davidgillon | Reading

A little while ago I got Stable cortical body maps before and after amputation via an NIH press release; today it was *Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia in people with chronic disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis...

... which dovetails neatly with the bits I just got out of The Painful Truth (Monty Lyman) about the bidirectional relationship between insomnia and pain, where each worsens the other but insomnia worsens pain more. (It's bedtime, so I'm not going to pick the book back up to get you those onward references just now.) With n = 5232, and their conditions including "cancer, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, and stroke", "CBT-I was associated with significantly improved outcomes" (for insomnia severity, and moderately improved outcomes for sleep efficiency and sleep onset latency).

What'll be next? WHO KNOWS.

sovay

I got up far too early to talk about far too much of my health, but I have been shot in the shoulder and eaten a bagel with chopped liver, which is at least two things the current administration would not care for. I am cleared to travel at the end of the month.

Now that it's been dislodged into the forefront of my consciousness, the phenomenon of Pirates of the Caribbean feels like the one real time in my life I was part of a megafandom and mostly what happened was the rest of the planet suddenly concurred that tall ships and chanteys and sea-change were cool. I saw Dead Man's Chest (2006) with my family because Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) had been such an unexpected swashbuckling delight, but I saw At World's End (2007) at a packed multiplex with friends who had agreed in common with much of the audience to arrive wearing as much pirate regalia as we could muster from our wardrobes, which at that time in my life meant the one rust-colored eighteenth-century shirt and my hair tied back with a black ribbon, the gold rings in my ears being a fortuitously preexisting condition. Especially since I continued not to interact with the supermassive explosion of fic unless it originated with my friendlist, that may be the most clinically fannish thing I have done in my life. I have never looked forward to a sequel in theaters before or since. I got the salt-green seventeenth-century glass onion bottle out of that first summer, as if it had been conjured off the screen into the traditional antique shop window for me to fall in love with its crusted tide. In the dog days of the second, I finished the novella its sand-swirled, barnacle-silted draught was part of the pearl-grit for. In the span of that year, my graduate career had conclusively foundered and left me washing around in the wreckage. It had not occurred to me previously, but in their own flawed and splashier, blockbuster fashion, those two films may have been as much of a lifeline as the sea they evoked. I didn't expect to share it with an entire internet, but I am not sure the experience hurt me any, even if it has never repeated since.

From reading about this message in a bottle, I learned not only about John Craighead George whose mother's books I grew up on, but his twin conservationists of uncles whom I had known nothing about, so all things considered it carried a great deal of information in its transit from Point Barrow to Shapinsay.

Current Music: Gordon Bok, "All My Sailors"

oursin

These days, I will often find myself puzzling over, what was that person's name? connected with some Thing in the past. I was actually struggling to recall the name of the very weird woman who was the landlady of the bedsit I inhabited near Mornington Crescent in the very early 70s, with whom there came about Major Draaaama (it eventually popped into my mind, as these things do, a couple of days later when I was thinking about something else: see also, finding that book one is looking for in the process of looking for something entirely different.)

I am not sure if this is AGE or the fallibility of human memory, and is it actually AGE and the wearing out of the little grey cells, or just having That Much More stored in them, so that they resemble one of those storerooms in museums where no-one has catalogued anything for centuries and curators have gone in and nicked stuff to sell on eBay -

- I think this metaphor is going a bit too far, somehow.

And yet one can recall quite readily, in fact one might even say intrusively, an obscure pop song by a not particularly renowned group.

That is, after reading that Reacher novel, The Hard Way, the other week, I found myself being earwormed by The Hard Way, a single put out by The Nashville Teens (who were from Surrey) in 1966 which got to all of 45 in the charts. It's not on iTunes even or in any of the compilation CDs, it's obscure. And yet I remembered it and who it was by.

Maybe it was being repetitively played on one of the pirate stations of my youth?

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

madgastronomer

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

cosmolinguist

A quiet day. I didn't sleep so I didn't feel very ambitious this morning. D had to work so I was happy to keep quiet and admire him at the kitchen table with his computer glasses and his headset on. At home he works in his own little room with his back to the door so it was kinda fun to just see him at work. Once he did the finger-snap/finger-guns thing that I recognize as meaning he's managed to do something satisfying on the computer; that was nice to see.

This afternoon V and I went for a little walk around: to An Lanntair ("The Lighthouse," an arts centre) where we bought fridge magnets and socks and admired sculptures wrapped in the distinctive red stripey foil from Tunnocks teacakes, how Scottish can you get. Then on to the sporting goods store, where I bought a t-shirt with a cute line drawing of blackhouses on it; it says "Western Isles." We admired them in the window the other day when the store was closed. They have one with a black pudding too but that isn't nearly as well-drawn or as appealing to me.

We went to Argos quickly to get a hand pump for the tires on V's new rollator, which turned up not long before we left home so this is its first outing. They're very happy with it as the bog-standard one they had before wasn't suited to their needs and caused almost as much pain to use as it alleviated. But one of the things that makes this one better is that it has pneumatic tires, rather than hard rubber ones; they'll absorb some of the shock rather than transferring it directly to poor V's arms. But we hadn't had a chance to pump up the tires before we left and V thought one of them needed it, hence the cheap pump. At home we have an automatic thing that we can use to pump up car and bike tires but we didn't bring it. Once we had the pump, V sat down on a bench outside Argos and I attempted to inflate the tires. They were all in pitiful condition and I marveled that the thing had been as useful for V as it has been. I ended up having to crawl around and just sit on the cool paving slabs to connect the pump, ha. Right there on the high street, I bet we'll be the talk of the town. I know how little it takes to do that in a small town -- I didn't realize quite how small but I just looked it up on Wikipedia and it's under seven thousand people. I feel like I've run into all of them the three times I've been at Tesco since we got here.

We failed to find the temporary location of a store that is run by someone from Minnesota who ended up here, which is the one thing remaining that the others have mentioned really hoping I get to see while I'm here. We have better intel now on exactly where it is, thanks to visiting V's son this evening (and thus I also got to finally meet his tuxedo cat Sam, who I've seen many many photos and videos of). So maybe we can manage that tomorrow, along with a plan to go to the castle. It's our last day here; I'm gonna miss it so much.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3145/

Some lava around the piercing site is normal, but keep an eye out for spreading earthquakes and eruptive activity that might indicate rifting.

https://xkcd.com/3145/

sovay

The status of the yontif this year is that my mother and I made honeycakes, but it is autumn and the head of the year and we are still here, the important thing. A sweet year, a safe. L'shanah tovah, all.

Current Music: Bok, Muir & Trickett, "Changing Times"

umadoshi

It's autumn! Or spring! Happy equinox!

And happy Rosh Hashanah to those celebrating! May the coming year be sweet.

It's not actually in honor of autumn's arrival, but we have a chicken marinating in the fridge for tonight's supper. ( food chat under the cut: very little more about the chicken, a bit about apples, and a bit about breakfast [read: banana bread] prep )

Current Mood: busy

oursin

Though probably African frogs do not say that (the chorus from Aristophanes' The Frogs).

Anyway, this was of considerable interest to me having had to do with archives relating to these here amphibians (in which they were described as 'toads'):

Escapee pregnancy test frogs colonised Wales for 50 years

and also read the ms of a work by A Friend on the history of pregnancy testing in which they played a significant role.

They replaced the rabbit test ('did the rabbit die' - the rabbit had to die, actually, in order to examine its ovaries) as this was a non-lethal test and kept producing yet more frogs.

And there was quite an issue of what to do with the little blighters once chemical testing became the norm - as I recall attempts to dispose of them as pets.

Also

The frog is genetically surprisingly similar to humans, which means that scientists can model human disease in this amphibian and replace the use of higher sentient species.

Do we not feel that this is the beginning of some Golden Age sf/horror work? FROGMAN.

oursin

Happy birthday,

jenett,

matociquala,

nanila and

paulkincaid!

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

cosmolinguist

Sadly V wasn't well enough to go out with us today, but D and I went to see the Calanais standing stones and the broch Dùn Carloway.

Things so old, no one knows why they're like they were. Why use so much timber in a place with so few trees? Why build it so high?

The broch is 2000 years old and the stones were put there 5000 years ago, longer ago than the time since. And no one knows quite why. These things that will seem precious and exotic to the people on the big cruise ships that dock at Stornoway are so ordinary to the locals that V told me about a house they nearly bought when they lived on the island that had some standing stones on the property so one of the things to be aware of is that people might inadvertently wander through your yard.

Once when my parents were visiting, my mom gushed on the train back from Chester (I think, unless it was York) how neat it is that Ing-ga-land has all this hiss-tree until she said something like "We don't have anything like this at home" and I couldn't help but say something about how that was because of the genocide and colonialization. She changed the subject then.

I had to learn about things like Cahokia all by myself, we didn't get that in school!

kaberett

[... sorry about the template, I hit return in the title field and IT POSTED. details to appear shortly. :-p]

Reading. ( Ann Leckie, Monty Lyman, Ronald Melzack & Patrick D. Wall )

Writing. ... I have actually put some more notes into The Document.

So many lost property e-mails. (And at some point I'm going to need to start replying to them, too.)

Watching. On YouTube: True Facts: Bats, The Science Of The Hunt. NSFW. Definitely... An Experience.

Cooking. ... yeah no I managed to make veg spag bol on Friday but otherwise we've mostly just been feeling faintly sorry for ourselves. Okay, no, that's not quite true, I did also achieve baked potato on Wednesday.

Eating. Misc takeaway from The Field (leftover Sunday night curry for dinner on Tuesday; leftover vegetable fried rice + Szechuan tofu for breakfast on same...). I remain mildly resentful that the Wagamama menu still does not contain any of My Favourites.

Growing. The second attempt at pineapple has NEW LEAVES. The second attempt at lemongrass is maybe Going? And other than that I have no idea because I have spectacularly failed to make it to the plot this week.

Observing. BATS. A variety of excellent dahlias and passion flowers on a Trip To Town (post office, pharmacy).

oursin

Last week's bread became really, really, dry, so I made a loaf of Shipton Mill Three Malts and Sunflower Organic Brown Flour: very nice.

Friday night supper: the ersatz Thai fried rice with red bell pepper, chorizo and salsiccon salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 strong white/rye flour, turned out very well.

Today's lunch: lemon sole fillets, which I cooked more or less as for the whole soles here - slightly shorter time and lower oven temperature, also sploshed a little wine in; served with La Ratte potatoes roasted in beef dripping, spinach according to recipe in Dharamjit Singh's Indian Cookery, and warm green bean and fennel salad (I included a little chopped red onion as there was one left over from last week as well as the fennel, and added additional tarragon to the dressing).

umadoshi

Posted elsenet yesterday: Queen's Quality is the only manga I've worked on with a simulpub release (for the last few years of its run), and now I'm down to odds & ends and small corrections that need doing for its final compiled volume. Feels a bit strange, having properly said goodbye months ago when adapting the epilogue.

That's this weekend's work, which I'd hoped to get done sooner than this (due to the Dayjob crunch starting this week, not because I'm running late), but I don't have the translation for my next assignment yet anyway, so I guess it's worked out fine. I do hope I can get this done today, though. (And I wish I'd gotten that translation and could have started adapting it this weekend, given. >.<)

Queen's Quality is one of those series that switched publishers/titles partway through its run (very early, in this case), and there's always something a bit amusing about being like, "I'm working on vol. 25, which is the final volume. I've worked on this story for 27 of its 28 volumes." (Which is to say, in this case, that Queen's Quality was preceded by three volumes of an initial series called QQ Sweeper, and someone else adapted vol. 1 of that one.)

scruloose and I have been getting some household puttering done, which was desperately needed. We're both prone to letting piles of ~stuff~ slowly accumulate, and getting some of that beaten back before work swallows my life for however long is a relief. (Especially since that type of visual clutter is one of the sensory things that starts to bother me far too easily when I'm stressed. It starts to feel like I'm being loomed over.

scruloose also hung up a piece of wall shelving for displaying things in my office! I have no clear idea yet of what will wind up on it, as most small things that go on such a shelf are just sort of stashed around my office in bins or odd places. I'll have to dig through some drawers and see what surfaces.

(I see the usefulness of the "a place for everything, and everything in its place" concept, but am terribly unclear on how that actually works for most people in practice, given how many sorts of objects [that do in fact see use] don't really lend themselves to "this object resides here in the house". We're very much not minimalists, which doesn't help, but...yeah. Like what do you do with, say, a vacuum cleaner if you don't have some closet space that lends itself to being the vacuum's home?)

(A while ago my mother-in-law forwarded a couple of pics she'd come across of our place not long after we'd moved in, when we were unpacked and a bit settled. It's incredible how alien it looked--the original horrible paint colors, some furniture that's been LONG since replaced--but I think the biggest thing is the complete absence of anything cat-related.)

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

oursin

Happy birthday,

italiceyeball!

sovay

I did not post it last night because I was so tired, but

spatch took a proof of life when I was finally home which does indeed look much more like a person than my fluorescently washed out self-portrait of a couple of nights ago and amazingly more so than the traditional tubes-and-wires effigy of earlier in the week. It's peculiar to look back on. Concentrating to talk to doctors during that period worked well enough that I was asked more than once if I had a medical background and had to answer only in the sense of having had a lot of medical to deal with, but otherwise much of what I remember of the first few days involved drifting in and out of weird half-overheard half-sleep acutely punctuated by conversations or procedures. It was amazing to go back to sleep this morning after my medications without having to discuss them extensively with anyone.

fleurdelis41 seasonally sent me some cases of piracy tried at the Old Bailey, of which my favorites are the prosecutor no-show, the punch line of the stolen hats, and the dudes whose defense was having been very drunk at the time.

Current Music: Gordon Bok, "Spell to Bring Lost Creatures Home"

forestofglory

Somehow I always go for long stretches without much to say about media and then finished several things at once, and suddenly its time to post here again.

Dominion and Devotion—Instead of watching any of the dramas I’ve already started I watched this mini drama (24 15 min episodes). I’ve had mixed luck with mini dramas but I enjoyed this one! It’s a crossdressing girl drama with enemies to lovers and political intrigue! The premise is that the FL has been raised from birth to pretend to be a young weak prince, in the hopes of someday escaping the palace. But instead she gets picked to be the puppet emperor.

The “AFAB person was raised as a boy for Reasons” variety of crossdressing girl stories really have a different vibe than the crossdressing girl adventures I grew up with, there’s just less of a sense of agency when the FL didn’t get to choose to crossdress.

Spoilers

I was not expecting the tragic ending thought! I thought it would somehow turn out ok up until the last moment.

Content Notes: Child death, corporal punishment (children and adults), torture (presented as righteous), blood

Wow the Worldep 1-4—Yes, I’m watching yet another Chinese reality show featuring Liu Yuning. This travel show where a group of people visit a bunch of cities near the 40th parallel. It’s pretty charming! I love that there's a little cartoon planet that represents each person. I would prefer a bit more focus on the tourism – tell us more about these places, and describe the food please!

Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China by Stephen R. Bokenkamp—This was a super interesting book about Daoist ideas about the afterlife and how they evolved after contact with Buddhism. I kinda wish I had read this before finalizing my translation of the about Wei Huacun because she’s mentioned in this and there’s a bunch of useful context about early Daoist practice.

Dragon Steel by Laurence Yep—The second book in this series which I’m reading to the kid. Still holds up well, I enjoyed the under sea dragon kingdom which was one of the bits that stuck with me from my first reading. This one does have some fatphobia though, which I didn’t enjoy.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh—I tried so hard with this book! Well maybe that’s not strictly true because at first I wasn’t going to read it because I didn’t really like the one thing by Emily Tesh I had read before (Silver in the Wood) but then I found out more about the premise – a teacher a magical school who actually has to do paperwork, so I decided to give it a go.

I loved the first third of this book with its teaching and risk assessment and a big climatic battle that could be the end of a different book. Saving the world part way through and then having to live with the consequences would make for an interesting book, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here. Instead we introduced a new very annoying character.

I was considering DNFing at that point but I asked some friends if he went away and they said that I could expect less of him, so I kept reading. And there was a lot less of him for a bit, but another thing started frustrating me: the story was providing big clues about something that the main character was not figuring out. I really don’t enjoy that kind of reader character knowledge mismatch! That’s been resolved now but I didn’t feel motivated to keep reading after that.

I really wanted to like this book because teaching at a magical school is a cool concept, and so many of my friends loved it but after the first third I found it pretty frustrating.

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David Gillon

Flat Out

September 2025

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Page Summary

kaberett - [pain] I have definitely inadvertently trained The Algorithm to tell me about relevant papers
sovay - One to sing and one to haul and one to heave me when I fall
oursin - Recherches de Temps Perdu (down the back of the sofa?)
jazzyjj in awesomeers - Just one thing: 23 September 2025
madgastronomer - No covid! Paaaaartyyyy!
cosmolinguist - Steòrnabhagh
xkcd_feed - Piercing
sovay - We're the ones who stand here now, but many others will again
umadoshi - Mostly food-related things for the first day of fall
oursin - Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax!
oursin - (no subject)
jazzyjj in awesomeers - Just one thing: 22 September 2025
cosmolinguist - Stones and structures
kaberett - vital functions
oursin - Culinary
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: work, impending work, and at least a bit of clutter tamed
jazzyjj in awesomeers - Just one thing: 21 September 2025
oursin - (no subject)
sovay - Cormorant to rock, gulls from the storm
forestofglory - Media Round Up: Mixed Feelings

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