Fossil Friday

Jun. 13th, 2025 06:47 pm
purplecat: Gif of running "pointy sauruses" (General:Dinosaur)
[personal profile] purplecat

A two legged, very upright, dinosaur skeleton with a long neck, smallish arms and large ribs.  About twice as tall as the man in an overall who stands looking up at it.  The background is black and the two figures are picked out with a pale light.

A Plateosaurus skeleton. Image stolen from The Great Dinosaur Discoveries by Darren Naish.

Various & misc

Jun. 13th, 2025 04:54 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Don't think I've previously either come across this or posted it, but who knows: Out on the Town: Magnus Hirschfeld and Berlin’s Third Sex: 'Years before the Weimar Republic’s well-chronicled freedoms, the 1904 non-fiction study Berlin’s Third Sex depicted an astonishingly diverse subculture of sexual outlaws in the German capital'.

***

Something else suitable for Pride Month: Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (review):

provides an original and stirring account of a non-commodifying queer love between two women and nonhuman nature—a love that was the defining relationship of Carson’s life and yet has been downplayed in heteronormative tellings of her story. So, too, is Maxwell’s work a convincing argument for this queer love’s formative role in the writing of Silent Spring, as well as an empowering message about how embracing queer feelings might function as a catalyst for “political and personal power” in contemporary environmental politics.

***

I think I have some copies of The Pioneer journal associated with this club, but they are somewhere in the maelstrom (I am gearing up to Doing Something About this, having acquired intelligence of a body that will collect books for charity): The Pioneer Club (1892-1939): A ladies' club at the forefront of late Victorian social reform, which suffered a long, slow decline in the early 20th century.

***

Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP:

[S]ources suggest that McLagan’s mother was probably of Black Caribbean or Black African descent.... McLagan’s father, Peter McLagan (1774-1860)... enslaved over 400 people on his plantations and personal estate in Demerara.

In fact there is strong evidence as mentioned in that article that he was by no means the first Black MP. Issues of class and family connections clearly played a significant role up to the mid-C19th.

***

An ancient writing system confounding myths about Africa:

'How come a country that did not have a colonial past in Zambia had so many artefacts from Zambia in its collection?'"
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries Swedish explorers, ethnographers and botanists would pay to travel on British ships to Cape Town and then make their way inland by rail and foot.
....
The Swedish museum had not done any research on the cloaks - and the National Museums Board of Zambia was not even aware they existed.

***

Artist's work to restore damaged shell grotto (I put this in a short story once.) (My own theory is that it was originally A Folly. Doing things with shells was as I recall quite A Thing in the C18th and Mrs Delany and her mate the Duchess of Portland had a rather less concealed shell grotto?)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The embittered Martian aerialist and the nonconformist live a thousand-plus years apart, in different solar systems. What, then, connects them?

A Rebel’s History of Mars by Nadia Afifi

(no subject)

Jun. 13th, 2025 10:01 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] arkessian and [personal profile] ironed_orchid!

it's been a busy day

Jun. 12th, 2025 08:45 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Cattitude and I got up at 5:45 so he could pill Kaja, preparatory to her dental surgery. Both the pilling and the medical care went well, and she is on soft food only for 10-14 days. Therefore Molly is too, and we have to give them different treats than the usual dental Greenies. (Kaja will also be getting anti-inflammatories for a couple of days, and gabapentin for five.)

I got email from my brother about Mom's estate. He has done the necessary formwork so Vanguard can give us the money from her account there, where we are co-beneficiaries. His share is already in his account existing account. I tried setting an account up online, which apparently failed at the last minute, so I called and got a helpful person to walk me through the process again, step by step. I had gotten far enough earlier to create security questions, including some that I can actually remember my answers to, and haven't used repeatedly elsewhere. Separately, I need to talk to someone at Amalgamated Bank about the account there, a joint account with both our names on it. I hope they'll let me, as co-owner, close the account and transfer the money elsewhere, rather than sending them a copy of the death certificate, getting the account just in my name, and then closing it.

Mark also said he's thinking of going to London next month to sort through Mom's belongings, photos, and paperwork. So he wants to know whether I'm going as well, and if so, what dates worth for me. (Putting this here so I'm less likely to forget to talk to Cattitude and Adrian and then write back to Mark.)

Rani Icons

Jun. 12th, 2025 08:15 pm
purplecat: The Sixth Doctor (Who:The Rani)
[personal profile] purplecat
Some icons of The Rani which have been languishing on my hard drive since there was only one of her. I guess I need to make some more...


Kate O'Mara as the Rani, dressed as Mel.  Face and lots of permed red h air. Kate O'Mara as the Rani from the hips upwards, striding forwards in her red outfit. Kate O'Mara as the Rani.  Side shot standing next to her Tardis console. Kate O'Mara as the Rani.  Waist up looking at Camera in red. Kate O'Mara as the Rani looking mildly annoyed.  The Master stands behind her.


Snaggin is free. Credit is appreciated. Comments are loved.
oursin: A cloud of words from my LJ (word cloud)
[personal profile] oursin

Okay, am v depressed by all the ongoing hoohah around AI and the people using it rather than their own brains, quite aside from Evil Exploitation aspect -

- but on intellectual pollution, having been moaning inwardly, banging the floor with my ebony cane and beating my head on my antimacassar for a considerable while over the awful errors that appear in prose because the word is correctly spelt but it is THE WRONG BLOODY WORD.

That the person who created that text has not picked up on, sigh, groan.

Insert here a lament for the decline in copy-editing and proof-reading, which might have spotted this sort of thing and corrected it.

I am a little worried that we are now have generations who do not know what words actually mean, because spell-check has not said anything .

This is brought to you by having encountered the term 'itinerary' deployed for something that is not, as far as I can see, a journey, but the programme/timetable for a meeting. Perhaps there is some sense of a progression to be made???

(The mermaids signing, each to each: that is why I cannot hear them.)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Very nice and punctual but they've basically learned nothing in the year they've worked at the theatre. Not where to stand, not which row is which, or the general location of a given seat. The last two really matter during reserved seating shows. Whatever side that usher is on is going to have lines, and people may end up in the wrong seats.

So I was discussing the situation with my boss and I said my current approach was that each shift would be to pick one thing that usher does not know, and do my best to ensure they know it by the end of the shift. Last shift was "where to stand", for example. My reward is, I think, that usher is now _my_ special project who I will be working with whenever I HM.

I did assure my boss I do remember a previous HM who grilled ushers on seat location and would ding them a quarter hour for minor uniform infractions and that I wasn't going to use them as a model. Well, I do, but only in the sense of asking myself if the way I want to handle something is how that person would, and if it is, I do something else.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


An artisanal cheesemaker's attempt to save her precious cheese cave lands her in the middle of an interplanetary crisis.

The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann LeBlanc
tamaranth: me, in the sun (Default)
[personal profile] tamaranth
2025/090: The Queen of Attolia — Megan Whalen Turner
“You made a mistake,” Attolia agreed. “You trusted your gods. That was your mistake." [p. 267]

Another reread: my review from 2010 is here. I remembered the shockingly violent act at the beginning of the novel, and the state of affairs at the end, but not much in between. And, unable to acquire any of the following novels -- well, back then I thought it was a trilogy! -- the characters faded away.

Read more... )

(no subject)

Jun. 12th, 2025 09:48 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] ase!

Wednesday reading

Jun. 11th, 2025 11:47 pm
redbird: full bookshelves and table in a library (books)
[personal profile] redbird

Last week:

*Cattitude read Blue Moose, by Daniel Pinkwater, aloud to us, because it's one of his favorites and Adrian had never read it. I've reread the book several times, and was happy to hear it out loud.

*I read Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire. Decidedly weird, funny fantasy. A lot of the humor is in the footnotes, which seem to be at least a quarter of the text. Also, the title does in fact describe the book. Isabella lives in a poor, out-of-the-way village, whose wizard keeps the local goblin market in check, until one day he doesn't. The goblins sell one thing, unnaturally tempting and dangerous fruit.

*Did not finish: Girls Against God, by Jenny Hval. I don't remember where I saw this recommended, and just couldn't get into it.

Currently reading:

*Installment Immortality, by Seanan McGuire, the latest book in her InCryptid series. I started it late last night, and only read a few pages before turning the light out.

*Twelve Trees, by Daniel Lewis, nonfiction about trees and climate change. I picked this up at the libraru, as a "book with a green caover" for the summer reading challenge.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Have never worked a show run by human golden retrievers...
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (2024) - rather slight, one for the completist, which I suppose I am.

Robert Rodi, Bitch Goddess (2014): 'told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions', the story of the star of a lot of dire B-movies who has a later-life move into soap-stardom. I hadn't read this one before and it was a lot of campy fun.

TC Parker, Tradwife (2024) - another of those mystery/thrillers which riffs off true-crime style investigation - somebody here I think mentioned it? - I thought it went a few narrative twists too far though was pretty readable up till then.

On the go

Apart from those, still ticking on with Upton Sinclair, Wide Is The Gate (Lanny Budd, #4), boy I am glad that I am reading these in e-form, because they must be monstrous great bricks otherwise. In this one he actually ventures back to Germany, his marriage starts to crumble, he continues his delicate dance between all the various opposed interests in his life while managing to get support to the anti-Nazi/Fascist cause, Spain is now in the picture, and I have just seen a passing mention to Earl Russell being sent down for his Reno divorce (that wasn't quite the story, but one can quite imagine that was what gossip might have made of it 30 years down the line).

Up next

New Literary Review.

The three books for the essay review.

I think more Robert Rodi might be a nice change of pace from Lanny's ordeals.

Another Bundle - Mercy of the Icons

Jun. 11th, 2025 06:45 pm
ffutures: (Default)
[personal profile] ffutures
This is a bundle for "Coriolis - The Third Horizon" from Free League Publishing, an SF game using the Year Zero Engine rules featuring the epic three-part "Mercy of the Icons" campaign:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/CoriolisIcons




I remember this as an interesting SF setting that for once is not based exclusively on Western culture. Parts of this bundle have been in previous bundles and it may be worth checking how much you need - sometimes it can work out cheaper to cherry-pick and just buy the bits you need. I don't think that's true in this case, but I haven't checked.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Tales of dissidents, dissenters, and iconoclasts taking on the status quo...

Five SFF Books About Oddballs Resisting Conformity

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Simon Bradshaw

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