Reading

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In which there are 52 times Our Heroine improves her habitat (hopefully), week 26

- Pride: I have GAY Marmite! In the UK, branded goods claiming a tiny percentage of their profits go to charity fundraising aren't uncommon, and Christmas / Easter branded items happen but I don't generally see event themed goods in High Street shops. However, my supermarket delivery this week included rainbow, Elton John, anti-AIDS, rebranded Marmite! Need to know: the Elton John AIDS Foundation is banned in Russia, and the EJAF knows where Lesotho is. It takes me ages to eat my way through a whole jar so I'll have cheering GAY Marmite to increase my happiness every time I open my eye-level kitchen cupboard for a long time. :-)

- Habitat: I sorted out and re-dyed everything old that could be renewed. I love the moment when all my favourites look at their best again.

- Pop: f'Keith Starmer and Lisa Nandy's attempts at government censorship of pop music are going about as well as British government censorship of popular media usually does (see also Lady Chatterley's Lover, Spycatcher, &c). "It’s upsetting that the way this country is going keeps our music relevant!"

- Birb log: 15 June, Jackdaws still flying off with beaks full of food.
16 June, juvenile ? Song Thrush in front garden (these are ringed locally and I hear them sing occasionally but I rarely see them).
25 June, Jackdaws in semi-juvenile plumage and with behaviours such as frequent vocalising and begging for food (including begging each other, lol, which helps establish the wider flock's pecking order). Most of the parents are very unimpressed with being harassed for food at this stage, although they do still voluntarily feed the kids, and adults will cheerfully put the youngsters in their place if the kids are failing to copy adult foraging behaviour or are trying to steal food the adults have found. This morning's flock was about a dozen individuals.

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games

PSA

Disco Elysium is currently 90% off in the Steam summer sale, making it a mere £3.49.

Play Disco Elysium, everybody. Yes, even if you don't play video games.

(It was the first video game I ever played -- apart from having once(?) played Pac Man as a child, many many decades ago -- and it was a perfect choice.)

If you understand the principle of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, have a vague sense that "stats" and "levelling up" are things, and can grasp "click to go to a place/interact with an object," you are sufficiently equipped.

ETA: Okay, I will add in

astrogirl's excellent content warning:

It's definitely not for everybody. I mean, for one thing, it gets pretty much all the trigger warnings for everything. Alcoholism and substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, discussions of sexual assault, gore (not visual, but some of the descriptions are very vivid), you name it. A number of characters are giant racists. (Towards fictional races/ethnicities, mind you, but it's still ugly.) Evil children will hurl homophobic slurs at you. That sort of thing. And whatever your politics, the game will try very hard to make you feel uncomfortable about them.

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Misc Books: Helene Hanff, Lauren Tarshis, Stuart Turton

84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff

A sweet epistolatory memoir consisting of the letters written by a woman in New York City with extremely specific tastes (mostly classic nonfiction) and the English bookseller whose books she buys. Their correspondence continues over 20 years, from the 1940s to the 1960s. It's an enjoyable read but I think it became a ginormous bestseller largely because it hit some kind of cultural zeitgeist when it came out.

I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, by Lauren Tarshis

The graphic novel version! I read this after DNFing the supposedly definitive book on the event, Dark Flood, due to the author making all sorts of unsourced claims while bragging about all the research he did. The point at which I returned the book to Ingram with extreme prejudice was when he claimed that no one had ever written about the flood before him except for children's books where it was depicted as a delightful fairyland where children danced around snacking on candy. WHAT CHILDREN'S BOOKS ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

The heroine of I Survived the Great Molasses Flood is an immigrant from Italy whose family was decimated in a flood over there. A water flood. It's got a nice storyline about the immigrant experience. The molasses flood is not depicted as a delightful fairyland because I suspect no one has ever done that. It also provides the intriguing context that the molasses was not used for sweetening food, but was going to be converted into sugar alcohol to be used, among other things, for making bombs!

My favorite horrifying detail was that when the giant molasses vat started expanding, screws popped out so fast that they acted as shrapnel. I also enjoyed the SPLOOSH! SPLAT! GRRRRMMMMM! sound effects.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

A very unusual murder mystery/historical/fantasy/??? about a guy who wakes up with amnesia in someone else's body. He quickly learns that he is being body-switched every time he falls asleep, into the bodies of assorted people present at a party where Evelyn Hardcastle was murdered. He needs to solve the mystery, or else.

This premise gets even more complicated from then on; it's not just a mystery who killed Evelyn Hardcastle, but why he's being bodyswapped, and who other mysterious people are. It's technically adept and entertaining. Everything does have an explanation, and a fairly interesting and weird one - which makes sense, as it's a weird book.

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In which our heroine travels from 2002 to 1490 by bus, feet, and time machine

It's June and therefore, like unto a salmon swimming wearily upstream to spawn, I must find a cafe according to

flaneurs challenge III.(c). This year I was hoping for 100% less fail! :D

My destination which, unlike in 2023, I had checked was actually open (lmao) was the National Trust "Old Oak" cafe in Greyfriars which is a preserved Tudor £££ brewer's £££ house £££, built 1490, in the middle of Worcester. My starting point was the Royal Voluntary Service hospital shop, built 2002, at Worcester hospital. To the time machine!

First, catch a bus... with a rly big net? Or a public transport network. Hypothetically there are several buses passing (busses kissing?) this stop but in practice the 38 is much more frequent than its rivals. The bus route passed many points I've described in previous June challenges. We also stopped for a funeral procession of a black hearse, complete with coffin and lovely bright yellow flowers, led by a woman funeral director in a formal black skirt and frock coat with a low-crowned top hat and carrying a silver-topped cane.

( Stuff what I saw (with links to some amazing art) )

Greyfriars: it's not grey and there were never any friars, but it was interesting to visit.

Federal Funding Update, the NPR version

Pursuant to yesterday's (locked) post where I discussed federal public health funding:

'Where's our money?' CDC grant funding is moving so slowly layoffs are happening (NPR)

God, that's eerie, to see NPR saying the same thing I was saying.

The grants mentioned in the article are all national in scope, btw: it's everybody who's not getting these grants, not just Texas or North Carolina. These grants aren't flashy or sexy, but they absolutely save lives.

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burning questions

The next Bond?

OK, who should be the next Bond? I’m impressed by the wide range of suggestions here. I especially liked the suggestion for Rege-Jean Page. No one mentioned Joseph Mawle, Edward Bluemel, Harry Lloyd, or Matthew Goode, though. Or Tobias Menzies!

What do you think?

Guardian readers make nominations for the next Bond