sollers | Reading

mark posting in

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

oursin

Goodness knows, some real weirdness is revealed in You Be the Judge in Guardian Saturday, but today's produces a theory which is entirely new to me -

You be the judge: should my housemate stop warming her mug and then pouring the water back into the kettle?

But apart from all this hoohah about HYGIENE, I am rather taken with New Health Scare Theory:

Boiling water twice is a no-no for me – there is a change in quality and taste. My life had a certain drabness to it – I now attribute that to consuming poor-quality water for so long without realising.

This could be a whole new thing, couldn't it? Once-boiled water for vitality!

I was going to ask are they living in a log cabin or what in Ohio if the kitchen is so freezingly cold in the mornings they have to warm up the mugs so that they do not immediately chill the coffee but I see the issue is poor insulation.

Maybe they should do something about insulation rather than bicker over 'secondhand water'?

chickenfeet

Anna Theodosakis' production deals effectively with the problematic libretto... https://operaramblings.blog/2026/03/14/is-it-all-uot-operas-the-rape-of-lucretia/

mildred_of_midgard

Oh, I forgot to mention that, as usual when I have a really good run, I felt stronger as the run went on. I did eventually get tired and have to stop, of course, otherwise I'd still be running, but I do feel like in the last mile or two I was going faster. I can't be sure of that without recording my splits, which I don't do, but I definitely felt stronger and less tired, more invincible.

The more I can convince my brain that this is a real phenomenon and worth waiting for, the easier it is to push through the lows in the beginning and middle of the run.

mildred_of_midgard

After a day off running to let my sore legs recover, I set out this morning with the goal of running 4.5 miles again, and a stretch goal of 5.2, if I could finish 4 loops.

...I ran 6.5 miles. In 62 minutes. Now, the 62 minutes is exact, because I was using the stopwatch on my phone, but the 6.5 miles is a Google Maps estimate. Even so, I'm still pretty sure it's a personal record for a single run. Not because of overall fitness, but because every time I get to 5 miles, I get injured by something (whether it's falling down the stairs or what).

Two things I've noticed about running in the last month:

One, Tucson (where I started running last month) and my neighborhood in Los Angeles are super flat, it feels like cheating, compared to my neighborhood in Massachusetts. I think I want to keep doing distance for a while longer, this leap to 6.5 is a bit sudden, but I do want to get to the gym soonish for some uphill cardio. My last house also had 4 stories, and my current apartment only has the one, so I get way less stair action in my day-to-day.

Two, back when I started running, for quite a while I would experience the phenomenon I described as feeling like I was running through jello: jerky movements, arms and legs moving at a running pace, but not working together smoothly. I didn't feel like I was *running* even if I technically was, and since I remembered what running felt like from many years ago, it was very discouraging. I eventually learned that I shouldn't interpret this as "today is not a running day" but as a "keep running and it'll get better." I was so happy when I finally got to the point where I consistently felt like I was running, right out the gate.

Well, I was afraid that after a year away, I would be back at square one and would have to fight that feeling again. Good news: I preserved the muscle memory! Every single run I've gone on, I've had that feeling of everything flowing and working together like it's supposed to, from the moment I started. I think that has probably accounted for a lot of my feeling that running is a lot easier this year.

But the lack of any hills or even slight inclines is probably an equally big contributor, and I need to do something about that.

oursin

Happy birthday,

gwynnega!

oursin

Or whatever. This is clearly my week for being Grumpy Archivist.

Have been solicited to review article for journal with which I have had a long connection, following a recent backstory I will not go into.

But anyway, I have been asked to review it, and it is definitely Within My Purlieu -

Perhaps too much so, because on opening the document to check that it in fact was, the person sending it having given me no indication of what it was about -

Discovered it was based upon an archive with which I had a significant history.

And no, the fact that there is this beautiful and fairly substantial archive in lovely curated order available to the researcher is a lot less down to the creating body (okay, I will give them points for the stuff actually having survived in fairly good nick) than to the work of archivists over 2-3 decades acquiring the material (in batches as it turned up during office moves and so on), sorting it into some kind of coherent order, and cataloguing it.

A saga which is actually recounted in the online catalogue to the collection, not to mention an article wot I writ about the organisation in question.

It is actually a pretty cool organisation, compared to some I have had dealings with, but superior archive processing, not really in their skill-set.

Grump. Will try and make tactful point about acknowledging the labour of archivists....

***

We may recall the saga of the tech bro whose sprog did not want the AI teddy he had acquired for her to talk back, and turned the speech facility off, his head around this he could not get -

And this is very creepy, no lessons have been learnt: AI toys for children misread emotions and respond inappropriately, researchers warn:

The parents in the study were interested in the toy's potential to teach language and communication skills.
However, their children frequently struggled to converse with it. Gabbo didn't hear their interruptions, talked over them, could not differentiate between child and adult voices and responded awkwardly to declarations of affection.
When one five-year-old said, "I love you," to the toy, it replied: "As a friendly reminder, please ensure interactions adhere to the guidelines provided. Let me know how you would like to proceed."
The concern is that at a developmental stage where children are learning about social interaction and cues, generative AI output could be confusing.

Well, at least they aren't (yet) brainwashing children into correct societal mores as in Harry Harrison's 'I Always Do What Teddy Says'.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/03/13/a-mirror-is-disturbing-but-compelling-theatre/

hyarrowen posting in

little_details

For large-scale projects, specifically for ships. All my ship-related resources for the era are for the British Navy, and books on colour that I've read have been on artists' paints or dyes.

How would a French Imperial Navy vessel be painted, not at one of the big shipyards? Would it be mixed up on site from raw ingredients, or bought in? Would there be barrels, buckets with lids, cannisters, vats or what - and what would the paint be made of?

Searching online produces info on painting scale models, or contemporary pictures of ships. I found a chapter on ship decoration in Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of Battle but that doesn't have the early-in-the-process details I want. I found an article on the pre-Revolutionary Navy in the International Journal of Maritime History, by David Plouviez, that's too early and still doesn't cover paint.

Thank-you in advance.

oursin

Naturally, from various angles of my interests, I am going to click on a link like this, no? Pornucopia: The World’s Largest Collection of Smut, and You Can’t See It.

And while I have a certain historianly interest in the contents of the collection (though I was having a conversation with somebody a little while ago and we reckoned we would love to take a gander at Antony Comstock's Private Cupboard, because a leading smuthound must have accumulated a really outstanding filth collection, hmmmm?)

- I was going to myself with my archivist hat on, OMG, this is so many problems - there must be HUGE conservation issues, I just hope none of those porno movies are on nitrate film, but I do not think the smart money would be betting on it, and a lot of those relics are on degrading media even if they're not going to spontaneously combust. Some of them I wonder if there are actually means of playing them still.

(Tangentially I mention my wince when hearing thrilled younger scholar recount how they had listened to a 78 rpm recording in a sound archive, and I was, really???)

Then it sounds as though they are Not Keeping Up With Basic Processing ('embarrassed about the unorganized conditions', heh) which sounds as though ambitious collecting agenda has totally outrun capacity of institution to keep on top of it (should I add 'fnar fnar, nudge wink' at this point???).

Plus on the access thing and being not entirely welcoming to visitors, while - perhaps - historically collections like The Private Case (in the BL), L'Enfer (Bibliotheque Nationale), etc, were only made available to selected readers for fear of contaminating the public, in more recent days this is because this material is particularly vulnerable to to being mutilated - pages torn out or defaced, etc - which is why if you want to consult Cup. classification material in the BL you have to do so under the eye of the Librarian's Desk.

I suspect also in play is a probably legit fear of persons presenting themselves as SRS Scholars who once they are in will go BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES on the place ('wary about divulging warehouse locations', totally figures).

Over here, being niche.

mildred_of_midgard

I've been too busy to post, but my knee got a lot better in the last month, and I'm back to running. Google Maps thinks I did 4.5 miles in 45 minutes today, which, if true, would be better than I expected.

I still have a hamstring injury that I can't shake, from last May, and it does prevent me from walking or running long distances, but hopefully maybe I can eventually figure out what it wants?

What my knee wanted was a few days of sleeping with my leg unbent.

...If I had known that, I could have done that a year ago, and never gotten a hamstring injury in the first place! And I could have spent the whole last year running and walking and hiking. But it's always a lot of trial and error to figure out what my body wants.

Anyway, remind me that if I get to where I'm pretty sure I'm doing 6 miles, I should join the gym and start doing some cardio and uphill workouts. It's hard to do cardio in this flat-as-a-pancake neighborhood. I miss the hills where I used to live in Massachusetts. But at least the weather lets me run in February and March. And the gym is only 1.5 blocks away.

Other goals if I can get caught up on some academic projects: try out a roping course at the nearby climbing gym, see if I can get some useful skills for caving.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/03/12/nobody-expects-ryan-mcdonald/

oursin

Happy birthday,

bats_eye!

oursin

What I read

Finished Death in the Palace - was not sure at first about the introduction of the actual Marx Brothers into the cast, but felt this had meta-textual resonance as there was something very Marxiste about the whole making-a-movie shenanigans (especially when it's this dreadful costume epic) + murder mystery going on.

Then went straight on to Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped, which was fine but perhaps didn't quite reach the high bar set by After Hours at Dooryard Books among her recent history/contemporary set works.

Returned to TonyInterrupter, which had perhaps lost some momentum from the hiatus, but nonetheless, I may try more Nicola Barker at some time.

Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck (1935) came up as a Kobo deal, and I realised it had not featured in the Heyer re-read binge a few years ago. Gosh, it shows a certain early style, what? with the massive amount of Mi Research, I Show U It, re prize-fights, phaeton-racing to Brighton, the interiors of the Royal Pavilion, the members of the House of Hanover (how right Mme C- was in advising to keep well away, no?). Also, this cannot be, can it, the first outing of the Apparently Dangerous Alpha Male vs the Civil and Sympathetic Beta Male who turns out to be a conniving sleaze? (not unique to Heyer.)

Also finished the book for review.

On the go

Also picked up as a Kobo deal, Fern Riddell, Victoria's Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen (2025). I have considered the author, as a historian of Victorian sexuality, sound on the vibrator question, if perhaps a bit too much in the 'Victorians were cool sexy beasts really' camp (It's All More Complicated), but I was interested to see where this would go. It's very good on the way things are with the Royal Archives, for which 'gatekeeping' seems too loose a term. But I'm still not entirely persuaded. It's a bit repetitive. Okay, it's quite good on the tensions within the actual Royal family (though can it really be that Kaiser Bill-to-be had Oedipus issues?). But still have a way to go.

Up next

Maybe the latest Literary Review. Otherwise, dunno.

sartorias

One thing that one has to accept with Dickens is that his heroines will be long-suffering, and that men will decide what's good for them, for which they will be grateful.

Given that, I think this the best of his books.

It has the fewest Victorian-plot coincidences, and it has the most and best swathes of bitingly funny satire of soi-disant high society. How the Lammle marriage comes about, and how each of them, in becoming a couple, brings the other down from spoken moral rectitude to the barest pretense of it is as horrific in a quiet way as all the rantings, drownings, and so on.

Bradley Headstone is a remarkably believable depiction of the stalker boyfriend who can't seem to stop himself from sinking into obsession--and violence. Eugene Wrayburn is a fascinating, witty guy for an idle dog.

There are some bits of brilliance--the depiction of the riverside society; Mr. Boffins' educational plan; the Veneering parties.

There were signs of actual personality on Bella's part (when we meet her, she is mourning over being forced to wear black because the guy she was engaged to--whom she had never met--had drowned, which pretty much has finished her socially. Why shouldn't she mourn?) even if the machinations behind her romance are quite wince-worthy.

Dickens also tries to make up for comfortably unexamined antisemitism, and the subsidiary characters are wonderfully memorable.

Altogether it's a real page-turner. Glad I reread it.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/03/11/nicole-percifield-in-recital/

oursin

Happy birthday,

parthenia!

lizvogel posting in

little_details

Okay, I thought I knew science, but after several days of researching this, all I've got is indecision and a headache.

Original fiction, unspecified not-too-far-future time.

My character is the pilot of a small cargo ship in the asteroid belt. (No FTL, no artificial gravity.) Said ship has sufficient radiation shielding to be safe under normal conditions. My idea is that there's an unusually strong solar event (solar flare? coronal mass ejection?), and he has to survive by positioning his ship on the shadowed side of an asteroid (rocks are good shielding), and use his excellent piloting skills to stay there until the storm passes.

1. Does this, theoretically, actually work?

2. I'd like the solar event to be a Coronal Mass Ejection, because some CMEs move relatively slowly, and that gives my character time to make a narratively interesting choice. But is it the CME itself that's hazardous to human life, or a sort of "bow wave" of radiation that precedes it? And if the latter, is that radiation moving at the speed of the CME, or the speed of light? (I keep thinking I have a grasp on this, and then the next source I read contradicts it.)

Guidance appreciated, fellow space enthusiasts!

ETA: Okay, based on comments and additional research the comments inspired, my takeaway is: (1) CMEs can happen with or without accompanying radiation, (2) the stuff in the CME itself is not dangerous to humans, (3) the dangerous-to-humans part of the radiation travels at the speed of light. Which means this story is probably dead; I really needed that longer warning time for the narratively-interesting parts, darn it.

oursin

So really, there isn't a lot of point in going diving into the rabbit-hole that's just opened up.

I.e. I am revising my old piece of work for the Fellows' presentations session, and I thought, why not just see if name of author of obscure feminist work cited appears in British Newspaper Archive, which at time I was writing was less in habit of habitually consulting on odd points (did not, I think, have a subscription, for one thing). As otherwise I had no info on her at all.

And, blow me down, she may only have written one book but seems to have committed the odd journalistic opinion piece, and furthermore, is listed as being one of the founders of an organisation set up by Old Suffragettes (or possibly -ists).

Which I find someone has Has Writ A Book About, as one of those women's orgs that have been condescended to by posterity as about the little dears getting together to chat, bless the ladies, and turns out to have been rather more activist in its sphere than one reckoned.

Library to which I have access has copy, but will not let me have online access to ebook for some reason, sigh.

And really, I do have other things to do (thesis to read, book to review, have been solicited to do a podcast, must try and put together a powerpoint for my talk) than dash off down to LSE to look at the archives of the org, right?

Because given the limitations on what it's for, at the moment - however the work in question will develop - it will be a sentence at best, because of time constraints.

Frustration.