6jan2026

Today is Epiphany, the 12th Day of Xmas. This minor holiday has always been important to me, a joyous cap to end of the Solstice; and indeed, at 6am yesterday (today as I write this) I received some very happy news from f2tY, a gift I'd been waiting to receive. For years.

And then I came downstairs to this:

I cannot keep up. I can barely keep up reading the posts of others who are trying, bravely, to keep up. But they can’t keep up either.

Heather Cox Richardson valiantly tries to present a matter-of-fact daily keeping-of-the-minutes for future historians. This attempt to keep up earns her criticism as “alarmist” or—because she is a woman—“hysterical.” [snip]

“After Venezuela operation, Trump says the whole hemisphere is in play,” Politico reports, with the president hinting at invasions of Cuba, Greenland, Mexico, and Colombia, by name. So far.

This fucking administration. God damn them to hell, to serve out the same misery they've inflicted on every single one of their victims, sentences served end to end to end, no matter how many millennia it takes.

Oh, and for ruining what should be a joyous celebration.

5jan2026

Welp, I see our dear leader has decided to invade Venezuela, which absolutely sucks for us and even worse for them, but...it's kinda par for the course, with this administration. (And, as Scalzi points out, this country. Sigh. I don't wanna be the baddies!) Clearly, not only is Ukraine off our radar, somebody would like the Epstein files and our crappy economy to get pushed to the background as well.

Not much I can do about the imperialism (aside from staying focused on those internal problems at home, ofc...)

But. In an rather interesting reversal to the whole, but this problem needs to be addressed at an institutional level! this vox article has the click-baitey but at least positive click-baitey title One of the most impactful resolutions you can make in the new year and right now, I'm for any positivity I can find.

So...since I'm not quite ready to give up dairy or eggs (and I do pay a premium to purchase locally, and supposedly humanely produced dairy and eggs from our local hippy-crunchy-granola co-op) I guess for me this is gonna be the year that I really work on choosing vegetarian options when eating out, and try to do better on the dairy front. Opt-outs as always for those whose circs don't have the margin for this sort of thing, but in the interest of offering a vegan protein source I find really tasty, here's a little recipe for making what I find to be a yummy-on-its-own-terms, texturally appealing meat substitute:

• bring 1 liter (quart) of 2% salted (20g/4 t) water to boil in medium saucepan (you can eyeball the salt)
• tear (for more authentic) or slice (easier) extra firm tofu (no pressing needed)
• add tofu to salted water, return to boil
• reduce heat simmer for about 5 minutes; the salt will reduce moisture in the tofu, ain't that magical? Chemistry for the win:)
• drain, without letting pieces touch; pat dry with tea towel
• dump into bowl adding enough cornflour/cornstarch (UK/US) (or other) starch, stirring to coat
• add 2–3 T (30–45ml) high smoke point oil (e.g. peanut) to cast iron or stainless steel pan, heating till it shimmers; reduce heat to medium high
• IMPORTANT: sprinkle a little salt into pan—this prevents tofu from sticking, especially if you're using stainless (cast iron, which is what I use, is relatively non-stick already, so it's not as critical)
• add tofu to pan & fry till golden brown on one side, 3–5 minutes or so; flip (adding more oil if necessary) and cook at least one other side.
• n.b.: if you want really crispy outsides, use more oil, and drain on paper towels. I'm going for the lowest amount of fat that works—if your tofu is getting black spots instead of a nice brown coating, that's a clear sign that you need to add more oil.

I like this stuff so much I'll happily eat it right out of the pan, and as I happen to be one of those rare americans who needs to increase my protein intake, this was a game changer for me. This ready-to-go protein can be stored in the fridge and added to curries, fried rice, etc. Additional bonus is that it costs less than $2/lb, and there are no worries about prions or other raw-meat pathogens, and yes, like animal products it's considered a complete protein. And oh yeah, vacuum packed tofu stays good for months in the fridge, no need to worry about it going bad or taking up precious freezer space.

Granted, it's not as fast as frying up an egg topper for your vege bowl, but no more time consuming than frying up a pound of hamburger, especially from the freezer (you can kind of see what my priorities are, here;).

If you'd like more of this sort of thing and have instagram on your phone, I recommend following the many folks publishing all sorts of easy, Asian recipes; though the cornstarch coating tip is courtesy of Maggie Zhu's Chinese Homestyle (all vegan recipes, & which I recommend highly, btw) the boiling/salting the pan was a tip I found on insta.

Aaaaaaaand, we have a xmas prezzie with a bit of st pat's shamrocking, just cuz I liked playing around with the assorted greens.

Enjoy.

2jan2026

Hoping you had a pleasant or relaxing or joyful interim between xmas and new years. I, er, spent that time reading a fanfic deconstruction (in three volumes) of Pern that puts my little squib utterly to shame. Though very well written I'm not certain these books would appeal to someone unfamiliar with the Pern universe, but should you like to try them out, the first one is novella lengthed (and if you like that one, vol II is about standard novel size and vol III is an 800,000+ word monster, and absolutely amazing); I recommend the AO3 site if you've the patience to click through one chapter at a time, because the comments are insightful, the author responds, and for me at least it added an extra layer of interest. The author's website, however, has all sorts of art on it, and is easier to navigate, though. Via slacktiverse, specifically Silver Adept's Pern deconstructions.

So. In effect I took the week off from finishing up late xmas (& now late new year's) gifts, working out, tidying up, doing end-of-year finances, or much of anything else, really.

But now I feel ready to be doing again, and hope you do too.

And as it's not yet the 12th day of xmas, here's a giftwrap (which as I recall was of something given last fall. Never let it be said that I'm not perpetually behind.)

26dec2025

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, hoping you had a good one; (And a delightful Thursday, for those don't;)

But of course, not everyone did, and what with all the crap going on here, Ukraine's issues have basically dropped off USian consciousness—you'd think all those 2nd amendment people would be really interested in this underdog's fate, given the parallels to this country's founding, and how France helped us... It just sucks.

Yet, the Ukrainian people persist. Here are some soldiers, defiantly playing Carol of the Bells.

Closer to home, Flatbush cats has a howto on making winter shelters for feral cats. Seems dead simple, but is there was, at least to my eyes, a number of important details.

Aaaaaaaand that's as much interaction with politics as I care to deal with today. Here's my little pushback against cruelty and ugliness.

17dec2025

Carol of the Bells is my favourite xmas song, which, given that it was evidently originally a New Year's harbinger of spring (and why yes, I think the year ought to start with spring, just like those ancient pagans) and not actually a xmas song at all, seems entirely appropriate.

I knew it hailed from Ukraine, and was under the impression that original melody was thousands of years old, but wasn't aware of its more modern history...I found all the AI video clips in the video a tad on the disconcerting side, but surely Ukraine's culture—for which Carol was an ambassador a hundred years ago when a choir toured worldwide to celebrate the country's newfound independence from the USSR—deserves recognition just as much now, as the country once again battles for its independence (from Russia. Sigh. The more things change, the more they stay the same....)

On a slightly brighter note (ha!) the splendidly ebullient Anna Lapwood gives a tour of her signature instrument, the organ explaining that playing it involves setting up a lot of sequences, akin to subroutines in a computer. Also that organs just sometimes randomly play notes. Oh, and she explains the meaning of ‘pulling out all the stops’:)

This giftwrap certainly doesn't do that, but it's pretty enough. Enjoy;)

16dec2025

Today, I'm doing difficult linkies...

I've recently read two re-interpretations of the classic horror tale The Fall of the House of Usher: Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothick and T Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead. For the record I found the former more horrifying and the latter more to my taste, mostly because Moreno-Garcia's heroine is everything I'm not, and though I admired the character, I didn't especially like her, and one of my failings as a reader is that I want to identify with the protagonists.

Both books are very good(1), and I recommend them highly if atmospheric horror is your thing (for someone who doesn't like horror I sure seem to consume a lot of it...) or you enjoy seeing modern interrogations of older stories. Neither of these books, however, came close to the horror I experienced while listening to one of Rebecca Watson's recent youtube videos, this one on the Freebirth movement. This appalling approach could be considered a subset of homebirth, which is why it made me so angry and sickened.

Homebirth, with a trained and experienced lay midwife, as I practised it, is for those for whom it is appropriate is a safe alternative to hospital birth—safer, in fact, if you've a particular horror of caesareans, as I did; freebirth, particularly as practised by the Free Birth Society, promotes wild pregnancy, meaning pregnancy without any prenatal care. (The irony being that in the wild, animals themselves may midwife; elephants are one such example. And other animals, on average, give birth more easily than we do.)

Roundabout the 16:30 mark, Watson observes what makes this dangerous approach so appealing:

...make women want to look outside of the medical establishment. Why am I paying through the nose for treatment that is so bad that I might end up getting a major surgery that I don't want or need or so bad that I might end up feeling so violated and destroyed that I need therapy and never want a doctor to touch me again? That's the loss of agency that a good con artist recognizes. The gap where they can slide in and make some coin whether they believe what they're selling or not.

Practically the first expectation a competent midwife will set up is that there are no perfect births, even more so than a doctor, because the less than 1% of people (in the US; homebirth is far more common in, ahem, more advanced countries) who pursue homebirth want to be in charge, and have what they hope is their idea of a great outcome: of course you plan and prepare, but reality has a way of upsetting those hopes; whereas the freebirth movement seems to be actively selling the idea of beautiful, complication free experience.

That's a lovely dream, but birth can have significant risks, and though the rather mundane ‘failure to progress’ is (I understand) much more likely than the blood-and-gore drama of placenta praevia or pre-eclampsia, nevertheless, it's not a condition for someone untrained to do on their own—I was in labor for over 10 days, (nights, technically—usually from about 10pm–6am) and think I would've gone out of my mind without experienced midwives to keep an eye on me and look out for danger signs (falling fetal heart rate and rising temperature, a sign of infection). Even as it was, the midwives joked that I belonged in the Guiness Book of World Records.

Because of the experienced midwife and her two apprentices, I avoided a caesarean (though not, alas, a hospital birth; mine, which pissed me off, was according to the midwives a ‘good’ one, so I can barely imagine the trauma other pregnant people have suffered) and ended up having (more) successful homebirth thereafter, resulting in healthy babies who grew to adulthood. The Guardian freebirth article so horrified me I wasn't even able to do more than skim, but was unsurprised that the moms in that story were not so lucky. What happened was heartbreaking precisely because it didn't have to happen! They too could've had the same excellent outcomes I did!

In conclusion: homebirth—sometimes called prepared homebirth, to distinguish it from accidental parking lot type experiences, and/or women who cannot, for one reason or another, access proper pre-natal care, absolutely essential to determine, just for example, whether one is a good candidate for homebirth, because some births are high-risk, and for those, hospital birth is literally life-saving—good. “Freebirth” unequivocably bad.

Whew. That's enough angst for one day. Have a sweet, pretty picture of a beautiful rose.

(1)One complaint about Gothic, frex, is an unconvincing romantic subplot, which after thinking about it for a bit, I realized from a Doylian perspective (i.e. needs of the plot) why the story went that way. Thought about it some more, and felt had the author made a more convincing case a) I would've liked the protag a lot better and b) it would've cranked up the horror even more—win-win. As it was I had to do some heavy lifting/rationalizing as a reader to make it work, because the text as written was for me unpersuasive.