drwex | Reading

Life is full of things which are hard or tedious or otherwise unpleasant that need doing anyhow. They help make the world go 'round, they improve skills, and they boost your sense of self-respect. But doing them still kinda sucks. It's all the more difficult to do those things when nobody appreciates it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our accomplishments and pat each other on the back.

What are some of the hard things you've done recently? What are some hard things you haven't gotten to yet, but need to do? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your hard things a little easier?

Current Mood: busy

nasa_apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260915.html

There was something behind the clouds.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260915.html

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from

fuzzyred. It also fills the "excitement" square in my 9-1-26 card for the Life Events Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Coracle Shores.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

redbird

The clinic called, and I made appointments for the balance PT (plural, because they wanted to set up the initial/evaluation appointment and the first two follow-ups at the same time.
We had a pleasant Rosh Hashanah lunch last weekend with Adrian's friend R from the havurah and their partners. A couple of hours of food and conversation before R said they needed a nap. We stopped in briefly at the fundraiser for Allston-Brighton for Palestine that R's partner Peter was helping run next door, and Cattitude bought a small tripod for indoor photography.
I'm definitely having better and worse days in terms of joint pain and other aches, and taking more naproxen than I'd like, but I've walked at least a mile on four of the last seven days.
I made a rice pilaf with leftover chicken tonight, which we all enjoyed. I used the (relatively) new four-quart pot with the glass lid, and it worked OK, but not as well as the enamel Dutch oven, so I will probably go back to that next time.

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/15/the-big-idea-marissa-lingen/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=62441

Does a weapon want to hurt people? What if it had opinions on the type of people it was used to slay? Author Marissa Lingen had these sorts of questions rattling around in her brain long enough that a story formed from them. Take up your (opinionated) sword and follow along in the Big Idea for A Dubious Clamor.

MARISSA LINGEN:

Some big ideas form in an instant, an explosion of brilliance, totally ready to write down and go–the Big Bang of idea formation, if you will. Others are more like planetary accretion. There’s a whole massive whirling disc of random crap, and over time it runs into each other and eventually you have an entire planet with rings and moons. A Dubious Clamor was definitely in the second group.

Twenty-five years ago I read the Francis Peabody Magoun translation of the Kalevala. This is my recommended translation. Rather than trying to preserve rhyme or structure, it preserves weirdness, which for my money is the exact right thing to preserve. Catch me at a con sometime and I’ll tell you about the milk from hell or the insults from your in-laws, as rendered in the Magoun translation of the Kalevala. But the one bit that kept poking at me over the years was when one of the magical swords made by the smith Ilmarinen said, “Probably I was not made for the slaying of young maidens.”

Probably. The sword was willing to leave room for discussion on this point. Huh.

That one word kept popping up in my head: probably. Probably. Maybe not, though! Who knows! Probably. I started to wonder: are there other swords with both opinions and a refreshing unwillingness to lay down immovable dictates? I mean, probably! Why wouldn’t there be? Who would make those swords? Was it all Ilmarinen? Probably not! There are lots of other magical smiths in mythology. Was I a little too obsessed with one word in a translation? Yeah, probably!

But I liked where it was going. I was trained as a physicist (can you tell from my go-to metaphors above?). I was a lab TA for three years. One of the most important things I taught in those lab sections was the section of lab reports devoted to error analysis. I tried to walk lab students through assessing where things might not be perfect, where their own error had a chance to slip in. Several students wanted to write, “There were no sources of error in this lab,” and I had to walk them through why that was in fact not true. But in the outside world I kept watching malicious actors treat uncertainty and error as if they were a sign that you were on the wrong track. As if they had perfect answers that would work every time. As though science acknowledging that it didn’t was a sign of dishonesty. And I kept returning to that sword and the way that it went with. Y’know. Probably.

I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Oliver Cromwell in general, but my favorite thing he ever said was, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you might be mistaken.” He should have listened to himself a lot more on that, but–yeah. At least consider. Think it possible. I can come up with a few contemporary figures who could do some more thinking it possible that they might be mistaken. I bet you can too.

The harpies came later. Jenny Lind and operetta and the alternate history aftermath of a Chartist rebellion and all the little cakes–all of it came later. The first and biggest idea, the one I couldn’t leave alone, was a sword that was not fond of people being all too certain they had all the right boxes to put each other in. That seemed worth raising a dubious clamor about.

A Dubious Clamor: Amazon|B&N|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Bluesky

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/15/the-big-idea-marissa-lingen/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=62441

sovay

I have not slept in three or four nights and my insurance actually is trying to kill me, but

theseatheseatheopensea makes a gorgeous case for Hugo Fregonese's The Raid (1954) in the August issue of Edición Sunset and Widow's Bay (2026–) swept its categories at the Emmys. I'd have been even happier with it on CD, but it may mark some kind of flashover in my relationship to Doctor Who that I have just spent a wistful half-hour listening to Gardens of the Dead (2015). The blue of the sky has blown off into fall.

Current Music: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Hysteric"

thebigquestions_feed

Posted by Steve Landsburg

https://www.thebigquestions.com/2026/09/15/last-of-the-titans/

https://www.thebigquestions.com/?p=12192

Today is the 100th birthday of Jean-Pierre Serre, the last of the twentieth-century mathematical titans. His most recent paper is less than a year old. By all accounts, he is still actively doing research.

When Serre was awarded the Fields Medal in 1954 at the age of 27, he was introduced to the audience by Hermann Weyl, a titan of an earlier age. “Never before”, said Weyl, “have I witnessed such a brilliant ascension of a star in the mathematical sky”.

It’s been pointed out that Serre now holds the distinction of being both the youngest and the oldest Fields medalist ever.

Unlike most of the other great mathematicians of his era, Serre worked in, and left a lasting imprint on, and in some cases completely transformed an astonishing variety of different mathematical subfields. His collaborations, often uncredited, are legendary. He was arguably the one collaborator who was absolutely necessary to Grothendieck. The proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem relies on a key observation of Serre’s (though in this case I’m guessing — but not certain — that while Serre sped things along, he doesn’t count as indispensable). Wikipedia lists over 30 “things named after Jean-Pierre Serre”. The list is incomplete (Where is “Serre’s GAGA”? Where is Auslander-Buchsbaum-Serre? Where are Serre’s regularity conditions?) but it still includes quite a few items that most mathematicians would be proud of as a once-in-a-lifetime accomplishment.

Once when I was very young (younger even than the age at which Serre won his Fields medal), I got up my courage and asked a senior mathematician a question that I was sure was extremely naive and silly but that I just couldn’t seem to figure out on my own. He was a very good senior mathematician, but his judgment was clearly quite imperfect, because he insisted that I send my question to Serre via an ancient system of communication that we called “airmail”. I balked, but the senior mathematician browbeat me into it. Two weeks later (which is about as soon as was physically possible in those days) I got back a three-page handwritten letter from Serre, making it crystal clear that the question was exactly as naive and silly as I thought it was, but taking the opportunity to teach me some related mathematics. It was kind, generous, and surely an extremely poor use of his time. I wonder what great theorem the world has been denied because I failed to stand by my “let’s not bother him” instinct.

But French mathematicians as a group are well known for their occasional sharp tongues. Here’s a story I’ve been told, which might or might not be entirely apocryphal. Serre once attended a lecture by another prominent mathematician, who, by some accounts, Serre considered both overrated and arrogant. That other mathematician (who I won’t name partly because this whole story might be fiction) started out by writing several theorems on the blackboard and then announcing that although the theorems were all pretty good in their own right, the best thing about these theorems was that they all followed from just one idea. At which point Serre raised his hand and corrected the speaker: “At most one idea.”

Again, I don’t know whether that one’s true. I do know that almost all of the mathematics that I know and love bears Serre’s imprint. I wish him a very happy birthday, and many more.

Click here to comment or read others’ comments.

https://www.thebigquestions.com/2026/09/15/last-of-the-titans/

https://www.thebigquestions.com/?p=12192

ysabetwordsmith

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you all for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! This is the perk for the Poetry Fishbowl meeting the $250 goal four times. Today's theme is "Coracle Shores." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

This series is apocalyptic portal fantasy in which people escape from a world wracked by climate change by venturing Underhill into one of the fey realms. They must figure out how to live in a world with unfamiliar magic and creatures. They also have to think about what they bring with them, and how to avoid spoiling a beautiful world with bad habits from the old one. It's a story of hope and fear, joy and grief, dynamic balance and resilience.

I'll be soliciting ideas for fairies, seelie or unseelie sidhe, the Wild Hunt, elves, magical animals, other types of fey, tricksters, contraries, rebels, activists, adventurers, refugees, mentors, historians, explorers, magic users, partners, teachers, leaders, teammates, fantasy species, other unusual fantasy folk, leaving home, exploring new territory, meeting new species, seeking a new home, doing magic, doing things backwards, causing mischief, breaking rules, caring for the land, upsetting predictions, twisting tropes, flipping stereotypes, expecting the unexpected, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, other fantastic activities, Underhill, faery rings, other portals, coracles, escape routes, the forest primeval, underwater, underground, liminal zones, castles, ruins, camps, villages, schools, kitchens, campfires, libraries, apothecary shops, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other phantasmagoric settings, faerie magic, magical artifacts, enchanted musical instruments or weapons, quests, magical plants, dragons, unicorns, enchantments, potions, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, fey time distortions, travel mishaps, trial and error, polarity, weird food, secret ingredients, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Life Events Bingo Fest Card 9-1-26

Boost the signal to reveal a verse in any open linkback poem.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

Current Mood: creative

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny and sweltering. Temperature is 88°F, feels like 93°F. A beautiful day to stay indoors and write! My Bonus Poetry Fishbowl is running today in the fantasy series Coracle Shores.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/15/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/15/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

Today's high was 99°F. Ugh. This should not be happening in mid-September. >_<

EDIT 9/15/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I watered the new picnic table garden and the telephone pole garden.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

flexagon

I'm interested in doing more "zoomed-out" posts, but in the meantime here's another week:

Paperwork victory for the India trip, getting my "tourist visa" granted. I had to give them my religion (very much "OTHER", out of the list they offered) along with every country I'd travelled to in the last ten years... yipes.

Painting radiator covers for our tenants, whose baby is starting to toddle around on his own. I started listening to The Deluge, a 40-hour audiobook about climate change, and it was peaceful; did three coats on three days; and then we installed the covers on Saturday.

The NYT games department re-opened for crossword submissions, and I dumped four new collabs (with four different people) into the queue. I'm proud of them; they include my first-ever Sunday. Now I'm working on my first-ever rebus puzzle, with a guy who's kind of a legendary constructor, and it's quite an education.

Saw a circus show with a videogame focus. The cutest act was an aerial one with two Yarnies joined together a la Unraveled Two.

Went ziplining on Sunday with Birdie, ironically on my wedding anniversary with heisenbug -- that, itself, is getting celebrated next weekend because nice restaurants aren't open on Sundays. Some of our fellow zipliners asked if we were sisters and we laughed and I said "no, mother and daughter". So on the way back we had a brief conversation about generally using the words "mother" and "daughter" with fewer differentiating words added on, even when not essentially cosplaying for strangers, and I said I was fine with that. And yeah, it does feel fine, to my slight surprise. I still don't feel generally like a mother since that's so often associated with having taken care of younger kids, but being this kind of "lightweight mom to an adult", which is to say being her mother, seems okay. If she has a kid in a few years then I might seriously regret this, as my squirrel will never shut up about my being a "hot grandma" -- I mean there have already been discussions about how if he buys me a rocking chair he will be bludgeoned with the pieces of it, and in short order! But for now... okay.

Sometimes a really good individual day coalesces out of the glop. On Tuesday I said, elsewhere: I got to see my friend's beehives, finished clues for two crossword puzzles with two different collaborators, put primer on three radiator covers I'm painting, took a juggling class, gave my other friend a stack of books, and cooked a new recipe. 🥰 Oh and I ran into my bio-kid at the bus stop, which is always fun. Yeah. That felt good.

I forgot to post this last night after a long day of taking care of details, and two cool things happened while I was forgetting! One of them is going to be of interest and will get its own friends-only post, the other is that I did good straddle-ups onto canes. Yes, using a very remedial setup of a minitramp on one side and a crash mat on the other BUT STILL.

gingicat

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

Current Mood: blah

ysabetwordsmith

dialecticdreamer is hosting Magpie Monday with a theme of "cleaning up afterward." Leave prompts, get ficlets!

Current Mood: busy

nasa_apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260914.html

The hydrogen in your body and present in every molecule of water came from the

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260914.html

ysabetwordsmith

Global warming is breaking a 400-year climate link between two oceans

The Indian and Pacific oceans have been climatically linked for centuries, but scientists say that connection is now breaking down in an exceptional way. Ancient climate records suggest volcanoes disrupted the relationship in the past, while today human-caused warming appears to be driving a much more unusual shift.

O_O The Indian Ocean drives the monsoon that India relies on for water. Disruptions in that would be bad.

Current Mood: busy

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3298/

Someday, we will find the problem that goes with this solution.

https://xkcd.com/3298/

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/14/today-in-places-you-might-not-expect-to-find-me/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=62434

Behold these history textbooks: World in Motion, Vols. 1 &2. They were sent to me today. Why, you may ask? Because I contributed to them both, by writing an introduction that went into both volumes. Why was I asked to write the introduction? Because I am awesome, you see, and also because I know one of the authors, and he asked nicely, and I thought it would be fun. And it was fun! And now I have another thing checked of the bucket list: Being in a textbook! Yes, it was pretty far down the checklist. But it was still there.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/09/14/today-in-places-you-might-not-expect-to-find-me/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=62434

ysabetwordsmith

Today I made watermelon salsa, approximately:

1/2 cup diced watermelon
1/2 cup diced cucumber
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger root
1 teaspoon minced fresh basil
1/2 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon lime juice

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is sunny and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a male cardinal.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I checked for ripe sunflower seeds in the prairie garden, but they're not ready yet.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I sprayed weeds in the prairie garden.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I picked basil to make watermelon salsa.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I watered the new picnic table garden, recently planted bulbs, patio plants, and old picnic table garden.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I watered the telephone pole garden.

I've seen a gray catbird.

EDIT 9/14/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Dinosaurs evolved very strange and unique strategies for digesting food and absorbing nutrients

A new study built entirely around these swallowed stones, called gastroliths, makes the case that dinosaurs never settled on a single way of digesting food. Some ground their meals inside a muscular stomach, the way a chicken still does. Some appear to have chewed everything to a pulp first, more like a cow. Others may have skipped the grinding altogether, relying instead on a long gut and patient fermentation to do the real work.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Reading
Today's Adventures
Wildlife
Nature
Birdfeeding
Poem: "Spun Sugar Sky"
Poem: "The Single Biggest Boost"
Fossils
Birdfeeding
Philosophical Questions: Peace
Today's Cooking
Crafts
Friday Five
Nature
Science
Birdfeeding
Follow Friday 9-11-26: Opera
Pawpaw
Today's Adventures
Birdfeeding
Community Thursdays
Poem: "Cutting Butternut"
Water
Books
Today's Cooking
Birdfeeding
Good News

Philosophical Questions: Rights has 31 comments. "Vocabulary: Cobra Chickens" has 21 comments. Poem: "Confidence, Trust, Believing, Strength" has 34 comments. Energy has 30 comments. Food has 31 comments.

There will be a Bonus Fishbowl on Tuesday, September 14. Based on an audience poll, the featured series will be Coracle Shores.

"Save All the Pieces" belongs to The Big One and needs $74 to be complete. Kenneth and Stylet discuss what to do about the mangled hedgerow.

The weather has been hot. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a female cardinal. Cicadas and crickets are singing. Currently blooming: pansies, violas, sweet alyssum, marigolds, lantana, million bells, blue lobelia, petunias, portulaca, nemesia, fan flowers, firecracker plant, pineapple sage, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, garlic chives, purple echinacea, yellow coneflower, frost aster, cosmos, sunflowers, nasturtiums, zinnias, bachelor's button, cup plant, sunchokes, goldenrod. Ripe fruit: tomatoes, peppers.

Current Mood: busy

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drwex

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Page generated Sep. 16th, 2026 12:31 pm

The fight for diverse and conscious voices

Everything starts with a story

Reading

Hard Things

(no subject)

Poem: "Throughout Sky, Sea, and Soil"

four things make a post

The Big Idea: Marissa Lingen

And these strange steps trace us back

Last of the Titans

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

Birdfeeding

Crosswords, India trip planning, bees, ziplining

Useful reference: xkcd Now

Magpie Monday

(no subject)

Climate Change

Aerospace Flowchart

Today in “Places You Might Not Expect to Find Me”

Today's Cooking

Birdfeeding

Fossils

Monday Update 9-14-26

Profile

July 2021

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