D.O.P.-T. (yesterday)
Apr. 16th, 2026 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weofodthignenTemperature's ticking up again. The dog and I took a nice walk about halfway to the park. Then I potted up some more geranium cuttings. The soil in the pots in the yard is already dry, sadly, so I also did some watering.
Allie Brosh: Hyperbole and a Half (2026-29)
Apr. 15th, 2026 08:54 pmsturgeonslawyerSubtitled "unfortunate situations, flawed coping mechanisms, mayhem, and other things that happened."
This occupies a weird space between a collection of personal essays, and a graphic novel. It has just a bit too much text for a typical graphic novel (though we must not forget things like certain arcs of Cerebus where the text took over and the pictures were relatively few), but too many and to integral to the work for typical personal essays. And, yes, many, perhaps most, of the pictures have text in them.
The pictures, of people at least, are deliberately primitive, a step sideways from stick figures. Yet there is no doubt about Ms Brosh's ability to capture real emotion in a drawing. She does, over and over in the course of Hyperbole and a Half, in such a way that the text and the pictures support each other quite well.
As for the content: it consists, essentially, of stories of and reflection on Ms Brosh's life (or so it would appear; they could, of course, be about an entirely fictional "Allie," in which case more power to her), from childhood trauma to adult thoughts on why she is not the person she wants to think she is.
Particularly moving to me is the two-chapter discourse on depression. I make no secret of the fact that the black dog of depression gnaws at my own life, and Ms Brosh fluently describes and depicts not only what it is like to live with depression, but what it is like to live with other people who just don't get what it is like to live with depression, and whose attempts to cheer you up only make things worse. (The Bible gets this straight: just look at Job's "comforters.") I've never seen this dealt with so well.
Ms Brosh is apparently a dog person, though given the experiences she describes with dogs I can only wonder why. The main dogs in her life seem to be the Simple Dog, who might perhaps have a two-digit IQ on a good day, and is incapable of learning a command as complicated as "Sit" or "Come;" and the Helper Dog, who is no help at all, but an agressive beast who wants to attack every other dog he sees (except, apparently, the Simple Dog). If my experiences with dogs were like hers, I would start raising cats, or gerbils. Or maybe bonsai. Bonsai rarely gnaw on the furniture.
At any rate, Brosh manages to write and draw personal whatever-they-ares that are funny and sad, sometimes by turns, more often at the same time. The saddest is probably the story of why she did not get to go to a friend's birthday party. The funniest is, I think without question, the story of how she and her boyfriend and their dog were terrorized in their own home by a goose.
Eight out of ten parrot toys.
This occupies a weird space between a collection of personal essays, and a graphic novel. It has just a bit too much text for a typical graphic novel (though we must not forget things like certain arcs of Cerebus where the text took over and the pictures were relatively few), but too many and to integral to the work for typical personal essays. And, yes, many, perhaps most, of the pictures have text in them.
The pictures, of people at least, are deliberately primitive, a step sideways from stick figures. Yet there is no doubt about Ms Brosh's ability to capture real emotion in a drawing. She does, over and over in the course of Hyperbole and a Half, in such a way that the text and the pictures support each other quite well.
As for the content: it consists, essentially, of stories of and reflection on Ms Brosh's life (or so it would appear; they could, of course, be about an entirely fictional "Allie," in which case more power to her), from childhood trauma to adult thoughts on why she is not the person she wants to think she is.
Particularly moving to me is the two-chapter discourse on depression. I make no secret of the fact that the black dog of depression gnaws at my own life, and Ms Brosh fluently describes and depicts not only what it is like to live with depression, but what it is like to live with other people who just don't get what it is like to live with depression, and whose attempts to cheer you up only make things worse. (The Bible gets this straight: just look at Job's "comforters.") I've never seen this dealt with so well.
Ms Brosh is apparently a dog person, though given the experiences she describes with dogs I can only wonder why. The main dogs in her life seem to be the Simple Dog, who might perhaps have a two-digit IQ on a good day, and is incapable of learning a command as complicated as "Sit" or "Come;" and the Helper Dog, who is no help at all, but an agressive beast who wants to attack every other dog he sees (except, apparently, the Simple Dog). If my experiences with dogs were like hers, I would start raising cats, or gerbils. Or maybe bonsai. Bonsai rarely gnaw on the furniture.
At any rate, Brosh manages to write and draw personal whatever-they-ares that are funny and sad, sometimes by turns, more often at the same time. The saddest is probably the story of why she did not get to go to a friend's birthday party. The funniest is, I think without question, the story of how she and her boyfriend and their dog were terrorized in their own home by a goose.
Eight out of ten parrot toys.
Peter Watts: Blindsight (2026-28)
Apr. 15th, 2026 08:47 pmsturgeonslawyerIf you hear the occasional thump during this review, don't worry: it's me punching and kicking myself for not reading this book twenty years ago.
It's ... wow. It's hard to articulate what I find so extraordinary about it, without going into deep and spoilericious summary. But, y'know, the book is twenty years old, and if you haven't read it by now, a bit of spoliation won't kill you, so what the Hell.
1. The setup. The narrator, Siri Keeton, after a brief flashback to childhood, is on a spaceship in the Oort cloud, looking for the cause of a disturbing event that took place shortly before the ship, Theseus, was launched. On an otherwise ordinary day, a large number of objects entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up. They were coordinated in a way that suggests that they were taking a holographic picture of the whole globe. But for whom?
2. The characters. There are a lot of flashbacks to Keeton's past, but in the story's present, there are five main characters:
This last perhaps requires some explanation, because this is very much a hard SF novel. But I think I'll let Watts explain it for himself, should you choose to read it.
3. The story. Blindsight is, at the heart of it, a first contact story, but it refuses to act like one. It is, in another way, a Big Dumb Object story, except that it actually talks to the Theseus crew early in the story.
The plot is tense in a way that reminds me of the way I felt when I read The Andromeda Strain at the age of thirteen, over fifty years ago, and that's really the only comparison I can make here. More important, it takes twists and turns that I did not in any way expect but that made perfect sense — but only once I knew a lot more than I knew when they happened.
4. The theme. And here's where I can't help getting a bit spoily. Watts is writing, here, about the mind, about consciousness, about what it is, what it isn't, and about whether or not it's beneficial to us as a species: he (or, rather, one of his characters) makes a pretty strong argument that it isn't.
Watts delivers intellectual punch after punch. This isn't to say that there is no emotional payoff — there certainly is — but another way this book plays back to classic SF is that its core is not emotional but intellectual: Big Ideas propel the story every bit as much as the characters who live through it.
I think I'm prepared to call this the first great SF novel of the twenty-first century.
Ten out of ten space vampires.
It's ... wow. It's hard to articulate what I find so extraordinary about it, without going into deep and spoilericious summary. But, y'know, the book is twenty years old, and if you haven't read it by now, a bit of spoliation won't kill you, so what the Hell.
1. The setup. The narrator, Siri Keeton, after a brief flashback to childhood, is on a spaceship in the Oort cloud, looking for the cause of a disturbing event that took place shortly before the ship, Theseus, was launched. On an otherwise ordinary day, a large number of objects entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up. They were coordinated in a way that suggests that they were taking a holographic picture of the whole globe. But for whom?
2. The characters. There are a lot of flashbacks to Keeton's past, but in the story's present, there are five main characters:
- Siri Keeton himself, who, as a child, had one hemisphere of his brain removed to stop a series of violent convulsions that would, in time, have killed him. He is a synthesist, trained (and amplified by devices in the emptied half of his skull) to observe, make connections, and report without becoming personnaly involved.
- Isaac Szpindel, biologist and cyborg who, as the blurb of the current edition puts it, "can't feel his own flesh.
- The Gang of Four, a woman (except for one of them) who deliberately induced multiple independent personalities in brain, not as competitors but as collaborators; together they are a crack linguist.
- Amanda Bates, a warrior who seeks to win without killing (or even fighting) wherever possible.
- Jukka Sarasti, a vampire, and the commander of the group.
This last perhaps requires some explanation, because this is very much a hard SF novel. But I think I'll let Watts explain it for himself, should you choose to read it.
3. The story. Blindsight is, at the heart of it, a first contact story, but it refuses to act like one. It is, in another way, a Big Dumb Object story, except that it actually talks to the Theseus crew early in the story.
The plot is tense in a way that reminds me of the way I felt when I read The Andromeda Strain at the age of thirteen, over fifty years ago, and that's really the only comparison I can make here. More important, it takes twists and turns that I did not in any way expect but that made perfect sense — but only once I knew a lot more than I knew when they happened.
4. The theme. And here's where I can't help getting a bit spoily. Watts is writing, here, about the mind, about consciousness, about what it is, what it isn't, and about whether or not it's beneficial to us as a species: he (or, rather, one of his characters) makes a pretty strong argument that it isn't.
Watts delivers intellectual punch after punch. This isn't to say that there is no emotional payoff — there certainly is — but another way this book plays back to classic SF is that its core is not emotional but intellectual: Big Ideas propel the story every bit as much as the characters who live through it.
I think I'm prepared to call this the first great SF novel of the twenty-first century.
Ten out of ten space vampires.
Jesus
Apr. 15th, 2026 12:00 pmconulyJust went to the store, spent over $90 for half a week's groceries just for me.
This is not sustainable, but it's not going to get better any time soon.
I could eat at work, but let's be clear, I don't much like the housekeeper's cooking, they rarely have in stock what I'd need to make my own food the way I like it (other than eggs), and also I have some weird food issues around... I don't really know. Eating other people's food? But not at a restaurant where it's okay? Maybe it's smelling the food? I honestly do not know, that's what makes these issues weird. (But even if I didn't, she boils the poor vegetables to death.)
This is not sustainable, but it's not going to get better any time soon.
I could eat at work, but let's be clear, I don't much like the housekeeper's cooking, they rarely have in stock what I'd need to make my own food the way I like it (other than eggs), and also I have some weird food issues around... I don't really know. Eating other people's food? But not at a restaurant where it's okay? Maybe it's smelling the food? I honestly do not know, that's what makes these issues weird. (But even if I didn't, she boils the poor vegetables to death.)
Interesting Links for 15-04-2026
Apr. 15th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. Why don't humans have a penis bone?
- (tags:evolution sex penis bone badgers ViaDrCross )
- 2. For the First Time in the U.S., Renewables Generate More Power Than Natural Gas
- (tags:renewables GoodNews USA )
- 3. YouTube Now Worlds Largest Media Company, Topping Disney
- (tags:YouTube business )
- 4. Anti-SLAPP law: how litigation is silencing UK journalists
- (tags:UK law censorship )
- 5. Takeaway cup recycling made easier in Edinburgh
- (tags:recycling edinburgh coffee )
- 6. Projected warming will exceed the long-term thermal limits of rice cultivation
- (tags:globalwarming rice food farming doom )
D.O.P.-T.
Apr. 14th, 2026 11:46 pmweofodthignenThose creepy (and dangerous) Waymo cabs are apparently now mapping potholes to Alphabet's routing software, offering the data to the municipalities as well as using them to plot trips avoiding them. I'm convinced they're also scanning faces as they pass, so I try to make sure I'm jeering.
The World Keeps on Spinning
Apr. 14th, 2026 10:16 pmfrith
It looks like Dreamwidth is back to loading normally now, regardless of whether I'm logged in or not. It was a lot of refresh/retry for a while there. I guess some nigh Totalitarian "free" economy was having an election somewhere.
The US/Israel war on Iran is doing one thing that no one would have had the guts to do otherwise: cut oil extraction and use. Not by much, only 20%, but still, it's giving the world a taste of the future. In Sri Lanka fuel is limited to 15L per week (I use half that much). In some regions of Australia public transit is free (that should be the case everywhere, regardless of oil supply). I can only hope that more investment in solar power grids and windpower is going to take place worldwide as a result and maybe make the 20% cut permanent. Except that people are just going to waste more power one way or another and fossil fuel extraction will just keep on going up. Burying dead trees in clay soils is just another distraction.
Should I stock up on toilet paper now? How about eggs? What's the panic like in Oz? Everything happens there first. It's the time zone/date line thing. Tru fax.
It seemed to me that it must be that the US and Israel have been using cell phone signal ID to locate and bomb specific people in Iran and Lebanon. So I searched "cell phone signal target iran" and yep, scattered news reports saying just that. It annoys me that the national news service keeps such things quiet. The cell phone omission in the assassination reports reeks of serving business interests over that of the general population. When data harvesting devices gone wild can allow trigger-happy governments to guide exploding drones to murder just about anyone anywhere, what more do you need to show that cell phones that broadcast your position and everything about you are a bad idea? I'm also ticked off about the same national news service no longer giving the daily value of the stock markets, of gold, a barrel of oil, the dollar and even on occasion, bitcoin. Instead, we get endless fluff pieces, like Ferrari-shaped Kitkats, a cat the crosses the border by jumping a ditch, the decline in the number of people going to the movies, McDonald's energy drinks, do you know your mail carrier, would you eat cricket powder...
Everypony see Hail Mary yet? That's the movie about wee black bacteria blotting out the sun. I saw it when it was still fresh. Now, some weeks later, while reading a blurb on the movie I realize that the movie was supposed to be about some guy who wakes up on a space ship 11 light years away from Earth with no recollection on how he got there or what he's supposed to do. Now that's a movie I would have liked better. Instead, the only way I can tell that there's a memory problem is because there's a few lines of dialog stating as much. Otherwise, the flashbacks just look like the standard filling in of details during what would otherwise be long boring breaks in the action. Instead, what I saw was a movie about an antisocial black sheep scientist who has abandoned a research career to become a middle-school science teacher. Despite having apparently totally pissed off the entire scientific community, he comes across as kind, thoughtful and just a little quirky. So, yeah, not buying the asshole hothead story. Moving on to the science.
Enter the space bacteria. The bacteria, capable of crossing interstellar distances, at apparently near light-speed to have infected all the stars in our neighbourhood simultaneously, and invulnerable to intense unfiltered solar radiation, can be punctured and popped with a pin. They also are able collect enough material out of the atmosphere of Venus to multiply in sufficiently high numbers to completely encompass the sun. It's like trying to paint an entire house using the film of water on a wet golf ball. Or maybe a wet pea. The sun is HUGE. Then there were the space amoebas. What's keeping the amoebas alive on the three year trip to Earth? Plus, I thought it was _hot_ in the alien ship, but in the whole rescue, all I saw was that O2 is corrosive (we knew that). As for the initial problem, sunshade cooling the Earth, where was the obvious solution: burn more fossil fuels, release methane, release HFC's! Also, after the wee bugs have finished cleaning up Venus, we could move there... or not. Scratch that, bad idea, see Mars. Then there was the alien recognizing a stopped clock as a mechanism for keeping track of time. That was a wee bit hard to swallow. I also did not catch how the leap occurred to linguistic translation without any apparent Rosetta Stone style object-to-word exchanges. So, the movie was a bit of a miss. Worth seeing once.
Next movie I saw was Mario Galaxy. Not good. There was no story. It was, metaphorically speaking, a wink and nudge fest. Sappy too. Seven-year-old kids will probably like it a lot. Well, it was (and still is!) the only thing playing in town and it wasn't horror or a romantic comedy (there's a new twist in the movie schedules now -- there's the one English movie playing once a day, like Mario Galaxy, and then there's a Thursday English movie at 7pm, like some rom com movie about Tuscany). It really did not go beyond what I imagine is the in-game "world", apparently revolving around a plumber who runs through an obstacle course. Plus there was air in space! Universal gravity toward the "ground" everywhere! How does the ground know which way is down in order to become the ground? It's a shame that instead of Hoppers or Zootopia 2, we get this.
So I ordered five movies via eBay. Zootopia 1 and 2, Alien: Covenant, Detective Pikachu, and Rick & Morty Season 8. OK, four movies and a season of a TV series. I looked at sales of Death of a Unicorn but whoa, pricey. I'll wait.
I think that when your TV series consists of scripts written by a parade of gig workers, it's all fan fiction, even if your writers only care about the paycheck. That goes double for spin-off books that aren't even canon to what transpires in the source audio-visual product.
I went to three different discount grocers belonging to the same chain in town and finally found cans of peppermint milk chocolate powder. It's the only one I've found that makes reasonably good hot cocoa, although I have to make the mix in three steps to minimize the dregs of chocolate left in the bottom of the cup. I should get a few more cans just in case this product has been discontinued. I'm going to go make a mug of hot cocoa now... In related news, I am amused to learn that a miscreant has been filling their cans of "pure" maple syrup with a 50/50 mix of maple syrup and cane sugar syrup! Somebody noticed that the flavour was off. That somebody is a somebody who works as a journalist for an news-style TV show. Talk about a scoop! So they collected 5 cans of this one "pure" maple syrup from five different grocery stores and all five were doctored. Oh la la! It is worse that le anti-freez in le vin! Oh wait, cane sugar isn't poisonous. Still, it's fraud. Pure Quebec maple syrup is sirious biznes, yo. Beware of deep discount deals on cooked tree sap.
One of the earliest signs of Spring is the awakening of the Asian ladybird beetles, Harmonia axyridis. Unfortunately, these spotted red insects have the gift of overwintering in my walls and come Spring, awake, finish the migration through my walls to swarm indoors, all over my windows and light fixtures, every time the temperature outside climbs above +7°C or so. They also bite. My bed is right below a window.
But there are other, more pleasant signs of Spring now. Redwing blackbirds, American tree sparrows, turkey vultures, a brown creeper, spring peepers, ruffed grouse drumming in the woods and the first flowers: coltsfoot. There were several European honey bees on the European coltsfoot flowers, collecting nectar and pollen, a good sign that coltsfoot is superior to dandelions, despite the no-mow May trend.
My trends tend to have staying power and as a result, my lawn is more of a wild area, carpeted with two years of weeds. I have a dethatching rake but it isn't easy going. I should go out and have another go at it soon. Eventually. When there are fewer cars driving by, judging me. Meanwhile, my lawn has become poplar with the trees, several of them. Poplars. As soon as the saplings bud out I'm pulling out the shears. They'll leave and the llama will get fresh greens.
At a different residence tonight
Apr. 14th, 2026 09:51 pmconulyOne of the staff has the same name as one of the residents, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out.
I just found a cool Excel function!
Apr. 14th, 2026 01:33 pmthewayneWell, it's not a cool function, it's an option on a function. Specifically, the Weekday function.
I'm finishing up our taxes. Normally I'd finish them in February or March, but it's been a heck of a few months. One of the things that I do is dump all my prescription drug purchases into a spreadsheet and calculate the day of the week, so I can take a mileage deduction on my state taxes for weekend pickups since I'm not working those days.
Nevermind whether or not we're going to dinner or a movie....
Anyway, the function ends up being:
=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)>5,42,"")
A1 is my date field of when the transaction takes place. By default, i.e. without a number changing the day of the week for the date the starting DOW is Sunday = 1. By supplying the 2, you're telling Excel that Monday = 1, therefore if the DOW is greater than 5, it's Saturday or Sunday, therefore the weekend! If that's true, plug in 42 (round trip to Alamogordo and back), otherwise make it a blank cell.
Five trips for an additional 210 miles, at $0.21 per mile towards my state taxes! I have to manually eliminate dupes for multiple transactions on the same day, being multiple drugs refilled and picked up at the same time.
I use spreadsheets a fair amount, but not for anything particularly complex, just as a general purpose tool, so I was kinda chuffed to find this. The question is whether or not I'll remember it for next year!
I'm finishing up our taxes. Normally I'd finish them in February or March, but it's been a heck of a few months. One of the things that I do is dump all my prescription drug purchases into a spreadsheet and calculate the day of the week, so I can take a mileage deduction on my state taxes for weekend pickups since I'm not working those days.
Nevermind whether or not we're going to dinner or a movie....
Anyway, the function ends up being:
=IF(WEEKDAY(A1,2)>5,42,"")
A1 is my date field of when the transaction takes place. By default, i.e. without a number changing the day of the week for the date the starting DOW is Sunday = 1. By supplying the 2, you're telling Excel that Monday = 1, therefore if the DOW is greater than 5, it's Saturday or Sunday, therefore the weekend! If that's true, plug in 42 (round trip to Alamogordo and back), otherwise make it a blank cell.
Five trips for an additional 210 miles, at $0.21 per mile towards my state taxes! I have to manually eliminate dupes for multiple transactions on the same day, being multiple drugs refilled and picked up at the same time.
I use spreadsheets a fair amount, but not for anything particularly complex, just as a general purpose tool, so I was kinda chuffed to find this. The question is whether or not I'll remember it for next year!
Interesting Links for 14-04-2026
Apr. 14th, 2026 12:00 pmandrewducker- 1. How much co2 does training AI models produce?
- (tags:ai co2 )
- 2. Consuming artificial sweeteners may raise diabetes risk for your children and grandchildren by modifying gene expression (in mice)
- (tags:diabetes epigenetics taste )
- 3. Iconic Edinburgh city centre toy shop "Wonderland Models" set to close after plans to turn shop into two restaurants approved
- (tags:toys Edinburgh shopping )
- 4. Birds do not, in fact, hit wind turbines
- (tags:windpower birds GoodNews )
- 5. 'Bloodborne' Video Game Getting R-Rated Animated Movie Adaptation
- (tags:movies games animation )
摩西摩西
Apr. 14th, 2026 04:14 pmnnozomiReading a few people on my f-list who always have interesting things to say about writing, I was moved to reread Dorothy Bryant’s Writing a Novel (I always want to call her Dorothy Allison, who is another person altogether). Not all of it works for me, but I find it interesting and sometimes motivating. For today “Remember that detailed planning is of great value, but only if you understand that it does not work. By that I mean you cannot expect your careful planning to solve in advance many of the problems you will run into while writing, nor help you avoid making changes you must make. It is through the writing itself that you learn what you are trying to write. You write some of it, and it’s not quite right, but the process of writing sets deep forces in motion. (That’s why if you miss a day you feel as if getting started again is like moving mountains.) These deep forces shift you to a new place, slightly closer to what you can write. Day by day, as you write, everything keeps shifting and changing under your hands. The plan helps in this process, but only if you are ready to deviate from it as you begin to see your direction more clearly.”
From my favorite singer, not a song this time but a game livestream (from last summer sometime). Unlike Liu Chang, Jiang Dunhao does not do livestreams on the regular (“I never know what to say”), so this is a bit of an exception. He’s playing a game called inZoi? which seems to be a kind of slice-of-life? in a city where they speak an annoyingly random language? and makes himself an avatar wearing one of his own typical striped shirts (with a lot of cute little “Nope!”s in English when he doesn’t like the options presented). It’s not all that exciting to watch, but like Liu Chang’s game livestreams, excellent for listening practice, since his narration reflects what’s happening on screen, plus the style of the game means there are a lot of everyday words coming up. (The first thing he does is go to the karaoke box on the game map, where he is somewhat appalled to find that his avatar sings really badly.)
(okay, I lied, here’s a song too, even though I think I’ve already posted this one: 掉了, just because it blows my mind every time.)
For work reasons, I came across this list of large cardinal properties (I don’t even know what cardinals are, other than cardinal-versus-ordinal, not counting the religious ones and the red birds) and found it extremely delightful. I know for math people, including those on my f-list, it must make actual sense, but I just like the existence of worldly cardinals, weakly and strongly inaccessible cardinals (need to apply this categorization to the local authorities, utilities companies, etc.), unfoldable cardinals, shrewd cardinals, almost and totally ineffable cardinals, ethereal cardinals, subtle cardinals, remarkable cardinals, almost high jump cardinals, super almost huge cardinals, and so on.
Antonia Forest fans may be amused to note that there’s a kid called Juki at the Saturday juku; also another boy called Mokuren, a very pretty name which means “magnolia” (I haven’t seen the characters but presumably it’s 木蓮, although these days you never know). Some of the modern kira-kira names I find too much, as in the previous post, but at least it’s more interesting than everyone being named Hiroshi or Daisuke or Keiko or Miyuki (depending on the generation).
Still working my way through the Chinese edition of The People at No. 1 Siwei Street; the dialogue is very cute in Chinese. Seriously confusing myself because there’s a character who is mostly just called the landlady, 房东, but because I know there’s a landlady character, I keep looking at 大家 and wanting to read it that way (“landlord/-lady” in Japanese, “everyone” in Chinese). Also I can’t believe I now know how to say both “pillowfriend” and “fuckbuddy” in Chinese (床伴 and 炮友, if anyone cares); clearly I have made some fundamental mistake somewhere in my self-guided Chinese education.
More silly Chinese: People online using on-the-spot loan words written in hanzi, like 哦莫 (Korean “omo,” kind of “oy vey”) or 摩西摩西 (Japanese “moshi-moshi,” telephone hello doubling as “hey you, wake up there”).
When I need spare names for original Chinese characters (I mean, people, not letters) I have a secret weapon: searching for chorus or orchestra rosters in Chinese. The former usually separates members by voice part and the latter often comes with photos, making it easy both ways to check name gender, and there are lots and lots of names to mix-and-match first and last. Also interested that Western orchestra instruments seem to have multiple translations: for the contrabass I’ve mostly seen 低音提琴, low violin, but also 倍大提琴 which is literally “double bass” (or “double cello,” anyway). Also the 法国号, French horn, which also goes by 圆号, round horn; the cor anglais seems to be literally the 英国管 as well. The harp is 竖琴, vertical-stringed-instrument (琴 is the word for “zither” but can refer to anything with strings, the violin family as above is various 提琴s and even rock guitarists and bass players will refer casually to their axes as 琴 as well). Timpani are 定音鼓, fixed-tone drums.
Visit to Arima, a hot spring spa with centuries of history as a tourist destination (possibly millennia; the original hot spring visitors were gods, if you follow the local legend). Lots of cherry blossoms, because it’s in the mountains and they bloom later; steep hills everywhere (my knees are not in good shape right now and the hills were a challenge; does anybody have any good exercise ideas that are easy on the knees?); the “Jealousy Spring” said to puff out steam whenever a beautiful woman walks by; a local train using rolling stock from sixty years ago; soda-water senbei, which you’re supposed to eat within five seconds (literally) after they come off the griddle, because the first bite is chewy and after that they get crisp (they taste like old-fashioned fortune cookies); and of course the hot springs, notable for their copper-colored water, like bathing in a mud puddle but actually very clean and soothing (see here, not where we stayed but the photos are nice). (No wonder I’ve read at least one murder mystery in which the Arima waters are used to conceal an exsanguinated victim.)
Photos: Way too many cherry blossoms, mostly from Arima; I still maintain that they’re not my favorite flowers, but they sure are photogenic. Two cats: Koron-chan with an elegant little halo, and an offended stray at a safe distance. Some maples: the red leaves are not actually painted on the wall, they just look like it. Message on a mailbox that cracked me up. A bounty of kumquats going to waste because they’re growing on the train side of the railway fence, meaning nobody can pick them (I suppose the railway company could, but logistically it wouldn’t be easy). An alleyway in Arima and a temple entrance which looks like it’s off in the mountains somewhere but is actually right in the middle of my large city.
Be safe and well.
From my favorite singer, not a song this time but a game livestream (from last summer sometime). Unlike Liu Chang, Jiang Dunhao does not do livestreams on the regular (“I never know what to say”), so this is a bit of an exception. He’s playing a game called inZoi? which seems to be a kind of slice-of-life? in a city where they speak an annoyingly random language? and makes himself an avatar wearing one of his own typical striped shirts (with a lot of cute little “Nope!”s in English when he doesn’t like the options presented). It’s not all that exciting to watch, but like Liu Chang’s game livestreams, excellent for listening practice, since his narration reflects what’s happening on screen, plus the style of the game means there are a lot of everyday words coming up. (The first thing he does is go to the karaoke box on the game map, where he is somewhat appalled to find that his avatar sings really badly.)
(okay, I lied, here’s a song too, even though I think I’ve already posted this one: 掉了, just because it blows my mind every time.)
For work reasons, I came across this list of large cardinal properties (I don’t even know what cardinals are, other than cardinal-versus-ordinal, not counting the religious ones and the red birds) and found it extremely delightful. I know for math people, including those on my f-list, it must make actual sense, but I just like the existence of worldly cardinals, weakly and strongly inaccessible cardinals (need to apply this categorization to the local authorities, utilities companies, etc.), unfoldable cardinals, shrewd cardinals, almost and totally ineffable cardinals, ethereal cardinals, subtle cardinals, remarkable cardinals, almost high jump cardinals, super almost huge cardinals, and so on.
Antonia Forest fans may be amused to note that there’s a kid called Juki at the Saturday juku; also another boy called Mokuren, a very pretty name which means “magnolia” (I haven’t seen the characters but presumably it’s 木蓮, although these days you never know). Some of the modern kira-kira names I find too much, as in the previous post, but at least it’s more interesting than everyone being named Hiroshi or Daisuke or Keiko or Miyuki (depending on the generation).
Still working my way through the Chinese edition of The People at No. 1 Siwei Street; the dialogue is very cute in Chinese. Seriously confusing myself because there’s a character who is mostly just called the landlady, 房东, but because I know there’s a landlady character, I keep looking at 大家 and wanting to read it that way (“landlord/-lady” in Japanese, “everyone” in Chinese). Also I can’t believe I now know how to say both “pillowfriend” and “fuckbuddy” in Chinese (床伴 and 炮友, if anyone cares); clearly I have made some fundamental mistake somewhere in my self-guided Chinese education.
More silly Chinese: People online using on-the-spot loan words written in hanzi, like 哦莫 (Korean “omo,” kind of “oy vey”) or 摩西摩西 (Japanese “moshi-moshi,” telephone hello doubling as “hey you, wake up there”).
When I need spare names for original Chinese characters (I mean, people, not letters) I have a secret weapon: searching for chorus or orchestra rosters in Chinese. The former usually separates members by voice part and the latter often comes with photos, making it easy both ways to check name gender, and there are lots and lots of names to mix-and-match first and last. Also interested that Western orchestra instruments seem to have multiple translations: for the contrabass I’ve mostly seen 低音提琴, low violin, but also 倍大提琴 which is literally “double bass” (or “double cello,” anyway). Also the 法国号, French horn, which also goes by 圆号, round horn; the cor anglais seems to be literally the 英国管 as well. The harp is 竖琴, vertical-stringed-instrument (琴 is the word for “zither” but can refer to anything with strings, the violin family as above is various 提琴s and even rock guitarists and bass players will refer casually to their axes as 琴 as well). Timpani are 定音鼓, fixed-tone drums.
Visit to Arima, a hot spring spa with centuries of history as a tourist destination (possibly millennia; the original hot spring visitors were gods, if you follow the local legend). Lots of cherry blossoms, because it’s in the mountains and they bloom later; steep hills everywhere (my knees are not in good shape right now and the hills were a challenge; does anybody have any good exercise ideas that are easy on the knees?); the “Jealousy Spring” said to puff out steam whenever a beautiful woman walks by; a local train using rolling stock from sixty years ago; soda-water senbei, which you’re supposed to eat within five seconds (literally) after they come off the griddle, because the first bite is chewy and after that they get crisp (they taste like old-fashioned fortune cookies); and of course the hot springs, notable for their copper-colored water, like bathing in a mud puddle but actually very clean and soothing (see here, not where we stayed but the photos are nice). (No wonder I’ve read at least one murder mystery in which the Arima waters are used to conceal an exsanguinated victim.)
Photos: Way too many cherry blossoms, mostly from Arima; I still maintain that they’re not my favorite flowers, but they sure are photogenic. Two cats: Koron-chan with an elegant little halo, and an offended stray at a safe distance. Some maples: the red leaves are not actually painted on the wall, they just look like it. Message on a mailbox that cracked me up. A bounty of kumquats going to waste because they’re growing on the train side of the railway fence, meaning nobody can pick them (I suppose the railway company could, but logistically it wouldn’t be easy). An alleyway in Arima and a temple entrance which looks like it’s off in the mountains somewhere but is actually right in the middle of my large city.
Be safe and well.
Late Bird by Angela Narciso Torres
Apr. 14th, 2026 12:42 amconulyCount me among the noon risers who stumble,
dazed and bad-haired, from the nest midday,
pecking the crazed dirt for half-torn moth,
pear’s white core, severed worm. I’ve never
been one to trill at chink of dawn, to hop,
skip, chirrup before full sun. I’m better
at picking over crumbs, stitching a quilt
from what’s left, remaindered, given up
for gone. Better at betting the careless
will miss the best. Count me among
the nightbirds who sip starlight, a guitar’s
fading strains. Find me where moondust
swirls in streetlamp glow and stray dogs sleep.
What clings to the bone is most sweet.
***********
Link
dazed and bad-haired, from the nest midday,
pecking the crazed dirt for half-torn moth,
pear’s white core, severed worm. I’ve never
been one to trill at chink of dawn, to hop,
skip, chirrup before full sun. I’m better
at picking over crumbs, stitching a quilt
from what’s left, remaindered, given up
for gone. Better at betting the careless
will miss the best. Count me among
the nightbirds who sip starlight, a guitar’s
fading strains. Find me where moondust
swirls in streetlamp glow and stray dogs sleep.
What clings to the bone is most sweet.
Link
D.O.P.-T.
Apr. 13th, 2026 09:22 pmweofodthignenThe breeze had swept the rain away, leaving a beautiful day. The housemate was away for most of the afternoon, so I swept the bottom of the driveway. I put 5 oranges that had been hollowed out by rodents into the compost monster's maw together with a full bag of skins from oranges I'd eaten, peelings and tops 'n tails, and teabags. And the day's fallen camellia blooms, though they're starting to tail off. I gave the dog an opportunity to walk: she stared for several minutes at a worker finishing up installing a new screen door, and decided not to walk. And then I provided catfood when Monty and Prudence pranced across the top of the fence.