vital functions
Oct. 6th, 2019 10:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. Making A Tinderbox, Emma Sterner-Radley. Oh gosh, even before the end of the first chapter it's already going hard (though possibly incompetently rather than maliciously, we shall see) on the bioessentialism. And, while it's quite clearly someone's id, it isn't mine, so when the next book showed up from the library I DNFed it.
The Lost Plot, Genevieve Cogman. Still getting twitchy about worldbuilding inconsistencies between books, and the Characters Who Are Really Not As Clever As They Think They Are, and also still enthusiastically hoovering these up. Albeit I am really kind of giving the major side-eye to this one for its intense commitment to the concept of biological family, w o w. Weird biological determinism aside, however, it's occurred to me that at least some of what's not gelling for me here is that I'm a multilingual autistic, and therefore have very definite ideas about precision in communication, and in consequence am not especially sold on a key piece of worldbuilding. I'm also a little perplexed by the sheer density of metaphors (it gets up to "several per paragraph" at some points), but -- nice quick easy reads, and I can see why they're iddy.
Trans Mission: my quest to a beard, Alex Bertie. This turns out to be much shorter than it looks, because the font's fairly large and only about half of each page actually has text on (between doodles and wide margins and Font Choices), and therefore much quicker. Final verdict: it is... extremely conciliatory and 101, and there's a place for that, and there are almost certainly people for whom it is useful, but I am not even remotely its target audience and I sort of feel like anyone who knows me is also, actually, Not The Target Audience. There's a bunch of clearly unintentional ableism; there's an entire section of hand-wringing about How Awful Sex Work Is (like, no, sweetie, the problems here are not, inherently, the sex work); there's a bunch of supporting gatekeeping; and I'm profoundly uncomfortable about the gushing about How Supportive And Lovely his family & parents are... juxtaposed against all the stories of them really not being. I'm glad to have read it - I think it's useful for me in terms of having a sense of What All Is Out There - but if I get asked for book recommendations I'm definitely going to be sticking with CN Lester's Trans Like Me, everything by Kate Bornstein, and so on and so forth.
(I think the thing that got me most agitated and uncomfortable was all the terribly earnest Stuff about how You Can't Really Expect Your Parents To Know Any Better, Give Them Time, now that I'm firmly in the dialectics position of "I can understand how they got to where they are & have compassion for that and it's not actually good enough & they could have learned more sooner if they'd cared & they don't get to keep hurting me".)
Watching. The Blue Planet: Deep Trouble. This is a Things We Are Doing To Harm Marine Environments episode. We're getting a lot of Commercial Fishing Is Bad, but I'm a little dubious about how much of the opening is about the Asian market instead of the problems with British trawl-fishing. .... oh okay, now we're getting explanations about cod. -- okay and NOW we are getting to dragnet fishing. Coral reef overfishing is also an issue (for aquaria!!! sing sodium cyanide!!!)
Aquaculture is not the solution in that it's not an entire solution; I'm doing a lot of OR MAYBE INLAND COMMUNITIES COULD JUST NOT EAT SALTWATER FISH shouting-at-the-screen every time we get a "but??? could aquaculture??? solve all our problems???" NOPE.
Okay, Alex, deep breaths, this is actually a reasonable awareness-raising harm-reduction approach targeted at people who are not already vegetarian environmentalists circa 2001.
Cooking. I continue to experiment with both scones (they like the griddle; I'm still not making them Tall; I think I need to try for "less liquid") and sourdough (with an increasing proportion of brown flour, which seems to work quite well).
Good Instant Pot lentil bolognaise with FENNEL SEEDS (because we had onions and carrots and garlic and an open jar of passata, but no celery, and See Below).
Exploring. Went on an adventure, Wednesday lunchtime, through the V&A courtyard and past the chandelier (please note the case designation because I am, perpetually, charmed by it). Friday afternoon I watched the (a?) Hyde Park colony of parakeets having a lengthy and raucous squabble adjacent the rose garden, which was lovely.
On Saturday I popped into the V&A with A, as a date activity around having half an hour of science I needed to get done over the road, and we were Thoroughly Engrossed by the glass gallery and ended up staying til we were kicked out and still rushing the end a bit.
Growing. WENT TO THE ALLOTMENT. I had acquired (with A's help) a cordless drill, you see, having decided it was worth Just Doing That instead of trying to handle my anxiety about Borrowing One Off Someone Else, and my being utterly stalled about the allotment was largely due to guilty flail about What Now, but now there is an INSTALLED RAISED BED (again with A's help) that needs filling in and then I can plant... something... in it and then I can make the next one too and, basically, Progress, Thank Goodness.
For bonus points we harvested a lot of damsons from next-door's tree (with permission and indeed encouragement!) and I additionally gathered (1) A Lot (but not All) of the fennel seeds to dry/thresh/use as ingredient and also Plant More Of, and (2) SHALLOTS. Possibly... fewer shallots... than I planted... but, like, more from each location than went in. SHALLOTS SHALLOTS SHALLOTS.
... hopefully I am now unstuck and can resume Spending Time There.
Poking. Twooooooooo shiny Oddishhhhhh on the first daaaaaaaay of them. From Team GO Rocket: a Very Good Ralts, a Very Good Dratini, a Very Good Psyduck. From field research: a 100% IV Onix; a 98% IV Spinda. New species: Snivy (which I detoured down the hill to pick up), Dewott (I'd got as far as the V&A courtyard before I realised it was an evolution, so shrug.emoji), Herdier, two Tepig. From raid: 98% Klink!
The Lost Plot, Genevieve Cogman. Still getting twitchy about worldbuilding inconsistencies between books, and the Characters Who Are Really Not As Clever As They Think They Are, and also still enthusiastically hoovering these up. Albeit I am really kind of giving the major side-eye to this one for its intense commitment to the concept of biological family, w o w. Weird biological determinism aside, however, it's occurred to me that at least some of what's not gelling for me here is that I'm a multilingual autistic, and therefore have very definite ideas about precision in communication, and in consequence am not especially sold on a key piece of worldbuilding. I'm also a little perplexed by the sheer density of metaphors (it gets up to "several per paragraph" at some points), but -- nice quick easy reads, and I can see why they're iddy.
Trans Mission: my quest to a beard, Alex Bertie. This turns out to be much shorter than it looks, because the font's fairly large and only about half of each page actually has text on (between doodles and wide margins and Font Choices), and therefore much quicker. Final verdict: it is... extremely conciliatory and 101, and there's a place for that, and there are almost certainly people for whom it is useful, but I am not even remotely its target audience and I sort of feel like anyone who knows me is also, actually, Not The Target Audience. There's a bunch of clearly unintentional ableism; there's an entire section of hand-wringing about How Awful Sex Work Is (like, no, sweetie, the problems here are not, inherently, the sex work); there's a bunch of supporting gatekeeping; and I'm profoundly uncomfortable about the gushing about How Supportive And Lovely his family & parents are... juxtaposed against all the stories of them really not being. I'm glad to have read it - I think it's useful for me in terms of having a sense of What All Is Out There - but if I get asked for book recommendations I'm definitely going to be sticking with CN Lester's Trans Like Me, everything by Kate Bornstein, and so on and so forth.
(I think the thing that got me most agitated and uncomfortable was all the terribly earnest Stuff about how You Can't Really Expect Your Parents To Know Any Better, Give Them Time, now that I'm firmly in the dialectics position of "I can understand how they got to where they are & have compassion for that and it's not actually good enough & they could have learned more sooner if they'd cared & they don't get to keep hurting me".)
Watching. The Blue Planet: Deep Trouble. This is a Things We Are Doing To Harm Marine Environments episode. We're getting a lot of Commercial Fishing Is Bad, but I'm a little dubious about how much of the opening is about the Asian market instead of the problems with British trawl-fishing. .... oh okay, now we're getting explanations about cod. -- okay and NOW we are getting to dragnet fishing. Coral reef overfishing is also an issue (for aquaria!!! sing sodium cyanide!!!)
Aquaculture is not the solution in that it's not an entire solution; I'm doing a lot of OR MAYBE INLAND COMMUNITIES COULD JUST NOT EAT SALTWATER FISH shouting-at-the-screen every time we get a "but??? could aquaculture??? solve all our problems???" NOPE.
Okay, Alex, deep breaths, this is actually a reasonable awareness-raising harm-reduction approach targeted at people who are not already vegetarian environmentalists circa 2001.
Cooking. I continue to experiment with both scones (they like the griddle; I'm still not making them Tall; I think I need to try for "less liquid") and sourdough (with an increasing proportion of brown flour, which seems to work quite well).
Good Instant Pot lentil bolognaise with FENNEL SEEDS (because we had onions and carrots and garlic and an open jar of passata, but no celery, and See Below).
Exploring. Went on an adventure, Wednesday lunchtime, through the V&A courtyard and past the chandelier (please note the case designation because I am, perpetually, charmed by it). Friday afternoon I watched the (a?) Hyde Park colony of parakeets having a lengthy and raucous squabble adjacent the rose garden, which was lovely.
On Saturday I popped into the V&A with A, as a date activity around having half an hour of science I needed to get done over the road, and we were Thoroughly Engrossed by the glass gallery and ended up staying til we were kicked out and still rushing the end a bit.
Growing. WENT TO THE ALLOTMENT. I had acquired (with A's help) a cordless drill, you see, having decided it was worth Just Doing That instead of trying to handle my anxiety about Borrowing One Off Someone Else, and my being utterly stalled about the allotment was largely due to guilty flail about What Now, but now there is an INSTALLED RAISED BED (again with A's help) that needs filling in and then I can plant... something... in it and then I can make the next one too and, basically, Progress, Thank Goodness.
For bonus points we harvested a lot of damsons from next-door's tree (with permission and indeed encouragement!) and I additionally gathered (1) A Lot (but not All) of the fennel seeds to dry/thresh/use as ingredient and also Plant More Of, and (2) SHALLOTS. Possibly... fewer shallots... than I planted... but, like, more from each location than went in. SHALLOTS SHALLOTS SHALLOTS.
... hopefully I am now unstuck and can resume Spending Time There.
Poking. Twooooooooo shiny Oddishhhhhh on the first daaaaaaaay of them. From Team GO Rocket: a Very Good Ralts, a Very Good Dratini, a Very Good Psyduck. From field research: a 100% IV Onix; a 98% IV Spinda. New species: Snivy (which I detoured down the hill to pick up), Dewott (I'd got as far as the V&A courtyard before I realised it was an evolution, so shrug.emoji), Herdier, two Tepig. From raid: 98% Klink!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-06 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-07 10:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-06 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-07 10:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-07 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-07 07:09 am (UTC)♥ Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-10-07 10:13 am (UTC)