owl | Reading

Gosh those people with the archivists' sales team are persistent! I've heard again - okay, different name and email, exact same wordage - TWICE, second time with added 'Worth a chat?'

No, sir, not in the least.

***

This week I got the Authors Licensing and Copyright Society payout, which was an agreeable sum, maybe it would not actually support me in My Old Age, but it is Better Than A Bat In The Eye With A Burnt Stick. Furthermore, as it is itemised - all the tiddly sums that get totted up - it is a Revelation of what works of mine are still being looked at, wow.

***

Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses:

A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed.
The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians.
Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent".
It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error.
....
But academics questioned the findings, pointing out that the results seemed out of step with other data. Results from the long-running British Social Attitudes Survey, and even the Church of England's own figures, show a long term decline in church attendance.
Experts said that YouGov's methodology - gathering data from volunteers who received cash rewards for their time - left it vulnerable to "bogus respondents" skewing the data.

Murmurs about Mammon distorting the data....

***

Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe – research:

Howe wrote to Pepys to “crave your acceptance” of a “small” enslaved boy, which “I brought home on board for your honour … Hoping he is so well seasoned to endure the cold weather as to live in England.”
Pepys wrote back indignantly rejecting the offer. But Edwards argues this was not because of ethical concerns about slavery, but the optics of looking like a man who could be bribed.

***

This is quite resonant with discussion I was having this week apropos of my 1930s feminists and the less visible ways in which the work was happening, so much so that it's been supposed (it was being claimed at the time) that Feminism Woz Ded: The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism.

regshoe

...on the back he saw a neat little résumé in Miss Pembroke’s handwriting, intended for such as him. “Allegory. Man = modern civilization (in bad sense). Girl = getting into touch with Nature.”

—The Longest Journey, chapter 12

~~Pan Pipes~~ The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories (1911) is a collection of various of E. M. Forster's short stories originally published in magazines over the previous decade or so; it is dedicated to The Independent Review, one of those magazines and evidently an Apostles/Bloomsbury project, which had ceased publication some time previously. The stories are a delight and I enjoyed them very much, but I fear an attempt to explain why risks falling into the triteness quoted above, or else perhaps the other, at least more entertaining, way of getting things right-but-wrong (or wrong-but-right) of Charles Sayle's view on 'The Story of a Panic', described by Forster in the essay 'My Books and I':

Then he showed Maynard what the story was about. B—— by a waiter at the hotel, Eustace commits bestiality with a goat on that valley where I had sat. In the subsequent chapters, he tells the waiter how nice it has been and they try to b—— each other again. [...] I was horrified and did not want to meet Charles Sayle. In after years I realised that in a stupid and unprofitable way he was right and that this was the cause of my indignation.

What shall I say about them, then? The stories, which may or may not be variously about Nature and b——y, are all more or less fantastical. The title story is meant very literally; it's about an omnibus that goes to Heaven (from Surbiton), and the bus is driven and Heaven peopled by famous authors and literary characters from through the ages. 'The Story of a Panic', 'The Road from Colonus' and 'The Curate's Friend' all feature classical themes; the first two are set in Italy and Greece respectively, while the Faun of the latter, haunting the hills of (of course) Wiltshire and usually 'only speaking to children' who forget him when they grow up, reminded me for a moment of Kipling's Puck, though Forster does more adult things with him. 'The Other Side of the Hedge' is also about Modern Civilisation and what it loses sight of, and is really more of an allegory than 'Other Kingdom', despite Agnes Pembroke's comment on the latter—for, what delighted me most of all in this collection, that story is (with a few minor alterations of detail) Rickie's story about the Dryad described in chapters 7 and 12 of The Longest Journey. Apparently Forster had written but not yet published it when he put it in the novel. Important and highly recommended reading for any Forster fan and anyone else who thinks this sort of thing sounds worthwhile.

runpunkrun

LOVED the art. Fun, colorful, cartoony, and expressive. Brings to mind Matt Groening and John Allison.

LOVED that there's more trans and genderqueer characters than you can shake a stick at.

LOVED the framing device with the kids in the museum.

LIKED the first half of the book with the Spiritual Association of Peers, a secretive community/cult that lives in the lawless exurbs outside the New York City Administrative and Security Territory and refuses to talk to the researcher sent to research them.

LIKED our hapless trans man Lucius Pasternak, researcher, who's just trying to do his job.

NOT KEEN on the second half of the book with the visions and the monster(s) as a metaphor for, idk, self-loathing or capitalism or whatever. It's not a trope I have a natural affinity for and this didn't sell me on it. I want real monsters or I want self-loathing, but don't outsource the problem. The romance also felt whatever. There was chemistry between them, but little else.

UNSATISFIED by the ending, which seems to be resolved in passing by two randos, but also raises a lot of big questions that go unanswered and left me skeptical.

IN SHORT, the first half is kind of a mystery where you're getting to know the players and the setting, and the second half is a kind of gory fairy tale where it's about types of people and social movements, big picture stuff, and I felt like it didn't really match up with the first half.

BUT I'm always glad to read something from Lubchansky and this was a fun way to spend some time.

CONTAINS: some misgendering, including from the robotic health care system; nudity; sex; animal harm (scraggly and aggressive wild bear); violence; cartoon blood and guts; cartoon cops and their cartoon blood and guts.

oursin

Bit of a flurry of Misguided Spam: this one is quite funny:

[W]e're working with other archivists that are offering historical resources.‍
I’m currently working with a few archivists on campaigns that are getting their sales teams meetings with warm leads every month. We’re targeting people who need historical resources using personalized email sequences.
If I could help you connect with potential clients like this, would that be helpful to you?‍

WOT. Unless this is some kind of operation like that BM curator who was selling off stuff from the storerooms, what kind of money do they honestly think there is in ARCHIVES??? Sales teams - No Can Haz.

Another one of the usual 'Contribute your article/join our editorial board/reviewer team' from an international journal... offering a space for the exchange of powerful ideas among academics and experts which cannot distinguish between the title of a book I reviewed and anything I actually wrote my own self.

This one is frankly cheeky, if presumably being spammed at a vast array of people?

I am sure you're quite busy, but I would appreciate if you could take a moment to my below request.
Well, our Open Access Journal of Advances in Complementary & Alternative Medicine (ACAM) is scheduled to release its Volume 9 Issue 2 by 6thApril, but we are in deficit of one article. So, is it possible for you to support us with any of your manuscript to achieve this goal?
Appreciate if you could provide your acknowledgement within 24 hrs.

Presumably they are anticipating recipients will stick prompts into ChatGP or whatever, though you'd think if it's that urgent they'd do it themselves.

Am also being followed on Bluesky by very dubious looking 'Global' conferences within my fields of interest. Suspect these are a racket.

***

However, in realm of being A Real Nexpert, gave a presentation at Institution With Which I Am Now Affiliated yesterday and I think it went quite well, insofar as there was a certain amount of discussion and people coming up and asking questions afterwards.

Also got 2 compliments from much younger persons on hair (green streaks in) though as one was outside the Scientology HQ in Tottenham Court Road I fear this may be one of their recruitment strategies.

oursin

Happy birthday,

robling_t!

mific

I've been quiet in terms of general journaling, mostly as I've been busy with projects. I've almost finished my SGA podfic for the podfic big bang, should be posting it in 2-3 days. Am now starting my first HR podfic, which will be interesting as I'm not going to be able to do Ilya's accent. But podficcers mostly don't attempt accents in podfics - except in HR, for Ilya, perhaps encouraged by Connor Storrie's virtuoso performance. A high bar.

I'm still reading lots of HR fanfic and not really interested in anything else, including profic. And writing. Have started my Hollanov big bang fic and have an AU WIP going as well. I can see that I'm going to lean pretty heavily towards writing AUs and fics that require bugger all knowledge of hockey, because I don't have any! But I'm writing, which feels really good.

It's early autumn here, a dry March until rain started yesterday, and now a much-needed soak. I should be tidying and mulching my garden beds, but my energy's mostly been directed to indoors creative stuff. Caught up with friends yesterday for a yummy Thai dinner, and it's hot cross bun time of year, so things have been excellent on the food front.

Not excellent at all elsewhere in the world, of course. I hope you're all okay and, for the northerners, enjoying spring. Hugs to you all.

james

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mific

I wrote another HR fic, one I've been thinking about for a while, but it wanted to come out now. It's a therapy session with Galina, set a bit after the end of The Long Game, in which Ilya and Galina finally explore his tendency to idealize Irina. About 2100 words, background Shane/Ilya.

Sad and Funny and Beautiful

kareila

We did in fact make the 3 hour drive to Atlanta last Friday for the long desired IKEA trip, although Connor opted to stay home. Our main objective was a Billy bookshelf unit for Will's room, but he also picked up some new bedsheets and a plush bear, Robby got some new kitchen tools, and I grabbed a small three-tiered wheeled cart that I've now deployed to organize craft supplies that are in active use.

In the handful of days since then, I've already made arrangements to go back twice more before the end of the year. One of my D&D friends coaxed me into agreeing to go with her to the Georgia Renaissance Festival in mid-April, which appears to be located maybe 20 miles south of downtown. Also, I bought tickets for the family to see Guster perform with the Atlanta Symphony in October.

I still hate driving there so much. This time I had the brilliant(?) insight that the reason everyone in Atlanta drives like a maniac is because the roads there are so terrible that the entire city has become an automotive asshole filter.

The next time we need an IKEA, we're going to try their new showroom in Huntsville instead.

Current Mood: accomplished

sovay

The train bears

selkie southward again: we have affirmed that the important part is not the leaving, but the coming back. This visit was somewhat more flying than usual and complicated by just about everyone on both sides having run out of running on fumes some time last year if not the previous decade, but we had celebration and I was finally able to give her the shells and stones I had collected for her five months ago on Cape Cod, reminders of northern Atlantic.

spatch and I have decided never again to pay attention to his phone when driving into Brookline. Making our way home from South Station, I was so pleased to see that the superstructure of the Northern Avenue Bridge has not yet been demolished and still stands as an installation of rust-flaked trusses, permanently perpendicular to its successor's flat concrete. What I would have called the new North Washington Street Bridge has been designated the Bill Russell Bridge since I first glimpsed it in miniature of the Zakim, a parabolic stickleback of white fish bones. We parked in the lot of Bill & Bob's for the first roast beef sandwiches of the season, so early the picnic tables had not been set up, and were introduced by WERS to the total delight of They Might Be Giants' "Wu-Tang" (2026) as we wound past the un-iced Mystic. Two days after a snow that stuck to all the branches, it is short-sleeved catkin spring, drive-with-the-windows-down weather. We watched the Charles and the Fort Point Channel scatter the same reflective blue as the sky.

Current Music: Talking Heads, "Creatures of Love"

oursin

What I read

Finished High Stakes. I previously noted a pattern in Dick Francis of the conditional rather than utter win.

Antonia Hodgson, The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path Trilogy, #1) (2025) - think I picked this up as a Kobo deal, because people were mentioning it? I realise that I am no longer in the habit of reading fat multi-volume fantasies of this ilk. I found it all a bit much, really.

Then did some nibbling (what do Tiggers eat?) and then settled into a re-read of Barbara Hambly, The Nubian's Curse, not one of the top Benjamin Januarys perhaps but still pretty good. Possibly when I am in that sort of phase I should just go Hambly/Haddam/Paretsky/Cross?

Currently Reading

Dorothy Richardson, Honeycomb (Pilgrimage, #3) (1917) for online reading group.

Up next

Today's Kobo Deal was the latest Jonathan Kellerman Alex Delaware thriller, Jigsaw, so probably that.

Then possibly more Hambly.

At some point must read Adania Shibli, Minor Detail (2017) for the in-person reading group.

cimorene

Ughhhh. Panic again (Finnish government bureaucracy), and trying to make important decisions, and trying to build healthy habits, and feeling too exhausted for any of it - we're barely ahead of laundry and dishes. I want to take myself and all three pets for checkups and I cannot make the appointments.

At least my dad isn't sick! My parents and sister's shared house is experiencing a plumbing emergency where the shower won't drain though. We have had so many drain problems here that that looks minor to me, though it is quite expensive.

Our wonderful Ukrainian tenant-neighbors in the other half of our house asked politely if they could trim the apple trees, which we've been thinking we need to hire someone to do because we have tried and failed and didn't have the tools. The husband there works, studies, cycles, takes his kids out, fishes, cooks, and is constantly buying and selling things through fb marketplace and fixing furniture with power tools. (His wife does too, but not the fishing or power tools; she swims and does other stuff.) The instant we said yes please 🙏 he thoroughly trimmed both trees, and the kids have gathered the brush into piles already. They are so active and involved and extroverted and successful that we feel inadequate in comparison, but we're so lucky to have them.

oursin

Happy birthday,

staranise!

nineveh_uk

Well it was for a few days. But it is the nature of spring to be fickle, so I shall endure the appearance of equinoctial gales and hope that the cherries don't blossom until later in the week or it will disappear in the closest thing to a blizzard of this winter. I have been failing to write a post because I should be writing about seeing Peter Grimes (brilliant, very dramatic), or more Olympics, or visiting my parents, or reading A Month in the Country (rich and lovely) and it has not happened. Admittedly having a cold has not helped. And I certainly don't want to try to think of something to say about geopolitics.

So when I was reminded of the existence of this song/vid, I thought, I should post that. It is very relatable, literally and metaphorically. Who has never been the penguin who doesn't want to get out of his futon?

Watch on YouTube

sovay

My poem "ἀγκυλοθάλασσος" has been accepted by Strange Horizons. I am indebted to

radiantfracture for his Twine prompt generator designed to produce scientific-sounding compound adjectives and nouns, in this case the irresistible "ankylothalassic" from ἀγκύλος "crooked, bent" and θάλασσα "the sea." I rendered it back into classical Greek and José Esteban Muñoz and Twelfth Night got in there along the way. It was written on New Year's Eve.

While I was out of ambit of the internet for almost all of yesterday, Reckoning: It Was Paradise hit the digital shelves. It is the special issue of the journal of environmental justice on war and conflict and contains a poem of mine which will go live on the internet in a month, or you could pick it up now with the rest of the shatteringly topical e-book if you don't feel like preordering it in print. I wrote it last summer after the—first—U.S. strikes on Iran. I taught myself a small amount of Elamite cuneiform for it. It should not have come around to such relevance again.

The designer of the Paleontological Research Institute's long-running pre-saurian Paleozoic Pals has just branched out into Pleistocene mammals with a Kickstarter for Cenozoic Snuggles. I have put in for a Glyptodon.

I may have slept nine hours. I just heard Rabbitology's "The Bog Bodies" (2026).

Current Music: Charlotte Sands, "Satellite"

oursin

Okay, it was lovely to see the heron again on my walk today. I wonder if it had decided that the eco-pond, with its shoals of Invasive Predatory Goldfish which people have dumped in it to the detriment of other life (frogs, newts, dragonflies) is a delicious all-you-can-eat buffet.

Assuming it is the same heron and that the first did not just tell a friend.

***

In more annoying news, today partner had a go at fixing my printer, which has been giving 'Paper Jam in Tray 1' error messages -

- and after doing pretty much the equivalent of open heart surgery on the thing, lo and behold, there was, entirely concealed from view, a page jammed in the works.

I depose that having to eviscerate a printer to discover this is something of a design fault?

Unfortunately, once the printer was put back together, it decided that the gate was open and it was not going to print anything.

Partner is going to have another go at it tomorrow, but I suspect that New Printer is in the future.

***

Meanwhile, I copied my paper for tomorrow to a memory-stick and took it to partner's computer so that I could print it out there.

This was accomplished successfully.

cimorene

Over ten years ago I researched and read articles looking for the right e-reader app for my phone, got attached to one called FBReader, and paid a tiny fee to upgrade it. I have configured my own font families, sizes, and colors; can adjust the screen brightness in the page; and can advance pages with the volume button. I am attached to the library views as well, although they're not ideal. I've used it to read every ebook I've read in that time — I convert them to epubs — and thousands of works of fanfiction. I won't put up with proprietary interfaces; they get in the way so much that I'd rather not read the book in question, or read it on paper.

But it's started to give me trouble! A few times last year I had to delete books that would freeze the app every time they were opened, but I attributed this to file corruption or a bug. But now it's happened several times in a row with several different books. I'm afraid I will have to look for a replacement! And I dread that.

I can't embark on a project like that until I finally get around to backing up my last two years' worth of photos. And I can't do that until I repartition my laptop harddrive, which will require reinstalling Linux Mint. I have stored all my files in a separate storage partition for like twenty years, so nothing but ADHD can account for the fact that I forgot to create one the last time I upgraded the laptop OS.

james

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sovay

selkie's birthday was duly observed with my parents and my husbands, a meal of much carnivory, and an apricot marmalade cake doused in whipped cream, strawberry sugar, and candles that burned like driftwood salts. Many deeply goofy photos were taken of various combinations of us. So much is wrong with the world and it is still true that my family for an evening is happy. A photogenic snow began to drift the streets as I drove everyone home.

Current Music: Emitt Rhodes, "With My Face on the Floor"

oursin

Anyway.

Partner and I are in need of a solicitor for a fairly routine and non-urgent matter, so, looked up who it was we went to last time we had a routine life admin thing requiring the services of a legal professional.

(This was actually a bit more time-consuming than I anticipated, have I mentioned that archivists are really Not All That at keeping on top of their own papers? The cobbler's children syndrome.)

But, I found the name of the practice and looked them up on The Internetz and they are there, as having gone out of business some few years ago, on Companies House website.

And they are by no means the first solicitors I have had dealings with, though I think the ones in Kentish Town saw me through the purchase of First Flat and present dwelling and possibly various other legal matters, but are now no longer operating more or less adjacent to the Tube station.

I suppose that these days one should not anticipate that you have Old Mr Thing the attorney-at law and Young Mr Thing his son who keeps up the practice and Even Younger Mr Thing who is being brought on in the family tradition -

- and that these things come and go like everything else and they are no longer quite the repository of folk memory like in mystery novels.

Way back when I was starting out as a Wee Babby Archivist, I remember that a big thing of the day, practically A Crisis, was solicitors' records. As I was never actually employed in a repository where I had any direct dealings with the problem, I'm not sure whether this was due to practices going defunct, or just somebody going down into the cellar and realising that they still had all the papers from Jarndyce v Jarndyce back to its origins along with tons of other stuff. But anyway, there were Massive Amounts of Very Misc Material (quite surprising what turned up) which looking back I suspect had all sorts of issues around ownership to complicate matters even further.

(If anyone has recs for N London solicitors would be glad to hear of them.)

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only a sinner saved by grace

December 2014

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Page Summary

oursin - Friday misc
regshoe - The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories by E. M. Forster
runpunkrun - Simplicity, by Mattie Lubchansky
oursin - I am a Nexpert, but not That Nexpert
oursin - (no subject)
mific - Quick catch-up
james - Red Dwarf: Cat
mific - An HR fic about Ilya and Irina
kareila - once and future Atlanta
sovay - Am I one of those human beings?
oursin - Wednesday had sushi for lunch for the first time in aaaaggggeesss
cimorene - False spring is here at last
oursin - (no subject)
nineveh_uk - Spring! Spring! And a penguin
sovay - I'm yours in the day and the dead of night
oursin - Not sure the nature was exactly healing to the troubled spirit....
cimorene - My beloved e-reader app with the custom Solarized css
james - Doughnuts
sovay - Just took time to say, I'll drop you a line
oursin - I guess The Old Family Lawyer just doesn't exist anymore

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