Scarlet Morning (Scarlet Morning, volume 1) by ND Stevenson
Feb. 10th, 2026 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
Two orphans escape their dismal island home for adventure in a slowly dying world.
Scarlet Morning (Scarlet Morning, volume 1) by ND Stevenson
Another unused image for Saturn Awards post
Feb. 10th, 2026 08:17 amneonvincent
Chinese Spring Festival, Victoria's Pride: Comparisons
Feb. 10th, 2026 05:46 pmtcpipBecause I enjoy the juxtaposition of such events in my life, a couple of days later I attended the Victoria's Pride street party for the LGBTQI+ communities and allies in Collingwood and Fitzroy with Mel S. It too features singers and dancers and community organisations, commercial groups, arts and crafts, suppliers of cuisines, and many people in their own colourful and elaborate costumes (especially including Mel's fabulous outfit), albeit all of a different nature and pitch. Nevertheless, the similarities did not go unnoticed; when a community has reason to celebrate, certain activities seem universal. For LGBTQI+ communities, there is much to celebrate, not just for the sheer joy of doing so, but also for the political advancements towards legal equality and acceptance by Australian culture at large over the past 30 years.
A comparison between the two had led to thinking of China's own stance on LGBTQI+ communities. A comparison between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China in this regard certainly does come out in favour of the latter, which is considered the most comprehensive in Asia. Within the PRC, there is legalisation, recognition, but neither equality nor explicit protection against discrimination. It's a pretty basic fact of empirical sociology that acceptance of diversity (whether cultural, religious, or sexual orientation) is more common in developed urban communities than elsewhere, which provides at least some understanding of the dynamics. Essentially, the LGBTQI+ communities in the PRC are about thirty years behind the more liberal countries of the Western world. I suspect that gap will decrease province by province over time, but I will reiterate that the RoC is ahead of the PRC on this, and, to get very political, for a socialist system to succeed, it must ultimately offer more freedoms than its counterparts, not less.
I've only myself to blame
Feb. 9th, 2026 10:41 pmjames_davis_nicoll(The preamble is about 6000 words)
What Lures Readers Into Picking Up an Unfamiliar Book?
Feb. 9th, 2026 10:08 amjames_davis_nicoll
What elements do you look for when browsing the shelves?
What Lures Readers Into Picking Up an Unfamiliar Book?
Unused image for Saturn Awards post
Feb. 9th, 2026 09:51 amneonvincent
Movies: Buried on Sunday
Feb. 8th, 2026 08:59 pmdewlineNoting the cast list including Paul Gross, Mary Walsh, Henry Czerny, Louis del Grande, even Harvey Kirck!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buried_on_Sunday
(no subject)
Feb. 8th, 2026 05:53 pmallezhopI was in an accident last Monday. I'm ok, but mild head injury. I got checked out right away, and nothing serious. I am pretty sure I have a mild concussion, just with some of the symptoms, but they are clearing up quickly. So I'm ok with just "contusion" being on the record for now. The accident wasn't my fault, but I am not going through therapy for this. I'm seeing enough progress as the days pass that I'm not worried about it.
Tomorrow after work I'll go to the tow yard to clean out my car, which is almost certainly totaled. I'll try to write more about the accident after that.
I'm pretty sad about my car, but considering how everything has been, I'm grateful.
Video for an abandoned Super Bowl post
Feb. 8th, 2026 12:18 pmneonvincentNine Tomorrows by Isaac Asimov
Feb. 8th, 2026 08:57 amjames_davis_nicoll
An assortment of (mostly) SF from just before Asimov's Sputnik-inspired hiatus from SF.
Nine Tomorrows by Isaac Asimov
(meme)
Feb. 8th, 2026 08:53 amelainegreyH/T [personal profile] https://sparkythegeek.dreamwidth.org/profilesparkythegeek https://sparkythegeek.dreamwidth.org/
1. What did you want to be when you were a kid? Writer, scientist... teacher probably came to mind.
2. What is your proudest accomplishment so far? My inner transformations.
*3. What is your dream job? *To survey and map properties for native and invasive plants, documenting the seasonal change and wild life, and helping the stewards understand the history and natural communities of their place.
4. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? I hope i am thriving with Christine in retirement, involved with local community -- native plant people? spiritual (yoga? Quaker?) community people? -- creating, caring for my body, stewarding home and yarden,
*5. What does it take to make you happy? *Awareness and looking up from my complaints.
(meme)
Feb. 8th, 2026 08:44 amelainegreyH/T [personal profile] https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/profilecmcmck https://cmcmck.dreamwidth.org/ and [personal profile] https://minoanmiss.dreamwidth.org/profileminoanmiss https://minoanmiss.dreamwidth.org/ (hope that works)
1 what's your favorite kitchen appliance? My immersion blender with chopper and processor attachments
2 do you have a collection of anything? North Carolina made pottery. A small mask collection. I have large accumulations of books, plants, seeds but i'm not sure accumulation has the intentionality of collection.
3 what's the best job you've ever had? My current role is very satisfying.
4 what's the worst job you've ever had? It was the manager, not the role, that was miserable.
5 what's your favorite piece of furniture and where did you get it? I do not have a favorite piece. We have Christine's grandfather's quarter sawn oak craftsman desk that is meaningful, and the previous owner made a kitchen island with concave front, a cherrywood top and some other wood for the curved cabinet and drawers. It is a gorgeous piece no matter how many times i catch my hips on the corners which arc out.
6 what's your go-to recipe when you want to make something that requires minimal effort?
Bread and cheese isn't a recipe.... The "minimal effort" is confounding me. Minimal effort for one person is a muchness for another: i think nothing of cutting up fresh veg but it's a barrier for Christine. She makes things that require stirring which -- look if i have to do something to keep it from burning, it's not minimal effort.
7 are you married or do you intend to get married? Married for 35 years this year.
8 do you have kids? do you want them? No. "Want" seems weird to me in this context, although it seems a common enough frame for most people.
9 are you on good terms with your parents? It was very complicated with my mother. With my Dad, for a basic understanding of good terms, yes.
10 do you have siblings? do you hang out with them? My sister is near and we spend time together when we can; my brother is far and we try to make time to video conference.
11 do you vote? YES
12 what's the biggest purchase you've ever made? Our home.
13 what are your hobbies? Currently various yarden activities that are hard to delineate between hobby and maintenance and stewardship.
14 what's a hobby you'd like to get into? I'd like to return to photography, fiber arts (crochet and sewing and fabric dyeing), and visual arts. I wonder if poetry and writing are still interests.
15 do you collect anything? I am not currently collecting pottery as i have boxes that are not on display, and my mother's collection is in a little limbo. The masks and the art we have is not hung. I suppose i am collecting things that would make living comfortable if the power goes out for an extended time and yard, forestry, and gardening tools.
16 how long have you known your oldest friend? Over forty. Not doing math.
17 are you a member of any clubs or associations? The professional group IdPro. The NC Botanical garden and the NC Native plants society.
18 have you ever changed fields in your career or education? Not during education, but i have gone through a number of changes in specialist knowledge.
19 how many wisdom teeth do you have and have you had any removed? I think they are all removed.
20 what's your favorite beverage? Keemun tea.
21 do you have any living grandparents? No, but my paternal grandmother made it to 104.
22 do you have nieces/nephews/godchildren/other kids in your life that aren't yours? Niblings are in my life, more or less. I'd welcome them more in my life.
23 what's the coolest place you've visited? Is this temperature? Or hipness? Because when i was in Ohio last week is was 0°F (-18°C). But only a few places i've been to in Ohio seem cool.
24 what's your most recent degree and has it been useful to you? I have not used my certificate in GIS, but would like to.
25 would you rather own a dishwasher or a laundry machine if you could only have one or the other? Er, dishwasher, but there are not many laundramats where i live now. One five miles away, and if that didn't suit, one fifteen miles away.
26 do you make a list before going to the grocery store or just wing it? List
27 what's your favorite household chore? Erm....
28 what chore do you hate the most? Erm....
29 do you have houseplants and how are you at keeping them alive? I bring plants in for the winter, and this year they are not doing so well.
30 what's your living arrangement? who do you live with, in what kind of building, do you own or rent or other? My spouse and i live in a what i will call a cottage, although it lacks traditional cottage style elements. The weathered cedar siding inspired our front porch rework to have raw cedar log posts and live edge, rough cut slats in the railing, with "stone" facing on the masonry. Inside is cozy, cluttered, and comfortable as opposed to stylish. We "own" it, and will really own it hopefully in less time than the ten years left on the mortgage.
Trophy
Feb. 8th, 2026 12:14 amjames_davis_nicoll
This detached from a car as it passed me. Missed me, hit a snow bank. When I returned from work, it was still there, so I collected it.
Not sure what happened, except the car's bumper also (mostly) detached.
Week in review: Week to 7 February
Feb. 8th, 2026 11:53 ampedanther27th Passenger is a deduction game in which the aim is to identify which of the other passengers on a train are the other players in disguise and eliminate them before they do the same to you. I did well; I achieved the first successful elimination, and arguably the second, although it would be difficult to say definitely who was second since that round was a bloodbath that saw three more players eliminated, leaving only me and one other player standing. The other player turned out to be a step ahead, and got me one round before I would have got him.
. After a bit of a break, I'm making reasonable progress on another jigsaw puzzle, though I'm not getting as big into it as with some others I've tried. This is the first puzzle I've attempted from this manufacturer, and I'm not impressed by the engineering quality of the pieces (they're a fair bit better than the one I had to give up on partway through, but that's a very low bar to clear). I'm also not finding myself engaged by the picture; it's one of the kind with lots of famous fictional characters hidden in it, but I don't recognise all of them and I'm not feeling very enthused about the ones that I do recognise.
. Continuing to make progress with Natural Six; this week I watched the episode "The Last Ride of Calypso Moonrise", which was a lot of fun and in no way like what I had expected from the title.
. I finished my run-through of XCOM 2 on the easier difficulty, and, as generally happens when a run goes well, immediately wanted to start another run.
There's a big sale on Steam for the XCOM games this weekend, because it's the tenth anniversary of the launch of XCOM 2, so I took another look at the "Shen's Last Gift" DLC, which I've wanted to try for ages but put off because it can only be bought as part of a pricey bundle with a bunch of other DLCs that don't interest me. The bundle was down to around ten dollars, which I decided was a reasonable price I'd be willing to pay for just "Shen's Last Gift", so I bought it.
What I hadn't anticipated was that Steam would immediately start downloading and installing all the DLC in the bundle without asking me first, which would have been mildly irritating without the fact that the bundle includes the big update that changes things throughout the game and adds several new fully-voiced characters and weighs nearly as much as the base game itself. It was still downloading when I went to bed.
Other reading in Week 6
Feb. 8th, 2026 10:18 ampedantherJanuary: Title containing "Before" or "After"
Before Dorothy, Hazel Gaynor. A historical novel telling a version of the life of Dorothy Gale's Auntie Em.
It's a straight historical, with no fantasy elements; one of the things it takes from the 1939 movie is the idea that Dorothy's trip to Oz was a dream inspired by things and people encountered in the waking world. Consequently, the cast of characters includes real-world analogues for the Wicked Witch (very similar to the movie's version), the Wizard (signficantly different), Glinda, and so on. Another thing it takes from the movie is that Tornado Day happens in the 1930s, allowing the author to make use of the Dust Bowl and the Depression; I was mostly able to roll with it but did occasionally blink at the inclusion of things that my head considers definitely post-Oz. (There's just something weird about the idea of Dorothy Gale sitting in Kansas reading Anne of Green Gables.)
I'm not sure how it would read as a straight historical for someone who wasn't familiar with The Wizard of Oz and didn't notice the references; I was initially rather distracted going "that's from that bit in the movie" and "that's from the book", and more interested in collecting clues about how the author was planning to deal with Tornado Day than in the characters for their own sake, but I did start getting involved in it once I'd settled to my satisfaction what kind of story to expect. My initial reaction when I realised what the driving question of the climax was going to be was "oh, this again?", but in the event I was sincerely invested in how it would play out.
I do think it could have done with another editing pass specifically to assess which of the references were actually contributing something worth keeping in; not every mention of circus animals need to include "lions and tigers and bears" (four separate times, I counted), and it felt like every red thing was ruby and just about every green thing was "emerald" -- though, having said that, I was struck by a moment near the end when one of the things I would have expected to be emerald was merely "green", which effectively undercut the moment in a way that I would like to think was deliberate.
Miscellaneous
Fiasco by Jason Morningstar. The source-book for a narrative role-playing game/long-form improvisational exercise for creating stories of "powerful ambition and poor impulse control", inspired by films like Fargo and Blood Simple. This was a re-read; I've owned the book for years, since I saw a demonstration game, but have never had any success at rounding up some people to play it with (nor the requisite impressively-large number of dice required).
You Say Potato: The Story of English Accents by Ben & David Crystal. Ben is an actor, David is a linguist, both have a professional interest in accents and how they develop and what they signify. The book includes a section about their work in the Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation project, which is where I first encountered them. I'm about halfway through, and have not yet reached the section promised on the back cover which addresses the vital question: "Has anybody ever actually said 'po-TAH-to'?"
The style is very conversational, and I have a feeling the audio book version would be a lot of fun to listen to.
