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• Post #4478980

  top story on bbc news this morning is another horrifying story about travelodge giving room keys to the wrong people. the headline case is the worst of the cases that have made it into the media. the worst so far. there are other incidents in the story. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgx1v922p5o

• Post #4464016

  when someone in the public eye is trying to defend themselves against allegations of wrongdoing (hello gianni infantino!) they say the accusations are ‘categorically untrue’. i looked up the word ‘category’ and was surprised to learn that its root is from the greek katēgoriā (= assertion, accusation). this is from katēgoros (= an accuser), made of kata (= down, against) and agorā (= assembly). the other surprise in english for me was the gap in meaning between category (= a class of things sh...

• Post #4425567

  thought i’d try #ThreeGoodThings which has been on hiatus in my head recently. • weather has been tolerable for a little while, a state which will last another day, but not into the weekend’s gigs, sadly • listened to 1000 Rabbits who were live on bbc radio suffolk last night. (not as it was broadcast, i’m lucky bbc sounds exists.) nice to hear them talking about their time at aldeburgh young musicians • some other thing i have forgotten.

• Post #4406066

  attn @SquirrelwithaninvisibleW@mastodon.social here is a clippy where i think the artist definitely was a nose-mouther. https://gives.hugz.online/@MelissaBearTrix/117046304826441249

• Post #4381483

  yesterday’s leftover wine was a boon, a miracle, but today it is an overstaying guest demanding to be drunk before it goes off.

• Post #4364125

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@anon_opin/117033566633714461 hard agree. let them that are impatient watch at 1.5x speed.

• Post #4358641

  the visitation of the daughter over the weekend resulted in the miracle of the leftover half bottle of wine, and the efficient editing of the unicorn score (see toots passim) has caused the editing day to finish early, so it is now official jody’s happy hour! #FindingJoyInTheEveryday or something.

• Post #4355106

  today in charity shop books, i was looking closely at the attached pamphlet, published in 1744. presumably campaigns in the war of the austrian succession (not my area, please advise if that’s the wrong war). anyway, difficult to value, as copies are vanishingly rare. i was writing a description, and sadly discovered that it is missing a folio (pp 5-6 are absent) which is a value-killer. i’m waiting to hear back from a senior books person about it. it’s possible to restore the missing page wi...

• Post #4323668

  “Head of Marine at the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Georgia de Jong Cleyndert, said although the ‘incredible’ blue creatures looked like jellyfish, they were actually colonial hydrozoans. She said: ‘Each by-the-wind sailor is made up of hundreds of tiny, specialised animals working together as a single floating colony’.” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c934kjkykkxo

• Post #4282230

  a friend needed a quick arrangement of something for a wedding tomorrow, and i was able to help her out. a bit of j s bach out of the toppest drawer of his compositional cabinet* (and that’s saying something), so i thought it might be worth the effort. i did something i’m quite pleased with (as in, it does minimal damage to the original); we’ll see what the feedback from tomorrow is. * bwv 140 first movement, for the bridal entrance, and i prefer to imagine the bride has chosen it for musi...

• Post #4276068

  does anyone know if this is right? the possessive apostrophe + s is a contraction of ‘his’ as in the lord of salisbury his pavan. the lord of salisbury’s pavan. (which is a piece by orlando gibbons, if you’re wondering). if so, it’s a tiny gendered corner of the language that goes unnoticed most of the time. lady rich her galliard. lady rich’r galliard? alas no. (that one’s a john dowland piece.) #language

• Post #4271483

  you know it’s a sub-optimal day, mental-health-wise, when taking refuge in work is the most attractive option. crowding out the old enemy with the painstaking process of making the wrong right, the inconsistent consistent, the rough places plain (to borrow a phrase). the smaller the task, the more its completion can be seen and aimed at. there is a thought there about my affinity with editing being at least partly to do with needing control of (some small part of) my life, seeking to create ord...

• Post #4248458

  i am at the ‘that which i have is what i shall eat’ stage. a tactical retreat in the daily battle.

• Post #4205734

  an insight into my frankly distressingly poor understanding of popular culture: #todayilearned the meaning of 'bucket list'. i don't think that even i can spin this as a person focused on more rarefied and important matters.

• Post #4201395

  just had a unicorn-level event occur: a composer has told me they are ahead of schedule and will be delivering a piece more than a week early. ‼️❗️‼️❣️❣️❣️⁉️‼️❗️⚠️⚠️⚠️

• Post #4200637

  i see i have been a bit remiss in posting 1000 rabbits content. here is ‘cinema aisle’ https://youtu.be/Xd9YQTRf5ew

• Post #4199674

  got back from therapy to find an ambulance outside my flat again. my downstairs neighbour has been taken (back) to hospital; she’s only been home about a week after the previous time. maybe it’s the heat today, i don’t know.

• Post #4192583

  sorry and not sorry.

• Post #4189020

  RE: https://furry.engineer/@kirakira/117000639207892348 “these words are too solid, they don’t move fast enough to catch the blur in the brain that flies by and is gone”

• Post #4174232

  if i am sitting in the office or living room, doing something requiring my attention (could be work, or practice, or watching a film, or social media), after a couple of hours, i stroll into the kitchen and am shocked, shocked i tell you, to find the dishes unwashed. this either shows a) admirable mental focus or b) my brain has not developed the concept of object permanence

• Post #4169282

  been reading #emilydickinson again, after a while with my head bent towards others. here is number 738: describing a (quite teenager-ish) mood which i recognise having been in myself, over a girl, at least once in my past. #poetry

• Post #4154645

  a(nother) sign i am not sleeping enough: yesterday, with my eyes stinging, i put on a radio drama and closed them. it was a good danish crime serial, not slow or dull. but i kept falling asleep. in related news, it’s 5.30am and i’ve been awake for at least half an hour. #BadSleepClub

• Post #4146561

  time for another of my #cryptic #crossword clues: Excursion to outskirts of Torquay, and church’s three-panelled altarpiece (8) (answer in reply)

• Post #4142517

  in a discussion with a friend, it was revealed that we have a different understanding of clippy’s, er, physiognomy. (image in followup post) one of us knows with absolute certainty that the inner u of the clip is clippy’s nose, and the outer U is his mouth. the other of us is utterly convinced that the inner u is clippy’s mouth, and the outer U is his chin. we have thrown this open to you to decide. if you know it’s something else, correct us in the comments. could be boosted, as a way of a...

• Post #4131525

  just read that good article being shared this morning about how history has been ignoring evidence of women in power for a long time. i was going to make a tiny editorial point about how the numbers in the pictured sentence are expressed (it should give the actual number of females, not just two approximations of it). but 42% of 37 is 15.54, and since we can assume the number of females is a whole number (!) i think there’s something (a bit) wrong here. 15 out of 37 burials is 40.54% which...

• Post #4117600

  i get leaflets delivered, sometimes. three days of eternal happiness at the norfolk showground? i don’t think so, somehow.

• Post #4114875

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@samuelpepys/116985274211775823 what is he on about here? mystifying.

• Post #4094031

  today, from a quotation in lavinia greenlaw's book (the vast extent), i see that stephen crane used the word 'oilily' (in his novella 'maggie') and… i don't know what to think about that. crane was a careful writer (though i've not read much, and not recently); 'oilily' is a word that i would rewrite to avoid, and i thought anyone with an ear for language, prose or poetry, would too. oilily. say it. eewww. #wordplay

• Post #4090803

  ooh also: my charity shop has these for sale. i kind of like. any thoughts? there are no labels on the back, and no clue as to artist. they are not prints.

• Post #4090472

  i am enforcing a day off today, and attempting not to perform my normal toxic autopsy on yesterday’s concert. to that end, i have poured a glass of wine and am doing nothing. later i will go out and read near the river for a bit.