Weather Report

Christ:

Eight days in a row of highs near or at 100 degrees. In September.

After that, highs in the mid-90s.

God.

Knee Update

The doctor ordered an X-ray, which shows "joint space narrowing of the patellofemoral compartment" "consistent with degenerative changes." The translates into "a little arthritis," the doctor says, and has prescribed a short course of anti-inflammatories.

If that doesn't fix it, he says we'll send me to an orthopedist.

It's better already, so I'm not too worried.

Surveillence State

I ordered a knee brace off the internet and since then every ad I see on YouTube or Amazon or the puzzle game I play on my phone is about canes, knee braces, knee surgery, and other ways to fix a knee.

(My knee is better today, though it still hurts.)

Knee Pain

I was at the Harps today, just walking like a normal person, when suddenly my knee went wonky.

Sharp pain, and then it started buckling. I could barely walk.

It went away after I sat down awhile, but then it came back. I could only just drive home.

Now I'm in my big chair with the knee elevated, looking up possible causes. My friend in the sciences says it might be incipient rheumatoid arthritis. Ugh.

Weather Report

Another heat dome is on the way. Ugh

Today is almost nice -- 70 degree when I went to the park with the dog at eight a.m.

But next week looks terrible.

Two more weeks of summer.

Anti-Vaxxers

One of the two people that died of measles in Pennsylvania was an infant.

All the anti-vaxxers who inquire (in bad faith) that if we have our measles vaccine, why do we care if others don't get it? Since we'll be protected by our magic shot, right?

This is why. Infants who are too young* for the vaccine can get the measles, and they are more likely to die of it than those of a more robust age. (Like six, which was when I got the measles. Not the shot. The actual disease. I lived before the vaccine was available, when children were still dying from the disease. About 200 kids died of it that year in America.)

“The real vulnerability is in infants between 6 and 11 months of age, as maternal antibody is waning and they haven’t gotten their first dose of the MMR vaccine,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Dallas.

In places where infants have a high risk of measles exposure, health authorities sometimes recommend an early dose of the vaccine for babies starting at 6 months old. That was the case during an outbreak in Texas last year, when two unvaccinated girls died of the disease.

Other people have immunological issues. They too can catch the measles. Some people, like me, lived before the measles vaccine was available and may never have caught the disease. Sure, they're likely to be old, so maybe anti-vaxxers don't care if they die. They didn't care during COVID, when "only" old people and people with immunological problems were likely to die of the virus. (Like my father, who was in his 80s, and had dementia. Who cares if he dies, right?)

These people have shrugged off the bonds of community. They aren't part of the community, they are declaring. Often they have their own insular (and whackaloon) community they have decided to belong to instead. That's their right, here in America.

But they're despicable all the same.

*12-15 months for the first shot, and a booster at ages 4-6

AI in the wild

(1) Guy at the dog park casually commented that he used AI to try to find out what kind of dog his mutt was. I hid my wince.

(2) The kid's husband is being compelled to use AI in his engineering class. WTF, I said. Apparently in the future engineers will use AI, he said, so we have to know how to do it. WTF, I said again. 

Donate to Imagination Library in Memory of Dolly Parton

 Link is here.

Dolly Parton RIP

Dolly Parton died today, and pretty much everyone is mourning her.  I was never a huge fan, but I held her in a lot of respect for the work she did fighting poverty and helping people in poverty get an education.

Over on Reddit, someone not from the US asked what Parton did that made her, in his words, a saint.

The first comment gives a list:

1. She is the founder of Dollywood, which is an amusement park that helped turn her hometown of Sevierville, TN from a small extremely poor town to a built up city with a large tourism economy. Dollywood pays a living wage to employees and covers full tuition, books, and fees for employees who want to attend college. She is one of the largest and best paying employers in that area, and the overall economy has grown immensely due to her efforts.

2. She founded the Dollywood Foundation and other scholarship efforts to improve high school graduation rates and help kids from Sevierville attend college.

3. She runs a large number of other charity projects, including an animal sanctuary. She runs a program called Dolly Parton's Imagination Library that sends free books to children.

4. She has donated a huge amount of money to disaster relief and children's hospitals. East TN Children's Hospital is now renamed as The Dolly Parton Children's Hospital in her honor. She's also made large donations to Vanderbilt for children's medical research, children's medical care, and COVID research. She has made a large donation to the Salvation Army as well.

5. She has a reputation for being kind, easy to work with, cool under pressure, and fair. She's been married to one man for her entire career and has no personal or political scandals. The only things she is known for are her musical career, her philanthropy, and her personal image. Her charity work is focused on universally beloved causes, not political campaigns or pet projects. She got a lot of heat for her image and background early in her career and she handled it with am immense amount of poise and grace. Her early interviews are pretty much a masterclass in how to address backhanded complements and rude comments with dignity.

TYWKIWDBI has several posts about Parton up on his page.

Erik Loomis weighs in.

From the Atlantic (gift link), something I didn't know: 

In 2020, she donated $1 million to help fund the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, then proudly received the shot.

This Guy.

Can we make this guy President:

We're being told that if we sacrifice the rights of some people, then the rest of us get to keep our rights. We all know that's some BS.

[image or embed]

— Abdul El-Sayed (@abdulelsayed.bsky.social) 10:19 AM · Aug 23, 2026

Hard link here. 

His wiki page.

Baby's First Cartoon

This is one of the first comics the kid ever made:

Translation, since only a mother could read the kid's handwriting:

First panel: Hello, Children!

Second panel: I'm Mr Happy-face!

Third Panel: Do you know what happens when you get old?

Fourth Panel: You die! (Kids, off-stage: Waah!)

No Power in Gary, IN

So apparently the power has been off in Gary, Indiana for ten days now.

Why isn't this national news?

We lost our AC for four days in August one year and I nearly fucking died. Ten days in a city in Indiana? 

God. Remember when America used to be a first world country? Good times.

Boycott the New York Times

In case you aren't already boycotting the New York Times, here's another good reason to join the boycott:

The nonprofit Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that, between 2024 and 2025, the Times published over 130 articles on trans issues, and only quoted trans people in 14 of them. Media Matters and FAIR both have found that the vast majority of articles they published contained misinformation or outright harmful rhetoric against the trans community.

The Times has even been cited in laws and court cases attacking trans rights. In 2024, Mother Jones reported on numerous different anti-trans state-level laws and legal battles that cited their reporting, including in Alabama, Idaho, and Missouri. The infamous US v. Skrmetti Supreme Court decision, which ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care is legal, cited the Times 29 times in justifying their decision.

American Public Schools

Over on Reddit, someone was puzzled about why US schools start so early. When I was in high school, for example, I had to be at the bus stop by 6.30, which meant I woke up at six, dressed, and left the house in about fifteen minutes. I dropped my little brother at the baby sitter's on the way. I would buy "breakfast" at a food truck near the school, after the bus dropped me off at around 7:45. It was a cheap sugary sweet roll, usually. 

Why start so early?

My mother taught in the Orleans Parish public schools, and had to be on campus by 7:15; she had to leave the house by six to get there in time. My father left for work every day at about four a.m. (He didn't get home until well past seven at night.) Schools in America have this schedule because pretty much every parent was working similar hours.

I would often fall asleep in my second period class (sociology) and sleep right through the entire class. (I read the textbook, and made an A for the semester, which pissed off the teacher.) 

When I got home -- my bus left the school at three and I reached the bus stop around 4:15 -- I would pick up my brother from the baby sitter and then start supper. My mother got home around 5:00. I also had to do the dishes and deal with the laundry and take care of my brother. Homework, you ask?

Also, why weren't my two older brothers (one two years younger than me, one a year older) doing any of the housework? They also had jobs. My younger brother was a bag boy at a grocery store, and my older worked for a lighting company. I briefly held a job, working at McDonalds, but the manager scheduled me to work from 4:00 p.m. until closing six days a week, which meant I got home at about 2:00 a.m., and still had to get up at six a.m.

If we actually wanted to educate children, school would start around 10:00 a.m. and let out at four, with a mandatory two hour study hall somewhere in there, when homework could be done. No one under sixteen would have a job, and no one who hadn't yet finished school would work more than two hours a day.

But we don't want educated kids in this country. We want workers. That's what the schools are set up to do -- make it possible for parents to work, make it possible for 'students' to grow up to be workers.

I got very little actual education from middle school on -- I spent most of my time reading books on my own, or, at recess, talking to my friends. In high school, the teachers would often give us what they called "free periods," when we didn't have to do anything but stay reasonably quiet. I would escape from my classroom and go find one of my friends, and we would play cards. Or if the teacher caught me trying to escape, I would read novels while around me people played music on their radios and danced and squabbled. I would often finish two novels a day -- I always took at least two books to school with me.

My most indelible memories of high school are those: reading novels, playing card games with my friends, and boredom while the teacher 'taught' us nothing at all. I remember being assigned to write a paper on a book from a list the English teacher gave us. I picked Jane Eyre, which I was way too young to read. "Write a paper" was the entire assignment. I had no idea how to write an English paper, and the teacher didn't bother explaining or showing us how to write a paper, except to say she "didn't want a book report." What did she want? I had no idea. 

French class was my favorite, because the teacher actually taught us. She left at the end of my freshman year, and after that I went over to the boy's high school to take Latin. (The girl's school did not offer Latin, or physics, which I also wanted to take.) The Latin teacher actually taught as well. Probably that's how I ended up with a PhD -- that was a way to keep taking Latin and Greek.

But other than those two courses, and a history class my junior year, no teaching occurred. I remember sitting in chemistry class so bored I drew little circles at the top of my paper and inked them all end, one per minute, for the last 20 minutes of class.

Every fall, I'm still glad I don't have to go back to high school.

Weather Report

It's been killing hot over the past week, with highs in the 100s -- 105, yesterday. Today, the high is predicted to be 99, and the same tomorrow.

After that, it will "cool down" to highs of 95 and 96. 

But fall is in sight. Only eleven days until September, and once September hits, can fall be far behind?

Fingers crossed.

What and why?

All of a sudden I'm getting emails from Doug Wilson's little white nationalist hate group, up there in the Idaho panhandle.

Why?

What makes them think I'd want their Christian hate mail?

I can't figure out how to block people on gmail. Anyone know how?

From the linked article:

"So probably the best illustration of this would be church bells? Yes. Minarets? No," he said.

Why?

"Because, the public space would belong to Christ," he added.

Wilson also wants to repeal women's right to vote. When asked why, he was quick to respond.

"Because it's a good idea," he said, adding that he wants it replaced with household voting, with women only voting if they are the head of their household.

What I'm Reading Now

Still reading SF novels for reviews, but also a lot of Stephen Graham Jones. He's a horror writer, and usually I do not like horror, but he's really good. So far I've read these books by him:

(1) Mongrels, which is a werewolf novel about a family (father, brother and sister and the child of another sister) living in isolation -- that is, they don't know any other werewolves -- and trying to figure things out. The lore in this is great, as are the characters. The werewolves are poor/working class, which is not something you usually see. In general, most of Jones's characters are working class and poor, and lots of them are Indians, as is Jones.

(2) Buffalo Hunter Hunter, which is what it says on the tin, a hunter who hunts buffalo hunters during the latter half of the 19th Century. The hunter is an Blackfoot Indian who has watched his people being decimated by white invaders. He's also a vampire. Some great detail and lore here too.

(3) Don't Fear the Reaper. This is the second in a trilogy and I read it first, so it's pretty stand-alone. I have to go find the others now. Anyway, it's a book about a small town on a lake where slasher movies, or rather their plots, keep happening. Like a lot of Jones's work there's some meta-fiction happening here. I like the writing and the characters more than the story, as I am not into slasher movies. But the writing is good enough to keep you reading.

Also recently read:

Margaret Atwood, Book of Lives, a Memoir of Sorts

A sort of a memoir of Atwood's life, this is surprisingly fun, with a lot of droll bits. 

I say surprising because I've only read a couple books and stories by Atwood and they were all very bleak. Atwood addresses this in the memoir, referring to herself as a kind of Jekyll and Hyde creature, with dark stories to tell while she has lived cheery life and is (apparently) a cheerful person. Anyway, this is nearly 600 pages long and I enjoyed every page.

Richard Russo, Under the Falls

This is Russo's new book, and of course I read it. I will read anything by Richard Russo. I thought it would be a sequel to Empire Falls, or maybe set in the same universe, but no, it is stand alone. It's okay. A musician name Tyler returns to Stone Mountain, his hometown, which he fled at age 18, to give a benefit concert. He doesn't want to be there, and most of the very small town doesn't want him there. As he's fleeing town after the concert, his limo is run off the road by -- someone. That's the mystery in the plot.

The main flaw, probably, is length. Russo doesn't do well with short fiction, and this is a very short novel. Because it is so short, none of the characters except Tyler really get developed. I don't really believe that some of these characters would do the things they're supposed to be doing, but that's at least partly because the characters are so undeveloped. Tyler is about 30, also. Russo's writing about a kid who is my kid's age, except he's fabulously wealthy, and a rock star. The parts where Tyler is writing music, those work, but Tyler doesn't feel like a 30 year old living in 2025, or whenever this book is supposed to have taken place.

The novel is readable, but it is far from Russo's best novel. That one is Nobody's Fool, which is one of the ten perfect novels in the world. If you've never read Russo, start with that one, not this one.

Lee Smith, Silver Alert

Another very short novel, but unlike Russo's, very well done. Lee Smith wrote two of my favorite books, Fair and Tender Ladies and Saving Grace. She is really good at voice and place. Silver Alert is set in Florida, among the hyper-wealthy and the underclass who serve the wealthy. Even more characters than Russo's novel, but all brilliantly well-developed. One of the main characters is a guy whose wife has dementia -- he's got heaps of money, and (despite that, I started to say) is kind and likable and doomed. The other main character, a woman of about 20, is desperately poor, without a family or any real resources. Smith does a great job with this character as well.

Very short, an easy read, and despite the subject matter not at all depressing. 10/10, even though I wanted it to be longer.

D. E. Stevenson, The Young Clementina

I was delighted to find a Stevenson I had not yet read. This is not her best work, though. Written in the early 1930s, this one has the flaws of its time (casual racism, silliness about measuring people's heads to figure out how evolved they are, 'old maids' of 33) and the entire plot is based on a lie one character tells which destroys (almost destroys) the lives of everyone, including that character. This is not how people behave -- why just believe someone one person says? Why not go talk to one another?

It reminds me of a line in one of Mary Renault's books, where one character, puzzled, says to another, "I think you must have read a lot of silly books, or something."

Anyway, if you want to read Stevenson, this is not the book to start with, as engaging as I found the young Clementina. 

Dean Koontz, Going in the Dark

Did not finish. 

EDITED TO CORRECT: My kid DOES NOT LIKE KOONTZ, thank God. likes Koontz, so I've been trying to read one of his novels to see why. This one starts well, with some meta-fictional stuff and a promising plot (the four main characters all have amnesia around  some mysterious event in their young adulthood), but I could not get through the first half. Edited to add: The kid is furious that I slandered him on the blog. He has never even read Koontz.

One problem is how Koontz over-writes, taking three pages to tell you someone has blonde hair. The real flaw, though, is that Koontz does not understand people, so he writes people who behave in ways no human being would actually behave. The academic in this book is shown to us through the eyes of her son, who hates her, so I tried to go with the ridiculous portrayal of an academic. Of course she is unrealistically awful, the son hates her. That sort of thing. But even with that, I could not believe this character, or the way her son engages with her. Same for the rest of the characters. Koontz has been reading too much social media or something.

Koontz also lards in his kind of silly political opinions throughout, generally debunked nonsense about renewable energy, for example. I could wince past those if I could have believed the characters, or cared about what was (maybe?) happening to them. 

Edited to add: It is Clive Barker my kid likes. Maybe I will give him a try instead.

I have another Koontz book on hold at the library. I am giving him ONE MORE CHANCE.

The Students Return

It's a college town, and I knew that when I moved here.

But JESUS, this first weekend they're back is a nightmare.

Traffic like you wouldn't believe, which would be horrible even without the record-cracking heat we're having; and all the restaurants (except the one we took the kid and his husband to for lunch) are just jammed.

The restaurant we went to, known as the Bloom Cheese collective, is tiny and services mainly cheeses and cheese boards, as well as sandwiches with things like fig jam on cheese; and also we got there around 1:30, so there weren't that many people there. The food was fantastic. I had the fig jam one. Amazing bread, and of course great cheese.

10/10, will go again, hopefully on some weekend when the traffic doesn't give me a migraine.

Stolen from Bluesky

Introduce yourself with the thing that almost killed you.

Me: Hi! I'm thyroid cancer!

Though honestly it could also be

Me: Hi! I'm streptococcus bacteria!

Or

Me: Hi! I'm the measles!

or

Me: Hi! I'm kidney stones!

or

Me: Hi! I'm riding a bike without a helmet and having a wreck at age 28!

What about y'all?

Learning French on Duolingo

I'm on my second trip through the French course on Duolingo. 

The first time I went through it, I used the free course, and learned basic things about grammar, as well as establishing a lexicon.

This time through, I signed up for Duolingo Max (it's about $150/year). This gives me help with errors, explaining what I'm doing wrong; it also lets me "talk" to the characters, via phone calls and role play. There also seems to be more talking and listening involved in the lessons this time through -- before, I was mainly reading and writing. Now about half the lessons involve speaking and listening.

That's made a big difference. I can (mostly) understand spoken French now, and because I get feedback on my spoken French, I can see where I'm fucking up.

It's also helping me with reading French -- I can now read French stories and novels if they are not too hard, and with the occasional help of a dictionary.

I've started trying to learn Russian, but that course doesn't give as much help as the French one does. The Latin and Greek courses as similarly useless, giving almost no help with the grammar or with errors. And I've been learning chess as well -- that course is pretty good, at least so far. (I knew the basics of chess, but nothing about the strategy or why certain moves were better than others.)

If you can justify spending the money, I'd go for Duolingo Max, is what I'm saying. 

Energy Audit Achieved!

Our co-op does free energy audits. The guy came today, looked around the house and in the attic. Verdict: we need more insulation, and we need sealing around the pipes and doors. Also, the can lights need to be changed out.

Good news: almost all of this, the co-op will do for free, including parts and labor. The insulation they'll pay half of, which is still a lot.

Thanks to Nicole and Maggie for suggesting this step!

Words Words Words

Back in graduate school, in the writing workshops, we were told that Tolstoy said you could use the word 'suddenly' just once in a 1200 page novel. I have no idea if this is true, but I passed the rule on in my workshops.

Working on Velocity 4, I'm wondering how often I can use the word 'dubiously.' As in, "Are you sure?" she asked dubiously.

What do y'all think?

Heat Dome

We're in a heat dome -- also known as a "thermal death ridge" -- for the foreseeable future.

It's worse down in the Fort where I used to live, where every day from now until September is going to be over 100 degrees. But it's hot enough here, and the humidity is worse.

I cower inside, between my two fans. It's still hot though.

Weather Report

I was hoping coming to the end of the dog days meant we'd get cooler weather for awhile, but nope:

Highs in the high 90s and 100s for the foreseeable future. UGH.

The AC cannot keep up with this heat -- it takes until 9:00 before the inside temperature finally gets below 72 degrees. (I need it to be in the 60s to sleep.) I spend the day sitting between two fans and whimpering.

Six more weeks of summer.

Shamus the Wonder Dog

Shamus has figured out how to get his collar off. I've never seen him actually do it, so I don't know what he's doing -- he just shows up with the collar in his mouth, looking very pleased with himself.

Soon he's going to figure out how to open doors, and then I'm really fucked.

Honestly Glad to be Out of the Classroom

Our local public schools are moving away from screens and back to paper and books -- which is a good thing, mind you -- and the university where my kid teaches and his husband attends is similarly going back to paper exams and quizzes.

This is, of course, because of AI. No one was doing the work, or even bothering to read the exams, for the most part. They simply asked AI to write their answers. This also meant, frequently, no one came to class -- why should they, when they knew they could cheat their way through the exams and lab reports?

So it's back to paper. Which, mind you, I approve.

But I am so glad I don't have to read 125 essays a month written in the scrawl that passes for handwriting these days. It was bad enough back when I first started teaching, in the 1980s and 1990s, when kids grew up writing everything by hand.

The answer is smaller classes for writing-intensive classrooms. You'll never get the university boards to agree to that, though.

What I'm Watching Now

I've been watching the YouTube videos put out by Andraz Egart, who describes himself as "a twenty-five year old adventurer from Slovenia," and who climbs mountains and camps overnight in public bivouacs and other places.

I don't know why I'm so fascinated with these. Egart has a nice sense of humor, and the scenery is great, but a lot of the time I'm clutching my hair and yelling at the screen, "You're crazy! What are you doing! DON'T DO THAT!"

I think I might like seeing what the bivouacs look like inside. There are usually multiple bunks or sleeping spaces, and sometimes a wood-burning stove, though not always. People leave extra food for other climbers, or blankets, or wood. We don't have anything like that here in Arkansas, but on the other hand we probably don't need it. It would be hard to get far enough away from a town to need shelter. Also, of course, the US does not believe in the public good. Or at least the South does not.

Anyway, they're usually thirty to forty minutes long and I watch them at 1.3 speed, usually one every evening. They're what I watch when I am too tired to read.

Sleep Paralysis

Ugh, I just had sleep paralysis again.

This is maybe the third time I've had it, and this time it was filled with auditory and scent hallucination. Like, I could hear a TV blaring (we don't even own a TV) and smell someone cutting up onions. (No onions were being cut up.)

I keep trying to move and dreaming I had moved and then prying my eyes open to see I still had not moved. I was utterly locked into position.

Finally I tried yelling for Dr Skull. I think I dreamed I was yelling at first, but then I did actually yell for him. And after that I was able to move.

About ten minutes later he came hobbling into the living room, where I was still lying on the couch. "Were you calling for me?"

Anyway, 0/10, don't like that.

Learn the Heimlich Maneuver, Folks

We went to lunch with the kid and his husband today, as is our wont on Fridays, and Dr Skull choked on a bite of chicken. I looked up and saw his desperate expression and how he was grabbing at his chest and throat. "Are you all right?" I said, and then more alarmed, "Are you choking?"

He did not answer, just looked more desperate.

I jumped up. "He's choking!" I shouted at the restaurant. "Who knows the Heimlich?" 

I looked wildly at the waiter, who backed away looking terrified. "I don't know it!" he said.

"Who knows the Heimlich?" I yelled louder. "He's choking!"

A woman got up. "I do. Move out of the way."

"Move!" I said. That was my contribution. Everyone scattered from her path.

She had to do it several times before he had choked up everything -- there was vomit involved, if you've never seen it done -- first while he was sitting and then getting him to stand up. It took like five minutes. It was absolutely terrifying, for me, though also for him.

When we were finally sitting down and he had cold compresses all over him -- that was also the woman's suggestion, since apparently choking makes your body heat go up -- I saw that the entire restaurant had cleared out. We all thanked the woman about a billion times. I forgot to get her name. 

Anyway, I'm signing up for a CPR/Choking class, which is given by the city. 

Aside from the time the kid, at about eight months old, choked on a pistachio,  this was the most terrifying five minutes of my life.

Don't worry, I left a big tip.

Crystal Bridges 2026

The kid and I had a fine if exhausting time at the museum. Here are my favorite works of art:

A Tiffany window

A George Ault I love to pieces

My favorite Will Barnet

We ate at the museum, which had excellent food -- I had a burger and the kid had catfish with purple rice, which was beautiful to look at, and he said it was delicious.

Then we went to William Sonoma. The kid loves William Sonoma. I got some linen napkins and he got a kitchen scale.

It was so hot, but we had a good time nonetheless. We rode the shuttle bus from the parking garage to the museum, and the kid got up to give an old lady his seat and all the old ladies cooed. "Oh, how sweet!"

Rain and Crystal Bridges

It rained last night, so today is cooler -- the dog and I enjoyed the dog park greatly this morning.

Later on, the kid and I are going to Crystal Bridges. I haven't been for over a year, because Dr. Skull is not up to walking around a museum and so far refuses to let me rent him a wheelchair for the excursion. I am greatly looking forward to the outing. 

SO HOT

God, it is so hot here. I can barely stand to walk outside with the dog. Even at dawn, it is near 80 degrees and so much humidity.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain and then it will be a bit cooler -- high 80s and low 90s for the highs, right through August 11, and then we will be out of the dog days. Things should be less miserable after that. Knock wood.

It is so dispiriting when you're staring down a week with highs in the 100s. Honestly. 

Eight more weeks of summer.

Oh NO

Forecast is for temperatures at or near 100 here for the next three days, with high humidity making it feel much hotter.

Our AC cannot keep it. It's miserable.

(We're in the charred black section.)

O BOY AI!!

Apparently Elon Musk is going to make an AI Odyssey which is "historically accurate," which is hilarious in and of itself. But the MAGA bootlickers cheering him on just crack me up.

This is not about that, but it's funny all the same:

London: we're making a fully AI horror movie! Poe: Barker: King: Koontz: Lovecraft: Barker: fuck ha ha Barker: this fuckin sucks Poe: clive Poe: no never mind Poe: this does suck

— The Midnight Society (@midnightpals.bsky.social) 12:21 PM · Jul 23, 2026

Disclaimer:  I have not seen the Nolan movie which has the Right pitching tantrums. For all I know, it is actually awful. But the belief held by the Right that the classical world was composed of 100% white people cracks me up. It's no use arguing, though. The Right cannot learn. It's kind of the entire basis of their worldview, not learning things.

Barker: this is shit, man Barker: real bad Mary Shelley: sup fuckers Barker: they're making an AI horror movie Shelley: ned ludd was right all along Shelley: we shoulda broken that fuckin loom when we had the chance

— The Midnight Society (@midnightpals.bsky.social) 12:21 PM · Jul 23, 2026

Dreaming

I've been having a lot of terrible dreams lately. Last night was an anxiety dream about working at the library, which was, God, forty years ago? Fifty?

I was late for work and I couldn't get my phone to let me call in (I had my iPhone even though I worked at the library so long ago no one had a portable phone and very few people even had those huge phones in their cars) and my mother was downstairs watching the television with the sound turned up really loud (this was something she actually did, which drove me crazy when I lived at home). Also I had some kind of medical appointment that I had missed and they kept calling me only the phone wasn't ringing and didn't let me take the calls.

Yesterday night I had a moving dream -- we were moving, but nothing was packed and the movers were arriving any moment and I didn't know where the new house was.

The night before last, the house was full of mice and bugs and the kid was an infant but we didn't have anywhere safe for him to sleep, because of the mice and bugs.

These are all clearly anxiety dreams, but what am I anxious about? Everything is fine.

Trump, maybe. The MAGA movement in general. The house being filled with mice and bugs and not being able to keep the kid safe really fits that one.

Anyway, ugh.

Encounter

So I was walking Shamus home from the dog park the other day and an immigrant gentleman was walking there as well. He stopped me and politely asked me to define a word -- he had a whole bunch of English words written down in a little notebook, so he was clearly working on learning the language.

"Coincidence," I read when he pointed at it. "Boy, that's a hard one. It's...like when two things happen at the same time, but no one planned them to?"

He stared at me, clearly not understanding. "Can you give an example?" he asked after a moment.

"Maybe," I said, thinking about it. "So, for example, I'm going out a door at a store and a friend of mine is walking in the door, and neither of us planned to see each other? I might say, What a coincidence!"

I'm still not sure he understand, but as I was walking home I was thinking to myself that maybe I didn't understand what 'coincidence' means either.

The dictionary says it's when two things happen at the same time but there is no causal connection. Too bad I didn't have a dictionary with me at the time.

This reminds me of when a student asked me to define irony, and then how irony differed from sarcasm, and then what sarcasm meant, exactly.

That was an adventure.

My Major Complaints about Life At the Moment

In general I am pretty happy with how life is going right now, but I do have some complaints.

(1) I have to put my shoes on every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. Often socks are involved as well.

(2) If I don't feed and hydrate my body, it gets really cranky and sometimes starts hurting

(3) I have to fix meals. Like, every single day. Sometimes more than once a day! [See #2]

(4) Summer

(5) Dishes, laundry

(6) I have to take showers. It's such a production. First you have to arrange a time when the shower is not being used by someone else and the laundry and dishwasher are not running. Then you have to get out a towel and a washcloth and a bath mat. And soap. Then you have to undress. Then you have to get in the shower. Being in the shower is okay, even pleasant, but eventually you have to come out of the shower. Then you have to dry off and dress and clean up the towels and shower and bath mat and now there's more laundry.

(7) Not only to I have to bathe and feed and hydrate my stupid body, I have to exercise it. Even in the summer. UGH.

(8) Republicans and MAGA. Can't we vote them off the island?

(9) So many books are very bad. True, there are also good books. But I need to sort through all the terrible ones to get to the good ones. GOD.

(10) Once you hit about 65, everything starts hurting pretty much all the time. This is also when you retire and finally have plenty of time to live your life but how can you when everything hurts all the time?

(11) If you're thinking about getting a border collie mix, remember it's like installing external ADHD.

(12) Summer. Did I mention summer? Let's mention it again. It's going to be 101 degrees on Tuesday and there are still eleven more weeks until we can reasonably expect some cooler weather. If we must have summer, couldn't we just have it for a weekend in August like they do in some European countries? Or well, I guess as they used to do, since climate change has changed that.

What's that? What's that out there? Let's GO SEE!!

Weather Report

 Oh God, it's going to be 100 degrees on Tuesday.

I hate summer.

Piano Update

I am getting better.

But I have reached the point in the lesson books where I have to play with both hands at once, and as I often say to Dr Skull, "I can do ONE THING at a TIME."

Right now I'm slowing way down and learning the two-handed parts bit by bit. But it's difficult.

Also, one of the C keys on my piano does not work, so I kind of have to play around any music that requires that note. It's a bummer.

Dinner Party

The dinner party went well, despite my anxiety beforehand (what was I worried about? We invited six people, which meant eight at a table that comfortably fits six; it was a murderously hot day, so would the air conditioning keep the house bearable despite the heat from the cooking? Dr Skull had been having more trouble than usual getting around; did I mention how hot it was?). 

The menu:

• chicken with mushrooms
• grilled asparagus
• boiled potatoes with dill and butter
• baguettes
• chocolate pie with whipped cream
• white wine for those who wanted it

I cooked all of it, with a lot of coaching from Dr Skull, and it all turned out marvelously. The baguettes were especially good.

I forgot to take pictures, and probably I couldn't have shared them anyway since the kid and his husband brought along their two friends (from their 'friend group,' which is what kids today call people they met online and hang out with, frequently, online). These two flew in from Maryland and somewhere else which I don't remember. Also their friend from Kansas who is going to graduate school here came, as did Uncle Charger.

Shamus was very pleased. He loves having people visit, especially when one of them is Charger and two of the others are the kid and his husband. Although this time, his friend from Maryland was the very favorite.

Anyway. It took two days to clean up the kitchen, but now it is almost done. Just one...more...big...pot to wash. Ugh.

This has to be satire, right?

Apparently having won his first war against Iran, by means of declaring that he had won it, Trump now has to declare a "second" war on Iran? Is that really the world we're living in now?

Also! Chocolate rations have been increased for the third week in a row! And the economy is BOOMING!!

Rain and Thunder and various updates

A big thunderstorm went through here last night, terrifying the poor dog. (He has a new 'safe place' he goes when he's frightened -- our bedroom, Dr Skull's side of the bed.)

This morning it is wet and significantly cooler. We went to the dog park and he tore around, leaping in all the puddles. Now he is wet and filthy and I have banished him to his crate until he dries off some.

The kid has friends visiting this week, so they are going to museums and restaurants and playing games. They'll be here on Tuesday for dinner which is going to require me to cook (Dr Skull is going to tell me what to do).

I'm still reading biographies, but I did gobble down an epistolary novel yesterday, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which meant I had to read Helen Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road again. Now I am hungry for more epistolary novels. Please give suggestions if you have them!

I am currently reading both a biography of FDR and one of Eleanor Roosevelt. The two authors are both disdainful of the spouses of their subjects -- that is, H.W. Brands sees Eleanor as as one of FDRs problems, and David Michaels has a great deal of contempt for FDR. 

Did you know Eleanor Roosevelt was bisexual? If not straight up gay. They didn't teach us that in history class. FDR, on the other hand, had a number of affairs, maybe partly because Eleanor didn't really want to sleep with him, despite how hot and handsome he was. (This is Brands, but Michaels admits FDR was a hottie too.) Anyway, Eleanor apparently had seven children for FDR (six survived to adulthood -- FDR wanted six kids) and then refused to have sex with him anymore. She moved into a cottage with two other women, and eventually hooked up with Lorena Hickok, her lifelong companion, as they say.

She stuck with the marriage, though, and tirelessly worked for FDR and his political aims. 

The political world of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s reminds me quite a bit of the mess we're in now -- white nationalism, eugenics, hatred of immigrants, the concentration of wealth among a very few families at the top and desperate poverty elsewhere. Also, of course, systemic racism. In an odd way, it gives me hope.

Also, today Lindsey Graham died, and apparent Mitch McConnell is on the edge of death. What a shame.

My Kid's Comic!

 Today my kid's comic reaches a scene I helped them with ---

Read their comic now!

Weather Report

It's not as hot as it could be, I guess.

Highs in the 90s for the foreseeable future, plus high humidity. It's too hot to stay very long at the dog park, even in the evening when the shade is pretty deep.

July and August are my least favorite months. Could we not just skip them and go straight to October?

What I'm Reading Now

Basically biographies. What's up with this? I do not know.

I started out reading Ron Chernow's Mark Twain, and then Lenora Chu's Little Soldiers, along with Lauren Hough's Monster of A Land and Virginia Woolf's A Writer's Diary (none of which are exactly autobiographies). 

Now I'm reading Traitor to His Class, which is a biography of FDR and just filled with things I did not know about the years between 1880 and 1945. After this, I have two biographies of Eleanor Roosevelt queued up. 

And while I was finding them on the shelves at the library, I saw a biography of JD Salinger I am tempted to read, though honestly Salinger is one of the most annoying writers on the planet. But maybe the biography would show me why! I'm also considering reading Chernow's Hamilton, which is responsible for the musical, kind of. I really liked his Mark Twain, though.

I'm also still reading a lot of science fiction, of course. Currently a really good novel called Homebound, by Portia Elan; but also I just scored a review copy of Tanya Huff's newest novel.

New Recipe up at Cooking with delagar

It's Dense Bean Tabouli!

If you haven't yet heard of dense bean salad, clearly you don't spend enough time on TikTok. I combined the dense bean ethos with my love of tabouli to create something delicious. Also featured: Wensleydale!\

Rain

We had a big storm last night and this morning at the dog park it was actually very nearly cool -- about seventy degrees and not much humidity. Shamus had a good time chasing the ball.

Tomorrow we're back to Arkansas hellscape, or so the weather guy says.

Don't forget to buy my kid's zines!

Traumatized Pup

I was walking my dog one afternoon about a month ago, and a crack of thunder burst right over our heads. (It was cloudy, but no other sign of storm, or we wouldn't have been out.) Shamus freaked, of course, and since then he has been afraid of thunder.

Here in Fayetteville, fireworks are legal from July 1 through July 4. They sound like thunder to him, I guess. Anyway, he's shivering in terror for three or four hours a night, from the time they start (around 9:00) until the idiots finally quit (around 11:00).

Tonight should be a treat.

Buy my Kid's Zines!

 My kid has several zines for sale. I star in one of them, the one called "Sleepy Little Town." The red, orange, and yellow ones are the first three chapters of his werewolf comic

Get'em while they're hot!