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a confession: today I have bought two more translations of Descartes
Dec. 9th, 2025 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettItem the first: the 1972 Harvard University Press Treatise of Man, translated by Thomas Steele Hall. This translation is quoted by two of the other books I'm working with, Pain: the science of suffering by Patrick Wall (1999), and The Painful Truth by Monty Lyman (2021). It is also an edition that, as I understand it, contains a facsimile of the first French edition (1664, itself a translation of the Latin published in 1662). My French is not up to reading actual seventeenth-century philosophy, but being able to spot-check a couple of paragraphs will be Useful For My Argument.
Item the second: Descartes: Key Philosophical Writings, translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (1997). This doesn't contain Treatise on Man, but it's the translation of Meditations on First Philosophy that's quoted in The Story of Pain by Joanna Bourke (2014).
Meanwhile the Descartes essay, thus far composed primarily but not solely of quotations from other works, has somehow made it north of 4500 words. I think it might even be starting to make an argument.
( Read more... )
I am resisting the urge to try to turn this into a Proper Survey Of Popular Books On Pain, because that sounds like a lot of work that will probably involve reading a bunch of philosophers I find profoundly irritating, and also THIS IS A TOTAL DISTRACTION from the ACTUAL WORK I AM TRYING TO DO. But it's a distraction that is getting me writing, so I'll take it.
If you're required to deploy AI
Dec. 9th, 2025 10:48 amjesse_the_k...here's an excellent use-case: feed your strong passphrase text as a prompt to an image generator
from the passphrase string "fabulous tattoo Harvey", Reddit user u/waydomatic and ChatGPT made ( this cheerful example )
The LLM thinks Harvey is a muscular white guy wearing a skimpy purple Speedo; arms, shoulder and upper chest covered in rose tattoos. He flexes his right arm and flashes a big white smile under his handlebar mustache. Of course he's wearing a rose crown.
Saving the generated image would certainly be more secure than writing down the password.
Crafting Update, November 2025 + 20 Minute Kitty!
Dec. 9th, 2025 09:53 amalthea_valaraI did a LOT of knitting in a very short timeframe in November, and TBH it pooped me out and I think I'm still recovering. BUT! I successfully knitted a pair of legwarmers to wear to the A New World concert! Here they are:
[Image Description: A pair of knitted legwarmers. They are Aran colored (think natural undyed yarn) and feature a folded ribbed cuff at top, with lazy cables on the body and an intricate cable at the back. One is larger than the other.]
So yeah, this pattern comes in small and large sizes. Small wouldn't fit me, but large was TOO big. I altered the pattern some for my first one, taking some stitches out to make it smaller. Well, I finished it and tried it on and nope, too big. So for the second I took even MORE stitches out of the pattern. This one felt like it fit well, but as soon as I started walking, it drooped.
I didn't have time to reknit them, so I made do with them as is, and used elastic headbands under the cuff to keep them up. That worked well! Also, I shortened the pattern because in the pattern pic, the lower edge was dragging on the ground and I didn't like that. Unfortunately, I shortened it TOO much. I might unpick the bind off and knit them a bit longer, but for now, they work. And no, I am likely not going to reknit the too big one. TOO MUCH WORK.
I also made progress on a hoodie!
[Image Description: a sleeve in progress for a knitted hoodie. It's mostly gray in color and features deep ribbing at the cuff. A center cable panel runs up the middle, in teal.]
At the beginning of the month, I had one cable cross done. Now I have two. So not much progress, but hey, progress is progress.
I also did some work on the Versailles Scarf, a small true lace knitted scarf. I wanted to finish this for the concert as well, but decided the legwarmers were more important. It'd be nice to get this done for Christmas, but with the lack of crafting I've been doing so far this month, it's not gonna happen.
FOLKS! I had a cat for 20 minutes!
[Image Description: A photo of a calico kitty visited our house for a bit.]
She came up to our patio door before the snow hit, when it was still decent out, and we decided to let her in for a bit, once we closed the bedroom doors. I, of course, was enamored. Mom less so. Being a cat, she did cat things, like scratching at an area rug (mom yelled at her, poor thing, but I can't really fault mom for that) and jumping on the kitchen table to try to get to our Christmas cactus. I kept a close eye on her the entire time she was in the house, so when I saw you going for the plant, I gently picked her up and deposited her back on the floor, because well, I don't know if those plants are safe for cats.
She was inquisitive and explored a lot, and liked to rub against legs. At one point, she was in our living room and started trotting towards the kitchen, so I called out to mom to let her know she was headed mom's way. Unfortunately mom was distracted and didn't hear me, and the cat, being friendly, came up behind her and rubbed her legs and mom almost tripped on her. :(
We considered calling an animal shelter, but due to her friendliness, decided to just let her back outside. Not before she jumped on the table AGAIN, though. I tried to grab her to deposit her back on the floor, but she jumped on the back of one of our chairs, and well, the chair tipped over.
Which means mom has declared NO CATS. :( I had really hoped she'd come around and we could, like, adopt a senior kitty, and my older sister made noise about us doing just that at Thanksgiving, but I don't think mom would be happy with a cat. Alas. But at least I had one for 20 minutes.
Murdoch Uni and Other End-of-Year Events
Dec. 9th, 2025 06:33 pmtcpipFor my own part (representing the 1990s graduates), I made the point that the radical parts of Murdoch's original educational objectives ("the Murdoch ethos") are now accepted and mainstream: encouraging mature-aged students and lifelong learning, allowing for part-time and external studies, encouraging interdisciplinary studies, and alternative entry based on experience. I also made a point of mentioning Bruce Tapper, who died a year ago on the day; not just because he was such a huge influence on my life, but in particular, because he was such a fierce advocate for Murdoch University's progressive education and egalitarian access.
In many ways, my alma mater sometimes stands in stark contrast with my employer, the University of Melbourne. Prestigious and conservative, the UniMelb is recognised as the top university in the country, which is really due to the excellent and well-funded research sector, standing on the shoulders of giants past. At UniMelb in the past fortnight, there have been two social occasions of note: an end-of-year potluck lunch for Research Computing Services (I brought along the Polish duck soup (Czernina), and an end-of-year social event for all of Business Services, this year held on campus at the Ernie Cropley Pavilion, a better location, and superior catering to previous years.
As another example of contrast, last Saturday I attended the Thangka Art Exhibition on Tibetan Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Development hosted by the Australian ReTeng Charity Foundation, associated with the Buddhist ReTeng Monastery in Donvale. I was somewhat surprised and impressed by the sheer number of dignitaries from the Melbourne Chinese community in attendance, and extremely impressed by the artworks on display. There was some juxtaposition of this aesthetic event, and the one attended in the evening, with Carla BL, at a little bar in Fitzroy to see a group of post-punk musicians (including my favourite local coldwave artists, Cold Regards) perform. For reasons of international travel, this is the end of EoY Melbourne activities - next stop, Santiago!
I'm gasping for love
Dec. 9th, 2025 01:27 amviridian5+++
The monthly premium for my Medicare prescription plan rose from $36 a month in 2025 to $100 a month for 2026, so I switched away from Humana to Cigna. Cigna claims to be monthly premium-free but doesn't cover every single prescription of mine; the one it doesn't cover I barely use. It'll probably be fine, but I still can't help worrying I might've made a mistake in switching. If so, it'll take a while to find out.
+++
My head has been killing me lately, which has gotten in the way of me doing a lot of things.
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I posted a first chapter of my current Encanto WIP to AO3. If you're interested:
A Long, Long Way to Go (2611 words) by Viridian5
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Encanto (2021)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: Mirabel Madrigal, Bruno Madrigal, "Abuela" Alma Madrigal, Pepa Madrigal, Félix Madrigal, Residents of Encanto Village (Disney), Luisa Madrigal
Additional Tags: Post-Movie: Encanto (2021), Prophetic Visions, The villagers can't be normal about Bruno, False Accusations, Drama, Family Dynamics
Summary:
This vision ends up revealing more than just the future.
(Or, the Madrigal family's new foundation is built on sand....)
three from hong kong
Dec. 8th, 2025 06:57 pmjazzfish( City On Fire )
( Peking Opera Blues )
( The Killer )
(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2025 04:41 pmysobelMy character rolls the highest initiative.
She is a L20 owlin monk. She has flight. She also has a) 70 feet of movement per turn, and b) magic items (and a feat) that gives extra damage for distance moved in a straight line just before the attack. Oh, and a potion that does bonus
First roll hit a nat 20.
Rolling 20 means damage dice are doubled; if you would normally do 2d6, on a crit you roll 4d6. Between the damage roll (doubled), the extra monk ability I always like to throw in (also doubled, plus poison for a round), and the bonus damage for straight lines (doubled), I did 119 points of damage.
I also have a feat that says if I get a critical hit, all attacks against that creature have advantage until my next turn.
So... a pretty good start.
I love this character.
(...I got a crit the next turn too.)
vital functions
Dec. 7th, 2025 10:45 pmkaberett(Last week's also now exists and is no longer a placeholder!)
Reading. Pain, Abdul-Ghaaliq Lalkhen. I want to be very, very clear: unless you are specifically researching attitudes and beliefs in pain clinics in early 2020s England, or similar, do not read this book. There are bad history and no references, appalling opinions on patients (
), quite possibly the worst hyphenation choice I have ever seen, stunning omissions and misrepresentations of pain science, and It's Weird That It Happened Twice soup metaphors. Fuller review (or at least annotated bibliography entry) to follow, maybe.
Some further progress on Florencia Clifford's Feeding Orchids to the Slugs ("Tales from a Zen kitchen"), which I acquired from Oxfam in a moment of weakness primarily for EYB purposes at a point when it was extremely discounted. It is primarily a somewhat disjointed memoir for which I am not the target audience, but hey, Books To Go Back In The Charity Shop Pile but that I wouldn't actually hate reading were exactly the goal, so that's a victory. Mostly. I'm a little over halfway through it, sticking book darts on pages that contain recipes for easier reference when I go back through on the actual indexing pass.
I absolutely needed something that was not going to make me furious and furthermore that was not going to be demanding, and there's a new one in the series, so I have now reread several Scalzi: Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades completed, The Lost Colony in progress.
I've also had a very quick flick through the mentions of Descartes in Joanna Bourke's The Story of Pain, which is my next Pain Book. She does better than everyone else I've read, but I still think she's misinterpreting Treatise on Man. (Why do I have strongly-held opinions on Descartes now. CAN I NOT.)
Playing. ( Inkulinati, Monument Valley )
Cooking. SOUP.
smitten kitchen's braised chickpeas with zucchini and pesto, two batches thereof, because I had promised A burrata to go with and then (1) the supermarket was out of it and (2) the opened part-pack of feta wound up doing two days quite comfortably, so the second batch was required For Burrata Purposes.
I have also established that the pistachio croissant strata works very well in one of the loaf tins if you scale it down to 50% quantities because there were only 3 discount croissants at the supermarket (... because you had to wait and watch the person who got there JUST ahead of you taking Most Of Them...), which also conveniently used up the dregs of the cream that I had in the fridge.
Eating. Tagine out the freezer (thank you past Alex). Relatively fresh dried apple. A very plain lunch at Teras in Seydikemer, which was apparently the magic my digestive system needed to settle itself down! And I am very much enjoying my dark chocolate raspberry stars. :)
Seeking recommendations for puberty books that are fat-positive
Dec. 6th, 2025 07:35 pmlannamichaelsI just read The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls by Valorie Lee Schaefer for content, focusing on a few things, but primarily ovulation and eating disorders. It doesn't mention ovulation, and while the eating disorder section itself is fine, I wasn't impressed with the overall section on food, and there were other parts of this book that really rubbed me wrong, especially the emphasis on smiling. It's weirdly anti-salt and doesn't seem to believe that insomnia exists.
This book kept making me think "this would be great to use in some kind of dissertation on a very specific culture that this came out of, telling the young girls in this culture how best to grow up to be women." The examples alone of what concerns they thought the girls had about their bodies and their social interactions (they all seem to have very mean friends and want larger breasts, except for the one girl with large breasts, whose friends all dropped her for being ugly and fat. No one is actually fat in this book. Also their bra size chart doesn't go above 36D; people thinking that breasts can't possibly be beyond that was the source of a great many problems in my life, and I kept thinking, while reading this book, that this book would have been negatively helpful to me in my actual experience of puberty.)
So.
Does anyone have recommendations for "what to expect when you're expecting to go through puberty" that are fat-positive? You know, something like "it's very genetic and it's not because you ate too much junk food"?
And is more honest about period pain, and mentions -- at the very least -- ovulation. And that you can get back pain from your breasts.
And also -- okay, there were a bunch of things in this book that made me go "this is the opposite of helpful, I understand why you think it's helpful, but trust me, while you're not contributing to the problem, you're also not helping."
But really, the fat-positive thing would be helpful, and also more realistic about numbers on scales, please and thank you.
(And maybe ones that don't assume everyone has a mom???? I'm just. I'm just. This book is so oddly heteronormative for a book that has nothing in it about dating.)
[Daf Yomi] Zevachim perek 6-8
Dec. 6th, 2025 05:40 pmlannamichaelsMy notes on these. Still not much to say but it's been, quite frankly, better than Nashim.
( Read more... )
some good things (a post)
Dec. 6th, 2025 11:28 pmkaberett- Breakfast in bed, accompanied by completing my first ever playthrough of the main body of Monument Valley. I think I wound up getting two prompts from A, who also spent a significant chunk of the afternoon attempting to get it working on two different large-format touchscreen devices -- I'd been struggling with the trackpad, and was gratified when A reported that they'd had a go at playing the very first level with a trackpad and it really was kind of wretched. (Made it to approximately halfway through Appendix 1 before deciding I needed to call it for the day...)
- smitten kitchen's braised chickpeas with zucchini and pesto continues fantastic.
- 'tis The Season for my current Favourite Chocolate (I'm not sure if it's available year-round but the company we get groceries from only carries them during the winter, and I honestly probably enjoy them more because of the Seasonal Availability). I am writing this post with one of them + a mug of warm milk.
- The box of meds I dropped in an airport this Monday gone has successfully been picked up! First step in a pass-the-parcel that will hopefully conclude weekend after next...
- Got a substantial increase on my highest score in one of the silly clicky games in Flight Rising :)
also recent reading
Dec. 6th, 2025 11:46 amthistleingreySonali Dev, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, The Rajes 1 (2019)
Recipe for Persuasion, The Rajes 2 (2020)
Incense and Sensibility, The Rajes 3 (2021)
Beyond the pairwise romance ostensibly cranking its plot, the first book is a love letter to third-culture kids whose lives have been bent by contradictory familial expectations, and an acknowledgment of bits of the wreckage wrought by postcolonial aspiration. Light touch, relatively, but I appreciate that these books say some of the quiet things aloud about costs and---better---that several characters encourage each other to speak to someone specific.
"Raje" isn't ordinarily a surname, which makes it a good choice.
Perhaps the most important feature of the setting, as a fix-it, is that when the kids who figure in these books as adult characters were growing up, several older relatives were local. I also appreciate the queer side-character situationship, whose arc suits the books' setting.
Anyway, four books total---none for Mansfield Park, which I think would be tough to fit. The fourth is The Emma Project (2022), which I've begun.