February: Aliens Made Them Do It
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trope_of_the_monthAmnesty is over!
The theme for February is Aliens Made Them Do It. For the purposes of this theme "it" doesn't have to be sex; if you want to write about aliens (or other similar beings) forcing characters to cook or dance or play chess, go right ahead!
Posting guidelines are here, and if you have any recs or prompts you'd like to share, you can leave them in the comments using the templates below:
For recs:
For prompts:
This theme will last until 28th February.
The theme for February is Aliens Made Them Do It. For the purposes of this theme "it" doesn't have to be sex; if you want to write about aliens (or other similar beings) forcing characters to cook or dance or play chess, go right ahead!
Posting guidelines are here, and if you have any recs or prompts you'd like to share, you can leave them in the comments using the templates below:
For recs:
For prompts:
This theme will last until 28th February.
Today in class...
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 06:00 pmbuttonsbeadslacewe did some prep for the B2 proficiency level exam that we're going to be taking at the end of February, for which we read an exerpt from Corazón Tan Blanco by Javier Marías. The point was that there were some words missing and we had to fill them in, multiple choice, and that went all right. But I don't even care about that because I had some sort of epiphany about past tenses, the way that they're used in this exerpt is so skillful. There's one bit that just blew away. But to tell you more details, I first have to tell you that this exerpt is about a suicide.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
(no subject)
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 11:48 amperfect_trinary posting in small_fandomsTitle: The Joy of Voyeurism
Fandom: Gourmet Gamer
Content Notes: None applicable
"Rim, why do you like making food for people so much, even if you can't taste it?"
It was Saturday, and Mellina had invited Rim and the other REAL players to hang out again. Rim, of course, had volunteered to let everyone stay at his place while he cooked a delicious dinner.
"Well, it's… I can't let my cooking skills fade away, right? And, when I see someone eating my food, and looking super happy, it's almost like I'm eating the food along with them!"
"Food voyeur," Mellina chuckled to herself as soon as she thought of the name."
Fandom: Gourmet Gamer
Content Notes: None applicable
"Rim, why do you like making food for people so much, even if you can't taste it?"
It was Saturday, and Mellina had invited Rim and the other REAL players to hang out again. Rim, of course, had volunteered to let everyone stay at his place while he cooked a delicious dinner.
"Well, it's… I can't let my cooking skills fade away, right? And, when I see someone eating my food, and looking super happy, it's almost like I'm eating the food along with them!"
"Food voyeur," Mellina chuckled to herself as soon as she thought of the name."
(no subject)
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 09:09 pmswingandswirl
Challenge #8
Talk about your creative process.
You know, I don't think I've ever sat down and thought through my creative process before. This should be fun.
My solo-written fic, as opposed to my cowrites (/waves to
rhi , ilyena_sylph , t_vo0810 and others/) is one of two kinds, usually: either it's written for an exchange fic, or a bunny ups and grabs me. When I sign up for exchanges, I try and craft my sign-up to get specific recipients, although I try and make sure that I can write for all potential recipicients. (I've only hit 'oh God no DEFAULT' levels of DNW a couple of times, which considering my Cursed Exchange Luck, I'm pretty proud of.) Once I get my assignment, I sit with the prompt that calls to me the most, and see what kind of story I can create that fits both the wordcount requirement and what the recip wants. Depending on how much plot there is, I throw myself on rhi's mercy for help, lol.
Once I've figured out what the story is, then I write it. Very rarely, I finish my first draft before deadline; usually I'm butting right up to it. (Being several hours ahead is a wonderful thing, sometimes. It feels like a sneaky little extension, lol.) I use the period between submission deadline and reveals to edit and polish my fic, although (thankfully) I write very clean drafts so there's rarely all that much editing, SPAG aside, to do. Sometimes my brain is a hunk of mouldy cheese and poor
rhi has to talk me down and remind me that I am a good writer and my fic will look better once I have had a snack and a nap. When it comes to non-exchange fic, it usually starts with a bunny nibbling on me. Once the nibbling becomes too hard to ignore, I sit down and write - sometimes just scenes, sometimes snippets, sometimes whole-ass fic. Then I let the for-publishing stuff sit for a few days before going back over it, then getting it beta'd.
Regardless of whether it's exchange fic or for my own satisfaction, there's one step of the process I find utterly loathsome: titles. There's a reason most of my fics have either lyrics or quotes for titles - titling is the worst, even harder than summaries. I am in awe of people who find it easy. But works need titles, alas, and so far I've somehow managed, lol.
And that's my creative process! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have.
Things
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 03:29 pmoursinLike they would have painted a sinister sixth finger (come on down Mr Cromwell insisting on the warts): Hidden detail found in Anne Boleyn portrait was ‘witchcraft rebuttal’, say historians. Hmmm. Oh yeah? Am cynical.
***
Overlooked women artists (maybe I will mosey on down to the Courtauld....): The Courtauld’s riveting, revelatory and deeply researched show of ten lost female painters looks afresh at the golden age of British landscape art:
Some of Mary Smirke’s pictures were ascribed to her brother and Elizabeth Batty’s entire output was assumed to have been her son’s.
***
Men are poor stuff. Men are terribly poor stuff. Men covertly filming women at night and profiting from footage, BBC finds.
***
The Black Beauty in the White House: this is actually about the famous horse book, which was written in a house of that name. In Norfolk.
This is the story of a child from a coastal town in Norfolk, who would go on to influence life around the world and who is just as famous today. Not Horatio Nelson, but rather Anna Sewell, the author of Black Beauty. She managed to not only influence the lives of people but also horses (and possibly many other animals as well) with the story, published only a few months before her death.
***
This looks fascinating though I need to read it a lot more closely: Right place, right time: Luck, geography, and politics:
On 12th May 2020, Mass Observation collected c5,000 diaries from people across the UK. Many of these diaries mention luck and many of these luck stories are geography stories. Geographers, though, have not written much about luck. In this article, I review the literature on luck from within and beyond geography to construct a working definition and geographical approach to luck. The working definition describes luck as chance, fortuitous, unexpected events that were beyond the control of those for whom they are now significant. The geographical approach distinguishes four geographical aspects of luck: the geometry of luck; lucky places; right place, right time; and the practical sphere.
Monday update
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 02:42 pmheleninwalesI had completely forgotten about the Merched y Wawr meeting this afternoon. For some reason I hadn't put it in the diary, so the reminder email (which actually arrived yesterday but I hadn't opened and read it) caught my by surprise. I wasn't feeling too bright, not ill, but rather tired. We'd had a visitor to the Quaker meeting yesterday. She's writing a book about Cader Idris (our local mountain) and wanted to know more about the Quakers. Fortuitously I was showing the video I've just completed about the Quaker Trail, but what with the extra hassle of taking and setting up the laptop and speaker, getting the budget approved by the other members and chatting to a complete stranger, I felt completely peopled out this morning. I'd also put a large number of tasks on my To-Do list that I really wanted to get on with. I therefore emailed back with apologies.
So, today I have done a load of washing and hung it to dry, I've also written notes for the Epilogue for the WIP. I try not to write out of order these days, but my writer brain hasn't got the message and gives me random scenes which don't necessarily follow on from what I wrote last. But I'm leaving it at notes. I won't write it properly until I get to the end.
I also nipped out to take the weekly alphabet photo. I wanted to get a shot of the church clock as it was striking eleven and this was the only chance all week. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain and the other mornings I'll be elsewhere at 11 a.m.
5/52 for the group 2026 Weekly Alphabet Challenge
This week's theme was: E is for Eleven
As a backup, in case the shots of the clock weren't good enough, I also photographed some fruit.
My husband likes little clementine type citrus fruits. The Co-op call them all "easy peelers" but if you look at the label on the box, there are a number of different varieties. These are Nadorcotts, which are "a high quality, mid to late-maturing Clementine-type of mandarin". They were grown in Morocco.
So, today I have done a load of washing and hung it to dry, I've also written notes for the Epilogue for the WIP. I try not to write out of order these days, but my writer brain hasn't got the message and gives me random scenes which don't necessarily follow on from what I wrote last. But I'm leaving it at notes. I won't write it properly until I get to the end.
I also nipped out to take the weekly alphabet photo. I wanted to get a shot of the church clock as it was striking eleven and this was the only chance all week. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain and the other mornings I'll be elsewhere at 11 a.m.
5/52 for the group 2026 Weekly Alphabet Challenge
This week's theme was: E is for Eleven
As a backup, in case the shots of the clock weren't good enough, I also photographed some fruit.
My husband likes little clementine type citrus fruits. The Co-op call them all "easy peelers" but if you look at the label on the box, there are a number of different varieties. These are Nadorcotts, which are "a high quality, mid to late-maturing Clementine-type of mandarin". They were grown in Morocco.
but she was far from asleep
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 11:30 pmnnozomiIt’s been shared in many places on my f-list but here again: https://www.standwithminnesota.com/ . 心疼.
Reading Cymbeline with yaaurens and company, mostly striking for the “Fear no more the heat of the sun” song—which works backward in me, calling up the books I’ve read where it’s quoted, including the chilling and well-judged use in Pamela Dean’s The Dubious Hills, and Nicola Marlow singing it and making first her mother and then herself cry with its associations of Jon and Jael.
A couple of Chinese jokes with A-Pei: she’s an expert baker who recently ventured into brownies and then into blondies, which we decided should be called 小金发 in Chinese. Also, an exchange about work thus. Me: I had to translate something about the Abominable Snowman for a psychological test of some kind, can you believe it? What is that, 雪男? A-Pei: lol, that sounds like the husband of 雪女, you know that Japanese goddess Yuki-onna? We’d say 雪怪 for the yeti. Me: somehow I don’t think Yuki-onna has plans to marry a yeti…
I learned from grayswandir that 搞掂 in Cantonese is what you say when you finish a job or a task, and was delighted to discover that the similarly used Mandarin term 搞定, which I already knew, is actually a borrowing from this Cantonese word!
Argument against machine translation #179544: Pink plastic tray with a Kitty-chan theme, which lists as its first raw ingredient 人民解放军, the People’s Liberation Army. Your country needs YOU to be transmuted into Kitty-chan!? I thought, and then figured it out… plastic --> pla --> PLA…
New musical discovery: Piano Sonata #1 by the extremely hyphenated Sophie-Carmen [Fridman-Kochevskaya] Eckhardt-Gramatté , which starts out a la maniere de Bach and very quickly gets much weirder and more Romantic, a lot of fun.
Jiang Dunhao song of the post: 你要的爱, a duet with Li Hao ideal for the combination of their voices.
Once in a way I like to act like the good Japanese housewife I’m really not, and one way is to make buri daikon in the winter—yellowtail and daikon radish stewed with the classic Japanese holy trinity, or rather 3+1, of soy sauce, cooking sake, mirin, and sugar, plus ginger on top. It’s very simple and usually turns out pretty well (see photo below); Y eats most of it, because I’m cursed to like the taste and texture of fish but hate anything that might have tiny bones in it.
Last week I had two in-person events of a purely social nature in three days, which never happens. One was a girls’ night out of sorts, women from the company I used to work at (and still freelance for), some former close colleagues, including Misa who was the most patient boss I could have asked for and Yu-jie who helps me practice Chinese, as well as others I used to know and some I’d never met, about two dozen of us, mostly middle-aged, eating cheap Chinese food and drinking according to capacity and chattering. Someone got me a glass of coffee liqueur with milk which was delicious and evil and I got much tipsier than I usually do. Yu-jie and another Chinese woman, Cho-san (Zhao or Zhang but I don’t know which) and I sat around talking in two languages; Cho-san and I delighted each other because she’d heard of my farmboys and I had heard of her own recent obsession, that hockey gay romance show. (“I know I wouldn’t really meet them if I went to Canada, but I still want to go!” “I feel just the same way about going to China!”). Rina-san, the organizer, played around with the group photo we took to results as shown below (I don’t usually post my own face online but this time I feel I can get away with it, especially since the app didn’t know what to do with me and made me look East Asian like everyone else there).
The other event was lunch with my former student D; we stay loosely in touch and meet up every couple of years. As usual he did most of the talking, mostly about his work and what he hopes to do, a little about his marriage and the other kids he went to high school with and so on. It’s funny. The gap between teens and early thirties, as we were when I was teaching him high school English, is enormous; the gap between early thirties and late forties, where we are now, is a lot less momentous. We’re not the same generation, but we’ve both lived in other countries, worked various jobs, married, lost a parent, and so on, we can and do interact as fellow adults with shared experiences. At the same time, he…damn, there is no good way to say 甘える in English (or in Chinese as far as I know), he knows I’ll let him get away with things? because I was his teacher when we met, and I’ve known him since he was fifteen, more than half his life. So he can be self-centered with me in a way he might not with someone he’d met as an adult. I’m very fond of him.
Something reminded me of The Young Visiters for the first time in ages, and I looked it up on Gutenberg; didn’t reread all of it but found this delightful romantic passage from near the end. (I think I like “well some people do he added kindly” in particular, but it’s all great.)
Photos: Not a lot this time around, it’s been too cold out to photograph things. Miké-chan enjoying the sun, the front half of a gorgeous Siamese (?) cat which came and chattered at us and looked annoyed when we didn’t respond by feeding it (when humans talk to each other they get fed, don’t they?), the afore-mentioned buri daikon, a bridge and river view, my standard train-station view at sunset (I’m often in this place on the platform and I just like the natural composition it makes), and the promised view of the girls’ night out. 
Be safe and well.
Reading Cymbeline with yaaurens and company, mostly striking for the “Fear no more the heat of the sun” song—which works backward in me, calling up the books I’ve read where it’s quoted, including the chilling and well-judged use in Pamela Dean’s The Dubious Hills, and Nicola Marlow singing it and making first her mother and then herself cry with its associations of Jon and Jael.
A couple of Chinese jokes with A-Pei: she’s an expert baker who recently ventured into brownies and then into blondies, which we decided should be called 小金发 in Chinese. Also, an exchange about work thus. Me: I had to translate something about the Abominable Snowman for a psychological test of some kind, can you believe it? What is that, 雪男? A-Pei: lol, that sounds like the husband of 雪女, you know that Japanese goddess Yuki-onna? We’d say 雪怪 for the yeti. Me: somehow I don’t think Yuki-onna has plans to marry a yeti…
I learned from grayswandir that 搞掂 in Cantonese is what you say when you finish a job or a task, and was delighted to discover that the similarly used Mandarin term 搞定, which I already knew, is actually a borrowing from this Cantonese word!
Argument against machine translation #179544: Pink plastic tray with a Kitty-chan theme, which lists as its first raw ingredient 人民解放军, the People’s Liberation Army. Your country needs YOU to be transmuted into Kitty-chan!? I thought, and then figured it out… plastic --> pla --> PLA…
New musical discovery: Piano Sonata #1 by the extremely hyphenated Sophie-Carmen [Fridman-Kochevskaya] Eckhardt-Gramatté , which starts out a la maniere de Bach and very quickly gets much weirder and more Romantic, a lot of fun.
Jiang Dunhao song of the post: 你要的爱, a duet with Li Hao ideal for the combination of their voices.
Once in a way I like to act like the good Japanese housewife I’m really not, and one way is to make buri daikon in the winter—yellowtail and daikon radish stewed with the classic Japanese holy trinity, or rather 3+1, of soy sauce, cooking sake, mirin, and sugar, plus ginger on top. It’s very simple and usually turns out pretty well (see photo below); Y eats most of it, because I’m cursed to like the taste and texture of fish but hate anything that might have tiny bones in it.
Last week I had two in-person events of a purely social nature in three days, which never happens. One was a girls’ night out of sorts, women from the company I used to work at (and still freelance for), some former close colleagues, including Misa who was the most patient boss I could have asked for and Yu-jie who helps me practice Chinese, as well as others I used to know and some I’d never met, about two dozen of us, mostly middle-aged, eating cheap Chinese food and drinking according to capacity and chattering. Someone got me a glass of coffee liqueur with milk which was delicious and evil and I got much tipsier than I usually do. Yu-jie and another Chinese woman, Cho-san (Zhao or Zhang but I don’t know which) and I sat around talking in two languages; Cho-san and I delighted each other because she’d heard of my farmboys and I had heard of her own recent obsession, that hockey gay romance show. (“I know I wouldn’t really meet them if I went to Canada, but I still want to go!” “I feel just the same way about going to China!”). Rina-san, the organizer, played around with the group photo we took to results as shown below (I don’t usually post my own face online but this time I feel I can get away with it, especially since the app didn’t know what to do with me and made me look East Asian like everyone else there).
The other event was lunch with my former student D; we stay loosely in touch and meet up every couple of years. As usual he did most of the talking, mostly about his work and what he hopes to do, a little about his marriage and the other kids he went to high school with and so on. It’s funny. The gap between teens and early thirties, as we were when I was teaching him high school English, is enormous; the gap between early thirties and late forties, where we are now, is a lot less momentous. We’re not the same generation, but we’ve both lived in other countries, worked various jobs, married, lost a parent, and so on, we can and do interact as fellow adults with shared experiences. At the same time, he…damn, there is no good way to say 甘える in English (or in Chinese as far as I know), he knows I’ll let him get away with things? because I was his teacher when we met, and I’ve known him since he was fifteen, more than half his life. So he can be self-centered with me in a way he might not with someone he’d met as an adult. I’m very fond of him.
Something reminded me of The Young Visiters for the first time in ages, and I looked it up on Gutenberg; didn’t reread all of it but found this delightful romantic passage from near the end. (I think I like “well some people do he added kindly” in particular, but it’s all great.)
Bernard at once hired a boat to row his beloved up the river. Ethel could not row but she much enjoyed seeing the tough sunburnt arms of Bernard tugging at the oars as she lay among the rich cushons of the dainty boat. She had a rarther lazy nature but Bernard did not know of this. However he soon got dog tired and sugested lunch by the mossy bank.
Oh yes said Ethel quickly opening the sparkling champaigne.
Dont spill any cried Bernard as he carved some chicken.
They eat and drank deeply of the charming viands ending up with merangs and choclates.
Let us now bask under the spreading trees said Bernard in a passiunate tone.
Oh yes lets said Ethel and she opened her dainty parasole and sank down upon the long green grass. She closed her eyes but she was far from asleep. Bernard sat beside her in profound silence gazing at her pink face and long wavy eye lashes. He puffed at his pipe for some moments while the larks gaily caroled in the blue sky. Then he edged a trifle closer to Ethels form.
Ethel he murmured in a trembly voice.
Oh what is it said Ethel hastily sitting up.
Words fail me ejaculated Bernard horsly my passion for you is intense he added fervently. It has grown day and night since I first beheld you.
Oh said Ethel in supprise I am not prepared for this and she lent back against the trunk of the tree.
Bernard placed one arm tightly round her. When will you marry me Ethel he uttered you must be my wife it has come to that I love you so intensly that if you say no I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river he panted wildly.
Oh dont do that implored Ethel breathing rarther hard.
Then say you love me he cried.
Oh Bernard she sighed fervently I certinly love you madly you are to me like a Heathen god she cried looking at his manly form and handsome flashing face I will indeed marry you.
How soon gasped Bernard gazing at her intensly.
As soon as possible said Ethel gently closing her eyes.
My Darling whispered Bernard and he seiezed her in his arms we will be marrid next week.
Oh Bernard muttered Ethel this is so sudden.
No no cried Bernard and taking the bull by both horns he kissed her violently on her dainty face. My bride to be he murmered several times.
Ethel trembled with joy as she heard the mistick words.
Oh Bernard she said little did I ever dream of such as this and she suddenly fainted into his out stretched arms.
Oh I say gasped Bernard and laying the dainty burden on the grass he dashed to the waters edge and got a cup full of the fragrant river to pour on his true loves pallid brow.
She soon came to and looked up with a sickly smile Take me back to the Gaierty hotel she whispered faintly.
With plesure my darling said Bernard I will just pack up our viands ere I unloose the boat.
Ethel felt better after a few drops of champagne and began to tidy her hair while Bernard packed the remains of the food. Then arm in arm they tottered to the boat.
I trust you have not got an illness my darling murmured Bernard as he helped her in.
Oh no I am very strong said Ethel I fainted from joy she added to explain matters.
Oh I see said Bernard handing her a cushon well some people do he added kindly and so saying they rowed down the dark stream now flowing silently beneath a golden moon.
Oh yes said Ethel quickly opening the sparkling champaigne.
Dont spill any cried Bernard as he carved some chicken.
They eat and drank deeply of the charming viands ending up with merangs and choclates.
Let us now bask under the spreading trees said Bernard in a passiunate tone.
Oh yes lets said Ethel and she opened her dainty parasole and sank down upon the long green grass. She closed her eyes but she was far from asleep. Bernard sat beside her in profound silence gazing at her pink face and long wavy eye lashes. He puffed at his pipe for some moments while the larks gaily caroled in the blue sky. Then he edged a trifle closer to Ethels form.
Ethel he murmured in a trembly voice.
Oh what is it said Ethel hastily sitting up.
Words fail me ejaculated Bernard horsly my passion for you is intense he added fervently. It has grown day and night since I first beheld you.
Oh said Ethel in supprise I am not prepared for this and she lent back against the trunk of the tree.
Bernard placed one arm tightly round her. When will you marry me Ethel he uttered you must be my wife it has come to that I love you so intensly that if you say no I shall perforce dash my body to the brink of yon muddy river he panted wildly.
Oh dont do that implored Ethel breathing rarther hard.
Then say you love me he cried.
Oh Bernard she sighed fervently I certinly love you madly you are to me like a Heathen god she cried looking at his manly form and handsome flashing face I will indeed marry you.
How soon gasped Bernard gazing at her intensly.
As soon as possible said Ethel gently closing her eyes.
My Darling whispered Bernard and he seiezed her in his arms we will be marrid next week.
Oh Bernard muttered Ethel this is so sudden.
No no cried Bernard and taking the bull by both horns he kissed her violently on her dainty face. My bride to be he murmered several times.
Ethel trembled with joy as she heard the mistick words.
Oh Bernard she said little did I ever dream of such as this and she suddenly fainted into his out stretched arms.
Oh I say gasped Bernard and laying the dainty burden on the grass he dashed to the waters edge and got a cup full of the fragrant river to pour on his true loves pallid brow.
She soon came to and looked up with a sickly smile Take me back to the Gaierty hotel she whispered faintly.
With plesure my darling said Bernard I will just pack up our viands ere I unloose the boat.
Ethel felt better after a few drops of champagne and began to tidy her hair while Bernard packed the remains of the food. Then arm in arm they tottered to the boat.
I trust you have not got an illness my darling murmured Bernard as he helped her in.
Oh no I am very strong said Ethel I fainted from joy she added to explain matters.
Oh I see said Bernard handing her a cushon well some people do he added kindly and so saying they rowed down the dark stream now flowing silently beneath a golden moon.
Photos: Not a lot this time around, it’s been too cold out to photograph things. Miké-chan enjoying the sun, the front half of a gorgeous Siamese (?) cat which came and chattered at us and looked annoyed when we didn’t respond by feeding it (when humans talk to each other they get fed, don’t they?), the afore-mentioned buri daikon, a bridge and river view, my standard train-station view at sunset (I’m often in this place on the platform and I just like the natural composition it makes), and the promised view of the girls’ night out.
Be safe and well.
Darkness!
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 08:40 pmrattfanWe've just had a power failure and everything went black. It's fantastic. Streetlights still on, unfortunately, but the houses around this block of apartments seem to be affected. Closest we'll get to a Black Sky event, Rob and Leece.
Am I weird that my first thought was wow, this sky right now would be great for astronomy. [EDIT. Though it is a full moon, so maybe not so much?]
It's to be expected after a 42^C degree day following a 27^C minimum night, I suppose.
I can hear my pet rats moving around, this being their free range time, but I can't see them, so the little horrors are going to go to bed exactly when they want to, I suspect!
Lucky I don't need to see my keyboard to type. I used to freak my boss out by transcribing with my eyes shut.
I just took a look out the front and it's definitely the surrounding block, not just us. A few folks will be getting their exercise, since of course this puts the lift out of operation. And a bunch of people are standing around in the car park, not sure what for. I've got my front door open, with flywire shut to prevent rat excursions,since it's getting a bit uncomfortable without the fan.
Am I weird that my first thought was wow, this sky right now would be great for astronomy. [EDIT. Though it is a full moon, so maybe not so much?]
It's to be expected after a 42^C degree day following a 27^C minimum night, I suppose.
I can hear my pet rats moving around, this being their free range time, but I can't see them, so the little horrors are going to go to bed exactly when they want to, I suspect!
Lucky I don't need to see my keyboard to type. I used to freak my boss out by transcribing with my eyes shut.
I just took a look out the front and it's definitely the surrounding block, not just us. A few folks will be getting their exercise, since of course this puts the lift out of operation. And a bunch of people are standing around in the car park, not sure what for. I've got my front door open, with flywire shut to prevent rat excursions,since it's getting a bit uncomfortable without the fan.
A Return to Scholarship
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 06:58 pmtcpipWalter Benjamin, with his usual brilliance, observed, "Scholarship, far from leading inexorably to a profession, may in fact preclude it. For it does not permit you to abandon it." The first part suggests that a scholar never ceases learning and, as a result, does not settle into a single profession. The second part indicates the difference between a student (who does need to a profession) and a scholar (for whom learning is a lifetime, evolving, and intrinsic behaviour. Well, after over a month of international travel and then followed by a few excellent celebratory gatherings, it is well about time that I return to the matter of scholarship. In these parts of my life, there are three current vectors.
The first is my doctoral studies at the University of Euclid. This week I have have completed the first part of a course on "Global Energy and Climate Policy", which is shared between the University of London and with the major project with Euclid University. The content was quite good, looking at the necessity of moving away from GHG energy sources, alternative energy sources (including nuclear), the Paris Agreement itself, and energy security and sovereignty. For the major paper, I'll be looking at "Optimal Energy Choices for Pacific Island Nations Under the Paris Agreement". I am especially interested in looking at the expected climate changes, the likely demographic changes, technology options, and the application of NDCs of other countries.
In addition, in a completely different vector, I have taken up studies for a Cert IV in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Now, this may seem a bit strange for someone who already has a Master's degree in Higher Education, but in my profession, my teaching is normally more than 50% of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds. It is extremely helpful for me to modify my presentation so it is more easily understood, even when the technical content is quite advanced. The course itself, through the Sydney Higher Education Institute, is thankfully very attentive to not just language learning, but also cultural differences. Whilst the course is designed to be taken over a year, because it's self-paced I'm hoping to get it done in a few months.
The third part is quite out of leftfield. About fifteen years ago, I ran a lengthy RuneQuest Prax campaign. As I often do, I kept extensive notes and even constructed a series of letters from one of the characters, Praxilites, as he developed from a young initiate of the sun god to reaching apotheosis. How is such fantasy storytelling scholarly? Well, apart from delving deeply into what can only be described as the deeply mythological metaphysics of Glorantha, our main character's story is very much in the style of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations", a subject that I have written about in the past. Of course, it will not be just Marcus whom I'll be drawing from, but also Diogenes, Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus and even a dash of Laozi. Anyway, with more than 35000 words already written, it is proving to be quite a joy to delve down a path of scholarship that is also entertaining.
The first is my doctoral studies at the University of Euclid. This week I have have completed the first part of a course on "Global Energy and Climate Policy", which is shared between the University of London and with the major project with Euclid University. The content was quite good, looking at the necessity of moving away from GHG energy sources, alternative energy sources (including nuclear), the Paris Agreement itself, and energy security and sovereignty. For the major paper, I'll be looking at "Optimal Energy Choices for Pacific Island Nations Under the Paris Agreement". I am especially interested in looking at the expected climate changes, the likely demographic changes, technology options, and the application of NDCs of other countries.
In addition, in a completely different vector, I have taken up studies for a Cert IV in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Now, this may seem a bit strange for someone who already has a Master's degree in Higher Education, but in my profession, my teaching is normally more than 50% of students from non-English-speaking backgrounds. It is extremely helpful for me to modify my presentation so it is more easily understood, even when the technical content is quite advanced. The course itself, through the Sydney Higher Education Institute, is thankfully very attentive to not just language learning, but also cultural differences. Whilst the course is designed to be taken over a year, because it's self-paced I'm hoping to get it done in a few months.
The third part is quite out of leftfield. About fifteen years ago, I ran a lengthy RuneQuest Prax campaign. As I often do, I kept extensive notes and even constructed a series of letters from one of the characters, Praxilites, as he developed from a young initiate of the sun god to reaching apotheosis. How is such fantasy storytelling scholarly? Well, apart from delving deeply into what can only be described as the deeply mythological metaphysics of Glorantha, our main character's story is very much in the style of Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations", a subject that I have written about in the past. Of course, it will not be just Marcus whom I'll be drawing from, but also Diogenes, Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus and even a dash of Laozi. Anyway, with more than 35000 words already written, it is proving to be quite a joy to delve down a path of scholarship that is also entertaining.
So, if you're even tangentially interested in blogs or people who spend a lot of time
Wednesday, February 4th, 2026 10:18 pmconulycorrecting things people think they know about history, you'll soon learn that a perennial topic is "Yes, people drank water in Medieval Europe", followed closely by "They took baths too!" And yeah, they drank a lot of ale and wine... but people today drink a lot of alcohol too, and for much the same reason - we like it! Or if we don't like alcohol we like soda, or coffee, or tea.
People in the middle ages did understand that some water was safe to drink and some wasn't, and they went through considerable lengths to bring clean, potable water to their towns. Not that most of them lived in towns, but in this case, living further from town is a bonus. Less people = less poop.
(Also, while there are other waterborne illnesses, cholera in particular didn't leave India until the 1800s, well into the modern period. I'm not sure it even existed prior to 1817. Please stop telling me earnestly about Snow and cholera in London. Totally different time period, totally different situation, totally irrelevant.)
Anyway, this just popped up on my feed yet again today, and it suddenly sparked a question in my head:
If people supposedly didn't drink water because they didn't want to get sick, what did their animals drink? Surely nobody thinks that medieval peasants were giving their cows and pigs ale? Or do they think that non-human animals are so hardy that they aren't at risk of waterborne illness? Or maybe that people just didn't care if their animals died, like every sheep isn't wealth, or at least a source of food and wool?
(I'm willing to bet that nobody has an answer to this question, but that if I ever ask them, should it come up in the wild, they'll be annoyed at me!)
People in the middle ages did understand that some water was safe to drink and some wasn't, and they went through considerable lengths to bring clean, potable water to their towns. Not that most of them lived in towns, but in this case, living further from town is a bonus. Less people = less poop.
(Also, while there are other waterborne illnesses, cholera in particular didn't leave India until the 1800s, well into the modern period. I'm not sure it even existed prior to 1817. Please stop telling me earnestly about Snow and cholera in London. Totally different time period, totally different situation, totally irrelevant.)
Anyway, this just popped up on my feed yet again today, and it suddenly sparked a question in my head:
If people supposedly didn't drink water because they didn't want to get sick, what did their animals drink? Surely nobody thinks that medieval peasants were giving their cows and pigs ale? Or do they think that non-human animals are so hardy that they aren't at risk of waterborne illness? Or maybe that people just didn't care if their animals died, like every sheep isn't wealth, or at least a source of food and wool?
(I'm willing to bet that nobody has an answer to this question, but that if I ever ask them, should it come up in the wild, they'll be annoyed at me!)
Serials
Monday, February 2nd, 2026 03:20 amigenlodeI wrote a long post, but the browser crashed while I was looking for images :-(
Summarised version:
( BBC Radio Lord of the Rings )
Waiting for the Out: continues very good -- Guardian review
( Marie Antoinette )
And also *two* Russian Smekhov-adjacent serials: an in-depth nine-part podcast on the 'musical spectacular' "Ali-Baba" (which I had vaguely heard of but hadn't realised he actually wrote all the lyrics for -- apparently it was another beloved Soviet children's classic, at least according to the possibly-not-impartial makers of the podcast!) and a pre-Musketeers adventure serial that was referred to in several recent interviews, "Smok and Malish", in which he plays the lead. Again, I had vaguely heard of this: it is clearly the prior production briefly alluded to in "When I Was Athos" which had involved falling off roofs, out of canoes, and into snowdrifts :-D
( Read more... )
I don't know -- I'm beginning to feel that *maybe* I've crossed some sort of threshold since Christmas, and that I'm actually starting to understand Russian freely at last...? ( Improved listening comprehension )
( Fast-talking historian )
Summarised version:
( BBC Radio Lord of the Rings )
Waiting for the Out: continues very good -- Guardian review
( Marie Antoinette )
And also *two* Russian Smekhov-adjacent serials: an in-depth nine-part podcast on the 'musical spectacular' "Ali-Baba" (which I had vaguely heard of but hadn't realised he actually wrote all the lyrics for -- apparently it was another beloved Soviet children's classic, at least according to the possibly-not-impartial makers of the podcast!) and a pre-Musketeers adventure serial that was referred to in several recent interviews, "Smok and Malish", in which he plays the lead. Again, I had vaguely heard of this: it is clearly the prior production briefly alluded to in "When I Was Athos" which had involved falling off roofs, out of canoes, and into snowdrifts :-D
( Read more... )
I don't know -- I'm beginning to feel that *maybe* I've crossed some sort of threshold since Christmas, and that I'm actually starting to understand Russian freely at last...? ( Improved listening comprehension )
( Fast-talking historian )
Daily Happiness
Sunday, February 1st, 2026 05:27 pmtorachan1. Final sales total for the new store yesterday was off the charts and today looks like it will be just as high.
2. The other day we were browsing GrubHub for something to eat and saw a burger place that looked really good, but decided it would be better to go in person as one of the big draws was their loaded fries, which would just be soggy on arrival. We went over there today for lunch and it was so good!
Karaage chicken sandwich with jalapeño yuzu slaw and sweet potato fries on the side.
Yakiniku steak fries, which were supposed to be with tater tots but they were out of tots so just regular fries, but still super tasty.
It was so much food but so good. Brought half the sweet potato fries and half the loaded fries home and Alex ate them this afternoon when she came over.
3. For some reason Chloe was so into exploring this Disney bag yesterday when we got home from the park lol. Nothing inside it but she had to investigate.
2. The other day we were browsing GrubHub for something to eat and saw a burger place that looked really good, but decided it would be better to go in person as one of the big draws was their loaded fries, which would just be soggy on arrival. We went over there today for lunch and it was so good!
Karaage chicken sandwich with jalapeño yuzu slaw and sweet potato fries on the side.
Yakiniku steak fries, which were supposed to be with tater tots but they were out of tots so just regular fries, but still super tasty.
It was so much food but so good. Brought half the sweet potato fries and half the loaded fries home and Alex ate them this afternoon when she came over.
3. For some reason Chloe was so into exploring this Disney bag yesterday when we got home from the park lol. Nothing inside it but she had to investigate.