chickenfeet | Reading

Last week's bread held out pretty well, though got rather dry.

Enough left - though perhaps a bit too much on the dry side - to include in frittata for Friday night supper along with a yellow bell pepper and eggs also getting used up.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe, Marriage's Light Spelt flour, maple syrup, ground ginger: turned out a little on the dense side.

Today's lunch: the Mediterranean roasted vegetable thing: garlic cloves, red onion, fennel, baby courgettes, green bell pepper, red, yellow and orange baby peppers, aubergine; served with couscous - this time I tried M&S, and while the packet instructions are a bit misleading, turned out a lot better than Waitrose.

andrewducker

Triptych (IKEA)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

andrewducker

Triptych (IKEA)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/03/29/and-not-in-a-good-way/

oursin

Happy birthday,

thatyourefuse!

andrewducker

As far as I know Gideon has seen neither anything with Guardians of the Galaxy's Yondu or an Alabama Sheriff, but when we're heading into combat in Zelda he does an amazing impression while yelling his battle cry of "C'mere Boy!"

Edit: Aha! Turns out it's from a school friend!

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2026/03/28/lieder-nachmittag/

conuly

Or several corpuses? (Corpora?)

I’m just getting tired of people claiming that “nobody” says things that I’m certain I’ve recently heard on contemporary lowbrow media. But I just can’t prove it! And I can’t make them prove it either!

Even fansites with searchable scripts would be something.

oursin

Things happen over a long term.

Things that look at the time like a failure or even a disaster may be sowing seeds or releasing spores and having an impact that will go on.

Or even have a counter-intuitive impact at the time: okay, The Well of Loneliness got convicted for obscenity in 1928 but 1000s of women realised they were not alone just from reading the reports in the newspapers, and 1000s of them wrote to Radclyffe Hall.

Just because something does not endure does not endure does not mean it had no influence.

Am currently reading book by a friend which makes quite a thing of long-term impact of small obscure organisations of early C20th I worked on.

Was a piece in Guardian Saturday today which doesn't appear to be yet online which was doing the ever-recurrent WO about 'I see no feminists' and I wonder what they expect them to look like and perhaps they are supposing something flashy and dramatic, which can be appropriate at times. But the work is not necessarily drawing attention to itself.

Further thought: I was a bit irked to see this: Lifeline is both a musical following Alexander Fleming’s discovery of the first antibiotic and a warning about the threat of superbugs in the present day, because the Fleming narrative erases the immense amount of work that Florey, Chain and Heatley had to put in to make pencillin actually viable.

ranunculus

Edit: The first part of this was written Thursday night, it is now Sat Morning.
Tomorrow's project is to clear a trail with Rosemary. In order to get ready the Gator had to be emptied of the detritus left from the clearing and burning around the pond. Two chainsaws were in the back of the Gator Belin and Harvey. Both were empty of gas, dirty and had dull chains. I'm almost out of new chains, only one left; so that meant I had to actually use the chainsaw chain sharpener I bought last year. Right off the bat my 3rd party attachment for it broke. So I re-attached the stock one and went from there. Thank goodness Darren, at the repair shop where I take my equipment, had done a tutorial for a couple of us on how to use an electric sharpener. Also thank goodness I had figured out some stuff and WRITTEN IT DOWN! There are now 4 1/2 sharp chains. I stopped when I broke my grinding wheel by not clamping the chain tight enough before using the wheel. Tore a huge chunk out of the wheel itself. Fortunately they are made to be replaceable and I now have a couple on order. And I have several sharp chains. And I've figured out how to do this thing.
It is still quite warm, and we have had almost no rain since early January. Fortunately there is rain in the forecast starting Monday night. We all hope it will stay in the forecast, and that the storm will be bigger/longer than predicted! We really need the rain and the Sierra Nevada could really use some snow.
Off to fill gas cans and pull more grass.

On our way up the hill to clear trail Rosemary and I found a cow and tiny calf standing at the gate. They were clearly on the wrong side of the gate from the rest of the herd. The cow clearly wanted to go through the gate but was a bit spooky of Chena and the Gator. We left the gate open, called the dog (repeatedly, as Chena obviously thought it was her job to move that cow, but had no idea where) and drove down the hill and around the corner. No cow in sight. After a moment I thought I'd better back up and go close the gate so the herd didn't find it and get out. We backed up and saw the cow, calf in tow, trotting happily through the open gate. Victory! After a quick trip up to see the fawn lilies (almost all finished blooming) we set to work on a terribly tangled mess of half dead manzanita which was liberally laced with poison oak. The manzanita was at least 20 ft tall and so dense it would have been impossible to move forward through it. Three hours later we had 100 ft of old, old road cleared. It looked so nice! Of course I forgot to take a picture. Cody was delighted to hear about our progress as he needs to work on the fence out there and we had just provided a really good access point. Rosemary and I worked for another hour and a half cutting our way down hill to the Grapevine Springs trail. So much poison oak out there!! Still, our work should vastly improve access. I'll take the weed whacker out with the hedge head on it and sheer off the poison oak so it doesn't crowd the trail so much. That will work for a year or two.
Caught one more vole last night. I think that clears the garden area for now.
This afternoon's project is to plant squash, cucumbers and other frost sensitive seed.

nanila

What is a common ear worm that you get?

My children rickroll me pretty regularly, so That Song gets stuck in my head.
How long do they last?

Not very long. My brain is usually too preoccupied with other sources of worry and stress to spend long on an earworm.
What do you do to get rid of them?

I don't know if this will sound contradictory, but on the rare occasions when an earworm sticks, I find that playing the actual song gets rid of it.
What is the worst ear worm you've ever had?

There's this Robyn song that I dislike intensely, and it popped in and out of my head for a week. I don't like the song so was very reluctant to employ my usual remedy.
Do you get some guilty pleasure in passing the ear worm along?

Not unless it's reciprocally rickrolling my children.

twistedchick

This is a prayer for Baba Yaga. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for the magic of chicken feet, the heat of old hates, the way old bones hurt. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for hat knitters, sign-carriers, Congress-callers. Old women make up the Resistance.

This is a prayer for casserole-bakers, newsletter-writers, nuisances. Old women make up the Resistance.

This is a prayer for phone-bankers, neighborhood-canvassers, early-voters. Old women make up the Resistance.

When the Moon is full, I call to Her.

I bring coals for Her oven. I bring flour, to cover Her tracks. I bring paprika salve for Her old, sore joints.

I bring a list of complicit women. I bring a doll poked with pins and bound with vines. I bring a bottle of ancient anger.

“Come, Baba Yaga,” I say. “Come find me alone in the woods.”

She comes as she always comes: after a long, scary wait.

She comes as she always comes: riding a mortar, a mop handle, a big, black bird.

She comes as she always comes: hungry, grumpy, alone.

“Old One,” I cry, “We are deep in the darkness. We stand on the front lines, but we are afraid.”
Old One,” I say, “We are tired, our legs get shaky, our fingers are sore.”

“Old One,” I whisper, “It seems to us as if we have worked all our lives and only gone backwards.”

“Oh, shut up,” Baba Yaga says, grabbing all the cookies and putting them into her bag. “Give me those for my cat,” She demands, pointing to liver mousse, sausages, cheese.

She pulls down the skin below my eyes. “Not enough yogurt,” She decides.

“Oh,” She says, turning her chicken hut around and going way past the speed limit, “You’ll be fine. I saw it in some tea leaves. This all works out in the end.”

“Build you a fence made of bones,” She says. “Write this on your wrist: ‘By my mother’s blessing.’”

This is a prayer to Baba Yaga. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for women in sneakers. This is a prayer for Resistance.

This is a prayer for one more phone call. This is a prayer for Resistance.

-- by Hecate Demeter

* * *

She did not write one for Ostara, but I found this one, from near the same time of the year a few years ago, and I think it's suitable on the eve of NO KINGS.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3225/

We're working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies.

https://xkcd.com/3225/

conuly

( Minor season 5 spoiler )

I actually have a similar thought about the most recent episode I watched of Young Sherlock, ( Read more... )

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oursin

Gosh those people with the archivists' sales team are persistent! I've heard again - okay, different name and email, exact same wordage - TWICE, second time with added 'Worth a chat?'

No, sir, not in the least.

***

This week I got the Authors Licensing and Copyright Society payout, which was an agreeable sum, maybe it would not actually support me in My Old Age, but it is Better Than A Bat In The Eye With A Burnt Stick. Furthermore, as it is itemised - all the tiddly sums that get totted up - it is a Revelation of what works of mine are still being looked at, wow.

***

Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses:

A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed.
The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians.
Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent".
It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error.
....
But academics questioned the findings, pointing out that the results seemed out of step with other data. Results from the long-running British Social Attitudes Survey, and even the Church of England's own figures, show a long term decline in church attendance.
Experts said that YouGov's methodology - gathering data from volunteers who received cash rewards for their time - left it vulnerable to "bogus respondents" skewing the data.

Murmurs about Mammon distorting the data....

***

Pepys ‘curated’ letters to conceal being offered enslaved boy as bribe – research:

Howe wrote to Pepys to “crave your acceptance” of a “small” enslaved boy, which “I brought home on board for your honour … Hoping he is so well seasoned to endure the cold weather as to live in England.”
Pepys wrote back indignantly rejecting the offer. But Edwards argues this was not because of ethical concerns about slavery, but the optics of looking like a man who could be bribed.

***

This is quite resonant with discussion I was having this week apropos of my 1930s feminists and the less visible ways in which the work was happening, so much so that it's been supposed (it was being claimed at the time) that Feminism Woz Ded: The Way of Water: On the Quiet Power of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Activism.

conuly

In a random reddit thread this time.

Truly, people will never, ever stop complaining about the man.

Also on reddit: "This is an old book" but also "snapchat was mentioned". Uh....

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andrewducker

I've seen occasional confusion from people over the last few weeks "Why is it so cold, isn't it Spring now?" - and I thought I should say a bit about one of the major causes that I almost never hear people talk about - the polar vortex.

This is a swirling wind around the Arctic that exists for basically the whole arctic night. One of the things it does is keep the freezing polar winds from coming further south in to Europe. But when it finally collapses in the Spring, it finally allows those winds out, and you get a sudden burst of cold air as all of that freezing weather escapes down to us.

Normally this happens some time in late February, but this year the collapse seems to have been a month later.

The other major factor is largely down to circulating high pressure areas (imagine slow large hurricane shaped wind "objects") that constantly move around the North Atlantic. Put one of these off of the west coast of Ireland, going clockwise, and it will pull air down from the North even further/faster. See this short video I took from the NullSchool site (my favourite wind visualisation site). In it you can see cold winds pouring down from the North Pole, funneled further by the circulation. And if you click on the link there you can see that currently the wind is instead being pulled off of the Altantic, where it's a few degrees colder.

British weather tends to be more chaotic than the weather north or south of us. This is because Spain (for instance) is fairly reliably in the warm weather caused by the heating tropics. And Norway is fairly reliably cold, due to proximity to the North Pole. But Britain can be part of either weather system, as the "barrier" between them is pulled North or South by a few hundred miles depending on the movement of the high pressure areas in the eastern part of the North Atlantic, either funnelling the warm air up to us or channeling the cool air down to us.

You can see that at the moment the warm weather is being slowly blown North-East, now that the cold weather isn't pushing its way down to us:

So, next time we get a period of warm weather at the end of Winter/start of Spring followed by a sudden burst of freezing weather for a few days, that's the polar vortex collapsing. And if we suddenly go from warm weather to cold (or vice versa) it's because we've switched weather system.

If you'd like to read more, then this is quite good.

(And apologies to anyone who actually knows anything about the weather for any appalling mistakes I've made.)