Reading

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how do your gardens grow

[growth] pineapple is go!

A little while ago the toddler's household told me that you could turn the top of a pineapple into a whole entire pineapple plant (with the caveat that at least 60% of the time it goes mouldy). My first attempt at this had got as far as growing a whole entire root network but then suffered a Tragic Incident from which it never recovered; the second had been sat around with partially-browned but no-longer-becoming-more-browned and definitely-still-partially-green leaves for Quite Some Time. I had more or less hit the point of "... is this actually doing anything? at all?" and then upon my return from the most recent round of Adventures I rotated it in service of watering it, to discover...

a pineapple crown, growing a whole new set of leaves

... that it's growing a WHOLE NEW SET OF LEAVES. Look at it go! I am very excited!

(My understanding is that if I manage to keep it alive that long it'll take somewhere in the region of 3 years to fruit, and then in the fashion of all bromeliads will die having produced said single fruit. Happily this is about the rate at which we eat fresh pineapple...)

Octet - The internet is a monster

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/09/18/the-internet-is-a-monster/

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Assorted things and stuff

Dept of, inventing the city: Fake History: Some notes on London's bogus past. (NB - isn't Nancy murdered on the steps of a bridge in the 1948 movie of Oliver Twist? or do I misremember.) (And as for the Charing Cross thing, that is the ongoing 'London remaking itself and having layers', surely?)

***

Dept of, smutty puns, classical division: Yet More on Ancient Greek Dildos:

Nelson, in my opinion, has made a solid argument for his conclusions that, while “olisbos” was one of many ancient Greek euphemisms for a dildo, this was not its primary meaning, nor was it the primary term for the sex toy. Rather, this impression has been given by an accident of historiography.

***

Dept of, not silently suffering for centuries: The 17th-century woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse.

***

Dept of, another story involving literacy (and ill-health): Child hospital care dates from 18th Century - study:

"Almost certainly she was taught to read and write while she was an inpatient."
He suspects just as part of the infirmary's remit was to get its adult patients back to work, by teaching children to read and write it would increase their employment opportunities.

***

Dept of, I approve the intention but cringe at certain of the suggestions: How To Raise a Reader in an Age of Digital Distraction:

Active engagement is crucial. This doesn’t mean turning every book into an interactive multimedia experience. Rather, it means ensuring that children are mentally participating in the reading process rather than passively consuming. With toddlers, this might mean encouraging them to point to pictures, make sound effects, or predict what comes next. With older children, it involves asking questions that go beyond basic comprehension: “What do you think motivates this character?” “How would the story change if it were set in our neighborhood?”

Let's not? There's a point where that become intrusive.

***

Dept of, not enough ugh: Sephora workers on the rise of chaotic child shoppers: ‘She looked 10 years old and her skin was burning’

The phenomenon of “Sephora kids” – a catch-all phrase for the intense attachment between preteen children, high-end beauty stores and the expensive, sometimes harsh, products that are sold within them – is now well established.... The trend is driven by skincare content produced by beauty influencers – many of whom are tweens and teens themselves.... skincare routines posted by teens and tweens on TikTok contained an average of 11 potentially irritating active ingredients per routine, which risked causing acute reactions and triggering lifelong allergies.

Breakage by Mary Oliver

I go down to the edge of the sea.
How everything shines in the morning light!
The cusp of the whelk,
the broken cupboard of the clam,
the opened, blue mussels,
moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the moisture gone.
It's like a schoolhouse
of little words,
thousands of words.
First you figure out what each one means by itself,
the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
full of moonlight.

Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

************

Link

We now have a washer again

I am just brimming over with excitement.

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( Read more... )

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

auguris and

fitzcamel!

King Gilgamesh at Soulpepper

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/09/17/a-great-king-a-lonely-king/

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Still sleep deprived Wednesday sinks into Buffy S4 & memage

Fair warning? Still sleep deprived, so irritable, tired and slightly depressed due to well lack of sleep. (I'm waking up in the middle of the night in pain and can't get back to sleep.) (I'm only revealing it - because I'm snappish at the moment, and not necessarily my best self.)

1. Having completed Buffy S3 in my rewatch. Am now finally in Buffy S4 and watched the Freshman, which has a couple of interesting guest stars, Pedro Pascal is in it. (Noticed something I hadn't previously? Spike is the front credits in various sections - previewing he's returning.) He's not going by Pascal, this is before he changed his name, also he's about twenty-five years younger. He plays the first victim and Buffy's friend in the episode.

I'm reminded of why I preferred the later seasons? I like the characters better? All of them. Willow's wardrobe is better and Willow becomes less of a damsel and more interesting. Also Xander is no longer a jerk, he's actually interesting and better developed. I actually like Xander. (Although he was more or less likable post the Zeppo. Xander's main problem was Angel - once Angel leaves, Xander kind of calms down.) Also his jokes are more self-deprecating and less nasty. (After the Zeppo, Xander becomes a touch more likable and gets over his skanky self - I finally figured out where I got the phrase "get over your skanky self" from? Buffy.) Giles and Joyce on the other hand - I wanted to smack - which feels like a continuation of S3, I wanted to smack them in S3 at various points, too. OZ remains as comforting and cool as ever.

Also the writing is a touch better - mainly because the writers are no longer attempting to write about their high school experiences which were about fifteen to twenty years ago? ( Read more... )

2. I finished reading The Perfect Rake - which didn't work for me? The writer was clearly trying to go for a Georgette Heyer style, and I found it tiresome. Also her prose was touch more purple than required. So you have bad Georgette Heyer with Purple Prose. I skimmed most of it. Otherwise I wouldn't have finished it? It's very skimmable - a lot of repetition. I don't know why I keep trying romance novels - I've clearly burned out on the genre? It's annoying at the moment.

Anyhow - I moved on to Spinning Silver by Naomi Novick rec'd by selenak. And so far? It's rather good. It's a retelling of the Miller's Daughter tale or Rumplestilskin. The second retelling that I've tackled.
The first was "The Croning" - a "cosmic" horror novel along the lines of HP Lovecraft that really disturbed me and I can't quite shake from my head. ( Read more... )

Also, stand a lone, like Uprooted was. I rather loved Uprooted and it stuck with me. So this is working for me for the same reasons it did.

I don't like "series" - I prefer stand-a-lone in novels. ( Read more... )

I do love fairy tales - or novels/stories that do twists on fairy tales, which is why I read The Croning. I find them interesting.

3. Greatest Comic Book Superhero of All Time - Prove ME Wrong via Screenrant
( excerpt )
While I do agree with the selection, I don't like using the word "greatest" - and wish I could remove it from the current lexicon? After reading the comments - I also think this depends on how you view superheros? And what you are looking for in a character and that's subjective and personal? ( Read more... )

********

Question a Day - Memage

11. Do you like the taste of fresh basil? What other fresh herbs do you like or dislike?

I love basil, rosemary, dill, chives, sage, thyme. I hate fennel or anise, licorice and I don't get along.

12. Have you ever kept a paper journal? What about a bullet journal?

Yes. I don't know what a bullet journal is? Looks it up. Bullet Journal - and uh, that would be a no.

13. Did you have a baby doll when you were growing up? How about a Barbie (or equivalent fashion doll)?

Not a baby doll. A Barbie doll - yes, and Madame Alexander Dolls. My mother loved dolls and bought them for me. (I wasn't really that into them outside of using them to tell stories.)

14. When was the last time you had to dress up for a special occasion? What did you wear?

My father's funeral. Black skirt, red silk top.

15. Do you enjoy driving a car, or is it just a way to get from one place to another?

Just a means of getting from one place to another. Also I can't drive. And rarely use a car to get anywhere. I use subways and trains. The only time I'm in a car is if I'm going to the airport, or visiting and someone else is driving. And no, I don't enjoy driving, or riding in cars.

16. Do you have pierced ears? If not, do you still wear earrings?

Yes. I have pierced ears. I rarely wear earrings - because I wear head-phones to work and at work all day long.

17. Do you own a smart speaker (Amazon Echo, Google Nest, Apple HomePod). If so, what do you use it for?

No. I do have a speaker, that you can use Alexa with - but I can't get it to work properly. I'm not techie. Nor really into gadgets. Also the whole idea of a smart speaker creeps me out.

Entry tags:

Wednesday is indulging in a spicy margarita

What I read

A little while ago Kobo had an edition of CS Lewis's 'Space Trilogy' on promotion, so I thought, aeons since I read that, why not? It turned out to have been not terribly well formatted for e-reader but I have encountered worse, it was bearable. Out of the Silent Planet, well, we do not go to CLS for cosmological realism, do we? But why aliens still so binary, hmmm? (okay, I think there is probably some theological point going on there, mmmhmm?) (though in That Hideous Strength there is a mention of 7 genders, okay Jack, could you expand that thought a little?) I remembered Perelandra as dull, at least for my taste - travelogue plus endless theological wafflery - and it pretty much matched the remembrance. However, while one still sees the problematic in That Hideous Strength (no, really, Jack, cheroot-chomping lesbian sadist? your id is very strange) he does do awfully well the horrible machinations of the nasty MEN in their masculine institutions, and boy, NICE is striking an unexpected resonance with its techbros and their transhuman agenda. Also - quite aside from BEARS!!! - actual female bonding.

Possibly it wasn't such a great idea to go on to Andrew Hickey, The Basilisk Murders (Sarah Turner Mysteries #1) (2017), set at a tech conference, which I think I saw someone recommend somewhere. Not sure it entirely works as a mystery (and I felt some aspects of the conference were a little implausible) - and what is this thing, that this thing is, of male authors ~~doing the police in different voices~~ writing first-person female narrative crime fiction? This is at least the second I have encountered within the space of a few weeks. We feel they have seen a market niche.... /cynicism

Apparently I already read this yonks ago and have a copy hanging around somewhere? I was actually looking for something else by Dame Rebecca and came across this, The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose (2010), which is more, some odd stray pieces it is nice to have (I laughed aloud at the one on Milton and Paradise Lost) but hardly essential among the rest of her oeuvre.

At the same time I picked up Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West and the God That Failed: Essays (2005), which apparently I have also read before. It's offcuts of stuff that didn't make it into his biography, mostly talks/articles on various aspects that he couldn't go into in as much detail as he would have liked.

On the go

Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier (1918), on account of we watched a DVD of the movie recently. Yes, I have a copy of the book but have no idea where it is. I was also looking for Harriet Hume, ditto.

Up next

Not sure.

Current Music: Donald Swann, "Say Who You Are"

If I press button A, all my pennies will go

I just had my first opportunity to shower in four nights, even without washing my hair, so I just had the same opportunity to free-associate in the shower.

I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).

As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).

Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).

Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.

Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

hairyears!

Current Music: Antler Joe and the Accidents, "Words"

Entry tags:

patreon

Afghanistan banana stand

When I heard tonight about Robert Redford, I did not think first of the immortal freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the righteous paranoia of All the President's Men (1976) or even the perfectly anachronistic jazz of The Sting (1973) where I almost certainly first saw him, effortlessly beautiful even before he shines up from street-level short cons to the spectacular wire of the title grift. I thought of The Hot Rock (1972), a freewheelingly dumb-assed caper film of which I am deeply fond in no small part because of Redford. Specifically, his casting makes it look at first like the inevitable Hollywood misrepresentation of its 1970 Donald E. Westlake source novel, a cool jazz glow-up of the canonically, lankily nondescript Dortmunder whose heists always look completely reasonable on paper and in practice like a Rube Goldberg machine whose springs just sprang off. Only as the setbacks of the plot mount past aggravation into absurdity approaching Dada, of which the attempt to sneak into a precinct house via helicopter must rate highly even before the crew land on the wrong roof and the siege-minded lieutenant mistakes their break-in for the revolution, does the audience realize that this Dortmunder has the face of a screen idol and the flop sweat of a shlimazl, a man whose charisma is not an asset when it makes people think he knows what he's doing. "I've got no choice," he says doggedly of the eponymous diamond which he did at least once successfully steal, whence all their troubles began. "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes, but that stone's jinxed me and it won't let go. I've been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed, and worse is going to happen before it's done. So I'm taking my stand. I'm going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me." When he acquires an incipient ulcer at the top of the second act, who's surprised? He glumly chews antacids as one of his meticulously premeditated schemes trips over its own shoelaces yet again. It may be the only time Redford played so far against his stardom, but he makes such a gorgeous loser with that tousle of coin-gold hair and an ever more disbelieving look in the matinée blue of his eyes, the Zeppo of his quartet of thieves who only looks like the normal one and no slouch in a stack of character actors from Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel through Lee Wallace and even a bit-part Christopher Guest, not to mention George Segal by whom he is characteristically almost run into a chain-link fence, trying to collect him from his latest stint upstate in a hot car with too many accessories. "Not that you're not the best, but a layman might wonder why you're all the time in jail." Harry Bellaver figured in so many noirs of the '40's and '50's, why should he not have retired to run a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue patronized by exactly the kind of never-the-luck lowlifes he might once have played? The photography by Ed Brown goes on the list of great snapshots of New York, the screenplay by William Goldman is motor-mouthed quotable, the score by Quincy Jones never sounds cooler than when the characters it accompanies are failing their wisdom checks at land speed. Watching it as part of a Peter Yates crime trilogy between Bullitt (1968) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) may induce whiplash. It may not be major Redford, but it is beloved Redford of mine, and worthwhile weirdness to watch in his memory. This stand brought to you by my jinxed backers at Patreon.

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Tuesday is still sleep deprived..and struggling to make sense of the world

Weirdly, and believe it or not? I sleep better now than I used to. I used to average between 3-5 hours. Now, it's between 5-7 hours, so progress. I even get 8-9 hours intermittently. The smart watch has made a difference - it inspires me to get to bed earlier - and the move to the financial district means that I'm sleeping twenty minutes longer.

I've always had problems with sleep - since I was a child. Busy mind. I used to sleep with my books. And a cat or two. I was raised with cats. I miss the cats, actually - but can't really own one now for multiple reasons not worth going into? They did not help me sleep better.
( Read more... )
Last night, I went to bed early, turned off everything around 9:00 pm, and was in bed by 9:40pm. Fell asleep by 10:16 pm (according to the watch at any rate), and ended up waking up at 2:30am, and couldn't get back to sleep - even though I listened to three different sleep meditations on the Calm app. One...kind of triggered a bad memory - it was talking about imagining being in a peaceful and safe place...and managed to remind me of a horror novel that I read over a year ago, and still haunts me to this day. (PenPal, avoid at all costs).

Me: It was about walking through a forest and for some reason it brought to mind this horrible scene from a horror novel -
Mother: How odd that a meditation about Star War's the "force" would trigger horror novel, usually the force is a good thing.
Me: No forest.
Mother: yes, the force.
Me: No. F-o-r-e-s-t, Forest.
Mother: Ohhhh. That makes more sense. I thought you said force.

Sigh. It is possible to have conversations with folks, use words in the same language, and completely not understand one another.
( Read more... )

****

Been seeing advertisements in the subway for "Friend.com" - stating things like, "Friend: listens to you, responds, and supports you" and "binge a entire television series with you", "share adventures"...and I thought, oh, this must be friending app, similar to a dating app, except for platonic relationships! I should go check this out.

Eh.

Turns out my definition of "friend" isn't exactly the same as others?

Friend is an AI wearable pendant that records everything you say and do, and after collecting all this data - analyzes it and talks to you about it

From the The Verge

( An AI pendant that you wear around your neck constantly, records your voice and all your discussions, and supports you, talks back to you and is your friend )

Apparently he spent $1.5 M just to buy the domain name.

I don't know, I find the concept kind of frightening? And really disturbing? That's not how I define friendship. Friendship is supporting each other, listening to each other, and caring about each other, and enjoying things together, debating things, discussing things, and sometimes disagreeing but being okay about it.

Although I guess it is weirdly reassuring in a misery loves company kind of way that there are so many people out there, including this guy, who crave friendship and can't quite find it?

In more disturbing AI news?( Read more... )

Okay. What happened to friendship apps - where you just, you know, meet folks with similar interests? I feel like I woke up one morning and suddenly found myself living in a science fiction horror series by way of Black Mirror and Philip K Dick? And how can I extricate myself? Does anyone see an escape route? Because I want out. Also is there a way we can make any of this stop?

****

I did spend about an hour this morning talking to Art History Major (cubical mate) who is stuck at home recuperating from a stress fracture, which I think is a broken foot. ( Read more... )

*****

I'm avoiding the news as much as possible. I know what's going on in the world. I wish I didn't. My way of coping is ruthlessly mocking it and making fun of everything. I managed to make myself and various co-workers laugh today. So, that's a win, right?

One co-worker thinks we should all go to group therapy for the trauma of Crazy Org's merger of the agencies. I'm beginning to think the entire United States needs some group therapy.

I found this "Portrait of Life/Portrait of Grief" rather moving and relatable:

Watch on YouTube

tired. so tired.

Have spent most of the day asleep.

Attempt #2 at pineapple-from-trimmed-top has NEW LEAVES.
I am also fairly sure that attempt #2 at lemongrass is taller than it was when we set off on our terrible adventures about ten days ago.
Actual bed. Favourite mattress.
I got to make someone's entire day by sending an "... I think I have your object" e-mail.
Leftovers for dinner: curry from the crew party on Sunday night. Didn't have to think about food. Extremely grateful for this fact.

Entry tags:

deaths

(no subject)

Robert Redford died. I always thought he was a better actor than he was given credit for. Too much focusing on the pretty.

Entry tags:

Creepy, creepy, creepy

‘I love you too!’ My family’s creepy, unsettling week with an AI toy:

Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn” your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.

Can we get a very loud UGH?

I thought I'd linked somewhere to the instructive tale of techbro who made, was it an interactive doll or was it a teddybear for his daughter, that would talk to her, and in very short order she turned the thing off and played with it as Ye Kiddyz have played with dolls since dolls were A Thing (Ancient Sumeria???). Can't find it, however.

Anyone else read Harry Harrison's 'I Always Do What Teddy Says'? which also springs to mind, although that is about plot to subvert conditioning via teddy.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

copperwise and

noveldevice!

nominations

I always find nominations as difficult to do as writing the actual story. because I feel that I'm not nominating them for *me*, but for someone else who might not have expected to find them in the list.

Routinely, I try to include at least one tv show or movie or media, something easily available; at least one book; this year it's two books and three tv series of various vintages, with the oldest one available on YouTube.

And I may have a story in mind for a couple of them, just in case.

***

Apparently, the drive band of my spinning wheel burst from old age. It is the original, same age as the footers that broke, so it's time. But I'm still probably going to spin the shetland by hand because it has very little crimp and my fingers feel how to do it on a spindle. That also gives me some time in front of the tv watching movies, never a bad thing.

Entry tags:

Futtock-shroudery

Or, do the details matter?

Concede that sometimes they do, cue here whingeing from me and from others about historical inaccuracies anent the rules of succession, the laws on divorce, etc, which have completely undermined our belief in the narrative we were reading.

But exchange earlier today on bluesky about specific time/place cultural references, do they throw you out -

At which I was, have I not read books involving baseball, and, on reflection, elaborate gambling scams, and I do not understand these at all, but this does not interfere with my enjoyment of the story. Possibly we do need to feel that the author knows what they're writing about and is not commiting solecisms on the lines of 'All rowed fast, but none so fast as stroke' - though apparently this is apocryphal.

I also felt that when I was reading that Reacher novel the other day that perhaps we had a leeeetle more detail than we really required about his exact itinerary whenever he went anywhere - the street-by-street perambulations in NYC, for ex. I am sure one could trace them exactly on a map, and any one-way systems were correctly described, and the crossings in the right place.

Which is sort of the equivalent of where I got 'futtock-shroudery' from, which was reading Age of Sail novels with Alot of period nautical terminology. (On the whole I though O'Brian got the balance on this right.)

There has been a certain amount of querying expressed in the Dance to the Music of Time discussions about some of the significance of parts of London invoked by Nick Jenkins, which is not just geography but Class (there was at least one passage where I was getting strong Nancy Mitford's Lady Montdore dissing on Kensington vibes), connotations of bohemianism, etc.

Sometimes the detail is load-bearing. But often it's not, particularly.

(no subject)

Happy birthday,

desert_dragon!