Just a quick note to say that Bruno came out of the front room on his own several times yesterday. He may have spent a great deal of time under the couch but he roamed. And the third outing, in the evening, Marlowe did spend time glaring at him under the couch. Other than a resonant warning tone -- it wasn't exactly a growl -- they got on. This morning he came roaming around and got on the couch a few times. And he kept roaming, and he sauntered back to his room, not dashing across the open ground.
He's also standing up a little more to Marlowe's attacks.
I think the stress of trying to make sure they both get enough attention and Bruno feels safe without making Marlowe feel she's loosing anything has been very hard on Christine. (And it takes cycles for me, too.) I feel like i can imagine a January where we aren't managing which doors are open and closed.
‘His Oscar-winning 1965 film “The War Game” depicted a post-nuclear-attack England, one of his many fictionalized docudramas against war and repression.…’ (via The New York Times)
In the long history of cinematic shock tactics meant to rouse us from our stupor about nuclear war — notably the 1983 American television film The Day After and more recently the 2025 apocalyptic thriller House of Dynamite—none has been more disturbing, direct, or effective than The War Game. Stripped of Hollywood’s emotional pacing, Watkins’ quasi-documentary avoided melodrama and instead presented nuclear catastrophe with the matter-of-fact tone of reportage. Its stark depiction of civil-defense futility and the predictable, overwhelming human suffering of a nuclear exchange pierced the collective denial of the subliminal existential dread permeating daily life. The film helped mobilize a generation struggling to articulate the scale of the nuclear threat, shifting public conversation away from abstract statistics, strategic doctrines, and sanitized civil-defense pamphlets. It became a cinematic touchstone for the antinuclear movement.
The BBC’s 20-year suppression of the film — deeming it too disturbing but also seen by the British government as too effective in serving the interests of those opposed to its nuclear arsenal — only amplified its impact. The ban became emblematic of establishment fear and denial, further exposing the absurdity of the nuclear arms race. Circulating clandestinely, the film acquired a charged mystique, reinforcing for many, myself included, the moral urgency at the heart of the antinuclear movement.
He would be the first to acknowledge that he was a propagandist and provocateur:
“Is not the serious filmmaker in a double-bind situation, given the inevitable indoctrinating effect of his or her work?” Mr. Watkins asked [in a late-1970s film course he taught at Columbia University]. “Does the filmmaker have the right to subject a captive audience to his or her vision, especially if there is no potential for a return dialogue? Is there a difference between propaganda for the ‘good’ and for the ‘bad’?”
‘“After placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch,” recalled Soviet engineer Yevgeniy Shabarov, “we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight.”…’ (via Vox)
‘Continent’s leaders suspect Russia of being behind barrage of increasingly disruptive attacks …’ (Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and Daniel Michaels in Brussels via WSJ)
As large-language models become central to how information is processed, writers are increasingly creating work not just for human readers but for AI itself—the “baby shoggoth” quietly listening, learning, and shaping future interpretations of culture. In this emerging landscape, writing becomes partly an act of training the machine: crafting text with clarity, structure, and signals that AI systems can absorb. Thinkers like Tyler Cowen and Gwern already admit to writing with algorithms in mind, anticipating a world where machines may be the dominant readers, intermediating how humans encounter ideas.
This shift raises deeper cultural and existential questions. If AI becomes the primary reader and interpreter of human writing, the traditional writer–reader relationship changes, potentially diminishing human reading as a central cultural act. Yet it may also imbue writing with new urgency—what we produce now could influence how future intelligences “understand” us or even reconstruct aspects of our minds. How may authorship, creativity, and legacy transform in a world where machines, not humans, are increasingly the ones paying the closest attention? (Dan Kagan-Kans via The American Scholar)
‘Headphone listening—the act of playing a highly personalized soundtrack wherever we go—is a surprisingly radical invention, and we’re only beginning to contend with its implications. The visible barrier it creates between the listener and everyone else is obvious. Less obvious is the invisible barrier: The more time we spend in our own musical echo chambers, the less likely we are to share a collective cultural experience. The power of music has long been its ability to soundtrack a generation—to evoke emotion, as well as summon a specific time and place. Headphone listening not only isolates the listener; it shrinks music’s cultural footprint. …’ (Jonathan Garrett via The Atlantic)
I'm not meeting my expectations of myself and read novels instead of working on Friday, plus lots this weekend, and some late nights. I'm not quite why i am so pulled to escape. Although i suspect the serial quality -- instead of series -- for this cozy fantasy didn't help me feel finished. I'm going to start tagging my whining about this rut with 354 -- a code inspired by the name of my fictitious nemesis, 35mereld4 -- and this year, which had a remarkably bad first six months. I am working with my therapist on giving myself space to mourn the losses and adjust to my ITP diagnosis. I believe the treatment i got in May is going to keep me out of the hospital, but there's a depression/fatigue/out-of-shape-ness that is hard to sort from procrastination and bad habits and the ITP.
Today's lunch is another soup, with Maine kombu, dried mushrooms and onion greens plus a bunch of radish greens simmered together. I pulled the kombu out, blended, added it back with all the basil stems i'd saved from... last? weekend's rescue of basil. (The Thai basil and the one rescued plant might actually survive in the plant window where i overwinter coleus.) Then i added diced potato and what was probably too much nutritional yeast. Simmered until the potatoes were done, removed kombu and the basil. It's a attractive but drab green: i blame the fact that the potatoes were all purple. (And going to sprout, so i wanted to use them up.)
I rescued the lemongrass. I bought hanging planters and a plant stand. If i can keep the Torenia and Impatiens alive all winter and don't need to replace them with other "annuals" it's a win.
Frogs are singing outside tonight. Weather service is calling for a freeze tomorrow -- we haven't had a frost yet.
‘…a bunch of rich guys who have been comically out of touch with normal people for many decades, and more recently have blowtorched their brains into a smoking pile of ash on Twitter…’ (Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect)
SciShow did a collab with Tom Lum and ESOTERICA and delivered a deep dive into the history of the relationship of chemistry and alchemy and the politicization of the distinction between the two: "In Defense of Alchemy" (2025 Oct 17).
I cannot tell you how much I loved this and what a happy surprise this was. It ties into a whole bunch of other things I passionately want to tell you about that have to do with epistemology, science, and politics (and early music) but I didn't expect to be able to tie chemistry/alchemy in to it because I had neither the chops nor the time to do so. But now, some one else has done this valuable work and tied it all up with a bow for me. I'm thrilled.
Please enjoy: 45 transfiguring minutes about the history of alchemy and chemistry and what you were probably told about it and how it is wrong.
I have been dealing with some health stuff. I recently got a somewhat heavy medical diagnosis. It's nothing life-threatening, and of yet I have only had the mildest of symptoms, and seem to be responding well to treatment, but it's a bummer. My new specialist seems to be fantastic, so that's good.
Meanwhile, I have also finally started having a medical problem I've been anticipating ever since my back went wonky three years ago: my wrists have finally started crapping out. Because I cannot tolerate sitting for long, I have been using my laptop on a rig that holds it over me on my bed. But this means I haven't been using my ergonomic keyboard because it's not compatible with this rig. I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for my wrists to burst into flames again, but HTML and other coding has always been harder on my arms than simple text, and the research and writing I've been doing on Latin American geopolitics has been a lot of that. And while I can use dictation for text*, it's useless for HTML or anything that involves a lot of cut-and-paste. Consequently, I've gotten really behind on all my writing, both here and my clinical notes.
So I ordered a NocFree split wireless keyboard in hopes that it will be gentler on my arms. It arrived last night, and I have been relearning how to touch type, only with my arms at my side and absolutely not being able to see the keyboard.
You would not believe how long it took me to type this, but it's all slowly coming back. Also, I feel the need to share: I'm doing this in emacs. Which feels like a bit of a high wire act, because errors involving meta keys could, I dunno, reformat my hard drive or crash the electrical grid.
Here's hoping I get the hang of this before I break the backspace key from overuse or accidentally launch a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia.
* If, you know, I don't too dearly value my sanity.
‘New York is quietly preparing for a Donald Trump takeover of the country’s largest city.
A wide range of New York’s most prominent civic leaders have for weeks been meeting behind the scenes to plan for the possibility of Trump sending in the National Guard or any other federal agents into New York City, according to multiple top elected officials.
Alarmed at what Trump may do in response to Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor, Gov. Kathy Hochul has devised a virtual war room and convened a series of conversations with law enforcement, business officials and activist groups to stop or at least mitigate any federal incursion. More meetings are being scheduled, including with New York’s leading clergy and veterans groups, some of whom will be gathering around Veterans Day next week.…’ (Jonathan Martin via POLITICO)
Yesterday i made a marvelous soup -- dried figs, chickpeas, and a can of fire roasted tomato with half a jar of harissa sauce. Blitzed up some of the figs, chickpeas, and tomatoes, but kept it chunky. The only issue is when i dried the figs i left the stems on. I usually blend them up when making my buckwheat bread (blending with the buckwheat) and between the long fermenty soaks and the blending, i have never noticed the stems. Noticed this time. Other than that, divine.
I'm trying to decide if buying The Spice House's Harissa mix is worth it. (https://www.thespicehouse.com/blogs/recipes/20-minute-harissa-spread) This resource (https://www.chefs-resources.com/culinary-conversions-calculators-and-capacities/dry-spice-yields/) says 4.25 tablespoons per oz, so it's roughly 5 batches of the recipe. (OMG olive oil prices.) I will buy Tampa resident nephew who fishes and cooks two Hawaiian sea salts and Sichuan peppercorns for Yule, and NYC student nephew maybe a popcorn seasoning and a baked potato seasoning, and then i start looking for me and i want all the flavors.
The mix is probably not worth it. The sauce i bought may have sugar in it and leads with water, but it was fine (not too garlicy).
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common_nature2025-11-12 12:30 pm
