Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I remain once again mostly behind on podcasts, but maybe have a listen to It Could Happen Here's "Governing Fertility: How Pronatalist Policies Kill." (Trigger warning: It contains fairly graphic descriptions of what happened in Romania under Ceaușescu, which legit gave me nightmares as a kid. 

One of the particular hallmarks of both Trump 2.0, his ex-BFF Elon (who is responsible for approximately 30,000 child deaths in his short tenure as Grima Wormtongue), and far-right populist/techbro movements around the world, is an obsession with forced pregnancy, insemination, and reproduction. Obviously this is viscerally upsetting to everyone who's read or seen Handmaid's Tale, and given that the actual supposed problems with a declining birth date are mostly solved by immigration, which they want to decrease, bears some further examination. They don't just want to ban abortion, but pursue incentives for large families headed by heterosexual married couples, punish the childless, and create eugenics programs. The one thing that they don't want to do is care for whatever children are born, or create social conditions where families can live in financial and physical stability, because then the money would be sad.

The gang looks at a number of movements, including Spain and Japan, but Romania is actually the closest parallel to Trump's plans, and it's important to confront that horror straight in the face so they you know exactly what they want for American families and children. Although, you know, eventually the Ceaușescus got shot in a basement and dragged through the streets so at least there's that to look forward to.

One more successful Balticon under my belt.

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We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.

Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.

I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.

* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.

Another day of Jackson County Fair pictures before ... probably another day of Jackson County Fair pictures! We'll just see what happens.

Here's a medium-size rabbit enjoying some privacy behind the bag of hay.

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And here's a very small rabbit enjoying some privacy by looking directly at me.

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Sprawled-out Californian gathering some solar power.

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Here's a fine-looking rabbit taking on a pose to match the rectangle of the cage surrounding them.

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Pretty sure this is the face of a rabbit.

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Couple shorthaired black rabbits just sitting up together, telling secrets.

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Hotot wishes you to know they ANGY cotton ball. But Hotots always look like ANGY cotton balls.

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Rabbit who looks a bit like Colombo chatting with a rabbit who looks a bit like Roger.

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This is a rabbit proud to have accomplished this much in life.

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Meanwhile, outside the rabbit barn, there's stuff going on, like golf carts and horses. And say ...

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I knew they had horseshoes, but horse boots is new on me.

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And also horse ankle braces too, it looks like.

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Trivia: In directing the city design for Philadelphia, William Penn --- a Quaker --- rejected as immodest naming city streets after himself or other people. Instead the streets would be numbered, with the cross streets named after ``things that Spontaneously Grow in the country'', such as Cherry, Chestnut, and Mulberry Street. Source: The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power, Dierdre Mask.

Currently Reading: Archaeology, May/June 2025, Editor Jarrett A Lobell. The articles are all interesting and the advertisements are all kind of creepy weird, like, ``status'' watches and stones on the ``brink of extinction'' and meteorite-ore rings.

As the subject line, quoting the 1980s jingle for the Westchester County, New York, fair suggests, I'm sharing pictures of the 2024 Jackson County, Michigan, fair.

And here's a horse enjoying their temporary accommodations and having a bag full of hay and the triumph of a bunch of ribbons plus a little statue. And say, what is that fancy aqua one with the side ribbons? Computer, enhance!

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It's a 4-H Hippology Master and I guess Hippology makes sense for the term, but it sounds like making fun of horse studies.

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Not sure who was supposed to be in this barn but they certainly cleaned up well!

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I'm all but certain this is the place to find rabbits, though.

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There's always educational panels around the animal exhibits; here's one about changing litter and doing so with less waste, which is possible because most rabbits pick a spot where they want to pee and stick to that. (Rabbit pellets are really not a problem; they're odorless and don't smoosh or anything.)

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A couple Californian rabbits give me the cold shoulder to chat amongst themselves, probably about me.

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Californian here looks at me and is not pleased that I'm being such a bother.

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Totally different Californian also not seeing where I get off thinking I'm all that.

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Here's a rabbit a couple cages down too busy being cool for me.

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Tongue! Got a picture of one Californian's tongue, grooming their roommate.

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I can't swear this Californian spent the night before in wild revelries but if I said they did, would you dispute my assessment?

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Here's the cover for a bunny's acoustic guitar covers of Clash songs.

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Trivia: The 2,751 Liberty cargo ships manufactured during World War II would, if lined up end-to-end, reach over two hundred miles. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy.

Currently Reading: Archaeology, May/June 2025, Editor Jarrett A Lobell.

Next thing was the Jackson County Fair, which I went to on my own because bunnyhugger was visiting her brother.

The fairgrounds you access through this building, which as a community recreation center I suppose was saved in the 80s.

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Among the first things I saw and did not understand: Dan Dan The Farmer Man driving around. I never saw what his deal was.

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Here's the carousel. They switched to tickets being pretty cheap but rides taking a gobsmacking number of tickets in trade.

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The teacups ride for kids is a mere nine tickets, though.

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Pharoah's Fury is a twelve-ticket ride. I like this kind of swinging ship ride; bunnyhugger is less fond of them .

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Redemption games offered a couple models of space alien to win, either inflatable or plush as you like.

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A Dragon Wagon kiddie coaster, which I could probably have ridden if I wanted to bang my knees up enough.

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Another Ring of Fire, 12 tickets. Note that you're not able to bring a hat on the ride, which does leave you suspended upside-down for a while.

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You may think, well, all the adult rides are 12 tickets, right? Nope! The Ferris Wheel is a big 15 tickets.

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And the Himalaya is also 15 tickets, which I find interesting pricing because I'd rate the Ring of Fire a more intense and exciting ride than the Himalaya.

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Can't tell you how many tickets the Starship 3000 (a Gravitron ride) was. But here's a photo along some midway.

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And now into the horse barn. The entrants create their own heraldic symbols for their horses that are neat to see.

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Trivia: English banks and private investors put something like £150 million in loans and £200 million in stock subscriptions to Latin American companies and projects in 1823 and 1824. Source: A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson. The crash came in 1825.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, March/April 2025, Editor Sarah Hamilton. Also some tiny insight into why Kalamazoo used to be called the ``celery city''; apparently it's where the crop first got planted in the United States and pitched as a food rather than a medicinal plant.

Next thing in our adventures? Another night at Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. I took fewer pictures than I really should have so, sorry. But here's what I have.

Pinball Row. Note that the Venom game is updating, one of those little surprise things pinball games can do now, even if it's minutes before a tournament where this game is going to be played. Fun!

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The other half of Pinball Row, going back to the Revenge From Mars that still had my pre-Covid grand champion score (and would through January, when this location closed).

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And of course I put up a killer game of Attack From Mars, but not in tournament play. Just for fun. What's the fun in doing something really well just for your own gratification?

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Some of the Chuck E Cheese bird animatronics.

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Oh yeah, also had a killer game of Toy Story 4, again where it didn't do me any good but be fun and get me on top of the daily high score board. Also more games should turn on the daily high score board.

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In the back, near the women's bathrooms, was this array of pictures of Riverview Park (I believe Chicago) along with many ride and redemption tickets for it.

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Other stuff in back, including a bunch of posters for mutoscope movies, not all of them about mutoscope salesmen stealing away businessmen's wives.

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Another typical view of Marvin's. A slightly dated promise of souvenirs, some old (reproduction?) freak show posters, a Mister Peanut that looks off-brand, some neon, and a black-and-white picture of some kind of store.

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Further along that area there's a lighthouse, flags of the world, and a coin-op mechanical (nonfunctional, I think) of a woman in an electric chair.

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And here's our old friend the Cardiff Giant!

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Behind the counter you can see part of an old magazine or newspaper print ballyhooing the giant. It's weird that it's obscured by the ticket redemption station.

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And then a sign for Marvin's advertising itself.

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Trivia: In stowing gear for reentry the Gemini 4 astronauts put the used film cassettes in the middle food box. The cameras, some refuse (including three defecation bags), the exerciser, and some other small bits of gear were put in the left-hand aft food box. McDivitt kept the EVA suit sleeves, blanket, and launch day urine bags underneath his legs against his seat. Source: Gemini 4: An Astronaut Steps Into The Void, David J Shayler.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, March/April 2025, Editor Sarah Hamilton. With an article on the time Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy recorded a show in Decatur, where it turns out he came from.

Since my last reading post:

Nobody Cares, by H. J. Breedlove. This one is good, but dark: it's dedicated this to Black Lives Matter, and fairly early on I got to the first mention of Missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It's also book 3 in the Talkeetna series, with further developments in the friendship-turning-romance of Dace and Paul.

The Disappearing Spoon, by Dan Kean: a history of the periodic table, with a bit about each of the currently-known elements and the people, or groups of people who discovered them. Someone recommended this after I mentioned liking Consider the Fork, but the two books have almost nothing in common.

The Electricity of Every Living Thing, by Katherine May: a memoir, about walking and what happens after the writer hears a radio program about Asperger's and thinks "but that's me." (I don't remember where I saw this recommended

Return to Gone-Away, by Elizabeth Enright: read-aloud, and a reread of a book I read years ago. Sweet, a family's low-key adventures in an obscure corner of upstate New York. As the title implies, this is a sequel; read Gone-Away Lake first.

Beautiful Yetta, the Yiddish Chicken, by Daniel Pinkwater, a short picture book that we read aloud after Adrian and I realized Cattitude hadn't read it before. Conversation in three languages, with translations (and transliterations) for the Yiddish and Spanish. Not Pinkwater's best, but fun.

Thimble Summer, by Elizabeth Enright, because I enjoyed rereading the Gone-Away Lake books. Several months of a girl's life with her family on a farm. The plot and adventures are relatively low-key. I liked it, and am glad I got it from the library.

Also, it looks as though I didn't post about the summer reading thing here. It started June 1, and the bingo card has a mix of kinds of books, like books in translation, published this year, or with an indigenous author; some squares with things like "read outside" and "recommend a book"; and some that go further afield, like "learn a word in a new language" and "try a new recipe." Plus the ever-popular "book with a green cover." (OK, last year it was "book with a red cover.") I do a lot of my reading on a black-and-white kindle, so I don't know what color the covers might be. Therefore, I walked into a library yesterday, looked at their summer reading suggestions, and grabbed a book with a green cover.

 This article is about the project that is my job, and my life's work.

https://www.thetransmitter.org/community/flybase-funding-squashed-amid-harvard-grant-terminations/

Two minor amusing things from a trip downtown this morning:

I saw (and rode) one of the googly-eyed trolleys for the first time.

And on the way back, an ad in a subway car for some AI thing. The headline is something like "offload the busy work." The steps given below that are "AI drafts brief" and "brief accepted." Almost anything would have been a better example, after repeated news stories about lawyers getting in trouble for submitting impressively flawed AI-drafted legal briefs.

The trip was to try on sandals at the Clark's store. There was one that was slightly two big, so I have ordered a pair in my usual style, to be delivered to the store, so I can try them on there and return them if they don't fit.

I stopped to grab some lunch at the Quincy Market food court, and then wrenched my knee while sitting down on some stairs in order to eat it. The trip home was not fun, but I came home, sat down for a couple of minutes, then got out last fall's cane and went into the kitchen to make tea.

there's an emotions wheel.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Healthygamergg/comments/1axjiw8/emotional_wheel_a_resource_for_better/

Just finished: real ones, Katherena Vermette. This one ruled. I don't have a lot to add to what I said last week except that I really enjoyed it. If you want a good pairing (or you're not super familiar with the context of the Canadian arts scene), Jesse Wente's Unreconciled provides a great non-fiction one. But yeah, I loved the characters, I loved the poetic, Impressionist writing style, it was emotionally affecting without high stakes or pacing, which is something that genre writers could learn a lot from (more on that later). Vermette seems to be putting out great books with impressive frequency but this is the one I've enjoyed most so far.

The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. This one was imperfect and ambitious, but I'll take that over boring any day. It's a master class in how to do some interesting worldbuilding; there's a lot going on in the background, and you get it only as a sketch. Oh yeah, there are lizard guns. Why are the guns lizards? Eh, don't worry about it, keep up. It's pretty New Weird in the tradition of Miéville and Tchaikovsky (positive) so I liked that quite a bit.

I have two big critiques, one big and one small. First, the small. This is critically acclaimed, nominated for a bunch of awards, and put out by a real press. And yet. And yet. Alefret, the main character, has one leg. This is clearly established in the opening line. His leg is slowly growing back thanks to an experimental serum that's delivered via wasp sting (again, cool) but it's slow and he's on crutches for the entire book, something that is done very well and really gives a good sense of the character's physicality. And then there is a scene where he is having dinner with two elderly sisters who have a cat. Under the table, the cat brushes up against his ankles and he holds his legs very still. WTF? Which editor let that through?

My bigger complaint is that I don't think she quite lands the ending. As I've said, it's ambitious, a story about whether pacifism can survive a horrific war.
( spoilers )

Cottagers and Indians by Drew Hayden Taylor. This is a one-act play based on the true story of Anishinaabe people trying to re-seed lakes with wild rice, over the objection of white cottagers. And it's amazing, obviously. Everything he writes is great and this is particularly affecting. It's a dance between two difficult, complicated characters, and while the white cottager character could easily be a hideous caricature, Hayden Taylor is too much of a humanist to take the easy road out. There's also a great afterword by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, because of course there is.

Currently reading: Dakwäkãda Warriors by Cole Pauls. This is a bilingual (!!!) Indigenous futurist comic about two defenders of the earth, beautifully illustrated in a Formline style. If you want to learn Tahltan, I can't think of a cuter way. There's a lot of pew pew pew and it's very fun.

I just found out that Peter David, one of the legendary writers of the comic book field (and novels, and TV, and other stuff, but I knew him first and foremost from comics) passed away last week.

For posterity, here's my comment on the locked post where I found out about it. (The Kickstarter "blog" for The Babylon 5 Preservation Project, which ran a long obit.) Also includes a few extra footnotes in italics.

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Damn -- I had missed that Peter had passed. Not a surprise under the circumstances [he's been quite sick for quite a while], but he'll be much missed. He was one of my favorite writers for most of my adult life.

I was at that "Three High-Verbals" talk at MIT [in Kresge, October 6, 2001], which was the second time I got to meet him. (The first having been after Universicon at Brandeis University, many years before. We wound up commandeering my living room for the after-party, resulting in Peter sitting in my easy chair for hours, telling stories to about two dozen college students sitting around him on the floor.)

Anyway, that was one heck of a memorable talk. Peter read his beautiful, sober But I Digress column about 9/11. Neil read "My Crazy Hair" (demonstrating that yes, Neil could read the phone book and people would happily listen). And Harlan picked a fight with the audience about how the Internet was destroying society, and proceeded to argue with them for half an hour. It seemed very true to each.

Once it was all over, we got to the signings, and I came up to Peter with a Trek fanzine that my wife had picked up at a NY convention in the mid-70s. [This was Jane's first-ever SF convention -- she wheedled her father into taking her into NYC for a Trek con when she was a teenager. I don't remember exactly how old she was at the time, but I vaguely remember it being '74.] Peter's eyes practically bugged out, and he yelled for Caroline [his wife] to come look. Turned out that his piece in there was the first thing he'd ever had published anywhere, and he hadn't seen a copy of it in decades.

That signed zine is buried somewhere in my stacks; I've been looking for it since his heart attack. I still rather regret not having just given it to him at the time...

Here's what I read last month:

Installment Immortality - Seanan McGuire
Mourner's Waltz - Seanan McGuire(novella)
The Number Ones - Tom Breihan (non-fiction)
Cat with a Clue - Laurie Cass

It's extra help in the library time!

After the first half of the year, I got rather into the habit of expecting 0-1 students, usually on the low end of that range. But then I've had a few weeks in a row of the pre-calc teachers sending me students to make up tests and things, or do body doubling, and suddenly this week I have _three kids_ hanging out with me. Two are doing tests (one mine, one a pre-calc kid) and the third is finishing up work with me semi-helpfully remembering how limits work.

(I have not yet cynically said "I suppose you can see how often this gets used in the real world" but it's coming)

We're very much at the end of the year, and things are pretty self-paced, which means sometimes in class I can even grade a test or two. Which is good, because the major work task I have right now is, uh, grade all the tests. And everything else that is outstanding. And shake my head and sigh at the students who are obviously using AI, badly. (I miss when they were using photomath badly, at least that wasn't --as I saw someone describe genAI today-- "smarmy").

I had a fourth student arrive! I briefly had FOUR STUDENTS at once which is an absolute record for library help! This was another one of my kiddos even, and I was able to help him grasp the trig stuff he managed to miss entirely, and then throw the test at him to finish up. It will be much more successful than the two days he spent staring at it in a panic because he didn't know any trig.

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In my real life, I have begun playing Stardew Valley (edit: no spoilers please), and decided it is the Bee's Knees. This shocks basically no one who has ever met me. Am I able to moderate my playing? I will be! But, uh, not quite yet. I need to calm down about it a little bit, or get _really_ strict about playing a day at a time and pausing in between each day to go accomplish real life tasks. (To be clear, I started it on Saturday, and finished the first day of fall yesterday, so we are moving along real nice. But also I did like eighteen hours in two days so UH.)

I'm also doing my reading (I have two days before my check-out pops for Drop of Corruption and I'm only about two thirds done), and getting ready for LCFD weekend quite soon (where hopefully I will not have an infinite amount of grading to do, although I am apparently going direct from work to my ride's house to camp. So I'm packing whatever I haven't already graded! (note to self: This means you'll be packing the work laptop, and shouldn't need to also bring your personal one).

Tonight is the high school graduation, and I've kinda just decided to go direct from school to there. This might be annoying in terms of baggage, but I think it will ultimately be fine. Worst case scenario, someone steals my work bag and I am very sad oh no.

The hardest part about Stardew Valley is that right now it feels _happy_ in a way that means I should probably talk to my therapist. Because Saturday was not otherwise particularly happy, and Sunday was better but also not exactly joyful and HM. What exactly am I looking for here? Control? Simple well definied tasks? An extremely imposed bedtime that I can't avoid no matter what? A morning routine that can always be the same followed by a variety of pleasant ways to spend the afternoon and evening?

(Sunday was good because I was helping LB move, and community is good. It's nice to get to pretend to be butch sometimes, and there was a lot of walking back and forth between old and new houses in pleasant weather. But it was also a lot of social-with-people-I-don't-know which can be fun or can be hard, and LB being extremely efficient which was actually great but then meant everything was done in like...three hours including the eating lunch at the end part. And back into my own head we go!)

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The real answer is I'm looking for "not being burnt out" and video games can feel like that, kinda sorta sometimes. It is unfortunate that the only real cure for burnout is "rest, prolonged" and I don't get access to that until mid-July. And then I need to figure out the rest of my plans, like when I'm going to Maryland and the like. Sigh.

okay, I think I have figured that out, and also I think I'll be in town for about two weeks, assuming the timing works for my mom. Which means I should definitely _actually see people_ in MD, and also like, I dunno, go to a bells practice? Note to self, send some emails closer to. But as always, it's primarily a chance to hang out with my Cool Mom.

And then I'll have queer Scottish on the 7th, and then two full weeks of very little planned¹, and then into the school year! Huzzah!

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We keep going. Tonight there might be ice cream. I do like that part.

~Sor

MOOP!

1: I uh. god willing and the creek don't rise, it's very little planned, but that little is a _lot_.

"Peter Stormare Gives Update on ‘Constantine 2’; Keanu Reeves Reportedly Unhappy with Script" by Meagan Navarro (very similar articles seen on a number of other entertainment news sites).

"'But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes,' Stormare said."

I think I agree with Keanu. We already have the John Wick franchise. IT IS AWESOME. But we don't need the Keanu-as-Constantine franchise to turn into another John Wick franchise.

I hope they resolve this soon because I am DROOLING at the chance to see Stormare play Lucifer again.

I feel like I should note that tonight's everquest was way shorter than expected and we'd be out aurora hunting now if there were aurora and that i'm definitely feeling some of the aerial stuff I did yesterday...

and Pkid taught me all about some of the airport history near montreal, which was kinda neat.

I must apologize profusely for the shortness of this chapter and the forthcoming delay, but for whatever reason this spring is absolutely kicking my ass in several directions, and it’s violently disrupted my writing schedule. So I’m going to be taking a break for the month of June, and work on getting back into the groove. The next chapter will be posted Sunday, July 6th. Thank you all so, so much for reading, commenting, and enjoying the story.

( Read more... )

My GI doctor says the celiac test is negative. This is both unsurprising and a relief: the doctor ordered the test because of comorbidities, not because there were any signs of celiac, but celiac is common enough in people with collagenous colitis that it was worth checking.

I do still need to contact her office tomorrow and ask about that follow-up appointment.

2025 May 16: The Washington Examiner: "An American papacy: The Catholic Church didn’t choose Pope Leo XIV to battle Trump"

2025 May 30: AlterNet: "'Divine trolling': Pope schedules Chicago mass on the same day as Trump's military parade"

Pattern is from the book Cross Stitch In The Forest. I foolishly thought, “This is just 4 colors! It should be simple. And I can use threads from my stash!”

Dear reader, it was not so. One 123stitch order for DMC 988 and more 989, hours of eyestrain from working on dark fabric, and about a billion three-quarter stitches later, I can confidently state that I HAVE NOT LEARNED A THING and intend to start Upon A Star (the one with the wolf and the moon) pretty much any second now.

Recently someone I know was complaining how bad Biden was. "He was so old," they said. "Going down hill. He never should have ran again (in 2024).

Well, maybe Joe was to old and should have handed it directly to Kamala Harris much soon. But I asked them, "Name me a bad policy he endorsed."

That shut them up.

'Nuff said.

Get better Joe.

Meanwhile, I stage managed Much Ado.

( Speak low if you speak love )