dancing_crow | Reading

is when an organization feels the urgent need to say something both in officialese and also everyday talk. I can think of three very relevant examples in NYC:

1. Every time you do your taxes or do almost anything that involves interacting with the state government, you'll have to pick your county, and if you live in Brooklyn or Staten Island that means they list the county with the coterminous borough in parentheses.

2. If you have a kid in school, every year they send you a form reminding you to fill out your Emergency Contact Card, and every year they include the phrase "Blue Card" right afterwards. Because that's what we all call it. Because they're blue.

3. And here's one I haven't thought about much since adolescence, but if a job is apt to hire teens then they will ask for their Employment Certification and then, inevitably, add "Working Papers" right afterwards, again, because that's what everybody calls them.

There must be other examples I'm missing, as well as non-NY examples. I sometimes wonder if it'd be easier for them to just cave to the inevitable and start listing the everyday term first and then list the "real" term afterwards.

moon_custafer

I’ve a job interview for Thursday, might lead to something, you never know.

Andrew’s been feeling a little better lately—we got a referral to a pain clinic a while back and some adjustment of his meds. It seems to be helping, and he’s been getting out for walks pretty frequently, at least till yesterday when the air-quality outside dropped. Apologies to everyone Stateside who’s also had to deal with the wildfire smoke.

I’ve begun volunteering with the local community theatre. We had the first production meeting for Bus Stop, and now I have to put together costumes for two diner waitresses and a seedy college professor. The head of costuming is doing the other five characters. She costumed the last production of the show thirty years ago, and says the gingham skirts she made for the waitresses might still be around somewhere, but I sort of hope we don’t find them, as I think those blue or green uniforms with the white collars would be more period-appropriate.

We watched A Matter of Life and Death (1946) last night—Andrew had never seen it before, and I’d never seen the whole thing all the way through. Andrew commented that it was the most solidly real surrealism he’d ever seen. Thinking of maybe watching Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) later. It’s also got an afterlife setting, as well as a score by Gogol Bordello; Shea Whigham (playing a character based on the lead singer of Gogol Bordello); and Tom Waits. Fanvid here (contains spoilers)

Watched Under the Volcano (1984), still processing it.

conuly

Gosh it's thunderstorming out there!

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sovay

Because I am more familiar with the operas than the film scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and tend to avoid even famous movies with Ronald Reagan in them, it took until tonight for me to hear the main theme for Kings Row (1942), at which point the entire career of John Williams flashed before my eyes. Other parts of the score sound more recognizably, symphonically of their era, but that fanfare is a blast from the future it directly shaped: the standard set by Korngold's tone-poem, leitmotiv-driven approach to film composing, principal photography as the libretto to an opera. I love finding these taproots, even when they were lying around in plain sight.

I don't think that what I feel for the sea is nostalgia, but I am intrigued by this study indicating that generally people do: "Searching for Ithaca: The geography and psychological benefits of nostalgic places" (2025). I am surprised that more people are not apparently bonded to deserts or mountains or woodlands. Holidays by the sea can't explain all of it. I used to spend a lot of my life in trees.

I napped for a couple of hours this afternoon, but my brain could return any time now. The rest of my week is not conducive to doing nothing. The rest of the world is not conducive to losing time.

Current Music: Martha, "1978, Smiling Politely"

conuly

Nonstandard and informal are not synonyms. Dialectal and informal are not synonyms. Regional and informal are not synonyms. You can speak formally even if you're speaking a nonstandard regional dialect.

Everybody needs to stop saying that dialect words are, ipso facto, informal.

Edit: On a different note, omfg this dude.

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sovay

My week seems to have started with catapulting myself on zero sleep to a specialist's appointment starting half an hour from the end of the phone call, so I am eating a bagel with lox and trying not to feel that the earth acquires a new axial tilt every time I turn my head. Paying bills, shockingly, has not improved my mood.

After enjoying both The Big Pick-Up (1955) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1964), I was disappointed by Elleston Trevor's The Burning Shore (U.S. The Pasang Run, 1961), which ironically for its airport setting never really seemed to get its plot off the ground and in any case its ratio of romantic melodrama and ambient racism to actual aviation was not ideal, but I am a little sorry that it was not adapted for film like its fellows, since I would have liked to see the casting for the initially peripheral, ultimately book-stealing role of Tom Thorne, the decorated and disgraced surgeon gone in the Conradian manner to ground in the tropics, because of his unusual fragility: it is de rigueur for his archetype that he should pull himself out of his opium-mired death-spiral for the sake of a passenger flight downed in flames, but he remains an impulsive suicide risk even when his self-respect should conventionally have been restored. He is described as having the face of a hurt clown. He'd have been any character actor's gift.

Mostly I like that Wolf Alice named themselves after the short story by Angela Carter, but the chorus of "The Sofa" (2025) really is attractive right now.

Current Music: The Hives, "Enough Is Enough"

oracne

I’ll be at Readercon 34 this weekend after spending most of the last couple of weeks doing massive re-reads.

If you’ll be there, please feel free to stop and say hello! My schedule is below.

The Works of P. Djèlí Clark
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT
Andrea Hairston [moderator]; Leon Perniciaro; Rob Cameron; Tom Doyle; Victoria Janssen
Our Guest of Honor P. Djèlí Clark rounded out his first decade as a published author with a Nebula and a Locus for his fantasy police procedural novel, The Master of Djinn, and both those awards plus a British Fantasy Award for his monster-hunting novella Ring Shout. His short story “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” is short-listed for the Hugo this year. As a History professor at University of Connecticut, he investigates the pathways leading from West African storyteller/poets (griots, a.k.a. djèlí) to the American abolitionist movement. Help us celebrate the works of our honored guest!

The Purposes of Memorable Insults in Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 5:00 PM EDT
Storm Humbert [moderator]; Anne E.G. Nydam; Charles Allison; Ellen Kushner; Victoria Janssen
Some of the most quotable lines in science fiction and fantasy are zingers. Wit can do a lot to build a character, a world, and a universe, and has the ability to either support or undermine reader expectations. This panel aims to explore and elaborate on the use of wit—and especially takedowns—in literature, exposing how a verbal jab can serve as more than just a punchline.

Moving from Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing
Salon G/H Friday, July 18, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Cecilia Tan; Jedediah Berry; Sarah Smith; Steven Popkes
It’s becoming increasingly common to hear of authors whose self-published work was so successful that they were picked up by a traditional publisher. But what of the authors who have gone the other way, by turning their backs on traditional publishing and going into self-publishing? Panelists will survey the varying reasons for making this transition, how authors have navigated it, and what this might say about the state of publishing overall.

Kaffeeklatsch: Victoria Janssen
Suite 830 Friday, July 18, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT

The Works of Cecilia Tan
Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 12:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Charlie Jane Anders; Laura Antoniou; Cecilia Tan (i)
Our Guest of Honor, Cecilia Tan, has a publication history that spans Asimov’s, Absolute Magnitude, Ms. Magazine, Penthouse, and Best American Erotica, among others. Writer and editor of science fiction and fantasy, especially as they intersect with erotica and romance, she is also the founder of Circlet Press, an independent publisher that specializes in speculative erotica. Her own writing earned a Lifetime Achievement for Erotica in 2014 from Romantic Times magazine. She also contributes to America’s other pastime, baseball, in her role as Publications Director for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Come hear our panel discuss Cecilia’s many talents and accomplishments.

Un-Kafkaesque Bureaucracies
Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT
Victoria Janssen [moderator]; Alexander Jablokov; J.M. Sidorova; Laurence Raphael Brothers; Steven Popkes
In fiction, bureaucracies are generally depicted as evil in its most banal form, yet many of the actual bureaucracies that shape our lives exist to protect us from corporate greed. How can—and should—we tell other stories about bureaucrats and bureaucracies, particularly as the U.S. stands on the precipice of disastrous deregulation? And might fantasies of bureaucracy (such Addison’s The Goblin Emperor and Goddard’s The Hands of the Emperor) be the next cozy subgenre?

The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction
Create / Collaborate Saturday, July 19, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT
Kate Nepveu [moderator]; Claire Houck/Nina Waters; Laura Antoniou; Victoria Janssen
In an article of the same name (https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/endless-appetite-fanfiction), Elizabeth Minkel discussed how “2024 was the year [fanfic] truly broke containment—everyone seemed to want a piece of the fanfiction pie, leaving fic authors themselves besieged on all sides.” Attempts to steal and monetize fanfic proliferated, as did reviews treating living authors as distant and unreachable. What do these trends say about larger changes in attitudes toward stories and creators? How can fans of all kinds nurture supportive connections to authors?

conuly

but it turned out to be a big bag of dog food.

This is... not so great, really.

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marthawells

A really thoughtful essay on Murderbot: ‘Even If They Are My Favourite Human’: Murderbot Just Explained Boundaries

https://countercurrents.org/2025/07/even-if-they-are-my-favourite-human-murderbot-just-explained-boundaries/

“I Don’t Know What I Want”: The Line That Changed Everything

In the final moments of the season, Murderbot says: “I don’t know what I want. But I know I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want or to make decisions for me. Even if they are my favourite human.”

This is not a dramatic declaration. It is confusion wrapped in clarity. A sentence that holds discomfort and self-awareness in equal measure. It reflects a truth often ignored in stories about intelligence and emotion: that it is okay to not know, as long as that unknowing belongs to the self. In a world that constantly demands certainty, this line opens up space for uncertainty without shame.

* And a great interview with Alexander Skarsgård!

https://collider.com/murderbot-finale-alexander-skarsgard/

So, it just wants to start fresh and get away, and figure out who it is and what it wants. It doesn't really know that. I quite enjoyed that Murderbot didn't end up having answers to all the questions or knowing exactly what it wants. It's more messy and complicated than that. But it definitely knows that it needs to find its own path and make its own decisions, to make its own mistakes, and not have the Corporation or anyone tell it who it is or what it wants.

shewhomust

J. invited us to dinner on Friday. She doesn't need a reason to do this, and we didn't need a reason to accept, gladly. Nonetheless, there were two reasons: it was an opportunity to catch up with our old friend C., who was visiting; and she wanted

durham_rambler's help setting up a subscription to ink supplies for her computer.

So while

durham_rambler wrangled the computer (with only partial success) and J. cooked, C. and I chatted: about what she and J. had done over the past few days, and about holidays past and planned, and fmily and old friends - and eventually C. told me about a conversation she had had with someone I didn't know, about the many words for shades of blue. They had competed to find the most obscure word, and C. had won with a name she could not now remember, though she thought it was the name of an artist, and maybe something to do with tiles.

So we dived down that rabbit-hole, and listed all the shades of blue we could think of; we discussed the difference between blue, green and turquoise; I told her about the exhibition of cyanotypes we had seen, and what I had learned there about the colour cyan; we dismissed sky blue and the blue traditional in the robes of the Madonna; I fell asleep that night thinking about periwinkles, and indigo, and Alice blue (favoured by Alice Roosevelt, apparently) and the wine-dark seas (blue being something for which the Greeks apparently did not have a word).

The next day C. messaged to say that she had remembered the name of Jacques Majorelle and the garden he created in Marrakech, painting the walls of the villa in an intense shade of blue ispired by the local use of colour and coloured tiles. This morning I looked it up, and found many extremely pretty pictures. I won't say I had never heard of it, because the Yves Saint-Laurent connection is faintly familiar - but I would not have thought of it in a thousand years!

sovay

I dreamed of taking a transcontinental train with as little difficulty as traveling to D.C., which I am not convinced has been the state of American rail for decades. Otherwise since my sleep has gone principally to hell again, I feel burnt and friable and past my last fingernail of whatever I am supposed to be doing. On the one hand we are a communal species; on the other I would like to feel I had any right to exist beyond what other people require of me.

I am relieved to see that the enraging article I read last night about the deep-sixing of Yiddish at Brandeis has since been amended to a reduced but not eradicated schedule, but it would have been best to leave the program undisturbed to begin with. The golem reference is apropos.

My formative Joan D. Vinge was Psion (1982/2007), which even in its bowdlerized YA version may have been my introductory super-corporatized dystopia, but I had recent occasion to recommend her Heaven Chronicles (1991), which I got off my parents' shelves in high school and whose first novella especially has retained its importance over the years, of holding on to the true things—like one another—even in the face of an apparently guaranteed dead-end future, the immutably cold equations of its chamber space opera which differ not all that much from the hot ones of our planetside reality show. Not Pyrrhically or ironically, it chimed with other stories I had grown up hearing.

Jamaica Run (1953) is an inexplicably lackadaisical film for such sensational components as sunken treasure, inheritance murder, and a deteriorated sugar plantation climactically burning down on Caribbean Gothic schedule, but it did cheer me that it unerringly cast Wendell Corey as my obvious favorite character, the heroine's ne'er-do-well brother whose landed airs don't cover his bar tab and whose intentions toward the ingenue of a newly discovered heir may be self-surprised sincere romance or just hunting his own former fortune, swanning around afternoons in a dressing gown and getting away with most of the screenplay's sarcasm: "What is this, open house for disagreeable people?"

I cannot yet produce photographic evidence, but the robin's eggs in the rhododendron beside the summer kitchen have hatched into open-mouthed nestlings. A dozen infant caterpillars are tunneling busily through the milkweed.

Current Music: The Kooks, "Four Leaf Clover"

marthawells

Here's a gift link for the New York Times interview with Paul and Chris Weitz, who wrote, directed, and produced Murderbot:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/arts/television/murderbot-season-finale-chris-paul-weitz.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V08.exvw.M_qE37ROOT58&smid=url-share

mrissa

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is a bit like if The Book of Ash had a massively repeating time loop and was explicitly anti-fascist, and clocked in at almost exactly 300 pages.

So...not a lot like The Book of Ash actually. Ah well. It does have a scholar/historian, it does have examination of the legends of the past and how they serve the goals of the present. It does have complicated human relationships, and it does have about as much blood as something this full of swords should by rights have.

There's a love story at the heart of this, possibly more than one depending on how you read it, but structurally it is definitely not a romance. It might be the older kind of romance, with knights fighting for their honor, with strange and wondrous events. Time loops certainly qualify, I should think. But the characters have a real tinge to them--they are explicitly not the stained glass icons some of them see from time to time in the text. If I had one complaint it could be my common one with time loops: that it's hard to get the balance right so that repetition and change are harmonized in just the right way. But I'd still recommend the way Harrow is determined to examine how the stories we tell serve ends that may not be our own--and what we can do about that.

conuly

and completion of orientation. They really are taking anybody with a pulse, as judged by the extremely detailed list of instructions for appropriate behavior during orientation. I'd be more insulted, but that's good for me, I really need a job. If they had higher standards they would hire somebody with formal work experience, or at least an associate's degree.

(Don't think I've stopped applying other places, mind you, but I'm really not in a position to be picky, either.)

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shewhomust

I wasn't even sure I would make it to the Gala this year. I wanted to; it's always an important date in my year. But I mistrusted my ability to spend all day on my feet, let alone a day at the mercy of what passes for a heatwave in the north of England. Well, the good news was that despite the announced withdrawal of the 3G on which my phone apparently runs, I could still get through to

durham_rambler. So I set off, with no plan for the day beyond doing my best and withdrawing if I needed to. And it turned out fine: we did a lot of shade-hopping, and all was well.

One of the pleasures of the Big Meeting is - well, the people you meet. Often they are Old Comrades, but this yer the first old friend we ran into was a poet, which was an unexpected pleasure.

We made our way down to the Racecourse. As we followed the path down behind this banner:

this is what I heard from the stage:

Watch on YouTube

It turns out to be Joe Solo's The Last Miner, and the more I listen to it, the more I like the way it engages with the question What is the Miners' Gala for now that the pits are all closed?.

We made our way down to the field, past the astronomy tent (we didn't see anything that looked like this), past StrikeMap (I meant to go back for a better look later, but when I did they were already packing up), and into a large marquee, which I think belonged to the Aged Miners' Homes: it contained nothing but some tables, a generous supply of chairs, and some people who were enjoying the shade. We joined them, with gratitude to our hosts, whoever they were. From here we made contact the our friend in the NASUWT, who arrived to brief us about her family news, and how her union has managed both to appoint and not to appoint Matt Wrack as its new General Secretary. From here, too,

durham_rambler foraged for our lunch (chips with mystery toppings). And from here we set off from home.

We didn't stay for the speeches: we didn't have the stamina to sit in the sun and listen, even to Jeremy Corbyn. We did pause on another well placed bench, from which we could hear the Palestinian Ambassador - not what he was saying, but the music of his speech, and the audience response. Then on to Hotel Indigo (we were aiming for the Methodist church, but they had stopped serving at two), to sit in the shade, drink water and watch the bands going past: and from here, finally, skirting the town along with the crowds of bandmembers carrying their instruments to the bus, and I sat at the foot of Crossgate while

durham_rambler came home and collected the car.

conuly

Well... if you're interested in reading a book about how living in an over-privileged Connecticut town is terrible and nobody should ever do it (especially if that's going to intersect badly with their terrible childhood) then this is a book you'll like. I preferred Dreadful - the realism : magic ratio in this book leaned a little too realistic, also, I just do not believe that the only school choices are a. fancy schools for wealthy overachievers that have massively high standards and high stakes testing b. xenophobic schools with very low standards and c. homeschooling. Even if there are no public school options there still have to be artsy fartsy schools for wealthy people who know that their kids cannot do the pressure cooker thing starting in kindy.

clevermanka

I just found out about this band and I'm sharing the joy everywhere I can

Watch on YouTube

conuly

Adrian Tchaikovsky is amazingly hit-or-miss for me, but this looks like it's coming up "hit". The sapient arthropods are a swarm of bees. If there are any spiders, I haven't met them yet!

marthawells

In Psychopomp, with me, Wole Talabi and Alix E. Harrow:

https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/issue97/interview-with-world-fantasy-finalists-part-one/

And in Scientific American:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/were-light-years-away-from-true-artificial-intelligence-says-murderbot/

marthawells

The new Murderbot short story is up at Reactor Magazine:

Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy

https://reactormag.com/rapport-martha-wells/

Edited by Lee Harris, art by Jaime Jones.

And Murderbot was renewed for a second season!

https://deadline.com/2025/07/murderbot-renewed-season-2-apple-tv-1236453764/

“We’re so grateful for the response that Murderbot has received, and delighted that we’re getting to go back to Martha Wells’ world to work with Alexander, Apple, CBS Studios and the rest of the team,” Chris and Paul Weitz, said in a statement Thursday.

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dancing_crow

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Page Summary

conuly - Something that's always interested me
moon_custafer - Update
conuly - Thunderstorms!
sovay - Unread books on dusty shelves tell a story of their own
conuly - Today's five second mini-rant:
sovay - Went to the doctor, turns out I'm sick
oracne - Readercon 2025
conuly - Hm. I thought we got a big bag of cat food
marthawells - More Murderbot Articles
shewhomust - Talking blues
sovay - Paperback novelette still open and the door is closed
marthawells - Murderbot Interview
mrissa - The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow
conuly - Well, I'm (probably?) hired pending the results of this background check
shewhomust - On the same Saturday in July...
conuly - The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association
clevermanka - Music rec
conuly - Trying to read Dogs of War
marthawells - Two new interviews
marthawells - New Murderbot Short Story

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Barn Pixie

will work to ride

Reading

Something that's always interested me

Update

Thunderstorms!

Unread books on dusty shelves tell a story of their own

Today's five second mini-rant:

Went to the doctor, turns out I'm sick

Readercon 2025

Hm. I thought we got a big bag of cat food

More Murderbot Articles

Talking blues

Paperback novelette still open and the door is closed

Murderbot Interview

The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow

Well, I'm (probably?) hired pending the results of this background check

On the same Saturday in July...

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association

Music rec

Trying to read Dogs of War

Two new interviews

New Murderbot Short Story

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December 2023

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