This evenimg, as the Gentleman Friend was on a call with a Kiwi colleague, I sat nearby working on a report. I half-heard him say something about how New Zealand feels so far away from the world and its ills and I stared down at the news window I had open, about an ongoing shooting […]
Giving up
After the shenanigans of the past few days I’ve more or less given up on Brexit. I think May’s deal will pass and the UK will leave. Shame on all of them.
New arrival
A new person has arrived, the last of the Gentleman Friend’s relations aside from a few outlying ones. This is someone who is very interested in genealogy (something that, I must admit, interests me not at all) and has been on a decades-long quest to map out relations from Trinidad to New Zealand. Along the […]
The enemy of the good
There is a common theme of disempowerment, at least on Metafilter, and I suspect in much US conversation around issues like Trump, the climate, etc. This struck me particularly a few days ago in a thread on planting native gardens to counter insect decline where the following comment was inevitably made: Although I’m all in […]
An old fashioned tale
Not that old fashioned, actually; the book was published in 1961 and given publishing patterns for this sort of trash I doubt it was written much before. How the world changes.
Britain, Brexit
It is Britain’s misfortune to have been ruled by such people, entitled men who don’t feel they need to master a brief and sneer at those who have to endure the consequences of their actions. – Hari Kunzru writing in the NY Review of Books Also this: Their arrival “over here” was one of the […]
Cool winds
The heatwave has broken, or rather, moderated. The wind has changed and it is far cooler. I learned today of the horse latitudes and the roaring forties. Winds are very romantic. Far less romantic is fucking Brexit. Damn them.
Crunch time
The Brexit storm has struck, and I do feel some pity for Theresa May, despite her own hand in her misery. Also some admiration for her ability to keep going, like the Black Knight, even though I wish she’d just done the sensible thing and called off the whole business and let the Brexiteer loons […]
Light reading
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. I have always had mixed feelings about Kowal’s work. She’s a decent writer and her contributions to the Writing Excuses podcast are usually quite insightful. But I find her books and stories middle-of-the-road, and she has a Middle America sensibility that rivals Bujold’s (many of whose books I […]
Shameful
What a dispiriting day for Pakistan. Another one, that is. Another full day of rioting and looting and rumours. The army saying they can’t interfere in every little issue in Pakistan (not that they don’t otherwise, maybe the rioters were careful to avoid the army’s extensive property portfolio). Then the assassination of Sami-ul-Haq striking abject […]