miscellany

13/3/26 22:48
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[personal profile] kaberett

In apparent celebration of Migraine World Summit, I have spent this evening having an unscheduled migraine attack for no obvious reason. I disapprove. (Because I've been doing a lot of audiovisual processing, captions notwithstanding? Because I had my screen much brighter than usual for a while playing a colours game?* Because oven't?)

Nonetheless I have watched and made digital notes on all of 2026 Day 2, watched and made digital notes on 3/4 talks from 2025 Day 2 (which I missed at the time), and made physical notes for 2025 Day 1 and 1/4 of Day 2. I am... sort of catching up.

I am really enjoying my pens. I also find myself with the problem of wanting lots of different notebooks and, also, to keep everything in One Single Solitary Notebook, For Convenience...

* NB I am a rocks nerd. My colour discrimination is ludicrously good. I am sorry that that link is weird and competitive about my ridiculous score, but not sorry enough to provide you with the bare link.

A good grade in therapy, something that--

12/3/26 22:46
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[personal profile] kaberett

I currently have a bit of a special interest happening, right. So I spent a bit of today's therapy session talking about it, as one does, and then meandered around to one of my current Big Topics[1], and made it all the way through to the wrapping-up stage of proceedings!

... when My Favourite Metaphor About Therapy abruptly suggested itself to me and I had. A Moment.

Which is how I found myself explaining that, in a thematically appropriate coincidence, said favourite metaphor is "emotional heavy lifting, with trained spotter".

To which came the response: "... can I. borrow that."

And thus: A Good Grade In Therapy.

[1] social anxiety. it's the social anxiety.

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apparently we also need a new oven

11/3/26 22:40
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[personal profile] kaberett

Via divers alarums and excursions we have established that the oven seems to trip All The Electrics... when it hits A Certain Temperature. ( Read more... )

But. BUT. Today I SAW THE BAT for the first time this year (having been doing a questionable job of actually managing to watch for it at bat o'clock over the last several weeks); and my Special Interest In Moving My Body went surprisingly well; and A curled up on the sofa and did some more Reading About Special Interest with me; and I am actually doing alright.

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Freedom of speech

11/3/26 14:18
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[personal profile] liv
There's been a rant I have been meaning to turn into an essay for a while, but Ken White (Popehat) has done it better, so I direct you to his really well-written and referenced (though US-centric) article: The Fashionable Notion of 'Free Speech Culture' Is Justifying State Censorship, Ironically. Criticism. Is. Not. Censorship, and “Free speech culture” has a natural tendency to discount the speech rights and interests of people who criticize speech.

This is important in Europe too, not just in the US, because it's a deliberate, specific Russian infowar tactic to promote far right events at UK universities and claim censorship if anyone objects. A network based at [Cambridge] University and backed by Thiel, which it said was using the issue of free speech to “normalise white nationalism on UK campuses”. Neither Putin nor Thiel has anyone's freedom at heart, and they're all too successful at distracting people with a toddler-like notion of "freedom" where you get to say the naughty words without being told off.

( shorter version of my original opinion, building on White's piece )

[books, movement] A Physical Education, Casey Johnston

10/3/26 22:34
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[personal profile] kaberett

Back at the beginning of January [profile] beadsbuttonslace wrote up some reflections on this book, which interested me enough that I put in a hold on my library's only digital copy, which was an audiobook, and then I managed to listen to it in under a week, and now I am subscribed to Johnston's newsletter (and reading its archives) and also trying to work out whether I want to buy a physical copy or a digital copy for my own library.

Which is to say: I liked it. A lot.

( Read more... )

And some final notes:

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vital functions

8/3/26 22:57
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[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. I confess I have tripped and fallen into a special interest and am therefore currently primarily working my way through the archives of She's A Beast. BUT.

  • This was all kicked off by A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting, Casey Johnston, inhaled; more comprehensive notes on this topic currently part way through being typed up.
  • I am also about half way through (reading!) LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell, also Casey Johnston, and am having fun starting to play with moving my body in ways.
  • Continuing the theme of Moving Bodies In Ways and What Even Are Muscles, I have also started Science of Pilates (Tracy Ward).
  • I also continue to work my way through What Is Queer Food?, John Birdsall, and am nearly done. Probably more thoughts on this at some point in the upcoming week.

Writing. Words continue to, very slowly, go up.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac. Very close to being caught up to the point I've theoretically listened to with A (some of which I wound up being asleep during)...

Playing. Inkulinati Exploders run on Master difficulty continues. We have now broken a quill (DEMONS :|) but we do continue to progress...

Another round (well, most of one) of The Little Orchard, this time with The Child deciding that we SHOULD turn the Bothersome Crows back over and put them back...

Cooking. New recipe! Meera Sodha's leek & chard martabak. Unlikely to make again but not sorry to have made.

Exploring. Adventures this week have included:

  • Wood Green Mall, which contains PRIDE STAIRS, and the Community Diagnostic Centre, which contains GIANT WATERFOWL MURAL
  • the walk between Wood Green underground station and Wood Green Mall, feat. ACORN BOLLARDS
  • went for a bit of a Cross Walk one evening earlier this week (brain said AAAAAAH) and discovered along the way a fantastic white-with-pink-stripes camellia
  • generally Going Out To Run Errands is currently accompanied by Many Flowers and that is nice, actually

Observing. flowersss.

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[food] the courgette and tofu thing

7/3/26 23:59

have a daffodil(s)

5/3/26 23:23
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[personal profile] kaberett

a frenzy of daffodils, with ridiculous doubled frills; the one in the foreground has a green streak

About twenty metres up the road is a front garden that is, at this time of year, full of ridiculous daffodils. It is an Annual Delight. I took this photo yesterday, and then I dragged A out to visit it at lunchtime today, in glorious weather. It has been a good day.

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[migraine] a belated realisation

4/3/26 22:41
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[personal profile] kaberett

This evening I am having A Headache. It's an annoying headache; it's definitely a distracting headache; but it's "just" A Headache. No other symptoms that I'm noticing.

... except that it's Exactly The Right Time For A Migraine, and yesterday I had a bunch of migraine prodrome symptoms. (Being Too Warm. Wanting to close my eyes a lot. Nausea. Overwhelming despair.)

I find myself Wondering whether my regular menstrual migraines actually started on 1st January 2021, or if that's just the point at which symptoms tipped over into very obviously photosensitive migraine. At that point I was on continuous acute pain relief, and it is slowly dawning on me that An Annoying Headache with no other symptoms distinguishable from background noise (anxiety, depression, thesis-related stress, ...) is the kind of thing I'd have just merrily ignored, and for that matter that I'd still be ignoring if I weren't now Keeping A Headache Diary...

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vital functions

1/3/26 23:45
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[personal profile] kaberett

... is a placeholder; apparently getting the bus to a hospital appointment today ate my entire brain, and I need to be up early tomorrow morning for a different medical appointment for a different body part in a different place. (Why am I being sent to get an ultrasound four stops down the Piccadilly line instead of five minutes up the road? A MYSTERY.)

Reading. Progress on my pile of tabs, mostly in the form of short stories! ( Read more... )

And finally Library Books In Progress:

  • What Is Queer Food? (James Birdsall): gradually plodding along; I'm enjoying learning about how many of the people involved in various culinary anecdotes with which I was previously familiar in outline... were queer, but so far (a little over halfway through) the attempts to construct a narrative or category of Queer(ed) Food feel quite contrived to me. Possibly this is because I have yet to come across an instance of Academic Queering of Whatever that, like, speaks to me, you know.
  • A Physical Education, Casey Johnston (in audio?!). ADORING THIS. Probably gonna buy myself a copy. Fuller notes to (possibly) follow (look, I've written some of them up at this point--). (Actually finished at the time I am filling this post in, though it wasn't at the point at which initial post was made, so I am absolutely holding out a bit on writing up...)

Writing. I continue to eke out words. :|

Watching. One (1) episode of Farscape (S2E08), while bleaching A. It sure was a Farscape episode.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac! And also (see Reading) A Physical Education, Casey Johnston.

Playing. ... we are tentatively trying an Inkulati run with Exploders at max difficulty. It's... working? I'm suspicious about how well it's working (so far) (and I am also annoyed that I couldn't make my beloved foxes work this well).

Eating. Enjoyed discovering Kiernan's Coffee at Wimpole; particularly appreciated the cinnamon bun but the multi-inch stack of whipped cream on top of my hot chocolate was also extremely welcome (albeit messy). That was not my only ridiculous pile of whipped cream of the day; I also got Birthday Cake later on in the afternoon...

Exploring. Had a good poke around Wimpole on Saturday. Enjoyed the Walled Garden feat. nonsense petticoat daffodils out in force, and also bimbling round Home Farm, where there were sleepy Shires and tiny (squeaky) piglets.

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some good things!

27/2/26 23:40
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[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Got libgourou working (link to follow), with thanks to [personal profile] simont for bringing it to my attention and [personal profile] me_and for making sympathetic and encouraging noises while I stared muzzily at the documentation this evening. Happy to report that I have successfully downloaded Adobe DRMed ebooks from my command line without any Windows install or emulators at all.
  2. I am enjoying A Physical Education so much - SO much - that I have gone out and bought a book it recommends (Starting Strength; very wordy descriptions of which muscles one should be using for what, apparently, i.e. exactly my kind of thing). Acquiring my own copy once I've given the library's back is a definite possibility. It's really interesting in terms of both the pain Project (memoir about embodiment!) and in terms of my own movement-related special interests (e.g. the gulf between my experience of largely self-led Pilates vs the version available via mainstream contemporary classes embedded in diet culture). Lots of content notes but I'm really really liking it. Gratitude to [personal profile] buttonsbeadslace for posting about it (... link to follow...)
  3. Stupid Little Walk yielded both very cheap pistachio croissants (MORE BREAKFAST NONSENSE) and a very cheap "cinnamon danish with vanilla fondant icing" I've been vaguely eyeing up but was also very suspicious of. I am glad to have tried it and probably won't get it again, even if it is only 19p.
  4. This evening's tofu was particularly cooperative with being cooked. (Thanks be to [personal profile] evilsusan for the specific combination of courgettes, tofu and garlic that I still make regularly lo these many years later )
  5. I hit refresh on Oxfam Online and discovered that the rotating sale has migrated back around to "30% off 3+ books". Thus now on their way to me I have: the first edition of Explain Pain for an astonishingly reasonable price (I want to do the deeply nerdy thing of a side-by-side comparison with the second edition, and also to revisit its structure while the second edition is on loan to a physio friend...); a book entitled Science of Pilates, which I'd previously eyed up but that time it sold before I got around to it; a book about allotments and cooking; and a probably questionable out-of-print 1980s cookbook...

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