desperance

Air temperature 68 F before 0700 hrs, dew point 66, wind near calm, partly cloudy. Supposed to reach 90 F or above this afternoon. AQI "moderate" and pollen high. Walk contraindicated. Hope my small friends with permanent fur coats are staying inside . . . .

tamaranth

2025/108: Code Name Verity — Elizabeth Wein

I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old. [p. 114]

Reread after The Enigma Game, which features a younger and considerably more cheerful Julie. (My review from 2013.) This is still a very harrowing read, even though I know what happens.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: sad

asakiyume

Two weeks running with posting about reading on Wednesday, whohoo! ... It won't happen again for a while.

The Tail of Emily Windsnap, by Liz Kessler

I wanted to read this after

troisoiseaux recalled loving it as a kid and enjoyed it on a reread. I was intrigued by her description of Emily’s starcrossed parents’ romance and Emily’s needing to rescue her father from mer-prison (which is only half the story; the other half is Emily discovering she turns into a mermaid in water, meeting a mergirl who can be her best friend, and learning about mer-school, etc., while meanwhile managing her mother and babysitter and the mean girl at human school).

( more analysis than a slim volume should have to bear )

The tl;dr of this is that I thought it was a fun, imaginative adventure story, and I can understand why

troisoiseaux remembers it fondly.

hrj

So remember when I was coming down to the wire on retirement and trying to get my Flexible Spending Account balance sorted out? To recap: I'd had a Flexible Spending Account (pre-tax medical expenses) for some years. The balance had always rolled over to the next year (though the instructions on that were unclear). I hadn't renewed the account for 2025 due to retirement, so to keep things simple I was identifying things to spend the ca. $500 balance on (since I can't schedule root canals for my convenience).

I picked up a second CPAP battery (to enable the possibility of using it for up to 3 nights off-grid) and went to charge it to my FSA. No-go, it said. That was a 2025 expense any my FSA could only reimburse 2024 expenses.

Many phone calls and run-arounds later, it turns out part of the problem is that my employer changed FSA administrators between 2024 and 2025. So my existing account couldn't reimburse 2025 expenses because that was out of scope for them. And the 2025 FSA administrator couldn't reimbuse a 2025 expense because I didn't have a balance in their account.

So what happens to my balance? How do I get my money? The 2024 administrator says, "We send it back to your employer. No idea beyond that." And my employer, after tracking down someone who claims under understand FSAs says, "Oops, sorry, your money is gone. No recourse. Use it or lose it." Eventually, I shrug and chalk it up to experience.

The 2025 benefit adminstrator (who also administers my IRA) at some point sends me an ATM card for my FSA. I check in with them: "Hey you sent me this card, but I don't have a FSA with you so there's no money in it and there won't be any money in it, should I just trash the card?" Yes, they say.

A month or so later, I get a notification: "Hey, you know your FSA balance? We've rolled it over into New!Administrator Account." So now I have to request a replacement ATM card (since it's the only way I have to use the money). With some trepidation that I was still being jerked around, last week I submitted the receipt for my CPAP battery. And--voila!--yesterday the money was deposited to my checking account.

So everyone who carefully explained to me that the FSA balance was use-it-or-lose-it and that they were just going to keep my money, thank you very much, was utterly wrong and didn't even know they were wrong and will continue to be ignorant of their wrongness. But me? I got my battery covered and have another $200 of medical money to spend, after which I will be done with the confusing nonsense that is the Flexible Spending Account.

And I will continue to disbelieve official opinions when they do not align with logic or justice.

jhetley

I see that a Governor is asking for an investigation into the National Park Service over that Grand Canyon fire. I don't know the politics of said Governor. Are we looking for decades of mismanagement here, or short-staffing due to budget cuts that prevented adequate and timely response?

larryhammer

The last time I posted about Yue Xia Die Ying, I had just read one of her xianxia novels and really enjoyed it. Since then, I’ve read two more of her historical romances. TL,DR: two thumbs up.

The first one, Like Pearl and Jade, is a more serious, if low-key, drama with romance. Technically the female MC is a transmigrator, but this identity has zero impact on the story and is used only as a framing device. The story and romance are both quite good, and I like how the frequent small digs at the patriarchy build to (small) actions that improve the status of (some) women. This is about the same size as I Am Average and Unremarkable, or about half of Journey to the West.

The second one, though, this one is a delight. The half-again longer* The Times Spent in Pretense I can only describe as a Chinese analog of Georgette Heyer. Its tone is relatively light, despite a redonkulous number of assassination attempts,** with a sheen of satire. More to the point, the male MC is outright Heyeresque, one of her Mark II models by Heyer’s classification, and his several brothers are as eccentric as any Heyer cast.*** The female MC, meanwhile, spends most of the first half playing several roles that are funny enough in themselves, but that eventually start colliding with each other, resulting in comedy gold.

Unlike Like Pearl and Jade, its feminism is baked in from the start. The female MC’s parents are both generals and military heroes. Her mother in particular is a badass beauty, with adoring female fans who proposition her in public — behavior viewed as more déclassé than scandalous. Way less hetereonormative than usual for a straight romance from mainland China. Meanwhile the female MC’s initial life goal is to acquire an estate near the capital where she can “raise male pets,” i.e. collect a harem of consorts — and her family quietly supports this, as it’s not an unknown hobby for noblewomen, though not one that gets publicly flaunted. The differences from our history are highlighted by contrast with a neighboring kingdom with traditional NeoConfucian values, where they look down on this degenerate place (while being baffled at how happy and prosperous it is despite its grave moral lapses).

I am also greatly amused by a minor character, part of a rival’s girl posse, who makes repeated metatextual commentary based on genre tropes.

Possibly best of all, though, the female MC never fades into the background, as happens all too frequently in Chinese historical romances, but is an active plot participant all the way through the climax.

Both recommended, the second highly so.

* So about three-quarters of a Journey West.

** Spoiler: not a single assassin succeeds.

*** My favorite is the would-be painter. The female MC’s first reaction to one of his landscapes is “What on earth was this painting? A bunch of heavily inked blobs and lightly inked blobs mixing together as friends?” Which is funny enough, but eventually it comes out that everything about this scene are even more examples of pretenses.

---L.

Subject quote from …Ready For It?, Taylor Swift.

jhetley

Air temperature 66 F, wind near calm, fog. Visibility under a mile at the airport, about half a mile here. Air temperature up to 90 F this afternoon. Foraging day.

Watched one of our fancy rats climbing the utility pole out front, reach the top and contemplate reaching for the high voltage line, and then back off. We still have power . . .

mizkit

My crossposter still isn't working, but I know people are enjoying the Cthulhu writeups, so I'll at least repost this one here manually...

***

I was sick the last two gaming sessions, and in my absence, Our Heroes gathered a lot of information, and...lost a hero.

Dillon, who if you will recall from the end of the England adventure, came away with compromised lungs, was caught in a cloud of icy lung-sucking horribleness, which worked as advertised, and killed him dead.

Of the various players and DM, it appears that Ted (Dillon's actual player) was the only person even KIND of emotionally prepared for this possibility, and even he was a little rocked by it. We're about to find out how everybody reacts in character (spoiler: Alice is going to have HUGE GUILT because Dillon was there in the first place because her father hired him to keep an eye on her. Never mind that it's now been YEARS since that happened and Dillon was definitely there of his own volition at this point; Alice is not exactly stable, and this isn't going to help O.O).

Okay. ONWARD.

Summerset says a few kind words about Dillon's bravery and how he'd have been honored to serve with him in the war. Teddy vows to avenge his best friend ever, Dillon. Alice stares into the distance, mute with guilt. Evelyn (whose player isn't available tonight) drinks herself insensible. Calliope, who doesn't really know any of us yet, studies while the rest of us are sad.

It transpires that the crew who have returned alive have also taken possession of a girdle from one of Alice's visions. Summerset, as he relates this information to Alice, adds a desperate, "Please do not put it on, it is very very cursed."

Me: I feel like I need a wisdom check on this one.

GM: You can roll luck.

Fortunately I rolled high and did not make bad choices. ::laughs::

The next morning, a Mysterious Stranger appears...

Mysterious Stranger, at the front desk: I am in search of a Dr Smith or a Dr Calliope (I can't remember her last name).

Summerset, overhearing: There's a man looking for us. We should either run away or go talk to him. Alice?

Alice looks over & sees this man:

Alice, apparently recovering her wits: We should definitely go talk to that incredibly handsome man.

Summerset: -eyes Teddy, down the table nomming his breakfast and oblivious- (mumbled) Poor Teddy. (aloud) Yes, very well, let's go talk to this gentleman, Alice.

We retire to the rooms, where we learn this gentleman's name is Arad al Fey and he'd like to know what the hell happened a couple nights ago, although much more politely framed. Summerset explains people were brutally murdered, including our Dillon and what turns out to be most of Fey's compatriots. Alice begins to cry at the reminder that DILLON IS DEAD.

Fey is shocked, but recovers. Summerset shows Arad al Fey the scimitar he was given by an imam at the site of the fight to help him survive, and offers it back to Fey. Fey tells him to keep it and asks about the above-mentioned girdle, whether they saved it and whether it's safe.

Alice, upon hearing the girdle mentioned: GASP A vision! She's looking at me! She looked at me and vanished!

Summerset: So I'm very sorry your friends are all dead, Mr Fey.

We discuss a plan of attack which ends up, somehow, with our concierge, Seleem, bringing poor Teddy up to the room, announcing that he's taken too much sun ("HOW?" Summerset demands, "IT'S MORNING!"

"Yesterday, sir," says Seleem. "When he was otherwise unattended he went out walking in the sun. Without water. All day."

"Of course he did," Summerset moans. "Go take a nap, Teddy."

"I don't feel so well, Summerset," Teddy admits. "A nap sounds good."

"Also," says Seleem, "A Mr Frederick Bosingworth* is here. Miss Evelyn's affianced, I believe?"

"Oh, good," Teddy says wearily, "Freddy can come sleep with me."

Summerset's player: HE SAID IT OUT LOUD, IT'S CANON, IS IT CANON IF EVELYN ISN'T HERE?

DM: No, sorry

Summerset's player: BUT PLEEEAAAAAASE

Summerset: fine. we're going to go talk to this guy. Teddy, I'm putting a chest in your room--

Teddy: Is there a body in it?

Summerset: NOT IN FRONT OF THE NEW GUY, TEDDY, WE DON'T PUT BODIES IN CHESTS EVER WE NEVER DO THAT and i want you to not open the chest, not put the thing in the chest on, and if anybody comes in and wants to open the chest, shoot them in the face

Teddy: And put the body in the chest?)

We went to see a couple of horribly maimed people who worked on the Giza dig for the people we're looking for. They're, like, HORRIBLY maimed, we have to roll to not go into shock from seeing them, but we succeed and they gave us a Mysterious Tablet, then carried on to Memphis, where

:: GLEEFUL SCREAMS ::

DR WILLIE PRESTON ENTERS THE CHAT

Willie: I just got fired for being a rogue element in the archaeology dig. A wyld stallion, if you will.

Me: ::screams laughing::

Summerset: Very well, I'm also a fan of unorthodox methods, perhaps we can be (I can't believe I'm saying this out loud) wild stallions together.

Me: ::SCREAMS::

We send Willie into town to stay at our hotel while we go try to shake some information out of the dig expedition that we believe might Know Stuff. It gradually becomes increasingly clear that they're incredibly untrustworthy and that Willie might know more than they do with his crazy theories about labyrinths under Giza. Alice does talk to the woman she had a vision of, who gives her a cryptic phrase to remember, and while she's doing that Summerset realizes that one of the dig members is a proto-Nazi. Not that we know what Nazis are yet, in 1925, but WE know, and decide it's best to get out of there since they're not helping with any info on what happened to the stolen alabaster sarcophagus they're complaining about having lost.

This, in fact, is why Willie got fired: he fell asleep and the sarcophagus got stolen. Along with a number of Egyptian police who are presumed dead, but we're not entirely sure about that, so we're going to go back to Giza and see if there's any labyrinths under the pyramids. Also, almost as an aside, we learned that when Willie fell asleep, he dreamed of a queen--

Alice: was she wearing my girdle?

Summerset: it's not YOUR girdle, Alice, and also we have to be very careful about taking things out of Egypt, they're really cracking down on that kind of thing--

Me: you're worried about this in 1925?

Summerset's player & the GM: That's WHEN they started cracking down, was in the 20s! After decades of looting! It's the one thing they're really able to do in that era!

Me: Huh! Okay then!

Summerset: --and so we absolutely definitely can't be caught with it. You might have to wear it to get it out of the country.

Alice, dreamily: okay

Summerset: NO WAIT I DIDN'T MEAN THAT--

Thus far, we have not yet managed to introduce Willie and Teddy, because, since Calliope and Evelyn's players weren't available this evening, we decided the three of them had been left in Cairo to do "a side adventure I wasn't planning on running anyway," said the DM. :D

BUT I HAVE FAITH THAT THE WYLD STALLIONS WILL BE (RE?)UNITED!

*I don't remember Freddy's actual last name. Something like that. :)

tamaranth

2025/107: The Enigma Game — Elizabeth Wein

People being nice to you after someone has made you feel like a criminal or an enemy is just like sticking cardboard in your window after a bomb has blasted all the glass out of it. The hole is stopped up, but the glass is still smashed and you can’t see through the window any more. Everything in the room is uglier and darker. [loc. 2523]

Louisa Adair is fifteen and orphaned: it's 1940, her English mother died in the Balham bombing, and shortly afterwards her Jamaican father was killed when his merchant navy ship was torpedoed. (He couldn't enlist in the Royal Navy because he wasn't born in Europe.) She telephones to answer an advertisement for someone to look after an elderly aunt -- the advertiser, Mrs Campbell, can't tell from Louisa's 'polite English accent' that she's biracial -- and finds herself escorting the redoubtable 'Jane Warner' (actually Johanna von Arnim, a former opera singer) from an internment camp on the Isle of Man to a pub in a small Scottish village.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: peaceful

sovay

Because I am more familiar with the operas than the film scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and tend to avoid even famous movies with Ronald Reagan in them, it took until tonight for me to hear the main theme for Kings Row (1942), at which point the entire career of John Williams flashed before my eyes. Other parts of the score sound more recognizably, symphonically of their era, but that fanfare is a blast from the future it directly shaped: the standard set by Korngold's tone-poem, leitmotiv-driven approach to film composing, principal photography as the libretto to an opera. I love finding these taproots, even when they were lying around in plain sight.

I don't think that what I feel for the sea is nostalgia, but I am intrigued by this study indicating that generally people do: "Searching for Ithaca: The geography and psychological benefits of nostalgic places" (2025). I am surprised that more people are not apparently bonded to deserts or mountains or woodlands. Holidays by the sea can't explain all of it. I used to spend a lot of my life in trees.

I napped for a couple of hours this afternoon, but my brain could return any time now. The rest of my week is not conducive to doing nothing. The rest of the world is not conducive to losing time.

Current Music: Martha, "1978, Smiling Politely"

annathepiper

My next playthrough post is going to be another one from Nona’s playthrough, and I am super behind on her in particular. I left off in the middle of running Carved Brink with her.

Y’all may recall that I put up a review post about that mod, as well. But here’s the thing: since I ran Carved Brink originally with Nona, I have since run it a few more times as Tuxborn has continued to develop its builds, and since I’ve been doing playtesting for Tuxborn, that by definition included re-running Carved Brink. This led me to discover some additional things about it that I’d missed the first time, and which honestly made me enjoy playing it more.

So at this point, I’m rather more kindly disposed to it than I was on the first playthrough. And I felt it was appropriate to put up an addendum to the original review.

Most of the commentary I gave in the original review still applies, and I’m not going to recap points where my opinion hasn’t changed. But I do have some additional stuff I like about Carved Brink, and which I want to note here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.

sovay

My week seems to have started with catapulting myself on zero sleep to a specialist's appointment starting half an hour from the end of the phone call, so I am eating a bagel with lox and trying not to feel that the earth acquires a new axial tilt every time I turn my head. Paying bills, shockingly, has not improved my mood.

After enjoying both The Big Pick-Up (1955) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1964), I was disappointed by Elleston Trevor's The Burning Shore (U.S. The Pasang Run, 1961), which ironically for its airport setting never really seemed to get its plot off the ground and in any case its ratio of romantic melodrama and ambient racism to actual aviation was not ideal, but I am a little sorry that it was not adapted for film like its fellows, since I would have liked to see the casting for the initially peripheral, ultimately book-stealing role of Tom Thorne, the decorated and disgraced surgeon gone in the Conradian manner to ground in the tropics, because of his unusual fragility: it is de rigueur for his archetype that he should pull himself out of his opium-mired death-spiral for the sake of a passenger flight downed in flames, but he remains an impulsive suicide risk even when his self-respect should conventionally have been restored. He is described as having the face of a hurt clown. He'd have been any character actor's gift.

Mostly I like that Wolf Alice named themselves after the short story by Angela Carter, but the chorus of "The Sofa" (2025) really is attractive right now.

Current Music: The Hives, "Enough Is Enough"

larryhammer

For Poetry Monday, another bit of Japonisme:

On Seeing the Daibutsu, Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Long have I searched, Cathedral, shrine, and hall,
To find a symbol, from the hand of art,
That gave the full expression (not a part)
Of that ecstatic peace which follows all
Life’s pain and passion. Strange it should befall
This outer emblem of the inner heart
Was waiting far beyond the great world’s mart—
Immortal answer, to the mortal call.

Unknown the artist, vaguely known his creed:
But the bronze wonder of his work sufficed
To lift me to the heights his faith had trod.
For one rich moment, opulent indeed,
I walked with Krishna, Buddha, and the Christ,
And felt the full serenity of God.

Wilcox (1850-1919) was an extremely popular American poet with, shall we say, a mixed critical reception. She visited Japan in 1911. This is from her collection Picked Poems (1912), and is about the same statue as Kipling’s Buddha at Kamakura.

---L.

Subject quote from The Sign, Ace of Base.

kareina

as always, I left my phone in power saving mode & offline during the event, but I took a few notes each day, so I will compile them here...

( it got long... )

Today I have created the registration page for Reengarda's august event. I should put stuff away, but we are going back to Umeå for an SCA gathering there, to meet a visitor from Oertha.

jhetley

Nice meet-up with Ms. Sasha, including an extended petting session on her front steps. Got home and cooled off and had a robot tell me that I have one prescription ready for pickup. At the pharmacy I had just walked past . . .

oracne

I’ll be at Readercon 34 this weekend after spending most of the last couple of weeks doing massive re-reads.

If you’ll be there, please feel free to stop and say hello! My schedule is below.

The Works of P. Djèlí Clark
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT
Andrea Hairston [moderator]; Leon Perniciaro; Rob Cameron; Tom Doyle; Victoria Janssen
Our Guest of Honor P. Djèlí Clark rounded out his first decade as a published author with a Nebula and a Locus for his fantasy police procedural novel, The Master of Djinn, and both those awards plus a British Fantasy Award for his monster-hunting novella Ring Shout. His short story “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” is short-listed for the Hugo this year. As a History professor at University of Connecticut, he investigates the pathways leading from West African storyteller/poets (griots, a.k.a. djèlí) to the American abolitionist movement. Help us celebrate the works of our honored guest!

The Purposes of Memorable Insults in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 5:00 PM EDT
Storm Humbert [moderator]; Anne E.G. Nydam; Charles Allison; Ellen Kushner; Victoria Janssen
Some of the most quotable lines in science fiction and fantasy are zingers. Wit can do a lot to build a character, a world, and a universe, and has the ability to either support or undermine reader expectations. This panel aims to explore and elaborate on the use of wit—and especially takedowns—in literature, exposing how a verbal jab can serve as more than just a punchline.

Moving from Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing
Salon G/H Friday, July 18, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Cecilia Tan; Jedediah Berry; Sarah Smith; Steven Popkes
It’s becoming increasingly common to hear of authors whose self-published work was so successful that they were picked up by a traditional publisher. But what of the authors who have gone the other way, by turning their backs on traditional publishing and going into self-publishing? Panelists will survey the varying reasons for making this transition, how authors have navigated it, and what this might say about the state of publishing overall.

Kaffeeklatsch: Victoria Janssen
Suite 830 Friday, July 18, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT

The Works of Cecilia Tan
Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 12:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Charlie Jane Anders; Laura Antoniou; Cecilia Tan (i)
Our Guest of Honor, Cecilia Tan, has a publication history that spans Asimov’s, Absolute Magnitude, Ms. Magazine, Penthouse, and Best American Erotica, among others. Writer and editor of science fiction and fantasy, especially as they intersect with erotica and romance, she is also the founder of Circlet Press, an independent publisher that specializes in speculative erotica. Her own writing earned a Lifetime Achievement for Erotica in 2014 from Romantic Times magazine. She also contributes to America’s other pastime, baseball, in her role as Publications Director for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Come hear our panel discuss Cecilia’s many talents and accomplishments.

Un-Kafkaesque Bureaucracies
Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Alexander Jablokov; J.M. Sidorova; Laurence Raphael Brothers; Steven Popkes
In fiction, bureaucracies are generally depicted as evil in its most banal form, yet many of the actual bureaucracies that shape our lives exist to protect us from corporate greed. How can—and should—we tell other stories about bureaucrats and bureaucracies, particularly as the U.S. stands on the precipice of disastrous deregulation? And might fantasies of bureaucracy (such Addison’s The Goblin Emperor and Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor) be the next cozy subgenre?

The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction
Create / Collaborate Saturday, July 19, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT
Kate Nepveu [moderator]; Claire Houck/Nina Waters; Laura Antoniou; Victoria Janssen
In an article of the same name (https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/endless-appetite-fanfiction), Elizabeth Minkel discussed how “2024 was the year [fanfic] truly broke containment—everyone seemed to want a piece of the fanfiction pie, leaving fic authors themselves besieged on all sides.” Attempts to steal and monetize fanfic proliferated, as did reviews treating living authors as distant and unreachable. What do these trends say about larger changes in attitudes toward stories and creators? How can fans of all kinds nurture supportive connections to authors?

Interesting Links for 16-07-2025

This is hot for us

2025/108: Code Name Verity — Elizabeth Wein

Wednesday reading: The Tale of Emily Windsnap

Why I Never Trust Official Nonsense

Be careful what you wish for?

“in my dreams / i know i’m gonna be with you / so i take my time / are you ready for it?”

Interesting Links for 15-07-2025

Squirrel avoids death

Call of Cthulhu: Pour One Out For Dillon

2025/107: The Enigma Game — Elizabeth Wein

Unread books on dusty shelves tell a story of their own

Mod review: Carved Brink, revisited

snatches of conversation in the orbit of the supermarket

In Which Ashoshah Takes a Contract

Went to the doctor, turns out I'm sick

“no one’s gonna drag you up / to get into the light where you belong / but where do you belong?”

Cudgel War

Post-walk irritation

Readercon 2025

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