Reading

2025.07.13

The Texas way: why the most disaster-prone US state is so allergic to preparing for disasters
It faces hurricanes, heat, drought, rising seas and – as last week showed – deadly floods. But despite the clear need for preventive action, that is not the political mood
Ed Pilkington US chief reporter
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/13/texas-disaster-weather-preparations-us

Some gut microbes can absorb and help expel ‘forever chemicals’ from the body, research shows
Previously, the only way to reduce levels of Pfas was by bloodletting or a drug with unpleasant side effects
Tom Perkins
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/13/pfas-gut-microbes-forever-chemicals

Quality of scientific papers questioned as academics ‘overwhelmed’ by the millions published
Mainstream mockery of AI-generated rat with giant penis in one paper brings problem to public attention
Ian Sample Science editor
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/13/quality-of-scientific-papers-questioned-as-academics-overwhelmed-by-the-millions-published ( Read more... )

Entry tags:

New Voices: The Campbell Award Nominees (New Voices, volume 1) edited by George R R Martin

The first in a series of anthologies that assemble stories by Campbell Award (now the Astounding) finalists.

New Voices: The Campbell Award Nominees (New Voices, volume 1) edited by George R R Martin

Entry tags:

political

meanwhile...

Quoted in the Yale alumni magazine: "You know the world is going crazy when Yale alums are making donations to Harvard!"

(This Yale alum donates to the United Negro College Fund, because they need it more than Yale does.)

Entry tags:

Some things never change...

Two days ago, Twice and Blackpink both had comebacks on the same day: Twice's "This is for" and Blackpink's "뛰어(JUMP)" (links go to the videos, so as not to spam your feed with two embedded videos).

Blackpink's song is a 1-song single, per YG's strategy of keeping Blinks starved for new music from Blackpink, while Twice's song is part of a 14-song album, keeping with JYP's strategy of giving Once as much music as they could possibly want from Twice. I prefer the JYP strategy — at first I was a bigger fan of Blackpink than of Twice, but eventually I got tired of waiting for new songs from Blackpink.

Two interesting things I noticed:

Twice Jeongyeon has had difficulty meeting the ridiculous weight standards imposed on K-pop idols (i.e. still not fat by any measure), so in recent comebacks Twice's stylists have started dressing everyone but Jeongyeon in midriff-baring tops. I don't know if this was done at the company's request or at Jeongyeon's, but they did it again this time.
Blackpink's song actually includes the English lyric "Are you not entertained?"

world according to cat, and more

Tybalt really does seem to find my weekly sorting of pills into pillboxes to be fascinating. Whenever I start it, he'll jump up and start inserting his nose in the business. I've managed to dissuade him before he gets to the point of eating the pills. He also likes knocking pill bottles to the floor. When I'm done, he goes back to wherever he was resting before. We call him my assistant.

B. is struggling with trying to get her new CD player to pair with her older headphones. They're both Bluetooth-enabled, and Bluetooth is supposed to be a universal standard, but apparently not. It's probably something like USB, which may I remind you stands for universal serial bus, but there are now at least four different sizes of USB plugs and ports, and woe if you have the wrong one for where it's supposed to go. So maybe there are different kinds of Bluetooth. They should name the new standard Forkbeard, as he was the next king of Denmark after Bluetooth.

Out on errands and needing lunch, I thought I'd revisit the Thai restaurant in a convenient shopping center. It was OK, never that great, but it'd been a long time since I'd been there. It's gone, replaced by a new Chinese Malatang outlet. This is like the fifth one I've come across in the last couple months of a type of cuisine I'd never heard of before. Malatang is a little bit like Mongolian barbecue in that you take a bowl, fill it with raw ingredients from a buffet, and hand it in for cooking. It's different in the ingredients and the seasoning - typical Malatang is soup, though there are also some dry versions - you pay by the weight, and you can't watch it being cooked. Ingredients are roughly the same between outlets but vary a bit. Some have lots of veggies, some few, some with broccoli, some with bok choy. Some have fish, some don't. Some peel their shrimp, some don't. Meat is always shaved beef and lamb, but there might be pork, might be bbq. There's also plenty of weird stuff, which the westerner tries at their peril. (I did not find cow throat edible.) There are no serving utensils in the containers; you take a pair of tongs with your bowl at the beginning. The quarters are always very clean, which is not always true of Mongolian barbecue. I've been getting kind of used to Malatang and will probably have some more.

Entry tags:

fanfiction,
writing

A question about plotting one of my fics

I've got an idea about the plotting one of my fics, but I'm not sure if the idea I've got right now is the right thing. So. . . if any of you have read my fic "Turning of the Year" — or if you feel like reading it right now — and you'd like to give your input on the future course of the story (at the risk of possibly getting spoiled), send me a message.

Entry tags:

links,
science

Family resemblances are complicated

via

oursin, something I found interesting: We still don't understand family resemblance, and some of what we thought we knew is mistaken, or might be.

This article describes research that used data from almost a million people: every Norwegian student who took a standardized test from 2007-2019.

Quoting the article: "The resemblance of twins cannot be reconciled with any model....The resemblance of adoptees cannot be reconciled with any model."

Adjusting a model to account better for twins makes it a poorer match of adoptive relationships, and vice versa. Any attempt to account for one of these moves the model away adopted siblings makes it fit twins less well, and vice versa.
( cut for length )

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Exeter, UK

Entry tags:

First Class Travel

I left Reno for SFO on Friday afternoon and arrived in London mid-afternoon on Saturday, continuing on to Exeter via London Paddington by train. Travel is always wearing, but this was some of the best travel I've ever had.

( First Class Most of the Way )

This was of course a very long day-plus for me, but fortunately, we don't have to be up early tomorrow. Getting that Polaris upgrade made a big difference, so I'm only tired, not shattered.

Entry tags:

bookses precious

The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow

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.

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

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.)

**************

( Read more... )

Huh

This is probably in no way significant, but it just occurred to me to check to see where WorldCon was the years I was nominated:

2010: Melbourne, Australia
2011: Reno, USA
2019: Dublin, Ireland
2020: Wellington, New Zealand
2024: Glasgow, Scotland

(I was nowhere near the ballot in 2009, Montreal)

At a guess, those are years where vote totals were a bit lower?

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

android,
google

Do you use a Google Pixel 6a phone? Prepare for your battery to get clobbered.

Not long ago, Google released an update that slammed the batteries in the Pixel 4 phone. That phone had batteries from two different makers, and it was found that one of those batteries did not age gracefully, the update greatly reduced its ability to charge to reduce its likelihood of bursting into flames. They also offered various compensation schemes to get the battery replaced or retire and replace the phones, but the hoops they put in place for said compensation were rather onerous.

Well, the circle has come around again and now it's the 6a's turn. But this time, the phone isn't particularly old. This one still has two years of updates available, and the compensation is higher than what was offered to owners of the 4. But it appears that the terms are just as bad, you'll need to make sure the screen is absolutely perfect and that there's nothing else at all wrong with the phone and that you read all the fine print before you try to comply with any of the terms.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/a-mess-of-its-own-making-google-nerfs-second-pixel-phone-battery-this-year/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/07/11/1921242/google-nerfs-second-pixel-phone-battery-this-year

Entry tags:

london

we will be visiting London

Cattitude, Adrian, and I are going to be in London for a week, starting Monday July 14th. This trip is partly so my brother and I can sort out my mother's things, including photos and papers, but we should have some free time to see people and/or do tourist things.

We'd like to get together with people. I realize this is somewhat last-minute as well as vague, since we don't know how much time we'll have available.

I have visited London several times, but that trip to see my mother in April was Adrian's first visit to England; Cattitude was three with me for a week in 2001.

We mask indoors, but it's July, so we're hoping for restaurants with outdoor seating.

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association

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.

2025.07.12

Three freeway closures planned in Twin Cities this weekend
MPR News Staff
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/07/11/twin-cities-freeway-closures-this-weekend

‘Tremendous uncertainty’ for cancer research as US officials target mRNA vaccines
Amid Trump cuts and state-level backlash, experts worry that progress in messenger RNA vaccines could stall
Melody Schreiber
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/12/mrna-vaccine-cancer-research-trump-administration

Engine fuel switches cut off before Air India crash that killed 260, preliminary report finds
Early investigation into accident in Ahmedabad in June also contains details of pilots discussing the switches
Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi, Nadeem Badshah and agencies
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/11/engine-fuel-switches-cut-off-before-air-india-crash-that-killed-260-report-finds

Risotto rice under threat from flamingoes in north-eastern Italy
Farmers are seeking ways to fend off birds who are stirring up soil in flooded paddy fields in Ferrara province
Associated Press
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/12/risotto-rice-paddies-flamingoes-ferrara-italy

‘Sheer luck’: how German backpacker Carolina Wilga was found after 11 nights lost in dense Australian outback
With minimal food and water, the 26-year-old drank from puddles, sheltered in a cave and used the sun for navigation
Tory Shepherd
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/12/carolina-wilga-missing-german-backpacker-found-after-11-nights-dense-australian-outback

Stellan Skarsgård on Ingmar Bergman: ‘The only person I know who cried when Hitler died’
Actor spoke at Karlovy Vary film festival about his experience working with ‘manipulative’ director in the 80s
Adrian Horton
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/11/stellan-skarsgard-ingmar-bergman-hitler

Georgia Republican’s Ponzi scheme defrauded people of $140m, say officials
Brant Frost IV’s First Liberty Building and Loan lied to investors about lending high-interest loans to small firms
Associated Press
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/11/georgia-republican-ponzi-scheme

Meera Sodha’s recipe for no-churn malted ice-cream and peanut cookie sandwiches
Soft, creamy ice-cream – light on fuss and subtly salted with soy – sandwiched between peanut cookies: an all-round winner of a summer dessert
Meera Sodha
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/jul/12/no-churn-malted-ice-cream-recipe-peanut-cookie-sandwiches-meera-sodha

Entry tags:

books received

Books Received, July 5 — July 11

Four books new to me.Two are SF, one is fantasy, one is a mix of both. I don't see anything unambiguously labelled as series works.

Books Received, July 5 — July 11

Poll #33350 Books Received, July 5 — July 11

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Secrets, Spells, and Chocolate by Marisa Churchill (December 2025)
12 (33.3%)

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey (September 2025)
13 (36.1%)

The Forest on the Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride (February 2026)
13 (36.1%)

The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick (February 2026)
16 (44.4%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.8%)

Cats!
29 (80.6%)

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Munich

Entry tags:

munichs

Bears ins Munichs

Wents withs girls tos britishs stores, was goings tos gets girls tos buys fishes ands chips. Bears woulds haves thes fishes, and bears woulds gives chips tos girls. Pouts. wents tos weres was supposes tos bes, buts nos stores. Stills hads lots ofs rides ons trains unders thes grounds.
Bears is tills tireds fromes travles, sooos girls tooks us backs tos apartments.

Current Mood: jubilant

Entry tags:

science fiction,
tv

Murderbot News!

‘Murderbot’ Renewed for Season 2 at Apple TV+

The news comes ahead of the Season 1 finale on July 11. Based on “All Systems Red,” the first novella in Martha Wells’ series “The Murderbot Diaries,” the season stars Alexander Skarsgård as “a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients” that “must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe,” per the official logline ... .