boilingwater | Member Posts

A little while ago I got Stable cortical body maps before and after amputation via an NIH press release; today it was *Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia in people with chronic disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis...

... which dovetails neatly with the bits I just got out of The Painful Truth (Monty Lyman) about the bidirectional relationship between insomnia and pain, where each worsens the other but insomnia worsens pain more. (It's bedtime, so I'm not going to pick the book back up to get you those onward references just now.) With n = 5232, and their conditions including "cancer, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, and stroke", "CBT-I was associated with significantly improved outcomes" (for insomnia severity, and moderately improved outcomes for sleep efficiency and sleep onset latency).

What'll be next? WHO KNOWS.

mellowtigger

During the last week, I have completely ruined my online tracking data. I couldn't even guess what data algorithms now conclude about me from my behavior. I've watched video material from the far right and left, trying to make some sense of what's going on during these turbulent times. I've searched text that is problematic.

Most of what's out there is awful, low-data, conspiracy-related, emotionally-manipulative triviality. There are a few rare nuggets of appreciated perspectives, from sources that I never would have visited, absent our current point in history. In that vein, I wanted to record a handful of things that I was glad I watched, despite how uncomfortable some of it is. There was:

insightful observation from a professional USA-trained sniper (1 (contains some blood in still-frame images) and 2 (follow-up with some corrections)),
moving comments from black pastors (1 and 2), and one of those videos includes a pastor saying they were called by the federal government to ask what they would say during their first sermon after the shooting,
which connects too obviously to the disturbing warnings about coordination and manipulation that this historian explains happened with churches and other institutions in the past,
potential manipulation on the ABC news network of judicial video covering the accused assassin (watch 5 minutes starting here),
very powerful words from a black woman, Joy Reid, offered here by an old white guy, which is important because sometimes words from an ally can pierce mental resistance against issues presented by whichever minority uses the same words, and
uplifting encouragement here from a journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I'm sure that I've never heard the phrase "spicy whites" before, but I think I kind of like it. I wouldn't have heard it during the last week either, except that I was deliberately exploring outside my usual territory and arrived someplace new where I heard Joy Reid speaking.

Part of the danger of my most recent adventure is that I would get suckered by false information... and I was. I found a particular YouTube video very moving and politically significant. While I was writing this post, I tried to source the supposed speech quotations. I eventually realized that the whole thing was fictional. No such speech. Inspiration crushed with the false attribution. I dislike this modern age of digital falsehoods.

duskpeterson

Most of the official documents of the Koretian government are locked away or in active use, but the outer chamber of the historian's room boasts a magnificent chart of the bloodlines of the previous rulers of Koretia. You will see that there are two main bloodlines; both were cut off by wartime casualties, although the last surviving direct descendant of the second line died surprisingly recently. See the section of this book on Valouse for more details.

The Jackal's previous bloodline is unknown, but the Koretian ruler has established a new bloodline by selecting a young kinsman as his heir. The kinsmanship is dually established through a wardship and through a blood-brotherhood of an earlier generation.

[Translator's note: With his usual reticence, the Ambassador fails to cite plainly his own connection to Koretia's royal line. That connection is mentioned often in Empty Dagger Hand.]

umadoshi

It's autumn! Or spring! Happy equinox!

And happy Rosh Hashanah to those celebrating! May the coming year be sweet.

It's not actually in honor of autumn's arrival, but we have a chicken marinating in the fridge for tonight's supper. ( food chat under the cut: very little more about the chicken, a bit about apples, and a bit about breakfast [read: banana bread] prep )

Current Mood: busy

lassarina

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azurelunatic

The worst part of colonoscopy prep turned out to be the sheer number of trips to the bathroom, which knotted up my legs something fierce. The second worst part was the taste of the solution, even with added flavorings. It was salty! (I got the huge jug rather than the Miralax version. Miralax at least isn't salty.) Next time, probably either green unsweetened Kool-Aid or lemonade Crystal Lite or whatever.

( Off topic for FFA )

I did make the planned gallon of orange jello, but since it was a little late for me to actually eat it, I put mandarin orange slices in it. Since that's often part of Belovedest's lunch. Today I packed it into smaller boxes to help with that effort and to decrease the crowding in the fridge.

I got a slight nap after everything was about finished. The split prep schedule meant that I started the second half around 12:30 am. Appointment check in time 6 am.

The distance in the facility wasn't super bad, although we brought my chair just in case. (Speaking of the chair, I have decked it out with retroreflective tape and electroluminescent wire. It looks much safer. The cup holder went on Friday.)

( The procedure wasn't bad. )

I got dressed again. I had picked a cute nightgown for the outing, black with flowers and butterflies. Instead of a coat (it's getting chilly at night) I wore my dramatic black velvet robe, the one with lace trim and bell sleeves. I received a compliment. And as soon as I proved I could stand up without excessive wobbling, we were off.

Belovedest gathered breakfast for me on our way home, and I took a much needed nap (interrupted a few times to confirm that I could be made conscious and accept hydration).

And that was that.

We did our usual Friday shopping on Saturday. I was still sore. Today my legs are thankfully feeling normal.

Current Music: Tom Cardy - "H.Y.C.Y.B.H"

lannamichaels

Title: Teach Us Something, Please.
Author:

lannamichaels
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: Merope Riddle is a disquieting little girl.

( In which Tom Riddle is a girl )

kaberett

[... sorry about the template, I hit return in the title field and IT POSTED. details to appear shortly. :-p]

Reading. ( Ann Leckie, Monty Lyman, Ronald Melzack & Patrick D. Wall )

Writing. ... I have actually put some more notes into The Document.

So many lost property e-mails. (And at some point I'm going to need to start replying to them, too.)

Watching. On YouTube: True Facts: Bats, The Science Of The Hunt. NSFW. Definitely... An Experience.

Cooking. ... yeah no I managed to make veg spag bol on Friday but otherwise we've mostly just been feeling faintly sorry for ourselves. Okay, no, that's not quite true, I did also achieve baked potato on Wednesday.

Eating. Misc takeaway from The Field (leftover Sunday night curry for dinner on Tuesday; leftover vegetable fried rice + Szechuan tofu for breakfast on same...). I remain mildly resentful that the Wagamama menu still does not contain any of My Favourites.

Growing. The second attempt at pineapple has NEW LEAVES. The second attempt at lemongrass is maybe Going? And other than that I have no idea because I have spectacularly failed to make it to the plot this week.

Observing. BATS. A variety of excellent dahlias and passion flowers on a Trip To Town (post office, pharmacy).

umadoshi

Posted elsenet yesterday: Queen's Quality is the only manga I've worked on with a simulpub release (for the last few years of its run), and now I'm down to odds & ends and small corrections that need doing for its final compiled volume. Feels a bit strange, having properly said goodbye months ago when adapting the epilogue.

That's this weekend's work, which I'd hoped to get done sooner than this (due to the Dayjob crunch starting this week, not because I'm running late), but I don't have the translation for my next assignment yet anyway, so I guess it's worked out fine. I do hope I can get this done today, though. (And I wish I'd gotten that translation and could have started adapting it this weekend, given. >.<)

Queen's Quality is one of those series that switched publishers/titles partway through its run (very early, in this case), and there's always something a bit amusing about being like, "I'm working on vol. 25, which is the final volume. I've worked on this story for 27 of its 28 volumes." (Which is to say, in this case, that Queen's Quality was preceded by three volumes of an initial series called QQ Sweeper, and someone else adapted vol. 1 of that one.)

scruloose and I have been getting some household puttering done, which was desperately needed. We're both prone to letting piles of ~stuff~ slowly accumulate, and getting some of that beaten back before work swallows my life for however long is a relief. (Especially since that type of visual clutter is one of the sensory things that starts to bother me far too easily when I'm stressed. It starts to feel like I'm being loomed over.

scruloose also hung up a piece of wall shelving for displaying things in my office! I have no clear idea yet of what will wind up on it, as most small things that go on such a shelf are just sort of stashed around my office in bins or odd places. I'll have to dig through some drawers and see what surfaces.

(I see the usefulness of the "a place for everything, and everything in its place" concept, but am terribly unclear on how that actually works for most people in practice, given how many sorts of objects [that do in fact see use] don't really lend themselves to "this object resides here in the house". We're very much not minimalists, which doesn't help, but...yeah. Like what do you do with, say, a vacuum cleaner if you don't have some closet space that lends itself to being the vacuum's home?)

(A while ago my mother-in-law forwarded a couple of pics she'd come across of our place not long after we'd moved in, when we were unpacked and a bit settled. It's incredible how alien it looked--the original horrible paint colors, some furniture that's been LONG since replaced--but I think the biggest thing is the complete absence of anything cat-related.)

mellowtigger

This YouTube video reveals a very interesting discovery about our population living near the southeastern (and northeastern) coastlines of the USA. In maps of the USA, the southeastern states almost always feature heavily in the least-well-off areas of the nation. There were (and still are) good reasons to blame their socioeconomic policies for that big discrepancy. Researchers, however, have found a climate connection that was on nobody's radar as a possibility.

These researchers from University of California, Berkeley, tried for 5 years to find a flaw in their research, because the results were so surprising. After each and every hurricane that reaches these areas, there is a persisting health deficit that lingers in the area, even amongst people who were not born at the time of the hurricane. This deficit persists years afterward, peaking about 6 years (68.6 months) after the initial landfall event. It is cumulative with additional hurricanes that may arrive later, so more hurricanes means even more excess total deaths later. These less-visible indirect deaths eventually affect 300X more people than the direct deaths caused by the hurricane itself. The reasons for these excess deaths? State and local governments have reduced capacities after each storm, individuals have less spare money after repurchasing and rebuilding after each storm, and stress is always bad for health, regardless of circumstance.

Watch on YouTube

It's a fascinating 14 minutes, if you can spare the time to watch the whole video. Here's the Nature article, if you prefer text and graphs.

zero_pixel_count

Life continues hectic!

Last weekend I schlepped to Oxford, where I certainly haven't been for a couple of decades at least (and even then probably 'some theatre and its loading dock' was probably the extent of it) for R's hen do. Which was not in the least the whole sequinned plastic tiaras / pink sashes / trolleyed by midafternoon schtick, partly because we're all in our 40s and 50s, partly because R was like 'yeah no', and partly because R was also like 'no I'm inviting my best mates regardless of gender' so that was all very comfortable actually. There was a bit of a theme - which my brain interpreted as 'bugsy malone in wonderland' although that is not actually what D. who was organising it said! So I made a novelty waistcoat with some alice in wonderland quilting cotton, as you do.

( In the course of the waistcoat making... )

And the day itself was very cool, those of R's friends who I didn't already know were cool, the park & ride was not particularly sketchy even late at night, etc.

So

raven wrote a piece years back, broadly about how, you know, there's a tendency in some circles to laud sparseness in fiction, and how that impacts anyone who's trying to write in a setting which isn't [quasi-medieval-europe or whatever the genre equivalent is]. One of the examples they used was 'the Pitt-Rivers bell' vs just 'the bell' and while at the time I was getting some additional context, I clearly wasn't getting all of it.

( I've now been in the Pitt-Rivers museum. For about three minutes... )
But at the time I was mostly like 'oof, I don't like it in here and I don't think the middle of R's hen do is the moment to stop and unpack that' and went back to the natural history museum to look at stuffed/model birds* and shiny rocks**.

*that display I liked, because they were grouped by habitat and had a little bit of blurb, so even if I wasn't actually learning - on account of not taking notes - I could see how learning would have been possible.
**which I actually do find pleasing to look at, and would have gotten more out of if I'd known to do some prep work and e.g. have the list of Waking the Dawn -plausible gemstones to refer to.

And then next week, which has suddenly crept up on us, we have another wedding (not R's) so it really is all just a bit non-stop around here.

umadoshi

The seasonal crunch at Dayjob hasn't even started yet (so soon, though) and I already feel like I'm falling behind. >.< But I've been reading, so here's a fairly bare-bones post about that.

scruloose and I finished listening to Exit Strategy, and reluctantly are not moving forward until after said crunch period. This is a good resting point. We're both really enjoying these, which isn't really a surprise (heaven knows everyone raves about the Murderbot audiobooks!) except that I so thoroughly think of myself as not being someone who takes in much(/any) audio media other than music. It's possible that these are the first audiobooks I've listened to since...maybe since some Robert Asprin book on cassette during a family road trip when I was a teenager (which I only recall even that much of because the reader's delivery of "'Gleep', said the dragon" has stuck with me), and whatever snatches of audiobook I've heard while road tripping with Ginny and Kas.

Saint Death's Daughter (C.S.E. Cooney) was a really good read and rather brutal; I imagine I'll pick up the sequel at some point.

Julie Leong's The Teller of Small Fortunes was a much softer book (it may count as "cozy", but that seems to be a very subjective classification). It didn't leave much of a mark on me, but I enjoyed it.

The most recent novel I finished was When Women Were Dragons (Kelly Barnhill), which was one of those books where I didn't think I had much idea of what it would be like but then found it was nothing like I'd (subconsciously, I guess) expected, based on having read a few sentences about it somewhere. It too was good, and the fact that both the tone and the actual unfolding of the concept threw me is on me, not it.

Now I'm reading The Starving Saints (Caitlin Starling), but I'm only a few chapters in.

Non-fiction: Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World is not a fast read, but then, I didn't suppose it would be. Slow progress is still being made.

I mostly don't mention cookbooks I've read, but a couple days ago I finished reading the ebook of The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World by Lisa Kyung Gross and the Women of the League of Kitchens Cooking School, with Rachel Wharton. And then the second book of collected Murderbot novellas (3-4) popped up on Book Outlet, tempting me to place an order even though I ordered from them pretty recently, and they also had the hard copy of The League of Kitchens Cookbook, so I pounced on it.

I don't remember where I heard about it, but someone somewhere mentioned it and then I snapped it up a while back when the ebook was on sale. I had no real idea what the League of Kitchens was until I was reading, and it turns out to be such a neat thing! From the book copy:

Founded in 2014 by Lisa Kyung Gross, the daughter of a Korean immigrant and a Jewish New Yorker, League of Kitchens is a unique cooking school that empowers immigrant women to share culinary expertise and culture through hands-on cooking workshops, both in their homes and online. The instructors pass on their knowledge, skills, recipes, and most importantly, their secrets for how to cook with love. At its heart, League of Kitchens is a celebration of the invaluable contributions of immigrants to our food culture and society.

IIRC from the intro to the book, they don't/didn't go searching for people from specific backgrounds as instructors; rather, it's about finding people who match what they're looking for, regardless of their country of origin. (Here's their current list of instructors.) Some classes are taught online, which is tempting, although I don't realistically like my odds of ever actually signing up.

(One thing I really like about the book is that the recipe instructions are broken down into incredible detail. I pretty much always want more detail than I'm given when learning something or being asked to do something. When I was still very early in the book, I was excitedly calling out to

scruloose about how the recipe I was reading--which was not for something super-complicated, I don't think--was broken down into seventeen steps. SEVENTEEN. Yes, please!)

Current Mood: drained

kaberett

... and doesn't quite make it.

On page 187 (of 218), we finally get this paragraph:

At this point we need to return to a crucial caveat. In most cases of persistent pain, whatever caused the initial injury has healed. Pain is now the primary disease. But there are a number of cases where there is continual damage that triggers nociceptive fibres; chronic inflammatory diseases are good examples. It is also important to point out that not every case of back pain is our brain's overreaction. A small -- but important -- minority of cases are caused by serious conditions -- cancer, some infections, spinal fractures and the nerve-compressing cauda equina syndrome -- but these can usually be ruled out by doctors, who will be on the lookout for 'red flag' symptoms. However, in the majority of cases of persistent pain (and over 90% of cases of back pain), there is no longer any identifiable tissue damage; our brain has become hypersensitive.

In a book that otherwise dedicates a lot of time to talking about gender and racial inequalities in healthcare access, including a solid half-paragraph on how common and how painful endometriosis (a chronic inflammatory condition!) is, the bit where "well this only applies to most people..." gets breezed past is certainly causing me more feelings. And yet it's still the closest anything I've read so far actually gets to engaging with the fact that the rest of us exist, so... no get-out-of-writing-essays-free card for me here, alas.

(The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, mostly pretty good and definitely got me to think constructively about a few things -- like the merits of classical vs contemporary Pilates for my specific usecase via discussion of knitting -- and introduced me to some more, like open-label placebos and "safe threats" and the impact of paracetamol on empathy. It's incomplete, but not disrecommended.)

kaberett

A little while ago the toddler's household told me that you could turn the top of a pineapple into a whole entire pineapple plant (with the caveat that at least 60% of the time it goes mouldy). My first attempt at this had got as far as growing a whole entire root network but then suffered a Tragic Incident from which it never recovered; the second had been sat around with partially-browned but no-longer-becoming-more-browned and definitely-still-partially-green leaves for Quite Some Time. I had more or less hit the point of "... is this actually doing anything? at all?" and then upon my return from the most recent round of Adventures I rotated it in service of watering it, to discover...

a pineapple crown, growing a whole new set of leaves

... that it's growing a WHOLE NEW SET OF LEAVES. Look at it go! I am very excited!

(My understanding is that if I manage to keep it alive that long it'll take somewhere in the region of 3 years to fruit, and then in the fashion of all bromeliads will die having produced said single fruit. Happily this is about the rate at which we eat fresh pineapple...)

lassarina

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mellowtigger

Here's a quick Public Service Announcement for anyone who lives in the city of Minneapolis. Check online for your utility bill. Minneapolis changed their billing system, and old autopay settings are no longer functioning.

Apparently they've been emailing me to pay my bill recently, but those emails go to a Yahoo account. Yahoo changed their email interface a while back, and it's awful. I have a difficult time finding things that formerly were easy to find. Tonight, I got an automated phone call about paying my bills. Good thing. I checked online, and I discovered I needed to set it up all over again for autopay... and pay my accumulating bill.

So... go check your account.
https://ub.minneapolismn.gov/iwr/

sage

books
still reading Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett. I haven't had the time to really focus on it, so I've been reading Kirk/Spock longfic.

yarning
I finished the crocheted globe for Niece and it looks pretty good. Definitely good enough for a child turning 5, though it's a little unevenly stuffed in a couple of places & I can't get it to shift. Am sad I had to miss yarn group this week, but yesterday I made a 3in diameter moon to go with the Earth. Hopefully it'll all fit in the box.

Yuletide
I nommed:
- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. (Amina, Dalila, Raksh, and Jamal)
- Shadow of the Leviathan by Robert Jackson Bennett (Ana, Din, Kepheus)
- A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (Cordelia, Hester, Richard, Penelope)
- Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher (Anja, Snow, Grayling)
- Dark Olympus series by Katee Robert (Icarus, Poseidon, Hades, Penelope)

sadly, Batman: Wayne Family Adventures and Rivers of London both look too large to nom this year, if I'm gauging them right. Drat!

#resist
October 18: No Kings Day #2

I hope you're all doing well! <333

lassarina

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mellowtigger

True, it's not MoodyMonday, but it's in the same vein, and it's getting harder to compartmentalize the various atrocities on the news these days

Last week, Brian Kilmeade of Fox News recommended killing homeless people. Media likes quoting the phrase "involuntary lethal injection", but the true meaning was just a few words later when Kilmeade finished with, "just kill them".

This week, I don't think it's making national news, but Minneapolis had 2 more mass shootings. At 2 different homeless camps. I just watched this news channel's story about it. Not once did I notice anyone mention Kilmeade. According to the story, these shootings are clearly the fault of homeless people and their sympathizers. As far as I know, nobody knows the shooters' motivations, because we don't know who shot all of those people. Kilmeade, though, clearly moved that Overton window and shifted expectations. Stochastic terrorism is a term that I keep seeing reasons to mention.

kaberett

Have spent most of the day asleep.

Attempt #2 at pineapple-from-trimmed-top has NEW LEAVES.
I am also fairly sure that attempt #2 at lemongrass is taller than it was when we set off on our terrible adventures about ten days ago.
Actual bed. Favourite mattress.
I got to make someone's entire day by sending an "... I think I have your object" e-mail.
Leftovers for dinner: curry from the crew party on Sunday night. Didn't have to think about food. Extremely grateful for this fact.

Profile

Boiling water without burning it

April 2020

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30

Page Summary

kaberett - [pain] I have definitely inadvertently trained The Algorithm to tell me about relevant papers
mellowtigger - trying to make sense of it all
duskpeterson - FIC: Historian's room (Tempestuous Tours)
umadoshi - Mostly food-related things for the first day of fall
lassarina - Tales of Vesperia Liveblog, Part 3
azurelunatic - They checked it
lannamichaels - "Teach Us Something, Please." (Harry Potter) G
kaberett - vital functions
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: work, impending work, and at least a bit of clutter tamed
mellowtigger - a climate impact on mortality in southeastern USA
zero_pixel_count - This week...
umadoshi - Almost two weeks' worth of reading
kaberett - [pain] today's book gets so close to The Thing
kaberett - [growth] pineapple is go!
lassarina - What Are You Playing Wednesday
mellowtigger - Minneapolis utility bill payments
sage - What I'm Doing Wednesday
lassarina - Tales of Vesperia Liveblog, Part 2
mellowtigger - (no subject)
kaberett - tired. so tired.

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