament.
Assassinations, and attempted assassinations, are big and important events, and Rory Carroll’s book gives answers to a lot of the questions that I suppose I had been vaguely wondering about since 1984. It has a couple of minor flaws – the opening chapters jump around the timeline in a way that could be confusing to readers less familiar with the history, and there are a couple of weird repetitions of detail between early and later chapters. So I rank it just below From A Clear Blue Sky and Say Nothing. But overall it’s a fascinating read about the biggest political bombing in British history. (The Gunpowder Plot doesn’t count, because it was thwarted.)
You can get Killing Thatcher here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2023. Next on that pile is Annette Vallon: A Novel of the French Revolution, by James Tipton.
Book Review: Hornblower and the Hotspur
2026-03-09 10:33osprey_archerWe begin Hornblower and the Hotspur with Horatio Hornblower standing at the altar with his blushing bride Maria, desperately informing himself that they’re not married just yet! There’s still time to run for it! Only he can’t bring himself to commit the cruel act of leaving her at the altar, so instead he stands there like a lump and gets married.
This is one of the most inexplicable marriages I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It appears that Maria confessed her love for Hornblower and Hornblower was unable to think of any response except “Will you marry me?”, despite the fact that he doesn’t love her, in fact doesn’t think he should ever marry, and lives in dread of passing his temperament on to his children. (I should note that he is in no way honor bound to her before the wedding: she’s not pregnant with his child and he didn't seduce her. He didn't even flirt with her! He just existed in her general vicinity and she fell for him.)
He then spends the rest of the book asking himself “What would a good husband do?” and then enacting the part of a good husband, in much the way that he sometimes enacts the part of a good captain.
littlerhymes and I discussed many possible explanations for Hornblower’s behavior, none of which were entirely satisfactory, but to be fair, what WOULD be a satisfactory explanation?
1. Hornblower is a deeply closeted gay man who is marrying Maria for reasons of social pressure. However, there seem to be plenty of bachelors in the Navy, so it’s unclear how much social pressure he would actually be experiencing, especially since he seems to have no family clamoring for grandchildren/an heir.
(Whether or not he’s gay, there is alas little evidence here that he sees Bush as more than an excellent lieutenant, although Bush is clearly still nuts about Hornblower. The bit where Hornblower fails to mention his own act of heroism in a letter to the Gazette and Bush is like “It isn’t RIGHT, sir.” And also the bit where Bush is tells Hornblower he’s worried about Hornblower’s health and Hornblower is like who cares about this SACK of MEAT that is my BODY.)
2. Hornblower is SO deeply repressed that he can’t cope with the fact that he is experiencing the weakness of having a human emotion (“love”), but actually does love Maria on some level. He keeps feeling surprising upswellings of tenderness for her. Also, he castigates himself severely every time he DOES experience an emotion (or also human weaknesses like “sleepiness” or “hunger”), which I feel has probably damaged his ability to recognize emotions at all.
But even if he loves her, he clearly doesn’t have a lot of respect for her. Might love her purely in the sense of feeling an animal attraction, and also gratitude for the fact that someone cares about him? He muses at one point that it’s strange to be going to sea with someone on land who gives a damn about him.
3. Hornblower doesn’t think that he deserves nice things, so he marries Maria to make sure that he will have a wife who is ill-suited to him, as he deserves.
Oh, also there are some sea battles and stuff. Hornblower is sent with the fleet to capture some Spanish ships carrying a fortune and then has to hare off chasing another ship at the opportune moment so he doesn’t get a share of the massive amount of prize money. But then the Crown takes the money anyway so he actually would have gotten nothing even if he had been there.
I’m pretty sure these Spanish treasure ships formed the basis for a similar incident near the end of Post Captain, only you better believe Jack Aubrey was on hand to win his part of the prize money. I finished Post Captain confident than Jack could pay off his debts and marry Sophie, but now it looks like maybe he won’t be getting the money after all…?
We will find out in HMS Surprise, but not for about a week, as I am setting off on a trip to Massachusetts on Wednesday!littlerhymes and I will resume our sailing voyages once I return.
This is one of the most inexplicable marriages I’ve ever encountered in fiction. It appears that Maria confessed her love for Hornblower and Hornblower was unable to think of any response except “Will you marry me?”, despite the fact that he doesn’t love her, in fact doesn’t think he should ever marry, and lives in dread of passing his temperament on to his children. (I should note that he is in no way honor bound to her before the wedding: she’s not pregnant with his child and he didn't seduce her. He didn't even flirt with her! He just existed in her general vicinity and she fell for him.)
He then spends the rest of the book asking himself “What would a good husband do?” and then enacting the part of a good husband, in much the way that he sometimes enacts the part of a good captain.
littlerhymes and I discussed many possible explanations for Hornblower’s behavior, none of which were entirely satisfactory, but to be fair, what WOULD be a satisfactory explanation?1. Hornblower is a deeply closeted gay man who is marrying Maria for reasons of social pressure. However, there seem to be plenty of bachelors in the Navy, so it’s unclear how much social pressure he would actually be experiencing, especially since he seems to have no family clamoring for grandchildren/an heir.
(Whether or not he’s gay, there is alas little evidence here that he sees Bush as more than an excellent lieutenant, although Bush is clearly still nuts about Hornblower. The bit where Hornblower fails to mention his own act of heroism in a letter to the Gazette and Bush is like “It isn’t RIGHT, sir.” And also the bit where Bush is tells Hornblower he’s worried about Hornblower’s health and Hornblower is like who cares about this SACK of MEAT that is my BODY.)
2. Hornblower is SO deeply repressed that he can’t cope with the fact that he is experiencing the weakness of having a human emotion (“love”), but actually does love Maria on some level. He keeps feeling surprising upswellings of tenderness for her. Also, he castigates himself severely every time he DOES experience an emotion (or also human weaknesses like “sleepiness” or “hunger”), which I feel has probably damaged his ability to recognize emotions at all.
But even if he loves her, he clearly doesn’t have a lot of respect for her. Might love her purely in the sense of feeling an animal attraction, and also gratitude for the fact that someone cares about him? He muses at one point that it’s strange to be going to sea with someone on land who gives a damn about him.
3. Hornblower doesn’t think that he deserves nice things, so he marries Maria to make sure that he will have a wife who is ill-suited to him, as he deserves.
Oh, also there are some sea battles and stuff. Hornblower is sent with the fleet to capture some Spanish ships carrying a fortune and then has to hare off chasing another ship at the opportune moment so he doesn’t get a share of the massive amount of prize money. But then the Crown takes the money anyway so he actually would have gotten nothing even if he had been there.
I’m pretty sure these Spanish treasure ships formed the basis for a similar incident near the end of Post Captain, only you better believe Jack Aubrey was on hand to win his part of the prize money. I finished Post Captain confident than Jack could pay off his debts and marry Sophie, but now it looks like maybe he won’t be getting the money after all…?
We will find out in HMS Surprise, but not for about a week, as I am setting off on a trip to Massachusetts on Wednesday!
littlerhymes and I will resume our sailing voyages once I return.(no subject)
2026-03-09 08:43unicorndukeAs expected, the time change has absolutely fucked up my sleep schedule. Not helped by a skunk spraying something in the front yard at 4:30am this morning so my bedroom smelled intensely of skunk while I was laying there awake for no reason and the house still smells faintly. We are going to have to trap it if it's living under the porch. And also not helped by covering the boiling for an hour until 10:30pm last night.
We have successfully started boiling sap although I'm not super involved in it. I don't know what I'm doing, never really have done it, so I panic a lot about it while taking over for my dad so he gets a break. Like last night, the sap started drawing off but the container with the filters nearly overflowed because the filters were ??? and there was some panicking. My dad said it probably wasn't going to draw off at all in the hour he went inside. So you know. Normal stuff. My sister is in town for a couple of days to help with it at least. Once I get some better idea on how it all works, I'll make a post about it. Currently, we are producing delicate grade, which my sister called cotton candy tasting. That changes over the tapping season as the microbes change.
I finished splitting all the basswood on the ground, just need to stack it. Not sure we have quite enough wood for the season, but I think it'll be a bit shorter anyway. I have started shifting focus to the field season, it is time to start outside work. Blueberry pruning is up first since that needs to be done dormant. I should crank through that quick. Then moving and mulching with woodchips. I need to order grow lights for our starts, I need to get peppers started in the next two weeks or so, figure out pumpkin orders, etc etc.
There's some health stuff going on with my parents that we are waiting to hear on, so I am scaling back farm stuff that was going to be a bit of a stretch to complete. The weird fruits like currants and expanding the elderberries.
I am working on sidejob stuff and need to bill that client. Need to nap and eat more food. I made chocolate cake and pizza the other night. Also split three loads of wood for the burner once I got the bobcat tire fixed. I took the bobcat tire to the tire place to get fixed on the day we had freezing rain, not my best move and there was only one hairy moment on a backroad until I kicked it into 4 wheel and slowed way down. Skipped that road on the way back. Main roads were fine. The bobcat had to come back to the main farm to pick up the sap totes because of where we put them for good gravity feeding since regular tractor forks can't lift high enough.
Also went to a grower meeting about christmas trees, looks like a really good enterprise, don't have the capacity this year, but should next year if all goes well. Interesting thing, a lot of the christmas tree farms have been in business for 50-100 years. Wildly long time.
I keep focusing on farm stuff because the world is such a shitshow. My local rep emailed me some propaganda so I sent back a little rant on how immoral bombing Iran is. I don't think it will do anything.
But yesterday instead of going to spinning group, I drove an hour and a half to an event put on by the regional trans org which was performances and a makers market and I felt like such shit driving down, but afterwards I was so happy. It was so nice to just see all the queer folks, and so many! And bought some weird art. And saw some performances. What a delight. Did get to talk to someone who is localish to me and they said they are trying to get some more folks together up our way at various places, so I'm excited to keep an eye out for that.
We have successfully started boiling sap although I'm not super involved in it. I don't know what I'm doing, never really have done it, so I panic a lot about it while taking over for my dad so he gets a break. Like last night, the sap started drawing off but the container with the filters nearly overflowed because the filters were ??? and there was some panicking. My dad said it probably wasn't going to draw off at all in the hour he went inside. So you know. Normal stuff. My sister is in town for a couple of days to help with it at least. Once I get some better idea on how it all works, I'll make a post about it. Currently, we are producing delicate grade, which my sister called cotton candy tasting. That changes over the tapping season as the microbes change.
I finished splitting all the basswood on the ground, just need to stack it. Not sure we have quite enough wood for the season, but I think it'll be a bit shorter anyway. I have started shifting focus to the field season, it is time to start outside work. Blueberry pruning is up first since that needs to be done dormant. I should crank through that quick. Then moving and mulching with woodchips. I need to order grow lights for our starts, I need to get peppers started in the next two weeks or so, figure out pumpkin orders, etc etc.
There's some health stuff going on with my parents that we are waiting to hear on, so I am scaling back farm stuff that was going to be a bit of a stretch to complete. The weird fruits like currants and expanding the elderberries.
I am working on sidejob stuff and need to bill that client. Need to nap and eat more food. I made chocolate cake and pizza the other night. Also split three loads of wood for the burner once I got the bobcat tire fixed. I took the bobcat tire to the tire place to get fixed on the day we had freezing rain, not my best move and there was only one hairy moment on a backroad until I kicked it into 4 wheel and slowed way down. Skipped that road on the way back. Main roads were fine. The bobcat had to come back to the main farm to pick up the sap totes because of where we put them for good gravity feeding since regular tractor forks can't lift high enough.
Also went to a grower meeting about christmas trees, looks like a really good enterprise, don't have the capacity this year, but should next year if all goes well. Interesting thing, a lot of the christmas tree farms have been in business for 50-100 years. Wildly long time.
I keep focusing on farm stuff because the world is such a shitshow. My local rep emailed me some propaganda so I sent back a little rant on how immoral bombing Iran is. I don't think it will do anything.
But yesterday instead of going to spinning group, I drove an hour and a half to an event put on by the regional trans org which was performances and a makers market and I felt like such shit driving down, but afterwards I was so happy. It was so nice to just see all the queer folks, and so many! And bought some weird art. And saw some performances. What a delight. Did get to talk to someone who is localish to me and they said they are trying to get some more folks together up our way at various places, so I'm excited to keep an eye out for that.