Hummingbirds, Sunsets and a Green Heron
Oct. 22nd, 2026 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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common_nature
I liked the outline of this backlit hummingbird doing a big stretch, prior to flying off.
( Read more... )
yourlibrarian posting in common_nature I liked the outline of this backlit hummingbird doing a big stretch, prior to flying off.
( Read more... )
writing ettiquite for dw
Oct. 22nd, 2026 04:43 pmgloomfiles posting in newcomersI've been poking around in original fiction, fanfiction, fanwork, etc. communities and I'm noticing that while there are fanworks spaces for all manner of genres, themes/tropes, time periods, fandoms, etc., there's also some communities that are specifically for a single user's work. I've seen it a few times, usually [user]_writes or something to that effect for the community name.
As a new user to the site, who wants to eventually start posting writing of both the fanwork and fanwork-adjacent (like, fanfiction of my D&D campaigns) variety, is that something I should do? Is there a norm that creative works go in communities, not on personal journals? If something's for a kink meme or fandom event, I assume those would have their own posting guidelines within the host community, but for stuff that I wanted to write and share without prompting, where should that go?
As a new user to the site, who wants to eventually start posting writing of both the fanwork and fanwork-adjacent (like, fanfiction of my D&D campaigns) variety, is that something I should do? Is there a norm that creative works go in communities, not on personal journals? If something's for a kink meme or fandom event, I assume those would have their own posting guidelines within the host community, but for stuff that I wanted to write and share without prompting, where should that go?
WBCQ
Oct. 22nd, 2026 05:52 pmsoemandWBCQ in Monticello, Maine is for sale. Two million USD, and the future of the station is uncertain.
It affects me less than it should. I am close enough that the groundwave is gone before the first skywave comes down, so a station I could drive to is one I cannot reliably receive.
I wrote about the long-wave end of this in June.
More static where the carriers used to be.
It affects me less than it should. I am close enough that the groundwave is gone before the first skywave comes down, so a station I could drive to is one I cannot reliably receive.
I wrote about the long-wave end of this in June.
More static where the carriers used to be.
Spooktober 22: They were 11
Oct. 22nd, 2026 04:33 pmasakiyumeThis prompt is a long one...
Hagio Moto's classic manga "They were 11" [11人いる! (1975)] was about a group of space cadets who find an extra person in their midst during what is to be their in-the-field final examination. They are strangers to one another, and no one knows who the extra person is or what their intention is. Invent your own who and why for this situation.
PS, you don't have to keep to the space field exam situation if you don't want.
Hagio Moto's classic manga "They were 11" [11人いる! (1975)] was about a group of space cadets who find an extra person in their midst during what is to be their in-the-field final examination. They are strangers to one another, and no one knows who the extra person is or what their intention is. Invent your own who and why for this situation.
PS, you don't have to keep to the space field exam situation if you don't want.
Thankful Thursday
Oct. 22nd, 2026 10:18 pmmdlbearToday I am thankful for...
- Linux Weekly News [LWN.net]
- Recovery (in progress). Also, plain dumb luck that it wasn't worse.
- My web host, DreamHost, which I
can trust to handle the
current PHP mess without my having to do anything much beyond
checking DreamHost Status
for reassurance. (OTOH it was a good excuse to do some upgrades and
make sure all my sites have up-to-date
authorized_keysfiles. And TIL how to find out the PHP version a WP site is using.) - My to-DO loG file and Data-mining the Dog.
Some self-confidence would be helpful, but...
Time to batten down those hatches
Oct. 22nd, 2026 08:49 pmloganberrybunnyPublic
Not a nice couple of days coming up. Storm Austen tomorrow, which won't break any records but will be very unpleasant to be out in. Then Storm Boelo on Saturday. The worst of that one will be in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but again it'll be wet and windy even down here. I'm going to Worcester on Saturday and I don't expect any real problems on the trains, but of course there's always the risk of a tree falling across the line when it's this windy. Let's hope it doesn't happen this time!
Not a nice couple of days coming up. Storm Austen tomorrow, which won't break any records but will be very unpleasant to be out in. Then Storm Boelo on Saturday. The worst of that one will be in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but again it'll be wet and windy even down here. I'm going to Worcester on Saturday and I don't expect any real problems on the trains, but of course there's always the risk of a tree falling across the line when it's this windy. Let's hope it doesn't happen this time!
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trying to reconstruct the theoretical use cases the devs had is my least-favourite archaeology
Oct. 22nd, 2026 07:49 pmwychwoodI have had both my flu and COVID jabs! With no more side-effects than a sore spot on my arm from the COVID one that lasted a few days, so that was nice, although it didn't make up for how appalling I felt on Tuesday (some sort of unholy combination of sleep-deprivation nausea and headache, rogue menstrual cramps breaking through the medication that keeps my periods away, and a roiling stomach unhappy with something I ate). Relieved to be only normal levels of rubbish today, honestly.
Instead I have been wallowing in the toils of New Outlook. We all know that change is hard, but I do try and give things a go before writing them off - but this time I don't think I've found a single thing that is an improvement, and every noticeable change so far has been for the worse. I keep enabling it and then having to go back because I can't deal with something. Half the time it loses all my secondary mailboxes (this was particularly fun last month, when I was dealing with an issue that generated lots of notification emails to one of them).
But the bigger problems I'm having is with places where Microsoft clearly feel that I'm interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. For instance, in old Outlook you have a little notification pop-up window, which comes up ahead of meetings and other calendar items, and then the items sit in it until you dismiss them. This is something I use a lot for, like, recurring tasks - I put into my calendar that I need to send the bulk email every other Tuesday, and then on Tuesday morning it looms up to spoil my whole day. But in new Outlook, it pops up in the corner of my window fifteen minutes before it's due, and then disappears forever. There is now an entire "notification pane" in the right-hand column, but I have no idea what it's for, because it's permanently empty and even if you have it open as a notification pops up in the corner, it doesn't show anything. After a bunch of web searching, the conclusion appears to be ¯\(ツ)/¯ don't use your calendar for reminders. But I can't tell where Microsoft thinks I should be putting recurring items so that they can remind me when they're due - like, is there another MS Office product that does that? It's not any of the ones I know! Do any of you who use Office have any insights into this mystery?
That's my biggest annoyance, but there's a whole bunch of little things - like, you can no longer look at the bottom of the screen and see a count of how many emails you have in the inbox you're looking at. The official recommendation is that you can mark everything as unread and then see the unread count on the folder list, but a) that's annoying and b) sometimes I don't want to mess up what is or isn't marked as read?? And you can't open several emails at once; you can open emails one after another until they're all open, but I regularly have scenarios where I want to open twenty emails at once in order to transfer information from all of them into a spreadsheet, or find duplicate / chase / follow-up emails in a batch so that I can delete the rest of the chain, and both of those are much easier to do with a series of open windows than when I'm scrolling up and down a big list, and it's so much easier to select them all and click "open" than it is to individually open sixty-four emails from the folder of shame. And I get a bunch of notification emails that sometimes have to wait for action until a new person starts, so I edit the email to specify the name and start date at the top, which means I can see at a glance why it's in my inbox... but new Outlook doesn't allow you to edit received emails any more.
Every day is a delightful opportunity to explore fun new frustrations!! At the moment I can switch back to old Outlook when I get too annoyed, but who knows how long that will last...
Instead I have been wallowing in the toils of New Outlook. We all know that change is hard, but I do try and give things a go before writing them off - but this time I don't think I've found a single thing that is an improvement, and every noticeable change so far has been for the worse. I keep enabling it and then having to go back because I can't deal with something. Half the time it loses all my secondary mailboxes (this was particularly fun last month, when I was dealing with an issue that generated lots of notification emails to one of them).
But the bigger problems I'm having is with places where Microsoft clearly feel that I'm interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. For instance, in old Outlook you have a little notification pop-up window, which comes up ahead of meetings and other calendar items, and then the items sit in it until you dismiss them. This is something I use a lot for, like, recurring tasks - I put into my calendar that I need to send the bulk email every other Tuesday, and then on Tuesday morning it looms up to spoil my whole day. But in new Outlook, it pops up in the corner of my window fifteen minutes before it's due, and then disappears forever. There is now an entire "notification pane" in the right-hand column, but I have no idea what it's for, because it's permanently empty and even if you have it open as a notification pops up in the corner, it doesn't show anything. After a bunch of web searching, the conclusion appears to be ¯\(ツ)/¯ don't use your calendar for reminders. But I can't tell where Microsoft thinks I should be putting recurring items so that they can remind me when they're due - like, is there another MS Office product that does that? It's not any of the ones I know! Do any of you who use Office have any insights into this mystery?
That's my biggest annoyance, but there's a whole bunch of little things - like, you can no longer look at the bottom of the screen and see a count of how many emails you have in the inbox you're looking at. The official recommendation is that you can mark everything as unread and then see the unread count on the folder list, but a) that's annoying and b) sometimes I don't want to mess up what is or isn't marked as read?? And you can't open several emails at once; you can open emails one after another until they're all open, but I regularly have scenarios where I want to open twenty emails at once in order to transfer information from all of them into a spreadsheet, or find duplicate / chase / follow-up emails in a batch so that I can delete the rest of the chain, and both of those are much easier to do with a series of open windows than when I'm scrolling up and down a big list, and it's so much easier to select them all and click "open" than it is to individually open sixty-four emails from the folder of shame. And I get a bunch of notification emails that sometimes have to wait for action until a new person starts, so I edit the email to specify the name and start date at the top, which means I can see at a glance why it's in my inbox... but new Outlook doesn't allow you to edit received emails any more.
Every day is a delightful opportunity to explore fun new frustrations!! At the moment I can switch back to old Outlook when I get too annoyed, but who knows how long that will last...
Books read, early October
Oct. 22nd, 2026 01:16 pmmrissaCarol Carnac, Crossed Skis. Kindle. Look, even for me this had a very large and not very differentiated cast. I like Carnac, who is also E.C.R. Lorac, and the skiing party mystery had its charms, but what I really want most out of mysteries is characterization, and this was more puzzle than characterization.
Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage. Kindle. This, on the other hand, was lots of vividly sketched (though not deep) characters in Miss Marple's village running around being people at each other. I think it's the last of hers that I haven't read yet that the library has in digital form. It was a good one to go out on.
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose. Reread. Well, this was where I'd left it, more or less. This is the sort of book that's absolutely why I only sort of behave as though stories should be written as short as they'll go, I don't actually believe it, because no one could possibly argue that the descriptions, the lists, or even the philosophical arguments couldn't be trimmed a little, and yet it is the book it is because they weren't. I do think that writing it in a substantially male-only setting set it up to age better than a lot of work of its era.
John M. Ford, Heat of Fusion and Other Stories. Reread. Every reread there are small details I've forgotten and large feelings I'll have, though not always the same large feelings. This time "Erase/Record/Play" was the one that made me go off thinking a lot. Next time something different.
James Alistair Henry, Pagans. I loved this. It's an alternate history mystery of the "cross-cultural pair of cops" format, like if Bon Cap Bad Cop was set in an England where the Norman Conquest never happened and Christianity's toehold in Europe was fairly minimal. I hope he writes more like this, or more like something.
Gwyneth Jones, Big Cat and Other Stories. My favorite story here was from the Bold As Love universe, which remains far and away my favorite thing Jones has ever done.
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (reread) and No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters. Kindle. The second volume was actually a great deal less of thinking about what matters than some of Le Guin's other essay collections. This was mostly collected blog posts. Fine for that but not more. I hadn't reread A Wizard of Earthsea in ages, but it continues to be like a Shaker chair, simple lines that do what they do admirably.
Ken Liu, The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories. I tend to like Ken's long-form work better than his short-form work (do I want to reread his big fantasy series: yes absolutely), but the middle of this volume was so lovely, definitely worth having around.
Jenn Lyons, The Sky on Fire. If you'd like a ripping dragon adventure yarn, this is exactly that, with modern sensibilities so you don't have to worry about the sexism (racism, homophobia, etc.) fairy showing up and making the fun evaporate. Several people I love are getting this for Christmas.
Val McDermid, 1979. Kindle. What an interesting structure for a mystery series. The detective is an investigative journalist, and the books are set ten years apart, with McDermid's experiences as a young Scottish lesbian journalist informing the shape and texture of the entire thing.
Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz. Reread. Another one where setting it in a largely single-sex setting has probably improved how the book has aged. It's not perfect, but it's very readable prose and a good snapshot of an era. (Not the era of its setting, the anxieties of the era of its writing. But that's a very useful thing for a book to do.) Post-apocalyptic monasticism develops around what limited resources people have.
Hope Mirrlees, Collected Poems. As much as I love Lud-in-the-Mist, these poems were very not for me--they were going in a direction of a kind of formality/formalism that I don't much care for and away from the poetry of the time I liked a lot. Well, now we know.
P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane. Reread. This is like the children's book equivalent of a novella: it's probably a novelette in length, but unlike the Poppins books I remembered better, it was just one story, a Midsummer story, that was a jumble of previous characters and very much had the feel of Mary Poppins Helps Pamela Travers Pay Her Bills.
Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington. Kindle. This was one of the least offensive Trollope novels I've ever read, but of the ones that didn't offend me enough to just stop reading them, it's also not one of the more interesting. All sorts of things are summarized with the comment that he doesn't have enough time to go into them here, but considering what he makes the time to go into, both here and elsewhere, this is not satisfying for me.
Patricia C. Wrede, Calling on Dragons. Reread, Kindle. This is very much a bridge book between the first two and the last one, not something I'd recommend reading as a stand-alone. Start at the beginning before you move on to the blue flying donkeys.
Jane Yolen, Sister Light, Sister Dark and White Jenna. Rereads, Kindle. I read these when they were new and I was small, and then not since, so my memories of them were very vague. I definitely did not remember the innuendo about the shadow sisters! I think it's interesting that she handled the shadow sisters so precisely that there were a million possible questions about them but also utter clarity that that was not the story she was telling.
New to Dreamwidth ! Confused on how and where to post to a fandom ?
Oct. 22nd, 2026 07:59 pmblood_pomegranate posting in newcomersHello ! As I mentionned, I am new here.
I wish to connect with people who dabble with dark themes in fiction, like fanfictions or art, but most specifically with Transformers characters.
How does posting work here ? Is there a "general" place to browse tags of a fandom / theme , aside from communities ?
Are the devs planning on adding a feature where you can share other people's posts/ journal on your profile ?
I appreciate all help, thank you !
I wish to connect with people who dabble with dark themes in fiction, like fanfictions or art, but most specifically with Transformers characters.
How does posting work here ? Is there a "general" place to browse tags of a fandom / theme , aside from communities ?
Are the devs planning on adding a feature where you can share other people's posts/ journal on your profile ?
I appreciate all help, thank you !
dear Yuletide writer
Oct. 22nd, 2026 01:48 pmfox[watch this space] (A letter will be here by the time I finish my submission; I'm making this post now just so I know what the link will be. Carry on!)
Hello, new friend! I'm so happy you're here! . . . I also note that since last year's Yuletide letter I have posted seven (7) times, exactly none of which were on happy topics, including any type of Yuletide wrapup in which—and I can't believe this!, because I remember saying how delightful it was!, but apparently I only did so in a comment on the story itself!—I praised my delightful gift (A Slow Morning, by ConfusedCyndaquil, Will Darling Adventures, Will/Kim) and acknowledged my own submission (Disaster Preparedness, for
DWEmma, Sports Night, Casey+Dana). I seem to spend most of my online / social media time on Tumblr (
agentreynard) and Discord (
![[discord.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_other.png){kind=small}
agentreynard) these days and just come here to record hard times when I'm struggling, but those platforms don't lend themselves well to Yuletide letters, do they? So here this is, and please believe me when I tell you that a lot more goes on in my life than just nightmares and my aging mother losing her mind. Honest!
I love Yuletide! Except for two years when I couldn't do it for family-emergency reasons and then later the first five years after my son was born [about two weeks before the posting deadline; it wouldn't have been wise for me to sign up that year at all!], I've been here since the second Yuletide. You will have an easy time pleasing me and a hard time disappointing me. Fear not. Let's have a great time together. The fellow fan and Yuletider who knows me best is ellen_fremedon (fremedon), who has agreed that you can ping her if you need insider info.
My general DNWs as I listed them in my signup (did I? I should have. I usually do.) are these:
- character bashing, which I define more or less as giving characters negative traits that are not evident in the text—making nice people mean, mainly, because all the rest is just variations on that (making thoughtful people selfish, for example; it's all the same) (I used to say "making smart people stupid" as another example, but the older I get, the more I leave that kind of thinking behind, I think.)
- 2016+ U.S. politics, because I am here for escapism
If I have further thoughts, I will return and post them here, but like I said, you can also approach Ellen if the signup/this letter leaves you stumped and you need insight.
As we have also been asked in the past to affirm that treats are also welcome, let me assure you: Treats are also welcome! In fact, all the opt-ins you could ever opt in to are also great. Go wild. ❤️
Have a great time and happy Yuletide!
Does your city have one of these?
Oct. 22nd, 2026 01:34 pmrebeccmeisterI'm still working on my presentation about bicycling for the climate change talk series here on campus, but in gearing up for it, I can't help thinking about how bicycling is just a small piece of a bigger transportation puzzle that has to be addressed at the scale of cities and urban planning.
That sent me looking for something. You might recall how, when I was in Tucson this past summer, I dragged my research students to a home composting presentation so we could obtain a compost bucket and drop off our food scraps instead of sending them to a landfill.
At some point in it all, I remembered learning that the scaling up of the composting initiative was part of a larger Climate Action and Adaptation Plan that Tucson had drawn up, after declaring a climate emergency in 2020. Here's the website that serves as a resource hub for the plan, which has more about the history of the plan and a copy of the entire plan:
https://climateaction.tucsonaz.gov/pages/caap
An interesting element in the Tucson plan is that things are structured around an aim to become carbon neutral.
What I don't know is, where are other cities right now, with regards to these sorts of plans? For Albany, I didn't find anything at the municipal level, but I did find some "Climate Resiliency" things happening at the county level here. However, the things happening at the county level seem more aimed at "preparing for the impacts of climate change" rather than the more ambitious "carbon neutral" approach being taken by Tucson.
That sent me looking for something. You might recall how, when I was in Tucson this past summer, I dragged my research students to a home composting presentation so we could obtain a compost bucket and drop off our food scraps instead of sending them to a landfill.
At some point in it all, I remembered learning that the scaling up of the composting initiative was part of a larger Climate Action and Adaptation Plan that Tucson had drawn up, after declaring a climate emergency in 2020. Here's the website that serves as a resource hub for the plan, which has more about the history of the plan and a copy of the entire plan:
https://climateaction.tucsonaz.gov/pages/caap
An interesting element in the Tucson plan is that things are structured around an aim to become carbon neutral.
What I don't know is, where are other cities right now, with regards to these sorts of plans? For Albany, I didn't find anything at the municipal level, but I did find some "Climate Resiliency" things happening at the county level here. However, the things happening at the county level seem more aimed at "preparing for the impacts of climate change" rather than the more ambitious "carbon neutral" approach being taken by Tucson.
Review: A Taste of My Own Medicine
Oct. 22nd, 2026 10:27 ampetrea_mitchellWritten for the booknook October review-a-thon.
Title: A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Is the Patient
Author: Dr. Edward E. Rosenbaum
Genre: Memoir
At age 70, Ed Rosenbaum has a long, proud career in medicine to look back on. He was able to make it into medical school at a time when those schools openly limited the number of Jewish students. In World War Two, he served in a mobile surgical unit that participated in the invasions of Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. After going into private practice, he became part of the volunteer faculty of what was later Oregon Health & Science University, heading its rheumatology division for thirty years. Throughout his career, he has maintained the utmost standard of empathy and care for his patients, or so he believes.
A bout of persistent hoarseness is the beginning of a saga that will show him he has a lot left to learn.
This book is best known for being the basis of the movie The Doctor, but it is the typical Hollywood usage of "based on" which means "has almost nothing to do with". Rosenbaum was a rheumatologist, not a surgeon, practicing in Portland, Oregon, not San Francisco, and all characters, symptoms, and even the results of treatment in the movie are entirely fictional.
The experience in the book is a series of small realizations, which begin even before the eventual diagnosis of throat cancer. First Rosenbaum delays seeing a doctor for his own problem, then dithers about getting a second opinion, which he recognizes as behavior he's seen in his own patients and previously never understood. Then, after drug treatments produce no result, he is sent to a speech clinic, where he has his first taste of the trouble with the power imbalance between doctor and patient:
Ultimately it turns out to be cancer, and Rosenbaum is sent for radiation therapy. The second and longest part of the book is a day-by-day chronicle of every radiotherapy session (and the agonizing weekend days in between). Interspersed with the session descriptions are his reflections and anecdotes about his childhood in Omaha and his past patients-- sometimes to explain how they shaped him, sometimes to look back and realize now that he could have done much better.
In addition to discovering the experience of the patient, Rosenbaum lets the reader in on the world of the doctor. Rivalries and quirks of the medical profession sometimes shape patient care in ways unrelated to the illness. And doctors become hypochondriacs, he says, because they know about all the worst possibilities. Part of what delays him at first is knowing that he might have cancer. Later, he has enormous anxiety about the radiotherapy because he knows the history of X-rays first being a fabulous new tool and then being discovered to cause cancer. He also knows the percentages about whether the treatment will work and all the errors that could be made along the way. But then on the weekends, he is consumed with fear about the cancer regrowing during the break in treatments and having a chance to metastasize.
It is not much of a spoiler to say that the author of this first-person narrative survives the experience. Rosenbaum's cancer is cured, and eventually he is back at work at his practice. But he has grown frustrated with the healthcare system, partly for longstanding reasons but partly also because his experience as a cancer patient has shown him a lot of way things could be improved. And even when he tries to improve himself, he finds his is holding himself to a standard he cannot achieve.
Rosenbaum would soon retire from his medical career and spend much of his remaining twenty-plus years as a writer and speaker, advocating for changes in the practice of medicine. This book is more than enough to explain why. For a look at the forces still shaping healthcare today, or just a positive story of a successful treatment and lessons learned, highly recommended.
booknook October review-a-thon.Title: A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Is the Patient
Author: Dr. Edward E. Rosenbaum
Genre: Memoir
At age 70, Ed Rosenbaum has a long, proud career in medicine to look back on. He was able to make it into medical school at a time when those schools openly limited the number of Jewish students. In World War Two, he served in a mobile surgical unit that participated in the invasions of Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. After going into private practice, he became part of the volunteer faculty of what was later Oregon Health & Science University, heading its rheumatology division for thirty years. Throughout his career, he has maintained the utmost standard of empathy and care for his patients, or so he believes.
A bout of persistent hoarseness is the beginning of a saga that will show him he has a lot left to learn.
This book is best known for being the basis of the movie The Doctor, but it is the typical Hollywood usage of "based on" which means "has almost nothing to do with". Rosenbaum was a rheumatologist, not a surgeon, practicing in Portland, Oregon, not San Francisco, and all characters, symptoms, and even the results of treatment in the movie are entirely fictional.
The experience in the book is a series of small realizations, which begin even before the eventual diagnosis of throat cancer. First Rosenbaum delays seeing a doctor for his own problem, then dithers about getting a second opinion, which he recognizes as behavior he's seen in his own patients and previously never understood. Then, after drug treatments produce no result, he is sent to a speech clinic, where he has his first taste of the trouble with the power imbalance between doctor and patient:
"Here, feel how tight this muscle is in your neck." And [the speech therapist] placed my hand on a neck muscle.
"You're right," I said. I really didn't notice any difference in the muscles, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. That was dumb, but it is a common reaction of patients: don't upset the doctor or he or she won't like you and won't take good care of you. I was startled by that insight. Had I known that before? Would it have changed my relationship with my patients? I wasn't sure.
Ultimately it turns out to be cancer, and Rosenbaum is sent for radiation therapy. The second and longest part of the book is a day-by-day chronicle of every radiotherapy session (and the agonizing weekend days in between). Interspersed with the session descriptions are his reflections and anecdotes about his childhood in Omaha and his past patients-- sometimes to explain how they shaped him, sometimes to look back and realize now that he could have done much better.
In addition to discovering the experience of the patient, Rosenbaum lets the reader in on the world of the doctor. Rivalries and quirks of the medical profession sometimes shape patient care in ways unrelated to the illness. And doctors become hypochondriacs, he says, because they know about all the worst possibilities. Part of what delays him at first is knowing that he might have cancer. Later, he has enormous anxiety about the radiotherapy because he knows the history of X-rays first being a fabulous new tool and then being discovered to cause cancer. He also knows the percentages about whether the treatment will work and all the errors that could be made along the way. But then on the weekends, he is consumed with fear about the cancer regrowing during the break in treatments and having a chance to metastasize.
It is not much of a spoiler to say that the author of this first-person narrative survives the experience. Rosenbaum's cancer is cured, and eventually he is back at work at his practice. But he has grown frustrated with the healthcare system, partly for longstanding reasons but partly also because his experience as a cancer patient has shown him a lot of way things could be improved. And even when he tries to improve himself, he finds his is holding himself to a standard he cannot achieve.
Rosenbaum would soon retire from his medical career and spend much of his remaining twenty-plus years as a writer and speaker, advocating for changes in the practice of medicine. This book is more than enough to explain why. For a look at the forces still shaping healthcare today, or just a positive story of a successful treatment and lessons learned, highly recommended.
Everything happening at once
Oct. 22nd, 2026 06:07 pmoursinThis was one of those weeks when several things come along making demands upon one's time and energies and while some of this might be considered to be what one has let oneself in for -
- really could have done without all of it having expectations of me Doing Something with a fair degree of expedition, even if some of this was pressure I was putting on myself.
It was really just as well that I found that the rescheduled postponed seminar - which I learnt about very late in the day - was already booked up so I couldn't get to it.
Not the week to have been smitten with a little story idea that I'd like to work on.
Oh allergies [status, rowing]
Oct. 22nd, 2026 01:08 pmrebeccmeisterWhen I woke up this morning, I was just a tiny bit sniffly, with slightly sore lymph nodes in my throat. Should I go to rowing practice? I had to figure I should at least try. There's near-constant background conversation and commentary on practice attendance, because whenever someone misses a practice, boat line-ups have to be redone, and that's a hassle and slows down the process of getting out on the water. On the other hand, we're adults and life happens, so there needs to be some give-and-take about it all.
On my way over to the boathouse, the sniffles turned into more of a cough. When I glanced at the attendance list, I noted there were 9 of us signed up for practice. 9 is an odd number, meaning someone would likely wind up in a single. It's now cold and dark enough to be unpleasant and a bit dangerous to be out in a single in the morning. So I let our coach know that I would be willing to sit things out, and she was able to put together 2 quads for practice instead. I biked back home and then crawled under a blanket for a few more minutes of rest. By the time I got back inside under a blanket, the coughing and sniffling subsided. This is more like allergies than a head cold. Eventually, I got back up, got back on my bike, and headed in to work.
The fall leaves are quite lovely, but I do miss being able to breathe.
On my way over to the boathouse, the sniffles turned into more of a cough. When I glanced at the attendance list, I noted there were 9 of us signed up for practice. 9 is an odd number, meaning someone would likely wind up in a single. It's now cold and dark enough to be unpleasant and a bit dangerous to be out in a single in the morning. So I let our coach know that I would be willing to sit things out, and she was able to put together 2 quads for practice instead. I biked back home and then crawled under a blanket for a few more minutes of rest. By the time I got back inside under a blanket, the coughing and sniffling subsided. This is more like allergies than a head cold. Eventually, I got back up, got back on my bike, and headed in to work.
The fall leaves are quite lovely, but I do miss being able to breathe.
Ruins of the Ferenc József Bridge in Budapest, Hungary
Oct. 22nd, 2026 12:00 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
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Walking through Budapest, it is impossible to ignore the stunning bridges. One in particular garners the attention of tourists, the Szabadság híd, or Liberty Bridge. It is ornate, green, and connects two very important parts of the city — Gellert Hill and the Central Market. It is also the only central bridge with old-timey trams regularly running across it, making it an iconic photo spot. But if you are lucky enough to find the Danube River level low enough, you can peer over the edge and see the ruins of its former self beneath the river.
The Ferenc József Bridge was destroyed during the bombings of the Battle of Budapest in January 1945. On most days, that is a history that is easily forgotten by pedestrians crossing the bridge and enamoured with the fantastic views of the city that it offers. But when the weather and the temperature along the Danube collude to make the levels low as they so often are in summer, the lost remnants of the old bridge appear close to the surface and sometimes even jut out of the water.
What you're looking at is the skeleton of the bridge that was destroyed by a Soviet shell detonating German explosives left on the bridge on 16th January 1945 in what is now known as the Siege of Budapest.
Unfortunately, this is likely to become a common sight if Hungary (and the rest of Europe) continue to swelter through hot, dry summers brought on by climate change.
Watching the Screen
Oct. 22nd, 2026 09:32 amrunpunkrunOn Netflix:
Bridgerton (S4): I loved Sophie, but somehow this show is perfectly calibrated to annoy me in minor yet meaningful ways so I don't find it as relaxing as I'd like. And while its diverse casting is usually delightful, this season served up a dragon lady stepmother—like, literally, right down to the costuming: the points on the shoulders of that last dress—aaaaaaaaaaaand is that okay? Surely that is not okay. The next season better be about Eloise being awesome or I'm going to flip a table. Also bring back Michaela.
Four Seasons (S2): This season is as good as the first. Funny and lightweight, until it's not. Contains lockdown-era covid, elder care, and Will Forte being an angry nice guy, which I think is why I detest him so much as an actor. He just gives off that vibe. Like he's always one second away from completely losing his shit.
Shrill (S1): I can only watch one ep of this a day (or less) because the bummer to joy ratio is too high for me. Seeing Portland on screen is nice, but the combination of body shaming, food policing, low self-esteem, and Annie being a bad friend who makes bad decisions can make this unpleasant to watch. I've seen season one plus the first episode of season two and I'm not sure I want to go on.
Below (S1): What if Jaws, but the small, remote island was cold instead of hot? Canada instead of the US? Coming home week instead of tourist season? What if the scientist were a woman instead of a man? And the hero a fisherman instead of a cop? What if the real evil was capitalism all along? Then you have Below. It's fun. It's got an interesting setting and likeable characters. It doesn't really pull off the big turn in the last episode, but I could see where they were aiming. It's very gory at times, but no jump scares. Some flashing lights.
The Diplomat (S4): More non-stop thrills and shouting for Kate and Hal. Everyone's continuing to crush it, but most especially Allison Janney. This season continued last season's trend of Kate fucking Hal's shit up, just as he spent the first two seasons fucking her shit up, and now I'm really hoping we'll get a chance to see whose shit they can fuck up together if they ever manage to get rowing in the same direction.
Enola Holmes 3: Not quite as charming as the first two movies—Enola spends the first half alone, feeling out of her depth, and being shitty to Tewkesbury—but I do appreciate the attempt to reckon with the crimes of the British Empire. Though Malta wouldn't be free of it until September 21, 1964.
And various documentaries of varying quality, listed here in order of decreasing quality:
Trust Me: The False Prophet: An engaging and compassionate look at the FLDS community in Short Creek from the perspective of an ex-Mormon, but Warren Jeffs is just as fucking gross as the guy claiming to be his successor so the women who escaped one but haven't freed themselves of the other are still being controlled by a monster, though the documentary lets the viewer draw that conclusion on their own, assuming they have enough information to do so. It's a real horror-movie you-missed-some-of-the-eggs moment there at the end. (Much like Below, see above.)
FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened: A bunch of rich influencers get conned by an even richer asshole. No one gets (physically) injured in the melee so we're free to feel smug about it, but the Bahamians who did the physical work of setting up the festival were exploited for their labor and the documentary won't let you forget it.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict: Very uncomfortable subject matter, not very well constructed. The only thing of any journalistic (?) value is the footage of his interview with Martin Bashir. The rest is filled with straight-to-the-camera talk from fans, "family friends," some cops, and two jury members, one of whom just straight up disappears from the narrative about halfway through. I got some details I wish I hadn't, but there's no real attempt to describe Jackson as a person beyond "eccentric" and "lives in an amusement park," and no look at what his family life was like or his experiences as a child star. All I know for sure is that whatever was going on with him and those kids, it was a goddamn tragedy. Which I already knew. But Macaulay Culkin??
And one EXCELLENT documentary, on PBS Passport and maybe Kanopy:
Marcella (2024): Marcella Hazan didn't start out a cook; she was a scientist who got married, learned to cook for her husband, moved to America, and ended up changing the way America approached—and ate—Italian food. Highly recommended. From American Masters, season 39.
And on DVD from the library:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: I can't say I enjoy this series, so I won't, but here's the stuff I enjoyed from season 3:
The Sheep Detectives (2026): As soon as Hugh Jackman righteously stormed into the church for no apparent reason, I shut this off. The talking sheep were just way too cutesy for me (if a sheep has anything to say it's going to be WEIRD and your types of sheep aren't going to map onto human traits, they're gonna be like "will eat anything" and "gets stuck in corners" and "worships the faucet" and "lurks in the bushes" and "wants to be best friends with the dog" not "the smart one" and "the dumb one" and "the glam one") also Hugh Jackman was acting like a lunatic (derogatory).
Bridgerton (S4): I loved Sophie, but somehow this show is perfectly calibrated to annoy me in minor yet meaningful ways so I don't find it as relaxing as I'd like. And while its diverse casting is usually delightful, this season served up a dragon lady stepmother—like, literally, right down to the costuming: the points on the shoulders of that last dress—aaaaaaaaaaaand is that okay? Surely that is not okay. The next season better be about Eloise being awesome or I'm going to flip a table. Also bring back Michaela.
Four Seasons (S2): This season is as good as the first. Funny and lightweight, until it's not. Contains lockdown-era covid, elder care, and Will Forte being an angry nice guy, which I think is why I detest him so much as an actor. He just gives off that vibe. Like he's always one second away from completely losing his shit.
Shrill (S1): I can only watch one ep of this a day (or less) because the bummer to joy ratio is too high for me. Seeing Portland on screen is nice, but the combination of body shaming, food policing, low self-esteem, and Annie being a bad friend who makes bad decisions can make this unpleasant to watch. I've seen season one plus the first episode of season two and I'm not sure I want to go on.
Below (S1): What if Jaws, but the small, remote island was cold instead of hot? Canada instead of the US? Coming home week instead of tourist season? What if the scientist were a woman instead of a man? And the hero a fisherman instead of a cop? What if the real evil was capitalism all along? Then you have Below. It's fun. It's got an interesting setting and likeable characters. It doesn't really pull off the big turn in the last episode, but I could see where they were aiming. It's very gory at times, but no jump scares. Some flashing lights.
The Diplomat (S4): More non-stop thrills and shouting for Kate and Hal. Everyone's continuing to crush it, but most especially Allison Janney. This season continued last season's trend of Kate fucking Hal's shit up, just as he spent the first two seasons fucking her shit up, and now I'm really hoping we'll get a chance to see whose shit they can fuck up together if they ever manage to get rowing in the same direction.
Enola Holmes 3: Not quite as charming as the first two movies—Enola spends the first half alone, feeling out of her depth, and being shitty to Tewkesbury—but I do appreciate the attempt to reckon with the crimes of the British Empire. Though Malta wouldn't be free of it until September 21, 1964.
And various documentaries of varying quality, listed here in order of decreasing quality:
Trust Me: The False Prophet: An engaging and compassionate look at the FLDS community in Short Creek from the perspective of an ex-Mormon, but Warren Jeffs is just as fucking gross as the guy claiming to be his successor so the women who escaped one but haven't freed themselves of the other are still being controlled by a monster, though the documentary lets the viewer draw that conclusion on their own, assuming they have enough information to do so. It's a real horror-movie you-missed-some-of-the-eggs moment there at the end. (Much like Below, see above.)
FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened: A bunch of rich influencers get conned by an even richer asshole. No one gets (physically) injured in the melee so we're free to feel smug about it, but the Bahamians who did the physical work of setting up the festival were exploited for their labor and the documentary won't let you forget it.
Michael Jackson: The Verdict: Very uncomfortable subject matter, not very well constructed. The only thing of any journalistic (?) value is the footage of his interview with Martin Bashir. The rest is filled with straight-to-the-camera talk from fans, "family friends," some cops, and two jury members, one of whom just straight up disappears from the narrative about halfway through. I got some details I wish I hadn't, but there's no real attempt to describe Jackson as a person beyond "eccentric" and "lives in an amusement park," and no look at what his family life was like or his experiences as a child star. All I know for sure is that whatever was going on with him and those kids, it was a goddamn tragedy. Which I already knew. But Macaulay Culkin??
And one EXCELLENT documentary, on PBS Passport and maybe Kanopy:
Marcella (2024): Marcella Hazan didn't start out a cook; she was a scientist who got married, learned to cook for her husband, moved to America, and ended up changing the way America approached—and ate—Italian food. Highly recommended. From American Masters, season 39.
And on DVD from the library:
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: I can't say I enjoy this series, so I won't, but here's the stuff I enjoyed from season 3:
- Spock and La'An dancing together (and being sex friends, I guess; they didn't give me enough to form an opinion on that, but they are my two favorite characters, so I think I like it in theory).
- Jess Bush perfectly threading the needle in her role as first officer in the fake Star Trek.
- Una's "—and loud" in response to Vulcan!Pike's "THIS MEETING WILL BE BRIEF."
- Ortegas getting her own episode, plus an annoying little brother. (Have they actually told us Ortegas is queer, or are we just supposed to assume so based on her haircut, sleeveless shirts, and motorcycle repair? Anyway, I want her to be friends with Reboot!Kirk now. They could get into so much trouble together.)
- Kirk/Spock mind meld!!
- Carol Kane
The Sheep Detectives (2026): As soon as Hugh Jackman righteously stormed into the church for no apparent reason, I shut this off. The talking sheep were just way too cutesy for me (if a sheep has anything to say it's going to be WEIRD and your types of sheep aren't going to map onto human traits, they're gonna be like "will eat anything" and "gets stuck in corners" and "worships the faucet" and "lurks in the bushes" and "wants to be best friends with the dog" not "the smart one" and "the dumb one" and "the glam one") also Hugh Jackman was acting like a lunatic (derogatory).