29jan2025

Today I have two omoshiroi (interesting) links and two life hack links:

1. Mount Lyell shrews had never been photographed alive in the wild—not, I gather, because they're particularly elusive or rare, but because their voracious metabolisms meant if you weren't checking your traps of these nocturnal animals constantly, they'd die of starvation. Well, someone decided to forgo the sleep and finally manage this feat, which I think is a pretty cool example of citizen science.
2. The other is using science to examine this magnificent Roman mosaic from Pompeii —I mean, the cords tying on the armour, wow. (I'm not the only person impressed— Jill Bearup made some cosplay armour using this mosaic as one of her references, and wasn't I charmed to see the serendipitous connection;)

And then we have the endless round of how to do household/to-do type $thing which is just clickbait for me, but I rationalize it as allowable distractions because it's not the actively harmful sort, such as making fun of other people's misfortunes or spreading misinformation lies:

1. Tidying in a spiral —this, IIRC, was starting in the perimeter of a room, getting the biggest/most obvious stuff tidied up first, then circling in to smaller tasks—just like laying out a drawing of a live model: start with the big masses (e.g. head/spine/legs, for me) then working towards limbs, then intermediate masses like the rough shape of hands and feet, and finishing up with fine details such as facial features, fingers and toes.
2. Reducing procrastination (a huge one for me—I'm writing this intro, frex, when I should be inputting stuff so's I can turn in my taxes to the accountant in a timely manner). Again, to super-summarize, envision a successful implementation of the task, the consequences of not doing it, then zero in on a bit you can do right now to begin. (There's more in the link, but for me at least, getting started is usually the most difficult aspect of daunting tasks.)

Or you can check out this mixed media I made featuring a tampopo (dandelion) wine bottle sticker.

24jan2025

Way back when, I read the very first Dragonriders of Pern trilogy; and then the YA Harper Hall trilogy—probably in the 70s, as the 7th book, Moreta, didn't come out until the early 80s, and it didn't exist when I started reading these books—these were a huge deal, especially for female fen: McCaffrey explicitly cast them as feminist, and wanting to write sf that starred female protagonists.

Which they mostly do! Books I & II of both trilogies star Lessa and Menolly, respectively, with viewpoints shifting to Jaxom in The White Dragon and Piemur in Dragondrums (Book III again, respectively, of the Dragonriders and Harper Hall trilogies). And, Lessa is abrasive and ambitious, not traits often given to female, especially feminine protagonists in 70s sf. Nevertheless these stories haven't aged especially well, a fact driven home when a) I reread a lot of them [plus newer ones I hadn't seen before] over the summer and b) F2tY and I discussed The White Dragon the other day (and caused me to finally finish this six month old essay & post it:)

F2tY's complaints are pretty much par for the course from modern readers, which I found gratifying, but I thought it might be fun to explore, a bit, what my generation saw in these books (as well the bits, even then, that I didn't like.) Plenty of people have of course cited the rape (and the inappropriate age and power difference between Menolly and the Masterharper, which is specifically what F2tY cited as problematic), but let's just start with regular ole biology, for which I at least haven't seen as much criticism:

Pern was “science fantasy”, ostensibly sf but with the people's spacefaring origins lost in time, their tech having reverted to a feudal system of landowners (holds), dragon enclaves (somewhat similar to monasteries—powerful, rich, and tithed to, but providing protection from the deadly, extraterrestrial and devouring thread, as opposed to, say, god's wrath) and crafthalls. The series starts out with a particularly long interval (400 as opposed to 200 years) since the last time thread crossed over from the red planet to scourge Pern, which it typically does for half a century. In that time, people have come to believe that thread and its threat, has gone forever, and therefore there is no reason to kowtow (or tithe) to the dragonholds.

Leaving aside the difficulties of this setup.... How does the thread achieve escape velocity from its own planet, survive outer space, yet die in water? How, with only a 200 year recovery period, if the stuff was all-devouring and ate every organic/hydrocarbon available, did the trees and other plants, wherries (some sort of bird), and fire lizards manage to survive/recover before the humans came and started their program to protect the ecology against thread?

That is, how did life evolve at all? It takes millions of years, and thread falls every 200 to 400 years! (I suppose the red planet could've had some catastrophic event that changed its orbit after Pernese life evolved, but given the detailed explanation of the ‘lost colonists’ history, what the thread biologically is, etc., from a Doylian [authorial] perspective this should then have been explained. And it never is.)

...Huge dragons flaming thread sounds like a terribly inefficient method for controlling it, especially as the original settlers were pretty sophisticated geneticists; but McCaffrey retconned that problem with grubs that eat thread, but having the descendants misunderstand, and destroy this more effective control, and instead rely on what was supposed to be more of a stopgap. (One reason I consider the grubs likely to be a retcon is that the dragons are supposed to increase in size over many generations, something that wouldn't be necessary if they're a temporary fix;)

Dragons flaming thread makes for great drama and a good story, and despite the issues with biology and planetary astronomy, McCaffrey did a pretty good job at depicting the political strife amongst the various groups, a big part of the series’ success. While the good guys (almost) always carry the day, the villains are crafty enough to give them a run for their money, and what's more, they're reasonably believable villains—old-timers who can't adjust to the way the world has changed in 400 years, exiles ripe for taking their resentment upon the world which hasn't treated them in they way they felt entitled.

But. Despite the lords and bishops, er, weirleaders often playing the villain role, the series fundamentally celebrates a conservative, even regressive feudal worldview. Besides, of course, the annoying habit of male romantic leads being ‘manly’ men who aggressively pursue their sexual agendas (unto rape) the female leads favour the mischievous boys and the pushier men over ‘considerate’ lovers. Ugh. Not to mention sympathetically depicted fathers casually beating their sons to discipline them, another example of toxic masculinity.

The dragon biology, particularly the peculiar sexual dimorphism, is another good example of this: fire lizards (& their dragon descendants) come in 5 colours, descending in size (& increasing in frequency within the overall population):

1. gold queens (female)
2. bronze (male)
3. brown (male)
4. blue (male)
5. green (female)

Size (and by correlation strength) confer status, so only the bronzes are big and enduring enough to manage mating flights with the golden queens. Brown and blue dragons mate green ones, which because they chew phosphine to breathe fire, a habit that renders female (but not male) dragons sterile, means only the rare golden females get to reproduce: the greens (and thus the blue and brown males that mate them) are merely worker bees, ahem, dragons. Recall that humans telepathically bond with the dragons, and reasoning behind this otherwise awkward worldbuilding becomes clear: the weir leader is the bronze rider whose dragon last successfully mated the queen, and, moreover, while in the throes of the draconic lust, themselves go at it nearly uncontrollably.

Defensible rape, amirite?

There's no particular reason that I could see that queen dragons had to have female riders, nor the other four colours all (or mostly, in the case of green dragons) male riders, besides Pernese feudal sexism and McCaffrey's desire, I think, to set her human protagonists up with overpowering lust: the ancestral fire lizards bond to whomever feeds them, regardless of sex, and several male characters impress queen fire lizards. (I note also the baby dragonets’ intense hunger doesn't cause their human bond-mates to gorge themselves...)

The thing that made Pern so appealing to my generation of girl readers was that, since the dragons were telepathic and could teleport, they were basically souped up magical horse stories in which the horse was not only your friend and solace, but also could talk back to you, and since they bonded to their riders at birth, they were your bestie forever. Add the rapey romance tropes going around in the 70s (anybody remember Shanna, which came out shortly thereafter, and had the same sort of feel?) —I thought at first p'raps this blockbusting Civil War bodice-ripper had influenced the Pernese novels but the timing doesn't work out: the earliest ones predate Shanna by a good amount.

I presume that both sets of books actually are spiritual descendents—in genre conversation, if you will—to the original Civil War bestseller, Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. One recent essay (that, naturally, I forgot to save) decried the book roundly because it was feminist while also being profoundly racist: Scarlett is, literally, a survivor, but the book perniciously promotes the myth of the kind plantation, noble (white) owners, and cheerful, loyal darkie servants (i.e. enslaved people).

Pern also has slaves.

I mean, drudges. These faceless, emotionless blanks, never named nor even individualized, permeate the holds and wehrs—uncomplaining servants with no hope of education, advancement, or ascension to any of the roles pertaining to the protagonists of these series. But, aside from the uncanny resemblances between the Pern novels and Woodiwiss’ old Civil War romance (I've never actually read Gone, though I've at least seen part or all of the film back when it was broadcast on network television, some 40–50 years ago)—the duels, the honour culture, the rigid class system, nominally meritorious, but in fact highly restrictive: note especially the focus on Ruathan blood (the protagonists of the first three books all descend from this line and it is this heritage that primes the hero for choosing Lessa to be a Queen Dragon candidate; Menolly, protagonist of the next two books, is a daughter of a lauded Sea Holder (lord). She can become a Harper in jig time; the faceless drudges, never.

This focus on bloodlines applies not only to the protagonists, but even moreso the villains: Kylara, a gold queen rider who is a rival to Lessa and especially the less-powerful Brekke (two of the heroines) is punished for her scheming and sexual peccadilloes, eventually losing her dragon and her mind; her half sister Thella is an out and out villain, and her treatment of drudges irrefutably moves them (if, honestly, the term itself wasn't already clue enough) from the servant to slave category:

[Thella's father] Lord Tarathel had even looked the other way when Thella had beaten a young drudge to death. He had, however, taken her to task for riding a promising young runner into the ground. Valuable [emphasis mine] animals could not be wasted.

McCaffrey has a habit of renaming common animals to make the setting more exotic, thus ‘runner beasts’ are horses—and the enslaved are disguised as...drudges. I had, for some two score/half a century done no more than a stumble over the drudges who are to be found in every hold, kind or cruel, but can no longer avoid the appalling, and racist over tones of these childhood favourites. McCaffrey could've chosen to retcon the Southern Plantation inspirations (out of) her later books; instead, she leaned into them.

I can't say, at this distance, whether this was the main reason I gave up on these books: to be honest, the stiff gender binary was likely the bigger choking point (complete with all the main female characters having baybees—frex, three protagonists had their first child all on the same day(!) a painfully obvious way of valorizing the all-important role of motherhood—see, I don't object to some women being super girly, super-moms, or super stereotyped, I just need to see some real life variation, just one childless iconoclast!)

Reading several of these newer books, I felt they were entertaining, reasonably well-written, and...plowing the same ground: not just stylistically or plotwise, but literally, since, frex, Renegades, takes place during the same time period as the first trilogy, Dragonriders of Pern. Thus, for the Pern devotee, these later books by McCaffrey will no doubt be delightful.

For me, disappointing. I should've trusted my earlier self, who managed to ignore them for the better part of 40 years.

Honestly, though, if you're jonesing for magical, telepathic horse-companion stories with romance thrown in, you'd probably be better off with Mercedes Lackey's Valdemaran novels. Valdemaran horses don't, alas, fly (nor breathe fire), but I find I can still read these, albeit sporadically; the oldest ones—set in the late 80s, that is, the same time McCaffrey was writing of “drudges” being beaten to death—while dated, and definitely building upon Pern (to which they show a clear homage)(2) nevertheless were ground breaking for their time in exploring diverse sexualities (as did Wendi Pini's ElfQuest which was nearly contemporaneous with the McCaffrey); in the latest, about the founding of Valdemar, the hero, while still too stereotypically noble to be believable, nevertheless is a) sympathetic and b) actively opposes slavery and fascism. Yay.

Or, if you must have battling dragons (not to mention having racism overtly addressed) and somewhat more sophisticated story-telling, then Naomi Novik's Temeraire series has real, flying dragons (albeit not fire breathing ones;)

I will be so glad when my local library branch reopens, which is finally scheduled to happen by this Fall New Year's Spring? Summer? (sigghhhhh—it's been nearly five years now(2), between COVID and storm damage and abestos abatement and remodelling...) and I can more easily check out modern fantasy:)

And speaking of Spring and Summer, here's a pair of basically the same image—some late season peonies, but with slight different focus.

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(1)My support for this assertion? Well, as ‘Harper Hall’ trilogy, suggests, Harpers, that is, Bards, play a big and high-status role in the McCaffrey books—aside from a dragonrider, it's probably the most valorized profession; in Lackey's Valdemar books, we have dragon Companion-riding ‘Heralds’, sort of a combo dragonrider/Harper:) Not to mention the psychic bond and abilities of the horse-shaped dragons, er, Companions:) Ditto, the wolf-riding Elves in ElfQuest. It would likely make an interesting thesis to compare and contrast these three long running series.

(2)To be fair, it was briefly open between COVID and the storm damage, and we have hoopla and libby. Not to mention other branches, for which there are bike safe routes now. They're ...okay, but just not the same as my beloved walkable, historic downtown branch.

14jan2025

Yeah, I know I was supposed to finish up those xmas beads, but I still haven't fixed up the camera/godox flash problems; and we're getting to the coldest part of winter (which, admittedly isn't nearly as cold I remember my childhood being—correctly, as it turns out—but I'm getting soft in my old age, I guess) so, while I certainly enjoyed the beautiful, large-flaked snowfall we had briefly mid-day, I was in the mood for flowers.

So here we are. And now I have another page onto which to hang all those links, so's I can clear them out...

• weight training and pain: this is one person's experience with the ‘knees over toes’ guy; not sure it will work for an arthritic knee, but it appears to be a more sophisticated version of my physical therapist's ‘as long as your pain is a 3 or lower, keep going’ —cuz hoping pain cures itself thru inaction doesn't seem to work real well. (I've kind of noticed this myself. That said, if you have pain while moving, please see a qualified PT!)
• If pullups are just too hard, mebbe just start with a 60 second hang; I need to strengthen my hands anyway, if I'm gonna start doing etchings, especially scrimshaw, again...
• Using dogs to find Lanternfly egg masses;
• though my initial reaction to the Neil Gaiman accusations was dismay, now I'm just pissed about the betrayal—not just of the victims (whom I noticed tended to be damaged, vulnerable people, something predators identify carefully) but all of his fans for whom his works meant something—especially the ones in marginalized communities who found, hope, solace, inspiration. I'm lucky, the only thing I'll really lose is the make new mistakes quote, which I really, really appreciate—but what about those with shelvesfull of books? That said, this take is the one I've found most useful;
• via slacktivist, “[t]here are many programs trying to reduce recidivism. This one works” and How a would be bomber rebuilt his life had for me fascinating parallels, not least of which is that investing in people when they're young and vulnerable is both easier, and cheaper, than after they become adult [criminal]s. (What would've happened, for example, if Gaiman had been rescued as a child, or entered counseling as a young man? How much suffering, both his own and others, could've been avoided?)
• Also related, treating addiction using a harm reduction model—that is, giving people resources before they've perfectly got their lives in order. Besides the fact that the author herself was an addict and now is doing all this useful work because someone cared enough to help her, the bit that stood out to me was an offhand comment about a surburban family man who could turn away from the siren song of highly addictive oxycodone, even though it was the most fabulous thing ever, because he had his career and family and life to lose, and it wasn't worth it—whereas the average addict doesn't have those alternatives, so of course they're just gonna go, screw it, and take the drugs.
• People with addictions have something to contribute, she says. (You still get to set boundaries, of course: I've deeply admired those who have continued to support family members who've sown chaos & stolen because of their addictions, but I don't think I have it in me to be that generous.) Reminds me of that Bujold quote about throwing geniuses away because they're from poor backgrounds, so never recognized.
• And one last somewhat arty entry, Martha Stewart weighs in on how to make a junk journal. Ha. I've been doing those for years, and other artists even longer. It's just a variation on mixed media, which got its start in the 1920s with the Joseph Cornell and the like. But Stewart claims this is different from scrapbooking...and I s'pose it is—but only in the modern sense! Original scrapbooks were just that—collections of mementos. Where I feel mixed media moves into junk journalling is when it collects unimportant ephemera—not just tickets from treasured experiences, say, but labels from jars, or instructions included with everyday objects. Ironically, the illustrations to the article feature vintage, browned envelopes, postcards from half a century ago, and black and white photos—all things I'm lucky to have acquired (mostly from people have died) but are not the typical person's daily ephemera, which to be honest tend to be brightly coloured, featuring ugly, unattractive graphic design—and more often than not is printed on plastic substrates that are difficult to glue, tear or otherwise use—I should know, I've been fighting with these problems for years.

But, hey-ho, today's entry features flowers, and delicately coloured ones to boot. Enjoy!

7jan2025

So I was reading this dude's rant on pocket why nothing works anymore and now have a rant of my own—as you may have noticed I'm kinda aggressively avoiding the political nonsense on the national level—and the big reason this particular rant annoys me is not that the guy is ranting—we're all allowed to do that—but that he's committing the fallacy that LanguageJones cites in his annual how to learn a language video which is successful learner-youtubers push a particular technique that works for them but isn't universally (or even commonly) applicable and not necessarily supported by science.

Going back to Dr Bogost's rant, he starts out with his three year old's refusal to use ‘magic’ (sensor activated) potties, because the kid is so short it triggers the flush mechanism prematurely, thus frightening the child. Such toilets, he says, waste 3x as much water as the old fashioned kind you had to manually flush. Ditto sensor'ed sinks, that jet water out at full blast.

These, he says, are examples of the declining quality of tech, but a professor who writes books about how to spend your time wisely ought to be able to differentiate between poor tech and the real problem (which he very, very briefly touches upon) which is corporate cheapness: sensored toilets work pretty well—when the sensor, as with our Japanese toilets, is located on the seat, rather than at the back. In another tab, I have an article from Smithsonian magazine about the absolute filthyness of human hands—because they touch things—so I'm all for bathroom design that is touch free (you see this in modern theatre design, where you don't even have to touch an entrance door) because the fewer things you touch, especially in public places, the less likely you're to pick up (or distribute) fomites.

This means, not having to touch toilet, sink, and paper towel, even soap dispenser handles is a good thing. But he's mourning the (loss of) sensory delight of yanking out paper towels unimpeded (which, yeah, nice, but honestly, people [like him?] who pull out too much have spoiled it for the rest of us), or flushing toilets by hand (ugh) .

His is most certainly not a universal experience!

In his view, those automations merely mean fewer workers to clean the bathroom. (How? —I can see how public restroom hand dryers, which a lot of people, myself included, don't like, presumably because they're slower, much noisier, plus they deprive the user of a handy cover to open the bathroom door, though I expect they're more ecologically sensible, at least for the vast majority of people who throw the paper towel out [and yes, I cart them home & use them to wipe up bead release off my table, then compost them, because it clogs the plumbing system to use washable rags] —nobody seems to be arguing for a return to those unsanitary cloth towels of days gone by).

I haven't noticed that the sensors have substantially reduced cleanup time, or, to be more precise, (since I haven't cleaned a public restroom in about 50 years & don't actually know how much of an impact the new tech has had) how much impact its had on the cleanliness of bathrooms, which I'm using as a proxy—after all people still drop toilet paper on the floor, and the tampon collectors still need to be emptied at the same rate. I mean, places that post cleaning schedules seem to imply a once-an-hour check, and that's about what I recall, too.

Personally, I love the way tech has improved not only toilets, but dishwashers (which waste less water than cleaning dishes by hand) washing machines (which freed women from a major household chore), furnaces, induction cooktops (so much safer than gas & more efficient than the old electric coils...) not to mention the plethora of devices that didn't even exist when I was a child. Microwaves for the win!

I expect low information (for values of whatever the topic is at hand—I, frex, am a very low information person regarding football, so I'm not necessarily being pejorative here) folks to make this error, but not professors writing books on how to spend your time wisely, for which these modern (in)conveniences are clearly adjacent.

But bitching about tech is easy. Fixing the power imbalance between the average schmoe and corporate America is not. Identifying an imperfect, annoying piece of tech is easy. Understanding why manufacturers, in our profit driven economy have prioritzed half-assed decisions amongst a myriad of factors (which all boil down to money, really) is more complex.

But with so much misinformation out there, it behooves those of us who (presumably) have the resources to filter it, not to give into clickbaity impulses, and lay the blame squarely where it belongs: on greedy people.

That said, this bead is a sample, and the design needs work, so perhaps I too am being a bit selfish inflicting it upon you. But perhaps I'll figure those bugs out, along with a bunch of other projects; but as a first pass, it's not too bad.

6jan2025

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Epiphany—I happen to have a good friend with a birthday on this date, so the 12th day of xmas is generally a positive for me.

On even numbered years I celebrate the xmas hols with my sibs and their families, which is a roundabout way of saying since I'm out of town, I tend not to post over the holidays. (Was looking over last year and was so impressed that I managed 12 days of xmas posting—not this time!)

I did, in fact, post most of the 2022 giftwrapping, but none of the beads I made as family mementoes, and since my flash isn't talking to my camera (resolving this issue is clearly on the list of New Year's resolutions) I've yet to take any studio shots of the latest batch. So! 2022 it is, starting with this gift, which serves as an intro to the 2022 xmas bead colour scheme:)

2jan2025

Happy New Year.

I did not expect my retirement years to be, um, so excitingly...chaotic. I have fond hopes that the current turmoil will be a turbulent prelude to an ultimately better, kinder, more just world; but I'm not a fan of the idea of hitting bottom before coming back up. Wages were depressingly flat during my working years, but things seemed relatively okay; I do wonder what sort of impact all this is gonna have on young people growing up in it. I worry about them.

I want to make more art, and spread more beauty and kindness in the world. To that end, here's a webpage of a drawing I made to bring in the new year—it's imperfect, but then, so are we; and nevertheless it can still have some value.

Take care.