Yom Kippur

Oct. 5th, 2025 11:50 am
liv: In English: My fandom is text obsessed / In Hebrew: These are the words (words)
[personal profile] liv
Content note: mentions antisemitic murders and police violence. I personally am completely safe, I'm only talking about dealing with news.

It's around midday Yom Kippur. I'm leading the morning service with a tiny community in the southwest corner of England. There's a slight hiatus as this congregation only have two Torah scrolls, so we have to roll through from the first reading in Exodus to the second reading in Leviticus, saving the second scroll for the afternoon reading from Deuteronomy. (In this community, like most of the Progressive world, our second reading is Leviticus 19, not the verses that are sometimes used as clobber texts to support homophobia.) While there's milling about, the volunteers running the tech for Zoom approach me at the bimah and let me know that there has been an attack in a synagogue in Manchester.

reactions ) Also, I am deeply grateful for the kind people who checked in with me personally when they heard the news, and for all the leaders, Muslim, Christian and civic, who sent messages of support to the Jewish community and continue to be in solidarity with us.

(no subject)

Oct. 5th, 2025 01:02 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] foxinsand!

Photo cross-post

Oct. 5th, 2025 05:10 am
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[personal profile] andrewducker


Just had to ask what was going on.

Sophia told me "There's a spider in the bathroom"
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

More Soothing YouTube Videos

Oct. 4th, 2025 02:33 pm
jesse_the_k: Head inside a box, with words "Thinking inside the box" scrawled on it. (thinking inside the box)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

No embeds this time, just links.

Everyone is calm and competent and cooperative

[profile] calamitykim1 is a 20-something woman who loves driving big rigs and fixing machinery and narrates as she goes, but autocraptions. In September 2025, she drives a tractor trailer through small-town Britain, carrying a piece of metal so large it requires a police escort—her typical length is 30 minutes. Moving traffic, but no flashing lights.

Ocean Creatures

[profile] exploreoceans features both livestreams and highlight reels. Super soothing is the 2025 Highlights of Pacific Walruses Hauling Out on a Beach—no narration or music, just surf on the beach and moaning walruses for 25 minutes. It’s part of the explore.org network, which I discovered via their delightful Fat Bear Week contest.

Admire Our Planet from Space

I love [profile] astronauticast’s 3-5 minute timelapse compilations from the International Space Station. They’re compiled by ISAA, the Italian Space and Astronautics Association. They travel at a steady rate over various parts of our globe, with a handy reference diagram in the upper left corner. Witness hundreds of thunderstorms from the west coast of Mexico all the way to Portugal. Admire auroras and airflows above North America. I shouldn’t have been surprised that deserts are readily visible because so few clouds. No words—pleasant classical-ish music.

Surprise Birthday Brahms!

Oct. 4th, 2025 04:33 pm
oursin: Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing in his new coat (Brush the wandering hedgehog dancing)
[personal profile] oursin

When I turned on my clock radio - which I do on Saturdays to ensure that the time is co-ordinating with the radio time-signal - Radio 3 was playing the finale to Brahms Violin Concerto.

Joy!

Well, this has been an up and downy year as ever, but I am beginning to poke my nose out of my hole. I am still Doing Stuff, even if various projects seem to have got bogged down (not just on my side ahem ahem).

Anyway, in accordance with tradition, I pass round virtual rich dark gingerbread (and also gluten-free, diabetic-friendly, etc, versions), sanitive madeira (eschewing Duke of Clarence jokes) and other beverages of choice, and lift a glass to dr rdrz.

Birthday in Maui

Oct. 4th, 2025 12:39 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila
I spent my birthday on my own in Maui after the conference I attended there, and I had a brilliant time.*

My birthday treat to myself was a boat trip to Molokini crater to snorkel with the fishes, and to Turtle Town off Wailea Point to swim with the sea turtles. I got really lucky with the weather, and Cap'n Doug sailed us around the far side of Molokini so we could see the sea bird nesting sites. Then we pulled into the harbour and we were allowed to jump in the water. I don't have a waterproof camera and I also don't feel too secure snorkeling without a boogie board in hand, so I've no photos of that. But the visibility was incredible, like I remember from Hanauma Bay as a kid. I saw a tube fish and a giant parrot fish. I followed her around for a bit, listening to her chomp the coral and seeing her make sand. I saw wrasse and tangs, sea urchins and crabs, and of course the legendary Humuhumunukunukuapua'a, from whom Eldest gets her moniker. It's colourful, pugnacious, and territorial. Mmhmm.

20250922_095731
[Approach to Molokini crater.]

20250922_100419
[Seabird nesting sites round the back of Molokini.]

Turtle Town offered excellent fish viewing in the water as well, although to be honest it was much better watching the turtles from the boat as the view was clearer and they got quite close to the bow, where you're not allowed to snorkel.

20250922_122638
[Sea turtle next to the tour boat.]

There were lots of older retired couples on the boat - because who else can afford $200+ plus tips for a five hour boat trip - and I could see them looking sidelong at me until finally when we were eating lunch someone sidled up to me and after some desultory introductions, asked if I was scared to travel alone. Hahaha. Nope! Very happy by myself, tyvm.

I pootled back to the hotel in the convertible Mustang** I’d hired with the top down, although “pootled” doesn’t feel like quite the right word for travelling in an absurdly ostentatious car. I had a shower to get all the sand off, liberally slathered on the after-sun, and got dressed again. I had a couple of chats with family and friends. I got myself a cold drink at the 808 market and wandered down to watch my last Maui sunset on this trip.

I got changed into a nice dress and spoke to the family before hopping in the car again to take myself to dinner: Isana in Kihei. I ingested a heroic quantity of nigiri (choice bits pictured below) and part of a silly cocktail (because driving, and that thing was strong).

Sushi under the cut because raw fish isn't everyone's cup of tea )

I plucked up the courage to ask my waiter a very odd question. I explained to him that I’d grown up in Hawai’i, and I had happy memories of eating something we called “stinky pickle sushi” which you obviously cannot put on a menu in a nice restaurant. After he’d finished guffawing, I explained that it was pickled daikon radish in a maki roll. He said he would go ask the chef if he knew about this.

Two minutes later, he returned, placed a small black dish in front of me, and said, “Yes, chef is from Japan, he knows this ingredient. Is this it?” I popped the bright yellow rectangle into my mouth and clapped my hands with joy. The waiter returned to place my stinky pickle nori roll order. And that, my friends, was my final brave birthday treat to myself: procuring a sushi roll I have not tasted for over twenty years.

20250922_203657
[Behold: stinky pickle maki]

* Sorry, family! We would have had a brilliant time together, too. But this conference happens during the school year, and so I was on my own. I love you guys. I also love time to myself.
** I actually wanted to hire the Mazda Miata but they didn’t have any, and also the hire car person said my giant battered old Briggs & Riley suitcase would not have fit in the boot anyway.


THE END.

Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz

Oct. 4th, 2025 11:01 am
steepholm: (Default)
[personal profile] steepholm
When I was learning to read, my parents got hold of a rhyming ABC book. It was American, and inevitably I was frustrated by the final page. I don't think it was Dr Seuss's ABC, but we had quite a few of his, and his ABC illustrates the problem well enough.

Big Z, little z,
What rhymes with Z?
I do.
I am a Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz
As you can plainly see.


Why, I asked, has this book abandoned its rhyme scheme at the final hurdle, having been so strict about it hitherto? My parents, as I remember, hastily changed the subject. The loss of Britain's cultural hegemony was not, after all, a subject for the nursery, especially just before bedtime.

Later, of course, I learned the awful truth about the American pronunciation of the letter I had always known as Zed. Later still, it started to seep into British usage. I think that the phrase "Generation Z" was really the death-knell for Zed, already battered by the popularity of various rapper names, etc. In the mouth of a young person, especially, Zed will soon sound like a hipsterish affectation. Although it will probably be tolerated from elderly people such as myself, it will be at best a charming throwback to a former age, much like a penchant for the works of Vera Lynn.

Two (long) recent YouTube videos that I watched show this process in action. Both had their British presenters (one in his thirties, the other in his forties) pronounce the letter Z inconsistently. First Shaun, in his latest (excellent) analysis of the book The War on Science, starts with Zee, then goes to Zed, then back to Zee. Meanwhile, Simon from Cracking the Cryptic is equally unstable, saying Zed, Zee and then Zed again, while taking a frustratingly long time to notice that "NZ lamb dish rats" is an anagram of "Brahms and Liszt". Neither appeared to notice his own inconsistency. And why should they? In the grand scheme of things, etc....

But I do draw the line (of course, there is always a line) at British people and Australians saying "Dragonball Zee", especially if they are also fluent in Japanese and are thus aware that the Japanese pronunciation of that character is actually "Zetto". Yes, Trash Taste boys, I'm looking at you.

The Friday Five on a Friday x2

Oct. 3rd, 2025 10:57 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila
20251002_105849
[HELLO I AM COMET AND I AM TOO CLOSE]

  1. Do you ever wonder if the way you see things visually aren't how other people see them?

    Frequently. My partner and I sometimes have very different perceptions of certain colours (and no, he’s not red-green colour-blind).

  2. What kind of sounds are the most annoying?

    Sounds I didn’t choose to hear, ha. Seriously, though, I quite often put my noise-cancelling headphones on with nothing coming through them, just to block out background sound.

  3. When walking through a store, do you shop with your hands by touching/feeling the texture of things?

    I *want* to do that all the time. I’m very sensitive to touch. I restrain myself most of the time unless it seems like it is OK (like in a clothing shop). I suspect I’d get thrown out of places if I went round running my hands over veg, freshly baked goods or pick-n-mix for example.

  4. If you could only smell three scents for the rest of your life, what would they be?

    My cats’ fur when they come in from outside on a cold day. Black Opium by YSL. My partner’s armpits. I am not joking.

  5. What sorts of things do you savor when eating them?

    Everything! I love food so much. I especially love very cold fruit juices on a hot day or with a sore throat, the velvety texture of a good chocolate mousse, and the salty satisfaction of slurping ramen noodles.


Last week's FF )

Omniumgatherum

Oct. 3rd, 2025 02:56 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

In case this has passed dr rdrz by, it is now possible for ordinary people to register for access to JSTOR's massive collection of scholarly resources.

***

This month's freebie from the University of Chicago Press is Courtenay Raia, The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle on psychical research.

***

Okay, I know I was going off at people getting all up in the woowoo about the Pill, but this is a bit grim about Depo-Provera: Pfizer sued in US over contraceptive that women say caused brain tumours. I was raising my eyebrows at this:

Pfizer argues that it tried to have a tumour warning attached to the drug’s label but this was rejected by the US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company said in its court filings: “This is a clear pre-emption case because FDA expressly barred Pfizer from adding a warning about meningioma risk, which plaintiffs say state law required.”

and going hmmm, because there was a huge furore in the 70s in the UK about Depo-Provera and what sections of the population were actually being put on it, i.e. there was a whole ethnicity/discrimination pattern going on, and I would not be entirely astonished to find out that there were programmes in certain US states which were maybe no longer sterilising 'the unfit' (though I'm not sure I'd bet good money on it) but blithely applying long-acting hormonal contraception instead.

***

And also in the realm of reproductive control: Of embryos and vaccines: If you REALLY want to protect the unborn... on rubella. Abortion historian notes that one reason (apart from thalidomide) for resurgence of abortion activism in UK in early 60s had been a German measles epidemic.... Also recall that my sister - who like me was not of a generation that routinely got this vaccine in childhood - when she fell pregnant with her first getting tested in the antenatal clinic to see if she needed to get the jab stat (in fact, she had high level of antibodies, so maybe we'd all had German measles among all our other many childhood ailments and barely noticed....)

***

Something more agreeable: the Royal School of Needlework's Stitch Bank:

RSN Stitch Bank is a free resource designed to preserve the art of hand embroidery through digitally conserving and showcasing the wide variety of the world’s embroidery stitches and the ways in which they have been used in different cultures and times. Now containing over 500 stitches, each stitch entry contains information about its history, use and structure as well as a step-by-step method with photographs, illustrations and video.

***

Asking good questions is harder than giving great answers: this so resonated with my experience as an archivist: 'often when people ask for help or information, what they ask for isn't what they actually want'.

***

Many years ago I used to go to a restaurant- Le Bistingo in South Ken, as I recall - that had a cartoon pinned on the wall depicting a chef bodily ejecting a diner. Waiter to observers: 'He Attempted To Add Salt'. This was rather my reaction to this particularly WTF 'You Be The Judge': Should my partner stop hankering after salt and pepper shakers?

Why do you need salt and pepper on the table, haven't you seasoned the food adequately? (oh, and btw, Gene, as a comment remarks, salt has naturally antiseptic properties*).

*I remember some historical drama of Ye Medeevles on the telly in my youth about dousing somebody's flogged back in salt water (?or rubbing it with salt) to stop it festering.

(no subject)

Oct. 3rd, 2025 09:46 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] quartzpebble!

Going a-bloomsburying

Oct. 2nd, 2025 06:16 pm
oursin: The stylised map of the London Underground, overwritten with Tired of London? Tired of Life! (Tired of London? Tired of Life!)
[personal profile] oursin

So yestere'en there was a get-together for the Fellows of the institution I have had the honour to be award a Fellowship of, so I thought I ought to Make The Effort and turn up at least for a little bit.

So I trotted off, and in spite of some hitches with the Tube (several trains going to the wrong branch) got to the right stop, and lo, the Scientologists are still infesting Tottenham Court Road, what is this thing that this thing is?

So I crossed the road, going, surely the traffic flow used to be one-way? Confusing.

And went down a side-street, and came to this lovely and surprising thing, which I am sure wasn't there last time I was in these parts, early in 2020:

Alfred Place Gardens

and was charmed.

Then on to venue, where everything seems same as it ever was.

Hearing aids still not optimum in room full of overlapping conversations: but I did manage to have some fairly coherent conversations, including one with old academic acquaintance who was most gratifyingly complimentary about The Biography, all these years later.

So I think a win, even if I did suppose that this event would also include some admin stuff relating to Fellowship, which it didn't.

oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished The Literary Life of Rebecca West, felt a bit meh about it.

Also finished The Military Philosophers, which is more of Nick Jenkins being in the backwaters of the War while other people die in theatres of war or he remembers dead people. Isobel (wife) actually got to be on stage and have a few lines.

Then, largely because there had been some discussion on [personal profile] troisoiseaux's DW about his works, picked up Dick Francis, Longshot (1990), as it happened to be in a conveniently accessible spot on my shelves; and then went straight on to Come To Grief (this features Sid Halley, who is I think the nearest Francis came to a series protag) (1995); To the Hilt (1996); and 10lb Penalty (1997), which were adjacent. This kind of back to back read really shows up an author's recurrent tropes (quite apart from the hosses and the hero getting painfully done over), like, the mostly quasi-father-son relationships, the quietly competent women minor characters etc etc. The last of this run was the weakest - it's a bit odd, to say the least, to have a plot which is all about politics and Parliamentary ambitions which is rather, um, coy, about actual political allegiances. Francis is very more-ish, though. Interesting that these do not all of them bring things to a tidy conclusion. (I wonder if this is the sort of thing that disappoints the once-a-year on the beach reader?)

Preordered and turned up yesterday, JA Jance, The Girl from Devil's Lake (Joanna Brady, #21) (2025), which, alas, does one of my least favourite crime novel tropes: serial killer with substantial portions of narrative being in their POV.

On the go

Have just picked up, because I felt like it, okay? Rebecca West, This Real Night (1984)

Up next

No idea.

1SE for September 2025

Sep. 30th, 2025 11:33 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila


I took some liberties with the dates in this 1SE video so I could put in more footage from Maui. There are also a lot of cats. Not all of them are our cats. No one tell Astro and Comet.
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

I do feel, Lee Child, that this categorisation is a bit simple:

But I think it’s nuts that people think genre is easier than reaching a very small and reliable audience. Some good, middle-class Julian Barnes or Martin Amis reader, they don’t expect to be 100% satisfied with a book. They put it down and start the next one. When you’re a bestseller, you’ve got to satisfy the person that reads one book a year on the beach. If you leave him disappointed, he may never read another book.

(Quite apart from the weird class thing going on.)

Okay, I read a lot and I very very seldom expect to be 100% satisfied with a book, but the ones that ring the bell are all over the place. I won't say I expect to be satisfied by a book but you know, Middlemarch exists, Tam Lin exists, The Fountain Overflows exists, etc etc, I can always hope.

And what do we mean by being satisfied by a book anyway? I was in Slow Motion Trainwreck Relationship with a person who had some very weird stuff going on about reading and what they would or would not read and somehow being afraid of investing time in reading a book that might not be Right. It was not about satisfaction precisely, it was about having some internal template a book had to match.

Actually I suppose this rather went with making the occasional askance expressions and noises at the kind of things that I was reading, because I may not be entirely indiscriminate in what I read but I do have to be reading something and I will give quite a lot of things A Go.

I also wonder how one fits into the above paradigm people who do read a lot but want the exact same thing with just slight changes, which is also a market that bestsellers aim at, surely?

Also, are there literally people who only read one book a year when they're on holiday (and probably on the plane rather than the beach)?

On another paw (how many have I got up to?) there is Uncle Matthew in The Pursuit of Love who would never read anything (except for Country Life, presumably, if he found the chub-fuddler there) after the transcendant experience that was White Fang.

spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- The State of the Me: v. tired. Nothing dreadful, merely too "geriatric" to support regular heavy menstruation. My family: dragging the average age of menopause waaay up since forever, lmao.

- Futuristic lolibobs: an attempt will soon be made on at least four islands in a week. Might be awol for a while. I haven't sent you to Coventry, and aten't ded (probably).

- Ghosts of lolibobs past: I can't stop thinking about these three wholly unrelated things...

1. Those British seaside food kiosks that hedge their weather-related bets with cheery signs for "ice cream" on one side of the window and "hot food" on the other. I'm now imagining a typical British holidaymaker emerging from the front of the queue with a whippy cone in one hand and boiling tea in the other, lol.

2. While changing trains in Cardiff with time to spare I wandered out of the station to see what I miss when I'm in a hurry and there's a wonderful statue of headmistress Betty Campbell, the first Black headteacher in Wales, which has been there since 2021. It's a realistic depiction, by sculptor Eve Shepherd, of Campbell literally larger than life, at 4m (13ft), and surrounded by equally well-sculpted local children, mostly reading. The inscription on the back quotes Campbell: "We were a good example to the rest of the world, how you can live together regardless of where you come from or the colour of your skin." - "Roedden ni'n esiampl dda i weddill y byd o sut y gallwn gyd-fyw beth bynnag yw eich gwreiddiau neu liw eich croen.". Campbell was chosen as the subject in a public vote, ahead of other women such as poet Cranogwen, suffragette Margaret Haig Thomas, Labour Party organiser Elizabeth Andrews, and anthropologist Elaine Morgan, so it was a significant sign of widespread respect in addition to the honour of a public statue in Central Square, next to one of the busiest pedestrian street crossings in Cardiff.

Images of the Betty Campbell statue (wikimedia).

3. There's gNo place like gnHome. Still thinking about the bare grass expanse hosting Llarge Llandudno LLandudgnomes around the base of supports for a street name sign rooted in the lawn of a suburban garden, and the way the gnomes weren't blocking the sign but enhancing it: displayed like a collection in an open air museum; prompting viewers to acknowledge the gnomes in a commentary on suburban culture, subverting passing glances like a Banksy, or like being Rick-rolled by traditional genii loci ("never gonna give you up"); or an accumulation of gifts after one or two were initially placed by the gnHome-owner.

Llarge Llandudno Gnomes

Surrounding a street sign on a suburban lawn,
huddled like a team playing capture the flag,
arrayed like an army of watchful guards,
clotted like antibodies against invasion,
aggregated like pebbles set in concrete,
clumped in a clod like earth elementals,
clustered like petals round the disc of a daisy,
a constellation of gnomic gods.

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