vital functions
Aug. 2nd, 2020 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading.
Strange Practice, Vivian Shaw. I actually managed to finish this! Despite flipping actively back and forth between three separate books! I was reasonably pleased with myself. I think on the whole I enjoyed this a great deal; while I was mildly irked with everyone using Fahrenheit I was willing to fanwank it as "they're mostly agèd immortals, it's fine", but I coped less well with the incredibly USois approach to medical care and also the idea that simultaneously (1) everyone is sworn to great secrecy and (2) our protagonist is contemplating academic papers regarding the topics of said secrecy, so that. Was a thing. Also not entirely here for the dubious romance. On the other hand, museum curators and medicine for underserved populations and nerding about London infrastructure and power sources? SIGN ME UP. Overall: I will probably get to the sequels at... some point. In the future.
Gail Carriger, Soulless. Partial progress through this; a friend mentioned it in passing in conversation, I expressed mild interest of the "I'll stick it on my to-investigate list", friend Arranged for a physical copy to show up. I'm sort of fascinated: so far it seems to be a trashy werewolf romance that is entirely skipping over my id (where, let's be clear, my taste in trashy werewolf romance absolutely includes e.g. the uncorrected bound proof I picked up off a free books shelf lo these many years ago with the strapline "she's a wolf in chic clothing"). It is definitely rollicking, and I can absolutely see why the recommending friend loves it, and I keep going "... okay well while 'gee' as an interjection is just about attested by the 1870s, if you squint, Alpha-Beta dominance hierarchies emphatically were not (and also it keeps sort of hinting towards the fannish interpretation and then coyly sliding off and it's going to be super het I can just TELL). This is... throwing me, somewhat, combined with the language, which is Highly Wrought and Full Of Flourishes.
Flipping back and forth between these two was extremely confusing.
Finally, this week, To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers. Full disclosure: A Reader of Else, a university friend whose Book Opinions I frequently share, hated it and was desirous of validation from me, and while I am in mild disagreement with her about the Wayfarer books she has been getting exactly what she wanted from me on the topic of this novella. It's not just that I disbelieve the prose; it's also that pretty much everything about how science is approached is frustratingly wrong, and there's a whole lot of internal inconsistency I'm finding upsetting, but the point at which I actually had to put it down and stare aggressively at a wall for several minutes was, uh,
This is just. So wrong. On so many levels. That I needed to pause and screech to people about how it was even more wrong than the compost (tl;dr if compost is the emotional core of your novel YOU SHOULD BE RIGHT ABOUT HOW IT WORKS).
I am not going to go into the detailed geologist screeching Right Now because it is getting on for 11pm and I have the rest of this post to write (or at least construct from notes) and I am Very Tired, but if you want the rant about planetary motion and/or compost (content note: the latter involves burial processes and gore) speak up in comments and regret your choices later.
Watching. planet earth: into the wilderness. Core questions in this episode -- another DVD bonus feature, I think, that goes into conservation work -- were "what does wilderness mean?" and "what are the threats to it?" For the former: "Very low human populations or entirely devoid of people. It's not a concept that has necessarily spread worldwide."
For the latter: there was a truly uncomfortable amount of both ecofascism (re overpopulation) and a White House advisor engaging in egregious climate change denial, though the latter set of interviews were at least, ah, Pointedly Bookended by some truly scathing critiques of the positions taken. They were also making a point of interviewing actual people-on-the-ground, which was. Good.
Some quick notes:
Listening. Magnus relisten continues!
We also listened to a significant chunk of the Fun Home recordings on our way to and from some medical faff on Wednesday, which took much longer than usual due to traffic in the middle of town being a mess, and I mostly didn't cry much.
Playing. PoGo: 100% Alolan Exeggutor as a research reward! Also my first two Deino, via timed research; a significant increase in Gible candy, thanks to Dragon Week; and a Kyurem plus some Rayquaza via the magic of inviting remote friends to join raids (aaaaaaah!).
Horn: I remain annoyed that more frequent and longer practice correlates very directly with improved overall tone and stamina and technique, sigh, not least because I've been struggling a bit with consistency. BUT HEY: still One Note every day. (I say, and go to play a very quiet very short very late-night Note.)
Cooking. Oh it has been a Good week for cooking.
Tiramisu and blackberry clafoutis, with A, both of which worked out well. Ongoing Artichoke Situations: lemon zest in the butter-and-pepper-and-lemon-juice is A Good, and also they go remarkably well with the high-percentage-brown 20%-rye pumpkin-and-caraway sourdough I've been doing.
Sushi, for the first time in a very great many years; turns out I can still (sort of) make tamagoyaki.
And! A pasta topping made of tromboncino squash, garlic, shallots and chilli from the allotment, plus olive oil (not from the allotment). This was a mixed success: I think I'd let the tromboncino get too big for this usage, really, so while there are lots more coming along I'm going to have some more of a think about how I want to handle future ones.
Exploring. Plague diaries. On Monday, we visited Forty Hall and went for a wander around some of the grounds for distanced social withhalojedha and smol, including spending some time sat in a secluded bit of woodland with No Other People Around Thank Goodness. A+ would social again.
Today, we... ventured the furthest afield we had been in a very long time because -- okay, so, my mother had mentioned to me that he and my other brother were going to be camping in the parentals' garden this weekend, and I knew I needed to send my mother a birthday card, but I hadn't quite put these two facts together until baby brother pointed it out to me earlier in the week and I went "...?!?!?!"
Long story short: A & I discussed options and safety and risk tolerance, and I have now been the furthest I have been from home since at least March, spent a lot of time around a lot (relatively speaking: six individuals from four households, over the course of the day) of people, and been inside a building that wasn't (1) my house, (2) my greenhouse, or (3) a hospital for definitely the first time since March. (This last bit I would very much have preferred to avoid, but despite my best efforts Bodies Gonna Body, so I made use of the bathroom via a route through the house that is mostly not used while the ventilation was all very good, with my most recent negative test having taken place on Wednesday and my parents having barely left the house for the duration. I have not yet calmed down about this. I might have in a fortnight or so.) As a bonus, A got his bike checked over by my brothers and some outdoor distanced social with some of his friends; I dropped off for my mother a jostaberry cutting (it had layered itself) and a pile of Kenwood bits, and traded chillis with my father (two of my plants -- Pretty in Purple -- for two of his, which are with $probability a padron and a cayenne), and came home with a bag of new potatoes I watched my mother dig up plus a Chaenomeles japonica sucker I really need to get into soil ASAP but am not managing tonight plus some bonus bay leaves and a helping of cake.
Making & mending. No further progress on the tablet repair, though the parts have shown up.
I divvied up the job of sharpening some knives with a relative, and did actually make progress on those.
We have begun dismantling the fruit cage's cladding until next season, and gosh but there's a lot of it still to go.
Growing. Harvested: tromboncino squash. TOMATOES (plural). More Sugar Magnolia peas. Chillis. Artichokes (endlessly). A lemon, probably to be combined with the HOW MANY blackberries into some form of jam.
At the plot: I am really enjoying watching the Cosse Violette beans go from "tiny, green, dark purple dorsal stripe" to "ENORMOUS (also entirely purple)": I'm expecting that by the end of next week there'll be enough ready that I'll get my act together to cook another enormous round of Misc Ethiopian Food. Greek Gigantes are finally starting to set. Pattison Blanc are flowering enthusiastically but not succeeding in setting fruit, yet. Purple sprouting broccoli not all dead. Tomatoes doing v well -- we've now had the first outdoor tomato as well as a bunch of indoor ones. Luffa goes SPROING and has flowers but as yet no fruit. Lemon has I swear put on another 6" in height (and I am so glad to see it growing so enthusiastically). Peppers are... really suffering from irregular watering, sigh, so I'm learning a thing there. The maize various is starting to have visible flower tassles, which I'm extremely excited about, and rather to my relief the various root veg are coming up.
Infrastructure: the peas collapsed their supports and needed significant reinforcing. I gave up on the maize having a growth spurt in useful time and have given all the Cosse Violette tall bamboo to climb in addition to their pre-existing rather shorter raspberry canes. I... have stalled on further raised bed construction, and should probably aim to unstick, but also, thesis.
I am really enjoying my plants a lot, even as I'm struggling with getting to them.
Observing. Bonus long-tailed tits, on our adventures! And I've been observing a lot of excellent caterpillars. Some striking insects I have utterly failed to even attempt to identify, including something that looked a bit like a large hoverfly except its abdomen was a spectacular black-and-white chevron or houndtooth check.
And, as ever, BATS.
Strange Practice, Vivian Shaw. I actually managed to finish this! Despite flipping actively back and forth between three separate books! I was reasonably pleased with myself. I think on the whole I enjoyed this a great deal; while I was mildly irked with everyone using Fahrenheit I was willing to fanwank it as "they're mostly agèd immortals, it's fine", but I coped less well with the incredibly USois approach to medical care and also the idea that simultaneously (1) everyone is sworn to great secrecy and (2) our protagonist is contemplating academic papers regarding the topics of said secrecy, so that. Was a thing. Also not entirely here for the dubious romance. On the other hand, museum curators and medicine for underserved populations and nerding about London infrastructure and power sources? SIGN ME UP. Overall: I will probably get to the sequels at... some point. In the future.
Gail Carriger, Soulless. Partial progress through this; a friend mentioned it in passing in conversation, I expressed mild interest of the "I'll stick it on my to-investigate list", friend Arranged for a physical copy to show up. I'm sort of fascinated: so far it seems to be a trashy werewolf romance that is entirely skipping over my id (where, let's be clear, my taste in trashy werewolf romance absolutely includes e.g. the uncorrected bound proof I picked up off a free books shelf lo these many years ago with the strapline "she's a wolf in chic clothing"). It is definitely rollicking, and I can absolutely see why the recommending friend loves it, and I keep going "... okay well while 'gee' as an interjection is just about attested by the 1870s, if you squint, Alpha-Beta dominance hierarchies emphatically were not (and also it keeps sort of hinting towards the fannish interpretation and then coyly sliding off and it's going to be super het I can just TELL). This is... throwing me, somewhat, combined with the language, which is Highly Wrought and Full Of Flourishes.
Flipping back and forth between these two was extremely confusing.
Finally, this week, To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers. Full disclosure: A Reader of Else, a university friend whose Book Opinions I frequently share, hated it and was desirous of validation from me, and while I am in mild disagreement with her about the Wayfarer books she has been getting exactly what she wanted from me on the topic of this novella. It's not just that I disbelieve the prose; it's also that pretty much everything about how science is approached is frustratingly wrong, and there's a whole lot of internal inconsistency I'm finding upsetting, but the point at which I actually had to put it down and stare aggressively at a wall for several minutes was, uh,
If Mirabilis and Opera had thin atmospheres, they likely would be locked with Zhenyi, but their thick quilts of clouds have a spin of their own, pushing against the surface as they whip around. This nudging is powerful enough to make a planet turn (an effect you can see on Venus as well).
In this regard, Votum, with its textbook tidal lock, is a more conventional planet. With an atmosphere only sixteen percent the thickness of Earth’s, there is not enough force to shove the mountains forward.
This is just. So wrong. On so many levels. That I needed to pause and screech to people about how it was even more wrong than the compost (tl;dr if compost is the emotional core of your novel YOU SHOULD BE RIGHT ABOUT HOW IT WORKS).
I am not going to go into the detailed geologist screeching Right Now because it is getting on for 11pm and I have the rest of this post to write (or at least construct from notes) and I am Very Tired, but if you want the rant about planetary motion and/or compost (content note: the latter involves burial processes and gore) speak up in comments and regret your choices later.
Watching. planet earth: into the wilderness. Core questions in this episode -- another DVD bonus feature, I think, that goes into conservation work -- were "what does wilderness mean?" and "what are the threats to it?" For the former: "Very low human populations or entirely devoid of people. It's not a concept that has necessarily spread worldwide."
For the latter: there was a truly uncomfortable amount of both ecofascism (re overpopulation) and a White House advisor engaging in egregious climate change denial, though the latter set of interviews were at least, ah, Pointedly Bookended by some truly scathing critiques of the positions taken. They were also making a point of interviewing actual people-on-the-ground, which was. Good.
Some quick notes:
- "wilderness" has been quantified by one study as regions with population density less than one person per km2
- ~39% of Earth's land surface meets this definition
- of which ~30% is ice, because, Antarctica
- a looooot of the rest is Amazonia
- over the last ~300 years we've lost ~50% of the ancient forest the planet had, starting out with temperate forest (esp. European) and then accelerating land clearance in tropical forest
- ~12% of this land is designated as protected areas, but whether that's "enough" depends a lot on land management around said designated areas
- cool example #1: African wild dogs aren't hunted by humans and do have enough habitat but are one of the most endangered mammals in Africa (or were when this was shot), with populations plumetting because... humans around the Serengeti keep dogs as companion animals but the ability to actually vaccinate these companion animals is, uh, limited, so illnesses to which there was no population immunity were getting introduced and spreading rapidly and devastatingly. solution? set up a cordon sanitaire around the edges of the Serengeti, providing free vaccines to companion dogs! win-win situation: companion dogs are healthier, there's reduced risk of canine-human rabies transmission, and it's conservation work that encourages tourism and therefore wealth influx. this is conservation work that is working and is enthusiastically maintained.
- Costa Rica pays (paid?) farmers for maintaining forest land as "water factories": subsidies/cash for sustainable management that improves water availability nationally, as distinct from clearance for crop growth. This led into a lengthy discussion about, ha, the costs and benefits of "putting a price tag on natural resources or assets".
Listening. Magnus relisten continues!
We also listened to a significant chunk of the Fun Home recordings on our way to and from some medical faff on Wednesday, which took much longer than usual due to traffic in the middle of town being a mess, and I mostly didn't cry much.
Playing. PoGo: 100% Alolan Exeggutor as a research reward! Also my first two Deino, via timed research; a significant increase in Gible candy, thanks to Dragon Week; and a Kyurem plus some Rayquaza via the magic of inviting remote friends to join raids (aaaaaaah!).
Horn: I remain annoyed that more frequent and longer practice correlates very directly with improved overall tone and stamina and technique, sigh, not least because I've been struggling a bit with consistency. BUT HEY: still One Note every day. (I say, and go to play a very quiet very short very late-night Note.)
Cooking. Oh it has been a Good week for cooking.
Tiramisu and blackberry clafoutis, with A, both of which worked out well. Ongoing Artichoke Situations: lemon zest in the butter-and-pepper-and-lemon-juice is A Good, and also they go remarkably well with the high-percentage-brown 20%-rye pumpkin-and-caraway sourdough I've been doing.
Sushi, for the first time in a very great many years; turns out I can still (sort of) make tamagoyaki.
And! A pasta topping made of tromboncino squash, garlic, shallots and chilli from the allotment, plus olive oil (not from the allotment). This was a mixed success: I think I'd let the tromboncino get too big for this usage, really, so while there are lots more coming along I'm going to have some more of a think about how I want to handle future ones.
Exploring. Plague diaries. On Monday, we visited Forty Hall and went for a wander around some of the grounds for distanced social with
halojedha and smol, including spending some time sat in a secluded bit of woodland with No Other People Around Thank Goodness. A+ would social again.Today, we... ventured the furthest afield we had been in a very long time because -- okay, so, my mother had mentioned to me that he and my other brother were going to be camping in the parentals' garden this weekend, and I knew I needed to send my mother a birthday card, but I hadn't quite put these two facts together until baby brother pointed it out to me earlier in the week and I went "...?!?!?!"
Long story short: A & I discussed options and safety and risk tolerance, and I have now been the furthest I have been from home since at least March, spent a lot of time around a lot (relatively speaking: six individuals from four households, over the course of the day) of people, and been inside a building that wasn't (1) my house, (2) my greenhouse, or (3) a hospital for definitely the first time since March. (This last bit I would very much have preferred to avoid, but despite my best efforts Bodies Gonna Body, so I made use of the bathroom via a route through the house that is mostly not used while the ventilation was all very good, with my most recent negative test having taken place on Wednesday and my parents having barely left the house for the duration. I have not yet calmed down about this. I might have in a fortnight or so.) As a bonus, A got his bike checked over by my brothers and some outdoor distanced social with some of his friends; I dropped off for my mother a jostaberry cutting (it had layered itself) and a pile of Kenwood bits, and traded chillis with my father (two of my plants -- Pretty in Purple -- for two of his, which are with $probability a padron and a cayenne), and came home with a bag of new potatoes I watched my mother dig up plus a Chaenomeles japonica sucker I really need to get into soil ASAP but am not managing tonight plus some bonus bay leaves and a helping of cake.
Making & mending. No further progress on the tablet repair, though the parts have shown up.
I divvied up the job of sharpening some knives with a relative, and did actually make progress on those.
We have begun dismantling the fruit cage's cladding until next season, and gosh but there's a lot of it still to go.
Growing. Harvested: tromboncino squash. TOMATOES (plural). More Sugar Magnolia peas. Chillis. Artichokes (endlessly). A lemon, probably to be combined with the HOW MANY blackberries into some form of jam.
At the plot: I am really enjoying watching the Cosse Violette beans go from "tiny, green, dark purple dorsal stripe" to "ENORMOUS (also entirely purple)": I'm expecting that by the end of next week there'll be enough ready that I'll get my act together to cook another enormous round of Misc Ethiopian Food. Greek Gigantes are finally starting to set. Pattison Blanc are flowering enthusiastically but not succeeding in setting fruit, yet. Purple sprouting broccoli not all dead. Tomatoes doing v well -- we've now had the first outdoor tomato as well as a bunch of indoor ones. Luffa goes SPROING and has flowers but as yet no fruit. Lemon has I swear put on another 6" in height (and I am so glad to see it growing so enthusiastically). Peppers are... really suffering from irregular watering, sigh, so I'm learning a thing there. The maize various is starting to have visible flower tassles, which I'm extremely excited about, and rather to my relief the various root veg are coming up.
Infrastructure: the peas collapsed their supports and needed significant reinforcing. I gave up on the maize having a growth spurt in useful time and have given all the Cosse Violette tall bamboo to climb in addition to their pre-existing rather shorter raspberry canes. I... have stalled on further raised bed construction, and should probably aim to unstick, but also, thesis.
I am really enjoying my plants a lot, even as I'm struggling with getting to them.
Observing. Bonus long-tailed tits, on our adventures! And I've been observing a lot of excellent caterpillars. Some striking insects I have utterly failed to even attempt to identify, including something that looked a bit like a large hoverfly except its abdomen was a spectacular black-and-white chevron or houndtooth check.
And, as ever, BATS.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-02 10:30 pm (UTC)it is possible I'm confusing myself wrt Soulless, but I recall a bunch of onscreen queer in that series. cannot remember if Our Heroine is a participant or an observer, though. and heads up (assuming I am correctly recalling about one particular character) about Dead Gay. though since we meet the Dead Gay bit rather after we meet the Dead Dad bit, maybe this hits differently enough? idk.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 09:36 am (UTC)The Parasol Protectorate series (of which Soulless is #1) apparently has a series of queer spinoff novellas, which might be what you're thinking about? Also yes I think the Dead Gay is... kind of egregiously stereotyped in a way that's honestly kind of anachronistic, but if we're thinking about the same character I think I'm more okay with Undead Gays that with, just, like, common-or-garden ordinary Dead Ones. :-p
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 10:10 pm (UTC)…I think
(I am pretty sure I have Parasol Protectorate for Kindle and I could check)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-04 11:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 01:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 09:37 am (UTC)... for the rest of them I'm pretty much at "okay well I maybe like some of the core concepts but good grief the execution", both in terms of language and in terms of fundamental scientific errors.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 01:23 am (UTC)I quite enjoy her novels and think the latter two in particular do interesting things with story structure-- sometime I should write that essay on how the third one is structuring a story in a way that both SF/F and litfic don't usually see as being a structure at all, but it's intentional and it does what she planned-- so I was very disappointed by the novella, though still looking forward to her future work.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 09:34 am (UTC)I hit the issue at the end and was briefly overcome with rage because what that does, what that irrevocably does, is render stunningly obvious just how much the rest of the work fundamentally does not commit to or believe in its central premise.
And thinking about that -- about the fact that it's fundamentally written for an early C21 audience and it can't even be bothered trying to pretend otherwise in any functional way -- clicked into focus for me what makes me so angry about Jack, and that's that his entire background speaks to an appallingly and offensively lazy imagining of trans futures, the contemplation of which is resulting in elevated heartrate and a notable adrenaline spike. So! That's a thing!
I very much appreciate your point about story structure; I did enjoy #2 and #3, though I think (again looking at them through the lens of TBTIF) that probably a lot of my problem with Chambers' work can be summarised as: I'm into some of the core concepts, and then the execution and the errors let the whole work down so badly (for me) that I just can't actually like them anywhere near as much as I want to, and that's deeply frustrating -- and. And. TBTIF could, actually, have done very interesting things with structure! It could have been set up to communicate in a way that looked much more like a technical document, that explained what the question was up-front and then provided supporting data and evidence, but I suppose! That wouldn't! Have fit the ~literary device~ targetted!
Ugh, I say. And again I say: ugh.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 02:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 09:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 04:27 am (UTC)Bar bs gur fhccbegvat punenpgref vf n lbhat genaftraqre jbzna. Ure pbzzhavgl bs bevtva vf nccneragyl fhccbegvir naq unf n grez sbe ure fvghngvba; Bhe Urebvar zvfhaqrefgnaqf guvf va n Uvynevbhf Frdhrapr bs Pvf-Pragevp Nffhzcgvbaf gb zrna gung fur vf *oneera*. Fur yngre ubbxf hc jvgu n ovfrkhny ybhg jub (qrfcvgr uvf erchgngvba) gehyl ybirf ure; gur Hasbeghangr Vzcyvpngvba vf gung ur Qbrf Abg Pner N Juvg nobhg ure travgny pbasvthengvba *orpnhfr ur vf ovfrkhny*, juvpu nf n ovfrkhny bssraqf zr.
https://rot13.com
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 09:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-03 02:12 pm (UTC)I quite liked her other books, though I found I liked book 2 slightly less overall, mostly because quite a bit of it was stressful, but it definitely had interesting things to say. I have not actually gotten around to reading TBTIF though I’ve had it for a while, so more information on it would be appreciated
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-04 10:50 am (UTC)Mind you, I remember James White's _The Watch Below_ where a small group of people are trapped in an air pocket on a merchant ship sunk in WW2. Fortunately they have just what they need; they can improvise an exercise bike to run a generator to make light (doubly fortunately, they have an extremely large crate of light bulbs) and with this light they can plant seeds and grow crops photosynthesising off the light which they can then eat to have strength to ride the exercise bike. This is handy because 100 years later their descendants can be sent to negotiate with the aliens because they're used to living in a smelly claustrophobic metal tube.
(To his credit, White wrote an enormous amount of SF about nonviolent endeavours - most obviously his Sector General books - at a time when that was distinctly unusual...)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-04 11:57 am (UTC)Yeah,
(no subject)
Date: 2020-08-07 03:29 pm (UTC)