marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
If you missed the live recording of the Murderbot interview episode at WorldCon, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24

This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.


***


I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.
juushika: Photo of a cat in motion, blurred in such a way that it looks like a monster (Cryptid cat)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: Boo Stew
Author: Donna L. Washington
Illustrator: Jeffrey Ebbeler
Published: Peachtree Publishing Company, 2021
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 540,220
Text Number: 1994
Read Because: more spooky picture books; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Nobody likes this little girl's strange cooking--except maybe the local Scares. There's so much life here! I love the ooky, goopy girl, and her practical gumption is empowering without totally de-scaring the monsters, a balance that most picture books can't manage. The angular art combined with the translucent shadow shapes is vivacious and cartoony, and suits a text that feels like a great read-aloud. Not a life-changing picture book, but a boatload of fun.


Title: Things in the Basement
Author: Ben Hatke
Published: First Second, 2023
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 540,460
Text Number: 1995
Read Because: more! only longer; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A boy tracks a lost sock through the endlessly deep basement under his new house. Middle grade graphic novel, or a really long picture book; either way, I appreciate the niche that this is filling. The basement is full of lost histories and eldritch monsters, and I admire that willingness to go ever deeper, to get weirder and more dangerous. The art is literally very dark, but has a diversity of color tones and biomes within the limited setting. Lots to like, but which isn't doing anything memorable with characters or plot structure.


Title: Prunella
Author: Beth Ferry
Illustrator: Claire Keane
Published: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 540,500
Text Number: 1996
Read Because: more!; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Prunella keeps a strange garden, which distances her from her peers until she meets some equally idiosyncratic enthusiasts. This wears its heart on its sleeve: Prunella's confused but supportive parents, idiosyncrasy as socially isolating but also a site for social bonding. It's charming, optimistic, and so idealized that I can't find it compelling or moving; the ending detail of the purple thumbs tips straight into twee. But the art is vibrant, with a fantastic colorway and a legible, cartoony style; most importantly, the plants are lovingly detailed.
juushika: Painting of multiple howling canines with bright white teeth (Never trust a stranger-friend)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: George and His Nighttime Friends (Gaspard dans la nuit)
Author: Seng Soun Ratanavanh
Published: Princeton Architectural Press, 2021 (2020)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 540,085
Text Number: 1991
Read Because: more spooky picture books; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A reluctant sleeper wishes for a nighttime friend to keep him company. The art in this book...! I haven't spent this long with each panel of a picture book in a long time. The intentional color palette, the mixed patterns, the brilliance and life in the details; it has a perfect, dreaming whimsy, pictures spilling from their frames and wallpapers coming to life in the shadows. The plot is structured in accumulating vignettes, a potentially-scary nighttime house rendered habited and friendly; it's less memorable, but a perfectly satisfactory companion to the art, matching that whimsical, fantastic tone.


Title: The Café at the Edge of the Woods
Author: Mikey Please
Published: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2024
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 540,135
Text Number: 1992
Read Because: more!; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: An aspiring artisanal baker opens a restaurant ... for undiscerning monsters. See, they get tricked into eating fancy food; a premise that feels more about children than it is for children, but what would I know. Cute, sweet, with an idyllic aesthetic and an autumnal palette that feels a little too color-corrected, harsh around the edges. Likeable but not memorable; cozy sometimes hits that way.


Title: Hungry Jim
Author: Laurel Snyder
Illustrator: Chuck Groenink
Published: Chronicle Books, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 55
Total Page Count: 540,190
Text Number: 1993
Read Because: more!; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Jim wakes up as a lion, hungry for people, nom nom. This is a delightfully strange little book, with a dedication to Sendak that makes total sense. That's refreshing: too often, the modern picture books I pick up are so nice and comprehensible; this removes repercussions to lower the stakes, but never stops being just about as weird as it could possibly be. The art doesn't do much for me, and this lacks the movement and dare I say, purpose, of a better picture book (like Sendak), but it's just plain fun.

spinning cont'd

Aug. 28th, 2025 01:17 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Current WIP: a gorgeous merino-silk-angelina blend.

Testing out a Dreaming Robots e-spinner, the Electric Eel Wheel 6.1. It's terrific and very easy to assemble and get running (at least after the learning curve on the Ashford Traveller treadle wheel). I hear the even more budget-friendlier Electric Eel Nano 2. (about $140 USD) 1 is fiddly, but I wonder. My use case for this is plying, which I find ungodly miserable.



Meanwhile, the local fiber animal is "helping" again. Cloud's floof is VERY spinnable so we're just randomly gathering catten floof while brushing her incredibly soft coat (she's mostly undercoat, and it's WILDLY soft).



(Sorry for the messy floor...I'm still under the weather and spinning is soothing/)
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Pre-launch for Ex Tenebris, a "a gothic space investigation TTRPG" forthcoming from Black Armada.

Beyond the dark emptiness of space, beyond dreaming, lies the Tenebrium. Only you can unearth its mysteries, defeat the twisted horrors that lurk there, and keep humanity from becoming prey.

In Ex Tenebris, you play a ragtag team of investigators, protecting the Republic of Stars from terrifying supernatural threats. You will face sorcerers and cults, dark technology from lost civilisations and the slobbering terrors lurking in the nightmare realm of the Tenebrium.


I will be writing a scenario [Update #2] for this game. :3

:goes back to orchestration homework:

Back

Aug. 27th, 2025 10:46 am
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
I'm back, sort of. We did a week of vacation after WorldCon, then got sick on the last day, so I'm still recovering. Covid tests were negative, so I think it's just a bad cold. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had to do a full day of travel from 6:00 am to 10:30 pm to get home.


More later, but one of my favorite things was the really wonderful piece that N.K. Jemisin wrote about me for the program book.



***

Big thing I wanted to mention here: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books

This is a 14 ebook Humble Bundle from Tor, (DRM-free as usual) and you can select a portion of the price to donate to World Central Kitchen.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
On a personal note, peace to Rai Weiss (https://news.mit.edu/2025/professor-emeritus-rainer-weiss-dies-0826) - physicist (co-won the Nobel Prize for detection of gravity waves at LIGO); learnt yesterday that he'd passed. I knew him only glancingly/socially (my husband worked with him as a grad student at MIT at LIGO Hanford) but I remember his extraordinary kindness and warmth.

DragonCon & BPAL?!

Aug. 26th, 2025 11:36 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Do I know anyone who is going to DragonCon this weekend in Atlanta, Georgia and who is

(a) willing to buy some BPAL for me there and ship it to me (Louisiana)
(b) in exchange for either filthy lucre (PayPal or Venmo) or
(c) 4 oz. handspun yarn just for you to be negotiated?

examples of my spinning:


wool, 2-ply


wool/sari silk, 2-ply

and more )

re: (c), fibers I have on hand in sufficient quantity



These are wool. Front left (greens & blues) and front right (blues & greys) I have 4-ish oz.

In back, I have 1-2 oz. of others (pink & blue, sky blue, navy blue), which could be blended, or I could spin multiple yarns up to 4 oz.

(I can't get more of the colorways shown here because these were inherited from others' destashes.)

Also 2 oz each of the following:



- left: 25/25/25/25 flax/hemp/cotton/ramie blend
- right: 25/25/25/25 flax/hemp/bamboo/ramie blend

I have smaller quantities of various sari silk colorways that could be blended into most of these for effect. (The silk fiber is the stuff on the chair, not the wool yarn draped over the arm lol.)



Or I could order US-based fiber batts/combed top (etc) within an agreed price range and spin those for you.

But I imagine filthy lucre is the most interesting. :p Leave a comment or email me at yoon at yoonhalee dot com!

moar spinning

Aug. 26th, 2025 07:59 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
This one's going to an astronomer friend. I think catten is trying to figure out where the SHEEP are. :p



Earlier:



Martha Wells/Murderbot book bundle

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:42 pm
alias_sqbr: (happy dragon)
[personal profile] alias_sqbr
Martha Wells' Murderbot & More is about $30AUD (so $20USDish?) for a whole heap of her books. It's available for the next 18 days. I had no trouble downloading them as DRM free ebooks in Australia.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

spinning, cont'd

Aug. 25th, 2025 07:50 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


40/40/20 cotton/tussah silk/hemp (the seller called it an "experimental blend"). Very inconsistent yarn thanks to the learning curve, as I'm still quite new to this. Surprisingly soft once plied, though, despite the hemp content, and one of my favorite fiber blends to spin because there's never a dull moment. This one's going to my graduate advisor.

Cloud oversaw the winding of the center-pull ball using a plying-size Turkish spindle. (I did the actual spinning and plying on the wheel.)



(Still buried under orchestration homework and health stuff, but fortunately I am taking a LONG break from writing so I can recuperate.)

Darwin Festival 2025

Aug. 24th, 2025 09:00 pm
tcpip: (Default)
[personal profile] tcpip
Darwin is not exactly known for being the cultural centre of Australia, but it does its best during its Festival and Fringe Festival. It's a particularly good time to visit in the dry season, where every day is 30 degrees, blue skies and a cool morning breeze, especially as a break from Melbourne's wintery touch (which I also love). The past several days have been in the fine company of Lara and Adam at MrBlueSky, where I also had the delight of catching up with Gary, Mon, Jac, and Shu on different occasions, and every evening there was an opportunity to soak up some fine entertainment.

A personal highlight was "John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew" performing the songs of Redgum. It's not my usual style of music, but they are the most notable radical Australian folk band that has ever walked in the country, and the musicianship was utterly superb. I felt like a teenager getting John to sign my copy of "If You Don't Fight You Lose", but I justified it on the grounds that I have been listening to this album since my teenage years; this will be a Rocknerd review. Another event also worthy of special note was "Duck Pond", a fusion of acrobatics, ballet, and theatre and a fusion story of Swan Lake and The Ugly Duckling. Understandably, I couldn't help but think of the RuneQuest scenario of the same name. Further, there is the excellent musicianship and storytelling of Fred Leone, whose self-taught upside-down southpaw guitar-playing is just a small testimony to his abilities.

Other events included a visit to the Northern Territory Art Gallery and Museum (MAGNT) which was hosting the National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA), the video artistry of Shundori", the impressive and moving Zhangke Jia film Caught by the Tides, and the impressive aerialist performance of "La Ronde". In contrast, I was less taken by Bangarra Dance Theatre's "Illume", mainly because it didn't provide what was said on the tin, or the Sydney alternative-improv "Party Dozen", although kudos to the young punk local support act "Tang" who had plenty of energy and style.

The time seemed to go quickly, and the view of the Darwin harbour from my co-owned apartment always gives the opportunity for reflection, consolidation of thoughts, and quiet strategic preparation for the future. It is, without a doubt, one of the finest places for a short visit, and I can certainly understand why some people feel the desire to move on a more permanent basis, although I am a long way from such considerations myself. I will, once again, take this opportunity to thank Lara and Adam for their absolutely superb hosting and care of this Southerner's visit and for showing me many highlights of their home town. Doubtless, I will return again soon.

Reading notes

Aug. 23rd, 2025 10:24 pm
fred_mouse: pencil drawing of mouse sitting on its butt reading a large blue book (book)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

It is a mere 20 days since my last reading notes post. I do occasionally wish that I had it together to do this weekly, and write more comprehensive reviews, but eh, when it happens, it happens.

finished

  1. My Throat an Open Grave (Tori Bovalino) - teenager from Evangelical Christian small USA town wishes their younger brother away. Much darker than Labyrinth, does some very clever things with traditional story tropes. 4.5 stars. review
  2. What Feasts at Night (T Kingfisher) - reread. Not the Kingfisher I was planning on reading, but eh. 4 stars. review
  3. Of Melodies and Maledictions (Maddox Grey) - prequel novelette, good world building and characters, but I resented being treated as if I couldn't see the plot detials shaping the story. 2 stars. review
  4. Within Prison Walls: Being a Narrative of Personal Experience During a Week of Voluntary Confinement in the State Prison at Auburn, New York (Thomas Mott Osborne) - very well written kinda long form journalism, kinda memoir, about the social experiment of a prison reformer spending a week in prison. 5 stars. review

active

(started or progressed)

  1. The Siege of Burning Grass (Premee Mohamed) - this is on my phone, and I haven't been on the bus, so I got about a third in and then haven't touched it in a week
  2. Unmasked: The Ultimate Guide to ADHD, Autism and Neurodivergence (Ellie Middleton) - finding this much less readable than the Aussie one that was specifically about ADHD, and thus struggling to maintain momentum. Also, I keep stopping to write grumpy reading notes. Such as "late diagnosed". Sweetie you are 25. (which, yes, is late diagnosed using specific definitions, but this hasn't been defined, and I've a lot of friends getting diagnoses in their 40s and 50s. Possibly 60s).
  3. After Story (Larissa Behrendt) - continues to be emotionally hard going; I've read a chapter in two weeks

there are also several for uni that haven't made it into the reading record.

paused

  • The Spider and Her Demons (Sydney Khoo) - forgot I'd borrowed this, got a 'return or else you are out of renewals' notification, got about 2/3 read in the time before I could get to the library. Very annoyed that I can't opt out of automatic renewals, but not enough that I'd done anything other than be annoyed at a librarian who kept trying to tell me it was a good process.

abandoned

nothing! For a value of nothing that includes the fact that I've taken two books from the little free library near the office, looked at the first few pages, and then returned them. One was about the Corn Laws in the UK, and while it might have reached the point that I agreed with the author, the way the whole thing was being framed was very much 'these stupid people didn't understand what was being done for their own good'. And the other was a history of Singer (I don't remember if it was the sewing machines specifically or the company) that I decided was probably really interesting but I have too many other things I want to have read in my life, and I'd rather read something else (at which point I think I started Siege of Burning Grass, and I am still of the opinion that was the right choice even if I've stalled on that one)

spinning on a spinning wheel

Aug. 20th, 2025 04:19 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


Spinning at a spinning wheel - not a tutorial or demonstration of good spinning, and most of the wheel is out of frame so you can see the main ~action. I am still a beginner, and I think I foxed up some of the terminology. But my advisor was curious so I recorded this.

moar yarn

Aug. 19th, 2025 09:15 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
What I do when sick: more spinning.





Now that I can spin wool blends at all, next up: working on consistency.
juushika: Drawing of a sleeping orange cat (Default)
[personal profile] juushika
And some not so spooky picture books that, accidentally or intentionally, ended up in this binge.


Title: The Discovery of Dragons
Author: Graeme Base
Published: Harry N. Abrams, 1996
Rating: 1.5 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 539,955
Text Number: 1988
Read Because: this was on someone's formative books list when formative book list quizzes were a fad, also maybe I read it as a kid?; borrowed from Open Library
Review: It takes a lot for me to DNF a picture book, but at the halfway point I gave up and just scanned the dragon drawings. I appreciate their non-traditional designs and the detailed art. I dig the narrative conceit, too, the collected and edited letters of the people who discovered these dragons; I'm a sucker for bestiaries and speculative evolution. But: incredibly strained, vaguely dated, this is trying so hard to be funny without success, and it crowds out the more interesting dragons.


Title: A Child of Books
Author: Oliver Jeffers
Illustrator: Sam Winston
Published: Candlewick Press, 2016
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 539,995
Text Number: 1989
Read Because: reading more by the author because I liked There’s a Ghost in This House; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: I read a lot; I still find books about the magic of books tedious. But because this is an invitation into the space of reading, it actually has a sense of wonder instead of being as smug and preachy as the subject matter often is. And that space is literal, landscapes rendered from suitable quotations from public domain children's literature. But I'm curious if that works for kids: the tiny font; the longer, older texts making an appearance in a picture book. This feels like another one secretly written for adults.


Title: The Night Gardener
Author: Terry Fan
Illustrator: Eric Fan
Published: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 540,045
Text Number: 1990
Read Because: this one was on a spooky list somewhere but I'd disagree; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: I'm generally adverse to stories about "everything was monochrome and boring here until someone introduced Whimsy" because they misrepresent how communities both make and repress joy, but this one is more actively an invitation into creative work: whimsy as intent and effort, but without misanthropy or superiority, and consequently a lot less irritating! But in the unavoidable shadow of Edward Scissorhands it can't but lack a little vibrancy, wonder, and well, whimsy, even if the topiary illustrations are a lot of fun.
juushika: Painting of multiple howling canines with bright white teeth (Never trust a stranger-friend)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: Tuesday
Author: David Wiesner
Published: Clarion Books, 1991
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 539,790
Text Number: 1985
Read Because: more spooky picture books; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: An all but wordless picture book about the day that something strange happened in a small town. What a great concept, but the weirdly static, stiff flying frogs saps so much life from this, and art is all it has.


Title: Little Mouse's Big Book of Beasts (Little Mouse's Big Books 2)
Author: Emily Gravett
Published: Macmillan, 2013
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 539,820
Text Number: 1986
Read Because: more! also I've read & loved some of her other books; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Minimal narrative, maximal interaction. This is delightfully tactile, modified both by mouse and reader, messy with tape and a traveling paint palette, with cutouts and flippable inserts. The library copy I read is showing some wear. I don't love this half was much as the Big Book of Fears; it's not as scary, and there's something that rubs me wrong about legitimizing/generalizing for young readers the fear of common scary animals. Still, I'm still an easy sell on Gravett's work, which is quirky, messy, and full of personality.


Title: The Skull
Author: Jon Klassen
Published: Candlewick Press, 2023
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 105
Total Page Count: 539,925
Text Number: 1987
Read Because: more! also I've read the author before so this has been on my radar for a while; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: In this modified retelling of a folktale, a little girl runs away to discover a mansion inhabited by a talking skull and haunted by a headless skeleton. I love the format of this little text, a picture book expanded into a neat, sturdy volume, with sparse writing and a bounty of Klassen's dark and textured illustrations: eminently pleasing. Klassen's Otilla, blank-faced and able, is delightful, and the climax is pleasure after so many picture books that feel compelled to sweeten everything scary in children's literature. But I like the pacing better in every version that I found digging around online (the source Klassen references, and some others from folklore websites); skipping the "haunted meal with a skull" scene is regrettable, and the staid tour of the house is no replacement. This is better as an experience than a narrative, but it's a great experience.
juushika: Drawing of a sleeping orange cat (Default)
[personal profile] juushika
More creepy picture books! All of these were grabbed blind off the shelves. The Secret Cat is pretty fantastic; the idea has been living in my head since then.

Interesting to see how little ratings reflect my actual options, re: text & art are intertwined in picture books (which is why reading re-illustrated books like so much of Margaret Wise Brown is fascinating, but I still frequently have a -1 for X +1 for Y metric in my head when art or text are significantly stronger/weaker than the other, which, in a flat number, ends up saying: it's fine. Precious and the Boo Hag looks awful! I still liked it. Beanie the Bansheenie is a soft eh that looks phenomenal. Do my favorites have to land both? Often, no. Not sure what to take away from that.


Title: The Secret Cat
Author: Katarina Strömgård
Published: Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2019
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 539,680
Text Number: 1982
Read Because: more spooky picture books; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Our protagonist wants a cat; after her mom says no, one crawls out from the wallpaper. What a remarkable premise, and the execution is spooky and magical; some reviews say this may be too scary for some kids, but it's exactly the kind of tone that keeps me coming back to picture books. Imaginary friends, pets, dreamspaces, power fantasies, and longing come together in luminous watercolors with a consistent, effective color palette. I wish it were willing to break out of dreamspace, because the cat going away during the day is no fun; and it's only by dint of a magic ghost cat that this escapes things about cat characterization and caretaking which annoy me in most fiction. But those are nitpicks; this is one of the better picture books I've picked up recently.


Title: Precious and the Boo Hag
Author: Patricia C. McKissack, Onawumi Jean Moss
Illustrator: Kyrsten Brooker
Published: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 539,720
Text Number: 1983
Read Because: more!; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Home sick, Precious has to keep her wits to stay safe from the Boo Hag. I rarely like how people, especially children, are drawn in picture books, but this is my new least favorite. The off-kilter, caricatured art is great for horror; but it appears in every panel, undermining that effect. I like the prose much better: it makes effective use of the repetitive structure of a folktale, and has a powerful, vibrant voice. This is one of the few books in my recent picture book binge that has been willing to be scary, which only makes the humor and pluck stronger in contrast.


Title: Wacky Witches and Their Peculiar Familiars
Author: April Suddendorf
Published: NorthSouth Books, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 539,760
Text Number: 1984
Read Because: more!; hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: The diversity of witches and familiars is a pleasure, each spread chock full of whimsical detail, a vignette into a vibrant life. But it barely coheres as a book, and the rhyming text, translated by the author, strains and struggles. Charming but frustrating.
juushika: Photograph of a row of books on a library shelf (Books Once More)
[personal profile] juushika
Title: Antarctica, or Two Years Amongst the Ice of the South Pole
Author: Otto Nordenskjöld
Published: 1904
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 610
Total Page Count: 539,650
Text Number: 1981
Read Because: I'm still working through the heroic age of Antarctic exploration in chronological order, skipping the ones where everything basically went fine unless they're directly connected to the British expeditions; this one did not go basically fine, and thus this is cold boys: extra niche edition; the Internet Archive has this one
Review: The Swedish Antarctic Expedition (1901–1903) made the first consistent study of the opposite-ish side of the Antarctic continent, breaking new ground; but its real claim to fame is that the ship sank when returning for the overwinter party, resulting in three (!) groups stranded for a second Antarctic winter. No wonder that this got a contemporary English translation, and it's an admirably complete and extremely readable telling, shuffling the slower contextualizing chapter into the middle third of the text to avoid the slow start that many Expedition memoirs have, including PoVs from the other overwinter parties, and willing (almost to excess) to skim and omit repetition in order to maintain flow. I want more and crunchier details re: overwintering and the single death, and multiple authors means multiple avenues towards bathos as the parties are miraculously reunited. But I can't fault this: an extremely satisfying telling of one hell of an expedition; fans of Scott's Northern Party should come read about some more men living in miserable stone huts in Antarctica.
juushika: Painting of multiple howling canines with bright white teeth (Never trust a stranger-friend)
[personal profile] juushika
We'll be here for years if I do these one by one; I'm just too behind on crossposting reviews. These are all spooky picture books. I've been grabbing from library reading lists and boldly off of the "imagine" section of the local shelves with mixed success.


Title: There’s a Ghost in This House
Author: Oliver Jeffers
Published: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2021
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 45
Total Page Count: 538,925
Text Number: 1978
Read Because: more spooky picture books, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A little girl explores an old house for ghosts, which the reader finds by turning over vellum pages. This is more gimmick than narrative, which makes it slight but extremely aesthetically pleasing, from the oversized layout to the mixed media of black and white found photos and cute doodles. It's a familiar, effective take on spooky subject matter in children's books: knowing more than the protagonist turns scary things playful, without compromising the atmosphere. Really fun!

(This one was a favorite of the batch, only my library coffee smelled so strongly of perfume/air fresher/whatever; smell it from across the couch-levels of stink. Not the ideal circumstances and not conducive to revisiting favorite panels.)


Title: Beanie the Bansheenie
Author: Eoin Colfer
Illustrator: Steve McCarthy
Published: Candlewick Press, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 65
Total Page Count: 538,990
Text Number: 1979
Read Because: more!, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A baby banshee who doesn't know when her person will die studies her to try to find out. I don't pick up a book about a banshees so that I can read about the least possible banshee-like banshee. I'm fine with defanging scary things in a kidlit! There are plenty of effective and productive ways to do it. But this almost feels like false advertising; it's its own mythology and heartfelt narrative. Luckily, the art is phenomenal, with one of the best color palettes I've seen in a picture book; it elevates an inoffensive but fairly forgettable work.


Title: Into the Goblin Market
Author: Vikki VanSickle
Illustrator: Jensine Eckwall
Published: Tundra Books, 2024
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 539,040
Text Number: 1980
Read Because: more!, hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: A bookish sister rescues her adventurous sister who has braved the goblin market. This is one of the weirder choices for adaptation into a children's book, and subsequently not a successful one. The black, white, and red artwork is stark and finely detailed and brings much-needed wonder and threat; the rhyming text is tolerable at best; but the original poem is what it is, so to excise the sensual, queer elements leaves a hole that cannot be filled by fairytale references; the beauty and depth just isn't there, even though I like the twist. I sympathize, I'm inspired by the poem, too!, but this ain't it.

(Go read Sendak's Outside Over There instead.)

Happy Birthday, Ratties!

Aug. 18th, 2025 07:52 pm
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[personal profile] tcpip
A little less than a year ago, after receiving confirmation of a second parent when I'm travelling, I decided to reintroduce rats as "animales de companie" into my life after a hiatus of several years. Fortunately, The Happy Rattery (FB) had tracked their birthdays and, I am pleased to announce, brothers Mayday and Mayhem have celebrated their first birthday, which makes them about 30 in human years. As an example of nominative determinism, their assigned names proved to be prescient. Mayhem, the larger of the two and with an appropriate bandit mask, is gregarious and boisterous, whereas the smaller Mayday is a lot more circumspect and a little even nervous about the world. Typical of their behaviour, these little brothers have provided a great deal of joy to my life with their antics, especially their remarkable rat-engineering projects; I was very surprised when they tried to add a bag of pegs to their home construction.

Currently 3.7K kilometres away, I am very thankful to Kate R., for looking after the rats in my absence. Delightfully, she provided them a little bit of cupcake for their birthday, complete with a candle. Meanwhile, at the top-end, Lara D. has purchased some Banksy-rat decals for our apartment, MrBlueSky, which we installed this evening in honour of Mayday and Mayhem. Further, because it must be mentioned, a few days ago the Australian water rat, the Rakali (Hydromys chrysogaster) won the ABC award for Australia's under-rated animal as part of National Science Week (I give honourable mention to the marsupial mole). Common in Melbourne's waterway, I derive a great deal of delight watching rakali, especially as they swim at speed, their white-tipped tail hoisted like a flag.

My advocacy for rats can now be measured in decades, and I like to think this has had some effect on their reputation and welfare. There is an excellent essay from Aeon ("Rats are Us") which highly the juxtaposition between the rat and animal welfare laws (essentially non-existent in the United States, it can be harrowing reading) and the scientific evidence that I have raised many times over the decades; they are social animals with communication, they are capable of past memories and future prediction, they are dreamers, they have a highly developed sense of empathy (even for strangers), they love to play, they like to learn (even driving rat-sized cars). With their sentience ("sentus", to feel) certain, and their sapience ("to know") evident, what of their consciousness ("shared knowledge")? The rat is us.

on organisation, and notes

Aug. 17th, 2025 03:53 pm
fred_mouse: brown chicken on a bi-flag gradient octagon (chicken)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

Having now acquired a uni laptop for study, I'm handling the different parts of my life better. One of the things that I'm really starting to embrace is Obsidian.

After a couple of false starts, I've moved my daily journalling there--I've created a template, and literally the only thing I require of myself each day is that I click the button that generates the daily note. Some days I don't do more than that, but as the template has a couple of verb tags, I come back afterwards and revisit. So far I mostly haven't been adding any details, but I am copying my 750 words in there, and if then afterwards at some point I will read through those (tag: to-do/tidy) and see whether anything resonates. This is a deliberately asynchronous process, because dumping the everything is cathartic, and I won't know what is going to resonate.

One of the interesting things is that I'm capturing bits and bobs of ideas, and not really worrying about where they go. It is possible that I'll never look at them again, and that is okay. but it is also possible that at some point I'll do a search on a word, see the set of things, and make a map of content. This is not a curated garden, this is a bushland with paths.

But! it means that I have draft blog posts that I remember to go and look at, because I have tagged them as blog/draft, and thus I have successfully separated out 'I have a thing I want to write' from 'dealing with posting'. Which is probably going to mean that things will be posted in clumps (this post is going straight into the editor, which is not the current normal).

reading lists (2025-07-04)

Aug. 17th, 2025 03:47 pm
fred_mouse: drawing of person standing in front of a shelf of books, reading (library)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

from the drafts archive

Bookbub: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of Summer 2025 (Jeff Somers) - supposedly a 'curated' list; I saw a number of new to me authors. There were three that I'm lukewarm about and have added to the list, and the rest I was bored by the descriptions. I suspect this is part of an ongoing issue with the way that blurbs are written, as I'm increasingly uninterested

added

  • Infinite Archive (Mur Lafferty) - because it is book three in the series; and I'm interested in where it might go
  • Lucky Day (Chuck Tingle) - maybe
  • Hemlock and Silver (T Kingfisher)

Transfer orbit: 11 new books for July - unsurprisingly, some overlap with the previous list; the only one I could have added was already there from the above list.

Gizmodo: 82 New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books Arriving in July - this is really too many books. I have skimmed, but wasn't committing to reading everything. Unsurprisingly, there are repeats. The blurbs here were shorter, and yet worse. I did add a couple to the list, but I'm a bit dubious. The Arthuriana one is intriguing, but book 3 of a series; the new Rivers of London one is of interest to Artisanat

added:

  1. Arthur by Giles Kristian - book 3, but Arthurian
  2. The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths

New Scientist: The best new science fiction books of July 2025 - some of the same books, with more interesting summaries. I am, however, a grouch, and added a single book to the 'maybe' list

maybe:

  1. Circular Motion (Alex Foster)

So I broke my toe

Aug. 17th, 2025 02:08 pm
alias_sqbr: Me on a couch asleep with a cat sitting on my lap top, with the caption out of spoons error (spoons)
[personal profile] alias_sqbr
It's all dealt with now, I am just keeping off my feet even more than usual while it heals, but thought I should let people know!

Details and some stuff about life in general under the cut, including mention of my colonoscopy (two unrelated minor surgeries in a month is TWO TOO MANY) and mention of blood/needles etc.

So above the cut I'll say: If you ever need to keep a bandaged toe dry in the shower, put a stretchy glove over it! Works like a charm!
Read more... )

a first ball of yarn

Aug. 16th, 2025 01:00 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee


It's wildly inconsistent (wool/sari silk waste blend, about 30 g / 1.2 oz) and I struggled with the learning curve for plying (first on a Turkish spindle that was too small for plying, then on the wheel once I figured out how to adjust the takeup; mine uses scotch tension) but hey, it exists!

I remain desperately curious about the mordant because I soaked yarn in hot water for an hour and the water ran completely clear, and it's a red dye!

But as therapeutic activities (quite literally this doubles as physical therapy for my wrecked ankles, and I'm still sick), this is very satisfying.

Walking

Aug. 16th, 2025 11:35 pm
fred_mouse: drawing in a scribbled style of a five petalled orange flower on blue and white background (flower)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

Yesterday, I chose to leave uni at 4:30pm, because I had more than half an hours work of Stuff left to do (I did get it done, but later than planned; that is not the point of this post). Which meant that as I was nearing home, it was still a lovely bright day, and it wasn't raining. 

so, instead of heading for the interchange, and hoping to make it for the other bus, I got off across the road from the shopping centre, with the intention to walk home (roughly 2km) through the suburb. Back up plan was that if this turned out to be a Bad Idea, I could call for pick up. Which was a possibility--I'd walked up to the Tavern for an afternoon catchup, which involves Too Many stairs, and only some of them have convenient (if tediously slow) lifts, each taking me a single floor. Which meant I'd used the cane to get there and back. And done a bit of stretching when I got back to the office to discover that I was the last one in, and someone had turned the lights out.

But! back to the walk home. Lovely day, peaceful opportunity. I resisted the nearly overwhelming temptation to pull out my phone and my headphones, and put on a podcast in order to spend the time productively. Instead, the goal was to exist, in space, with no task but to be in the moment. 

And it was lovely. 

I spotted a lot of flowers--a daffodil, some white bulbs that I should recognise and don't, azaleas and/or camellias (really need a refresher on those), grevillia, something pretty in purple, and many that I admired and don't recall. 

Someone's mulberry is already fruiting, with tiny green fruits the size of my smallest fingernail covering it enough to look like leaves. 

A house has vanished, to be replaced by a concrete pad that doesn't look large enough, so I'm wondering whether it will be two stories. A front garden has vanished, leaving grey sand to blow away. 

I watched two buses go past--the one I might have caught, from too far down the side street to hear it, and one the other way thundering past as I was nearly home. 

I stopped to take a photo of gum nuts (proper gumnuts, I might remember to post that and explain why). 

I wandered past the tennis courts at the school where two adults and two kids were split up teaching the kids variously to hit a tennis ball with what looked like a totem tennis bat, and to ride a bike with trainer wheels. Just past there were a pair of tweens with a football, trying something fancy, based on the general behaviour.

It wasn't warm, and I was glad for my jumper, but there wasn't much wind. As I walked, the probably muscles in my right leg slowly untangled, and I went from unsure about this as an idea, through 'just another bit, then I'll know' into 'oh, actually, this is pretty good'. 

I managed mindfulness for a reasonable amount of the walk. I did get a bit bored and grumpy at myself, and lost the meditative feel when I was about five minutes from home, which was coincidentally about a minute before Artisanat messaged to see where I was at and whether I was wanting a lift from the station. But at that point there was little point in asking for a lift, so I stomped on home. 

I don't mind walking, but I'm dreadful at doing it recreationally. This, where it was a necessary path between where I was and where I wished to be, is a good compromise, but finding the spaces in my life where it fits is challenging. As the days get longer, I hope I'll remember that this is a net positive to deal with the pain, and that the more I walk, the more I can walk.

Darwin Visit

Aug. 16th, 2025 05:41 pm
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[personal profile] tcpip
I've boarded the silver bird and landed in Darwin, where I'll be staying in Mr Blue Sky in Darwin City, which I still have to remind myself that I am a co-owner. Co-owner Lara and tenant Adam have been wonderful hosts to me, with Cocoa rabbit, the 11-year-old spritely dwarf, providing great entertainment as always. The weather here is of magnificent quality; consistently in the high twenties, clear skies, and gentle cool breezes off Darwin harbour with delightful views across to the National Park. From this vantage point, it's all rather idyllic.

There are nominal household matters to sort out, but it is a convenient time for the Darwin Festival. I have a lifelong interest in aesthetics, which I have to grudgingly accord myself a modest analytical ability. From metaphor, referentiality, creativity, technique, persistence, and connections, I must also confess some apparent predictive skill when evaluating the future success of self-proclaimed artists. Darwin's contribution to the fine arts is not exactly famous, being small and distant, but there are plenty of opportunities in the programme which will receive a fair review in the week to come.

In the meantime, I was blessed yesterday with a second opportunity to visit to the Menzies School of Health Research (Charles Darwin University) (not to be confused with the Menzies Institute for Medical Research (University of Tasmania), let alone the Menzies Research Centre of the Liberal Party. The Darwin Menzies centre particularly interests me as they have a small high performance computing system, which has a few file system and management issues, but nevertheless great to see that it's there! I was hosted by Anto Trimarsanto, a medical researcher in malaria (specifically Plasmodium vivax), who also dutifully informed me that Menzies has an outpost in Timor-Leste. My brain is now working on how to combine these multiple interests.

unhinged spinning

Aug. 15th, 2025 10:48 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Unhinged spinning experiment: Immolation Fox prototype #1 (WIP)



Close-up:



(This is a WIP single, which I'd plan to ply, so that's active twist right now.)

I'm resigned at this point to destroying fiber in the service of something I find personally delightful to spin but Shinjo only knows how I'm going to get rid of the resulting yarn since I don't knit or crochet and don't plan to start. I took it up as an extremely backhanded way of additional physical therapy for my ankles.

If I am scarce right now, I'm physically ill, sorry! Spinning is at least a different sickness distraction from Balatro, which eats my device batteries.

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