sovay | Sovay's Friends

… that money just can’t buy

A few links some of you may appreciate:

Sometimes you just need to watch a video of 24 hopping baby goats. (via)

Incidental Comics gives us a handy guide to Proofreader’s Marks. (via a friend)

First footage of live colossal squid in its native environment.

---L.

Subject quote from Can’t Buy Me Love, The Beatles.

rydra_wong

"You Wouldn't Steal A Gender" and "I Would Definitely Steal A Gender" badges, in exactly the font you'd expect.

poliphilo

The cover picture on that book I dreamed about looked a lot like this.....

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Agnes Hewes’ The Codfish Musket, third and last in her trio of boring 1930s Newbery Honor winners. I can only imagine that the committee felt that the “Rah rah MANIFEST DESTINY” message was good for the Youth, because my God these books are dull. How can books be so dull when there are so many deadly conspiracies?

But maybe it’s because Hewes is actually not great at deadly conspiracies. The best part of this book by far is the non-deadly middle, when our hero Dan Boit goes to Washington and accidentally becomes Thomas Jefferson’s secretary after he finds Jefferson’s lost notebook full of observations about when the first peas come up and the frogs start peeping.

In modern-day Newbery Honor winners, I finished Chanel Miller’s Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All, a short and charming tale in which Magnolia and her new friend Iris try to return orphaned socks from Magnolia’s parents’ laundry to their owners. In the process, they explore New York City and learn more about the denizens of their neighborhood.

I also read Susan Fletcher’s Journey of the Pale Bear, about a Norwegian boy accompanying a captured polar bear to England as a present for the king. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Fletcher wrote a related picture book, but that focuses more on the bear’s experiences, while this is more about the boy and the boy-meets-bear of it all. Who among us has not wished for a bear friend!

What I’m Reading Now

In Our Mutual Friend, Lizzie Hexam’s father has DIED. This may be a lucky escape for him, as he was about to be arrested on suspicion of murder (at the word of his wicked lying former business partner), but I’m very concerned what will become of poor Lizzie.

My suspicion that Mr. Rokesmith is in fact the dead John Harmon has only grown stronger as he has insinuated himself in the Boffin household as an unpaid secretary. What is his ultimate goal here? A more suspicious soul than Mr. Boffin might wonder who on earth would offer himself up as a secretary without pay, and consider the possibility of embezzlement, but blessed Mr. Boffin is not concerned a bit.

What I Plan to Read Next

Onward in the Newbery books! I am ten books from the end of the historical Newberies, and I intend to finish the project while Interlibrary Loan is still alive.

sabotabby

Just finished: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. I don't know what else to say about this scathing, perfect little book beyond that I wish I could make everyone in so-called Western civilization sit down in a chair with their eyes forced open, Clockwork Orange-style, until they'd read it. Until they make this atrocity fucking stop. It's one impassioned cry in the midst of genocide but it's a very powerful cry.

The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui. I have mixed feelings about this novella, which is a military sci-fi about a pilot, sidelined after a career-ending injury, who plots an elaborate revenge against the empire that blew up her planet. I first encountered the author at the same event where I first encountered Suzan Palumbo, and this could be a paired reading with her book Countess, only I read Countess first and preferred it. Which is not to say that this book isn't good, because it really is, but it's a bit inevitable to compare two anti-colonialist lesbian revenge fantasy space operas that end in tragedy that came out the same year, y'know?

My main criticism is that it suffers from the same issue that a lot of space opera suffers from, which is that there's a big universe and a limited cast of characters, doing all the things. The genre wants scrappy underdogs with interpersonal drama, but it also wants its protagonists in positions of power, which you can do in longer-form work but is challenging in a first-person novella. The Third Daughter is very hands-on, and it's implied that Mother is as well, but at least the former is ludicrously incompetent for someone running a massive empire. Which is to say that if you've blown up someone's planet, you probably shouldn't promote three young people, all of whom are childhood friends, from that planet into critical military positions. Especially if you're going to fuck at least two of them.

That said, I like the romance in this one more, if you can call it a romance; it's wonderfully toxic. And the ending is a gutpunch.

Currently reading: Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. This continues to be excellent. One thing that I think is really cool about it, among the many things that are cool about it, is that she's decided to capitalize the word Black in all instances, not just where it applies to humans. Which has the intended effect of anthropomorphizing the creatures she writes about in a way that identifies them as the racialized Other, and thus part of the struggle for liberation. Look, this is poetry about marine biology, I'm going to basically love everything about it.

Lost Arc Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. I just started this one last night but we have a future Lagos that is mostly underwater, save for five skyscrapers. Which is a cool enough concept that I'll overlook that the book starts with both a dream sequence and the main character dressing for work. I'm into the worldbuilding so far.

vass

Books
Very little progress.

Crafts
Dyed a 36x45cm piece of white 14 count aida cloth purple, for Secret Reasons. And now I know that I can get a reasonable result doing that with a large storage box and hot water, winging the quantity of Rit dye. Shenanigans may result.

Food
My parents' Christmas present to me, a new frying pan, just made it to me today. I haven't test-driven it yet, but it looks nice. And like it should heat up easier than the cast iron one my stove can't really handle, much as I love it.

Weather
Finally cooling down. Good.

Other
One of the Discord servers I'm in had a PowerPoint night. I didn't present, but I contributed a very unserious set of slides for someone else to present sight unseen. This was a heap of fun, and I recommend this form of grownup show and tell to other nerds. I am already working on my next such document.

In a different Discord, a discussion of linguistics prompted me to make a series of noises which in turn made Dorian give me a very funny look. If you would like to provoke yourself to make a series of noises that will make your cats give you funny looks, here is the chart.

vass

What if, when you went to a nonprofit/charity/etc website because you want to donate money to them, you could add ?nomarketing on the end of the link, and it would bring up a barebones version of their donation page that would JUST LET YOU MAKE A SINGLE DONATION.

It would not sign you up to their newsletter.
It would not give them permission to contact you.
It would not ask you to share their link on social media.
It would not ask you how you found them.
It would not show you a thank you letter written in the first person by a composite version of one of their clients.
It would not show you tragic and distressing photographs or descriptions of the horrible things happening to the people you HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO GIVE MONEY TO HELP.
There would not be any animated banners or carousels.
There would be no popups.
Required fields on the form would only be information they genuinely cannot accept your money without, and they would have checked both the law on what information they actually need and their assumptions about names and titles (e.g. not everyone has a first name, not everyone has a last name, not everyone's name is short, some names have spaces or apostrophes or hyphens, not everyone belongs to one of the four genders Mr, Mrs, Miss, and Dr.)
It would not give you a menu with three choices: make your one-off donation a monthly amount, make your one-off donation a monthly amount but more money, or (deselected and in a duller colour) "keep your one-off donation" before letting you donate.
Or after you donate.
Or both.

I understand they have a job to do, but do they understand how aversive this experience is? It is the biggest thing about charitable giving that I dread, when I have enough to give. "Hi, I'd like to give you some mon-" "CAN YOU GIVE US MORE? CAN YOU GIVE IT EVERY MONTH? KIDS ARE DYING, VASS, ANIMALS ARE DYING, THE PLANET IS DYING, MOREMOREMOREMORE CAN WE TEXT YOU, CAN WE CALL YOU UP AND TELL YOU ABOUT THE DYING KIDS CAN YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO GIVE US MONEY TOO-"

If they made it less stressful, I would not have to psych myself up to do this. And by definition this is how they are treating people who already want to help them.

rydra_wong

https://whatthetrans.com/compilation-of-protests-against-the-supreme-court/

conuly

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

*******

Link

conuly

Watch on YouTube

conuly

Clicky!

Also, I meant to say re: the utilities that you are all the best and I absolutely love you :)

(Still need to call National Grid and still don't wanna.)

poliphilo

I have a cold. I was coughing so irrepressibly that I spent the night downstairs in a chair. Among the dreams that drifted by was one about a book called Baptist Church 1882. It was ghost story set in Australia. and the pity is I never got to read it.

labingi

Silly question but when did "exhale" become a noun? I've been seeing it everywhere in fan fic lately, everywhere an "exhale," not one fic with an "exhalation"--or a "he exhaled." I figured it was a fan fic thing.

Then I saw an "exhale" in the poem "Forgotten Portraits," on my son's AP test study list.

The dictionaries are pretty much still telling me "exhale" is a verb.

This is, of course, all my language snobbery and utterly irrelevant, but when did this happen? What memo did I miss?

sabotabby

This one was clearly ripped off the Ashley Madison hack, with a weird reference to Rohinie Bisesar (the woman who stabbed a stranger to death in the PATH Shoppers Drug Mart). The latter is even name-checked in the show, which I'm kind of surprised is legal.

The plot is needlessly convoluted. A hacker gets the database for Not!Ashley!Madison Dot Com, and appears to be blackmailing either the owner or someone in the database. People in the database include a well-regarded judge and a pastor of a megachurch. She's about to reveal the identity of someone in the database to her married best friend, but will only do it in person. They agree to meet in their usual spot in the PATH, but the hacker, who arrives first, is being followed. She makes her way to a Shoppers, where she's stabbed to death by a masked assailant.

( you know the drill )

jjhunter

Let's take a breath for poetry. It is April, and as good a time as any for a collaborative poetry fest. Please find below a starting stanza or two of a brand new haikai (what's a haikai, you ask? Think extended haiku: alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 and 7-7). Comment with a following stanza to build on that seed. Someone (most likely me) will respond with another stanza, and so on and so forth throughout the day.
===

daffodil focus
bell song, valdrome, pheasant's eye
live stained glass glory

_

sholio

As is my usual practice, my latest book as Lauren is available for download for my DW circle for the next week or so!

Download from Bookfunnel.

The download will be up until the book goes live on Amazon on May 2.

(Technically this is Shifter Agents #6, but it's a standalone that shouldn't require any context to read.)

heron61

I’m looking at the various options for what my partner and I can do and what is likely to happen with the US, and I find this seriously depressing, so I’d love if anyone reading this could provide alternatives or reasons that they think some of the unlikely possible options are actually pretty likely (and why).

Option 1 Fleeing Fascism: My best guess is the US slides into full on fascism, somewhere between Hungary and Nazi Germany, and after my mother dies (likely in the next year or so, she’s 90) my partner and I flee the US, likely not to Canada unless it looks likely that 47 won’t invade, so our options are Portugal (you can buy your way in with money we’ll have from my mom), or New Zealand (same). The problem is I utterly hate the idea of having to leave Portland and our friends, but I’m not too keen on living under fascism either.

Other options (I’m saying how likely I think they are, if you disagree, please let me know, and also why):

Option 2 Social and economic collapse: 47 and Musk are idiots who aren’t remotely careful, so this seems like a real option that seems somewhat likely, but I’m uncertain , I also find this far superior to option 1, in large part because while it will suck, people won’t be disappeared to Central American torture prisons, and it likely won’t last that long. I’d expect the states to pick up the pieces and we might even end up with the US balkanizing.

Option 3 Military coup/civil war: If 47 (as he seems very likely to do) invades Canada or Greenland, or both, some portion of the US military will likely refuse to attack NATO allies. If it’s enough, we get a military coupe, which is terrible, but also a serious improvement, since I’d expect them to push for free elections soon. OTOH, if only some of them refuse we could easily end up in full on civil war. I think the overall option is moderately likely, but have no idea which way things would go, and in the case of a full-on civil war, I would want to be on another continent.

Option 4 Low Violence Popular Uprising: This has happened in numerous nations; enough people take to the streets and the leaders flee. I’d love for this to happen here, but I also firmly believe it won’t. The US lacks that sort of hard-core protest culture. It could easily happen in France, I don’t believe it will happen here.

Option 5 Free elections: I think this is only slightly more likely than a successful popular uprising. It’s been 3 months, 47 will have been in power for almost 22 months for the mid-term elections, and the Republinazis have shown themselves to be absolutely fine with eliminating democracy. Blue states may or may not keep far elections, but red and many purple states won’t.

Option 6 Secession: This is my strong preference – either for the West Coast to join Canada or to become its own nation, and in either case, I’d never need to worry about sharing a nation with the powerful wealthy elites in hard core red states like Alabama, Idaho, or Iowa. The problem is that attempting this either results in an ugly civil war that our side loses, or someone needs to seize nukes and a way to deliver them. I expect that in CA at least there is at least some discussions about this, but I have absolutely no idea how likely I think this is.

I don’t see any other remotely likely options, and I really don’t like the likely ones other than 1-3. What do you think?

lauradi7dw

I liked the 1993 Ang Lee "Wedding Banquet" and wondered why it needed to be re-made. I went because I wanted to see the actors (and as always, to see how many Korean words I could understand). I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly - a lot has changed in the US, including the legalization of equal marriage (I don't think that is much of a spoiler). Good enough reason to re-make, probably.

I had a private screening at the Lexington Venue, where I was glad to see it on a very big screen - the people were beautiful, Vancouver pretending to be Seattle was beautiful, even the orchestra was beautiful (that's a joke - in the brief flash of people playing traditional stringed instruments, I was looking at the instruments, not at the players).
I like not having other people exhale around me, but it is perturbing that I was the only one who bought a ticket for the 12:15 matinee. I was charged the budget price. I thought about offering more when I left, because I want the theater to stay in business. I have no idea what their weekend ticket sales are, because I don't go then.

Watch on YouTube