[pain] working on an articulation

Oct. 29th, 2025 09:48 pm
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[personal profile] kaberett

I have, in the latest book, got to The Obligatory Page And A Half On Descartes, but this one makes a point of describing it as a "reductionistic approach".

The Thing Is, of course, that much like the Bohr model (for all that's 250 years younger, give or take), for many and indeed quite plausibly most purposes, The Cartesian Model Of Pain is, for most people and for most purposes, good enough: if you've got to GCSE level then you'll have met the Bohr model; if you get to A-level, you'll start learning about atomic orbitals; and then by the time I was starting my PhD I had to throw out the approximation of atomic nuclei as volumeless points (the reason you get measurable and interpretable stable isotope fractionations of thallium is -- mostly! -- down to the nuclear field shift effect).

Similarly, most of the time you don't actually need to know anything beyond the lie-to-children first-approximation of "if you're experiencing pain, that means something is damaging you, so work out what it is and stop doing that". The Bohr model is good enough for a general understanding of atomic bonds and chemical reactions; specificity theory is good enough for day-to-day encounters with acute pain.

The problem with specificity theory isn't actually that it's wrong (although it is); it's that it gets misapplied in cases where Something More Complicated is going on in ways that obscure even the possibility of Something More Complicated. The problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that it doesn't get presented with the footnote of "this isn't the whole story, and for understanding anything beyond very short-term acute pain you need to go into considerably more detail". But most people aren't in more complex pain than that! Estimates run at ~20% of the population living with chronic pain, but even if we accept the 43% that sometimes gets quoted about the UK, most people do not live with chronic pain.

There's probably an analogy here with the "Migraine Is Not Just A Bad Headache" line (and indeed I'm getting increasingly irritated with all of these books discussing migraine as though the problem is solely and entirely the pain, as opposed to, you know, the rest of the disabling neurological symptoms) but I'm upping my amitriptyline again and it's past my bedtime so I'm not going to work all the details of that out now, but, like, Pain Is Not Just A Tissue Damage, style of thing.

Anyway. The point is that I still haven't actually read Descartes (I've got the posthumously published and much more posthumously translated Treatise on Man in PDF, I just haven't got to it yet) and nonetheless I am bristling at people describing him as reductionist (derogatory). Just. We aren't going to do better if we also persist in wilful misunderstandings and misrepresentations for the sake of slagging off someone who has been dead for three hundred and seventy-five years instead of recognising the actual value inherent in "good enough for most people most of the time", and how that value complicates attempts at more nuance! How about we actually acknowledge the reasons the idea is so compelling, huh, and discuss the circumstances under which the approximation holds versus breaks down? How about that for an idea.

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[personal profile] kitewithfish
What I’ve Read

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer – As I wrote in more detail last week, this book is a really great overview of the Ottoman Empire, in the opinion of someone who knows very little about the Ottoman Empire. Baer’s style felt approachable and clear and made a point of grouping developments both thematically and in a clear timeline.

I will concede, I felt more positively about the book last week, but that’s not a writing failure. The latter half of the book is a downward slide from religious tolerance and multicultural assimilation into a larger Empire (good or bad, it did allow upward mobility!) to an ethnic and religious paranoia of the non-Turkish elements of the failing state. The book’s coverage of the Armenian Genocide was, in fact, both horribly clear and quite personal and made me very very sad.

I again recommend this book and if anyone has other books that look at the Ottoman Empire’s history, I would like to read them!

Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy Sayers (narrated by Ian Carmichaels, thank you again anon donor of audiobooks!) – Hilariously funny and also deeply goddamn bleak. It does a very compelling job of showing Wimsey’s doublemindedness while he’s undercover – at times, he truly thinks of himself as Mr Bredon, advertising copywriter in a quirky little office, and occupies that role with humor and warmth. Then he has to come back to being Lord Peter Wimsey, investigating the death of a young man at that same office, and knowing that he’s likely to do real damage to at least one person involved in a real and dangerous criminal ring at the advertising firm. The tension is well structured and given breaks of humor around the office, but has clear stakes for individual people we meet who are harmed by the crimes the scheme is covering up.

Spoilery reflections on the ending of this book and on The Unfortunateness at the Bellona Club )


What I’m Reading


Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove – I tried the audiobook – I really did! But the main narrator was much too annoying to continue. (I’d mention them by name but this appears to be an ensemble audiobook with several narrators and I can’t tell which one this was.) The book is unfortunately for a book club – I would have bailed by now, if it were up to me, just because the pacing is so glacial. It’s trying to do Murderbot and failing to make it fun.

A key failure is the description impedes the pacing. When you come across our Computer Main Character doing a normal thing in an unusual way because they are a computer, not a human, you get a description of how that action is completed in computer-y way. And the first time, that’s great. But. You get that same description over, and over, and over. As a result, instead of grabbing the reader swiftly and towing them excitingly thru realizing, gasp! your ship is full of CORPSES! Then the WEREWOLF attacks! - the text plods. Pauses. Observes. Describes. And then plods again.

This is rapidly proving to be the sort of book I would read ONLY via audiobook because the text is too irksome, but the audiobook sucked! The narrator is very very English and very very irksome. So on I plod, reading a book that doesn’t trust me to remember that computers are different than people.

The Nine Tailors
by Dorothy Sayers – I almost mention this book in self defense against the accusation that I’m bored by Of Monsters and Mainframes because I only like sexier and dumber writing. (No one has made this accusation, other than the hobgoblins of my mind.) This is an English countryside murder mystery that doesn’t get to the discovery of the body until our main character has been introduced to the little town via their New Year’s Eve change ringing performance that involves 8 men ringing church bells for nine hours in precise mathematical permutations. It’s fascinating, and compelling, and I don’t actually care that I’m not able to perfectly understand everything that’s happening, because the book’s momentum is taking me forward at a satisfying clip. The people of the town are interesting, and there’s a blatant self-insert of Sayer’s childhood self in a precocious little teen who wants to be a writer. (I love her.)

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison - for next week, I have read the first half, I should get on this!
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed
Next Earthsea book?
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Sarah Russell of The Ostomy Studio, the person who made such an enormous difference to my general State Of Being just over a year ago via the medium of a private Pilates lesson pre-surgery, has just announced publication of the new Exercise and Physical Activity after Stoma Surgery best practice guidelines that she's been working on for literal years along with some amazing collaborators!

The principles here are the bedrock for the private lesson I had before surgery, and are also what I used as my foundation for rehab despite not after all needing to work with a stoma; I've not read them in full, but if you know folk they might be of interest to then please do pass the link on <3

Films I Watched

Oct. 28th, 2025 11:10 am
tiggymalvern: (want to see - D)
[personal profile] tiggymalvern
Sinners Really enjoyed this. Good cast, beautifully directed with good sound and music, very much captures the mood and the vibe. A historic US-set vampire film that also covers racism and wealth inequality sounds like an interesting mix and they definitely made it work.

The Thursday Murder Club I was looking forward to this, because I love the books and they got an amazing cast for the film, but with hindsight I suspect the let-down was inevitable. The cast are as good as expected, but overall the film’s just fine. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing standout. And honestly that’s the problem of trying to adapt a book like this, where the strength doesn’t come from the plot but the witty brilliance of the text that makes you laugh out loud. Some of that carries over in the dialogue, but so much of it’s in the descriptive writing and there’s no way to capture that. It’s the same problem that afflicts every Terry Pratchett adaptation – when the genius is in the written word, you can’t put that on a screen. So you end up with something mildly entertaining that you watch once and then move on.

Mickey 17 Another one that I was expecting more from based on how good Parasite was. Mickey 17 has a lot of valid things to say about capitalism and worker exploitation and US christofascist politicians, but it really does whack you over the head with them. The brilliance of Parasite was in the slow build – it starts with the tale of a poor family who tell small lies to get some money, then bigger and bigger lies, and it’s all fine until it starts causing harm to other people who don’t deserve it, and things spiral uncontrollably. Mickey 17 doesn’t build – it opens with the sledgehammer and then it really has nowhere to go. Worth a watch, definitely funny in parts, but not what I was hoping for.

Superman I heard so many people enthusing about this on tumblr that I went in with expectations that were too high. It’s fine. It’s a perfectly decent Superman film. It made the sensible decision to dispense with the origin story that everyone already knows, and the choice to have the Clark-Lois relationship already established with her in the know was a good one. But it’s hardly redefining the franchise or the superhero genre. And James Gunn has done so much good stuff, but I’m guessing the problem here was the studio putting too many limitations on him. He had to make a Superman film, so it wasn’t allowed to be a James Gunn film, and the man’s at his best when he’s allowed to push the boat all the way out. Honestly, the best reason for watching this film was to see how it ties in to season two of Peacemaker, because that was good. (More on that when I do the next TV round-up…)

The Alabama Solution And in an entirely different vein, an HBO documentary about the appalling conditions in Alabama state prisons. Filmed mostly by the prisoners themselves on smuggled in cellphones, they’re able to document what goes on and film all the things the film crew were barred from seeing when they went into the prison themselves. The conditions unfit for habitation, the brutality of the guards (backed up by testimony from a couple of ex-prison guards) – it’s not exactly shocking, because we know what goes on in those places, but seeing it is different from hearing about it. And then of course there are consequences for the prisoners who were brave enough to do it... Far from an easy watch, but it deserves to be seen.

Alphabet meme

Oct. 27th, 2025 07:39 am
laurajv: Holmes & Watson's car is as cool as Batman's (Default)
[personal profile] laurajv
Picked up the AO3 alphabet meme from [personal profile] viridian5:

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

Is this is when I am punished for not having uploaded all my old fic to AO3? Let us find out.

A: As compasses. The Goblin Emperor, Idra & Maia
B: Baresark. due South, Fraser/RayK
C: Contamination. Sherlock, casefic
D: Dry Cell. Highlander, Duncan & Methos
E: Exhalation. Star Trek x The Sentinel, Jim/Blair. Second in a series.
F: From Sweet Fellowship Comes Nectar. LOTR, Legolas/Gimli
G: Gammer Gurton's Garland. Sherlock, Sherlock/John, Eurus.
H: hold fast (hold steady). Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Cody, OC/OC
I: I spread my dreams under your feet. Star Trek 2009, Spock/Uhura.
J: [nothing]
K: Kaiidth. Star Trek 2009, Spock, T'Pring, T'Pau, Stonn
L: Lied: Lay My Heart Naked. LOTR, Legolas/Gimli.
M: Maybe Next Time. The Sentinel, Jim/Blair.
N: Numberless the ways, and imperceptible. LOTR, Legolas/Gimli.
O: Once Upon A Time. Highlander, Methos/Kronos.
P: a picnic planned for you and me. Good Omens TV, Aziraphale/Crowley
Q: [nothing]
R: Roust. Written with [personal profile] basingstoke. due South, Fraser/RayK.
S: ship's night, residential deck, third corridor. MCU, Loki & Thor
T: Tech. Hockey RPF, gen
U: unsuitable. The Bone Key, A Theory of Haunting. Blanche Parrington Crowe, Griselda Parrington, & the unfortunate Kyle Murchison Booth.
V: Valse a deux temps. due South x The Sentinel, Fraser/RayK, Jim/Blair
W: The Wrong Tree. Sherlock, Sherlock/John.
X: [nothing]
Y: [nothing]
Z: [nothing]

21/26. I'm almost certain uploading my old fic would not have helped. What I should stop doing is using so many I and W titles and branch out a little more.

vital functions

Oct. 26th, 2025 09:19 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Two things finished, various things picked up and put down again.

Ouch!, Kerr & McRobbie: the subtitle is Why pain hurts, and why it doesn't have to; it's indicative of my current preoccupations that I was actively surprised that it is not, in fact, about chronic pain, except in passing, in that it's mentioned in the introduction in the context of pains the authors have experienced, and then it just sort of... vanishes again. What it actually is is more-or-less a tour of the sociology of acute pain, from a variety of perspectives and contexts, and an invitation to reshape your relationship with pain, optionally via the medium of sports.

It's very much aimed at a general audience (by which I mean both "not people with any particular pre-existing knowledge about pain" and also "not chronic pain patients"), with the infuriating-to-me feature of having not an actual bibliography but instead a "selected references" section, i.e. any claims I wanted to actually check required digging and then guessing (and in one case working out that they were actively wrong about which year the thing was published in, at least for referencing purposes). I did nonetheless get some useful information and vocabulary out of it (I'm especially here for the pointer to the 3P approach to pain management), and it prompted another couple of articulations.

Overall: not a disrecommendation; plausibly a light read if you have, you know, a recreational interest in pain; verify any specifics you want to rely on.

The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. A's conclusion was Well It Was Better Than The Second Film; mine was mild spoilers? )

and would be very happy to see that show up in an extended cut of the first film. The library doesn't have the second volume and I think we're unlikely to seek it out.

DW catch-up: halfway through September!

Playing. Inkulinati, mostly watching A play and occasionally making Suggestions. Does not work as well as a Shared Activity as I'd hoped (annoyingly I think I'd need to play basically all of it hands-on myself in order to internalise mechanics and strategy, rather than being able to e.g. swap who's driving for every level) but I am enjoying it happening in my vicinity. Today we also read the PDF of the art book together, which I am not counting as Reading because it was mostly looking at the pictures in another context.

And after six months I GOT UNSTUCK ON I Love Hue! The Ascension/Air/1, extremely gratified that searching for it revealed someone who'd managed to complete everything but that, and bolstered by this knowledge I turned brightness all the way up and the phone upside down and FINALLY managed to sort out the yellows, on my nth attempt... in way fewer than the average number of moves. VICTORY.

Cooking. Read more... )

dear yuletide writer!

Oct. 24th, 2025 08:42 pm
desecrets: (autumn)
[personal profile] desecrets
Hello!

First of all, thank you so much in advance!! And just in case, because I always get a little apprehensive about writing fills: go where your heart and the plot bunnies take you, and have fun!! 💗

I don't really have any hard DNWs. Things that are sometimes less to my tastes are:
  • non-canonical MCD (in fandoms where it's canonical it's totally fine!) 
  • "worldbuilding AUs", e.g. sentinel, soulbond, his dark materials au, etc.
  • heavy kink 
  • kidfic (think "3 Men and a Baby" style)
Genre-wise, pretty much go wild. I enjoy angst, h/c and whump, but also banter, fluff/romance, plotty/case-fic/monster of the week fic, and straight up smut. For any of the fandoms on this list, any of these things is great. I ship the duos requested in all fandoms, but obviously write gen if that's your speed. Happy ending not required!

Fandom-specific notes under the cut! )


kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Summary: nobody seems to have done the data analysis I actually want, because data collection is hard and then actually making it internationally comparable ditto, but the proportion of chronic pain cases that are primarily attributable to back pain Of Some Kind seems to be very roughly in the region of 20%-50%, depending.

Read more... )

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[personal profile] possibilityleft
The dark-eyed juncos are back and the sun is setting early. Welcome fall!

*****

books! )

Vampire Haven update

Oct. 23rd, 2025 02:03 pm
dannye_chase: (Default)
[personal profile] dannye_chase
 

Vampire Haven update

An in-progress 7-novella series of gay vampire erotic romance.

Book 1 is with its first beta reader!

❤️ Vampire/Human meet-cute

🧡 Charming playboy/Shy nerd

💛 Soft dom/New sub on journey of discovery

💚 Accidentally landing the most eligible bachelor

💙 Psychic connection

💜 Happy eternally after

Finn and August. A gorgeous, charming vampire looking for his happily-eternally-after falls ridiculously hard for a shy, nerdy human who’s never had a date in his life.

Want to read sneak peaks? They’re in my free author newsletter. (NSFW)

Finn Sullivan is among the most eligible bachelors in Chicago, with movie-star good looks and a reputation as a talented gentle dom. Secretly, he’s also a vampire looking for the love of his life in the shape of a human who wants a very long-term relationship. Finn realizes almost immediately upon meeting introverted, inexperienced August Amesbury that August could be The One. But Finn’s been disappointed in love before—will sweet, shy August only break his heart once more?

August Amesbury can get his head around the idea of actual vampires congregating in a diner to have lots of sex. And while he has no idea what these (very) friendly strangers mean when they say August is a sub in need of a gentle dom, he’s down for figuring that out. What August can’t believe is that Finn Sullivan, the most beautiful person in the world, could actually be interested in awkward, geeky August. But that could be a problem, because August is pretty sure he’s already falling in love.

Plus! A plot! What will August’s awful cousin Logan do when he finds out August has snagged the trophy lover Logan’s been chasing?

Tropes: charming/shy (my fave), gentle dom/sub, virginity kink, strangers to lovers

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ The Vampire Haven erotic romance series ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

kitewithfish: (daisy face)
[personal profile] kitewithfish
What I’ve Read

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club – Dorothy Sayers – I have been liberated from the library waitlist on the Wimsey audiobooks! (Thank you, kind person who may remain anonymous at their own discretion!)

Really enjoyed this one – several plots interacting with each other until mistakes get made. As I mentioned last week, the inciting incident is an elderly man found dead (!) of seemingly natural causes (?!) at his gentleman’s club. The time of his death has specific import because his wealthy sister has also died today. If he died after her, her will passes her money to him, and thru him, to his two sons; if the old man died before his sister, then her money passes nearly totally to her companion, a Miss Ann Dorland.

Sayers does such fantastic character work that the real pleasure of the novel is visiting with all of the people impacted in the death and investigation: one of his sons is impoverished by his PTSD and ashamed that his wife is earning their keep, so he’s an absolute ass to everyone around him. The older son is an unmarried old soldier who is utterly unflappable but deeply hurt that he can’t help his family more, and so driven to foolish ideas.

The book saves Miss Dorland’s interview with Wimsey for the end - simply a wonderful and sensitive examination of how trapped a feeling but strong willed woman could be in this era. In keeping her character and her intentions a blank until nearly the end of the book, Sayers keeps tension in the story in a way that I really enjoyed. It allowed Miss Dorland to feel real and wounded - I really enjoyed meeting the character like this. Loved the revelation of the mystery, honestly kind of loved the ending? It’s not unlike Clouds of Witness or Strong Poison, in that Sayers loves a woman being liberated from a horrible and immoral man, but it feels like its own thing.

Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin – Last week, I thought this would be a bit slow for me, and it’s not a speedy book. But it grew on me – Ged goes from a callow youth to a brave and cautious man. Le Guin throws enough ideas at this book to make a whole series, if she chose to focus on any one of them. Again, her strongest suite here is the capacity to think of both individuals and their communities as characters – Ged’s movement thru different islands and their different social levels and cultures take us on a journey with him, and provided subtle ways for him to grow as a person. Also, I do love that the best way to fight a dark spirit is to hunt it down and make it face you on your own terms. 

The Five Red Herrings (Dramatized) by Dorothy Sayers – I cannot say I followed this with an exacting focus. The performances by the voice cast were all quite good (to my un-Scottish ear) and I felt like a fair shake was made at really explaining a complicated murder plot. That said, it did feel so far the most like a whodunit, and I was less intrigued by the characters than I have been by Sayers novels. I enjoyed myself but I will put an asterisk by this book and read it properly later before I render a judgment on it. Someone who knows more about trains, art, or Scottish culture of the 1920s might be a better judge than me, in any case. Fun tho, and it kept me company on a rough cleaning day.

What I’m Reading

The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars and Caliphs by Marc David Baer – about 79% as of time of writing. Baer’s thesis is that the Ottoman Empire is part of European history and neglecting it leaves the story of European development incomplete. I was largely on his side already, and man, he’s really done a good job of convincing me on the particulars! 

Baer's book is brisk and covering a lot of topics and figures– I feel like I’m getting a detailed thematic sketch of each major historical figure rather than full biography, as the focus is much more on how the Ottoman politics developed over the course of the empire's six centuries, rather than a biography. It’s broad strokes about internal groups – Baer tends to do a quick summary of the historical context around a group (including deviant dervishes, apocalyptic Sufi movements, Shia factions that opposed the Osman family, warrior castes, tax farmers) and then gets into the specifics of the chronological conflicts and how they impacted the Empire and its connection to European Christian powers and other Muslim countries. It’s fascinating just how weird the Ottoman Empire was and how quickly it became a military power.

Baer also has done a good job anchoring the details of this history to people and topics that I already knew about. For example, Martin Luther’s 95 Theses or “Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” was published in 1517 because the Catholic Church was selling indulgences – specifically, to raise money to fund wars against the Ottomans! This kind of makes the Ottomans fairly crucial to the creation of Protestantism, one might argue! That seems important! Baer points out several other things Luther wrote about the Turks as a divine judgment on the sins of the Catholic Church. 

Sidebar: For context, I had a standard-to-good US public school history education, so I got a nice chunk of European history. Thematically, it focused on the nations with the most connection to US history -- so the UK, France, and Spain, the Dutch as an economic force, and the rise of Protestantism in the German states. I learned more about the Ottomans in passing when I studied in Vienna, and a bit more when I married an ex-Yugoslav, and honestly, through Dracula. So, I had a sense I wish missing a lot - this fills in a lot of the gaps nicely, and may suggest some more avenues for investigation.

This book probably doesn’t have enough detail for a real history buff, but if you’re looking for a broad overview on a brisk pace, you might well enjoy this.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers narrated by Ian Carmichaels – 40% ish – Started this and then realized I would have to push on the Ottoman audiobook to get it done before the library recalls it, so I am putting Sayers gently on hold for now.  (A minor note for some language that is pretty racist, in brief passing, even for the 1920s).

I supposed I am technically reading The Artist's Way? It feels a bit more like a user guide than a reviewable book, but I am doing it, and finding some of it useful. It came up online as a tool for ADHDers attempting to get in touch with their own artistic selves. Which, not quite what I am doing, but I am trying to be more attentive to my own metacognition, so here we are. 

What I’ll Read Next
Witness for the Dead Katherine Addison - xing book club
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed -xing book club
Of Monsters and Mainframes -Barbara Truelove - necromancy book club


kaberett: A series of phrases commonly used in academic papers, accompanied by humourous "translations". (science!)
[personal profile] kaberett

One of the things I'm sure I've come across repeatedly in the books I've read so far is the idea that a very high proportion of Chronic Pain Cases are down to either back pain or headache. This is important because back pain genuinely is something that has a massive nociplastic component, especially in the lower back, that is unequivocally worth treating (despite myself I remain grudgingly impressed with the Boulder Back Pain Study; and, to be clear, I do myself have a grumbly section of lower back following an injury a few years ago that I am practising all my Theories on!).

This is an Important To Me framing device because my point is that treatments aimed purely at nociplastic pain/central sensitisation cannot be expected to work as well for people with ongoing or recurrent tissue damage/injury... but why it's worth using some of these approaches anyway, with the understanding of the actual scope of what effects to hope for or expect. Which means I'd like to know where they're GETTING those numbers from.

Mindfulness for Health )

The Way Out (... long, bonus tangential rant) )

The Painful Truth )

... aaaaaaand it is now definitely past bedtime so I'll finish Revisiting Books tomorrow. (My notes on Explain Pain, consistent with it being generally competent, are that it doesn't go anywhere near talking about what The Most Common Forms Of Chronic Pain are; might have a quick flip through when I'm next in the same place as my copy. Also couldn't find anything in Touch. Will be revisiting the current book, Ouch!, in the morning...)

Talapus and Olallie Lakes

Oct. 22nd, 2025 11:18 am
tiggymalvern: (charles-erik good isn't it?)
[personal profile] tiggymalvern
Yesterday was another gorgeous afternoon - Tuesdays seem to be hiking days the last few weeks.

Talapus and Olallie )
dannye_chase: (Default)
[personal profile] dannye_chase
 

Welcome to Weird Wednesday! Today we are going to visit…nowhere.

No, really. Because when you stand at the center of a crossroads, that’s exactly where you are. Which road are you on? What direction are you going? There’s no path forward that doesn’t pass over some kind of border.

Crossroads are contradictory, and in folklore, that makes them very powerful. They’re “thin places,” meaning the border you cross may not only be physical, but metaphysical. It certainly makes dying or being buried at a crossroads quite a fearsome fate…

For one thing, it would be super noisy! Because you can meet all kinds of interesting characters at a crossroads:

The dying, the dead, the dreaming, the demonologists, and yes, the Devil.

Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post to get writing prompts, such as:

Runs like clockwork. Where does the Devil get the musical talent he sells at the crossroads? Maybe it’s the same talent every time, harvested from a soul who’s died and passed to the next hopeful bargainer. What if there was a whole steampunk-style system for transferring talent from one soul to another via jazzed-up (literally) musical instruments?

Image credit

DannyeChase.com
 ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

Soup Season

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:27 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

I have, today, made my first Soup of the autumn: carrot and leek and celery and a couple of potatoes for good measure (and I then added frozen peas to my portion, because I like them cold and not at all cooked and definitely not reheated repeatedly over the course of a week). Bread and cheese, fruit to follow. I didn't manage Monday Morning Soup Ritual this week, as you can tell from the fact that it's Tuesday, but. Soup.

Some other bits and pieces: I have reached the stage of Squash Week where I have more recipes I want to make than I have squash with which to make them (... and one spaghetti squash) (for which I have at least some open EatYourBooks tabs). I hit refresh in my Oxfam tab aaaaaand the sale has cycled around to 30% off 3+ books. I have a chilli order ready to go as soon as my new debit card arrives OR I get over myself and see whether the credit card is actually behaving. There is a batch of onions caramelising in the Instant Pot. The current pain book is abruptly unexpectedly absorbing -- it's much more Sociology Of Pain than I'd quite been expecting, but it's potentially building to making at least some of the argument I want to from a refreshingly different angle to everything else I've come across in my background reading so far, and in the meantime in spite of my frustrations with it it's prompting lots of Useful Thoughts.

And I am wearing my Seasonal Leggings (courtesy of Mardy Bum, findable primarily on Facebook, or Instagram for a bit of an idea) and my Extremely Enthusiastic Slippers, like so. Read more... )

Free Spec Rec

Oct. 21st, 2025 09:43 am
dannye_chase: (Default)
[personal profile] dannye_chase
 

This week’s free spec rec is the sentimental poem “Hotel for the Dead  by Ian Li in Orion’s Belt. 

foxtrotting / across blood-glazed floors with deathly grandeur.

Find all my spec recs

erinptah: (pyramid)
[personal profile] erinptah

Back in August 2024, Tyler James on ComixLaunch did a podcast episode about a rash of spam AI projects on Kickstarter. Campaigns with almost-identical templates, and an eerie lack of substance, where all the images look like Midjourney and all the text sounds like ChatGPT.

You can see him browsing them on-screen in the Youtube version. They don’t show up in Kickstarter’s own search results anymore, but I tracked down at least half of them.

(Here’s one of the project images. Fun game: guess which spam project title it goes with.)

Project image with text The Mountum Metropolils: A Fabtilch Vivibitie

These have almost exactly the same story sections, in the same order. (The last one screwed up their copy-pasting — they have the same headings in the text, they just pasted it all into a single section.) None of them have any actual comic pages, just 4-6 standalone illustrations, and most of them are clearly “six different responses Stable Diffusion/Midjourney came up with for the same prompt.”

Hilariously, “The Forgotten Realm” actually left a prompt in their campaign text: “An illustration featuring the archaeologist at the entrance to the hidden realm, surrounded by mythical creatures and ancient ruins, with a dark shadow looming in the background.”

They don’t even come up with their own image prompts! It’s just another point on the list of Things They Ask ChatGPT For!

Bot-generated image for that prompt

Tyler admits in the episode that he’s baffled about the point of the spam campaigns. Most of them have five-figure funding goals. If the idea is to swindle backers out of money, you have to make a campaign that can realistically get funded! Otherwise you’ll never get the money in the first place.

(Note, when I looked at the ones that are set to $5K — that’s The Enchanted Artifacts and Quantum Detective — I realized, the “Fundraising Goal” story section has a five-figure goal written. Whoever posted them, they changed the goal in one place, and didn’t proofread the rest.)

Here’s what I think he’s missing:

The goal is to swindle creators.

Somebody wants to do the crowdfunding equivalent of the “publishing startup” Spines. They want to post ads that say “Do you have a great comic idea that you want to sell on Kickstarter, but don’t know where to start? Hire ScamFunderCo! For just $4,000, we will use the power of AI to make the whole campaign for you!” They don’t actually care whether the project succeeds or not. All their profit comes from would-be creators, up front, a few grand at a time.

I’m guessing ScamFunderCo never got that far, because if ads like this were going around, the online comics community would definitely have been talking about it. Which suggests the spam campaigns were a proof-of-concept thing. ScamFunderCo was testing the waters, finding out if Kickstarter would clock them as spam upfront, or if their ChatGPT templates could get approved.

That explains the unreasonable funding goals, too. ScamFunderCo doesn’t actually want these to fund. That would obligate them to produce something! They just want a track record of “see, here’s our proof that we make real KS campaigns.”

A track record with a 100% failure rate won’t necessarily hurt them, either. For comparison, multi-level marketing companies are legally required to share income disclosure statements, which show 99% of their members lose money — then they go “but if you just work really hard, you could totally be one of the 1%! Aren’t you willing to work hard? Don’t you believe in yourself?” And some people still get conned into signing up.

ScamFunderCo could get awfully far by claiming “if your idea is better than these, your campaign could totally fund. Don’t you believe in your idea? Good, now hand over that $4K.”

In the ComixLaunch episode, Tyler reveals that he reported the spam projects he saw, and according to later episodes, he got encouraging responses. First, the campaigns were still up, but they started adding “AI usage disclosures”…which were clearly still fraudulent, and also ChatGPT-produced. (The Time Traveler’s Diary has an example.) Eventually, all of them got suspended by Kickstarter.

So I’m feeling hopeful about ScamFunderCo never getting off the ground.

“Here are the projects we’ve made, 100% of them flopped” could be explained to potential marks as Those Creators Just Weren’t Good Enough, You’re Different, You’re Special. “Here are the projects we’ve made, 100% of them got booted off the platform” is a lot harder to handwave.

Even if the scammers behind that first round of projects have given up, I’m sure new enterprising con artists will keep trying. I’m sure it’s taking some extra behind-the-scenes filtering effort from the staff at Kickstarter (and BackerKit, which has been more restrictive about bot-generated content from the start) to keep them at bay.

I appreciate the effort, and I hope they keep it up.

(I stand with Kickstarter United.)


vital functions

Oct. 19th, 2025 11:00 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. No finishes, lots of fragments.

Started: The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. Their faces are WRONG and I don't LIKE it. (Shared Reading Experience.) I also don't like The Smoking, and I really feel the absence of the baklava scene.

In progress: Forgotten Fruits, Stocks, which despite saying I was going to DNF I have continued working my way through, with occasional grumpy squawks; Index, a history of the, Duncan, in very small nibbles; and I'm now a third of the way through Ouch!, Kerr + McRobbie, which is much more sociology than I was expecting when I bought it, having failed at that point to register that one of the authors is a sociologist. A bunch of the neuroanatomy is irritatingly (and unnecessarily! they could have just been less specific!) wrong; we've had a lengthy case study focussing on endometriosis but as yet no indication that they're actually considering the role of ongoing tissue damage. Not ruling out that they'll get there, though.

Dreamwidth catch-up: UP TO SEPTEMBER.

Listening. Cornish waves recording.

Cooking. Ridiculous Textures Of Beetroot from The Modern Vegetarian (good, did like); mildly underwhelmed by Bengali five-spice roasted squash, a totally acceptable meal it was very pleasant to be able to stick in the oven and forget about while I did something else; and stir-fried pumpkin with cashews from Rosa's Thai Café: the Vegetarian Cookbook.

Buttermilk continues to work. Managed some bread. Baked some crabapples and then singularly failed to actually make the ginger-and-lime caramel to coat them in, so this lot probably needs composting and I'll try again next week. Maybe. (Raymond Blanc recipe, from The Lost Orchard, which I much preferred at least so far to Forgotten Fruits.)

Eating. Particularly excited this week by Limonera pears, which are apparently DPO Spanish-cultivated Docteur Jules Guyot! All of the descriptions say "very reminiscent of Williams, flavour not as good unless you get them just right", to which I add that they are sliiiiightly firmer fleshed in a way that I think is an active plus.

I am very much enjoying yoghurt + hazelnuts + a drizzle of quince syrup.

Creating. ... took some photos of some plants?

Growing. MORE SAFFRON. Still very excited by the saffron. Also the chillis. (Home saffron also now definitively coming up, in the trough if not around the fig, but no sign of it intending to flower, alas.)

Cannot tell if the windowsill lemongrass is in fact just dried out or if it's in the Growing Many Roots stage. Grumpily aware that going digging is counterproductive. Pineapple continues pineapple.

Observing. A MUNTJAC. There was, at the plot, A Great Rustling out of the plum tree on the neighbouring plot, and I looked up and thought, for an entire moment, "gosh that's a remarkably large fox with a remarkably short tail", before my brain caught up with the data it was actually being sent. Less than twenty metres away. Think that's the closest one of them's ever been to me (at least that I've noticed)!

some good things

Oct. 18th, 2025 11:36 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Spontaneous(ish) brunch at the localish Gail's, in that it's a thing I have been meaning to do for A While and the weather will shortly be getting cold enough (and likely damp enough) that their outside seating loses its appeal. Underwhelming hot chocolate but I really liked the sesame-cardamom bun -- think Kardemummebullar With Bonus Sesame; I got the last one and it was way better than I was expecting. (Millennial Avocado Toast also tasty.)
  2. Successfully acquired Discount Bread from the supermarket this evening, for the purpose of tomorrow's dinner (a recipe from Salt Fat Acid Heat which will use the cavolo nero from the fridge + some of the Seasonal Squash in a panzanella).
  3. And I was nearly back to baseline on the walk home from same, which is a very welcome development (I have been Lingeringly Ill for the last four weeks).
  4. Successfully read a chapter of The Old Guard comic (on loan from library) on my laptop as a Shared Activity. Consequently we are about a fifth of the way through. I prefer the film.
  5. I think the chilli plant I lost track of the label for might plausibly, finally, be a Trinidad Perfume??? Fingers crossed for it managing to usefully set fruit (and I really do need to bring All the chillis in from the greenhouse...)
  6. I am listening to Cornish waves while I get ready for bed. Is good. <3

did some errands

Oct. 17th, 2025 10:53 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Debit card in amended name theoretically on its way to me. Two sets of Objects belonging to Players are now OUT OF MY HOUSE and IN THE HANDS OF ROYAL MAIL. And on the way back up the hill, when I was in less of a hurry, I paused to Observe Some Plants.

Ergo: Some Plants.

grey brick container merging seamlessly with floor, dark green hebe, firey autumnal decorative maple

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