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guardian_learningysabetwordsmith
conuly posting in agonyauntkaberettReading. ( Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )
Skimmed several more pain-related papers.
... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.
Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".
I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.
Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).
Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).
For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)
Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.
Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!
Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.
Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where ( breathing, everything is fine )
such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!
Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?
Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.
Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!
ysabetwordsmith andrewduckerrebeccmeisterysabetwordsmith rocky41_7 posting in booknookThis review will be briefer than I wish, because I’ve got two fingers taped up (injury) and it makes typing a pain. This morning I finished book #12 from the “Women in Translation” rec list, which was Siblings by Brigitte Reimann, translated from German by Lucy Renner Jones.
This book was published in 1963, just two years after the Berlin Wall went up, but takes place in 1960, before the Wall. It’s a book about three siblings, but really it’s a book about Germany’s future. The core of the novel is the relationship between the protagonist, Elisabeth (“Lise”) and her brother, Uli; and their views on the German state.
Lise is an adamant supporter of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; aka communist East Germany) and communism as a whole. She views it as her generation’s chance to right the injustices of a capitalistic world. Uli, on the other hand, while supportive of communism, resents the GDR for what he views as a lack of opportunity and its petty politics. At the start of the novel, Uli has decided to defect to the west, and Lise and her partner Joachim are trying to convince him to stay.
Throughout these efforts, the shadow of their eldest brother Konrad hangs over them—Konrad has already defected, years earlier, and is firmly settled in West Germany, though not without struggle.
This book is very politically philosophical. As mentioned, it’s about Uli and Lise (and Konrad), but it’s really about the future of Germany. Not yet 20 years out from the end of WWII, this is not an easy question (and there is a lot of finger-pointing to go around about who did what for the Nazis while they were in power). The book definitely leans in favor of supporting the GDR. While Uli and Konrad have their gripes about it, these are generally cast, through Lise’s viewpoint, as self-centered, or fig leaves for their real issue, which is that they cannot let go of a capitalist ownership mindset. Even where she acknowledges their complaints as valid—such as Uli’s frustration at the stunted opportunities for anyone who is not a Party member—her attitude is essentially that they need to tough it out for the sake of making the communist experiment work, or that it’s a reasonable trade off to avoid what she sees as the cruelties of capitalist West Germany.
It's the closest I’ve ever come to reading a pro-communism book (even Soviet authors I’ve read have been pretty staunchly against the Party, a la Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna), which made it interesting in that respect, as well as in how it addresses the ways the split of Germany affected individual Germans and German families.
However, the prose is very “tell not show” and this, combined with the highly philosophical nature of it, kept me at arm’s length from the characters and their lives.
Nevertheless, it’s fascinating from a historical perspective.
oursinThis week's bread: loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, v nice.
Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, strong brown flour, possibly rather too many in the way of pinenuts.
Today's lunch: halibut fillets, panfried (the packet possible exaggerated cooking time), served with samphire sauce; with La Ratte potatoes roasted in goose fat, baked San Marzano tomatoes, and Boston beans roasted in pumpkin seed oil with fennel seeds and splashed with gooseberry vinegar (a bit too al dente, not sure if this was innate or due to inadequate cooking time/temperature).
cosmolinguistI woke up in the early hours of this morning from an intense bad dream. But when I described it to D this morning as "my usual 2025 nightmare...my friends and I fighting in the streets," he made a perfectly understandable but inaccurate assumption: "what, like a fight club?"
No, I said, not fighting each other. Fighting nazis.
But being very silly about which of our friends we could best in physical fights ("well P's out, she has a broken leg" "...do we have to fight each other?"), while snuggling in bed on the one morning a week I don't have to get up as soon as I'm awake, did a great job of dispelling the visceral misery the dream left me with.
Saved from angst by silliness, this feels like the story of my life these days heh.
susandennisalthea_valara
smallweb for Small Web September!smallweb is a community for folks building personal, small websites. I'll be taking part in Small Web September to spruce up my Final Fantasy Fan Script Fan Site. The goal is to complete porting over the stuff I've previously posted here, at the very least. If I can, I'd like to get FFXI: Chains of Promathia documented as well. And I really should go back to my FFXIV script, too; it's been over a year since I touched it and I'm still mid-Shadowbringers.communal_creators is a community for creative types, and will be starting its next round in mid September. ANY creativity counts! I am definitely going to double-dip and count working on the website, but I also hope to get some fiber arts done. We'll a supportive and chill community, so come join us if you need some cheering on for your creative projects!brithistorianI just finished reading Cherie Priest's It Was Her House First. It's a really good book and I highly recommend it. It's a haunted house book set in the Seattle area, centered around the ghost of a silent film era actress and her house, now badly in need of restoration. It's got an interesting twist that I've never seen before in a haunted house story, but I can't really say anything else without spoiling it. I hope you give it a shot, and I hope you enjoy it.
james_davis_nicoll
james_davis_nicoll
frozenstatures - (no subject)nnozomi in guardian_learning - 第四年第二百三十五天ysabetwordsmith - Cyberspace Theoryconuly in agonyaunt - Two letters in the same columnkaberett - vital functionsysabetwordsmith - New Year's Resolutions Check Inandrewducker - Life with two kids: A matter of probabilityrebeccmeister - The circus and fixing things [status, stuff]ysabetwordsmith - Birdfeedingrocky41_7 in booknook - Book review: Siblingsoursin - Culinaryjoseph_teller - History & Engineering Marvel in Michigancosmolinguist - Hey, think the time is right for a palace revolutionyhlee - latest spinning WIPsusandennis - Buh bye, Audible - ER, maybe notalthea_valara - Signal Boosting: smallweb and Communal Creators!brithistorian - Book reaction: It Was Her House First (Cherie Priest)james_davis_nicoll - August 2025 in Reviewjames_davis_nicoll - Always the Black Knight by Lee Hoffmanandrewducker - Interesting Links for 31-08-2025timeasmymeasure
