Culinary
Oct. 19th, 2025 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This week's bread (because last week's suddenly got The Mould): a loaf of Bacheldre Rustic Country Bread Flour, v nice if turned out a bit crumbly.
Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng with saucisson sec and red bell pepper.
Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, einkorn flour, maple syrup, dried ('apple-juice infused') blueberries: turned out particularly well.
Today's lunch: pork belly slices slow-braised in soy sauce, rice wine, maple syrup and 5-spice powder; served with slowcooked tenderstem broccoli (lime rather than lemon at the end), fine green beans and chopped red bell pepper roasted in walnut oil with fennel seeds and drizzled with elderflower vinegar, and cornbread (plain white flour + baking powder, half and half with mixture of fine/coarse cornmeal)..
Man Plus (Man Plus, volume 1) by Frederik Pohl
Oct. 19th, 2025 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Mars being unfit for humans, there is no alternative but to make humans--or at least a human--fit for Mars.
Man Plus (Man Plus, volume 1) by Frederik Pohl
Flashing by . . .
Oct. 18th, 2025 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
But today the weather was perfect for the protest gathering at a very busy five-points intersection here on Martha's Vineyard, with A LOT of people and some winsomely unique signage. Lots of laughter and horn honking, and although there were two protesters for the current regime, and a couple of cars went by with passengers waving thumbs down, there was no violence whatsoever. Yay! I wish that would be true everywhere.
Interesting patterns in signage; many quotes from the Bible and from the Constitution, and so very many crowned clowns. One frog, one unicorn, and a bee. Many, but not all, were my age or older.
Yes, I felt this probably deserved a codfish across the chops
Oct. 18th, 2025 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
When I glanced through Mr J Jones' review here of Sami artist Máret Ánne Sara’s Turbine Hall installation (spoiler alert: he did not like it), my thought was, there is no point in asking Mr Jones for an opinion on anything which does not feature nekkid laydeez, because I can remember him being snotty about a Barbara Hepworth exhibition. (And we are not that keen on his opinion on the nl's, either.)
Anyway, two correspondents take to the letters column to have a go at him:
completely misses the point. The land the Sámi live in is “quite big”, just as the Turbine Hall is in Jones’s words, but the Sámi do not take over the entirety of their landscape. They live within it. The “fort” is not a place to “hide”. That is a city-boy reading rather than a deeper understanding of the ancient methods that Sámi families use for herding reindeer in the vastness of their lands, combined with the political realities that surround them. Jones is too close to playgrounds and not close enough to the realities of the Sámi and northern political history.
***
I was appalled by Jonathan Jones’s review.... There is something incredibly unique and, in the end, pristine about existence in these Nordic villages. Maybe it is the ultimate quiet that falls upon the forests at times. Everyday life is not silent, but the forest silence after a day’s work is peace. Is art not art unless it includes some gore, an exhibit of violence? The artist has captured the ordered existence necessary for survival in harsh conditions and the peace that comes from living with nature rather than against it.
Books Received, October 11 to October 17
Oct. 18th, 2025 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Seven books new to me. Well, six and one replacement. Four fantasy, one historical, one horror, one science fiction. Two appear to be part of series.
Books Received, October 11 to October 17
Which of these look interesting?
Boys With Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell (July 2026)
6 (12.5%)
Behind Five Willows by June Hur (May 2026)
16 (33.3%)
Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher (August 2026)
31 (64.6%)
Heir of Storms by Lauryn Hamilton Murray (June 2026)
4 (8.3%)
City of Others by Jaren Poon (January 2026)
19 (39.6%)
Starry Messenger: The Best of Galileo edited by Charles C. Ryan (November 1979)
7 (14.6%)
How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by Jessie Sylva (January 2026)
17 (35.4%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
32 (66.7%)
New Worlds: Are You Insured?
Oct. 17th, 2025 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/N18vHc)
Round 180 Theme Poll
Oct. 17th, 2025 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Pick the next theme of fancake:
Mystery & Suspense
40 (45.5%)
Protest & Revolt
27 (30.7%)
Whump
21 (23.9%)
Sport for fun and sport for - not
Oct. 17th, 2025 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Though even conkers people take seriously apparently: 'King Conker’ cleared of cheating at World Conker Championships (Is nothing sacred?)
However, this sounds like it brings a certain anarchic spirit to the business: ‘Cheating is encouraged’: nut crackers at Peckham’s Conker Championships go for the fun
But apparently the TikTok generation post videos of gently unpeeling them???
The conkers danger is actually a Top Elf'n'Saftee Myff: 10 ridiculous Health and Safety myths debunked.
Am not sure why conkers should be having a moment just now, because they were dropping off the local trees several weeks ago, and are surely now past.
But at least the people playing conkers seem to be having fun: apparently - and counter to all those exhortations to do this thing for the good of your mental health - doing marathons has a downside: One in four endurance runners displays ‘worryingly high’ levels of anxiety and depression.
One wonders how far it's the obsessive dedication as much as any physiological factor that has an adverse effect.
Bright Side: I Fired the Nanny to Protect My Granddaughter—Now My DIL Banned Me
Oct. 17th, 2025 11:26 amThe Last Door (2014, 2016)
Oct. 17th, 2025 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Set in Victorian Britain, Season One follows Jeremiah Devitt, an alumnus of a remote boarding school where he belonged to a secret society performing occult experiments. As an adult, he receives a cryptic letter from a former classmate, but by the time he arrives, the classmate has died by suicide, prompting Devitt to investigate. Season Two follows Devitt's psychiatrist Dr. Wakefield, now investigating his patient's mysterious disappearance and the true nature of the secret society and the hidden reality it has uncovered.

This one is sleep-with-the-lights-on scary. Lots of suspenseful sequences and expertly timed jump-scares. Something horror games can do that horror movies can't is to make you decide to keep walking further into the dark hallway where the creepy voice is coming from, and this game really leans into that. There were many moments when I found myself creeping forward inch by inch, dreading what was coming but knowing I had no choice but to press on. I loved it.
( cut for length )
If you really want to be scared this spooky season, I highly recommend The Last Door. It's available on Steam (Season One, Season Two) for $9.99 USD per season, but GOG (Season One, Season Two) currently has both seasons on sale for $3.49 USD each.
As The Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories edited by Terese Mason Pierre
Oct. 17th, 2025 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

A selection of speculative fiction stories by Black Canadians.
As The Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories edited by Terese Mason Pierre