sovay (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay) wrote2025-09-19 10:18 am
sovay) wrote2025-09-19 10:18 amAnd the shrouds hum full of the gale of the grave and the keel goes out to the sea
In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I respectfully wish to submit that if I had just had scurvy, this whole week would have been much easier. Have a suspicious ghost crab, the Changelings' "Port Royale" (1998), and Tim Eriksen rocking out Bellamy's setting of Kipling's "Poor Honest Men" (2011). In keeping with the recent influx of Kevin McNally in the eighteenth century, when I get back to my stack of DVDs I could just rewatch Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006). For all the varied and undeniable flaws of those second two films, their sea-iconography has clung to me like dream-wrack for nearly twenty years and I wouldn't have a cycle of stories without them.
sovay (sovay) wrote2025-09-18 11:48 pm
sovay) wrote2025-09-18 11:48 pmEntry tags:
She was an excellent governess and a most respectable woman
This afternoon I voted Miss Jessel from Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) one of my favorite ghosts on film, a tall order but a true one. A masterstroke of sound design and suggestion, she's not spectral, she's uncanny: as real as the reflection she casts on the sunlit shiver of the lake, as motionless in the heat as the bulrushes she stands so far out among, she could be walking on water, though we will learn she drowned herself in it instead. Her slight, dark-dressed figure in long shot gives no impression of a threat, nor even any particular emotion such as hunger or melancholy that would make her apparition easier to read. Her incongruity becomes its own eeriness, the noonday drabness of her presence more frightening than its disappearance between one look and the next, which is after all only characteristic of her kind, though part of the film's chill is that really it has no such rules by which a haunting may be mapped and governed, only the inexplicable facts of things that should not be. Once we have heard that she grieved sleeplessly for her rough, flaunting lover until she died of him, the governess played like a doorway of possession by Deborah Kerr can hear her sobbing, a desolate, gulping, wretchedly echoing sound that when finally traced to the schoolroom has nothing to do with the still-faced, dry-eyed imprint of Miss Jessel at her desk and yet when the governess rushes to the empty chair and touches the slate left by her own earlier lesson, it is wet with tears. Without a parapsychological conversation in sight, it gives the effect of a ghost that has stained through time in all its layers, desynched to perpetuity. The parallel sightings of Peter Wyngarde's Peter Quint with his cock-strut and his bestial snarl of a smile, always smeared through sun-mist, night-glass, steam-sweat until he can cast his unfiltered shadow from a crumbling ring of statues at last have their own rude potency, as malignantly charged as one of the more explicitly libidinous legends of Hell House, but it is his ruined lover who looks as though you could never scrape her off the air, so soaked into this patch of reality that trying to part her from the grounds of Bly would be about as efficacious as trying to exorcise an ice age. Their voices whisper like tape loops on the candlelit stairs. The children are watching. The children are watching. The children are watching. Like the uncredited radiophonics of Daphne Oram that accompany her first, summer-humming manifestation, Miss Jessel or whatever has been left of her belongs to the weirdness of time just really starting to flower in British film and TV, more Nigel Kneale than Henry James or even Truman Capote and yet she fits as exactly into the sensibilities of the Victorian Gothic as she would into the bright horror of that lakeside to this day. She was one of three images left on film by the artist and director Clytie Jessop and I doubt you could get her off the print, either. This excellence brought to you by my watching backers at Patreon.
Sam (l33tminion) wrote2025-09-17 08:36 pm
l33tminion) wrote2025-09-17 08:36 pm
As Big as the Sun
Erica seems to have entered an absurd questions phase, and her preferred question is "what if there was a [type of object] as big as the sun?" I do not understand her new obsession with solar-scale constructs. (What brand of toothpaste does the sun use? Solgate!)
The Somerville primary election was yesterday, so we have the pretty exciting news that we're going to get a new mayor. The current mayor got absolutely wrecked in the primary and didn't manage to make the cut to top-two. The general will be between two challengers who are both current city councilors. It will be really interesting to see how they present their ideas as they campaign head-to-head, much more interesting than if the general were mostly a referendum on the incumbent.
I finished (the first season; apparently it's renewed for a second and I can't wait, but the first season also feels like it stands on its own) watching Common Side Effects, that show is spectacularly great. It's an animated sci-fi story centering around a mushroom that can cure anything. Reminds me a hair of King of the Hill (no coincidence, Mike Judge is a producer and one of the voice actors) and Scavengers Reign (Joseph Bennett is also one of the creators), but also reminds me a lot of Pulp Fiction and Paranoia Agent. It's not a comedy, but it is quite funny in addition to dramatic. It has a somewhat caricature-esque sketch-artist style for the character designs, in addition to some lush scenery and creative psychedelia and a bit of surreal horror. Apparently a good way to do comedy drama is just have all of the characters be huge weirdos in one way or another. There are lots of interesting ways to be weird, and no one is really normal, after all.
The Somerville primary election was yesterday, so we have the pretty exciting news that we're going to get a new mayor. The current mayor got absolutely wrecked in the primary and didn't manage to make the cut to top-two. The general will be between two challengers who are both current city councilors. It will be really interesting to see how they present their ideas as they campaign head-to-head, much more interesting than if the general were mostly a referendum on the incumbent.
I finished (the first season; apparently it's renewed for a second and I can't wait, but the first season also feels like it stands on its own) watching Common Side Effects, that show is spectacularly great. It's an animated sci-fi story centering around a mushroom that can cure anything. Reminds me a hair of King of the Hill (no coincidence, Mike Judge is a producer and one of the voice actors) and Scavengers Reign (Joseph Bennett is also one of the creators), but also reminds me a lot of Pulp Fiction and Paranoia Agent. It's not a comedy, but it is quite funny in addition to dramatic. It has a somewhat caricature-esque sketch-artist style for the character designs, in addition to some lush scenery and creative psychedelia and a bit of surreal horror. Apparently a good way to do comedy drama is just have all of the characters be huge weirdos in one way or another. There are lots of interesting ways to be weird, and no one is really normal, after all.
kitewithfish (kitewithfish) wrote2025-09-17 09:10 pm
kitewithfish) wrote2025-09-17 09:10 pmEntry tags:
Wednesday Reading Meme for Sept 17 2025
What I’ve Read
My Happy Marriage Vol 1 & 2 – Akumi Agitogi
A manga in a slightly fantastical Taisho-era Japan setting. Our beautiful humble kind and gentle main character has been send to the garden by her family to eat worms -aka, she’s been displaced from her place of comfort to the role of a servant by an evil step mother and half sister. She is relieved to discover that the arranged marriage she was set to is, in fact, perfectly arranged-- the self-contained and stoic male lead is actually soft and squishy, adores her, and wants to take care of her. It’s very much an id-fic style indulgence, and I enjoyed it a good deal. It was a bit slow. I started it because I found the anime and was a bit curious, but on review, I think the anime might be a better go.
Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert – Bob the Drag Queen – I really enjoyed this book and it was also a very strange book. It’s technically a fantasy, in that it involves an impossible conceit: Harriet Tubman (among other historical notables) returning to the modern world, and in Miss Tubman’s case, wanting to engage with the modern Black American through music and performance. But, it’s literally just a conceit – the main appeal of this book is a personal exploration of the Underground Railroad’s most famous members, in their own voices. The characters are personal and the meaning of freedom is both pragmatic and spiritual. They are all conversations with a modern viewpoint character, who is not actually Bob the Drag Queen. He’s a gay Black music producer who had some rough patches in his journey, but achieved enough success that Harriet Tubman asked to work with him.
I’m charmed by the book – it’s history as personal story, and I enjoyed the main character’s emotional roller coaster of awe, humiliation, and self respect. The book does not shy away from difficult self reflection, and I think the audiobook was pretty fantastic.
Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers – A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery from 1927 - Sayers is great, the characters are well sketched out, the mystery is plausibly tricky! I think the main heroine of the book is the newly introduced Miss Climpson – she channels her natural nosiness for justice and seems to have a wonderful time doing it. (There’s a wonderful passage where Lord Wimsey laments that the England’s greatest investigative resource - nosy older women - is being squandered and divided amongst the populace. He’d have a crack set of smart women ferreting out murderers as a public service, if he could just persuade the police to hire them!)
I’ve read Sayers out of order, so I do miss Harriet Vane, even if she wasn’t written into the book yet. I did find that this book, like Strong Poison and Have His Carcase, focus a good deal on the cleverness of the means of murder, and how medical knowledge shapes the understanding of the crime. However, I know about hemophilia and I about air bubbles in injections killing people, so I feel a bit cheated when the first thing I think of is meant to be a big revelation. However, these stories are so fun to read, and Sayers is so generous with the intelligence and dedication of her side characters, that I don’t mind going for the ride even if the destination is no surprise.
This one had a some real marks of 1927 on it, tho. Sayers has a certain respect for the cleverness of her murderers that makes you almost root for them, but this one leans hard into the stereotype of “doing gender wrong makes you dangerous.” The murderer, a tall commanding and “mannish” nurse who uses her medical knowledge to kill and her strong personality to isolate other victims by manipulation, reads as lesbian. (Hard to tell how much is deliberate with these things – patterns of thought reveal bigotry you didn’t know you harbored.) The point is driven home when she isolates a younger woman to be her particular friend, to move out to a remote farm and do all her housekeeping, and to eschew the company of any other person, but particularly men. It’s obviously a bad relationship whether they are lovers or not, but it’s structured so all the evils of it are attached to the characters’ deviation from their gender’s expected role in society. To a reader unfamiliar with gay tropes of the era, it might fly under the radar; but I’m not and it hit and I feel a bit queasy about that section of the book. Caveat lector.
My friend has a term called “the shot dog factor” – whatever you post on the internet, there’s always a chance that someone will come into your comments acting like you shot their dog. The risk is never zero. But you can shave off the worst likelihood with placating asides about what you really actually mean. Sayers, writing for herself, in a different century, has no fear of her dog getting shot. Sometimes I think that’s all the difference.
What I’m Reading
Whose Body -Dorothy Sayers – I appear to be in a mood. This is the first one and hinges on joint mysteries of a body found in bathtub and the disappearance of an upper crust Jewish financier. Since it’s also from the 1920s, it’s got some… choice language about Jewish people, tho the characters are all generally about as non-antisemetic as one could hope from upper crust English people in the 1920s.
Worn – Sofi Thanhauser. I feel bad, because I held out such hope for this audiobook, but the narrator is mournful throughout. Lots of the work of modern fabric creation is, in fact, worth of mourning – we depend on the exploiting the labor of underpaid people across the globe who deserve fair compensation; fabric creation depletes natural resources at a devastating clip – HOWEVER, not all of it needs to be talked about in sepulchral tones! I’ve heard Gregorian chant that was less of a downer. Slow going.
Lent by Jo Walton – continues beautifully and complexly and sadly. The book club enjoyed the first half and the Big Twist in the middle.
What I’ll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin for book club
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Monsters and Mainframes?
I feel due for a Pratchett.
My Happy Marriage Vol 1 & 2 – Akumi Agitogi
A manga in a slightly fantastical Taisho-era Japan setting. Our beautiful humble kind and gentle main character has been send to the garden by her family to eat worms -aka, she’s been displaced from her place of comfort to the role of a servant by an evil step mother and half sister. She is relieved to discover that the arranged marriage she was set to is, in fact, perfectly arranged-- the self-contained and stoic male lead is actually soft and squishy, adores her, and wants to take care of her. It’s very much an id-fic style indulgence, and I enjoyed it a good deal. It was a bit slow. I started it because I found the anime and was a bit curious, but on review, I think the anime might be a better go.
Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert – Bob the Drag Queen – I really enjoyed this book and it was also a very strange book. It’s technically a fantasy, in that it involves an impossible conceit: Harriet Tubman (among other historical notables) returning to the modern world, and in Miss Tubman’s case, wanting to engage with the modern Black American through music and performance. But, it’s literally just a conceit – the main appeal of this book is a personal exploration of the Underground Railroad’s most famous members, in their own voices. The characters are personal and the meaning of freedom is both pragmatic and spiritual. They are all conversations with a modern viewpoint character, who is not actually Bob the Drag Queen. He’s a gay Black music producer who had some rough patches in his journey, but achieved enough success that Harriet Tubman asked to work with him.
I’m charmed by the book – it’s history as personal story, and I enjoyed the main character’s emotional roller coaster of awe, humiliation, and self respect. The book does not shy away from difficult self reflection, and I think the audiobook was pretty fantastic.
Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers – A Lord Peter Wimsey mystery from 1927 - Sayers is great, the characters are well sketched out, the mystery is plausibly tricky! I think the main heroine of the book is the newly introduced Miss Climpson – she channels her natural nosiness for justice and seems to have a wonderful time doing it. (There’s a wonderful passage where Lord Wimsey laments that the England’s greatest investigative resource - nosy older women - is being squandered and divided amongst the populace. He’d have a crack set of smart women ferreting out murderers as a public service, if he could just persuade the police to hire them!)
I’ve read Sayers out of order, so I do miss Harriet Vane, even if she wasn’t written into the book yet. I did find that this book, like Strong Poison and Have His Carcase, focus a good deal on the cleverness of the means of murder, and how medical knowledge shapes the understanding of the crime. However, I know about hemophilia and I about air bubbles in injections killing people, so I feel a bit cheated when the first thing I think of is meant to be a big revelation. However, these stories are so fun to read, and Sayers is so generous with the intelligence and dedication of her side characters, that I don’t mind going for the ride even if the destination is no surprise.
This one had a some real marks of 1927 on it, tho. Sayers has a certain respect for the cleverness of her murderers that makes you almost root for them, but this one leans hard into the stereotype of “doing gender wrong makes you dangerous.” The murderer, a tall commanding and “mannish” nurse who uses her medical knowledge to kill and her strong personality to isolate other victims by manipulation, reads as lesbian. (Hard to tell how much is deliberate with these things – patterns of thought reveal bigotry you didn’t know you harbored.) The point is driven home when she isolates a younger woman to be her particular friend, to move out to a remote farm and do all her housekeeping, and to eschew the company of any other person, but particularly men. It’s obviously a bad relationship whether they are lovers or not, but it’s structured so all the evils of it are attached to the characters’ deviation from their gender’s expected role in society. To a reader unfamiliar with gay tropes of the era, it might fly under the radar; but I’m not and it hit and I feel a bit queasy about that section of the book. Caveat lector.
My friend has a term called “the shot dog factor” – whatever you post on the internet, there’s always a chance that someone will come into your comments acting like you shot their dog. The risk is never zero. But you can shave off the worst likelihood with placating asides about what you really actually mean. Sayers, writing for herself, in a different century, has no fear of her dog getting shot. Sometimes I think that’s all the difference.
What I’m Reading
Whose Body -Dorothy Sayers – I appear to be in a mood. This is the first one and hinges on joint mysteries of a body found in bathtub and the disappearance of an upper crust Jewish financier. Since it’s also from the 1920s, it’s got some… choice language about Jewish people, tho the characters are all generally about as non-antisemetic as one could hope from upper crust English people in the 1920s.
Worn – Sofi Thanhauser. I feel bad, because I held out such hope for this audiobook, but the narrator is mournful throughout. Lots of the work of modern fabric creation is, in fact, worth of mourning – we depend on the exploiting the labor of underpaid people across the globe who deserve fair compensation; fabric creation depletes natural resources at a devastating clip – HOWEVER, not all of it needs to be talked about in sepulchral tones! I’ve heard Gregorian chant that was less of a downer. Slow going.
Lent by Jo Walton – continues beautifully and complexly and sadly. The book club enjoyed the first half and the Big Twist in the middle.
What I’ll Read Next
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin for book club
Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison
Monsters and Mainframes?
I feel due for a Pratchett.
magid (magid) wrote2025-09-17 04:58 pm
magid) wrote2025-09-17 04:58 pmEntry tags:
Farm share, week 15
I think this is the heaviest share so far this year.
First thoughts: stir-fried broccoli with tofu. Chicken baked with onion, cabbage, and apples (I’d thought of this originally with red cabbage, but I’ll use what I have), maybe also the tarragon. Roasted eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes. Colcannon. Baked sweet potatoes. Some kind of dessert-like dish incorporating sweet potatoes and apples?
- 4 pounds of purple-skinned potatoes
- 4 pounds of sweet potatoes
- 4 yellow onions (I chose the largest I could see)
- 4 heads of garlic
- 2 medium heads of green cabbage
- 6 smallish Italian eggplants
- 6 big green peppers
- 4 large stalks of broccoli with their greens (large enough that I’d consider calling them heads)
- 24 small red tomatoes
- 1 pound of basil (half swapped for 2 more onions)
- 1.5 pounds of mixed salad greens
- take-what-you-want hot peppers and herbs (I chose Hungarian hot wax peppers, jalapenos, and some cayenne, leaving the habaneros for those who don’t have Scotch bonnets in their fridges, also a bit of tarragon, a bunch of parsley, and some red shiso)
First thoughts: stir-fried broccoli with tofu. Chicken baked with onion, cabbage, and apples (I’d thought of this originally with red cabbage, but I’ll use what I have), maybe also the tarragon. Roasted eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes. Colcannon. Baked sweet potatoes. Some kind of dessert-like dish incorporating sweet potatoes and apples?
Redbird (redbird) wrote2025-09-17 02:42 pm
redbird) wrote2025-09-17 02:42 pmEntry tags:
Massachusetts has updated covid vaccine guidance
I am happy to see that "should receive" the covid vaccine or booster includes infants; children and adolescents who haven't already been vaccinated; anyone with a medical condition that puts them at higher risk of severe covid; and all household contacts of anyone at higher risk.
Everyone aged 65 or older should receive two doses, six months apart.
All healthcare workers "should" receive the vaccine, as should anyone who is pregnant, contemplating pregnancy, or has recently been pregnant, and a few other groups.
Everyone else "may receive" it.
https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-2025-2026-respiratory-illness-season-covid-19-vaccine-recommendations/download
What I saw is Massachusetts-specific, but it says it is aligned with the recommendations of the new Northeast Public Health Collaborative, which includes New England except for New Hampshire, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
Everyone aged 65 or older should receive two doses, six months apart.
All healthcare workers "should" receive the vaccine, as should anyone who is pregnant, contemplating pregnancy, or has recently been pregnant, and a few other groups.
Everyone else "may receive" it.
https://www.mass.gov/doc/massachusetts-2025-2026-respiratory-illness-season-covid-19-vaccine-recommendations/download
What I saw is Massachusetts-specific, but it says it is aligned with the recommendations of the new Northeast Public Health Collaborative, which includes New England except for New Hampshire, plus New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
sovay (sovay) wrote2025-09-17 04:25 am
sovay) wrote2025-09-17 04:25 amIf I press button A, all my pennies will go
I just had my first opportunity to shower in four nights, even without washing my hair, so I just had the same opportunity to free-associate in the shower.
I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).
As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).
Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).
Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.
Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.
I have no explanation for why I was singing the blessedly abridged setting of Kipling's "The Ladies" (1896) that I learned from the singing of John Clements in Ships with Wings (1941) except that it's been in my head ever since it displaced Cordelia's Dad's "Delia" (1992).
As a person who does think all the time about the Roman Empire, I am incapable of not associating Rosemary Sutcliff's "The Girl I Kissed at Clusium" (1954) with Sydney Carter's "Take Me Back to Byker" (1963)—as performed by Donald Swann, the only way I have ever heard it—even though Sutcliff was obviously drawing on Kipling's "On the Great Wall" (1906) with her long march and songs that run in and out of fashion with the Legions and the common ancestor of all of them anyway is almost certainly "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (17th-whatever).
Somehow I remain less over the fact that Donald Swann was the first person to record Carter's "Lord of the Dance" (1964) than the fact that he did a song cycle of Middle-Earth (1967) and an opera of Perelandra (1964).
Oh, shoot, Swann would have made a great Campion. You register the horn-rims and immediately tune out the face behind them.
Ignoring the appealingly transitive properties of Wimsey, Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter, I am not going to rewatch the episode of Granada Holmes starring Clive Francis, I am going to lie down before someone wakes me.
sovay (sovay) wrote2025-09-16 10:59 pm
sovay) wrote2025-09-16 10:59 pmEntry tags:
Afghanistan banana stand
When I heard tonight about Robert Redford, I did not think first of the immortal freeze-frame of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or the righteous paranoia of All the President's Men (1976) or even the perfectly anachronistic jazz of The Sting (1973) where I almost certainly first saw him, effortlessly beautiful even before he shines up from street-level short cons to the spectacular wire of the title grift. I thought of The Hot Rock (1972), a freewheelingly dumb-assed caper film of which I am deeply fond in no small part because of Redford. Specifically, his casting makes it look at first like the inevitable Hollywood misrepresentation of its 1970 Donald E. Westlake source novel, a cool jazz glow-up of the canonically, lankily nondescript Dortmunder whose heists always look completely reasonable on paper and in practice like a Rube Goldberg machine whose springs just sprang off. Only as the setbacks of the plot mount past aggravation into absurdity approaching Dada, of which the attempt to sneak into a precinct house via helicopter must rate highly even before the crew land on the wrong roof and the siege-minded lieutenant mistakes their break-in for the revolution, does the audience realize that this Dortmunder has the face of a screen idol and the flop sweat of a shlimazl, a man whose charisma is not an asset when it makes people think he knows what he's doing. "I've got no choice," he says doggedly of the eponymous diamond which he did at least once successfully steal, whence all their troubles began. "I'm not superstitious and I don't believe in jinxes, but that stone's jinxed me and it won't let go. I've been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed, and worse is going to happen before it's done. So I'm taking my stand. I'm going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me." When he acquires an incipient ulcer at the top of the second act, who's surprised? He glumly chews antacids as one of his meticulously premeditated schemes trips over its own shoelaces yet again. It may be the only time Redford played so far against his stardom, but he makes such a gorgeous loser with that tousle of coin-gold hair and an ever more disbelieving look in the matinée blue of his eyes, the Zeppo of his quartet of thieves who only looks like the normal one and no slouch in a stack of character actors from Moses Gunn and Zero Mostel through Lee Wallace and even a bit-part Christopher Guest, not to mention George Segal by whom he is characteristically almost run into a chain-link fence, trying to collect him from his latest stint upstate in a hot car with too many accessories. "Not that you're not the best, but a layman might wonder why you're all the time in jail." Harry Bellaver figured in so many noirs of the '40's and '50's, why should he not have retired to run a dive bar on Amsterdam Avenue patronized by exactly the kind of never-the-luck lowlifes he might once have played? The photography by Ed Brown goes on the list of great snapshots of New York, the screenplay by William Goldman is motor-mouthed quotable, the score by Quincy Jones never sounds cooler than when the characters it accompanies are failing their wisdom checks at land speed. Watching it as part of a Peter Yates crime trilogy between Bullitt (1968) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) may induce whiplash. It may not be major Redford, but it is beloved Redford of mine, and worthwhile weirdness to watch in his memory. This stand brought to you by my jinxed backers at Patreon.
Redbird (redbird) wrote2025-09-16 04:43 pm
redbird) wrote2025-09-16 04:43 pmEntry tags:
vaccinated
I just got this year's covid booster, as a walk-in at CVS. I'm glad I called first, because the CVS closest to our house doesn't have the vaccine; the one where I get most of my prescriptions does.
The pharmacist asked me if I wanted to get the flu vaccine at the same time, so I told her I'm waiting, on my doctor's advice. The actual injection was faster than I expected and didn't hurt much, so that's good.
The pharmacist gave me a coupon for $10 off a $20 purchase (with the usual list of exclusions). Kitchen trash bags were on the shopping list, so I picked those up, then added a box of envelopes and a bottle of dish soap to get the total up to $20. I got home and saw we may have too much dish soap, given limited storage space, but we will use it.
The pharmacist asked me if I wanted to get the flu vaccine at the same time, so I told her I'm waiting, on my doctor's advice. The actual injection was faster than I expected and didn't hurt much, so that's good.
The pharmacist gave me a coupon for $10 off a $20 purchase (with the usual list of exclusions). Kitchen trash bags were on the shopping list, so I picked those up, then added a box of envelopes and a bottle of dish soap to get the total up to $20. I got home and saw we may have too much dish soap, given limited storage space, but we will use it.
phi (totient) wrote2025-09-16 11:00 am
totient) wrote2025-09-16 11:00 amEntry tags:
Somerville city council election endorsements (better late than never)
Preliminary elections today in Somerville.
The PDS do a questionnaire every year but are bad about linking to it from the front page of their web site. This year is no exception and the info I used for research is here. I also looked at some other surveys and candidate web sites.
City council is 12 candidates running for 8 slots on the final ballot. Voters pick four.
Three candidates are assured of advancing: incumbents Kristen Strezo and Will Mbah; and Justin Klekota who is the strongest non-incumbent candidate. I like all three of these but will be leaving Strezo and Mbah off my ballot for the preliminary because they will advance without my vote this time.
Three others are running strong campaigns and will likely advance: Christopher Spicer, Marianne Walles, and Ben Wheeler. Of these I endorse Spicer and Wheeler, and will not be voting for Walles. The main impact of these two votes, and the one for Klekota, is so that we collectively can gauge support when voting tactically in November. That's worth doing even though it's unlikely to actually change anything on the preliminary.
Three are running middling campaigns but have a reasonable shot at advancing anyway because there are eight slots: Ari Iaccarino, Jon Link, Jack Perenick. I am not particularly impressed with any of these candidates.
Three are, in my mind, running behind, and I don't think any of them have done a good job making an impression with Somerville voters: Scott Istvan, Holly Simione, and Tuesday Thomas. I rather like Scott Istvan, who appears to be able to listen and to pick his battles. He's well informed, has thoughtful and actionable positions, and has experience getting involved in the kinds of issues that the council will face. I don't think he has a chance in November, and I'm not even sure I'll give him my vote then, but I'll be voting for him this time because I'd rather see him on the November ballot than any of the folks he has any chance of finishing ahead of.
It's rare that I endorse an all-male slate and I would not do so if I thought Strezo had even the tiniest chance of missing the cut. But she does not, and will most likely be getting my vote in the general.
The PDS do a questionnaire every year but are bad about linking to it from the front page of their web site. This year is no exception and the info I used for research is here. I also looked at some other surveys and candidate web sites.
City council is 12 candidates running for 8 slots on the final ballot. Voters pick four.
Three candidates are assured of advancing: incumbents Kristen Strezo and Will Mbah; and Justin Klekota who is the strongest non-incumbent candidate. I like all three of these but will be leaving Strezo and Mbah off my ballot for the preliminary because they will advance without my vote this time.
Three others are running strong campaigns and will likely advance: Christopher Spicer, Marianne Walles, and Ben Wheeler. Of these I endorse Spicer and Wheeler, and will not be voting for Walles. The main impact of these two votes, and the one for Klekota, is so that we collectively can gauge support when voting tactically in November. That's worth doing even though it's unlikely to actually change anything on the preliminary.
Three are running middling campaigns but have a reasonable shot at advancing anyway because there are eight slots: Ari Iaccarino, Jon Link, Jack Perenick. I am not particularly impressed with any of these candidates.
Three are, in my mind, running behind, and I don't think any of them have done a good job making an impression with Somerville voters: Scott Istvan, Holly Simione, and Tuesday Thomas. I rather like Scott Istvan, who appears to be able to listen and to pick his battles. He's well informed, has thoughtful and actionable positions, and has experience getting involved in the kinds of issues that the council will face. I don't think he has a chance in November, and I'm not even sure I'll give him my vote then, but I'll be voting for him this time because I'd rather see him on the November ballot than any of the folks he has any chance of finishing ahead of.
It's rare that I endorse an all-male slate and I would not do so if I thought Strezo had even the tiniest chance of missing the cut. But she does not, and will most likely be getting my vote in the general.
drglam (drglam) wrote2025-09-16 09:13 am
drglam) wrote2025-09-16 09:13 amThings one doesn't want to find out just before one's colonoscopy
I'm apparently insensitive to propofol, so I got to have my procedure awake.
Whatever the pre-propofol drug was did mildly sedate me, so it wasn't so bad. And I was able to banter with the anesthesiology nurse and the gastroenterologist the whole time.
Good news! The preliminary lab report says the ridiculously large collection of polyps are tubular adenomas, which are benign growths.
Whatever the pre-propofol drug was did mildly sedate me, so it wasn't so bad. And I was able to banter with the anesthesiology nurse and the gastroenterologist the whole time.
Good news! The preliminary lab report says the ridiculously large collection of polyps are tubular adenomas, which are benign growths.
drglam (drglam) wrote2025-09-16 09:11 am
drglam) wrote2025-09-16 09:11 amMore FlyBase coverage
The situation with FlyBase has made the national news.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/trumps-harvard-cuts-threaten-giant-biomedical-research-community-datab-rcna230610
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/trumps-harvard-cuts-threaten-giant-biomedical-research-community-datab-rcna230610
forgotten_aria (forgotten_aria) wrote2025-09-15 08:21 pm
forgotten_aria) wrote2025-09-15 08:21 pm(no subject)
I got my car back! (Yay!)
I think there might be over-spray on the windshield. (Boo!) More because it points to sloppiness, not that it's a unsolvable problem. I hope to fix it myself tomorrow. Until they it's a little unsafe to drive at night.
EDIT: they took it back apologetically and agreed with me it was over-spray.
EDIT2: they seem to have gotten most of it, but not all of it, especially on the plastics. I have the right stuff for that and me doing that small amount myself is not worth the spoons it would take the press the issue further. I still haven't had a chance to drive it on the highway to find out if the blind spot was fixed.
I think there might be over-spray on the windshield. (Boo!) More because it points to sloppiness, not that it's a unsolvable problem. I hope to fix it myself tomorrow. Until they it's a little unsafe to drive at night.
EDIT: they took it back apologetically and agreed with me it was over-spray.
EDIT2: they seem to have gotten most of it, but not all of it, especially on the plastics. I have the right stuff for that and me doing that small amount myself is not worth the spoons it would take the press the issue further. I still haven't had a chance to drive it on the highway to find out if the blind spot was fixed.