calimac

After a month of overwhelming Stuff, I'm escaping east, on my way to Montreal for Scintillation, though working on Worldcon stuff along the way, as well as other projects. But these are my projects, and I get to look out the window and see beautiful scenery! I am so grateful for the breathing space.

One thing: I'd like to point out the publication of a skiffy book I read in draft and LOVED: Emmet O'Brien's Both Your Houses, criminally cheap at 2.99

Really, all the nifty aspects of SF: a terrific heroine, lots of action, lots of ideas, big far flung governments, aliens . . . wit and verve.

conuly

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

**********************

Link

oursin

Took my wonky knee to the GP this afternoon - the GP, as they are these days, appeared to be about 12 years old from my advanced perspective, but v competent, did a thorough interrogation and examination, and came to the conclusion that it looks very like a damaged meniscus -

- and guess what?

We treat that with PHYSIO! like what I am doing for other assorted bits of anatomy. They are sending letter to appropriate quarters and no doubt it will take 6 months at least to get an appointment.

***

In entirely other news:

An investigation into acts of self-pleasure among parrots and other birds has reached a climax, with the results providing welcome relief for vets and researchers, not to mention the birds themselves.
Bird keepers are often advised to discourage and even punish birds for masturbating, but the study found the activity was more common in the wild than in captivity, with researchers concluding it is part of a bird’s natural behaviour.

I am trying to recall what novel it was in which somebody mentions that the family have a canary (or maybe a budgie?) they have christened Onan because it scatters its seed upon the ground....

'Don't forget to ~~feed~~ pleasure the parrot!!!' (so that nature will not turn sour in its veins.)

lsanderson

Happy meteorological summer!

The rise and fall of Minneapolis-Moline
Created by a 1929 merger of three Midwest manufacturers, Minneapolis-Moline became one of the nation’s largest farm equipment companies and a major Minneapolis employer.
by Paul Nelson
https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2026/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-minneapolis-moline/ ( Read more... )

calimac

On Friday, the Redwood Symphony put on another of its occasional spectacular Sondheim semi-staged productions, this one of A Little Night Music. B. came with me to this one. I was unfamiliar with the show and hadn't heard much of it, and what most struck me on this encounter was how little it sounds like standard-issue Sondheim. His usual ticks are completely absent. I enjoyed most of the music; the closest thing to a catchy song in it is "The Glamorous Life" and the most tiresome and irritating is "A Weekend in the Country," which I had heard before somewhere.

The orchestra - this was Tunick's rarely-heard full symphony orchestration - did very well, but the singers were mixed. Fredrik had a weak voice, and Anne was whiny and annoying, which undercut both the character and the plot. But Desiree (Annmarie Macry) did a good job with "Send in the Clowns," and William Giammona as Carl-Magnus had complete command of his character's infinite self-regard; he was even better than the guy on the original cast recording.

Sunday I headed out to the local area's most popular ethnic event, the Greek festival put on annually by a local Greek Orthodox church in the forlorn hope that attendees might be distracted from the food and the dancing long enough to pay regard to the religion. Instead, I spent two hours eating the like of lamb chops, dolmas, and a new offering of fried cheese (saganaki) that was quite delicious. Having arrived at opening, I was able to get in some of this before the lines became insanely long, and at that point I just left.

However, I did unusually run into someone I knew, and thus spent a considerable part of my eating time in the company of the marketing director from Music@Menlo, whom I've had a lot of professional contact with, plus her husband and two small children, whom I hadn't met before because she doesn't bring them to work. We chatted on a lot of music gossip, such as the appointments of new music directors in both San Francisco and L.A., hopeful signs both of them, and I told stories like how Shostakovich led to the fall of the old San Jose Symphony.

oursin

Happy birthday,

sea_changed!

redbird

Books finished:

Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance. the book covers a lot, with a focus on Machiavelli and on Florence--The idea of a Renaissance, as a goal, was invented in Florence, and tourism has been important to the economy of Florence for centuries. Recommended.

T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Faith. A reread of a romance set in the Temple of the White Rat universe.

Celia Lake, Claiming the Tower. Another romance set in her Albion fantasy history, this takes place during the Crimean War, and the relationship arc is a slowly-developing friendship and then romance between two wonen.

Jenn Lyons, The Sky on Fire. A fantasy novel, set in a world with dragons. The main viewpoint character wanted to be a dragon rider, and instead found herself living on the barely-habitable surface, after what was intended to be been a fatal fall. Politics on multiple levels, as well as relationships. I enjoyed this and am not sure what to say about it. Lyons does a good job of world-building, with a lot of what Jo Walton calls including to avoid the "as you know, Bob" problem of telling the reader things that the characters take for granted. This seems to be a stand-alone book, and I have another of Lyons's books on hold at the library.

Susan Kaye Quinn, editor, Bright Green Futures. An anthology of solarpunk stories. These are mostly near-future stories about living in a climate-changed future, and adapting to aspects of that.

I liked most of the stories. Serena Ulibarri’s “What Kind of Bat Is This?” is about people working on studying and restoring a bit of desert. Danielle Arostegui’s “A Merger in Corn Country” is about farming and finding community as the climate changes and people have to decide whether to relocate. Brightflame’s "Ancestors, Descendants,” is weird and interesting, depicting a few people finding a way to live within a fungally-linked network of plant life at the northeastern edge of the continent (I think North America). “Centipede Station” by T K Rex is set much further in the future, somewhere a long way from Earth. It's anti two people whose starship has crash-landed on some kind of space station. Recommended, though I apparently tried and gave up on one of the author's novels a few years ago.

Celia Lake, Distilling Sunlight. Another Albion book, a romance between a widower with two children, and a woman who has never married, because she never met anyone she wanted to marry, and because she thinks her distractability and tendency to lose track of time would interfere with any serious relationship.

Holly Day, Squirrel Circus. A romance between two "shifters," one a wolf shifter (with a lot more control over the transformation than the typical werewolf, and a squirrel shifter. The two men can smell that they are each other's destined mates, and both think it would be a very bad idea, because wolves tend to kill and eat squirrels. I enjoyed this, but have no immediate impulse to seek out more of Day's work. We never see the titular squirrel circus, but it's a minor plot point. (This book, the Celia Lake romances, and the Courtney Milan book discussed below all contain explicit sex, but this one has an "adults only" warning at the beginning.)

Lois McMaster Bujold, Knot of Shadows. Another Penric and Desdemona novella.

Courtney Milan, A Compendium of Ever-Increasing Mayhem. Romance, and I'm not sure I entirely believe the characters getting together after the man ruined the woman socially years earlier, largely to amuse himself and his friends. (He has changed, but she has trouble believing that.)

Current reading:

I am reading what seems to be the new Penric and Desdemona story, Darklight Dare, on the kindle.

Our current read-aloud book is Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, translated by someone who liked the book enough that he learned French in order to translate it. (We compared this to another translation, and agreed that we preferred this one.)

oursin

Last week's bread held out pretty well, up until the point it became a dried out solid brick.

Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng with yellow bell pepper and Calabrian salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: grated apple, with Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour and maple syrup.

Today's lunch: baby carrots roasted in sunflower + toasted sesame oil, right at end sprinkled with sugar and mirin; baby courgettes white-braised with ginger rather than star anise, no sesame oil; green beans steamed with fennel seeds then tossed in olive oil + tarragon vinegar with a little chopped red onion; large flat mushrooms marinated for approx 30 mins in 50/50% tamari and mirin boiled with with a dash of sesame oil and star anise, then healthy-grilled for 5 minutes or so.

lsanderson

Could Trump’s Iran ‘excursion’ be a bigger global turning point than Vietnam?
The far shorter Middle East war has rapidly revealed the strategic weakness of US firepower in an interconnected world
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/may/31/donald-trump-iran-excursion-vietnam-war

‘It’s never enough’: young Americans struggle to build financial independence as cost of living spikes
A difficult job market and rising costs are making it harder for young adults to enter adulthood
Rainesford Stauffer
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/31/young-adults-financial-independence-affordability-crisis ( Read more... )

andrewducker

Intermittently I would like to bring forward a single instance of a regular payment.

Normally transfer money from A to B on the 17th, but this month you want to do it 2 days early? Tough, you have to make the early payment, wait for the later payment to go through, and then get it transferred back.

andrewducker

Ah, the wonders of nature.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

oursin

Happy birthday,

wonderlandkat!

calimac

I spent much of Saturday attending four politically-oriented panels at the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, all of them in the rented facility of the Freight and Salvage stage.

I was unfamiliar with the names of any of the participants, but they turned out mostly to be authors of books, usually non-fiction, on the topics of their panels. But the subjects interested me.

The first panel was something of a damp squib. Titled "Mindful Democracy," it was full of activists who said that democracy wasn't, or shouldn't be, a war between two hostile tribes, but a communitarian act of compassion and connection. But they offered no way to get there from here, or to solve the mutual suspicions that characterize our political world.

The second, though, was a dazzler. The topic was detention of immigrants, and the highlight speaker, buttressed by the others, was a historian from Stanford named Ana Raquel Minian, who argued that detention of immigrants is a long-standing US practice and who summarized her book tracing that history back to 1900. I was impressed enough with Minian's speaking that I went to the sales table afterwards and bought that book, titled In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention.

Moderator for this panel was a local named Piper Kerman, whom I didn't know by name but who turned out to be the author of the original book of Orange is the New Black.

The other panels, all like the second full of hard advice on what to do about it, featured the topics of press freedom (support independent journalism) and academic freedom. Particularly excoriating speakers in the latter, notably UCB professor Hatem Bazian, who ran off the rails a few times but who was most impressive saying that public education is a public good that should not leave students shivering in debt and consequently fearing to speak out because of potential damage to their careers.

andrewducker

Children are having a very loud conversation with each other on the bus about where babies come from.

I'm hiding three rows back.

sturgeonslawyer

Hugo Novel Nominee #2

This book has a delightfully odd structure, with three types of chapter ... or maybe four.

The protagonist of what appears to be the man story is Zelungo "Zelu" Onyenezi-Oyedele, a woman born in America of Nigerian parents -- an Igbo father and a Yoruban mother. There is a slight tension from the fact that mother is a princess and the Igbo proudly have no kings.

When she was a fairly young child, Zelu climbed a tree in the back yard that proved to be rotten from the inside due to borer beetles; she fell and broke her spine, paralyzing her from the waist down. She has therefore been protected most of her life by her parents and four siblings.

When we first meet her, however, she is teaching a workshop in writing at a Chicago college. This chapter is the only one told by Zelu in first person; it is also the first of many titled "Interview: ," giving a variety of perspectives of Zelu and her story as told by numerous other characters.

Shortly after, we encounter her in the Bahamas, at the wedding of one of her sisters. Three fateful things occur here: She gets a phone call from her supervisor at the college informing her that she has been fired; she gets another from her agent informing her that her novel has been rejected for the nth time; and she meets Msizi, who will wind up being her life partner.

But not yet.

In a fit of depression, Zelu, who has never cared for "sci-fi," begins writing a novel called Rusted Robots, a story about a robot named Ankara in a post-apocalyptic scenario where humanity has wiped itself off the face of the Earth, leaving robots to try to mend the mess we have made.

Over a period of a couple of years, she finishes Rusted Robots and gives it to her agent, who enthuses wildly and gives it to publishers for a bidding auction, resulting in a three-book, high-seven-figure contract.

She is contacted by Hugo, a scientist at MIT, who lost both is legs in an accident and has built himself a set of amazing prosthetics and has now designed exoskeletal prostheses for paraplegics. Would she like to be a test subject?

She would.

Her family thinks she's crazy.

She goes, and they work wonderfully.

And ... that's enough summary. It's very light summary of what's gone so far, and not very far into the book. But I must say what the chapter types, other than "Interview," are. The second type, not surprisingly, are third-person narrative of Zelu's story.

The third chapter type, is chapters of Rusted Robots -- which proves to be quite a fascinating story in itself, and reflects back in multiple ways on Zelu's life (as one would expect).

Then there's the last chapter. This is a huge spoiler, not for plot but for theme: so don't read the next paragraph if you don't want to know.

( Last warning )

Five out of five people who love you so much you can't breathe.

sturgeonslawyer

There's probably nothing much new to be said about this play, and especially by someone who, at my age, has just read it for the first time.

It begins well, continues well, and ends well. Perhaps the ending comes a bit too easily. That's my only gripe.

Four out of five remarkably easy-to-recognize rings.

sturgeonslawyer

Hugo Novel Nominee #1

The first thing we meet is the title of part one of the book: "The First Death of Una Everlasting."

Professor Owen Mallory, a more-or-less harried and mild-mannered junior professor of history (and accidental war hero) at a college in the polity known only as Dominion, is vying with a colleague for the only endowed faculty position in Middle Dominion Studies. A book appears on his desk which, until it does, he would have assumed did not exist.

It is, or appears to be, the earliest version of the legend of Una Everlasting, the knight who, in service to Queen Yvanne, united the Dominion brought peace to the land, and slew the last dragon. He brings it away from the college to a peaceful place where he begins translating it and sends the first pages to a different colleague, his mentor, when to his shock the book vanishes, replaced only by a card bearing an address and no name.

Mallory, with some hesitation, goes to the address, to find himself faced with Vivian Rolfe a high government minister, who, after some discussion, stabs his hand and causes his blood to drip on the book. He falls backward into time, to a clearing beneath a yew tree, where he meets none other than Una Everlasting.

Sir Una has been sent by Queen Yvanne on her final mission, to slay the last dragon and get from its cave the grail that will cure the queen's fatal illness. But Una has no interest in doing this; she has returned to her childhood home intending to die there.

Mallory, gradually, brings her back to her sense of duty and they set out together for the Cloven Hill, where she slays the dragon and gets the grail. They return to the castle, where Dominion's foes have prepared an ambush. Thanks to the three shots remaining in Mallory's pistol (I did say he was a war hero) and Una's extraordinary fighting skill, they defeat the enemy and are led to the Queen's chamber.

Here Una places the grail into Yvanne's hands. A few drops of wine are placed in the cup, she drinks them, and arises from her bed, miraculously cured (or so it would seem0: but at that moment the knight who has been closest to Una attacks her from her blind side, and, though she does kill him, she is fatally wounded.

Mallory realizes that Yvanne is actually Vivian Rolfe; she hustles him away and explains to him how important to the history of Dominion it will always already have been, that he finish writing what will turn out to be the book he received. When he isn't cooperative she sends him back, telling him he won't remember any of it.

And that's the first part. After that it gets complicated.

I started very much prejudiced against The Everlasting because, not only is it a romantasy (of sorts, anyway): it appears at first to be a rather tired retread of the time-loop theme. But it redeems the first and does new and interesting things with the latter. It's worthy Hugo nominee material.

Five out of five cantankerous horses.

sturgeonslawyer

William Blake: engraver, poet, artist, and visionary. Many of the "illuminations" in these books were partially or completely designed by Blake's wife, Catharine (nWilliam Blake: engraver, poet, artist, and visionary. Many of the "illuminations" in these books were partially or completely designed by Blake's wife, Catharine (née Boucher), but there is a continuity to them that suggests that she either shared his vision or subjected herself to it.

And it was a strange vision indeed. The books wander afar in their topics, and sometimes leave the main road entirely (as with the "Songs of Innocense and Experience"), but there is a general sense of a personal mythology, which grows in size and complexity as Blake grows in skill and age.

At its center are four "Zoas," a word which appears to come from Greek meaning "living creatures." They are:

Urizen - reason, logic, and law; represengin the rational, but restrictive and oppresive, aspects of mind.
Luvah - emotion, passion, and love
Tharmas - sensation and the physical body
Urthona - imagination and art

Each of the Zoas has other names, with the possible exception of Urizen; Urthona, for example, is usually referred to as Los in the material world.

The four Zoas were originally one being, the "Universal Man," Albion, who became selfish and divided. Then the Zoas warred against one another and humanity in general became lost. Some of this is, apparently, covered in Blake's longest poem, "Vala, or the Four Zoas," which was not an Illuminated Book, and is so not included in this eBook.

The two earliest inclusion are All Religions Are One and There Is No Natural Religion, both from 1788, and both quite short. The key proposition of the former is that "The Religions of all Nation are derived from each Nation's different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is everywhere call'd the Spirit of Prophecy;" the latter argues that "...God becomes as we are , that we may be as he is." They re both visually fairly primitive, consisting by and large of line drawings with the text simply inserted.

But the following year brought The Book of Thel, a huge step forward; and 1790 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which the imagery is bolder, more complex, and colored, and the text is wild and choppy. One brief sample will do.

The voice of the Devil

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following Errors.
That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a Soul.
That Energy, calld Evil, is alone from the Body & that Reason, calld Good, is alone from the Soul.
That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his Energies.

But the following Contraries to these are true
Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
Energy is the only life and is from the Body nd Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy
Energy is Eternal Delight

This has gotten hugely long for a review already, and I have to admit that I didn't understand a great deal, especially in the later books. If I ever read them again I think I will have to find a good guidebook first.

Four out of five senses.

oursin

‘There is no way to stop this’: ‘Biotech Barbie’ Cathy Tie on her mission to genetically modify babies

Gene editing has the power to alter the trajectory of human evolution for ever; the direction it takes will depend on who wields the editing tools. “There is no public funding available for researchers in the space,” Tie explains. “Everything is privately funded.” It’s up to entrepreneurs to demonstrate the potential benefits for humankind, she says, so regulators may soften their hardline stance and allow them to rewrite human DNA.

O gee, we wonder why that is, and whether that is because it is flim-flam.

Also, just look at the people who are funding this, and we think that this is the C21st equivalent of Citizen Kane trying to make his mistress an opera star.

And as for this, I don't think she can really get away from it?

“Eugenics is a very heavy word,” Tie says just before taking questions from the floor. “I would prefer to stop throwing that word around.”

Can't help thinking this is another version of that thing I posted earlier this week about the supposition that you can make a quick 'n easy path to Big Desirable Scientific Breakthrough -

- and somehow I have been thinking all week about Charles Darwin moseying around the Galapagos, and over the subsequent decades gradually evolving the theory of evolution....

Unfortunately 'The Big Idea' on AI children as the future of reproduction is not yet online.

I also think of the fairly parlous state even in relatively advanced countries of women's ability to reliably control their fertility, have high-quality safe obstetrical care, etc, issues around children' nutrition, early years care, education....

But I guess these things do not have a gosh-wow factor.

lsanderson

Chicago-to-Minneapolis United Airlines flight diverted after attempted cockpit breach
Plane landed in Wisconsin and ‘unruly passenger’ was taken into custody before flight continued to Minnesota
Edward Helmore
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/30/chicago-minneapolis-united-airlines-flight-diverted-attempted-cockpit-breach

Why $1bn in Balkans energy contracts are going to an obscure company connected to Donald Trump
Guardian investigation shows how US presidency blurs line between policy and enrichment of American ruling family and those around it
Tom Burgis in Sarajevo
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/30/why-1bn-in-balkans-energy-contracts-are-going-to-an-obscure-company-connected-to-donald-trump ( Read more... )

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calimac

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Reading

On the train . . .

Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Knee bone connected to the shin-bone....

2026.06.01

two outings

(no subject)

recent(ish) reading

Culinary

2026.05.31

Banking functionality I would like

Photo cross-post

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Bay Area Book Festival

Life with two kids: bus chat

Nnedi Okorafor: Death of the Author (2026-37)

William Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well (2026-36)

Alex E. Harrow: The Everlasting (2026-35)

William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books (2026-34)

I was reading this sf years ago, and it did not turn out well

2026.05.30

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June 2026

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