low_delta | Network

At least, I found a whole foods supplier which had - among other things like wheatbran which looked like it would not be like the sawdusty stuff Ocado have lately been purveying under that name - things like Medium Oatmeal! Wheatgerm! and POMEGRANATE VINEGAR!!! which I have been complaining everywhere were No Can Haz. Also kasha (I did have kasha but on recently examining the package found that its BBF was way back last summer).

And conveyed to me with remarkable expedition even if I didn't pony up for the expedite delivery option.

Slight whinge at DPD for just leaving it on the step and not even ringing the bell.

Also, I discovered that my library card for Former Workplace expired several years ago. On emailing about renewal (as I have a need to Go In and Consult Things) got a next day response saying they can renew if I send in scan of appropriate ID and address verification, and pick up card when I go in.

This somewhat makes up for:

a) the two reviews I did last year which still sit in limbo with the relevant editors.

b) the two feelers put out for books to review, ditto, such that I am hesitant to put out another for a different book to a different journal in case I end up yet again with stack of books for review.

c) local history society which I contacted last year apropos 2 volumes of its proceedings which are Relevant to My Interests and which after some initially encouraging response has gone silent.

Am still miffed about either inadvertently deleting or not being sent Zoom link for the last Dance to the Music of Time discussion.

and am baffled by the ongoing situation 'The server is taking too long to respond' of the Mastodon instance I frequent, which has now pertained for nearly 5 days.

Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge.

This is my top 10 collages of 2025. In chronological order.

1. Sherlock Holmes Birthday (6 Jan)

2. Blue (I like the busy-ness of this. There's a lot going on AND a lot of space.)

3. Keats coffee. Probably my favorite of all because I love coffee and coffee-themed collages (and I loved Keats coffee because I love the flavor and coffee in general and Keats and people trying to rid the world of TB, all good, good, good, things). Also busy with different textures which I love.

( Seven more )

The Dark Invader, Kapitänleutnant Franz von Rintelen (available on Gutenberg Australia)
The autobiography of one of Germany's most successful secret agents in WW1. One of the good bits from my previous book was the mention of this autobiography in the author's note at the end, since Rintelen appears as a minor character in 'The Spies of Hartlake Hall'. So I looked it up and read it, and what a read it was. Rintelen is an absolute lunatic; what he most reminded me of was a German Miles Vorkosigan, including the bit where his superiors ship him off to cause problems for the enemy instead of having him meddling in politics at home. He likes coming up with wild ideas and carrying them out, he has bucketloads of chutzpah, he's not above creatively delaying his obedience to orders, he's not afraid of wading into just about anything and he's very cocky. He is exactly who you don't want as a coworker in headquarters, but exactly who you do want to send off to sabotage the enemy.

And since he spoke excellent English - the memoir is written by him in English, not translated from German - the Germans sent him to America to do something about the fact that America, though neutral, was supplying huge volumes of ammunition to the Allies. And so he sets about arranging the manufacture of time-bombs to put in the holds of cargo ships carrying munitions, he looks for ways to sabotage harbours, he tries to send money and weapons to Mexico to encourage them to invade the USA, he gets involved in organising strikes among dock workers and munition workers, and he makes friends with Irish nationalists and encourages them to help him with all of this. And, because this is real life and not fiction and he's not quite as lucky as Miles Vorkosigan, eventually he gets captured by the British on his way back to Germany, and put in a POW camp, and then later was sent for trial and imprisonment in the USA for his crimes there - he doesn't get back to Germany again until 1921, after four years of hard labour in pretty grim conditions which he makes plain in his memoir that he felt was extremely inappropriate as an enemy soldier.

But he did very obviously adore the British officers who captured him, he's incredibly Anglophile and the whole description of his being captured is interleaved with a description of him spending Christmas with one of the officers involved years later and how well they got on ('dearly beloved ex-enemies' is his phrase); he loves England and the British. He found that Germany wasn't the place for him when he got out - not least because von Papen, the Weimar chancellor, was his fellow naval attache in the US embassy while he was carrying out all this sabotage and they hated each other's guts and, according to Rintelen, Papen deliberately let his name leak out so that the British knew who he was and could arrest him. So Rintelen moved to London and settled there, and according to the Wikipedia article about him, it's possible that when WW2 came around he helped train SOE operatives in sabotage work, this being something of his area of expertise.

The memoir is very obviously written with his own biases and interpretation and grievances about various things, but it's a fantastic read and honestly even though he was clearly a complete nightmare in so many ways, I couldn't help but like him.

Public

Back to the Future (1985)

This is a film I might have guessed would score full marks from me. As you can see, it doesn't, because it's just that little bit too problematic when looked at with mid-2020s eyes. Don't get me wrong, this is still a great movie, expertly constructed and supremely watchable. There aren't any real weak links in the acting, and the atmosphere of 1955 America is wonderfully created. Even having a DeLorean break down about every ten seconds is true to life. For what it is, Back to the Future is pretty much spot on at first viewing, and it's strong enough to hold up to being seen multiple times, as indeed I have. That's not something to sniff at.

But those problems? There's the "Johnny B. Goode" scene, though in reality by November 1955 what you might call modern rock'n'roll already existed: Little Richard had released "Tutti Frutti" the month before, even if it didn't chart until December. The Libyan terrorists are comic-book villains and I can live with that. A bigger deal is how the film treats Lorraine. The "unintentional incestuous attraction" joke is slightly overdone, but the real issue is the plan Marty cooks up, which requires Lorraine to be genuinely emotionally abused to set up George's hero moment. Then an actual assault is played more realistically than you'd expect for a feel-good family comedy, yet the victim is completely fine a few minutes later.

None of this destroys the movie as a whole. Michael J. Fox is excellent as Marty, even if a little gratingly cool at times for these British sensibilities, and Christopher Lloyd is suitably manic as Doc Brown. Lea Thompson must also get a mention for a really fine turn in a tricky role as Lorraine, while Thomas F. Wilson's Biff manages to pull off both "comedy class bully" and "genuinely dangerous predator". The clock tower scene, the other callbacks, most of the humour, and the way it never lets up from start to finish make it a very fine film to this day. Still an easy four-star movie – but looked at through today's eyes, I can't quite see it as the near-perfect picture I'd half-expected. ★★★★

Current Mood: hungry

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/gallery-racing-bulls-unveil-race-suits-for-2026-season.4E38UPGGjSI76NMMohd31Z

Ahead of their joint launch event with Red Bull this week, Racing Bulls have revealed the race suits that their drivers will be wearing in 2026.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/gallery-racing-bulls-unveil-race-suits-for-2026-season.4E38UPGGjSI76NMMohd31Z

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/gallery-cadillac-reveal-special-livery-for-barcelona-shakedown-week.2Vwr3amcEHmeSMh9Hvjrj5

Cadillac have unveiled a special livery for the Barcelona Shakedown, with the design including the names of the founding members of the team from both the United States and the UK.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/gallery-cadillac-reveal-special-livery-for-barcelona-shakedown-week.2Vwr3amcEHmeSMh9Hvjrj5

If yesterday was an edge case, this one’s completely off the edge — when I was compiling the week’s words, I failed to notice this one is not Polynesian but Micronesian, and while the two groups do make up the Eastern branch of Oceanic languages, it’s still off topic. My bad. Especially as the history is too interesting to give up:

bikini (buh-KEE-nee) - n., a close-fitting, two-piece women’s bathing suit that does not cover the midriff.

The history is easier to explain in chronological order. One of the northernmost of the Marshall Islands is a coral atoll called Pikinni (stress on the first syllable) in Marshallese, from pikin, flat land +‎ ni, coconut, so (is)land where coconuts grow. When the Marshall Islands were part of the colony of German New Guinea, the German adaptation was Bikini (still stressed on the first syllable), it became known by that in English (stressed first syllable) and French (stress typically on the second syllable, following that language’s norms). Japan took over the Marshall Islands in 1914 at the start of WWI, and the USA took it over following WWII, and from 1946-1958 they test-fired 23 nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll. [Sidebar: They relocated the ~150 inhabitants first, and since in traditional Marshallese culture wealth is based on how much land your clan controls, this impoverished them.] Four days after the first test-fire on Bikini in July 1946, French designer Louis Réard introduced a new midriff-baring two-piece swimsuit, which he named bikini (stressed second syllable) after it, the idea being that it was just as much a sensation. Um. Yeah. [Sidebar²: Thanks to the swimsuit, the atoll now is just as likely to be pronounced with stress on the second syllable. Second round of Um. Yeah.]

---L.

13. January is the best time to see the bright gas giant planet Jupiter in the sky – have you ever seen it?

Not sure that I could really spot it with the naked eye, but a few years ago we looked at it through our neighbor's telescope.

Current Mood: annoyed

It was raining in Seattle when I left and is a little drippy here this morning.

The Seattle airport, SeaTac, was weirdly a bit of a mess. The security set up was not nearly as efficient or as well equipped as the one in Austin. To get on the plane we had to go outside on the tarmac where the jets were taking off and landing (far away from them but still on the same ground with jet fuel and noise and fumes) then up a set of ramps to get into the plane. I can only assume they are doing lots of work somewhere and this is the temporary result of that work. But the difference between the Austin airport and the Seattle airport was striking. We'll see how temporary that is in five months when I do it again.

The flight was uneventful. I was wearing my hoodie and put on the Bose sound killing head phones, flipped up the hood, put on four or five episodes of Pluribus, and disappeared from the world for a few hours. I've got a routine. Crawl into my cave and return when the metal tube has deposited me near where I'm going.

All is well here, nothing went amiss while I was gone. Beaux is very happy to have me back and I was thrilled to see him. Similar experience with Dana and Toby but in Beau's case lots of enthusiasm and body wagging.

My weight is unchanged after a week of different eating and everything else and no exercise. So that is encouraging. It will be nice to get back in the groove with measured food and pickleball. Time to get serious about losing that last ten or fifteen pounds. I've already reached my initial goal only to find it is not actually the one I want. But I'm happy with the progress and ready for more.

A week off from exercise is too long. I can feel it. And the immediate snap back to form that I enjoyed when I was younger isn't going to happen now. I'll need to put in a lot more effort and focus to get back to where I was a week ago. It slips away so quickly.

I do miss being able to go down to the Timber Ridge library at 6AM and read the physical WSJ paper with one of the residents. He never even looked up when I arrived but acknowledged me on his way out. Companionable silence, coffee, and someone to have the paper ready.

But I trade it off for quiet house and morning coffee and feeding Beaux.

I've got lunch today with my networking group but that's it. Such a nice schedule. A couple of other things to do with scheduling later in the week and accounts of one kind or another but nothing pressing.

I do kind of like my schedule.

So I wait for a couple of days to be sure I didn't pick up any virus during the travels. Finger's crossed. I didn't notice anyone who looked sick and did spend some quality time washing my hands in the airport.

Time to walk the dogs.

I had completely forgotten about this old workaround until today, and honestly, it's a lifesaver in my loud office workplace. Since my iPhone doesn't allow me to charge and listen simultaneously without a bulky dongle, I finally remembered I can just tether it to my computer via a USB cable. By opening iTunes, I can access my entire library of 2,000+ tracks directly from the phone while it stays at 100% battery.

The real winner in this setup is my Etymotic IEMs. In our noisy workspace, their passive isolation provides an epic level of noise reduction. It's actually more effective than active noise cancellation (ANC) because it blocks out office chatter and high-frequency sounds.

I'm finally back in my high-fidelity bubble.

Cut for length...

( Read more... )

The "demand for perfection -- but only on one side" approach is, in fact, a major tactic and stumbling block in modern politics, and I should probably make that another post.

things melted last week and everything was mud, so I got a couple days break from spreading straw. weirdly, my problem elbow hurt more when I wasn't using it constantly than when I was. Not sure what's up with that. The temperature dropped again, so the ground froze again. Did another load at dawn this morning but discovered a belt had worn weirdly on the shredder, so I need to run to town today and get a new one before we shred more.

The pottery class I was going to take isn't actually available on Wed, their only evening hours are mondays from 5-8 and they only just updated that on facebook and haven't emailed me back. I'm busy that night, so that's out. I could theoretically do day classes but with how short the days are, any daylight is needed for work hours especially if I need extra warmup time between morning and afternoon. ETA: I found another studio with wed classes and easier signup procedures. done.

I did go to spinners guild on sunday and it was a gosh dang delight including one of the longer term guild members coming this time who is queer in so many ways and everyone was lovely to him. It was so so so nice and relaxing. I think for the next meeting I'm going to get either my electric wheel battery up and running or take my smaller wheel and start an alpaca spin on it. My CPW is too big and loud for the space we've been meeting in. I got there right at 1pm and was still one of the later arrivals, so clearly I need to get there even earlier :)

We have started the wood stove indoors back up, so that's nice. I missed it. We ran out of wood that size and it had gotten warm, so there was less point in running it. Dad got on the roof and cleaned the chimney out while it was off, so that was nice and split some of the wood at the rental into wood stove size for both their house and mine.

I did kickstart my parents into doing work on their house! I sanded their office floor and then mom cleaned it and we sealed and finished it together. Definitely one of those times where it would have been faster with just one person, but so be it. My dad has been working on their living room wall drywall which is next in line. They do have renters moving into the rental Feb 1, so there is painting to be done there, plus some other small misc stuff. Parents' house also needs paint so I will be helping with some amount of painting. I didn't do drywall in my upstairs bathroom yet as expected, but I'm planning to later this week when dad is around to help me move the drywall outside to cut and then upstairs to get in place. They do have an extremely firm deadline of house renovations of June when my dad's college buddies are coming to visit, so there's that. We did discover that nice foosball tables are extremely heavy and it would be good to have more than two people to get it in a bilco basement door. I didn't get squished but it was very very heavy. After we got it down there, my dad said, you know, I think it did say something about being over 200lbs. hmm. thanks dad. Although we would have had to get a cousin or something to come help, which my parents are slightly allergic to asking for help, so I dunno if that would have happened anyway. We do have a vague plan to get the floor done which is good and there is progress happening. Given my parents hated the smell of the seal and finish, we are waiting to move them into the house until the living room/dining room/kitchen are all sealed and finished.

Winter is one of those times where I am just sleepy a lot, so I do accept this as a fact of life but also am fully aware that I am relatively isolated from the local area. In NY, I had an established friend groups, I had places I could go when I wanted a little socializing or crafting with folks, all sorts of things. Here I don't have any of that, so I'm trying to find something. Over the summer, I was so busy with the farm that I didn't really notice, but now I really can tell. To be fair, I have three nights a week where I have weekly social opportunities, but they are all digital. I know I need to push myself and get out there but it's hard and farm work is a bit unpredictable with when we need to run for straw and things. So spinners guild was excellent. I'm hoping to go to a meetup this saturday, although I'll be missing gaming with Jade that night for it. I need to do something thur/fri nights. And maybe some saturdays during the day. Hmm.

What with Recent Events and all, I was wondering if I was stopped by ICE, how would I prove I was a citizen?

( I am collecting permabans on reddit, actually... )

Where, oh where, did I go wrong?

I think by picking up the wrong travel brochure in Bardo.

Clearly, I was reaching for the glossy folder emblazoned, Enjoy your next incarnation as a veterinarian in the 1930s & 1940s Yorkshire Dales!

Instead, my astral fingers fumbled, & I picked up the one labeled, Be Cassandra while Western Civilization collapses around you! (Note: This material contains themes of intense sadness, depression, hopelessness, and emotional distress.)

###

Anyway, yesterday I did regain a modicum of sanguinity: It was a bright, sunshiney, though intensely cold day & I shot the shit with a couple of my fellow tax-preparing wage slaves at the Schlock office who laughed at all my jokes and told me they never peddled product unless the client was clearly on the verge of being swept up in a financial maelstrom. Their eyes widened with admiration when I went into my patented rant about how companies bloated with middle management always update their perfectly functional software & support documents every year because that's the only way middle management can justify its existence.

I am a mouse trained on scraps! The things that keep me happy are so small! All I really need is an audience for an hour & a chance to show off how much I remember from my university economics classes.

###

Came home & realized that Chapter 4 in the Work in Progress would be wayyyyyy too long if I followed my kinda/sorta outline. Really, I need to split it into a Chapter 4 and a Chapter 5!

And Chapter 4 has to end with an elliptical, evocative, & allusive conversation with the New Millennium Kingdom girl—

And here, I totally ran out of steam.

Because while it's staying light till 5pm now, it's still midnight at 6pm, and I can't work at night.

Which is weird because I'm perfectly capable of working at 4 o'clock in the morning when it's just as dark.

###

So! Notes for the final climactic Chapter 4 WiP scene, which hopefully, I can polish off before I toddle off to the gym:

Brief review of the revolving signage on the New Millennium Kingdom table: COVID is God's Down Payment, The Blood of the Lamb Works Better Than Purell, etc, etc, etc.

One time I asked her (your enigmatic question & response goes here)

Another time I asked her, "But what did you do before this?"

She laughed and said, "I was a broker at Goldman Sachs."

Work Buy the dip, short the godless index into the dialog somehow.

Has to be some ruminations about the Universe's plan & the very last line will be the girl laughing at Grazia, Didn't we already decide that?

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Public

This spring's Senedd election looks like being an interesting one. Right now if I had to put money on any particular outcome, I'd go for a minority Plaid administration. I don't think they'll get anywhere near the number of seats they'd need to get a majority in the Senedd, which will now have 96 members. Probably a final seat count somewhere in the low-mid 30s. Reform are on their heels but seem to be slipping back a little very recently, so I'd suggest mid-high 20s for them. Quite possibly every other party, including incumbents Labour, in single figures.

Current Mood: thoughtful

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/10-youngest-drivers-to-race-in-f1-and-how-they-all-fared-as-lindblad-debuts.6v3qxVRmrw7AeLEbbascHu

Arvid Lindblad will become the fourth-youngest driver in F1 history when he debuts for Racing Bulls at the 2026 Australian Grand Prix, aged 18 years and seven months old. But who currently makes the top 10 in the sport’s all-time list, and what happened after their respective debut weekends? F1.com has the answers…

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/10-youngest-drivers-to-race-in-f1-and-how-they-all-fared-as-lindblad-debuts.6v3qxVRmrw7AeLEbbascHu

Greetings on this Tuesday morning! Turns out, even with the good cough syrup, I'm still awake at night. Freaking steroids. Oh well, it's okay, at least I got a little more sleep than the night before.

Yesterday at work, it was bugfuck insane. The one offices PET machine has been down for 4 days, and will be down again today. Patients were understandably upset, since this is part of their cancer diagnosis, but goddamn, stop taking it out on us. We did not have the machine break AT you. Also, you are not special, we'll get you back in as soon as we can, but I'm not bumping someone else for you.

Add to that, call volumes were incredibly high. At one point, we had 37 calls waiting. It was absolutely the busiest I've ever seen it. I took 52 calls, and that was with making some outbound calls. I was waiting for it to slow down to make them, but I finally had to just do them because it wasn't slowing down. When I left, there were 25 calls waiting. If I hadn't had a doctor's appointment at 4:45, I would have offered to stay and get a little OT.

Instead, I hopped off and right onto a virtual doctor's appointment. The nurse practitioner I saw was very sweet. She kicked down the codeine cough syrup, and told me if it goes past day 17, I. should let her know and she'll order a chest xray. I can live with that. The cough syrup was very important to me. It means actual relief. I didn't cough much last night between that an our vaporizer, which was good. Like I said, the steroids are still making it difficult to sleep straight through, but when I am sleeping, it's pretty good sleep.

After I finished with the nurse practitioner, I threw on some hamburgers and Twice baked potatoes, which turned out very well. We're still using the good grass fed beef that we got from the farm, so it's especially tasty and not too fatty. It's expensive, but I highly recommend Evensong Farm's Beef shares. You get to choose your cut package. The beef is grass fed and delicious. I've done it for two years, and I plan to do it again in the spring and pick it up at the Silver Spring Farmer's market. If any of my DC peeps want to get some, I'm happy to put in the order when it comes time.

Then, I went to get my prescription, and came home to walk the dog. Then, right after, I took the cough medicine and went to relax. We listened to another episode of Bake On, which is a podcast about the Great British Bake Off, and I fell asleep halfway through.

Today, I'm still coughing, but maybe a tinge better? The voice is annoying--it's kind of raspy and deep, and I'm going to have a fun time talking all day. I sound like a sex bot, so that'll be fun.

We're down to 114 days til Alaska. Every time the clock ticks another 5 points, I get excited. It's below 115, which is something. By the end of the month we'll be in double digits. I want to start getting our dog used to the sitter, but I need to wait until this crud is done. I don't believe that I'm still contagious, but the cough *sounds* abysmal.

The sitter is the last piece of the puzzle. I'm sure Yoda will be okay with her, though I'm sure he's going to be a pain about eating while we're gone. Boodle probably will be sad, but she'll be okay. Hopefully, Yoda bonds with her, so that he will spend the day pushed up against her like he does us. Thanks to the way he loves his groomer, I'm cautiously optimistic.

It's slowly dawning on me that I'm going on a cruise. I know I booked it, and have scheduled excursions and done research, but it's actually going to happen. I'm terrified that something will go wrong, but mostly I'm just excited about it. I'm actually going to see the Pacific Ocean and Seattle and Vancouver, and some of the Alaskan ports. We talked about this cruise years ago, but couldn't do it because of Dad. But it's all paid off. I paid everything up front except the one hotel and one of the car services.

I've decided in our Vancouver day we're going to get passes to the hop on hop off bus, so we can get to all the major tourist attractions with no problems. It might mean missing out on a few local gems, but that's okay, there's no way we could see everything in one day. My two things are Granville Island and Gastown. I'd like to see Stanley Park, but we'll see what we have time and energy for. Oh, and I want to do the Flyover ride. Totally a tourist trap, but the version in Disney was one of my favorite experiences. It looks like they have two possible experiences, one a flyover of Canada, and one of Iceland. Ideally, I'd do both if there's time.

Okay, time for me to consider the merits of pants. Everyone have an awesome Tuesday!

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/alpine-part-ways-with-reserve-driver-doohan-ahead-of-2026-season.4Q5bEWFiYZknQ7QKf6oNOy

Alpine have announced that they are parting ways with Jack Doohan ahead of the 2026 season, ending a whirlwind experience for the Australian at the team.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/alpine-part-ways-with-reserve-driver-doohan-ahead-of-2026-season.4Q5bEWFiYZknQ7QKf6oNOy