djkittycat

Just finished: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This held up on re-read—it's still my favourite of her work (admittedly I haven't read her latest) and is just this perfect exploration how it feels to be 15 and simultaneously enraged with and in love with the world.

Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction, edited by Sonia Sulaiman. Somehow I missed this coming out last year despite—I thought, anyway—being on some kind of list from the editor. Anyway. It's quite excellent. Stories range from the hauntingly beautiful "The Third or Fourth Casualty" by Ziyad Saadi, about a group of children swimming and drowning, to the gorgeously defiant "Gaza Luna" by Samah Serour Fadil, to the absolute ugly-cry of "The Generation Chip" by Nadia Afifi. It's hard to pick a favourite—there are a lot of bangers in this collection. Anyway, you should read it.

Currently reading: Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams. I would probably never read this if Mark Zuckerberg hadn't tried to have it banned, so good job with the Streisand Effect. It's pretty entertaining, though. The author pitches a job that doesn't exist to Facebook because she's naïvely convinced that the company is going to change the world in a good way (ha. ha. ha.) and then gets progressively more disillusioned when it turns out she works for the worst people. Also she almost got eaten by a shark when she was 13, which is a metaphor. But also she almost did get eaten by a shark when she was 13.

It's all dealt with now, I am just keeping off my feet even more than usual while it heals, but thought I should let people know!

Details and some stuff about life in general under the cut, including mention of my colonoscopy (two unrelated minor surgeries in a month is TWO TOO MANY) and mention of blood/needles etc.

So above the cut I'll say: If you ever need to keep a bandaged toe dry in the shower, put a stretchy glove over it! Works like a charm!
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 Hey, it's a new Wizards & Spaceships episode! In "The Science Bros Answer Your Science Questions Part 1," you can find out what happens if you jump out of a spaceship* and other pressing sci-fi and fantasy questions.


* Don't.

😔 Another month when I have to ask for help with rent again. (My landlord lets me split it into two payments, but uh the second payment is coming up fast)

A GoFundMe for keeping my business (and me) afloat.

Just finished: Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age by Ada Palmer. I went to art school semi-on-purpose. Which is to say I always loved art, loved drawing, but was it my passion? Who knows what a 13-year-old's passion is? I was nerdier about other things. But I was bullied in grade school and wanted only to get away from my tormentors when I finally graduated, and so I auditioned for the art school as an escape. I was good at drawing, good enough that they plucked me out of my boring town and away from everyone I hated. There I had teachers who truly were passionate about art, and art history, and I fell in love with not just the paintings and sculpture and architecture but the stories and personalities behind them. We scrimped and saved so that I could go on the school trip to Italy and there I got to see the art, and fall in love with Florence in particular, and walk in the footsteps of Michelangelo and Leonardo and Machiavelli and Lorenzo the Magnificent and it was the most incredible thing to happen to me in my life thus far.

So anyway reading this book was like reliving that, only—as Ada Palmer says throughout the book—"Ever-So-Much-But-More-So." Because there is more history than I knew, or learned since, more stories, more people, about 100 pages of footnotes, and it's contested history, histories complicated by someone who loves this era even more than I do. Despite the book's heft, it's a very fast read. Also I cried a l'il. Fight me. But read it.

Currently reading: Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This is a re-read of my favourite SM-G book For Reasons and my God, Meche is even worse than I remembered. I love her. Ahaha. What a nightmare child.

anghraine tagged me in a tumblr meme to make your username with songs, my reaction was "Hah, only four letters, that'll be- WAIT do I like ANY songs with Q in the title??" but a quick search found One, and I built the rest of the list around it to consist of songs on my computer which (a) I like at least a moderate amount and (b) make a funny sentence. Thus:

Song For The Dumped (Ben Folds Five)
Queer (Garbage)
Being Boring (Petshop Boys)
Right Here Right Now (Moby)

Runner up:
Speed Kills (Bush)
Queer (Garbage)
Bachelorette (Bjork)
Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush)

Since I haven't gotten around to downloading and rating as many recent songs the selection leaned towards older stuff, but I did happen to buy "Stay The Fuck Away From Me" by Emily Wurramura today and I am sure something fun could be done with that too.

And I am going to tag anyone else with a short username to see if they can come up with something fun :) (People with long usernames can play too if they like a challenge)

I had started a rejuvelac culture with older whole rye berries that F had bought years ago, and they just spoiled. I chucked that, bought some new whole wheat berries, and started a new culture with these and brown rice grains as well. The rice had visible sprouting earlier than the wheat. After they germinated, you soak the grains in water for three days. At the end you filter everything out, chuck out the grains in the compost. The filtered liquid that's left, which smells like feet, is your rejuvelac. Eww. Apparently you can DRINK this?? I mean I will obviously try it because I am me.

F has a soymilk maker with which she makes her soymilk. At the end of the operation, you're left with soybean fiber and still lots of protein matter to be cast off. You can't make tofu from it, since tofu is made from precipitating soymilk anyway. It's sometimes used at cattle feed, but because it's so wet, it has a very short shelf like, so much of it is just disposed of. So F had made soymilk and had left her usual 2 cups of okara or so on the counter for me, because I had been looking at using a tempeh starter to make okara tempeh. People have done it, and it's not as good as tempeh, but apparently it's edible. I think if one was to mix in extra broken soybean chunks in the okara, like there is in tempeh, it could come closer to the experience. I thought I had bought tempeh starter, but I can't find it. It's probably deep in the freezer an I can't be bothered to empty the freezer to find it, so I thought that I'll just buy a new culture later. However this newest batch of okara has been sitting on the counter for three days now, it's fermenting a bit but it'll spoil if it stays there any longer, so I should just chuck it.

Meanwhile I'm looking at my cookbook which starts a lot of these vegan cheese recipes with pulverized cashews. And I had this okara in front of me. So the obvious thing to do is to try to start a cheese culture with the okara and the rejuvelac. It required more rejuvelac to get a smooth spin in the blender, possibly because my blender is not one of the ninja style machines, it's an old, classic Osterizer. But eventually I got a smooth spin going on, and it looks like the okara further pulverized itself, turning to a creamy texture.

So we'll see what I get! I could get a spoiled culture on account of the okara being left to rest on the counter for a while, I could have a vegan cheese, or maybe I could have some sort of disgusting natto paste. If I get a spoiled culture, I'll just try again with fresh okara in a week.

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Oh yeah, I had bought a Drinkmate, the BDS-safe bubbly water machine, (don't buy SodaStream) but in typical ADHD fashion the box had just been sitting there, unopened for a few weeks. The goal being to add more bubbly beverages to my rotation to drink less beer or something. So I finally opened and unpacked it. Even just carbonated plain water is nice. What this machine has that's better than the SodaStream is that you can carbonate other beverages too... So if I find the rejuvelac edible, I'm going to see about carbonating it too. :P But more seriously, I'm looking forward to make bubbly cold chai, and bubbly amaro type things.

I don't know if this is limited to the US. (If you find out, please comment.)

The sale includes publishers that the University of Chicago Press distributes: Acre Books, Bard Graduate Center, Brandeis University Press, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Gingko Library, Haus Publishing, Iter Press, Karolinum Press, Charles University, Seagull Books, Swan Isle Press, and The American Meteorological Society.

Use the code EBOOK75

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/virtualCatalog/vc106.html