Brook-feather green, robin-egg blue, penstemon lavender, I dream of you

[sovay]

My ironic virtual con crud has progressed to the point of keeping me up at night coughing and sneezing when I get up in the afternoon. I have some fairly solid reasons for believing it not to be COVID-19, but have nonetheless put in a call to my PCP in order to warn them that my history with normal respiratory crud is quite bad and if I am not lucky I will be calling them later in the week about it. In the meantime, I am trying to procure more orange juice.

I want to write about so many things and I need to do my job and the state of my body is not helping. Nothing is interacting—physically—well in here. It's not new and I still hate it.

Have a nice thread about Jewish atheism and some smoking twelfth-century sunglasses.

Comments

[lilysea]

Urgh! :(

I hope that it is indeed NOT-COVID,

and also that you get better soon and it doesn't turn into bronchitis or pneumonia or any other body nonsense.

[sovay]

and also that you get better soon and it doesn't turn into bronchitis or pneumonia or any other body nonsense.

Thank you! I should indeed like to skip all of that.

[minoanmiss]

I am very annoyed at this direly ambitious con crud. May you evict it soon and fully!

[sovay]

I am very annoyed at this direly ambitious con crud. May you evict it soon and fully!

Thank you! I still don't even know where it came from!

[gwynnega]

I hope your virtual con crud goes away quickly! (I think sneezing is not usually a Covid symptom? But that doesn't make it less unpleasant.)

[sovay]

(I think sneezing is not usually a Covid symptom? But that doesn't make it less unpleasant.)

Well, now that the CDC has its ass in gear at last, the fact that I called my doctor's office about potential sinus infection was enough to fast-track me to triage and I am set to be tested for COVID-19 at you've-got-to-be-kidding-me o'clock tomorrow morning. But it still feels like sadly familiar crud to me. I don't know what to do with the fact that respiratory symptoms lasting more than ten days are now a COVID-19 flag, since I have never had a cold in my life that went away in less than two weeks and sometimes persisted much longer than that.

[gwynnega]

I can relate, because my allergies have been trolling me on and off for the whole pandemic! I'm sorry you have to get up so early for the test, but I guess it's good the CDC is on the ball now, in general.

[davidgillon]

Ironic virtual con-crud is not fair! Regrettably, proposing a full disc scan and a reboot is unlikely to fix this, so I hope the search for orange juice is successful.

And those sunglasses are so smoking you could wear them right now.

[sovay]

Regrettably, proposing a full disc scan and a reboot is unlikely to fix this, so I hope the search for orange juice is successful.

"Reboot startup disc, offline for thirty-six hours, and replace head."

(Thank you. We have an order in for more orange juice tomorrow.)

And those sunglasses are so smoking you could wear them right now.

If I had them, I would.

[vr_trakowski]

This is completely unrelated to your post, but - remembering your lovely Chronicles of Narnia fic - I thought you might find this interesting.

https://tomato-bird.tumblr.com/post/633069857957609472/inexorable-2020-taylor-leong-some-thoughts

(Or you may have seen it already.)

[sovay]

This is completely unrelated to your post, but - remembering your lovely Chronicles of Narnia fic - I thought you might find this interesting.

I hadn't seen it! Thank you. That's really excellent. And I like it much better than Neil Gaiman's similar balancing of Aslan and the White Witch in "The Problem of Susan."

[vr_trakowski]

You're welcome! It's fascinating to see that nuanced-yet-outside perspective, which is why it reminded me of your fic.

Oh, I have a lot to say about Susan and what Lewis was probably trying to do there, but I will restrain myself. *grin*

I hope you are feeling better.

[ethelmay]

Those are lovely sunglasses, but I would really like to see a citation on where they're from (I mean now -- which museum they're in) and who says they're twelfth-century.

[sovay]

Those are lovely sunglasses, but I would really like to see a citation on where they're from (I mean now -- which museum they're in) and who says they're twelfth-century.

This is the oldest post I can find incorporating that image, which claims the twelfth century but does not provide a photo credit; there's more than one picture of the sunglasses and their case in this tweet, which does not name a date. Nothing that I could find yet from museums. Nice nineteenth-century pair, though.

[thisbluespirit]

*sends hugs and good wishes*

[sovay]

*sends hugs and good wishes*

*hugs*

[deerlittletree]

Oh no <3

Wishing you a refuah shleimah ASAP.

-L

[sovay]

Wishing you a refuah shleimah ASAP.

Thank you.

[choco_frosh]

Ick. I'm glad you're getting tested, though, even if it means getting up at Impossible:00.
Those glasses are indeed rad. I'm am now imagining, say, the Qianlong Emperor looking at Macartney over them.

[sovay]

Ick. I'm glad you're getting tested, though, even if it means getting up at Impossible:00.

Thank you. It has left me rather wiped for the rest of the day.

Those glasses are indeed rad. I'm am now imagining, say, the Qianlong Emperor looking at Macartney over them.

I like that image.

[nineweaving]

Hope that this is non-con-crud, and will be proven that and fade away.

Those spectacles are fabulous.

Nine

[nineweaving]

Similar pairs have been sold as circa 1810.

This same image appeared under a text reading "The first real lenses created to block light from reaching the eyes were developed by the Chinese in or before the 12th century." I would guess that a hasty reading attached these particular glasses to that date.

Nine

[sovay]

I would guess that a hasty reading attached these particular glasses to that date.

See reply to ethelmay: I found an earlier article crediting the glasses with a twelfth-century origin (rather than just illustrating the style of smoky quartz lenses worn at the time, which does seem to have been a thing); I also found some of the nineteenth-century pairs when trying to source the image. They are constructed differently enough—much more lightly—that I'm willing to believe the contested pair is older, but I would also like an attestation from a museum or private collection and have not so far been able to find one.

[nineweaving]

The hinged temple-pieces would suggest a later date. Those appear to have developed in the 18th century, at least in the West.

If only the library were open!

Nine

[sovay]

The hinged temple-pieces would suggest a later date. Those appear to have developed in the 18th century, at least in the West.

The internet tells me that museums of eyeglasses exist, but good luck visiting one right now.

and cites Science & Civilisation in China, for which I cannot find an online text.

I linked it in my comment:

"The Sung people, however, did have two techniques which may be considered introductory to spectacle lenses; one was the magnifying glass, and the other dark glasses as eye-protection. Regarding the former, Li Chhi wrote, in his Hsia Jih Chi (Records of Leisure Hours) some time before his death in +1117, that his contemporary, Shih Khang, and other judges, used to use various magnifying lenses of rock crystal (shui ching) for deciphering illegible documents in criminal cases. The judges also used to use dark glasses made of smoky quartz (e.g. chha ching), not, as we do, for driving against the sun, but so as to disguise from litigants their reactions to the evidence." This last sentence is footnoted: "This piece of information, which I fully believe to be true, comes from a paper on fire-pearls and spectacles by Pi (1), which, though interesting, is full of serious and misleading mistakes. The same applies to the paper by Rakusen (1)." No further information is given on the two interesting but misleading papers.

[edit] I went to all the trouble of typing that text out, so I'm leaving it!

[nineweaving]

I linked it in my comment.

You did. We were delving at the same time, and you emerged first. I saw, and deleted that part of my comment, too late.

I am very curious about those judges' dark glasses and what form they took. The "proper" design seems obvious to us, but were they two framed circles? Or something like a visor? Did they balance on the bridge of the nose? Were they tied on like a mask?

Nine

[nineweaving]

I went to all the trouble of typing that text out, so I'm leaving it!

Many thanks! I was typing it out myself when I refreshed.

Nine

[sovay]

I am very curious about those judges' dark glasses and what form they took.

I was trying to look into that myself and all the citations I could find kept circling back to Needham's Science and Civilisation in China. This page does the same, but adds that Chinese spectacles "were quite different than early spectacles from the West as they were made from rock crystal and were monoculars that could be attached together," which if true means the pair under debate cannot be an early model. It's not well-footnoted, though: it claims that the "tea lens" variant (what Needham transliterates as chha ching) were used as sunglasses proper and I can't tell if he has another source for that information or if he just disagrees completely with the paper on fire-pearls and spectacles that Needham is willing to believe partly. In short, I want more than the one book on the subject.

[nineweaving]

In short, I want more than the one book on the subject.

Truly.

Curse these circumstances.

Nine

[sovay]

Hope that this is non-con-crud, and will be proven that and fade away.

Thank you. I have a prescription in waiting for antibiotics if necessary.