jack

but I did spend this morning sat down with my printouts and my page markers and my highlighters, and I did this evening take some photos of the relevant pages of a book I've loaned to someone else, and the essay (I say, grandiosely) tentatively entitled The Obligatory Page And A Half On Descartes: against a new dualism is definitely In The Works.

I haven't quite worked out the It is a truth universally acknowledged... opening sentence, and it's probably mostly going to be a series of quotations accompanied by EMPHATIC GESTICULATION in the form of CAPSLOCK, but it's not actually (in its entirety) germane to The Book, so here the indignant yelling can go.

andrewducker

I do like how Edinburgh looks at this time of year.

(Sorry about the reflections, I'm on a bus)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

cosmolinguist

Making [workplace] a great place to work involves us all. It's about everyone playing their part, and of course that includes myself and the Executive Leadership Team.

It's important that we lead by example and that's why we've signed up to some important commitments following your feedback via the recent Colleague Voice survey and listening groups.

Thanks to my involvement with EDI via helping run one of the protected-characteristics staff networks, I know this has been a big fucking deal for our EDI lead, she's been working a lot and trailed this to us earlier this week, so I'm intrigued (if not overly optimistic...) to finally see what results from this.

I've recorded a five-minute video (link) to talk about these commitments, or you can read the transcript (link).

I'm a transcript person. So I click on that and... Sharepoint tells me "You don't have access."

Our internal communication people are good and work hard and with the amount of stuff they put out it's inevitable that every so often a link is gonna go wrong or a file won't have the right permissions like this.

But it had to be this one about how we're all in this together, didn't it.

I did laugh, bitterly.

andrewducker

1. Town's Huge Christmas Mural Was Generated Using AI, Resulting in Ghastly Chthonic Horrors: (tags:AI Christmas epicfail )
2. The 10 most important life lessons to master in your 30s: (tags:life advice )
3. Building on Ruins: The Russification of Mariupol, One Apartment Block at a Time: (tags:Ukraine Russia OhForFucksSake )
4. UK Supreme Court rules Christian-focused RE taught in NI schools is unlawful: (tags:law UK religion christianity GoodNews NorthernIreland )
5. Worrying about UPFs is extremely premature: (tags:research food health )
6. Christian school objects to children singing about demons. Even about the hunting thereof.: (tags:singing christianity religion uk )
7. The U.S.'s first out trans diplomat was once considered a hero. Now she may never come home.: (tags:LGBT transgender USA bigotry OhForFucksSake )
8. Pfizer's mRNA flu shot outperforms standard flu vaccine in late-stage trial: (tags:flu vaccine )
9. The Patent Office Is About To Make Bad Patents Untouchable: (tags:patents usa OhForFucksSake intellectual_property )
10. Aging Out of Fucks: The Neuroscience of Why You Suddenly Can't Pretend Anymore: (tags:women age psychology )

lnr

Yesterday I turned 50, which feels like it should be a bit of a milestone, but in reality has just been an excuse for a lot of cake.

We went away as a family at Halloween, as it was the end of half term and meant we could get a slightly longer weekend away. Three days in a collection of cabins in the Forest of Dean, with Forest Holidays. We nominally had a halloween party on Friday night and a birthday party on Saturday but it was kind of hard to tell which bits were party (having an age range from 7 to 73 makes for rather varied party requirements) but there was cake and fizz and cocktails, and we did an outdoor puzzle game with the kids, and Mike and dad joined me in trying axe throwing, and we had a nice walk through the forest down to the river Wye with a very sulky Matthew and generally had a good time :)

Yesterday I decided not to take the day off work, and instead took in cake to share in the morning, and took my immediate colleagues to the pub at lunchtime (though they wouldn't let me pay for drinks). We had pizza and fizz and more cake for tea, and a generally chilled out and lovely day. Matthew has an inset day on Friday, so Mike's taking the day off too, and we'll go out for a visit to the Botanic Gardens and lunch at Browns. And I've invited some friends round in the morning to help eat up cake, instead of meeting them at a coffee shop (which is my usual Friday routine).

I suggested to Mobbsy and David that we should do a celebration of 150 years between us, given what a good party we had for our joint 90th, but I never did get round to throwing a party this time. We shall try and make it out to the pub next Wednesday evening instead. And next Friday our little coffee gang will be going our to the village annual wine tasting/dinner - organised by the twinning association. And then I think I'll be more or less done with birthday celebrations for the year. Thanks so much to everyone who found me elsewhere on social media (or text message, or card) to say Happy Birthday, it's been very much appreciated!

cosmolinguist

So many meetings today. I had to run a focus group, I had to talk to my manager about something stressful (it turned out fine), I had to have a meeting that felt important but probably wasn't, about a task I totally overlooked somehow (very erikphobic of the DfT to launch a consultation with a deadline right after my own big deadline!!), which was supposed to last half an hour after the usual end of my work day and actually overran even that tomorrow...

Also today, in other Boo Meetings news, I realized I have the other focus group tomorrow evening, which means I can't go to any of the Transgender Day of Remembrance events that my friends are going to (though me being unable to go does free up D for another thing that's more "fight like hell for the living" than "mourn the dead" and I think that's fine too).

The good part of my meetings today is the one where a colleague and I were in an external meeting which was arranged by the other organization so it was held on Google Meet rather than Teams as we are used to. This is only relevant because on Teams I have my background blurred and in this thing I never used before (I could barely even unmute myself or hang up at the end of the call, never mind such niceties as adjust my background!).

In the debrief with my colleague, after the normal stuff, she said "off topic but I spotted the distinctive design of a pits and perverts power in your background. Dope, love it." I had noticed my background was clearer and sharper than I was used to, but I didn't think anyone else would notice that! And indeed I didn't really notice the poster, as distinct from the mirror or the door covered with coats (they hang on hooks over the door) that are also visible behind me. It was very sweet that it was one of my queerest colleagues in this meeting and I'm glad she noticed.

She asked where I'd gotten it from and I explained about this event the others had gone to, put on by one of V's friends, and that I'd been brought the poster as I hadn't been able to go (I think I was in London for a work thing actually, or something like that). My colleague explained that she'd been wanting one of these posters for years but always wanted the money to actually go to a queer person or something. She decided a museum would be close enough, some good cause. I checked and they're still selling the poster, and at a very reasonable price too! So much so that I feared the shipping would ruin the good deal and offered to pick her up one and get it to the London office the next time I'm there for work, but she ended up finding other stuff in the shop that'd make good Christmas presents for her friends so she didn't need to take me up on that offer.

The shop listing does a good job of explaining the poster:

Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) is an activist group that formed in solidarity with the striking miners in 1984. Mark Ashton, one of the founders, saw the struggle of the miners as the same faced by gay people fighting for their rights against a government that would not listen.

LGSM organised fundraising events like the one depicted in this poster from a concert from 1984 featuring Bronski Beat at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. Designed by LGSM member Kevin Franklin.

"Well that meeting has been productive on several levels" she said after all this. And that was a nice way to go into my last meeting of the day (the one that took until what I thought was dinnertime if not bedtime!).

kaberett

At the weekend we made a mildly unusual detour to a fancy local bakery; one of the things they had on the shelves about which I went "oooh" was fig, hazelnut & anise bread. So that flavour combination (plus some spelt) was went into the oven this morning!

The way bread normally works around here is that I make it, via the Ritual Question of Do You Have Any Breadferences (Bread Preferences). To facilitate this call and response, A List of our Usual Options, doubtless to be added to. Suggestions welcome. :)

( Read more... )

cosmolinguist

Tonight diffrentcolours@tech.lgbt drilled holes in bricks to install brackets that let us hang our bikes from the wall. It frees up a bunch of space in our dining room, where they've just rested against the radiator forever. It also makes the bikes look like they're floating in the air.

I helped by being there to hand him things as he needed them so he didn't have to keep stepping on and off the stepstool in the corner that even he needed to get the brackets at the correct height. I said it was a shame he didn't have a little floating shelf there to put all the stuff on, and he said "Yep, instead I have you for a floating shelf." I was very happy to be a furniture -- I didn't want the job of drilling which I find scary because I'm prone to fucking it up.

conuly

People at /r/englishlearning need to stop saying "Song lyrics/poems don't have to be grammatical! Don't try to learn English through songs/poems! People just do whatever, ungrammatically, to fit the rhythm/mood/rhyme scheme!"

This may be true, I guess, but funnily enough it's never true when people say it. At least half the time, the quoted text isn't even archaic or nonstandard!

That said, I do like reading (most of the) comments in that subreddit. There's always something! ( Cut for appropriateness )

*************************************************

( Read more... )

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1886696.html

Hey, Americans and other people stuck in the American healthcare system. It's open enrollment on the state exchanges, and possibly through your employer, so I wanted to give you a little heads up about preventive care and shopping for a health insurance plan.

I've noticed from time to time various health insurance companies advertising themselves to consumers by boasting that their health plans focus on covering preventive care. Maybe they lay a spiel on you about how they believe in keeping you healthy rather than trying to fix problems after they happen. Maybe they point out in big letters "PREVENTIVE CARE 100% FREE" or "NO CO-PAYS FOR PREVENTIVE CARE".

When you come across a health insurance product advertised this way, promoted for its coverage of preventive health, I propose you should think of that as a bad thing.

Why? Do I think preventive medicine is a bad thing? Yes, actually, but that's a topic for another post. For purposes of this post, no, preventive medicine is great.

It's just that it's illegal for them not to cover preventive care 100% with no copays or other cost-sharing.

Yeah, thanks to the Obamacare law, the ACA, it's literally illegal for a health plan to be sold on the exchanges if it doesn't cover preventive care 100% with no cost-sharing, and while there are rare exceptions, it's also basically illegal for an employer to offer a health plan that doesn't cover preventive care.

They can't not, and neither can any of their competitors.

( So any health plan that's bragging on covering preventive care?.... Read more [2,270 words] )

This post brought to you by the 220 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

silveradept

Good day. Let's begin with 144 hours of DDR to make a record.

Early hominids appear to have not only used tools, but passed that knowledge down through the generations. Which will evolve the understanding of the earliest ancestors of the human species, as science is wont to do.

If you haven't received a flu vaccine for this year, it might be a good idea to do so, even if the protection might not be ideal because of a new mutation showing up after the formulation had been decided.

The complete history of the nation must be preserved, and that means a lot of places are trying to keep and digitize the collections of Black newspapers and broadsheets they have in their collections.

Also, Dick Cheney is no longer able to create a more terrible world, having died at 84 years of age. If his name is invoked from here on out, it should be as a warning not to do what he did.

( There's more inside, about people who have made cruelty the point and disclaim any responsibility of care for what they've created. )

Last out for tonight, an eyesore with a bad caricature and Randian-libertarian messaging is now providing a better message, since the land and the billboard were bought by the local Native nation.

And research now suggests that humans do instinctively work to help each other, rather than passively watch others be hurt, especially in emergency situations.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness

kaberett

"Ugh," I thought, "why am I feeling weirdly migrainey? My Next Phase Of The Menstrual Cycle is very much not due for like another week? I've been weirdly super regular basically since it reasserted itself post-surgery?"

... TURNS OUT that I had lost track of time a bit and I'm not a solid week early at all, it's a whole two days. This Means Some Things:

... still super regular by my pre-surgical standards,
I will not be at the worst stage of my cycle during Significant Travel next week, and LAST BUT VERY MUCH NOT LEAST
the migraine is still in fact very clearly associated with hormonal changes even when I'm not expecting them, take THAT Headache Is The Second Most Common Form Of Psychosomatic Pain ~statistics~ (and ongoing anxiety).

ewx

( Two Videos )

cosmolinguist

A half dozen or so of us at work have started a book club. The first month I didn't get around to reading the book, which is fine because it was apparently terrible. This month we chose some literary fiction which is fine but I'm not used to it.

The audiobook is sixteen hours and forty-nine minutes long!

I've been using a perfectly good app to listen to audiobooks for a year or more but I bought the paid version because that was necessary to listen at higher speeds than 1x (normal).

All my library books (different app) get listened to at 1.5x or 1.75x.

It was a good decision, I'm 21% of the way through the book now.

conuly

"It's set in a time when things were hard for black people in America" - a line which so flabbergasted me that I don't think I ever figured out what to say.

But this one may have topped it!

"The story is about a black girl, somewhere between 8 and 16 years old, from a black family."

...I'm dying to ask why they think they need to specify that this girl is the same race as everybody else in her family, when that's usually how this works. There's no indication in the rest of the post that we might have reason to think she's not.

kaberett

~~... has done so many things and is Going To Bed and will fill in this placeholder Tomorrow.~~

Reading. ( Descartes, Gouldercourt et al., Clifford )

Forgotten Fruits (Christopher Stocks) got auto-returned to the library for a second time while I was still, like, a third of the way into it. I am going to try to take the DNF with grace this time, but the Completionist Itch is still there...

Writing. Grumpy e-mails to HMPO. Grumpy e-mails to uk.bookshop.org (on the plus side, the book I bought from them now has a shiny wee DRM-free tag! on the downside, I can download it in neither of the browsers I've tried so far.) Mental drafting of context-setting on movement and sleep, which really need to get out of my head and onto the page.

Playing. Inkulinati! We have Completed All Three Journeys. In the second stage we achieved an absolutely bullshit strategy that made things astonishingly easy; the third stage (with SEAL) was much harder work.

Little bit more I Love Hue.

Cooking. Two things of particular note, of which the first was ridiculous parsnip risotto with thyme pesto from The Modern Vegetarian, extremely good, would very happily eat again but I'm more dubious about the prospect of cooking it again, though I will concede it would probably go faster now I know what I'm doing.

Item the second was THE MEDLAR STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING. I am not entirely convinced I can actually detect the, you know, medlar, but it is very tasty.

Elsewise I have two batches of medlar jelly on the go (first batch did not set properly, BAH, I have not made enough jam recently, so I'm going to need to redecant and reboil that before I move on to the spiced) and some ridiculous quince sorbet that needs forcing through the sieve before churning.

And I have still not touched the apples.

Eating. Saturday lunch at Holtwhites Bakery :)

Exploring. Stupid little walk on Sunday revealed unto us, among other things: a pair of cyclamen in a bit of the verge outside our house we don't normally walk past; a discarded fork; a local bush of Purple Metallic Berries; a secret holly hedge.

Growing. SEEDS arrived. Jalapeños (at least at home) turning red.

andrewducker

After several hours of hammering and some excellent assistance from Sophia, we have constructed a child-stacking device.

(Side-pieces to be constructed tomorrow)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Reading

this post is not Descartes apologia

Photo cross-post

This week's work newsletter:

Interesting Links for 20-11-2025

Another year older

LGSM

[food] breadferences

flying bikes and floating shelves

I've picked out a new hill on which to die

Interesting Links for 19-11-2025

Choosing Health Insurance: Preventive Care [US, healthcare, Patreon]

Only a little bit behind - Early November 02025

[embodiment] ... ha

Badgers in the garden

Interesting Links for 18-11-2025

Book club

Interesting Links for 17-11-2025

I think I may have seen something in /r/whatsthatbook more baffling than

vital functions

Photo cross-post