jack

It always surprises me that Boots isn't open until 9am. You would have thought that there'd be enough people wanting to pick up painkillers or similar on the way in to work.

siderea

Boston locals! Blue Heron, an acapella early music ensemble, is throwing a three-day shindig to celebrate Guillaume de Machaut (died 1377), May 1-3, mostly involving talks about Machaut's works, talks about his lyrics, talks about the illuminations in the manuscripts his works come from, concerts of his music, and also a little ars subtilior tacked on the end just because.

More info https://www.blueheron.org/machaut-weekend/

Affordability note: They have a free ticket option as part of the "Card to Culture program" for people with EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare(!) cards*, and a discounted "low cost" option.

Of note, the "Opening Festivities: Keynote, Performance & Sing-Along" on Friday night includes (emphasis mine):

a keynote talk by one of the world’s leading scholars of 14th-century music, Anne Stone (CUNY Graduate Center), performances of pieces in several of the genres represented in Machaut’s oeuvre, and a sing-along of the Kyrie from the Messe de Nostre Dame.

Which: huh. Huh. The Kyrie, huh? Wow. Now that is certainly a choice. I commend their bravery. Were I in better health, I would consider showing up just to be in on the shenanigans.

If you're curious what the Kyrie from Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame sounds and looks like, here you go.

* There is no separate ConnectorCare card like there is for MassHealth. They mean your regular insurance card, which if it's a ConnectorCare plan should say so on it, or so the Mass Cultural Council, whose program it is, thinks.

siderea

The YouTube algorithm pseudorandomly served me this, thereby answering the question I'd had on a distant back burner forever, "Hey, didn't I hear something about colored cotton cultivars once upon a time? Cotton that you didn't need to dye? Like back in the 90s?"

If you are a fellow fiber freak or interested in agriculture or organic crops or the underappreciated problem of sustainable clothing production, you may find this as fascinating as I did:

2026 Mar 7: Good Yarn Bad Knits [goodyarnbadknits YT]: "The Yarn That Almost Saved The World"

Watch on YouTube

corrvin

So it's been two years since I posted.
( a quick catch-up ) Checky is ridiculously badly behaved at times, but we love each other and that's plenty enough for all the head-bonks.

I am still a librarian, now with 2.5 years of experience. I have so many plans and ideas, and I have from now until I retire to try to do all of them. I'm apparently really good at event creation, and maybe I can teach some other folks, too. I'm currently starting the outline for my April event hand-outs, and imagining what August stuff is going to look like.

My parents' health continues to decline, but just in a way to make them miserable, not in a way that's Approaching The End. I know what to do when we get to the end of things, but getting from here to there is still a bit foggy to me. They live two hours away, so every time I need to help them out, it's two hours down, two hours driving them to the doctor (who is usually 5 minutes from my house) and then repeat in reverse. It's exhausting, and I've let them know that I don't want to be doing that when I am 60, so if things go as I think, we'll have a few years to argue that out.

I think it'd be nice if they lived in the senior living down the street from where I work; they'd have people to talk to, and a nice outdoor space with plenty of community events (it's accessible for wheelchairs, too), and I could stop by during lunch three or four times a week. It would definitely be nice for me, at least.

But they still live in their nice quiet house in the country, which they love, even though none of their friends can visit (their friends are older and in worse shape, mostly) and even though their internet is absolute shit and worse than dial-up. Although they're working on setting up something better for that last-- I can't wait to be able to show them how to stream movies, or send them videos, or even video call.

kaberett

Reading. Finished my first pass through LIFTOFF by Casey Johnston! Will continue to use it as a reference work (tomorrow starts my third and final week of Phase 1 -- bodyweight practice of compound movements -- before I move on to doing things with Actual Weights...). I should probably note for the record that I have edited it as I've gone through to fix a fair few typos.

More She's A Beast archives (just reached February 2023!).

Tiiiiiny bit of a start on my Wicked Problems (Max Gladstone) reread, in a general spirit of wanting to have any idea at all of what's going on in Dead Hand Rule.

Writing. The document! is over! 9000!!! despite the fact that I've deleted a bunch of bits of variation-on-a-theme as I home in on what it is I actually want to say! I have gone "that will do" about my first draft of the introduction (it definitely needs ... more ... tweaking, but I think all the pieces are now there) and have moved on to the introduction to part the first, working title "What is pain?" I'm very close to having that Good Enough For Now, I think, whereupon... a chapter?!

Watching. 2026 Migraine World Summit. So much Migraine World Summit. BUT I managed to catch everything this year, and now I am working on condensing and transcribing my digital notes into my notebook. More to follow, possibly.

Listening. I caught up to where A had got to with Hidden Almanac (which I had theoretically heard all of but in practice was asleep for... some... of)! We had a long drive! We are now most of the way through 2014, I have learned about Pastor Drom's side hustle, and there is a crow named George.

Playing. Bit more Inkulinati? Tiny bit more Inkulinati.

Eating. Mooooore allotment lamb's lettuce. AND a bunch of TREETS from the local FANCY BAKERY, incl. double chocolate brownie (not quite dark and chocolatey enough for my tastes; too dark for A); bread pudding; and a rhubarb and ginger teacake.

This week I am also experimenting with lentil cakes (like rice cakes, but lentil) and Dr Karg's Pumpkin Seed Protein Thins. I find the former perplexing, in that they taste kind of like crispy seaweed snacks while also being completely the wrong shape and texture, and am much more into the latter (even eaten dry!) than I expected. A considers them alarming cardboard; I think I think they are enough like Ryvita, of which I am fond, to be of at least some interest? Might... get more of these. (Could in theory reverse engineer them but that sounds like a lot of effort.)

Exploring. Had another couple of Extremely Satisfactory errand-bimbles discovering People's Front Gardens.

Making & mending. I have FROGGED the experimental continental knitted portion of A's second glove (tension was bad; have decided I want these gloves Done more than I want to do enough continental knitting to get the tension right) and resumed; I have done A Little More Cuff.

Growing. Aubergines finally! belatedly! sown! Oca into the ground. Broad beans finally coming up. More garlic transplanted.

Observing. THE COOTS! HAVE! EGGS!

conuly

In which this teacher earnestly wants a word to substitute for "chink" in Midsummer Night's Dream, and one person suggests kink which doesn't mean the same thing.

And on the one hand, I'm sure they all have their hearts in the right place, but on the other hand, maybe they should collectively teach a different play instead. Shakespeare wrote plenty of comedies, just pick a different one off the shelf.

andrewducker

1. Some Divorce Trends That Aren't Leaving Your Partner Mid-Hike: (tags:satire funny relationships murder )

siderea

[requires both audio and video]

Jonasquin on YT (previously) has written a wholly original motet in the 16th century style after Desprez upon the cantus firmus "Seven Nations Army", for the words of Psalm 10, verses 2, 3, 7-11.

Comment would be superfluous.

2026 Mar 20: Jonasquin YT: "A 16th century motet for the US President"

Watch on YouTube

Click through to the video on YT to see the translation in the description.

cosmolinguist

On a single tube train alone the other day, I saw two people in black thin-rimmed aviators and all I could thin was well now I know what I want my next pair of glasses to look like!

Never felt so much like a dad, possibly because that style always reminded me of my dad since that's what he wore when I was a little kid.

But one of these two people was a young person of ambiguous gender presentation, so I have hope that such things can become fashionable among the queers.

I'm due an eye test, and presumably new glasses, so I've been keeping an eye out for what kind of frames I might want (since the narrow rectangular thick-framed "hipster glasses" that seem to suit me best are not as readily available as they once were! the frames I have now are boring as hell, too big and too round for me even though they're not as much of either as has been popular lately).

kaberett

Today was A Travel Day; yesterday, in preparation for same, I Ran Errands, including "acquiring Tiny Cake" and "visiting the pharmacy".

On the way from those two jobs to the next couple, I passed Several Good Things.

One was a new-to-me flavour of completely ridiculous daffodil:

a double daffodil, with white petals and inner trumpet, protruding past a much shorter orange outer trumpet

It's a double not in the sense of having a confusing froth of intermingled trumpets (as of Double Fashion or Double Camparnelle, both of which exist locally), but in the sense of having two nested trumpets, one shorter and orange, from which the longer white one protrudes. I have never! previously! seen a thing like this! I am really enjoying my current streak of encountering varieties of daffodil that make me go "what the fuck???"

Shortly thereafter I checked over my shoulder while crossing a tiny bridge and was startled and delighted to see A COOT UPON THE NEST that, last I passed it, was clearly still derelict. Obviously I went back and Gazed Upon It for Some Time and was eventually rewarded by it STANDING UP to reveal SEVEN??? (possibly) EGGS!!!

And the Egyptian goslings were peeping about the place when I subsequently passed them on my way back up the hill. A+ errands would run again.

rmc28

This time a week ago I was on the ice with fellow Cambridge alumni for "Alumni game 1", kicking off Varsity. Photos (from one of my Warbirds teammates!) that actually make me look good are over at my hockey insta but here's my personal favourite, capturing a moment in motion:

After about an hour on the ice (2 periods running clock, 4 lines), I had a quick shower, and then spent the next ten or so hours mostly on my feet, doing music and announcements for my Huskies teammates, and scoresheet and in-game announcements for Women's Blues and Men's Blues. Final scores were:

Alumni game 1: 1-1
Alumni game 2: not sure, but we won
Huskies: 3-8
Women's Blues: 0-1
Men's Blues: 5-1

The alumni games were a great vibe: we cared, but it wasn't that intense. A whole load of the women I played with in 2022-23 came back, and for me that was really joyful, plus I got to make some new friends. A couple of the older guys in game 1 had played with my old work colleague Brian Omotani back in the day. Although he didn't play, he was there to watch, and he made time to come and find me for a brief catchup later in the day.

The rest of the day though was a different gear. The Huskies game was especially tough to watch, and I felt every goal against my teammates. The Women's Blues game was incredible, the team worked so hard and it was probably the best I've seen them play. And the Men's Blues winning so decisively was delightful, especially as the first goal came from one of the two ex-Huskies (and they both got an assist each later). The whole day was incredibly intense. And then I took my kit home to hang it up, changed, met up with everyone at Mash, danced until the club closed, went to Maccies (and realised just how much my feet hurt) until that closed, and sat on a bench gossiping with two of my favourite people in the club while one of them finished his burger. Eventually we all cycled home. I didn't want the day to end, but I had things to do on Sunday.

That is, very nearly, the end of the season with just the Nationals weekends in Sheffield to go. We've finished the league games, we've had Varsity, we're shifting to "summer ice" open practices, and even had the very last "S&C" gym session on Thursday this week. Some people will graduate and leave soon, and I will miss them so much, but I am so grateful for this university season and the time I've had with these wonderful people.

azurelunatic

... Make better choices.

Yellface went into Mila's room, hid under a table, beefed with Mila in some fashion, and was hauled ignominiously out.

As for me, my rescheduled retina appointment went fine. Some of the issues have cleared up. Prognosis very good. I had to transfer between power chair and clinic chair three times. As I told them on the final occasion: I have a bad knee and a worse knee. Trying CBD ointment in addition to Voltaren, on the advice of my now-former primary care. (And I know who my new primary care is going to be, yay.)

It's possible that my retina appointments this year are cursed. On the last attempt, my car was so low on battery that it died at an intersection and there was a whole drama with a guy who scared the whole block and tried to open my car door. This time we got there okay, but Belovedest suffered a flat tire while out with

alexseanchai later in the day. This wrapped up with Thorn having to come rescue that Toaster with a wrench that actually fit the nuts. (Cue penis measuring jokes.)

siderea

I knew that other contemporaneous cultures than those of Europe had unfathomably higher numbers of books than Europeans did, but I didn't know about this in retrospect obvious reason why:

2026 Mar 19: Dwarkesh Patel feat. Ada Palmer [DwarkeshPatel YT]: "Why Medieval Books Cost as Much as a House" (1 min, 7 sec):

Watch on YouTube

Without papyrus, what you're writing on is a dead sheep. And if you think of the price of a head of lettuce and the price of a leather jacket, you're understanding the difference between a sheet of papyrus and writing on a dead sheep. So every page of a medieval book is as expensive as that much of a leather jacket. And a medieval book hand written costs as much as a house.

And so to have a library is to be not just rich but mega rich. So only the wealthiest cities contain anybody who has a library. The great library of the University of Paris, the library from Europe's perspective, has 600 books.

There's definitely more than 600 books in this room. Every kiosk at an airport selling Dan Brown novels has more than 600 books. This is nothing.

And at the same time as that, in the Middle East, sultans have libraries of over a thousand books or 5,000 books. There are libraries in Sub-Saharan Africa with thousands of books.* There are libraries in China with thousands of books. Because they in China have cheap paper and rice paper. The Middle East has papyrus.

Europe, and only Europe, is writing on a leather jacket.

* Three hundred thousand. It's been thirteen years and I am still not remotely over that fact. Every time I encounter it anew, my SCA persona gets acrophobic trying to imagine a library that big and has to sit down and put her head between her knees so she doesn't pass out.

siderea

The previously expected ICE enforcement surge never materialized. Curious.

I wonder if this just means they're short-staffed. Or perhaps distracted.

(I also wonder if somebody made a judgment call not to try what they did in MN in MA, but have largely rejected the notion. It would not be to anybody's advantage if they did, on either side, but I'm not seeing a lot of good judgment in evidence anywhere.)

rachelmanija

This spooky ghost story has a central pairing that I feel like I may have requested as an original work: Widow/Female Fake Psychic/Ghost of a Female Bog Body.

My Darling Dreadful Thing is set in the Netherlands in the 1950s, which is a selling point all by itself as I love unusual settings. Roos is a young woman whose abusive fake psychic mother forces her to participate in her fake seances. But though Roos does not communicate with the spirits sought by the desperate, grieving customers, she actually does have a spirit companion, a bog body whom Roos has bound to her and named Ruth.

Roos is delighted when Agnes, a biracial (Indonesian/Dutch) widow, takes her as a companion and spirits her away to her neglected Gothic mansion in the middle of nowhere. The mansion is otherwise occupied only by Agnes's sister-in-law, Willamine, who is dying of tuberculosis, and has a marvellously bizarre Gothic history. Roos falls hard in love with Agnes, with whom she has a surprising amount in common.

But this whole story is being told in retrospect, as a series of interviews Roos is having with a psychiatrist who is trying to determine whether she's mentally fit to stand trial for murder. Something very bad happened at the mansion...

( Read more... )

Very enjoyable, very gothic, very atmospheric. I'm excited to read van Veen's other two books. I looked her up to see if she's actually from the Netherlands (yes) and learned that she's one of a set of non-identical triplet sisters! I don't think I've ever read a book by a triplet before.

cosmolinguist

1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?
I started LiveJournal in 2002 when a new friend (soon girlfriend) heard me saying that I wanted to write more and suggested LiveJournal. "What's LiveJournal?" I said, and she gave me an invite code, and here I am.

I moved to DW in 2011, I can't remember which exact thing made me do it but it was after Strikethrough, before things got very Russian but I think they were getting pretty Russian.

2. How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?
Five.

3. Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?
I mean, they're all on my reading page. Most are pretty quiet; one I made for covid-cautious people and don't use much myself any more either (its name is a pun based on "herd immunity," that's how old it is...). The best are thisfinecrew, for U.S. political actions people can taken (often online or relatively low-spoons) and thissterlingcrew, the British version of the same thing. Very useful communities to have In These Times.

4. How did you pick your user name?
This one was picked by D and another friend (I now cannot remember who) independently when I was looking for a new one.

5. If you could change your user name, would you?
It's clearly from a very specific time in my life, when I was using the name Cosmo and studying linguistics.

As for changing it, I mean, I could. I have. My LJ went through a couple of names too. I almost never re-use user names either; I just use whatever sounds like a good idea at the time. I can barely remember what it was before, and would probably prefer that one now. I did make a concerted effort to get away from puns, things based on my real-life first name, or both; no wonder this is what my friends suggested for me, this is my Brand.

While I'm here, another point I've been meaning to make under this tag for a bit but haven't gotten around to: having been writing about my life for half of it now, I find myself wishing there was a way for tags to become, like, dormant or something. There are lots of tags that I want to keep having but am not going to add new entries to, so I wish I didn't always have to look at them in the list or when I'm choosing tags.

conuly

And every one of those recs is better than the books. Well, I've shared my opinion on the books, the problems and characterization are insufficiently balanced for dual viewpoints.

But anyway, that's not what I'm thinking about. What I'm thinking about is Fabian and his generically shitty parents who clearly don't care about him very much. ( Read more... )

andrewducker

1. Earth's first mass extinction may have been far worse than believed: (tags:extinction prehistory paleontology )
2. People using AI to give law advice finally reaches Scotland.: (tags:ai law scotland )
3. Denmark was preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland in January, with military support from France, Germany, and Nordic nations.: (tags:war usa norway germany france denmark )
4. This perfectly encapsulates why I won't surf the web without an ad-blocker: (tags:advertising web newspapers )
5. How *did* a multi-storey car park get built in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle?: (tags:edinburgh cars history )
6. Waymo self driving cars are 13x safer than humans: (tags:safety automation driving cars )
7. Police Scotland announce they don't want trans people to report any crimes: (tags:transgender LGBT bigotry OhForFucksSake Scotland )
8. The change that made lighthouses work much better - and why it drove the keepers mad. (Lots and lots of mercury): (tags:mercury light history safety ships )
9. Gen Z is broke, stressed and exhausted - but boomers won't accept it: (tags:stress society doom )

conuly

For

minoanmiss

Reading

Morning medical annoyance

Syncopated tritone hockets for everybody! [early music, MA]

Foxfibre [text/ag]

Two years down the road.

vital functions

So here's this thread

Interesting Links for 22-03-2026

"Dum superbit impius" [music, pols]

Possibly my most #dadcore thought EVER

happy equinox, etc

Interesting Links for 21-03-2026

Varsity!

Cat ...

The cost of literacy [medieval hist]

Massachusetts not the next? [Ω, MA/US]

My Darling Dreadful Thing, by Johanna van Veen

Friday Five

There sure is a lot of Heated Rivalry fic being recommended every day

Interesting Links for 20-03-2026

gingicat has posted links to the obituary and charitable donation information