rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija


A historical children's novel by a Ukrainian-Canadian author, based on Ukrainian teenagers and children forced into slavery during WWII. After watching her neighbors and finally her family getting dragged off by the Nazis, Lida, a Christian Ukrainian girl, is kidnapped along with her younger sister. They're immediately separated and Lida is sent to a horrendous work camp. She's skilled at sewing, which keeps her useful and so alive for a while. But then the Nazis need bombs more than uniforms...

This book is an impressive feat of walking the line between being honest and straightforward about how terrible conditions are while not being too overwhelming for children to read. Lida and the other girls endure and try to support each other. Lida gives a Jewish girl her crucifix necklace to help hide her identity, and an older girl advises Lida to lie about her age so she isn't killed immediately for being too young to work. The German seamstress Lida works with (an employee, not a prisoner) is occasionally casually kind to her, but also gets a gift of looted clothing from a probably murdered French woman, and gets Lida to meticulously remove the woman's stitched-in initials and re-sew them with her own. A Hungarian political prisoner, who gets better soup than the Ukrainians, advises Lida to say she's Polish, as that will improve her her food. Later, Lida muses, It seemed that just as there were different soups, there were different ways of being killed, depending on your nationality.

Read more... )

The book is interesting as a depiction of an aspect of WWII that isn't written about much, a compelling read, and a moving story about some people trying to keep hope and caring - and rebellion - alive when others are being as bad as humans can get. It's part of a trio of books involving overlapping characters, but stands completely on its own.

The afterword says that Skrypuch based the book on her interviews with a survivor.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:47 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I have been meaning to sign up for Venmo because I've been encountering more and more times when something that used to be cash only now has a non-cash option but only Venmo or other online payment services. I finally got around to setting up an account yesterday and then today I found myself in an unexpected situation where it was my only option to pay! I got my hair cut this morning and the salon was having issues with their payment software and could put the actual cut itself on the card they have on file for me, but not the tip. The only option for tips other than cash was Venmo. Now, I am a regular at the salon now, so if I hadn't had Venmo set up, I could have just told them I'd tip her double next time and I'm sure it would have been fine, but this was a great opportunity to practice using the app. We've been going to the farmers market a lot lately and most stalls do take credit or ApplePay these days but a few are cash only or Venmo (including the rhubarb seller from this past weekend), so now I have another option there, too.

2. Jasper is such a cutie.

End of an Era

Jun. 2nd, 2025 03:44 pm
sanguinity: woodcut by M.C. Escher, "Snakes" (Default)
[personal profile] sanguinity
Two weeks ago, I bought my first smartphone.

Good-bye flip phone, we had some good times together. )

So. Smartphone. )

Anyway, if there's a killer app or usecase that you want to rec (or disrecommend!), or a thing you wish you'd known earlier, or a setting I should definitely turn off or on (I have an iPhone, if that helps), please feel free to mention it in comments. I'm still very much deciding what I want out of the thing, now that I have one.

(Keanu-as-) Constantine 2!

Jun. 2nd, 2025 01:52 am
firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)
[personal profile] firecat
"Peter Stormare Gives Update on ‘Constantine 2’; Keanu Reeves Reportedly Unhappy with Script" by Meagan Navarro (very similar articles seen on a number of other entertainment news sites).

"'But to do a sequel, the studios want to have, you know, cars flying in the air. They want to have people doing flip-flops and fighting action scenes,' Stormare said."

I think I agree with Keanu. We already have the John Wick franchise. IT IS AWESOME. But we don't need the Keanu-as-Constantine franchise to turn into another John Wick franchise.

I hope they resolve this soon because I am DROOLING at the chance to see Stormare play Lucifer again.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 1st, 2025 10:15 pm
torachan: maru the cat peeking through the blinds and looking grumpy (maru peeking through the blinds)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I made rhubarb custard pie today with the rhubarb we got yesterday from the farmers market. It didn't even use half the rhubarb, so we've got a ton left to make a cake or something as well.

2. Tuxie has been spending more and more time away from our yard. Last weekend he was away for a couple days, then came back for one day, then has been gone the rest of the week. Because he's been spending more time away and often when he's here, not acting as hungry, I'm confident that he's being fed somewhere else and if he did disappear for good, it would be because he's decided to stay at his new home permanently (maybe even to become an indoor cat, which I would love for him), and I wouldn't be worried the way I might have been if he just disappeared without warning. But he was back today and spent the whole day in the yard and got several meals. I hope he continues to spend at least some time here!

Everybody Has a Right to be Happy

Jun. 1st, 2025 06:40 pm
sanguinity: woodcut by M.C. Escher, "Snakes" (Default)
[personal profile] sanguinity
Just got back from seeing Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, which is being put on by Fuse Theatre Ensemble, a queer theater group here in Portland.

I have no idea what Sondheim et al. originally conceived of the role of the Proprietor to be, but I can confidently say that the role was clearly meant to be played by a drag queen cosplaying America (Quesa D'Mondays). Larger than life in a sequin stars-and-stripes bustier, handing out guns, hugging people to her bosom, and whispering in their ears about Fame and Glory and the American Dream. Choices were made, and they were inspired.

I also had to laugh (never having seen the play before), that here we have yet another instance of Sondheim writing a beautiful love song that, in context, is one of the most fucked-up things you've ever heard.

Anyway, I enjoyed the production thoroughly. A couple of the voices had trouble competing with the orchestra, but not so much that I didn't enjoy the music, and there were supertitles for the lyrics/text, which was nice for catching all of Sondheim's wordplay. It runs for another two weeks, if anyone else is in town and might enjoy a fucked-up gremlin of a show about presidential assassinations (and doesn't mind prop guns too much).

2025 Disneyland Trip #37 (5/31/25)

Jun. 1st, 2025 03:23 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
We went down later last night with the intent of seeing the Paint the Night parade. When the Electrical Parade was running, we had some good luck with getting seats for the second showing, since it was so late, so that was my hope for this trip, too.

Paint the Night! )

In which there are mice and mien

Jun. 1st, 2025 01:45 pm
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- I accidentally googled kintsugi mouse and found the worst taxidermy shop I've had the misfortune to be tempted to click on.

- Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles is still the best possible title for a book about the Bloomsbury Group, although What Narcissism Means to Me remains my favourite title in any category.

- Devastating book review written in black ballpoint pen inside the front cover of a novel I saw in a charity shop: "I couldn't be bothered finishing this". Also stamped on the same page: "DISCARDED Telford & Wrekin Libraries".

- Nature is odd, but pretty: shell lerps.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 1st, 2025 01:10 am
torachan: onoda sakamichi from yowamushi pedal with a huge smile (onoda smile)
[personal profile] torachan
1. They had rhubarb this morning at the farmers market! It's so rare to see here so it was such a pleasant surprise. Going to make a rhubarb custard pie tomorrow and then freeze the rest to make something else when Carla gets back from visiting her folks (she's leaving next Friday so don't want to make a whole lot of baked goods when it will just be me to eat them up).

2. We did a later Disneyland trip today and saw the Paint the Night parade. It was so cool! This isn't a brand new parade but it's new to me as it only ran for a couple years ten years ago.

3. Ollie!

yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
I've been given permission to share this but this was written for an audience of people working for/affiliated with LIGO, so some of these actions won't apply to e.g. general "normal" US citizens.

I will try to make phone calls Monday, but that depends on my being able to speak audibly over the phone (due to medical issues ongoing for ~nine months affecting my voice). I may be limited to emails and handwritten mailed letters. (Good thing I'm not a singer-songwriter?!)

Dear all,
Answering some questions, here are a few more details about US advocacy for science funding:

Please only send emails or visit Congree people if you are a US citizen or permanent resident (so you are talking to people you can vote for), and if you feel comfortable doing so.

You can find actual numbers for funding from different agencies in different states by selecting a state in this link: https://www.aps.org/initiatives/advocate-amplify/policy/support-federal-science-funding-budget (which provides a template letter too), or using data provided here: https://www.aps.org/initiatives/advocate-amplify/policy/dashboards

We have been collecting companies and institutions where graduate students and postdocs trained in LIGO with NSF funding have gone in here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13yMrZ9HdmjtDTxS7hr7quwGEX-j4Ri0TVjMk0hJmxms/edit?usp=sharing (the diversity of companies is a very effective message for Congress people)

You can find flyers with data about specific issues APS [American Physical Society] advocates for in Congressional Day Visits held in January; these can be used year-long, of course: https://cvd.aps.org/

Nothing beats a face-to-face conversation; meeting with your Senators’ and Representative’s offices is one of the most impactful actions you can take.
[This part is probably addressed to e.g. university faculty and so on rather than regular people.]

(In joke mode, as a Cornell alum, I preferred the less clown show timeline when my jokey aggro rivalry feelings toward Harvard were "catchy well-respected Latin motto Ivy League p*nis envy" rather than rooting for Harvard. Sorry, Harvard folks!)

[adapted from cross-post to Tumblr]
I'm over a year late on CROWNWORLD. My agent and editor are aware. The book is not likely to get done soon despite my being under 10,000 words / 3 chapters from the finish line, because I'm too stressed and exhausted to soldier on.

The parts that I haven't discussed much if at all in public:

- My health cratered a few years ago. I wrote most of STARSTRIKE in all lowercase while seeking ways I could write flat on my back in bed without making the pain worse. I spent a year bedridden, getting 0-4 hours of sleep per night (not a typo); I only left the house for doctor's appointments or to vote.

- This included uncommon bad med reactions like the one that sent me to the ER with internal bleeding. I'm cautious about new-to-me meds for a reason.

- I was making good progress writing early in 2025 but then I had a concussion. I'm mostly recovered but my balance is still not 100%.

- A family member had multiple health crises that could have killed them.

- South Korea's president attempted an insurrection (a common interpretation) by declaring martial law in December 2024. Almost all my family is in South Korea. I couldn't even discuss it publicly because there was a nonzero chance that it would endanger my relatives. (I've been to a literature festival in Seoul under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Sport. They know I exist, and South Korea has a history of dictatorships, censorship, and brutal putdowns of protests.)

- I learned my father had a cerebral hemorrhage that same month. He's in South Korea. I'm in the USA. The unstable political situation in South Korea would have made any attempt to visit him unusually fraught.

- The Trump presidency. Unfortunately, chronic health problems curtail the kinds and amounts of activism I can physically do even before we get to being burned out.

- My husband works at LIGO, which won a Nobel Prize for the detection of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. President Trump's proposed budget would (among many other things) cut funding for one of two LIGO sites, at which point why not defund both. (NSF budget news [science.org] but the link may be paywalled.) You need two gravitational wave observatories to verify a detection (triangulation/noise reduction).

What about other observatories internationally, you ask? There are two: VIRGO (Italy) and KAGRA (Japan). LIGO can detect out to ~150 megaparsecs, VIRGO to ~80 megaparsecs (best case), KAGRA to ~10 megaparsecs (best case). But space is volumetric, so for a comparison you need to cube these numbers.

LIGO's at ~3 million (let's call that 100% as a measuring stick). VIRGO's at ~500,000 (~20%). KAGRA is at ~1,000 (under 1% - worse by a couple orders of magnitude, in fact). These are estimates, but I've estimated conservatively.

Pictorially:
LIGO    **********
VIRGO   **
KAGRA   .


- This is a proposed US budget, not an approved one as of this writing, but if LIGO doesn't get cut, it's because something even more essential than basic research in astronomy/physics is axed (further).

- I am selfishly stressed about the possibility that my husband will lose his job. I'm on his health insurance, and did we mention my health? This has career implications for me as well if I become the primary breadwinner. If we knew for certain one way or the other, we could plan; but the uncertainty is wreaking havoc for pretty much everyone.

- I've had my books challenged and pulled from libraries for "DEI" reasons (Tiger Honor seems to be the usual "problem" due to the nonbinary protagonist; I don't think Phoenix Extravagant sold well enough to attract similar attention).

- A studio optioned Dragon Pearl but was stymied first by the Hollywood strikes (solidarity to the unions!) and then opted not to negotiate for another renewal because when shopping it around, the feedback was that a Korean space opera was too "DEI" to be a good investment in this political environment. (Whatever one's feelings about this, this is absolutely true in a business/economic sense.) So this makes career planning additionally selfishly fraught. Too bad I didn't go all in on het shifter romance? I started writing one! - het shifter romance is my favorite kind - and I loved it but somebody had a book contract to attend to.

- I am sad for the US wrecking ball clown show and I am sad for everyone everywhere who is affected by the US wrecking ball clown show. ("Lying low" politically is a lost cause when one is a semi-public figure.) I am, perhaps controversially, of the opinion that the despot playbook of North Korea and past South Korean dictatorships ought to be assiduously avoided, not enshrined as some asshole US administration's hashtag life goals. But I'm just a science fiction writer, not a politician, so what do I know.

Any impact to me is unimportant in the grand scheme of the world. My job is producing entertainment fiction and it's by definition nonessential. My household will lurch along; I'm not in financial distress. But I am selfishly stressed out of my mind and likely to spend June 2025 writing bad music, badly playing 16-bit videogames, badly designing/coding a visual novel and/or graphic novel only half a dozen friends will ever see. Maybe I will scribble at the het shifter romance without any intention of writing well, but rather stress relief, and continue moseying toward music composition/orchestration. Under better circumstances, this would make a nice mini-vacation; but these are not better circumstances.

My failings as a writer and human being are well known at this point; but if the book isn't delivered in June, that's why. It's not much of an apologia. Y'all stay safe and take care of yourselves and each other out there.

Note: I had planned to just delete this journal as having served its function but here we are.

Daily Happiness

May. 30th, 2025 09:03 pm
torachan: arale from dr slump dressed in a penguin suit and smiling (arale penguin)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Everything went okay with the store reopening today. Still needs some finishing touches but overall looking good.

2. I went in to work really early today to check on that store before they opened for customers, but I also was able to go home early this afternoon so that balanced out nicely.

3. No window ledge is too narrow if you really want to sit there.

Weekly Reading

May. 30th, 2025 08:46 pm
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
Currently Reading
Murder in Masquerade
47%. Sequel to Murder in Postscript. As enjoyable as the first.

Riding the Rails
No progress.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
24%.

Red Hail
27%.

Architectural Follies in America
47%.

Recently Finished
Murder in Postscript
I liked this. Glad there are already two more books in the series.

The Clockwork Ghost
Big twist at the end! I'm looking forward to reading the third and final book in the series.

Cosmoknights vol. 1-2
Volume one of this was a reread as I started volume two only to realize I remembered absolutely nothing about the first one. I expected this to be the conclusion to the series but it looks like there's going to be more. I liked this second volume just as much as the first and am looking forward to the next one.

Boku ga Shinu Dake no Hyaku Monogatari vol. 9-10
I really enjoyed this series. Neat framing story to link together a bunch of stand-alone horror shorts (all of which I enjoyed as well).
rachelmanija: (Books: old)
[personal profile] rachelmanija


In a magical version of the medieval Middle East, a middle-aged single mom, who was once the notorious pirate Amina al-Sirafi, is dragged out of retirement for one final job.

This book is a complete and utter delight from start to finish. It has all the pirate tropes you could possibly want - sea battles! sea monsters! quests for magical objects! loyal crews! tossed overboard! marooned! - and sly twists on others. It's got great characters. It's got hilarious dialogue and character interactions. The world is wonderfully detailed and varied, full of plausible historical details and with a lovely faux-historical feel. There are stories within stories. It's all marvelous.

As a child, I had a book called Muslim Saints and Mystics, which was a translation of parts of the Tazkirat al-Awliyā, a collection of stories about Muslim saints written around 1200. It was funny and magical, and some of the stories-within-stories in Amina al-Sirafi have a similar feel. The novel neatly toes the line between dialogue that feels fairly contemporary and a plausibly historical mindset. Amina is horny as hell, but a serious Muslim who believes in not having sex before marriage; as a result, she's had five husbands. There's a major trans character, in addition to several gay characters; Amina has come across people before who prefer to live as the other sex, and takes it in stride without resorting to Tumblr-esque labels or attitudes.

I loved every moment of this book, and was delighted that though it has a reasonable ending, it is the start of a trilogy. It's the first book I've read by Chakraborty, and I'm excited to read her City of Brass series.

Read more... )

Daily Happiness

May. 29th, 2025 10:06 pm
torachan: my glitch character (glitch)
[personal profile] torachan
1. They're remodeling one of the stores and it's been closed for a couple days and supposed to open tomorrow. This morning it looked like they might not be able to finish everything in time, but it's looking like everything should be okay. Fingers crossed! I'm going in early tomorrow morning to check on things before the store opens.

2. The Japanese bakery at one of our rival supermarket chains had a really tasty pastry that I got every time I had a chance but they had stopped selling it the last time I went there. Instead I got a mini baguette filled with whipped red bean paste butter (not red bean paste and butter separately, but red bean paste whipped into the butter) and it was so good! I stopped by there again today and they still have it, so I got another. That's near the store I have to go to early tomorrow morning, so I might stop in for another...

3. Buying things for the cats is always such a gamble because you never know if they'll like something or not, but this $20ish cardboard cat house from Target that we got several years ago has just been a consistent favorite. Chloe loves it best (those are her teeth marks) but Gemma and Molly also use it occasionally.

jesse_the_k: portable shortwave radio (radio)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

The Met Office’s Shipping Forecast Key announces weather conditions in 31 areas around the UK. For internet users, real-time info is now available for each area via a handy-drop down

But it's the radio broadcast which has soothed me on many an anxious evening. Here’s five hours worth: https://youtu.be/CxHa5KaMBcM

They use a highly structured, compact format limited to 370 words:

  • Time and Date of the active forecast being read
  • List Gale Warnings current around the British Isles
  • General Synopsis
  • Area Forecasts, within each
    • Location
    • Wind direction
    • Wind speed according to Beaufort scale
    • Precipitation
    • Visibility
  • Inshore Waters Forecast

The Beaufort Scale provides vivid descriptions of different wind patterns, as befits a tool standardized before radio or photography. For example,

Wind force 5, also known as "Fresh Breeze," is 29-38 km/h or 19-24 miles per hour or 17-21 knots. You can recognize this force when Small trees in leaf begin to sway; crested wavelets form on inland waters. Moderate waves, many white horses. Probable wave height of 2.0 meters, 2.5 meters max, with a "sea state" of 4.

The newsreaders develop a very soothing rhythm—so consistent that many people have created "better sleeping through weather awareness" content on YouTube.

For radio nerds like me, nothing finer than this 30 minute deep dive: The Shipping Forecast: A Beginner’s Guide

Unlucky

May. 29th, 2025 04:39 pm
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
A hundred years from now, chroma key colors are going to be considered unlucky to wear in a set of professions like newscasting, and nobody is going to quite realize why.

In which I read therefore I am

May. 29th, 2025 01:03 pm
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
- Reading: 58 books to 28 May 2025.

54. Cwen, by Alice Albinia, 2021, 5/5, is a trans-inclusive, anti-racist (anti-misogynoir), women-centred, feminist speculative utopian fiction set on an archipelago of small islands that are part of our contemporary British Isles but where 50% of local power has recently been legislated to women. Written in a very readable style, combining serious critique with the mischievousness of the best feminist fiction. Reminiscent of Ellen Galford (especially Fires of Bride updated and improved), probably intentionally although she doesn't get a namecheck unlike Marija Gimbutas, and the backstory of the islands includes a multicultural feminist separatist commune that fails but plants seeds of ideas and actions which I read as acknowledgement of the positive effects of second wave feminism.

The plot, which is unspoilerable, is that a leading local woman Eva Harcourt-Vane has died under not especially mysterious circumstances, after rowing out into a storm at sea, and bequeathed all her worldly possessions away from her three wealthy and politically influential sons who have demanded a Public Inquiry into the results of their mother's utopian feminism. Past and current events are then presented through the device of witnesses to that Inquiry, especially the dozen women who were most involved in Eva's cabal ( / coven / disciples): what they say in public, their private memories, and responses from other community members. There's a large cast of characters, who can be difficult to keep track of while reading, but many of the asides included from the Public Inquiry scenes appear to be intended as a Greek Chorus effect so the persona speaking isn't individually important and when a character does require closer attention in a scene it's obvious in context so readers don't need to track every utterance of every character for overall reading comprehension and enjoyment. There's also a supernatural element but readers can dismiss that as symbolic if they prefer. It sounds dry but the mix works well.

It's interesting that the situation in this novel is convincingly presented as a feminist utopia / gynotopia provoking massive backlash, but then undercut by the evidence given to the Public Inquiry which shows that what happened is not even equality for women e.g.: 50% representation in local government is under-representation; and the women's club isn't as luxurious and doesn't ban men as extremely as traditional men's clubs in the UK; and the reworking of museum exhibits only adds interpretations and accurately re-sexes the skeleton from a chambered cairn; and one woman working in an otherwise male-dominated field is seen as an unacceptable threat to men's livelihoods; &c.

The tone of this book is realistic encouragement: Utopia is here, and the revolution is always now, because here and now are the only possibilities and we should choose to live as much of the gynotopia in our lives as we can (men too, obv, unless you're one of those losers who finds 50% female a scary number).

I LOVED THIS. 5/5. :D

Quotes and language use )

Daily Happiness

May. 28th, 2025 11:29 pm
torachan: nepeta from homestuck (nepeta)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Finally done with the last of the yearly evaluations today.

2. Carla took some old games and the Wii U to Book Off today and was able to get some cash for them. (She took the PS2 as well, but apparently we were missing a cord, so they wouldn't take it. Will have to look around the house and see if it's here anywhere. If we can't find it, I'll probably just put it out on the curb.)

3. Despite the crowds we had a nice dinner at Disneyland tonight.

4. Molly!

2025 Disneyland Trip #36 (5/28/25)

May. 28th, 2025 10:49 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
We went down after work today and had a very nice dinner but omg the crowds were terrible. It's a Grad Nite, so there were tons of teens, and tomorrow is the last day the lowest level of keyholders can go until the second week of August so they're getting their last visits in.

Read more... )
spiralsheep: Sheep wearing an eyepatch (Default)
[personal profile] spiralsheep
Aurora Australis readalong 6 / 10, An Interview with an Emperor, by Alastair Mackay, post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text of An Interview with an Emperor, by Alastair Mackay:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/An_Interview_with_an_Emperor

Readalong intro and reaction post links:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

Reminder for next week, the poem Erebus by Nemo (Ernest Shackleton):
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Erubus

Links, vocabulary, quotes, and brief commentary )

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