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Friday, March 6th, 2026 01:54 pm
I really want some scones. Like legit British scones with whipped cream and jam. I made some not too long ago, along with homemade whipped cream...maybe I could make some this week....
Friday, March 6th, 2026 04:46 pm
Friday, March 6th, 2026 03:01 pm
We eat rice almost every night, so I buy it in 20-pound bags--Goya medium-grain rice. For us, it's pretty much as good as Japanese short-grain rice and less expensive. (Sometimes we have different rice--basmati or jasmine or wild rice, or any style of brown rice, but generally it's white Goya medium-grain rice.)
I like the look of the bags, and I thought it would be fun to use an empty bag as a bag ... and finally I got round to making one:
Here's the front, with a fold-over flap
And here's the back
Might take it grocery shopping with me next time I go!
I like the look of the bags, and I thought it would be fun to use an empty bag as a bag ... and finally I got round to making one:
Here's the front, with a fold-over flap
And here's the back
Might take it grocery shopping with me next time I go!
Tags:
Friday, March 6th, 2026 01:48 pm
Water bears on Mars: Tardiguardians of the Galaxy?
Tardigrades – also known as water bears – are tiny animals about 1 mm or less in size. They’re known for being able to survive in extreme environments.
Tardigrades can survive in simulated Martian regolith, researchers found … if you rinse it with water first.
Future astronauts could use tardigrades to help grow plants and survive in habitats on Mars.
Tardigrades are interesting little extremophiles. They can survive a wide array of harsh conditions, such as radiation and starvation. Some live in desolate conditions; others live in warm, green places hence their nickname "moss bears." This implies that they excel at colonizing harsh terrain, but they can also take advantage of better conditions. They're about as close to indestructible as life on Earth has gotten. So it makes sense to take them along for space exploration.
Tardigrades – also known as water bears – are tiny animals about 1 mm or less in size. They’re known for being able to survive in extreme environments.
Tardigrades can survive in simulated Martian regolith, researchers found … if you rinse it with water first.
Future astronauts could use tardigrades to help grow plants and survive in habitats on Mars.
Tardigrades are interesting little extremophiles. They can survive a wide array of harsh conditions, such as radiation and starvation. Some live in desolate conditions; others live in warm, green places hence their nickname "moss bears." This implies that they excel at colonizing harsh terrain, but they can also take advantage of better conditions. They're about as close to indestructible as life on Earth has gotten. So it makes sense to take them along for space exploration.
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Friday, March 6th, 2026 01:34 pm
Today is mostly sunny, unseasonably warm, and windy. It drizzled on and off yesterday and last night. Today the wind is drying things out some.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen any yet.
I put out water for the birds.
Lots of flowers are blooming -- the crocuses are open and I spotted a winter aconite.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I transplanted volunteer snowdrops from the parking lot to the apricot tree.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I tried using a pruning saw on one of the remaining saplings in the parking lot. I managed to make a small cut, but clearly this method is too inefficient to bring down a sapling. *sigh*
.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen any yet.
I put out water for the birds.
Lots of flowers are blooming -- the crocuses are open and I spotted a winter aconite.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I transplanted volunteer snowdrops from the parking lot to the apricot tree.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I tried using a pruning saw on one of the remaining saplings in the parking lot. I managed to make a small cut, but clearly this method is too inefficient to bring down a sapling. *sigh*
.
Tags:
Friday, March 6th, 2026 01:32 pm
Today is mostly sunny, unseasonably warm, and windy. It drizzled on and off yesterday and last night. Today the wind is drying things out some.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen any yet.
I put out water for the birds.
Lots of flowers are blooming -- the crocuses are open and I spotted a winter aconite.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I transplanted volunteer snowdrops from the parking lot to the apricot tree.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I tried using a pruning saw on one of the remaining saplings in the parking lot. I managed to make a small cut, but clearly this method is too inefficient to bring down a sapling. *sigh*
.
I fed the birds. I haven't seen any yet.
I put out water for the birds.
Lots of flowers are blooming -- the crocuses are open and I spotted a winter aconite.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I transplanted volunteer snowdrops from the parking lot to the apricot tree.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/6/26 -- I tried using a pruning saw on one of the remaining saplings in the parking lot. I managed to make a small cut, but clearly this method is too inefficient to bring down a sapling. *sigh*
.
Friday, March 6th, 2026 05:30 pm
My graduate seminar on Middle Vernacular Sinitic has six M.A. students from the PRC in it. They are all advanced in Literary Sinitic / Classical Chinese (LS/CC) . In this seminar, which I have been offering for more than a decade, each time I focus on a different medieval text. Because the texts I assign to the students are largely or wholly unannotated, the students are mostly sailing through uncharted waters. For them to be able to read and understand these texts, their Sinitic philological skills have to be high, higher than for most students in Advanced LS/CC courses.
By way of introduction, I requested the students to tell the class how to write their names in characters. For most of the students' names, with some back and forth explication, we could explain which characters were operative, although some were harder and some were easier. For the ones we couldn't readily explain verbally, we wrote them on the board. Of the 18 characters in question, there was one character — consisting of only 10 strokes (less than average) — that nobody in the room (other than the student to whom it belonged) could recognize. They couldn't figure out what it meant, how it sounded, or its construction. I had probably seen this character two or three times in my life, so I knew what it looked like, but didn't know much else about it. Just judging from its appearance, I guessed that it meant "a kind of (fine) jade" (there are numerous recherché characters for types of jade like that, as there are for horses, fish, usw.)
I asked the student who owns that character, Zhao Xutong, if I could write about it on Language Log, and she told me I could.
Xutong said:
I actually recognize this anecdote as a very interesting one. My name is 赵珝童 (Zhao Xutong), and it’s common for people to pronounce it wrongly as “Zhao Yutong (羽童),” “Zhao Yitong (翊童),” or “Zhao Xu (fourth tone) Tong.”
[VHM: Zhao is one of the most common Chinese surnames; tóng 童 means "child, boy" — see below for more detailed historical, linguistic, and lexicographic notes.]
As far as I understand, “Yutong” usually means that they decide the pronunciation based on the part they do recognize, such as 羽. “Yitong,” on the other hand, means that they realize the character is unfamiliar to them, and they are not satisfied with recognizing it only through the parts they know, so they may search in their mind and assume that 翊 and 珝 are the same character.
I have encountered tons of trouble because of my name. For example, when printing my boarding pass at the airport, my name was sometimes presented as 赵__童, and I had to go to a particular counter to have my name written out and certified by an officer. At school, most teachers couldn’t recognize it, so they simply decided not to cold-call me in class (which was actually a relief).
And a fun fact: Zhao Yuetong (玥童) was once my “used name” (曾用名) that appeared in my citizen profile. 23 years ago, the officer who recorded my name misread it and left this mistaken record.
Oh, and I was very impressed by the way you [VHM] constructed the meaning of 珝 as “jade and feather.” I often find it difficult to explain this character briefly to people. The 王 next to 羽 is actually the 玉字旁 ("jade" radical), but if I say that 王 is 玉字旁 , people often argue that it’s not 玉 but 王 ("king"). So whenever I try to explain the meaning of this character (a very pure kind of white jade), I usually have to give a much longer speech than I would like.
At this point, I thought I was almost finished with this post, because — when I asked Xutong if it were in my favorite smallish dictionary, the famous Xīnhuá Zìdiǎn 新华字典 (The Xinhua Dictionary of Chinese Characters) — the world's best-selling reference work, with nearly half a billion copies in print, which I held up to the class, she said "yes", it was. But when I went home that evening and looked for it, try as I may couldn't find it, though I spent much time searching for it every which way.
珝 may be well nigh unrecognizable to most people, including highly literate and learned individuals, but it does pop up often enough (maybe once every several million times) that it does have to be taken into consideration by font designers and managers, government officials, financial institutions, professors, and so forth. It is not exceedingly rare in terms of the total corpus (approximately 100,000 sinographs), but it is quite rare enough to give plenty of people — including one person who has it in her name — lots of headaches.
This is not the first time I have encountered similar mystery / phantom characters in my classes or in public situations (see, for example, hàn 菡 below).
By the way, many years ago, perhaps before Language Log, I wrote that the first act of the Japanese Diet was for the members to explain how to pronounce their names. I don't know if that still obtains.
Technical notes on tóng 童
"child; servant boy; virgin; bare”
Löffler (1966) compares it to Kuki-Chin dong (“boy”); see also Rengmitca tong-kléng' (“boy”), Areng thon-dén (“boy”) (Löffler, 1960). Schuessler (2007) also compares it to Hmong-Mien: White Hmong tub (“son”), Iu Mien dorn (“son”).
“shaman”
Norman and Mei (1976) proposed that the Min Chinese word for “shaman” (*-dəŋA), written as 童, is from an Austroasiatic substratum, cognate with Vietnamese đồng, Mon ဒံၚ် (tòŋ, “to dance while under daemonic possession; to proceed by leaps”), ဒေါၚ် (tòŋ, “shaman called in to organise kəlok dances”). This is rebutted in Sagart (2008), who cited the wide distribution of the sense “magician; sorcerer” in late 19th-century & early 20th-century Chinese and the secondary meaning of 童 as “servant; messenger”, describing the resemblance between the Min and Austroasiatic terms as “undoubtedly fortuitous”.
Oracle bone form, an ideogrammic compound (會意 / 会意): 䇂 (“chisel”) + 見 (“kneeling person with a huge eye”). It depicts a person getting their eye (目) gouged out, a common punishment for slaves in ancient China. Compare 民, 臧.
When I began studying Chinese religions in the early 70s, one of the first terms I learned, one that captivated my imagination, was jītóng 乩童 ("spirit medium").
I was intrigued that a synonym in Hakka, Hokkien, and Teochew was 童乩 , with the syllables reversed.
Although the word was pronounced jītóng in MSM, I never for a moment thought that it had anything to do with northern religious practices (I witnessed Formosan tâng-ki climbing up ladders whose rungs were sharp knives and flagellating themselves till blood flowed copiously from their back.
Historical notes on Zhào 趙
Zhao (/dʒaʊ/; traditional Chinese: 趙; simplified Chinese: 赵; pinyin: Zhào; Wade–Giles: Chao⁴) is a Chinese-language surname.[note 1] The name is first in the Hundred Family Surnames – the traditional list of all Chinese surnames – because it was the emperor's surname of the Song dynasty (960–1279) when the list was compiled. The first line of the poem is 趙錢孫李 (Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li).
Zhao may be romanized as "Chiu" from the Cantonese pronunciation, and is romanized in Taiwan and Hong Kong as "Chao" in the Wade–Giles system. It is romanized as Vietnamese family name "Triệu" among the Chinese diaspora in Vietnam. Zhao is cognate to Korean family name "Cho" (조) in Korea.
Lexicographical notes on xǔ 珝
- Kangxi Dictionary: page 730, character 26
- Dai Kanwa Jiten: character 20952
- Dae Jaweon: page 1142, character 10
- Hanyu Da Zidian (first edition): volume 2, page 1114, character 7
- Unihan data for U+73DD
Since I couldn't find xǔ 珝 in the Xinhua Dictionary, which has about 10,000 characters, but it does occur in the above sources, which go up to 50,000 or more, you can get a sense of its frequency.
Selected readings
- "Recognizing half of a character and half of a word" (5/2/21) — on the character hàn 菡, which has a story similar to xǔ 珝
- "A confusion of languages and names" (7/18/16)
- "The political dangers of mispronunciation" (4/5/17)
- "How to pronounce the name of the ruler of the PRC" (10/16/25)
- "How to pronounce the surname 'Mair' and other Doggie talk" (2/17/22)
Friday, March 6th, 2026 10:14 am
Last night I was puzzled as to why Backblaze wasn’t backing up Homura II. But it was late, and I decided to follow up in the morning.
This morning, no backup was occuring, and I forced a Backup Now. After a few minutes of wheels turning, everything stopped again. Backblaze reported 0 files to be backed up.
But I could see that 7.6TB was selected for backup. Could it be that backup was done?
I began the process to request a data restore so I could see what was in the cloud. Amazingly, all 5+ TB of Homura II was there.
I drilled down into the tree structure and confirmed that both folders from TWICE concerts in January 2026 were there.
It appears that Backblaze was smart enough to connect stored data from Homura (I) with the new Homura II drive. All my Lightroom data is backed up to the cloud – and I even know how to do a restore from that backup!
(They say you should always test your backup with a restore. Consider my backup tested.)
Previously
Well, That’s Not Good...
Home System 2026
This morning, no backup was occuring, and I forced a Backup Now. After a few minutes of wheels turning, everything stopped again. Backblaze reported 0 files to be backed up.
 |
But I could see that 7.6TB was selected for backup. Could it be that backup was done?
I began the process to request a data restore so I could see what was in the cloud. Amazingly, all 5+ TB of Homura II was there.
 |
I drilled down into the tree structure and confirmed that both folders from TWICE concerts in January 2026 were there.
It appears that Backblaze was smart enough to connect stored data from Homura (I) with the new Homura II drive. All my Lightroom data is backed up to the cloud – and I even know how to do a restore from that backup!
(They say you should always test your backup with a restore. Consider my backup tested.)
Previously
Well, That’s Not Good...
Home System 2026
Friday, March 6th, 2026 11:59 am
Friday
A lot of melting going on the past few days. There was a big flock of mixed blackbirds this morning - Cowbirds, Grackles plus the usual Blue Jays, House Sparrows and the Downy Woodpecker returned.
A lot of melting going on the past few days. There was a big flock of mixed blackbirds this morning - Cowbirds, Grackles plus the usual Blue Jays, House Sparrows and the Downy Woodpecker returned.
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Friday, March 6th, 2026 05:00 am
Friday, March 6th, 2026 07:26 am
Sometimes you read a book at exactly the wrong time, and you're like 'god this stupid big fat fantasy novel. Why are you six hundred pages. Why is everybody Sexy. What's the point of you. I'm tired' and sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time and you're like 'thank god! actual worldbuilding!! somebody had a good time getting weird with this! please tell me more about how weird you're getting!!' and I think I could easily have gone either way on Tessa Gratton's The Mercy Makers depending on the four books I'd read just previous as well as the time of the moon. But as it happened, at the point I read it I was really hungering for something, ANYTHING that felt like it actually cared about depicting a unique and distinctive society with characters that felt like they actually belonged in that society, and The Mercy Makers gave me that in spades, so I ended up really high on it! I had a great time! Please understand that I mean it lovingly when I say that it felt like a visual novel high fantasy dating sim!
-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --
Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.
For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:
- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor
In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.
The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.
But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )
-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through
alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.
For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:
- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor
In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.
The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.
But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )
Tags:
Friday, March 6th, 2026 10:21 am
In November, I wrote about people who advocate assaulting people they call Nazis. Bad as they are, they aren’t in the same league as people whose political views include endorsement of murder. This group is on the fringe, but it needs to be strongly repudiated.
A report that caught my attention recently says that “The man who allegedly opened fire at a country club in Nashua, N.H., last fall, killing a restaurant patron and wounding two other people, later confessed to the shooting and told investigators he wanted to kill the rich.” Many people on the left admire Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing insurance executive Brian Thompson in cold blood. Posts on social media express enthusiasm for France’s Reign of Terror, in which about 17,000 people were executed. The Chicago Teachers Union posted on pre-Musk Twitter applauding a death threat in the form of a mock guillotine.
I didn’t see much outright celebration of Charlie Kirk’s death, but the outburst of hatred following his death was far out of proportion to his views and inappropriate to the occasion. Last September, I posted about one aspect of that reaction.
These are people who believe individual human lives have no significance. If they can improve “society” by eliminating some of its members, they’re all for it. In previous generations, people with similar views cheered the killing of millions by Stalin and Mao.
These people have the right to express their views, so long as they aren’t directly threatening people. What they don’t have is the right to be considered anything better than human dirt. Teachers who applaud guillotines should be pariahs in educational communities. Talk show audiences who cheer for Mangione should be kicked out of the studio. People who post to social media advocating a new Reign of Terror should have their accounts suspended. People who believe in human rights in any form should make it clear they have nothing to do with admirers of murder.
Friday, March 6th, 2026 12:00 am
Comic strip for 2026/03/06
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 12:00 am
Comic strip for 2026/03/05
Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 12:00 am
Comic strip for 2026/03/04
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026 12:00 am
Comic strip for 2026/03/03
Monday, March 2nd, 2026 12:00 am
Comic strip for 2026/03/02
Friday, March 6th, 2026 02:59 am
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 11:46 pm
It seems to be this time of day a lot anymore. I wake up near midnight and have to try to get my sleep-addled brain to work well enough to get my ass up, take a leak, pour a cup of orange juice, and get the computer working so I can post a brief journal entry before tomorrow comes crashing down on my head. Minimal wakefulness prevents all but the shallowest and most trivial thoughts.
But then that makes the best excuse, since my thoughts are rarely anything but shallow and trivial anymore. Maybe my subconscious knows what it's doing. Too bad that can't balance out the imbecility of my consciousness, but at least it's a disguise of sorts. I'm bearding for myself. Now that I think about it, that's pretty clever. Too bad clever is just TEMU smart.
Crap, what am I going to do for midnight breakfast?
But then that makes the best excuse, since my thoughts are rarely anything but shallow and trivial anymore. Maybe my subconscious knows what it's doing. Too bad that can't balance out the imbecility of my consciousness, but at least it's a disguise of sorts. I'm bearding for myself. Now that I think about it, that's pretty clever. Too bad clever is just TEMU smart.
Crap, what am I going to do for midnight breakfast?
Friday, March 6th, 2026 12:07 am
This month is the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
marchmetamatterschallenge, where folks are encouraged to archive their old meta so it doesn't get lost and/or post new meta. In honor of that, today's theme is Meta. So this month, save your meta, make some new meta, and crosspost to meta communities to keep them active. \o/ See my Follow Friday Master Post for more topics.
( Read more... )
marchmetamatterschallenge, where folks are encouraged to archive their old meta so it doesn't get lost and/or post new meta. In honor of that, today's theme is Meta. So this month, save your meta, make some new meta, and crosspost to meta communities to keep them active. \o/ See my Follow Friday Master Post for more topics.( Read more... )
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Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:53 pm
( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )
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Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:20 pm
It is a little dry, but today I got the tractor out and graded the road. Hopefully we will have a light rain soon to settle the gravel in it's new home.
This weekend it Obstacle Practice. I'm mostly ready.
The greenhouse is full of little plants growing lustily.
This weekend it Obstacle Practice. I'm mostly ready.
The greenhouse is full of little plants growing lustily.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:11 pm
Last week the ladies from the basket weaving group came out to help cut back willow trees. They did some cutting, and a lot of harvesting of small willow twigs, most around 2 feet long. I used the chainsaw and the loppers. We got a tiny area done. On the way back to the car I realized there was an elderberry tree there. It was HUGE, one stem was at least 16 inches in diameter and probably 40 feet tall. I'm used to thinking of elderberry as a shrub. I cut back several of the smaller stems and the ladies harvested from the downed wood. They were very excited about it. Elderberry is used to make flutes, rattles, arrows and all kinds of things. The elderberry, will grow back strong and straight. It is a fire ecology plant and responds really well to being cut, or burnt.
I'm so happy that I've made contact with this community of people!
I'm so happy that I've made contact with this community of people!
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 09:42 pm
As of a few days ago we FINALLY have a permit to do the planned construction at Henry has been 3 long years since we set out to find an architect to draw new plans for a renovation.
This is a picture from 2004, showing the back of Henry St house. In it you can see, on the left side of the house, that there are two enclosed "porches" hanging off the back wall of the house. The top one is little, only about 7 feet wide. The lower one is 15 feet wide, so just over half the width of the house. Both porches leak a bit in big storms. Yes, since before 2004. The construction will take both porches completely off the back of the house, remove all the siding from the back of the house and move some of the windows. The window changes will allow us to put in 2 - 4 ft wide "sheer walls" running from the foundation to the roof. These will strengthen the house in an earthquake. Currently there is a window or a door, on one level or another, making it so there is almost no place where even one support runs all the way from foundation to roof. Speaking of foundations, our is literally crumbling away and has no tensile strength. NOT good. After demolition the first step will be to pour a new foundation across the back of the house.
I have been down to SF several times in the last few weeks, helping Donald clean out the garage, and hauling things to Ukiah.
.
This is a picture from 2004, showing the back of Henry St house. In it you can see, on the left side of the house, that there are two enclosed "porches" hanging off the back wall of the house. The top one is little, only about 7 feet wide. The lower one is 15 feet wide, so just over half the width of the house. Both porches leak a bit in big storms. Yes, since before 2004. The construction will take both porches completely off the back of the house, remove all the siding from the back of the house and move some of the windows. The window changes will allow us to put in 2 - 4 ft wide "sheer walls" running from the foundation to the roof. These will strengthen the house in an earthquake. Currently there is a window or a door, on one level or another, making it so there is almost no place where even one support runs all the way from foundation to roof. Speaking of foundations, our is literally crumbling away and has no tensile strength. NOT good. After demolition the first step will be to pour a new foundation across the back of the house.
I have been down to SF several times in the last few weeks, helping Donald clean out the garage, and hauling things to Ukiah.
.
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Friday, March 6th, 2026 12:01 am
noun: 1. Extravagance. 2. A large quantity or abundance.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 09:07 pm
The late blogger Kevin Drum was under treatment for many years for multiple myeloma, which eventually killed him about a year ago. He wrote often about his medical adventures, and had particularly strong feelings about a medication he was on, a steroid named dexamethasone, which he called "the evil dex."
What exactly was evil about it he never made exactly clear, but it seems that it prevented him from sleeping, leaving him groggy all the time.
I do not have myeloma, but I have been taking intermittent courses of dexamethasone - one to four days each - and have to report differently. It doesn't seem to have caused any disruption in my sleep, which has actually been getting less disrupted lately, and though that may be because I was taking the dex in the mornings, I've had it in the afternoons with no further effect.
What it does cause is a spike in blood sugar, which has to be watched over carefully. And either it or some of the other medications I've been taking at the same time has been causing constipation, about which the less said the better.
What exactly was evil about it he never made exactly clear, but it seems that it prevented him from sleeping, leaving him groggy all the time.
I do not have myeloma, but I have been taking intermittent courses of dexamethasone - one to four days each - and have to report differently. It doesn't seem to have caused any disruption in my sleep, which has actually been getting less disrupted lately, and though that may be because I was taking the dex in the mornings, I've had it in the afternoons with no further effect.
What it does cause is a spike in blood sugar, which has to be watched over carefully. And either it or some of the other medications I've been taking at the same time has been causing constipation, about which the less said the better.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:48 pm
Atacama surprise: The world’s driest desert is teeming with hidden life
Even in the world’s driest desert, tiny worms are proving that life finds remarkable ways to endure.
Even in the ultra-dry Atacama Desert, tiny soil-dwelling nematodes are thriving in surprising diversity. Scientists found that biodiversity increases with moisture and altitude shapes which species survive. In the most extreme zones, many nematodes reproduce asexually — a possible survival advantage. The discovery suggests that life in arid regions may be far richer, and more fragile, than once believed.
Even in the world’s driest desert, tiny worms are proving that life finds remarkable ways to endure.
Even in the ultra-dry Atacama Desert, tiny soil-dwelling nematodes are thriving in surprising diversity. Scientists found that biodiversity increases with moisture and altitude shapes which species survive. In the most extreme zones, many nematodes reproduce asexually — a possible survival advantage. The discovery suggests that life in arid regions may be far richer, and more fragile, than once believed.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:13 pm
Recently Charles de Lint shared the story "ICE Out," from his urban fantasy setting Newford. So I decided to write one of my own, from the world of Monster House.
Warning: Here there be monsters.
( Read more... )
Warning: Here there be monsters.
( Read more... )
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Thursday, March 5th, 2026 07:46 pm
I'm back to looking at backup tools for linux, and massively unimpressed with the documentation of several that are reputed to be good.
Here's my use case:
- I have a fresh minty external drive, currently in an unopened box
- I wish to use it to backup my linux system.
(Implicit) Instructions for MacOS TimeMachine
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- tell the system you want to use the new desk (nicely identified by name) for Time machine
(I forget this was via a pop-up when the system saw the disk, or via the File Manager GUI)
- tell Time machine you *really* don't have any data you care about on the disk; it's free to format it any way it likes.
Instructions for Borg Backup and Restic
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- figure out how to format it, whether and how to partition it, etc.; put a file system on it, and mount it, and do so. Guess which file system type would be best. Guess whether there's any reason to use multiple partitions.
- now you can start using the documentation's quickstart guide.
This was fine back when most people installed their own linux systems, and the installation involved deciding how to format and partition your disks, and which file system type(s) to use.
But that hasn't been true for most linux users for the past decade or more.
(1) Plenty of folks happily buy pre-installed linux systems
(2) Those who don't find that the installation process gives them a single bootable partition, with a single file system, using the file system of its choice. Maybe it asks user input if it sees multiple disks/ssds, and it does ask for confirmation when installing to a disk that already has a file system.
( Read more... )
Here's my use case:
- I have a fresh minty external drive, currently in an unopened box
- I wish to use it to backup my linux system.
(Implicit) Instructions for MacOS TimeMachine
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- tell the system you want to use the new desk (nicely identified by name) for Time machine
(I forget this was via a pop-up when the system saw the disk, or via the File Manager GUI)
- tell Time machine you *really* don't have any data you care about on the disk; it's free to format it any way it likes.
Instructions for Borg Backup and Restic
- unpack, attach cables, plug in to comp following manufacturer's directions
- figure out how to format it, whether and how to partition it, etc.; put a file system on it, and mount it, and do so. Guess which file system type would be best. Guess whether there's any reason to use multiple partitions.
- now you can start using the documentation's quickstart guide.
This was fine back when most people installed their own linux systems, and the installation involved deciding how to format and partition your disks, and which file system type(s) to use.
But that hasn't been true for most linux users for the past decade or more.
(1) Plenty of folks happily buy pre-installed linux systems
(2) Those who don't find that the installation process gives them a single bootable partition, with a single file system, using the file system of its choice. Maybe it asks user input if it sees multiple disks/ssds, and it does ask for confirmation when installing to a disk that already has a file system.
( Read more... )
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:01 pm
There's been a downpour on and off tonight, hitting a couple hours ago and then coming back loud enough I can't miss it. There was a little snow left in the parks and at the very edges, but this is going to see to everything. The feeling of knowing this is exactly it, more than it felt on Sunday, is somehow both peaceful and unsettling. There's an acceptance and a sense of gratitude of not having missed the moment. It's not something I'm eager to seek out, and it's one I can hold onto and sit with a while.
I put in three bids for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate, two for beta readers and one for a vid. Whether they'll end up getting outbid remains to be seen. I've got at least a day to figure out what my absolute maximum collective bid should be and which ones to prioritize. Not something to think about for the rest of the night, at least.
I put in three bids for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate, two for beta readers and one for a vid. Whether they'll end up getting outbid remains to be seen. I've got at least a day to figure out what my absolute maximum collective bid should be and which ones to prioritize. Not something to think about for the rest of the night, at least.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 07:10 pm
I missed out on my chance to be at David Hewlett or Rachel Luttrell’s table at the con, but I see the person who played Na’Toth on B5 will be there and I am very tempted to sit at that table…
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 08:50 pm
"ICE Out" by Charles de Lint (free PDF version)
ICE came to Newford. Big mistake.
For:
Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres
Geraldo Lunas Campos
Víctor Manuel Díaz
Parady La
Renee Nicole Good
Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz
Heber Sánchez Domínguez
Alex Pretti
murdered by ICE
I've been an activist for decades. I've done marches and letter campaigns and all the usual stuff. The technique I've found with the highest throughput of people saying, "I did the thing!" is plain old storytelling. Stories are part of what makes us human. Stories bind the past, explain the present, and imagine the future.
For bards, this is our fight. This is how we fight. Pass it on.
EDIT 3/5/26 -- My contribution is "The Express Bus to Crazy-ass Death Land."
ICE came to Newford. Big mistake.
For:
Luis Gustavo Núñez Cáceres
Geraldo Lunas Campos
Víctor Manuel Díaz
Parady La
Renee Nicole Good
Luis Beltrán Yáñez–Cruz
Heber Sánchez Domínguez
Alex Pretti
murdered by ICE
I've been an activist for decades. I've done marches and letter campaigns and all the usual stuff. The technique I've found with the highest throughput of people saying, "I did the thing!" is plain old storytelling. Stories are part of what makes us human. Stories bind the past, explain the present, and imagine the future.
For bards, this is our fight. This is how we fight. Pass it on.
EDIT 3/5/26 -- My contribution is "The Express Bus to Crazy-ass Death Land."
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Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:03 pm
something's fishy
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 09:43 pm
( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )
Tags:
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 07:52 pm
Time of the Cat
3/5. Sci-fantasy time travel about the future scholars paired with talking cats to romp through history.
Connie Willis, but make it way zanier. I picked this up the day our cat went into the kitty ER (he’s fine, he ate approximately four feet of ribbon but they got it back out without surgery). It was good for that day spent waiting, but after that exhausted/worried interval there was still more book, and it went weirder and more spaghetti splat than I wanted. Like there was so much happening in this book simultaneously, and all of it – the zany talking cat parts and the far future parts and the multiple factions parts and the romance parts and the trying-to-be-serious memory loss parts – were all treated with the same cheerful rush, which left me unsatisfied.
A good head empty no thoughts day book, but otherwise, kind of a frenetic mess. Also, I genuinely don't know why the protag was still into the love interest by the end, she did not sell me on that in the slightest.
Content notes: Memory manipulation.
3/5. Sci-fantasy time travel about the future scholars paired with talking cats to romp through history.
Connie Willis, but make it way zanier. I picked this up the day our cat went into the kitty ER (he’s fine, he ate approximately four feet of ribbon but they got it back out without surgery). It was good for that day spent waiting, but after that exhausted/worried interval there was still more book, and it went weirder and more spaghetti splat than I wanted. Like there was so much happening in this book simultaneously, and all of it – the zany talking cat parts and the far future parts and the multiple factions parts and the romance parts and the trying-to-be-serious memory loss parts – were all treated with the same cheerful rush, which left me unsatisfied.
A good head empty no thoughts day book, but otherwise, kind of a frenetic mess. Also, I genuinely don't know why the protag was still into the love interest by the end, she did not sell me on that in the slightest.
Content notes: Memory manipulation.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 06:23 pm
Dad's house has daffodils about 1" above the ground. My house gets less sun and is a little behind his, so no daffs at my place yet.
( In other news... )
( In other news... )
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 06:53 pm
Not having a Tumblr, I now inflict upon you, my dear dwenizens, the results of idly scrolling the Tumblrs of various authors whose public posting I follow on and off.
https://restlesshush.tumblr.com/729914555516485632
"I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human."
https://restlesshush.tumblr.com/729914555516485632
"I feel like it would be useful if people conceived of causing emotional harm to others more through the lens of being the emotional equivalent to stepping on someone’s foot. Like obviously you can step on someone’s foot deliberately and maliciously, but most of the time if someone tells you you stepped on their foot you’re going to go “oh sorry I didn’t realise!” and stop doing it and try not to do it again. Getting caught up in how it makes you feel to be Someone Capable of Stepping on Others’ Feet would be a transparently self indulgent distraction from the other person’s pain, but also like… that’s just a status you hold by virtue of being human."
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 11:23 pm
About twenty metres up the road is a front garden that is, at this time of year, full of ridiculous daffodils. It is an Annual Delight. I took this photo yesterday, and then I dragged A out to visit it at lunchtime today, in glorious weather. It has been a good day.
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Thursday, March 5th, 2026 04:50 pm
Spending time in nature triggers a calming chain reaction in the brain
People often say a walk in nature clears the mind. Scientists have long suspected the effect is real, but exactly what happens inside the brain has been harder to pin down.
A sweeping synthesis of 108 brain-imaging experiments now shows that natural environments consistently quiet neural stress circuits and shift the brain toward a calmer, more integrated state.
( Read more... )
People often say a walk in nature clears the mind. Scientists have long suspected the effect is real, but exactly what happens inside the brain has been harder to pin down.
A sweeping synthesis of 108 brain-imaging experiments now shows that natural environments consistently quiet neural stress circuits and shift the brain toward a calmer, more integrated state.
( Read more... )
Thursday, March 5th, 2026 10:41 pm
I think jargon is getting thicker with each passing day, but where are people learning it? Perhaps they are actually being taught it in business schools. It's so pervasive, nauseating, and suffocating that it must be somebody's job to produce it.
To put the new wave / avant garde jargon in perspective, I turned to this consummate collection compiled by WSJ from the complaints of actual endurers:
‘Leverage.’ ‘Reach Out.’ ‘Circle Back.’ The Corporate Jargon We Hate the Most.
We pinged our readers for the terms that really annoy them. The list is long.
By Demetria Gallegos, WSJ (Feb. 26, 2026)
Here begins the deluge:
Bandwidth: You’re not a router, just say you’re busy, pal!
I recall during an all-hands, the CEO announced the elimination of a quarterly planning meeting to “protect everyone’s bandwidth.” The freed-up two hours were immediately filled by: one new check-in meeting, three “bandwidth review” sessions to discuss how people were using their reclaimed bandwidth, and a mandatory survey about whether people felt less bandwidth-constrained. By week two, people had less bandwidth than before. The CEO sent a note: “Given current bandwidth constraints, we’ll discuss the bandwidth situation next quarter.”
— Noa Khamallah, New York
[VHM: I should mention that each of the 28 items comes with an illustrative example. Here, to save bandwidth, I omit the illustrations. However, because of the wit and vitriol displayed, I invite you to read each of them in their entirety.]
Change agent: …conjures for me someone on the midway at the fair wearing a money belt with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.
Circle back: I asked someone to do some research and the response was “I’ll check it out and circle back to you.”
Decision tree: As in, “Let’s reach up into our decision tree.” It’s just stupid!
Decisioning: It’s a pointless invention to give gravitas to the notion that action or choices should follow. For example,
Deep dive: Every time I hear some C-Suite type utter the dreaded “deep dive,” I want to respond, “Oh, really? Not investigate, study, discern, discover, find out about, look into?
Growth mindset: Used mainly as an ambiguous way of describing (or asking for) ambition…
Hard stop: I used to participate on a weekly call with several of my peers from different departments, all of whom, I estimate, were equally busy and crunched for time. The call was scheduled for one hour. But one person had a propensity to announce to everyone at the beginning of the call that she had a “hard stop” at 2 p.m.,
Hit the ground running: Early in my career as a new-employee trainer, I witnessed a manager tell this to a group of new hires on their first day, at the start of the onboarding process.
Juice isn’t worth the squeeze: I hear this so much every day you’d think I was working at Tropicana.
Lean in: Lean in to what? Are you dancing the Macarena? [VHM: This is one of my least favorite and least understood, but most ofter heard, trite expressions.]
Let’s take this offline: No, let’s discuss it now! [VHM: kinda reminds me of two guys in a bar about to fight — "let's take this outside"]
Leverage: When did this become a thing? “We can leverage the existing PowerPoint deck,” for example. Or maybe we could just use it?
Move the needle: Ugh. I want to vomit every time I hear this phrase.
Negative growth: This one is tough to beat.
Piggyback: As in, “I just want to piggyback on his comment.”
Pivot: Usually said by someone who does not want to tell their superior they disagree with their strategy or when a project is going horribly wrong.
Probabilistic: In the marketing world, there is “probabilistic” targeting of customers. It means probable, but someone had to make it sound fancy and almost impossible to pronounce.
Put a pin in that: This, along with “Let’s double-click on that,” is just silly speak.
Reach out: This phrase sounds so overblown.
Socialize: To share an idea or proposal with key decisionmakers in order to solicit feedback and gain approval or buy-in to make a decision.
Soup to nuts: This phrase is a non-value-add in most cases as we can tell from the context of the statement something is being looked at or redone completely. [VHM: I never thought about this enough before to understand that it meant "beginning to end".]
Space: The equity space. The beauty-supply space. The intellectual-property space. The media space.
Stakeholders: It makes me think of vampire slayers. [I bemoaned this years ago.]
Take a 10,000-foot view: I hate when people use this phrase to mean taking a look at a situation or project more broadly.
Thought leadership: This isn’t a term that most of us would use, even in semiformal conversation. Either “research” or “analysis” is easier to understand quickly/
Unpack that: In other words: Deal with it now.
Utilize: I teach new writers to avoid utilize except in a “MacGyver”-like case, when something is used for a purpose it wasn’t originally intended…
There follows the Conversation section which closed after it received and printed 688 comments, which are similar to those in the main body of the article. Of this avalanche, I will quote just the first one, together with its illustration:
Asked Grok to use all 28 phrases in one paragraph:
In a highly orchestrated alignment meeting framed as a thought leadership exercise, leadership opened by citing bandwidth pressures and recent negative growth, insisting we leverage existing assets before any deep dive, though a pivot remained visible on the decision tree pending further decisioning. Key stakeholders were told to reach out and socialize the proposal, ideally taking a 10,000-foot view while a designated change agent tried to move the needle by piggyback-ing on prior work. Predictably, difficult topics were deferred as we put a pin in that and agreed to circle back after we unpack that offline, because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, at least under current probabilistic assumptions. Everyone was encouraged to lean in, utilize available resources, respect the looming hard stop, and maintain a resilient growth mindset despite the absence of anything resembling a concrete decision.
To me it's all just so much empty talk. I couldn't help but think how I'd say that in Mandarin, which (for me) would be fèihuà 廢話 (lit., syllable by syllable, "wasted / crippled talk"). In turn, I thought of all the ways to translate fèihuà 廢話 into English: nonsense; absurdity; balderdash; blab; blabber; blah; blather; bull; bullshit; buncombe; bunk; bunkum; codswallop; fiddle-faddle; fiddlestick; gab; guff; haver(ing) [VHM: heard that word many times in a Scottish song by the Proclaimers, "I'm gonna be (500 Miles)"; inanity; keckle; overtalk; piffle; poppycock ; prattle; rubbish; stuff; talk nonsense; tootle; trash; tripe; twaddle; waste; yack; yackety-yak; yak; yap (courtesy of GT)
Now, here at the end, I'll circle back to one of the least favorite expressions I hear from people on a daily basis: "quick question", meaning, I have no clear idea what I want to ask you, so this is going to take a lot of time to unpack and make any sense of..
Selected readings
- "May I ask you a question?" (6/12/17) — "readh out to your", cf. "overreach"; "quick question"
- "Stream of consciousness blather" (4/4/12)
[h.t. Mark Metcalf]