Word: Steganography
Sep. 8th, 2025 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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noun
the technique or practice of concealing a secret message or image in a digital file or physical object that is not secret, as when watermarking a digital image or using invisible ink.
examples
1. The art of hiding secrets in plain sight is called steganography—distinct from the more commonly used cryptography, which hides the message itself but not the fact that it is being shared. "AI Could Smuggle Secret Messages in Memes." Scientific American. 1 Sept 2023.
2. This time, some variants use techniques such as steganography, an obfuscation method rarely seen in mobile malware. Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 23 Sep. 2024.
origins
Steganography is a word that was resurrected after being in disuse for almost 150 years! It was put to rest in the early 1800s, labeled an archaic synonym of "cryptography" by dictionary makers, but was brought back to life in the 1980s as a word for a type of digital cryptography. There is nothing cryptic about the word's origin; it is based on the Greek word steganos, meaning "covered" or "reticent."

Peniarth MS 423D is a volume of astrological texts written in Latin. It is a transcript, dated 1591, of Steganographia by Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), which was originally written in the late 1490s. Steganography is the act of writing in a secret code. This version is in the hand of Dr John Dee, Queen Elizabeth I's ‘favourite philosopher’.
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Sep. 8th, 2025 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sigh
... back to working on my list of nominations for Yuletide.
In my time on earth, I said too much, but not nearly, not nearly enough
Sep. 8th, 2025 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
P.S. Stop the presses, Benny Safdie and Dwayne Johnson will be adapting Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music (1976)? They had better get the Surrealism.
Bundle of Holding: Rifts Core MEGA (From 2022) & Bundle of Holding: Rifts Worlds 2
Sep. 8th, 2025 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

The ULTIMATE rules and 17 supplements
Bundle of Holding: Rifts Core MEGA (From 2022)

11 RIFTS World Books from Palladium
Bundle of Holding: Rifts Worlds 2
Birdfeeding
Sep. 8th, 2025 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 9/8/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
Sep. 8th, 2025 01:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

What, aside from the overwhelming weight of evidence, suggests Einstein was right?
Five Books That Just Said To Hell With the Speed-of-Light Barrier
Clarke Award Finalists 2013
Sep. 8th, 2025 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Which 2013 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
1 (14.3%)
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
5 (71.4%)
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
1 (14.3%)
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod
0 (0.0%)
Nod by Adrian Barnes
1 (14.3%)
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
0 (0.0%)
✓ for read, * for intend to read, ! for never heard of it. Or whatever amuses you.
Which 2013 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson ✓
Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway ✓
Intrusion by Ken MacLeod
Nod by Adrian Barnes
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
What I Bought 9/2/2025 - Part 3
Sep. 8th, 2025 06:30 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
The food truck selling the Cuban sandwiches still has not been at the big Friday food truck thing since the first time I went. I missed my chance. On the other hand, I did have some jerk chicken tacos last Friday. The spiciness kicked my ass.
Wrapping up the books from August with the last issue of one mini-series, and the return of another after an absence of several months.
Dust to Dust #6, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (wirter), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - The jackrabbits all being very careful not to make eye contact with the person in the gas mask.Sarah the photographer is still asking questions about the alleged child killer the sheriff let escape, while also trying to better understand the sheriff. The sheriff, back on his feet after the moonshine brothers beat his ass, has sworn off the demon drink and sets out to fix a break in the phone lines that he says the mayor didn't seem too concerned about finding and repairing.
But the mayor's found the rough drafts of Sarah's article, and doesn't approve of how his town is being portrayed. So he shreds her notes and boots her from the hotel. In general, the mayor appears to be grow aggressive and unhinged. The sight of a photo of his wife makes him hit his daughter (who is starting to figure out her baseball-playing fiance is a loser), and he's lost all patience with the alleged "rainmaker", who has produced bupkis so far.
And run through all this is the jackrabbit drive. Essentially, the locals feel there are so many rabbits they're like a plague. So they run them all into a big chicken-wire cage, and beat them to death with sticks. Based on what the sheriff tells Roscoe, they don't even use them for meat, they just kill them so they don't eat whatever pitiful amount of crops grow. The parents even encourage the kids to grab a stick and join in, but one boy, Roger, would rather read a book or help the rabbits escape.
Jones spends quite a few pages in this issue on that whole deal, but it's entirely ignored by any of the main cast. The sheriff is playing repairman, the ballplayer is fooling around with the preacher's daughter, the mayor's having his breakdown over the bleak financial situation, Sarah's not interested in taking pictures of that bit of local color. Because it's a waste of time. It doesn't solve any of the problems facing the town; it's just an opportunity for these people who feel beaten down by the world to take out their frustration on something that can't fight back, then go have themselves some booze to cool the thirst they worked up in a pointless effort.Past Time #5, by Joe Harris (writer), Russell Olson (artist), Carlos M. Mangual (letterer) - There's always gotta be one class clown in the team photo.
Henry murdering that scout last issue brings the story back to where the mini-series began. Because the scout's sportswriter buddy, Jack, was a day late showing up, but spent the next several decades tracking Henry as he jumped from one bush league to another, under vaguely similar names, sometimes with an excuse for the affliction that made him need to stay out of the sun.
Eventually Henry had enough of being hounded, and has sufficient power to put everyone else in the stadium into a stupor while he smacked line drives at the writer's head. Terry ends up caught, hanging from the ceiling and bleeding into a bucket, but Henry lets him live. No thanks to Ronny, who is still hanging around with Henry for some reason, but doesn't care what he does to this guy.
Olson sets the scene in two columns of panels, one red and one blue on each row. The red are focused on Henry, on his anger or maybe just on his wants. He wants a story written about him (but only the story he wants told.) He doesn't want to hear about the war. The blue are focused more on Jack or Ronny. Jack bringing up Henry's war record like that matters at this point, Ronny just bored with the whole thing.
But they let Jack live and now it's 1988. Henry might just get to play in the major leagues, and Jack abide that thought, or whatever Henry is getting to play in the majors. But he's too late. Henry gets his at-bat, and Jack Terry gets hit by a car because he stopped in the middle of the street, too aghast at Henry getting his dream.
The book ends in the "present day" where, despite what Henry told Ronny that night in Chicago "one last time", he's still playing baseball. In Mexico, wearing a luchador mask and calling himself "Hector Hermanos." So Henry's selfish to the end, or maybe he just loves playing baseball too much to stop. And being an immortal creature of the night means he never has to stop. Ronny's still with him, I guess the effect of Henry siring him. In an earlier issue, Henry staked someone he bit that was still trying to find him to be with him.Or maybe for all Ronnie's talk about dying in a church, and being angry about what Henry took from him, he doesn't want his life to end, either. Continuing on, for the love of the game.
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Sep. 8th, 2025 04:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Howdy! I’m Yoon, an MFA student in media composition and orchestration. I am here today to talk to you about sampled orchestral mockups in composing music.... It’s a niche field even in (media) composition due to the cost + tech barriers to entry. I thought folks might be curious (and maybe interested in trying their hand at a lower-cost version of it).
To the extent that I have musical training (mostly Obligatory Asian-American Piano Lessons by volume), it’s classically inflected. Even folks who hate classical music :) probably know it exists. A more “traditional”/conservatory approach to writing for (symphony) orchestra might involve pen-and-paper composing to generate sheet music. This is my background and I still do a lot of sketching on staff paper.
This inherently means you’re reading (Western classical) music notation (of which more anon) and often means you’re wrassling explicitly with music theory and related topics.
However! These day, hiring a session orchestra is semi-doable by a dedicated individual if you have the money lying around. ( Read more... )
So most mortals who are doing orchesstral or hybrid orchestral scores for film or TV and especially non-AAA video games are using sampled orchestra mockups.
Note: unless otherwise specified, if I say “music notation” or “music theory” I’m referencing more or less common practice Western (European-derived)-style music notation simply in the interests of avoiding unwieldiness in this overview. ( some further observations )
Hiring a session orchestra may be surprisingly semi-doable by a normal human but most work in orchestral media composition (film, TV, video game scores) is now done in software via sampled orchestral mockup. This includes classical-ish, e.g. John Williams everything or Carlos Rafael Rivera’s score for The Queen’s Gambit, or hybrid orchestra (e.g. Two Steps from Hell) with synth or “modern” instrumentation elements.
A quick and dirty (incomplete) overview of terms you might come across in this space, with simplified explanations. There’s a LOT of jargon, some of which is obscure or confusing even to e.g. classical musicians entering this space! ( Read more... )
This has all been in the way of preliminaries, apologies! This is an extremely technical field so the jargon alone is A Lot.
These days, composers often write (in that workflow) using engraving software. In this context, this means “music typesetting for sheet music,” and for session work specifically there are strict formatting rules to save time (money). The other workflow for computer-based composition + production (i.e. not tracking live instruments, of which more discussion later) involves taking everything into the DAW and producing realistic-sounding mockups in software. I will (in future posts) run through DAW examples of this (hopefully with video + audio capture so you can see the workflow).
Happy to answer any questions; it’s almost impossible even to gesture at a bunch of the music or tech stuff in a small space, and I have almost certainly missed some useful jargon because it's UNENDING. :p
Hugo Homework (from four months ago)
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher, narrated by Eliza Foss & Jennifer Pickens ( Read more... )

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky ( Read more... )
The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed ( Read more... )

Girl Genius for Monday, September 08, 2025
Sep. 8th, 2025 04:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
sanguine
Sep. 8th, 2025 01:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 8, 2025 is:
sanguine \SANG-gwin\ adjective
Sanguine is a formal word that today almost always describes someone who is confident and hopeful, or something that shows confidence and hopefulness. Sanguine can also describe something that is bloodred in color, something involving or relating to bloodshed, or a person’s reddish complexion.
// The young group of entrepreneurs is sanguine about the future of their business.
Examples:
“[David] Corenswet is remarkably sanguine about a film that has been the subject of immense scrutiny. The trailer is the most watched in the history of either DC or Warner Bros. Though he may not want the burden of Superman’s success or failure on his, yes, broad shoulders, it will land there anyway.” — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 1 Apr. 2025
Did you know?
If you’re the sort of cheery, confident soul who always looks on the bright side no matter what happens, you may be described as sanguine. Sanguine traces back to the Latin noun sanguis, meaning “blood,” and over the centuries the word has had meanings ranging from “bloodthirsty” to “bloodred,” among other things in that (ahem) vein, so how did it also come to mean “hopeful”? During the Middle Ages, health and temperament were believed to be governed by the balance of different liquids, or humors, in one’s body: phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood. Those lucky people who were governed by blood were strong, confident, and even had a healthy reddish glow (all that blood, you know)—they were, in a word, sanguine. In time, the physiological theory behind the humors was displaced by scientific medicine, but the word sanguine is still commonly used to describe those who are cheerfully confident.
engine running hotter than a boiling kettle
Sep. 7th, 2025 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Yesterday, I made garlic & mozzarella milk bread (pics), which turned out quite well even though I forgot the salt due to its weird placement in the recipe (in theory I understand why it is where it is, but in practice it makes no sense to do it that way), but I used salted butter, so I don't think I missed it, and the bread rose just fine.
This afternoon, I finally made this strawberry cheesecake since my cream cheese was well past its use-by date and my heavy cream was getting there! It's still chilling, but when I licked the spatula after pouring the filling into the pie plate, all I really tasted was the five-spice powder. Which I like! But it's not what I would expect given the amount of freeze-dried strawberry powder in it. I guess we'll see how it goes when I cut into it tomorrow. (I also have this issue with nutmeg - even when I try to go easy on it in something, it still is frequently the only thing I taste after using it. I don't know why!)
And then I finally got up and made meatballs with oregano and red wine vinegar to have for lunch during the week. This was a method my grandmother used to use, and it is a great way to eat meatballs (or veggies - she also used to make it with zucchini, and I imagine you could do other types of squash or eggplant this way) - you make and cook the meatballs and set them aside. Then you saute onions in some olive oil (or in the beef fat left if you've fried your meatballs - I do mine in the oven, so I just use oil) and lower the heat and let them caramelize a bit, then you put the meatballs back in, sprinkle about 1/8 cup of dried oregano over them, and then pour in 1/3 - 3/4 cup of red wine vinegar. Be careful as billows of deliciously pungent smoke will rise from your frying pan at that point! Then lower the heat and let it all simmer for 10 or 15 minutes. Good both hot and at room temperature! (I haven't made it with zucchini myself, but for that, you slice and fry or bake your zucchini, and then continue on with the onions/oregano/vinegar as described.)
I have taken the garbage out and started the dishwasher, so now I am prepared for the awfulness of Sunday night. Sigh.
*
Two Prompt Fests
Sep. 7th, 2025 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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All fandoms are welcome. Stories can be Gen, Het, Slash or Femslash. All ratings are accepted.
We have TWO new Creatures this year: RAVEN and GRAVEYARD
I have royally failed at this the last like five years, but I do want to keep trying. It's really my favourite prompt fest.
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Here is the spreadsheet of all requests!
Link.
There are two sheets on it. The first one is a list of all baskets sorted alphabetically by username, and this is where I'll keep track of the number of gifts. The second is every single fandom request posted individually in alphabetical order, for ease of finding. If you spot anything missing or any mistakes, let me know ASAP.
I don't have a basket this year, but hope to maybe write drabbles or something? Possibly?
needle lace WIP
Sep. 7th, 2025 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

I started this a few years ago but life got busy.
(Technical details posted elsewhere to
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Done Since 2025-09-01
Sep. 7th, 2025 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
We then spent the rest of this week working on scratch tracks.
I'm too sleepy to hunt down good links -- not a whole lot anywaay because see above about working. (I'm too old for this. Nevertheless...)
Birdfeeding
Sep. 7th, 2025 01:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 9/7/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.
I picked 6 groundcherries.
EDIT 9/7/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 9/7/25 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 9/7/25 -- I hauled out the hose to water the new picnic table and the septic garden.
EDIT 9/7/25 -- I watered the patio plants, old picnic table, and house yard plants.
EDIT 9/7/25 -- We reeled up the hose.
I watered the telephone pole garden and the savanna seedlings.
Crickets are singing.
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.
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In the town of Pornainen, they've built a 13 meter tall battery of "low-grade" sand that they warm-up to 450 degrees C - that 842 degrees F! - and it can hold that temperatures for weeks if not months, then they can use the hot air from it to heat the town's local heating network!
I think that's a pretty awesome use. They're using excess energy generated by renewable sources - free energy - to heat up the sand, then piping it around town. The former method to warm up the town was a woodchip furnace plant, clearly they're drastically cutting their CO2 footprint with this. And by using low-grade sand, their costs are pretty low.
But let's talk about sand for a minute. Businesses are literally dredging up ocean floors for sand to make more concrete. And you can't recover it from broken-up concrete when buildings are demolished. Now, to use sand to make a thermal battery I think is a worthwhile endeavor. I just wish they'd work out better ways to repurpose and recycle existing demolished concrete.
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/sand-battery-renewable-energy-finland-b2818348.html
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/06/027211/a-very-finnish-thing-huge-sand-battery-starts-storing-wind-energy-in-soapstone
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Sep. 7th, 2025 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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A lot of rain today but surprisingly a good number of birds - House Sparrow, Mourning Dove, Northern Cardinal and Blue Jay.
Sunday Splash Page #391
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:40 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Released in 1985, a 4-issue mini-series about Nightcrawler and Lockheed getting lost in other dimensions because Kitty messed around with the Danger Room after Nightcrawler described a past adventure he had after his teleportation powers got tangled with the Vanisher's and they ended up at the Well of Time.
Nightcrawler initially ends up in a world of sky pirates, which seems like a dream come true until he realizes these aren't nice honorable pirates, but greedy killers. It does present him the opportunity to rescue a scantily-clad princess, but he also runs afoul of a shark-looking wizard, Shagreen, who'd sacrifices young women, and wouldn't mind hacking Nightcrawler up in an attempt to unlock the secrets of teleportation.
Eventually, Dave Cockrum brings in the versions of the X-Men from some fairy tale story Kitty told Illyana, where Kitty's a pirate (sailing seas, not skies), Storm's called "Windrider," and Wolverine's an even shorter-than-usual dwarf-looking thing called "Mean." Shagreen's defeated a second time, and Nightcrawler eventually finds his way back to the X-Mansion.
The series seems to get sillier the further along it goes. Kitty does, in one of her attempts to rescue Kurt, only manage to grab his costume, while he's wooing the princess. At another point, she grabs Shagreen's muscle, "Dark Bamf", who can't explain where he went when he's sent back, only that he just pawn, in game of life. During the climactic battle, Kitty's at least able to open a portal to see what's going on, and be seen. Her attempt to intimidate Shagreen with a "Great and Powerful Oz" routine is entirely ineffective. Before he makes it home, Kurt has a brief run in with Cretaceous Sam, a mammal-hating Tyrannosaur cowboy.
And then there's the Bamfs. Kurt meets two different races of being that bear similarities to him. In the sky pirate world, there's the Boggies. They only reach waist-height on him, wear little but loincloths and ragged boots, and speak in a weird jumble of mashed together words ("turnloose", "nastyface" "fastpoof" for teleporting.) They also have the ability to move into and through mirrors. Boggies don't seem well-regarded, and Kurt's appearance in a town market prompts a panicked frenzy of people wanting to kill the "Boggie."
The Bamfs look more like Kurt, albeit they don't come up to his knees. They speak a bit like they escaped from the Little Rascals or something of a similar era. That's the boy Bamfs anyway; the girls are almost Kurt's size - he describes them as all looking like his kid sister - and are pretty wary of the boys, who are apparently really horny. Though the girls all start drooling over Kurt the moment they see him, so they're just as bad. One actually uses the phrase, "Hubba-hubba."
Actually, the last we saw of the Boggies was them being happy Kurt got zapped away, because it meant the princess was alone. Which, yikes, but also, apparently the defining characteristic of furry, blue teleporters with spiked tails is a high libido.
latest spinning WIP
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

I figure if I'm spinning anyway, I may as well entertain myself by spinning my own silk thread (largely the white on the left, mulberry/bombyx, with a random foray into the darker yellow on the left, eri silk) for needle lace.
(Ignore the red/yellow nonsense on the bobbin, which is sari silk; I was too lazy to reel it off because my bobbin situation is hilariously dire.)
Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction edited by Greenberg, Olander & Pohl
Sep. 7th, 2025 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

An assortment of stories, and commentary on same, drawn from across Galaxy Magazine's life.
Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Joseph D. Olander & Frederik Pohl
Book 46 - David Barber "When the Fat Lady Sings"
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

The subtitle says it all: Opera History as it ought to be taught. (Although it's really about the composers rather than their operas.)
As with his other books, it is a humorously engrossing book. You don't have to be a big opera buff to enjoy this exhilarating and entertaining book. If you feel down, this will definitely perk you up.
Book 45 - Iain Banks "Transition"
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Banks usually splits his novels between contemporary fiction and science fiction, but here he publishes what is obviously a science fiction story under his 'contemporary' nom de plume. I'm unsure of the reasons for this, but it is certainly his most enjoyable novel in quite some time, an improvement on The Steep Approach to Garbadale, which was just The Crow Road reheated.
The story, told from the point of view of several characters, but mainly that of a man called Temudjin Oh, is about an organisation called The Concern, which intervenes in the affairs of alternate realities for supposedly benign reasons. They do this using the talents of 'Transitionaries', people who can flit between realities with the aid of a drug called Septus. With me so far? Good.
But the head of the Concern's central council, Madame d'Ortolan, has her own agenda, and Oh finds himself a hunted man. A renegade called Mrs Mulverhill comes to his aid, and he finds himself caught in a power struggle for control of The Concern. It's an ambitious storyline and thankfully free, for the most part, of Banks's recent penchant for making his characters mouthpieces for his political rhetoric.
Banks is no stranger to mixing genres; his earlier novels, such as Walking on Glass and The Bridge, featured fantasy elements, but here the whole story is fantastical.
However, I do have reservations. The structure is fragmented to say the least, and the start of the book is very confusing. You're not sure what's going on, and it takes perseverance to get a grip on the story. As ever, Banks can tell a good tale, but what I'd really like is for him to return to the form of Espedair Street or The Crow Road - brilliantly told contemporary fiction. However, well worth reading.
Book 44 - Billy Bragg "The Progressive Patriot: A Search For Belonging"
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Billy Bragg is a well-known singer-songwriter and activist, and this is a very personal account of English identity. He examines both the history of dissent in England and his own family history as a way of examining how he came to his own views, and rounds it off with a passionate plea for a proper, modern Bill of Rights in this country as a way of countering the rise of fascist organisations like the BNP (British National Party), who have been particulalry succesful, until recently, in his own East End of London. It's an interesting account of Englishness (rather than what it is to be British, for the Welsh and Scots seem more secure in their own identity), but it is rather uneven in the way it is written. At times, the account becomes too personal, almost autobiographical, with long sections on the rise of Punk music and his part in the music scene of the time. Interesting in itself, but too much detail compared to the more measured historical analysis of English identity.
Perhaps I was expecting more of the latter and not expecting the depth of autobiography; I certainly enjoyed that part more and became restless when the focus switched back to his own family. Probably this should be two books, not one, each one a little more focused.
Book 43 - A. K. Blakemore "The Manningtree Witches"
Sep. 7th, 2025 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Sadly, I could not get into this novel about witchfinder Matthew Hopkins and his investigation of witches in Manningtree during the English Civil War. It was doubtless quite beautifully written, but most of that beauty was expended on place and visuals, rather than on trying to understand the characters. It felt emotionally detached and a little boring. Unfortunately I think I have recently responded this way to several novels by contemporary poets. It is probably a "me problem" not a "them problem," but I have found that several poets approach novel writing in ways that just don't gel with me as a reader.
Sunday Word: Oneiric
Sep. 7th, 2025 12:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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oneiric [oh-nahy-rik]
adjective:
of, relating to, or characteristic of dreams
Examples:
Then there's Jake Messing's selection as Best Artist, whose dense and powerful images seem to peer into the oneiric heart of Healdsburg, that dream state between what we think we know and what we can barely imagine. (Best of Arts and Entertainment 2024, The Healdsburg Tribune, November 2024)
Set to a haunting score by the director's brother Giorgi, this melancholic mystery presents Georgia's open plains and mountain regions in alien, oneiric contexts. (Christian Zilko, NYFF Reveals 2025 Currents Lineup, Including New Films by Tsai Ming-liang and Radu Jude, The Guardian, August 2025)
In 'A Boy Named Isamu,' James Yang imagines an ideal, almost oneiric day in the life of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a young child. (Sergio Ruzzier, Portraits of Three Artists as Young Children, New York Times, November 2021)
More practically, and from a totally different point of view, M Chabaneix, having studied the continuous subconscious, divides it into nocturnal and waking subconsciousness. If the former be a question of sleep or of the moments preceding sleep, it is oneiric or pre-oneiric. (Remy de Gourmont, Decadence, and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas)
I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me. (Will Self, How I Write)
He is at once a stratum of the earth and a streamer in the air, no painted dragon but a figure of real oneiric power. (Seamus Heaney, Beowulf)
As George Orr slipped into another oneiric state, the fabric of reality trembled. His dreams, potent and uncontrolled, reshaped the world with each passing thought, blurring the lines between imagination and actuality. (Ursula K Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven)
Origin:
'of or pertaining to dreams', 1859, from Greek oneiros 'a dream' + -ic. (Online Etymology Dictionary)
The notion of using the Greek noun oneiros (meaning 'dream') to form the English adjective oneiric wasn't dreamed up until the mid-19th century. But back in the late 1500s and early 1600s, linguistic dreamers came up with a few oneiros spin-offs, giving English oneirocriticism, oneirocritical, and oneirocritic (each having to do with dream interpreters or dream interpretation). The surge in oneiros derivatives at that time may have been fueled by the interest then among English-speaking scholars in Oneirocritica, a book about dream interpretation by 2nd-century Greek soothsayer Artemidorus Daldianus. In the 17th century, English speakers also melded Greek oneiros with the combining form -mancy ('divination') to create oneiromancy, meaning 'divination by means of dreams'. (Merriam-Webster)
behest
Sep. 7th, 2025 01:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 7, 2025 is:
behest \bih-HEST\ noun
Behest can refer either to an authoritative order or an urgent prompting.
// The committee met again at the senator’s behest.
// At the behest of her friends, Marcie read the poem aloud.
Examples:
“... Raymond Carver and I were selecting stories for our American Short Story Masterpieces. When Ray and I worked on our selections, we would meet in Manhattan, where I lived, or in Syracuse, New York, where he lived. ... Each morning we’d read and then meet for lunch and talk about what we’d read. After lunch we’d read some more, and at dinner we talked about the afternoon’s reading. Sometimes we’d reread at the other’s behest.” — Tom Jenks, LitHub.com, 2 Aug. 2024
Did you know?
In Return of the Jedi, the villain Darth Vader speaks with an old-timey flair when he asks his boss, the Emperor, for instructions: “What is thy bidding, my master?” If the film’s screenwriters wanted him to sound even more old-timey, however, they could have chosen to have him ask “What is thy behest?” As a word for a command or order, behest predates bidding in English by a couple centuries, dating all the way back—long, long ago, though still in this galaxy—to the 1100s. Its Old English ancestor, the noun behǣs, referred to a promise, a meaning that continued on in Middle English especially in the phrase “the land of behest” but is now obsolete. The “command” sense of behest is still in good use, typically referring to an authoritative order, whether from an emperor or some other high-ranking figure. Behest is now also used with a less forceful meaning; it can refer to an urgent prompting, as in “an anniversary showing of classic films at the behest of the franchise’s fans.”
college perks
Sep. 6th, 2025 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
*remembers doing a bunch of Afghan War reading for Sherlock Holmes fandom last time around*
And there's this all-night garage and the 7-Eleven
Sep. 6th, 2025 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
1. In music still in situ on my computer, I have had the Punters' "Jim Harris" (1997) since 2005 when I believe it to have been one of the fruits of a now-deceased music community on LJ. It is not a variant on Child 243; it was contemporarily written by Peter Leonard of Isle Valen about a local schooner fender-bender in 1934. I discovered last year that it's got a Roud number and I have never gotten over the way its last verse turns from traditionally recounted maritime mini-disaster to Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi:
It's all right when the wheel is going up, but when she turns for to go down
You all might meet with the same sad fate as Jim Harris in Paradise Sound
The folk tradition being what it is, this song is naturally the only thing I know abour its eponymous captain, which is rough.
2. I should not have read this article about the Instagram filter valley of the current rejuvenative craze for deep-plane face-lifts no matter what because one of the reasons I have trouble being read as younger than my age is that I have worked very hard to reach this one, but toward the end of the piece I hit an anonymously quoted surgeon, "When you look at someone else with an elite face-lift . . . all you should be thinking is, How did you age better than me? The goal is you want to look genetically dominant to other people," and at the notion that eugenics should be aspirationally mixed with ageism, I just wanted that surgeon to be operated upon by Dr. Einstein after an all-night open-bar horror marathon. I felt better after dialing up the grainily inimitable footage of Pamela Blair's "Dance: Ten; Looks: Three" (1975).
3. Thanks to listening to Arthur Askey, I became curious about the origins of the musical have-a-banana phrase which diffused decades ago from music hall into general pop culture and apparently the best guess is a Rocky Horror-style audience improvisation that has now endured as a meme for more than a century. Good for it.
I just want to sleep and read books and write about movies. Who's even asking for a small fortune?
Birdfeeding
Sep. 6th, 2025 02:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
EDIT 9/6/25 -- I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 9/6/25 -- I watered the patio plants and the old picnic table plants.
EDIT 9/6/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 9/6/25 -- I did more work around the patio.
EDIT 9/6/25 -- I watered the irises, the telephone pole garden, and a few of the savanna plants.
EDIT 9/6/25 -- I watered the new picnic table garden and the septic garden.
I am done for the night.
I was bored
Sep. 6th, 2025 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Doctor* Shawinigan**
( Read more... )
Saturday Splash Page #193
Sep. 6th, 2025 01:14 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Sand Land was a manga Akira Toriyama wrote and drew in 2000, running a total of 14 chapters, and about 215 pages. Set on a world where humans narrowly avoided wiping themselves out in a war decades ago, only for the great river that provided water to most of the inhabitants to dry up as a great drought took hold. Everyone is stuck buying their water from the king, but Sheriff Rao wants to go looking for the "Phantom Lake." It's a dangerous journey, so he travels to the home of the demons that also live on the planet, and requests help. Ultimately, the Prince of Demons, Beelzebub, and one of his servants, named Thief, agree to go along (Rao offering them a Playstation 6, complete with Dragon Quest 13, helps seal the deal.)
A lot of the story revolves around Rao's past. We gets hint at it when Rao turns out to be a pretty good hand-to-hand fighter, taking on a gang of KISS Army rejects with just a pair of tonfa, or when he knows how to turn on and drive a tank belonging to the King's Army. Toriyama pulls a fast one on us when Rao hangs a pin-up of a well-known actress - named Sexy Terrier - in a tank they've stolen. It seems like Toiyama's usual gag about dirty old men.
It turns out more sad than anything. Rao was a general, who attacked a peaceful race because he was told they were building a doomsday weapon. The resulting explosion killed most of the Picchi people, and also destroyed Rao's home village, killing his wife in the process. His wife was the actress, and with his home destroyed, that magazine pin-up is the best he can do for a photo. The real joke, such as it is, was that the Picchi people were building a machine to make water, something Rao learns from Thief.
Which is a recurring theme in the story. For all they're called demons, even by themselves, Beezlebub and his people aren't all that bad, or even bad, period. Certainly not compared to humans. Beezlebub does rob water shipments, but doesn't take all of it, and even gives some of it to a small child, arguing it's better to wait until the kid gets bigger to beat him up, when it'll be more fun. His examples of "evil" are sleeping in late and not brushing his teeth, whereas Rao acknowledges that he's killed many. In war, but, 'killing is killing.' He was the one fooled by the propaganda of his superiors, and went on a mission he wasn't meant to survive, because he didn't like his bosses and was outspoken about it. Yet he followed orders all the same, and it cost him everything. His wife, his home, the men who followed him, his idealism. It's the demons, who exist outside human society, but could conquer it easily if they chose, who see the truth of things.
Toriyama does add in a few goofier aspects. There's a family of criminals called "The Swimmers" who wear swim trunks, swimming caps and goggles. None of them except the father can actually swim, since there's not been any water around to learn, but they've got history with Rao and Beelzebub both. Thief gets them supplies from a village while dressed as Santa, because that'll provide a cover story if anyone catches him. The Supreme Commander of the King's Army is a miserable, withered old bastard, but he's confined to a floating version of that wheelchair Commander Pike had on Star Trek.
I believe Toriyama was working on a sequel or continuation to Sand Land when he passed away, and there was going to be anime adaptation as well. I don't know what the status is on those at this point, and the series seemed to pretty well resolve itself. The river was restored, Commander Zeu is dead, the King's pressured into giving up half his wealth as food for the people, and the demons are revealed to be great heroes who helped the land.
And with that, throw your hands in the air, because we are finally - finally! - done with the letter "S."
Anthropic AI pays $1.5b to settlement fund in author's litigation case
Sep. 6th, 2025 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
But that was a bit of ex post facto reasoning: they'd already committed the crime of stealing the contents of the books, subsequently buying them after having already incorporated the contents into the datasets doesn't make it all better.
From the article: "In June, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of the books in training models was “exceedingly transformative,” one of the factors courts have used in determining whether the use of protected works without authorization was a legal “fair use.” His decision was the first major decision that weighed the fair use question in generative AI systems.
Yet Alsup also ruled that Anthropic had to face a trial on the question of whether it is liable for downloading millions of pirated books in digital form off the internet, something it had to do in order to train its models for its AI service Claude. The books were obtained from datasets Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
“That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages,” the judge wrote. (emphasis mine)
The piracy issue was a huge one. in court, Anthropic IT staff testified that they used bit torrent software to download vast troves of books at the direction of management. The problem is with bit torrent. Bit torrent uses "seeds". When you download a file, you are downloading small pieces of it from many clients and servers from around the world. And your computer becomes one such piece of this network and starts serving up pieces of the files that you've downloaded to people requesting those files.
As a general rule, companies don't go after people downloading pirated material if they're not downloading it 24/7/365. But they do go after people providing pirated material! And if you use bit torrent software to download pirated material, you're downloading AND uploading material that shouldn't be shared! Eventually they're going to notice you and their attorneys are going to dust off their giant mallets of loving correction.
I've used bit torrent software before. But what I use it for is downloading books that I've bought from Humble Bundle where I've got 20 large PDF books to download, it's the only practical way to do it even when I have a fairly fast fiberoptic internet connection. And I leave my torrent connection open so other people who've bought the bundle can benefit from my PC having those books on it.
I have no idea how many books Anthropic downloaded. It's quite possible that Anthropic has no absolute count as to how many books they downloaded. And that's probably why they agreed to this settlement. They wanted to avoid a damages trial which would dig into exactly how many books they had stolen.
And let's take that one step further. This would have branded them - in court! - as the world's largest piracy case. EVER. That's one thing that they definitely did not want to be branded with. A great big Scarlet P that they would wear forever. Much better to pay $1.5 billion and be rid of it.
Two additional things about this of interest. First, the settlement only covers their misdeeds through August 25. If they are found to have conducted any additional piracy after this date, then all the court processes could get reset and everything starts over again. Second, and this is the most significant part: "Anthropic also has agreed to destroy the datasets used in its models."
I have no idea what this fully means. Since they bought all these books and scanned them, they presumably have an even better dataset on standby once this pirated set is destroyed, so it shouldn't affect them much. Perhaps this is purely a symbolic victory, but it is an important one. We shall see.
https://deadline.com/2025/09/anthropic-ai-lawsuit-settlement-1-5-billion-1236509423/
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/09/05/1941245/anthropic-agrees-to-pay-record-15-billion-to-settle-authors-ai-lawsuit
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Sodium-ion batteries have some great tech advantages over lithium-ion. Most importantly, they don't catch on fire as easily. They don't use lithium, so they're less expensive and don't consume a rare earth mineral. Sodium is much more readily available and cheaper to produce. They also don't use copper, a somewhat rare mineral, and using aluminum instead of copper makes for a much lighter battery.
However, sodium-ion has a lower energy density than lithium-ion, which makes it a bit less desirable than LIon. Whether this disadvantage can be overcome in time, we shall see.
I have no idea if this company's products were targeted for the EV market, or just for industrial use.
https://www.wral.com/story/battery-maker-natron-closes-shop-killing-plans-for-1-000-jobs-in-north-carolina/22144342/
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/09/05/2126200/americas-first-sodium-ion-battery-manufacturer-ceases-operations
Books Received, August 30 — September 5
Sep. 6th, 2025 08:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Five books new to me, at least four of which are fantasy (not sure about the El-Mohtar) and three instalments in series.
Books Received, August 30 — September 5
Books Received, August 30 — September 5
Lies Weeping by Glen Cook (November 2025)
21 (53.8%)
Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (March 2026)
24 (61.5%)
The River and the Star By Gabriela Romero Lacruz (October 2025)
7 (17.9%)
The Bookshop Below by Georgia Summers (November 2025)
15 (38.5%)
The Burning Queen by Aparna Verma (November 2025)
9 (23.1%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
27 (69.2%)
ah, yes, this again
Sep. 6th, 2025 05:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
(I was in her targeting crosshairs but fortunately only in a glancing fashion, unlike people I know whom she harassed in pretty awful ways, in an ongoing pattern of behavior.)
(no subject)
Sep. 6th, 2025 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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The two most protagonist-y protagonists are Saira, the band's lead singer/guitarist, who is at all times extremely punk rock, and Amina, a stressed-out trad-Muslim scientist with terrible stage fright, who really has to work to access her inner punk rock. The cast is rounded out with Ayesha, the angry lesbian drummer; Bisma, who plays the role of maternal peacemaker until she starts to chafe at it; and Momtaz, the band's go-getter manager. The first season focuses mostly on the question of whether Amina can conquer her own inhibitions enough to contribute her excellent guitar skills and huge Disney eyes to the band after Saira press-gangs her into joining them. The second season brings the whole band up against the music industry more generally, and the various ways that the public pressure of moderate fame starts to push each of them into re-examining their self-image and relationships to their music and identity. It's a good show! I liked it very much!
Also, like everyone else in the world, we have recently watched KPop Demon Hunters. Also a very good time featuring banger music tracks -- I'd seen it described as 'a series of really good music videos' and broadly I agree with this assessment -- plus twenty pounds of fun kdrama tropes stuffed into a five-pound bag. Probably would not have felt compelled to write anything about it except for the fact that by an accident of timing, we ended up watching the season finale of Lady Parts the day after we watched KPop Demon Hunters which made for a very funny accidental wine pairing. Both funny and telling to go from ( high-level spoilers for both KPop Demon Hunters and Lady Parts )
mollify
Sep. 6th, 2025 01:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 6, 2025 is:
mollify \MAH-luh-fye\ verb
To mollify someone is to make them less angry. Mollify can also mean "to reduce in intensity."
// The celebrity's statement was intended to mollify critics.
// Time mollified her anger.
Examples:
"The philanthropic move is likely meant to mollify angry residents who are protesting against the celebrity-filled spectacle being held in their historic backyard." — Madeleine Marr, The Miami Herald, 25 June 2025
Did you know?
Mollify is particularly well-suited for referring to the action of soothing emotional distress or anger and softening hard feelings: the word comes from the Latin adjective mollis, meaning "soft." Mollis is also the root of the English adjective emollient, used to describe something (such as a hand lotion) that softens or soothes, and the noun mollusk, which refers to any one of a large group of animals (such as snails and clams) that have a soft body without a backbone and that usually live in a shell.
Birdfeeding
Sep. 5th, 2025 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 9/5/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 9/5/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 9/5/25 -- I watered the old picnic table, new picnic table, telephone pole garden, and a few of the savanna seedlings.
I picked 2 yellow pear tomatoes.
Cicadas and crickets are singing.
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.