rivka

Some years ago I advised a composer who was composing an opera about A Historical Figure about whom I am something of a Nexpert, and I am now on their mailing list and get info on their current activities and broadcasts and so on -

And I was invited to the Private View of this, taking place at a venue which is only a reasonable bus-ride and short walk away.

Also giving me the chance to see a small part of the nearish locality with which I am relatively unfamiliar, and which has its charms.

I am not sure I was entirely enthused by the artworks - there was one installation of ceramics where I wished I had someone there to whom I could murmur that they had an urgent phallic look -

My main problem with the venue, however, was the acoustics - I think it was the kind of space where once you got a certain mass of people conversing it would always have been a bit trying for me and my hearing aids, but combined with the ambient music coming out of the various speakers, not optimal at all. (Though maybe its own soundscape....)

I don't think there was anyone there I knew besides The Composer - mostly of a younger generation and art/music people rather than groves of academe - and I didn't really get into much chat, but I did get 2 admiring comments on the green hair streaks and 1 compliment to my pendant (which I think I got at Wiscon, unless it was 4th St?).

However, I have had a sweet email from The Composer thanking me for coming.

What I read

Finished Persuasion - but felt a bit out of sync with the online reading.

Then I went on to something Entirely Different: my interest was aroused by rydra_wong posting about Rachel Rosen's Cascade (2022) and Blight (2025) (The Sleep of Reason, #1 and #2), so I went and discovered that the ebooks could be obtained directly from the small Canadian press in question. Got stuck into Cascade and while I would not have thought I was up for grim eco/magical dystopia with festering political intrigue before everything goes to hell, I was absolutely gripped.

Pretty much the only reason I then read LM Chilton, I Think We Should Kill Other People (2026) was I had finished that and had not yet downloaded Blight. This was a not entirely happy mashup of rom-com (this part I thought worked least well), serial killer, and version of 'cut-off country-house' mystery (small airport shut down in middle of snowstorm trapping relevant characters), with added 'reality tv show that includes AI setting' and 'comic intentions'.

On the go

Have now gone on to Blight and may be some time (these are not your slender novellas).

Up next

Alexis Hall, Father Material arrived this week; also KJ Charles, How To Fake It In Society is currently a Kobo deal so have also got that on the ereader.

Still have not yet got to Slightly Foxed, and the latest Literary Review recently arrived.

And surely that would include realising that things were not always the exact same way they are today?

For decades, publishers have swapped out cultural references in new editions of books to appeal to younger readers. Fans aren’t always thrilled.

This seems so weird to me. I grew up on reading books that had lingered for however long on the shelves of the children's dept of the local public library - which were all bound in that standard hard-wearing public library binding so one did not have any sense of shiny newness or otherwise - along with my mother's old books, some of which were works of a yet more previous generation which she had loved in her youth.

And that's before we get into the oddness of the Alice books and the talking animals and so forth.

Do they have no imaginations? Are they only supposed to identify with recognisable experiences?

Read somewhere about (in this case I think actually adult readers) who could not deal with subtext, foreshadowing, and other Litry Devices.

I was a bit beswozzled by this chap, too, though perhaps from a rather different direction. I devoured classic novels as a teenager. In a world of distractions, can I relearn how to read them?.

Sometimes books have their time and it is past. And sometimes they are just not the right thing at that moment.

And I also think of times in my past when I had fairly long commutes and other stretches of otherwise dead time that I could fill up with doing perhaps rather dutiful reading of those things One Ought To Read, and whether this is not only my experience. And then one's life shifts and these spaces go away.

Last week's bread held out pretty well, up until the point it became a dried out solid brick.

Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng with yellow bell pepper and Calabrian salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: grated apple, with Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour and maple syrup.

Today's lunch: baby carrots roasted in sunflower + toasted sesame oil, right at end sprinkled with sugar and mirin; baby courgettes white-braised with ginger rather than star anise, no sesame oil; green beans steamed with fennel seeds then tossed in olive oil + tarragon vinegar with a little chopped red onion; large flat mushrooms marinated for approx 30 mins in 50/50% tamari and mirin boiled with with a dash of sesame oil and star anise, then healthy-grilled for 5 minutes or so.

‘There is no way to stop this’: ‘Biotech Barbie’ Cathy Tie on her mission to genetically modify babies

Gene editing has the power to alter the trajectory of human evolution for ever; the direction it takes will depend on who wields the editing tools. “There is no public funding available for researchers in the space,” Tie explains. “Everything is privately funded.” It’s up to entrepreneurs to demonstrate the potential benefits for humankind, she says, so regulators may soften their hardline stance and allow them to rewrite human DNA.

Also, just look at the people who are funding this, and we think that this is the C21st equivalent of Citizen Kane trying to make his mistress an opera star.

And as for this, I don't think she can really get away from it?

“Eugenics is a very heavy word,” Tie says just before taking questions from the floor. “I would prefer to stop throwing that word around.”

- and somehow I have been thinking all week about Charles Darwin moseying around the Galapagos, and over the subsequent decades gradually evolving the theory of evolution....

Unfortunately 'The Big Idea' on AI children as the future of reproduction is not yet online.

I also think of the fairly parlous state even in relatively advanced countries of women's ability to reliably control their fertility, have high-quality safe obstetrical care, etc, issues around children' nutrition, early years care, education....

But I guess these things do not have a gosh-wow factor.

France overturns law classing people as property – 178 years after it abolished slavery

Have been for some considerable time casting sceptical glances at the whole liberte egalite fraternite thing, because that third element did seem rather to circumscribe the application....

(And also the historical tendency to consider that o-la-la, they were far more sorted in matters erotique - a good deal of this was surely the perception of gents Britannique en vacances, surely.)

I was a bit stunned by this: Argentina’s ‘European’ self-image under renewed scrutiny after racist incidents in Brazil, but agreeably surprised to find that Brazil (which was very late to abolish slavery) has a law of 'racial insult'. Although it has significant racial problems.

Or, doing those things I ought to have done/been doing already, maybe.

Well, not quite that, but it was one of those days when after several days of flopping around feeling that not much was getting done and general apathy not entirely attributable to the weather I actually -

Rang the dental practice to reschedule my hygienist appointment because now Condoms Are Go it's less convenient than it was.

Okay, this only came up yesterday anyway: a younger scholar got in touch (prompted by former colleague) over thing they are doing and hoping for input if not actual collaboration from me, and I am not sure about collaboration but feel I could advise, and maybe, blurb or something?

Also, is yonks since was in contact with former colleague so emailed them.

While I was on email roll contacted person i/c archive I did research in some while ago and am contemplating doing a piece on fruits of my research about any constraints on quoting the material.

Sat down to beginning writing what I am intending saying about the Powerpoint slides for Condom Talk.

Did some updates for website.

Had some technical communications re talk.

Phew.