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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Hostile, the deep-space alien horror rpg from Zozer Games.

Bundle of Holding: Hostile (from 2022)

Clarke Award Finalists 2011

Aug. 25th, 2025 12:27 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2011: The VAT is improved by altering it from the hard to remember 17.5% to the more memorable 20%, the government continues efforts to replace the Incapacity Benefit with an alternate program in which applicants have cinderblocks dropped on them from a height and there is absolutely no news involving PM Cameron and a pig.

Poll #33534 Clarke Award Finalists 2011
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18


Which 2011 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
7 (38.9%)

Declare by Tim Powers
11 (61.1%)

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
0 (0.0%)

Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
1 (5.6%)

Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
2 (11.1%)

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
6 (33.3%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2011 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Declare by Tim Powers

Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
Lightborn by Tricia Sullivan
Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

Wolf! Wolf!

Aug. 25th, 2025 03:21 pm
oursin: The stylised map of the London Underground, overwritten with Tired of London? Tired of Life! (Tired of London? Tired of Life!)
[personal profile] oursin

Reading the first question addressed in Ask a Manager today:

I have been at my job for a two years, and the job requires international travel, often with members of a team. We often go to very safe countries (Europe, Singapore), but for a new client we had to travel to South Africa. I’m South African and therefore am quite aware of the risks and safety measures necessary, particularly in the areas in which we were traveling, as was HR, which repeatedly sent emails about safety precautions.
Unfortunately, my fellow team members continuously engaged in risky behavior over the course of the trip (jogging at night alone by the freeway, wearing expensive jewelry in public, getting rides from random taxis on the street…). I repeated my concerns to them repeatedly, as did the hotel manager (who was so concerned that he ended up asking me to tell them to stop, saying he didn’t want the hotel to be held responsible for their choices). They didn’t take my concerns seriously, saying they were “experienced” travelers because they’d gone to Europe before, and I was being “overly cautious.” The entire experience was incredibly stressful, it was like babysitting toddlers.

I can't help wondering if fellow-team members spent their youth being bombarded with stories about The Dangerous Big City (and that's just in USA) and the teeming hell-holes that are the Major Capitals of Europe, and now they have been there and discovered that they are not actually sinks of vice and depravity, they think that all such warnings are entirely spurious fear-mongering?

Besides the story of the boy who cried Wolf! (except this is more like, if the villagers kept crying Wolf! every time they saw a wee doggie coming up the village street) I have a vague recollection of a ?fairy tale/children's story of somebody who is brought up to think Out There is terribly dangerous. And something happens and they go out there and are not immediately eaten, so they think Nothing Is Dangerous. And if as the tale progresses they don't actually end up eaten it is only through luck rather than good risk management.

terriko: (Default)
[personal profile] terriko
This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.


I mentioned back in June that shimmer inks had been giving me trouble. But I’ve found a new solution! the Pelikan Twist.





I own a few of the cheaper pens that people said worked for them, and the one that had been giving me the least trouble had been the TWSBI Swipe. But even “least trouble” meant that I could use the pen, but it felt like it was getting a shimmer particle stuck somewhere on the regular, so I’d have skipping and low ink flow and the whole thing felt scratchy and annoying to use. You can kind of see it in my journal writing:





A sample of writing using my TWSBI Swipe and Diamine Wishing Tree ink. There are noticeable dents in teh paper where the pen was giving me trouble.
A sample of writing using my TWSBI Swipe and Diamine Wishing Tree ink. There are noticeable dents in the paper where the pen was giving me trouble.




Note that this ink *is* shimmery but I couldn’t get an angle of light that showed the paper dents and the shimmer at the same time so you’re not seeing much of it in these writing samples. This is on white Clairfontaine paper in my current journal.





Someone on mastodon (sorry, I forget who but it might have been [profile] paradoxmo?) mentioned that they liked Pelikan for shimmer inks, but the ones they used were pretty pricey. But I had a Pelikan Twist I’d bought ages ago. So I wanted to know would the feed take shimmer as well as their more expensive pens? I can’t answer that because I don’t have any of those, but I can tell you that it’s worlds better than the TWSBI Swipe, or any of the other pens I’d gotten in search of the One True Shimmer Pen for my collection.





Sample of handwriting using Diamine Wishing Tree Ink. The first two lines were done using my TWSBI Swipe fountain pen and have missing sections and dents where the pen wasn't working correctly. The bottom two lines writen with the Pelikan Twist pen are ver smooth in contrast and show no skipping or dents.
Sample of handwriting using Diamine Wishing Tree Ink. The first two lines were done using my TWSBI Swipe fountain pen and have missing sections and dents where the pen wasn’t working correctly. The bottom two lines writen with the Pelikan Twist pen are ver smooth in contrast and show no skipping or dents.




I don’t know if the photos convey how different the writing experience is between these two pens. The TWSBI Swipe feels most often like I’m writing with a mechanical pencil: lots of feedback, very scratchy. It also tends to get finicky about angles. It’s not consistent: I think it’s happening when a particle gets stuck somewhere, so it’ll write fine for a word and then just choke. But basically it works beautifully for a day or two and then it feels like it’s running out of ink half the time.





The Pelikan Twist on the other hand, writes like, well, a fountain pen, even with the same shimmer ink. It’s smooth and the ink flows consistently. I can leave the pen for a few days without having to run the nib under the tap to get it going again. It is everything I wanted out of the writing experience but had never been able to achieve when using shimmer inks in any pen.





Pelikan Twist pen in red. It's a pen shaped like a long trianglular "tube" with a gentle twist so the ends are offset by about 1/3.
Pelikan Twist pen in red. It’s a pen shaped like a long trianglular “tube” with a gentle twist so the ends are offset by about 1/3.




I’m really pleased, but also confused: lots of people love the TWSBI pens for shimmer, and I have 3 of them all of which eventually did the same half-clog thing. None of my other pens fared better, including the Wing Sung 698 I’d bought especially for this purpose. (To be fair, that one had other problems so I may have just gotten a bad one.) I still don’t know if I’m doing something wrong or if I’m just significantly more picky about my writing experience. The former is entirely possible, the latter seems unlikely given how fountain pen users are. I am rolling the pen periodically to keep the shimmer moving as I write, and making sure the ink bottle is shaken so the shimmer is suspended in the ink before I fill the pen.





For all that I now love it, the Pelikan Twist is a weird pen. I think it cost me about $20 and only came in medium (which is fine, I like medium). I had some trouble finding a converter that actually fit it. The internet said it should fit a standard international converter but nothing I had on hand worked; thankfully the fine folk at Jetpens have more precise recommendations so I picked up something from them and it’s great. (I could also hae refilled the cartridge that came with it, but I like converters better.) I will say that the plastic on my Twist is already kind of dinged up (if you look closely in the photos you can see some grey areas), probably from when I carried my pens around in a pencil case that didn’t keep them separated.





Pelikan Twist pen in red with teh cap off to show the triangular grip section, which continues in line with the twisted pen body.
Pelikan Twist pen in red with teh cap off to show the triangular grip section, which continues in line with the twisted pen body.




Unfortunately, the reason this pen never made it into regular rotation when I bought it to try many months ago (because it looked weird and was on sale) is that I don’t love the feel of the triangle grip. It’s not unbearable, just slightly off from what I find most comfortable. This got it most often relegated to “to do list pen” for months while I used up the cartridge, then got it forgotten in the pen cup until my shimmer problems made me pull it out.





But even *with* a grip that doesn’t perfectly suit me, it’s worlds better with shimmer ink than any other pen I own, and I’m really happy because this means the Diamine Inkvent inks I’d been struggling to use now have a dedicated pen and will be coming out significantly more often than they would have if I’d had to use a dip pen with them.





Another sample of writing with the Pelikan Twist fountain pen using Diamine Wishing Tree ink. Again, the writing is smooth and shows no misbehaviour from the pen. there's also a sticker with a strawberry macaroon shaped like a sea turtle on the same page.
Another sample of writing with the Pelikan Twist fountain pen using Diamine Wishing Tree ink. Again, the writing is smooth and shows no misbehaviour from the pen. there’s also a sticker with a strawberry macaroon shaped like a sea turtle on the same page.




I should note that it’s not *all* shimmer inks that give me these headaches. I’ve been having a delightful time with the KWZ All That Glitters inks in pretty much any pen I try. But my ink collection is very small so it’s pretty dominated by last year’s Inkvent calendar at the moment. Still, the problem was bad enough that I’d been refusing to buy other shimmer inks and had taken the Diamine inkvent 2025 calendar off my plans for this year because I didn’t want to pile up more inks I could barely use.





Anyhow, I’m very happy with discovering that even this cheap Pelikan pen has a feed that takes shimmer better than anything else I own! But I will admit that it made me go look at other Pelikan pens and of course I feel in love with one that’s considerably more expensive and limited edition to boot. I can’t really *blame* companies for making money and no one manufactures exactly the same thing forever, but this hobby can be a bit much with the special editions to keep you buying. Ugh!

Culinary

Aug. 24th, 2025 07:21 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

Last week's bread held out pretty well.

Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng, with milano salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 light spelt/buckwheat flour, turned out well.

Today's lunch: savoury clafoutis with Woodland Mushrooms, garlic and thyme, served with steamed asparagus with melted butter and lime juice, padron peppers, and baby pak choi stirfried with star anise.

With which we had our traditional unwedding anniversary Bollinger (41 years).

andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Spent the afternoon being serenaded by a cinema full of kids at the K-Pop Demon Hunters sing-a-long.

As musical kids movies about demon-hunting go out was pretty darned good and I expect to be earwormed for weeks.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A diverting assortment of spooky stories selected by an editor about whom I could discover almost nothing.

Stories of Suspense by Mary E. MacEwen
oursin: Fotherington-Tomas from the Molesworth books saying Hello clouds hello aky (Hello clouds hello sky)
[personal profile] oursin

I was very taken with this article (from 2008) about a genre of nature writing, and how, really, it's very dubious to invoke wild and untamed NAYCHUR in our green and pleasant land.

Wild and not-wild is a false distinction, in this ancient, contested country. The contests are far from over. When the wild is protected by management, or re-created by the removal of traces of human history, you have to ask, who are these managers? Why do conservationists favour this species over that? Whose traces are considered worth saving, whose fit only to be bulldozed? If the landscape is apparently empty, was it ever thus?

I mean, we are all about nature, but here I am in London Zone 2 and we have wildflower plots at the edge of the local playing field and an eco-pond, and little copses of woodland and apparently an RSPB sparrow meadow in the local park, rus in urbe, hmmm. In fact London is one of the world's greenest cities, a development which might have surprised dear old Mad William when he was trudging along the chartered streets.

It's also wonderfully codslappy about a certain type of (male) writer going alone into the Wild Places (and not meeting the existential horror that attacked poor Moley in the Wild Wood before he found Badger's house).

It seems to me to resonate with this other thing I came across lately about Rights of Way. Which is of particular interest to me since I am pretty sure that the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act of 1949 owed rather a lot to my dear fubsy interwar progressives rambling and occasionally organising mass trespasses because the countryside was for The People and they had a Right to Roam. And was much more about collective enjoyment.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Poll #33520 Books Received, August 15 — August 22
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

The Last Woman on Earth by Bex Benjamin (September 2025)
12 (28.6%)

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole (January 2024)
13 (31.0%)

Guilt by Keigo Higashino (April 2026)
8 (19.0%)

Green and Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (March 2026)
15 (35.7%)

The River She Became by Emily Varga (June 2026)
12 (28.6%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.4%)

Cats!
32 (76.2%)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Five books new to me: three fantasy, one mystery, and one science fiction. Two are series, and the other three may be stand-alone.

Books Received, August 15 — August 22

(no subject)

Aug. 23rd, 2025 12:34 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] natlyn and [personal profile] quinfirefrorefiddle!

Photo cross-post

Aug. 22nd, 2025 12:50 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


Gluten free pie and a collection of badges to indicate my new age. I think my family might like me!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

It's the little things

Aug. 22nd, 2025 06:08 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
I've just discovered that Android has an option that lets you snooze notifications. You have no idea how happy this makes me.
oursin: My photograph of Praire Buoy sculpture, Meadowbrook Park, Urbana, overwritten with Urgent, Phallic Look (urgent phallic)
[personal profile] oursin

Or maybe not.

Only over the past day or two there have been various things on listservs and social media relating to research I have done and published (and not just my research, much lamented Canadian historian in the same area's work) and I realise that this was Back in the Day and maybe it has fallen off the radar.

But how is this thing that this thing is that - I suppose this comes with working in a particularly niche area - that people are not aware of the Horrible Hystorie of the Heinous Synne of Onan?

I am almost tempted to go forth and offer a conference paper WOT.

I'm not sure I have anything in the way of startling new research to offer but a lot of the same anxieties have been popping up again around Precious Bodily Fluids etc.

On another paw somebody was advance-mentioning a book they have coming out and that made me think, though it's not directly related, that there's a piece of research I keep meaning to get back to that's a similar sort of story.

Meanwhile there is something a bit weird going on, I fear, with conference I have been invited to speak at next month, having had rather cryptic message from person who was liaising with me. Shall get on with book reviewing before investing any more energy in paper-prep.

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