Dec. 19th, 2025 08:29 pm
Red Barn
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ranunculusFifteen years ago the Red Barn was an elderly, falling apart mess. I swapped board for work on it. In general Tom did a great job, but he wasn't an electrician. That is why, when he moved the electrical panel from the north aisle onto the west wall of the barn he made a mistake. I had laboriously pounded in a ground stake on the west wall for the fence charger. Tom appropriated it and turned it into the ground for the whole electrical system. This issue has produced weird reading and unreliable electric fence, but it was never -quite- bad enough for me to fix. This week it came up on the to-do list, mostly because last week Lily noticed a snapping noise of the system making the sheet metal on the barn live. Oops. I turned the system off. If I had to fix the darn thing I might as well move it too.
My plan has been to move it 50 feet back to the rear of the barn. There is an existing electric outlet I could plug into at the back there but it is in quite an exposed place in the southeast corner. That bothered me. It never dawned on me that I could move it to the northeast corner which is quite protected. Finally a couple of days ago the idea finally surfaced. Duh.
Yesterday Donald and I removed the wire that had been causing the problem and replaced it with a much better insulated one. To be fair, the problem with the first wire was a manufacturers defect, but. The new wire will now take signal from the back of the barn and bring it to a junction that services the front pastures instead of taking signal from the front of the barn and feeding the pastures in the rear and to the north.
Today I drilled some holes, pushed conduit through and tapped into a light in tack room #4. Tomorrow I need to finish running conduit down to a new outlet box. Cody has already come and used his motorized pounder to install a 8 ft rod. The ground there is terribly rocky. We got the stake 6 1/2 feet into the ground and hit a BIG rock. 6 1/2 feet will have to do as a ground stake for the fence charger. The manuals say that ground stakes have to be about 25 or 30 feet apart to be counted as separate. This is 70 feet, so it should work.
Next is 2 more short pieces of pipe, an outlet box and connecting the wires. It will be really good to get this project done.
My plan has been to move it 50 feet back to the rear of the barn. There is an existing electric outlet I could plug into at the back there but it is in quite an exposed place in the southeast corner. That bothered me. It never dawned on me that I could move it to the northeast corner which is quite protected. Finally a couple of days ago the idea finally surfaced. Duh.
Yesterday Donald and I removed the wire that had been causing the problem and replaced it with a much better insulated one. To be fair, the problem with the first wire was a manufacturers defect, but. The new wire will now take signal from the back of the barn and bring it to a junction that services the front pastures instead of taking signal from the front of the barn and feeding the pastures in the rear and to the north.
Today I drilled some holes, pushed conduit through and tapped into a light in tack room #4. Tomorrow I need to finish running conduit down to a new outlet box. Cody has already come and used his motorized pounder to install a 8 ft rod. The ground there is terribly rocky. We got the stake 6 1/2 feet into the ground and hit a BIG rock. 6 1/2 feet will have to do as a ground stake for the fence charger. The manuals say that ground stakes have to be about 25 or 30 feet apart to be counted as separate. This is 70 feet, so it should work.
Next is 2 more short pieces of pipe, an outlet box and connecting the wires. It will be really good to get this project done.
Dec. 20th, 2025 01:28 am
Horses at night
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little_detailsIf my characters have made camp in a wood for the night while travelling on horseback, what will the horses be doing?
I was sort of picturing them standing dozing together under a tree somewhere nearby -- possibly tied, possibly hobbled, possibly just being a herd together -- but poking around on the Internet suggests that if not shut up in a stable horses are actually quite active by night. (Which messes with the story, as quite apart from anything else nobody is going to be able to hear anything while keeping watch if the horses are busy foraging around!)
I was sort of picturing them standing dozing together under a tree somewhere nearby -- possibly tied, possibly hobbled, possibly just being a herd together -- but poking around on the Internet suggests that if not shut up in a stable horses are actually quite active by night. (Which messes with the story, as quite apart from anything else nobody is going to be able to hear anything while keeping watch if the horses are busy foraging around!)
Dec. 19th, 2025 01:17 pm
recent game tastings
thistleingreyDemos I've played during 2025, none of which I've tried in full (in the order I met them):
* Ambrosia Sky: Act One is a powerwashing game iiin spaaace, with overgrown fungus and a lot of dead bodies. Clunky controls. A review I've read of the full game suggests that it doesn't convey much of a story.
* Is This Seat Taken? asks the player to arrange seating (or standing, occasionally) on a bus, at the cinema, etc. for characters with some specific wishes or DNWs. Demo size is enough for me, but it's a low-stress, really lovely version of the seating-people-around-a-table logic puzzle which reminds the player to consider people as individuals.
Tangentially---the hand-drawn animation style reminds me a bit of A Little to the Left. An attempt to attract a similar audience? Seat is less fussy, I think.
* PowerWash Simulator 2 expects the player to care a lot about getting every last scrap cleaned of muck. It helps the player, too, with a highlighting toggle and a percentage-completed index for each component of a scene. I like the creativity of its scenes---even the demo tries hard---given that the player does the exact same thing in each one.
* Tiny Bookshop involves running a tiny bookshop from a mobile trailer. The demo shows the start of decision-balancing. For example, in the starting location by the waterfront, sailors come by; they like travel books. A cafe location becomes available shortly before the demo ends, and presumably some customers there would like children's books. I think I would've liked the full game in my twenties, had cozy mini-sims been available back then.
* Ambrosia Sky: Act One is a powerwashing game iiin spaaace, with overgrown fungus and a lot of dead bodies. Clunky controls. A review I've read of the full game suggests that it doesn't convey much of a story.
* Is This Seat Taken? asks the player to arrange seating (or standing, occasionally) on a bus, at the cinema, etc. for characters with some specific wishes or DNWs. Demo size is enough for me, but it's a low-stress, really lovely version of the seating-people-around-a-table logic puzzle which reminds the player to consider people as individuals.
Tangentially---the hand-drawn animation style reminds me a bit of A Little to the Left. An attempt to attract a similar audience? Seat is less fussy, I think.
* PowerWash Simulator 2 expects the player to care a lot about getting every last scrap cleaned of muck. It helps the player, too, with a highlighting toggle and a percentage-completed index for each component of a scene. I like the creativity of its scenes---even the demo tries hard---given that the player does the exact same thing in each one.
* Tiny Bookshop involves running a tiny bookshop from a mobile trailer. The demo shows the start of decision-balancing. For example, in the starting location by the waterfront, sailors come by; they like travel books. A cafe location becomes available shortly before the demo ends, and presumably some customers there would like children's books. I think I would've liked the full game in my twenties, had cozy mini-sims been available back then.
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Dec. 19th, 2025 01:26 pm
Belated cake note | First morning of vacation
umadoshiSince I'm vaguely tracking things we've been making: a few days ago we made Smitten Kitchen's gingerbread apple upside-down cake. It's tasty, although I didn't like it nearly as much as the SK Mom's Apple Cake that we made not that long ago. (scruloose likes it more than I do, for the record.) Now I mostly just want to make an actual gingerbread. ^^;
(My brain keeps starting to compose a post or posts about my currently-annoyingly-complication feelings about holiday baked goods etc., between our intensely-covid-cautious life and my still-newish need to stay aware of my blood glucose, but will I actually manage to write about it? Who knows. It's exhausting.)
I started my first day of vacation waking ahead of my alarm from a weird, teeth-clenchingly stressful dream, possibly one of a sequence, and it takes me a while to shake off dreams like that. >.< I've gotten a couple of household things done/underway, though, and am sitting down to do some manga work once I've posted this.
We still haven't decorated Bucky; he comes with lights, which are the most important part of a Christmas tree, especially without the smell of a real tree, and at least one year we bought our tree and put lights on it and never did anything more, and that was fine. I guess it's possible this'll be another such year. (Although we're due for strong winds and heavy rain tonight and into tomorrow, and if we lose power, I guess that's something we could do tomorrow afternoon.)
But we got most of our other fragments of decor up last night, and this morning I put out my Nativity set for the first time in a few years. It's wooden, but a couple of the pieces have taken damage over the years nonetheless (before my time, or when I was young enough that I don't remember what happened), and having it out around the cats has made me nervous since my mother gave it to me* several years ago. But a few months ago I bought a piece of display wall shelving for my office (and my office mostly stays shut when I'm not in it for long), and the set fits in it fairly well, so now it's there and I've got my fingers crossed.
(Also, this year I bought an old-fashioned ceramic tree from a local artist, and it's on a speaker under the wall display, so realistically, if a cat gets up on my desk where they shouldn't be, I'll know about it from the tree going down. [Which I really hope it doesn't, because it's breakable and the lights aren't actually attached, so that's all kinds of cat hazard in a package. And thus, it's in my office; if the cats were actually prone to getting on my desk and messing with things, I wouldn't have bought the tree at all, but even Sinha is really pretty good about it.])
*I think I mentioned at the time that this is the Nativity set of my childhood, carved of olive wood. My mother's parents once--in the '50s, I think? When she was a kid--were in Jerusalem over Christmastime, and brought it home. Mum deciding to pass it on to me is genuinely one of the best gifts she's ever given me.
scruloose likes it more than I do, for the record.) Now I mostly just want to make an actual gingerbread. ^^;(My brain keeps starting to compose a post or posts about my currently-annoyingly-complication feelings about holiday baked goods etc., between our intensely-covid-cautious life and my still-newish need to stay aware of my blood glucose, but will I actually manage to write about it? Who knows. It's exhausting.)
I started my first day of vacation waking ahead of my alarm from a weird, teeth-clenchingly stressful dream, possibly one of a sequence, and it takes me a while to shake off dreams like that. >.< I've gotten a couple of household things done/underway, though, and am sitting down to do some manga work once I've posted this.
We still haven't decorated Bucky; he comes with lights, which are the most important part of a Christmas tree, especially without the smell of a real tree, and at least one year we bought our tree and put lights on it and never did anything more, and that was fine. I guess it's possible this'll be another such year. (Although we're due for strong winds and heavy rain tonight and into tomorrow, and if we lose power, I guess that's something we could do tomorrow afternoon.)
But we got most of our other fragments of decor up last night, and this morning I put out my Nativity set for the first time in a few years. It's wooden, but a couple of the pieces have taken damage over the years nonetheless (before my time, or when I was young enough that I don't remember what happened), and having it out around the cats has made me nervous since my mother gave it to me* several years ago. But a few months ago I bought a piece of display wall shelving for my office (and my office mostly stays shut when I'm not in it for long), and the set fits in it fairly well, so now it's there and I've got my fingers crossed.
(Also, this year I bought an old-fashioned ceramic tree from a local artist, and it's on a speaker under the wall display, so realistically, if a cat gets up on my desk where they shouldn't be, I'll know about it from the tree going down. [Which I really hope it doesn't, because it's breakable and the lights aren't actually attached, so that's all kinds of cat hazard in a package. And thus, it's in my office; if the cats were actually prone to getting on my desk and messing with things, I wouldn't have bought the tree at all, but even Sinha is really pretty good about it.])
*I think I mentioned at the time that this is the Nativity set of my childhood, carved of olive wood. My mother's parents once--in the '50s, I think? When she was a kid--were in Jerusalem over Christmastime, and brought it home. Mum deciding to pass it on to me is genuinely one of the best gifts she's ever given me.
Dec. 19th, 2025 03:29 pm
Miscellany
mtbcToday is my first day of leave from work for over the Christmas break. This morning we sent the boys off back home to Asia to visit family, now it's just me and R. I am relaxing on the sofa with our dog L. while R. brings some sanity to the kitchen storage. I already feel my headspace increasing and have been getting some small postponed things done. Many more await.
I am quite good at sleeping. Given the opportunity, I can do plenty of it. This morning, I dreamt we lived somewhere else and I spied a sizable swirly unnatural-looking Weather Thing approaching, and turned to R. to strongly suggest that we leave the house now and drive elsewhere.
Again, I thought back to high school where one of my math teachers figured Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of a regular dodecahedron and, looking at one, I wonder what the straightforward strategy is for doing that. I like to think that enough staring and turning would help make it clearer. Now, this is where I wish I had a large desktop system with lots of PCI-e slots for used RTX 3090's or somesuch: it's the kind of thing I'm happy to try idly chatting to some opensource LLM about. It's not as if anything's riding on the answer. Perhaps they're rather better at classic book suggestions than anything analytic though.
I also got to wonder about mobile telephony. ( How might routing work? )
My mention of idly chatting to LLMs reminds me, I have three sizable pending purchases in mind: such a desktop AI system, a small laptop for use while commuting, and a cross-trainer. The interesting question is how to prioritize them though clearly the first there should actually be last while I cross my fingers for the bubble bursting. Also, I'm reluctant to spend too freely until I'm more ahead of the higher-interest debt.
In the meantime, I've found that, as usual, BBC iPlayer didn't exactly help me discover that there's recent Later… with Jools Holland to provide me with a somewhat alternative musical backdrop, albeit a considerably mixed bag of such. I've been enjoying ex-BBC's Stereo Underground recently which is also nicely varied. Given that it often plays the music of my childhood, it makes me wonder: I think of all the energy of especially some of the more punk-ish songs, and how exciting life seemed to me at the time, especially with books filling my head with new intellectual worlds to wrestle with. There's something there I'd be interested to recapture, about possibility and choice, about who I am and what I pursue. I may not quite know which destinations make sense but one of the many wonderful things about R. is how supportive they are.
I am quite good at sleeping. Given the opportunity, I can do plenty of it. This morning, I dreamt we lived somewhere else and I spied a sizable swirly unnatural-looking Weather Thing approaching, and turned to R. to strongly suggest that we leave the house now and drive elsewhere.
Again, I thought back to high school where one of my math teachers figured Cartesian coordinates for the vertices of a regular dodecahedron and, looking at one, I wonder what the straightforward strategy is for doing that. I like to think that enough staring and turning would help make it clearer. Now, this is where I wish I had a large desktop system with lots of PCI-e slots for used RTX 3090's or somesuch: it's the kind of thing I'm happy to try idly chatting to some opensource LLM about. It's not as if anything's riding on the answer. Perhaps they're rather better at classic book suggestions than anything analytic though.
I also got to wonder about mobile telephony. ( How might routing work? )
My mention of idly chatting to LLMs reminds me, I have three sizable pending purchases in mind: such a desktop AI system, a small laptop for use while commuting, and a cross-trainer. The interesting question is how to prioritize them though clearly the first there should actually be last while I cross my fingers for the bubble bursting. Also, I'm reluctant to spend too freely until I'm more ahead of the higher-interest debt.
In the meantime, I've found that, as usual, BBC iPlayer didn't exactly help me discover that there's recent Later… with Jools Holland to provide me with a somewhat alternative musical backdrop, albeit a considerably mixed bag of such. I've been enjoying ex-BBC's Stereo Underground recently which is also nicely varied. Given that it often plays the music of my childhood, it makes me wonder: I think of all the energy of especially some of the more punk-ish songs, and how exciting life seemed to me at the time, especially with books filling my head with new intellectual worlds to wrestle with. There's something there I'd be interested to recapture, about possibility and choice, about who I am and what I pursue. I may not quite know which destinations make sense but one of the many wonderful things about R. is how supportive they are.
Dec. 19th, 2025 07:02 am
podcast friday
sabotabby This week's episode is Wizards & Spaceships' latest, "Postcolonialism in SFFH ft. Suzan Palumbo." Suzan is a rising star in the Canadian speculative fiction scene and also just a very lovely, funny person. In the episode, she discusses the tropes and traditions that are baked into genre that reinforce colonialist mindsets, and the BIPOC authors pushing back against it. It's really good go listen.
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Dec. 19th, 2025 06:42 am
Abeni and the Kingdom of Gold (Abeni’s Song, volume 2) by P. Djèlí Clark
james_davis_nicoll
In which history long forgotten is recovered.
Abeni and the Kingdom of Gold (Abeni’s Song, volume 2) by P. Djèlí Clark
Dec. 18th, 2025 10:28 pm
A two-fer
extraarcha2 - Enjoy
“What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.”
~ Edward Langley
"What's wrong with our children?
Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating.
Adults telling children not to be violent
while marketing and glorifying violence.
I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America."
~ Marian Wright Edelman
~ Edward Langley
= = = = = = =
"What's wrong with our children?
Adults telling children to be honest while lying and cheating.
Adults telling children not to be violent
while marketing and glorifying violence.
I believe that adult hypocrisy is the biggest problem children face in America."
~ Marian Wright Edelman
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Dec. 19th, 2025 01:35 pm
Gosh, don't you just hate it
conulywhen your boyfriend, who turned out to be a fabulously wealthy member of the magical nobility, insists on buying you an expensive ring, and not just to get at his awful family who all hate you?
Last time that happened to me, I told him, "The ring is nice, but seriously, get your shit together and stand up to your folks, or the wedding's off." And this is why I'm not married today. Fabulous wealth is all well and good, but there are limits, and realistically speaking, you probably can't murder all your inlaws.
Alas, our protagonist is going to take the next book and a half to put her foot down. I can just tell. Unlike any sensible heroine, she's going to spend all her time trying to placate those assholes instead. Honey, it's a wasted effort! If you insist on standing by your man, stand by him by booking a couples spa date - no parents allowed.
(The ring isn't even magical. It's just expensive. I mean, honestly, I would not put up with those people for a nonmagical ring, and here she is insisting that it's all too much, it's too valuable, is he sure he wants to spend what, to him, amounts to pocket change on little old her? Please.)
*****************
( Read more... )
Last time that happened to me, I told him, "The ring is nice, but seriously, get your shit together and stand up to your folks, or the wedding's off." And this is why I'm not married today. Fabulous wealth is all well and good, but there are limits, and realistically speaking, you probably can't murder all your inlaws.
Alas, our protagonist is going to take the next book and a half to put her foot down. I can just tell. Unlike any sensible heroine, she's going to spend all her time trying to placate those assholes instead. Honey, it's a wasted effort! If you insist on standing by your man, stand by him by booking a couples spa date - no parents allowed.
(The ring isn't even magical. It's just expensive. I mean, honestly, I would not put up with those people for a nonmagical ring, and here she is insisting that it's all too much, it's too valuable, is he sure he wants to spend what, to him, amounts to pocket change on little old her? Please.)
( Read more... )
Dec. 18th, 2025 04:58 pm
Nisi Shawl: Making Amends (2025-59)
sturgeonslawyerTo be clear: "Amends" is an extrasolar world, and "Making" means colonizing it.
In a middle-near future, the rich (code word for: White) rule the poor (code word for: not-White) largely through corporate power -- or at least in the Western Hemisphere, this is true; we never learn much about the rest of the world.
The first story is set in a prison/school/orbital colony/something -- its exact economic nature is never made exactly clear -- where poor (non-White, and clearly mostly Black) young people live a violent life. A young woman who escaped a while back now returns as an agent to recruit people for a colonial mission to Amends (not named in this story).
The trick, as we eventually learn: the colonists are stripped of their bodies and stored in computer modules for the decades-long journey. When they arrive, new bodies are grown for them -- bodies cloned from (White) "victims" of "crimes." So, as they gradually realize, they are essentially being used as breeding stock for their oppressors.
The stories range from brutal to gently beautiful, sometimes within the same story. I don't want to tell too much about the individual stories, because there's so much juice in them that I don't want to spill.
But (here at least) Nisi Shawl writes like a demon; they are the closest living thing to a kind of cross between Octavia Butler and Harlan Ellison, and I mean that in a good way. I recommend this book highly.
9 out of 10 totally not suspicious surveillance devices
In a middle-near future, the rich (code word for: White) rule the poor (code word for: not-White) largely through corporate power -- or at least in the Western Hemisphere, this is true; we never learn much about the rest of the world.
The first story is set in a prison/school/orbital colony/something -- its exact economic nature is never made exactly clear -- where poor (non-White, and clearly mostly Black) young people live a violent life. A young woman who escaped a while back now returns as an agent to recruit people for a colonial mission to Amends (not named in this story).
The trick, as we eventually learn: the colonists are stripped of their bodies and stored in computer modules for the decades-long journey. When they arrive, new bodies are grown for them -- bodies cloned from (White) "victims" of "crimes." So, as they gradually realize, they are essentially being used as breeding stock for their oppressors.
The stories range from brutal to gently beautiful, sometimes within the same story. I don't want to tell too much about the individual stories, because there's so much juice in them that I don't want to spill.
But (here at least) Nisi Shawl writes like a demon; they are the closest living thing to a kind of cross between Octavia Butler and Harlan Ellison, and I mean that in a good way. I recommend this book highly.
9 out of 10 totally not suspicious surveillance devices
Dec. 18th, 2025 04:55 pm
Elton John: Me (2025-58)
sturgeonslawyerI have always preferred autobiographies to biographies, because biographies almost always end with the death of the main character.
More seriously: one always has to be a bit careful with an autobiography, because the motives of the author, who is also the subject, must be suspect until proven otherwise.
In the end, I don't know whether Sir Elton is completely honest in his book or not. He certainly seems to be, at least, attempting the feat. He has a no-holds-barred approach to discussion situations where he acted like an asshole, in one particular case over a period of years; he puts all blame for the failure of his marriage to Renate Blauel firmly upon himself; and he is not at all shy about admitting that he has inherited a raging bad temper from both of his parents.
This is not in any way a tell-all sort of book. He describes most of the people he has known (Freddie Mercury, Elizabeth II, Princess Diana...) in very positive terms, and, when he describes someone more negatively (for example, his encounter with Elvis Presley), he talks not only about what that person has become, but why: Elvis had been isolated from reality, and from most of the consequences of his actions for so long, that he was pretty much dissociated by the time Elton met him (not long before he died).
On the other hand, there are people (including his parents) on whom he has no problem ladling massive amounts of blame. If the facts are as he describes them - and in a few cases, such as the manager who ripped him off, they are verifiable (though I have not chosen to do the work) - then these people certainly deserve to have blame poured on their heads.
Perhaps the most moving section of the book is his spiral into alcohol-drugs-bulemia, and his eventual, difficult, decision to enter a recovery center. (It was, incidentally, difficult to find one who could deal with someone with drug, alcohol, and eating disorders.) Coming out the other side, and spending a long time attending AA meetings -- sometimes more than one per day -- created a side of his life that had not previously existed, and that, eventually, made it possible for him to marry David Furnish and for them to have two sons together.
I come away thinking that Me is a genuine warts-and-all autobiography.
But can I ever know?
77 out of 88 piano keys
More seriously: one always has to be a bit careful with an autobiography, because the motives of the author, who is also the subject, must be suspect until proven otherwise.
In the end, I don't know whether Sir Elton is completely honest in his book or not. He certainly seems to be, at least, attempting the feat. He has a no-holds-barred approach to discussion situations where he acted like an asshole, in one particular case over a period of years; he puts all blame for the failure of his marriage to Renate Blauel firmly upon himself; and he is not at all shy about admitting that he has inherited a raging bad temper from both of his parents.
This is not in any way a tell-all sort of book. He describes most of the people he has known (Freddie Mercury, Elizabeth II, Princess Diana...) in very positive terms, and, when he describes someone more negatively (for example, his encounter with Elvis Presley), he talks not only about what that person has become, but why: Elvis had been isolated from reality, and from most of the consequences of his actions for so long, that he was pretty much dissociated by the time Elton met him (not long before he died).
On the other hand, there are people (including his parents) on whom he has no problem ladling massive amounts of blame. If the facts are as he describes them - and in a few cases, such as the manager who ripped him off, they are verifiable (though I have not chosen to do the work) - then these people certainly deserve to have blame poured on their heads.
Perhaps the most moving section of the book is his spiral into alcohol-drugs-bulemia, and his eventual, difficult, decision to enter a recovery center. (It was, incidentally, difficult to find one who could deal with someone with drug, alcohol, and eating disorders.) Coming out the other side, and spending a long time attending AA meetings -- sometimes more than one per day -- created a side of his life that had not previously existed, and that, eventually, made it possible for him to marry David Furnish and for them to have two sons together.
I come away thinking that Me is a genuine warts-and-all autobiography.
But can I ever know?
77 out of 88 piano keys
Dec. 18th, 2025 04:52 pm
The Didache (2025-57)
sturgeonslawyerThe Didache (dee-dah-KAY) is an anonymous handbook for newly-converted Christians, believed to be from the first century AD. In its first chapter it claims to be "The Lord's Teaching to the Heathen by the Twelve Apostles."
Its sixteen short chapters cover several broad topics, beginning with the "Ways" of Life and Death: "The Way of Life is the love of God and of our neighbor." The Golden Rule is given in its negative form ("Do not do to others...").
It moves on from there to some of the Commandments concerning social behavior, forbidding murder, adultry, and so on, and derives additional recommendations based on them, observing further how one vice leads to another.
Chapter 4 gives further precepts, concluding: "This is the Way of Life," then describes the Way of Death simply as a list of no-nos. In chapter 5, we are exhorted to "bear the whole yoke of the Lord" if we can, but if not, to do what we can; only under no circumstances to eat what has been offered to idols - though it seems to include in this a sense that one need not refrain from eating those foods forbidden by Mosaic and Talmudic law.
From there, the Didache moves on to matters of ceremony and church order: instructoins on baptism, fasting, the Eucharist, and general thanksgiving.
Finally, it describes the organization of the Church, including some interesting passages on the treatment of wandering prophets and how to discern whether they are "true" prophets or not.
It's hard to render a judgment on a book like this. I will note two things and be silent.
1) Given its extreme early date and its claim to be the teaching of the Apostles, one has to wonder why the Didache was not included in the Canon of Scripture. My first thought is that it gives a great deal of advice on behavior, but little or nothing in the way of theology, and especially not Christology; but it is hardly for me to guess at what went through the minds of people in a very different culture, in a very different time and place, making such an important decision.
2) It shows in early form a number of things that Protestants point at in Catholicism as not being true to the "Primitive Church." Oops.
Its sixteen short chapters cover several broad topics, beginning with the "Ways" of Life and Death: "The Way of Life is the love of God and of our neighbor." The Golden Rule is given in its negative form ("Do not do to others...").
It moves on from there to some of the Commandments concerning social behavior, forbidding murder, adultry, and so on, and derives additional recommendations based on them, observing further how one vice leads to another.
Chapter 4 gives further precepts, concluding: "This is the Way of Life," then describes the Way of Death simply as a list of no-nos. In chapter 5, we are exhorted to "bear the whole yoke of the Lord" if we can, but if not, to do what we can; only under no circumstances to eat what has been offered to idols - though it seems to include in this a sense that one need not refrain from eating those foods forbidden by Mosaic and Talmudic law.
From there, the Didache moves on to matters of ceremony and church order: instructoins on baptism, fasting, the Eucharist, and general thanksgiving.
Finally, it describes the organization of the Church, including some interesting passages on the treatment of wandering prophets and how to discern whether they are "true" prophets or not.
It's hard to render a judgment on a book like this. I will note two things and be silent.
1) Given its extreme early date and its claim to be the teaching of the Apostles, one has to wonder why the Didache was not included in the Canon of Scripture. My first thought is that it gives a great deal of advice on behavior, but little or nothing in the way of theology, and especially not Christology; but it is hardly for me to guess at what went through the minds of people in a very different culture, in a very different time and place, making such an important decision.
2) It shows in early form a number of things that Protestants point at in Catholicism as not being true to the "Primitive Church." Oops.
Dec. 18th, 2025 04:48 pm
David Szalay: Flesh (2025-56)
sturgeonslawyerI can remember, not too long ago, a time when this book would have been considered pornographic. In 2025, it won the Man Booker Prize.
It tells the life story, more or less, of István. We meet him as a boy living in a small city in Hungary. In the first chapter, he fails to have sex with a girl his own age, and is then gradually seduced by an older woman who lives across the landing from István and his mother: the relationship ends in the accidental death of the woman's husband and István's spending ten years in jail.
He gets out, spends a short time helping smuggle drugs from Croatia, and eventually ends up in the army in Kuwait, where he accidentally becomes something of a hero. And so on.
It's very incidental, less "cause and effect" driven than "this happened, then this happened," with, at times, very little seeming to connecit one "this" to the next.
Yet somehow it all seems to hold itself together, rather like an early Vonnegut novel, only the humor is much drier and the sex more frequent and explicit.
My book club picked this to read, and I cannot honestly understand why except for that Man Booker prize.
Oh well.
Five out of ten classic watches.
It tells the life story, more or less, of István. We meet him as a boy living in a small city in Hungary. In the first chapter, he fails to have sex with a girl his own age, and is then gradually seduced by an older woman who lives across the landing from István and his mother: the relationship ends in the accidental death of the woman's husband and István's spending ten years in jail.
He gets out, spends a short time helping smuggle drugs from Croatia, and eventually ends up in the army in Kuwait, where he accidentally becomes something of a hero. And so on.
It's very incidental, less "cause and effect" driven than "this happened, then this happened," with, at times, very little seeming to connecit one "this" to the next.
Yet somehow it all seems to hold itself together, rather like an early Vonnegut novel, only the humor is much drier and the sex more frequent and explicit.
My book club picked this to read, and I cannot honestly understand why except for that Man Booker prize.
Oh well.
Five out of ten classic watches.
Dec. 18th, 2025 07:44 pm
The Friday FIve for 19 December 2025
anais_pf posting in thefridayfive1. What is one thing about you that you hate?
2. What is one thing about you that you love?
3. If you had to change one thing about you what would it be and why?
4. What is one word that you would use to define yourself?
5. Imagine what you would look like in a perfect world...what do you look like?
Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.
If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
2. What is one thing about you that you love?
3. If you had to change one thing about you what would it be and why?
4. What is one word that you would use to define yourself?
5. Imagine what you would look like in a perfect world...what do you look like?
Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.
If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
Dec. 18th, 2025 08:17 am
Bechdel in Bookshelf
lb_leeRogan: Last night, I found myself pondering what narrative story books/movies of mine (no essays!) fail the Bechdel Test.
( nerd-sniped! )
( nerd-sniped! )
Tags:
Dec. 18th, 2025 12:58 pm
The hoped-for silver lining of the Yona manga ending!
umadoshi"Yona of the Dawn Gets Sequel Anime". [Anime News Network]
I'm delighted both that this is happening and that it was announced so promptly on the heels of the manga ending. (;_;) As we learned from the second Fruits Basket anime arriving thirteen years after that manga ended, anything is possible, but it's sure nicer to have this sort of thing happen with a speed that makes more sense.
ANN says "sequel anime", which I'd imagine means it'll pick up where the first one left off, but how OAVs factor into that, I'm not even going to try to guess.
I'm delighted both that this is happening and that it was announced so promptly on the heels of the manga ending. (;_;) As we learned from the second Fruits Basket anime arriving thirteen years after that manga ended, anything is possible, but it's sure nicer to have this sort of thing happen with a speed that makes more sense.
ANN says "sequel anime", which I'd imagine means it'll pick up where the first one left off, but how OAVs factor into that, I'm not even going to try to guess.
