vital functions
Oct. 26th, 2025 09:19 pmReading. Two things finished, various things picked up and put down again.
Ouch!, Kerr & McRobbie: the subtitle is Why pain hurts, and why it doesn't have to; it's indicative of my current preoccupations that I was actively surprised that it is not, in fact, about chronic pain, except in passing, in that it's mentioned in the introduction in the context of pains the authors have experienced, and then it just sort of... vanishes again. What it actually is is more-or-less a tour of the sociology of acute pain, from a variety of perspectives and contexts, and an invitation to reshape your relationship with pain, optionally via the medium of sports.
It's very much aimed at a general audience (by which I mean both "not people with any particular pre-existing knowledge about pain" and also "not chronic pain patients"), with the infuriating-to-me feature of having not an actual bibliography but instead a "selected references" section, i.e. any claims I wanted to actually check required digging and then guessing (and in one case working out that they were actively wrong about which year the thing was published in, at least for referencing purposes). I did nonetheless get some useful information and vocabulary out of it (I'm especially here for the pointer to the 3P approach to pain management), and it prompted another couple of articulations.
Overall: not a disrecommendation; plausibly a light read if you have, you know, a recreational interest in pain; verify any specifics you want to rely on.
The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. A's conclusion was Well It Was Better Than The Second Film; mine was ( mild spoilers? )
and would be very happy to see that show up in an extended cut of the first film. The library doesn't have the second volume and I think we're unlikely to seek it out.DW catch-up: halfway through September!
Playing. Inkulinati, mostly watching A play and occasionally making Suggestions. Does not work as well as a Shared Activity as I'd hoped (annoyingly I think I'd need to play basically all of it hands-on myself in order to internalise mechanics and strategy, rather than being able to e.g. swap who's driving for every level) but I am enjoying it happening in my vicinity. Today we also read the PDF of the art book together, which I am not counting as Reading because it was mostly looking at the pictures in another context.
And after six months I GOT UNSTUCK ON I Love Hue! The Ascension/Air/1, extremely gratified that searching for it revealed someone who'd managed to complete everything but that, and bolstered by this knowledge I turned brightness all the way up and the phone upside down and FINALLY managed to sort out the yellows, on my nth attempt... in way fewer than the average number of moves. VICTORY.
Cooking. ( Read more... )
Seven Deadly Sins of Reading
Oct. 26th, 2025 08:36 pmLust, books I want to read for their cover:
- Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere (OK I have read it but I would have picked it up just for the cover, UK edn)
- Andrew Porter, The Imagined Life
- Benjamin Wood, Seascraper
Pride, challenging books I've finished:
- Uwe Johnson, Anniversaries
- Laszlo Krasnahorkai, War and War
- JRR Tolkien, Hobbitinn (The Hobbit in Icelandic)
Gluttony, books I've read more than once:
- Alaistair Reynolds, Redemption Ark
- Sergei and Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra
- Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air (I like reading this on airplanes, God help me)
Sloth, books on my to-read list the longest:
- David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite
- Milorad PaviΔ, Dictionary of the Khazars
- Gabriel GarcΓa MΓ‘rquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Greed, books I own multiple editions of:
- Mary Renault, Return to Night
- (...plus various books in multiple languages but I think that's the only one with multiple editions in English)
Wrath, books I despised:
- RF Huang, Babel
- Don DeLillo, Underworld (I want so much to like this but I don't)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Envy, books I want to live in:
- My own
Autumn Hiking and Birding
Oct. 26th, 2025 10:06 amThe river was full of Canada geese, but here is the full list of birds that I heard:
- Cedar waxwing
- Northern cardinal
- White-crowned sparrow
- Red-bellied woodpecker
- American crow
- Blue jay
- American goldfinch
- American pipit*
- Kildeer
- Song sparrow
- House sparrow
- Common raven*
- House finch
- Tundra swan*
- Canada goose
*I have never heard before, or I have never realized that I was hearing them.
I should get some actual birding binoculars so maybe I can *see* the birds next time.
My ankle held out pretty well, but I'm sore today. I haven't really pushed myself in a looong time.
Project progress
Oct. 26th, 2025 07:34 pmIn the interest of accountability: yes, I have worked on Eldest's quilt. Previously I was at the point of needing some more blanks drawn (done), and then 20 blocks needed sewing and then assembling. The goal was to do 2 per weekend and then assemble over a few weeks.
However! After two weekends, I have 5 blocks sewn, and one nearly done, being thus a block (and a half) ahead). I have also assembled the first four into a two by two block thus having got ahead on the assembling. Thus, I am feeling tentatively confident about minimum goal: finish top by the end of the year.
I've also attempted to progress Youngest's. Sadly, while I know I had an image that they wanted to have converted, I have not found where I filed it. That is not a this week problem though. I have only progressed Middlest's by dint of sending them another reminder that they need to actually decide on a pattern.
Other than that my craft has near stalled. I have started back on the playing the Hanon's, but only a few pieces every few days, and only the first set of 20, on loop. It does help my hands when I do, but also, I'm struggling to find the motivation.
Reading wise, I have simplified my life down to seven currently reading, mostly because Storygraph added the 'pause' option, which adequately reflects how I feel about a lot of books. One of my thoughts about the last week of the year is to set myself a goal of finishing or abandoning one book per day. Which won't be that hard, as there are several I had put somewhere sensible I found today which are all past half read. In terms of reading goals, the number of works is past the goal, because I started tracking online short fiction (if it were already there) which I kind of wish I could separate out. I'm not anywhere near the number of pages goal, but I also haven't been tracking where I'm up to, so it might be that when I sit down and capture where I'm up to I'll be much further. Whether I get there or not isn't an issue -- I've been doing a lot of academic reading and really haven't had the time/energy for fun reading.
I had another thought when I started the last paragraph, that was more than just the 'where are the two reading goals' but eh, I've forgotten (possibly: tidy the library. or do the next pass through of the library check, given that Librarything has a better way of doing it than I've previously found).
halloween icons
Oct. 26th, 2025 12:51 am( icons )

Dept. of The Darkest Timeline
Oct. 25th, 2025 04:19 pmI'll be back with other things to say, happy things, or at least I hope so.
But right now, I give you this, taken as a screen shot from video a neighbor took as the ICE thugs ambushed him, and who shared it on some local news sites.
It's my city.
It's my adopted country.
He's my neighbor.
He's my brother.
They don't care.
The cruelty, the racism and xenophobia, is the point.

UK people: Scrap The Bathroom Ban
Oct. 25th, 2025 11:33 amFrom TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance. Produces a template letter to your MP which you can customize as much as you can or want to.
Article by Jane Fae of TransActual (who have been absolutely kicking ass):
https://www.scenemag.co.uk/jane-fae-a-director-of-transactual-writes-on-the-eve-of-launching-a-new-campaign-to-get-mps-to-reject-the-ehrcs-bathroom-ban/
There are now a bunch of Labour MPs who are worried and making noises at the government, even if it's only about the impact on businesses of rules which are possibly illegal and impossible to follow without getting sued:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/23/dozens-of-labour-mps-warn-of-chaos-for-firms-over-gender-recognition-advice
It's alleged that Bridget Phillipson was sitting on the guidance because she was worried it'd scupper her bid for the deputy leadership, whereas Powell is actively trans-friendly and has called for MPs to have a chance to debate and vote on the guidance.
The below may be an overly optimistic view but it seems clear there's tension and conflict between the EHRC and government:
https://iandunt.substack.com/p/frightened-and-desperate-ehrc-anti (warning for Substack, in case you are boycotting it)
So this is a moment when leverage is possible, and letters to your MP may actually do something.
School again, plus...?
Oct. 24th, 2025 10:13 pm...I got 100%.
I'm more confident about my second CEJ than I was about my first, even with overhearing the teacher say she was planning to grade the first very liberally. Like the Asynchronous Class Notes assignments for the first third of the semester, we are assigned three of these, of which the lowest scored will ultimately be dropped from our grade.
Methinks I might indulge myself and take a zero on the final one.
After stopping by the ceramics lab this afternoon, I finished my pieces for the throwing assignment! I've got doubles of each piece, as assigned, which is more than rather a lot of my classmates can say π Apparently, including the wheel in Ceramics 1 is specifically a community college thing in this state, while other institutes will have coil-and-pinch and slab stuff in Ceramics 1 and save throwing for Ceramics 2. With all the trouble my classmates are having, I can understand that! In any case, I'm glad I managed to finish my stuff. Pics soon, I hope!
Finally, I made a new mood theme! No pics as yet, as I am being lazy about it, but I'm submitting it for consideration as another official mood theme, so hopefully everyone will get to see it soon anyway π I must confess that I stole an idea from someone's planning at the beginning of last year and made cloud moods. Still, I did my best to follow the official mood theme preferences to a T this time around, which meant a maximum of 30x30 pixels in size, which is tiny. I expect that someone who wanted to work with the full 100x100 pixel space, or even 50x50 pixels, would have a better time of it!
I may see about getting a basic screencap of the moods up at some point, but I'm not sure I'll be uploading all of them individually this time π
Chess (Imperial Theater, New York City, 9/17/25)
Oct. 23rd, 2025 01:37 pmChess is a show I know entirely through the cast recordings; if I recall correctly, it was such a thoroughly Cold War project that the liner notes referred to the two chess players as only "the American" and "the Russian". The new book by Danny Strong turns it into a (even more) melodramatic period piece, with the chess matches not simply a allegory for political tensions or a way of obtaining minor diplomatic concessions but tools for averting World War III. The Arbiter is dragooned as a narrator, who exposits both the global situation and the personal interactions with the characters, partly through a series of very bad and very obvious jokes.
Freddie Trumper, American grandmaster and obnoxious wunderkind, is challenged by Anatoly Sergievesky, mordant, depressed, and engaged in a clandestine flirtation with Freddie's chess second and lover, Florence Vassy. Freddie is notoriously a weak point in the original book, so prone to anti-Communist slurs, misogyny, and temper tantrums it is impossible to extend him much sympathy. The new version mitigates this by giving him bipolar disorder and medical noncompliance, and also by casting Aaron Tveit. Tveit is indeed so good and so charismatic that I was on Freddie's side way more than I expected, although not enough to take self-pity anthem "Pity the Child" seriously. (The rest of the audience seemed less skeptical.) Lea Michele as Florence is just as strong vocally, and almost as strong in terms of acting, though unfortunately without much romantic chemistry with either partner. (The closest any scene comes to a sexual charge is Freddie's sleazy half-assed attempt at persuading Anatoly to throw the game in Act II.) Nicholas Christopher as Anatoly is the weak point in Act I, where I had the same opinion as I had of his Sweeney Todd: he's got the potential to be great, but he isn't quite there yet. He really needs to work on his emoting, which is too flat even for the murderous Sweeney or the dour Anatoly. He is greatly handicapped in Chess by having to affect a Russian accent, which I really hope the production drops. But! He pulled out all stops in Act II, both for the songs and the acting, and won me over with his intensity and vocal power.
So basically: the book is still flawed and they need to cut the runtime, particularly in Act I. This was the second night of previews, so there's still time for changes before the show technically "opens". If we're lucky, they'll start by cutting the topical jokes.
But the point of Chess has never been the book; it is the score full of bangers and power ballads. The music is by ABBA's Benny Andersson and BjΓΆrn Ulvaeus and the lyrics by Ulvaeus and Tim Rice. And the musical performances are GREAT. I am still guiltily fond of the kinda-no-really-very-racist "One Night in Bangkok" (which can plausibly be explained as Freddie's typical white guy take on the city) and which in this production is a camp masterpiece. I am seriously tempted to see the show again just for that.
[pain] further notes on chronic pain statistics
Oct. 24th, 2025 03:51 pmSummary: nobody seems to have done the data analysis I actually want, because data collection is hard and then actually making it internationally comparable ditto, but the proportion of chronic pain cases that are primarily attributable to back pain Of Some Kind seems to be very roughly in the region of 20%-50%, depending.
( Read more... )
"fake it til you make it"
Oct. 22nd, 2025 08:54 pmInstead:
♥ November noveling month is coming; it's year 3 of 50k in Chinese!
♥ Daphne and I got to see the weir being taken down this fall. Neat.
♥ And the wind and waves of an early nor'easter blowing in on the beach.
♥ Marci and I enjoyed an autumn craft fair with lots of crochet and cider donuts!
♥ Next is a Halloween race by the bay; matching sweatshirts may be involved.
The world is a lovely and terrible place.
Quarterly update to check in on my year goals while there's still time to achieve them:
1)
2)
3) reading goal faltered a bit over the summer
4) gave up on
5) restarted and re-stopped
6) finished black dragon diamond painting & started seasonal fox
7) gardens went significantly better than expected
*my plan for the rest of the year is 5% Tron: Ares fic and 95% seasonal Mo Dao Zu Shi fluff
I got a lego tree for the dollhouse; I should build that. Loved doing the poster art for
Got a shirt that says "love everyone" and every time I wear it I am reminded to act more the way I want to be.
(Thus I went with "fake it til you make it" as the subject, but "just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do anything" was a close second.)
[pain] stats (or lack thereof) on causes of chronic pain
Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:35 pmOne of the things I'm sure I've come across repeatedly in the books I've read so far is the idea that a very high proportion of Chronic Pain Cases are down to either back pain or headache. This is important because back pain genuinely is something that has a massive nociplastic component, especially in the lower back, that is unequivocally worth treating (despite myself I remain grudgingly impressed with the Boulder Back Pain Study; and, to be clear, I do myself have a grumbly section of lower back following an injury a few years ago that I am practising all my Theories on!).
This is an Important To Me framing device because my point is that treatments aimed purely at nociplastic pain/central sensitisation cannot be expected to work as well for people with ongoing or recurrent tissue damage/injury... but why it's worth using some of these approaches anyway, with the understanding of the actual scope of what effects to hope for or expect. Which means I'd like to know where they're GETTING those numbers from.
( The Way Out (... long, bonus tangential rant) )
... aaaaaaand it is now definitely past bedtime so I'll finish Revisiting Books tomorrow. (My notes on Explain Pain, consistent with it being generally competent, are that it doesn't go anywhere near talking about what The Most Common Forms Of Chronic Pain are; might have a quick flip through when I'm next in the same place as my copy. Also couldn't find anything in Touch. Will be revisiting the current book, Ouch!, in the morning...)
Anyway here is a cool person I didn't know about before
Oct. 22nd, 2025 06:08 pm
[Image description: Bluesky post by Luke Turner reading "here is a pleasingly anti-fascist animal painted on the Hurricane of gay RAF pilot Ian Gleed", above a picture of Gleed in the cockpit of his plane pointing to the image on its side of a cartoon cat swatting at and destroying a swastika.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gleed (he may have been the fastest RAF pilot to ever make ace, in two days; he was only 26 when he was killed)
Further research by
http://www.hatfield-herts.co.uk/aviation/gleed.html
week 4; stress, sleep and exercise
Oct. 22nd, 2025 06:25 amweek 4; workload
Oct. 21st, 2025 03:11 pmissue #2: i am struggling to find to sit down and work for hours. given i'm commuting and often with a friend, it can be hard to crack down. i feel conflicted about this. doing a little work on trains, that's good. now i'm getting used to the whole rhythm, it is mentally easier to do little bits. but i need concentrated, longer sessions too.
issue #3: everything i'm always running away from. at the moment it's applications. everything is very ewwww right now
issue #1 (extended): do i run the hypothetical scenario i only have one day left, what would i do in that time and only do that? cause it's looking like that might happen if i continue to do all the less effective tasks as i want to. aghhhhh
fic meme!
Oct. 21st, 2025 07:44 pmRules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, βAβ and 'Theβ do not count for 'aβ and βtβ. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.
A β Accidentally in Love (Smallville, Clark/Oliver)
B β better together (MCU, Steve/Tony)
C β close to each other (far from the others) (MCU, Sharon/Maria)
D β Dancing in the Rain (Smallville, Lois/Oliver)
E β the easiest path (isn't always the right one) (9-1-1, Buck/Eddie)
F β fly with me (Smallville/Nolan Batman, Clark/Bruce)
G β getting ready (for our future) (DCEU, Clark/Lois)
H β home for the holidays (MCU, Bucky/Sam)
I β i don't mind falling (as long as you'll catch me) (Smallville, Clark/Lois/Oliver)
J β Just The Way You Are (Smallville, Clark/Oliver)
K β
L β let it snow (Gilmore Girls, Paris/Rory)
M β maybe in the future (you're going to come back) (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Kimberly/Tommy)
N β no tricks, just treats (MCU, Bucky/Sam)
O β on three (he will stay) (DCEU, Diana/Steve)
P β playing pretend (with real feelings) (MCU, Maria/Sam)
Q β
R β Rumor Has It (Smallville, Clark/Oliver)
S β Several Weaknesses ... Only a Few Regrets (Smallville, Lois/Tess)
T β Taking Risks (Smallville, Lois/Lana)
U β underneath the mistletoe (Smallville, Lois/Lana)
V β
W β where you go (i'll follow) (MCU/What If ...?, Peggy/Steve)
X β
Y β you know me (honey, it's all or none) (Smallville, Clark/Oliver)
Z β
21/26! I am surprised I didn't have a fic with the letter "K" but I did find out that I had two fics with the exact same title! Whoops. I also seem to have a lot of fics that start with "i" or variations of that, which I didn't realize until I saw it laid out like that. Also I was reminded how I have written 1/3 of the Clark/Oliver tag on AO3, which is kinda fun. Someone left a comment on one of my fics a couple of months ago (after going through a lot of them) and was like "you are holding the Clark/Oliver tag down" (paraphrasing), which was not something I expected to hear in 2025 but I do love it. :D
Here's the meme for anyone who is interested!