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Hi folks, I hope you all are doing well. Not good at doing these intro things, but I'll give it a try. I'm Lesley. I'm in my late thirties, happily married and I have one cat child. I love books of all types, I'm currently making my way through the Dungeon Crawler Carl books, Tv shows including The Golden girls, How I met your Mother, Grace and Frankie and others. I love all kinds of music, and I enjoy baking. I welcome people of all backgrounds and stuff, I'm a Christian myself. as for what I write about in here, To be honest, there's only one entry in here, but I plan on changing that. I will most likely write about daily life things, and sometimes about what I'm watching/reading/listening to as well as mental and physical health stuff. I am totally blind, so sometimes I will write about that. If there is anything else you wanna know, feel free to take a peak at the profile. I will be writing in here probably every few days to every week. Depends on the mood I'm in. I hope all of you have a good day, and if you celebrate them, happy holidays
Name: Georgiana or Georgie. Neither is my legal name, but they are what I use here and in most situations.
Age: Forty-two.
I mostly post about: Entries may consist of anything from short summaries of my day, to surveys, to essays on various topics, to interesting links and quotes that I find, along with my commentary on them. Lately, I have been writing reviews of opera recordings from the 1950's and earlier. I have no interest in politics and modern celebrities. I wish to keep my journal light and happy as much as possible.
My hobbies are: studying dandyism, Received Pronunciation, the Regency, and the Italian language, reading, writing, cooking, baking, playing cards and dice, and enjoying warm weather.
My Other Interests include: coffees, teas, antique menswear and accessories (usually Edwardian), chamber and classical music, old opera singers, plants and gardening, crafts, and history and nature documentaries. I love wit, wordplay, and sarcastic humour without vulgarity. I also love cats.
My fandoms are: I don't have any.
I'm looking to meet people who: are positive, who share my interests and can introduce me to some new ones, and who enjoy at least some elements of high culture. While the minimum age I will add is twenty-one, I tend to get along with those who are older than I, particularly seniors. I am also single and searching, but since this isn't a dating community, I'll just say that you can find more about that in one of the sticky entries in my journal. You can also find my Mastodon and Escargot.chat information there.
My posting schedule tends to be: It varies, from a few posts in a given week to a few in a single day. Often, I post what I call filler entries toward the end of the month. These are entries posted on one date but for another. I try to post a few entries per week.
When I add people, my dealbreakers are: minors (I prefer at least over twenty-one), depression and/or anxiety (posted regularly), bad self-esteem, life drama, recreational drugs, religion or politics (posted regularly), a lot of bad grammar and spelling (unless you're learning English), and frequent obscenities. Please note that I am totally blind, so if you mostly post images, I won't be able to comment on them, as I cannot see them.
Before adding me, you should know: I have no time for political correctness, lies, or drama. While I always try to be civil during discussions, I share my opinion without reservations. If you are easily offended, please do not add me. I have a very dry and witty sense of humour. Otherwise, feel free to read my profile and/or posts and add me if you wish. I will most likely reciprocate. I also comment when I have something to say, but there are times when I don't read my friends' page for awhile, and I am trying to change that.
Age: Forty-two.
I mostly post about: Entries may consist of anything from short summaries of my day, to surveys, to essays on various topics, to interesting links and quotes that I find, along with my commentary on them. Lately, I have been writing reviews of opera recordings from the 1950's and earlier. I have no interest in politics and modern celebrities. I wish to keep my journal light and happy as much as possible.
My hobbies are: studying dandyism, Received Pronunciation, the Regency, and the Italian language, reading, writing, cooking, baking, playing cards and dice, and enjoying warm weather.
My Other Interests include: coffees, teas, antique menswear and accessories (usually Edwardian), chamber and classical music, old opera singers, plants and gardening, crafts, and history and nature documentaries. I love wit, wordplay, and sarcastic humour without vulgarity. I also love cats.
My fandoms are: I don't have any.
I'm looking to meet people who: are positive, who share my interests and can introduce me to some new ones, and who enjoy at least some elements of high culture. While the minimum age I will add is twenty-one, I tend to get along with those who are older than I, particularly seniors. I am also single and searching, but since this isn't a dating community, I'll just say that you can find more about that in one of the sticky entries in my journal. You can also find my Mastodon and Escargot.chat information there.
My posting schedule tends to be: It varies, from a few posts in a given week to a few in a single day. Often, I post what I call filler entries toward the end of the month. These are entries posted on one date but for another. I try to post a few entries per week.
When I add people, my dealbreakers are: minors (I prefer at least over twenty-one), depression and/or anxiety (posted regularly), bad self-esteem, life drama, recreational drugs, religion or politics (posted regularly), a lot of bad grammar and spelling (unless you're learning English), and frequent obscenities. Please note that I am totally blind, so if you mostly post images, I won't be able to comment on them, as I cannot see them.
Before adding me, you should know: I have no time for political correctness, lies, or drama. While I always try to be civil during discussions, I share my opinion without reservations. If you are easily offended, please do not add me. I have a very dry and witty sense of humour. Otherwise, feel free to read my profile and/or posts and add me if you wish. I will most likely reciprocate. I also comment when I have something to say, but there are times when I don't read my friends' page for awhile, and I am trying to change that.
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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-seventieth issue:
“The Patriarch of Empty Lies,” by Wilt L. Idema. (free pdf)
INTRODUCTION
The Tale of Empty Lies (Tuokong zhuan 脫空傳) is a prosimetric narrative in four chapters that tells the story of the poor man Ma Pianliu 馬騙六 who, unable to pay back his creditors, leaves home to escape his troubles. After meeting with characters like Bai Lai 白賴 and Wu Pin 吳品 and traveling through a world of horrors, he eventually arrives at the abode of the Patriarch of Empty Lies (Tuokong zushi 脫空祖師), who teaches him never to repay any loan even if he would by a stroke of luck become a wealthy man. This text of this catalogue of low-lifes at the bottom of Chinese society has been preserved in a set of manuscripts, collectively titled Liaozhai waizhuan 聊齋外傳 (Additional tales by Liaozhai) and copied out in the years 1908–1915 by a certain Cao Rugui 曹汝貴, whose grandson Cao Juetian 曹厥田 donated them to the Pu Songling Museum. Most of the texts included in this collection are well-known “rustic songs” (liqu 俚曲) by Pu Songling 蒲松齡 (1640–1715), but The Tale of Empty Lies cannot have been written by him in its present form, as the text mentions the institution of “Nurturing Incorruptibility Silver” (yanglianyin 養聯銀), established in 1723 by the Yongzheng emperor. This would suggest that the text was originally composed (or rewritten) in the middle of the eighteenth century. As Tuokong zhuan was transmitted together with prosimetric writings by Pu Songling, it may not only have circulated in central Shandong but also have been composed there….
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All issues of Sino-Platonic Papers are available in full for no charge.
To view our catalog, visit http://www.sino-platonic.org/
——————–
From the author:
Many thanks for including Empty Lies in SPP. What gave me most trouble in translating this piece was the great number of puns, especially in the second chapter. I am quite sure I also missed the intended meaning of several colloquial expressions in that chapter. It would be wonderful if people with some knowledge of the local dialect of central Shandong would have a look at it. Even so I thought the text curious enough to merit publication, despite the mistakes it is bound to contain. The text very well illustrates the problems one encounters when performative texts are not just written in "standard vernacular" but also make use of any local dialect, especially its vulgar aspects. Corrections are welcome.
Empty Lies in its present shape cannot be by Pu Songling as it refers to changes in official salaries of the Yongzheng period. But as a popular prosimetric performance text it became mixed up with the "rustic songs" of Pu in at least one connection. As such it illustrates the problems in identifying the borders of Pu's vernacular corpus as discussed by Zhenzhen Lu. In this case we are "lucky" in that the text contains elements that allow one to date it, but in the majority of cases such elements are missing.
From Zhenhen Lu:
Tuokong zhuan is among a number of vernacular texts transmitted in central Shandong that has at one point or another gotten grouped with the liqu attributed to Pu Songling, which for me is much more interesting as a local corpus of vernacular writings than their often uncertain connections to Pu (as professor Idema has shown through specific terms like "yanglianyin," this particular text would have been from a later time). In its spirit of parody and mockery of conventional values, Tuokong zhuan certainly elicits comparison with other texts in that corpus, such as the pair of texts on the God of Poverty that I translated in my book (see chapter 3, pp.119-125; in chapter 2.5 I discuss vernacular texts, including Tuokong zhuan, transmitted in the Zichuan area and vicinity and the manuscripts they are found in). The language of the text can use further study–it's very colloquial, but I wonder how much of it is topolectal—it would be very interesting to study it alongside texts that belong to the so-called "Liaozhai liqu" today, which Chinese linguists have studied as established corpus seemingly without much attention to other locally transmitted vernacular texts. I attach a PDF of the article which contains the text prof. Idema translated, so you can take a look and get a feel for its language (the text starts on p. 12 of the PDF)—which I think is still quite different from the Qiangtou ji that you translated. It's a real feat that prof. Idema completed the translation, given the spectacular verbal acrobatics that it delights in (for example in chapters 2 and 4).
VHM: If anyone is truly desirous of seeing the original text that Prof. Idema worked from, I can arrange to send the pdf Zhenzhen mentioned. Even better, it would be great if someone were willing to post the pdf online so that everybody could see it at the click of a URL.
Selected readings
- "Vernacular and classical fiction in late imperial China" (10/3/25)
- Zhenzhen Lu, The Vernacular World of Pu Songling: Popular Literature and Manuscript Culture in Late Imperial China Series: Sinica Leidensia, Volume: 173 (2025). xix, 312 pp.
By Zhenzhen Lu - "The Wall, a Folk Opera in Four Acts", by Pu Songling. Translated and annotated with an Introduction by Chang Li-ching and Victor H. Mair, Chinoperl Papers, 14.1 (1986), 97-152 | Published online: 20 Nov 2013. https://doi.org/10.1179/chi.1986.14.1.97
- "Shandong vernacular, then and now" (8/1/21)
- Strange Tales from Make-do Studio (Denis C. & Victor H. Mair). Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989.
I have a hell of a lot of friction when it comes to spending money on things I might want. "Buy now pay later" has no hold on me, nor does it's friend, "pay in installments". I hate to owe money. The only BNPL situation I got myself into was for buying a house, AKA a mortgage, because, well, a house is _expensive_ and if I'm to live with a roof over my head, rent-to-own (the mortgage) beats rent-without-end, especially if it's somewhere not compatible with hand-rearing orphaned fawns. (Is it me or do I use a _lot_ of hyphenated words? Some sentences just don't make sense if certain strings aren't hyphenated.) So anyway, I go to eBay, try to find the stuff made in China or India (free shipping!), browse and browse and browse and buy nothing. I don't have the shelf space, it's too expensive, it's not quite right, do I _really_ want that? And I close all the tabs and get nothing. Then I look at my tiny Bambi saucer of sparkly artificial rocks and I think, y'know, I'd really like an opal, and then it's back to closing tabs and buying nothing.
I'm still zookeeping in my sleep, working with a colleague who retired and died a decade ago, working in a section that was demolished two decades ago, dealing with coworkers who leave doors open (animals wandering reserved spaces, leaving piles of manure, knocking stuff over), hunting for golf carts parked who knows where, dealing with moody vet interns going from stall to stall collecting data or something, sorting trash. I'm not getting paid for this.
My parents ditched their old gas powered vehicle for an electric one. It's full of settings and gadgets. One thing it does is display all the nearest charging stations (which, unlike gas stations, are hard to find). Now if I were a gigantic multinational car manufacturer and I was itching to make even more money beyond just selling an electric car, I'd do the following: make locating a recharging station a monthly subscription service, only show recharging stations that pay a fee to be included on the map in the display in the car, get the recharging station chosen by the driver to pay a cut of the revenue it gets from selling the electricity, make the ability to accept "fast charging" a subscription service paid by the driver, play adverts non-stop during the charging process, make getting a full charge a subscription service, have "dynamic pricing" for the charge service based on either who is driving the car or if that fails, who owns it, also have "dynamic pricing" based on how low your car is on battery power (ergo, how desperate you are to get recharged), and finally, tweak the selection of charging stations so that by the time you get there you _will_ be desperate to get recharged, or risk the car dying for lack of power. Yep, better mouse traps, we get new ones every day. Oh, and expose the plethora of chips controlling every aspect of the car to the elements and to power fluctuations to ensure they fail frequently and require expensive replacements that only the dealer can provide. Do I want an electric car? Hell no, not unless it runs on an electric weed-eater motor from 1980 and self-charges via super efficient solar panels.
My Windows 10 laptop (boo! Hiss! Windows 10!) has been collecting more dust than usual. Not only does it suck all my bandwidth trying to update (can't turn that off) and keeps time like a cheap 50 year-old knock-off watch (probably update dependent), it was corrupting files on and refusing to stay connected to various of my USB keys, including a Verbatim one. Not exactly a no-name brand and they work just fine on my Win 7 laptop. I am leaning toward replacing the OS with Ubuntu (I've never done that before) but that requires a USB key and I'd like to first save the screen caps from that pony game and the hundreds of ComfyUI auto-pastiche images I'd saved to disk, something that would also require a USB key. Fortunately, I bought some cheap 32 GB USB 2.0 keys last week. I tried one on the laptop-from-hell and inexplicably, it worked! I should look for a tutorial and try to learn how to switch OS's.
One positive from the mouse-munched fiber-optic phone line was that I figured out that yes, despite it using my web browser to display the control board, ComfyUI is completely local to my Win 10 machine. Ergo, I can unplug my modem and use ComfyUI to generate huge-eyed alien horse images, without getting bothered with updates and a drain on my paltry bandwidth allotment. Cooking with free-falling robots is back on the menu! The auto-pastiche cake is a lie, but sometimes it looks good.
We are now into the fifth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health remain anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:
1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.
2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.
3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.
4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.
5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.
6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.
7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button.
Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.
With that said, the floor is open for discussion.
You'd think we'd get snow, but no. Tomorrow's forecast thus far calls for a "wintery mix". The only wintery mix I want is cocoa and marshmallows, not whatever the hell happens to fall from the sky like soggy doom confetti.
19F, jesus. At least it'll be warmer tomorrow. Warm enough to get a fucking wintery mix instead of snow, which is what we really want.
********************
( Read more... )
19F, jesus. At least it'll be warmer tomorrow. Warm enough to get a fucking wintery mix instead of snow, which is what we really want.
( Read more... )
- 1. Tribunal dismisses Sandie Peggie's claims against trans doctor (but finds NHS Fife did harass her)
- (tags:transgender LGBT law UK NHS GoodNews )
- 2. "The Matilda Effect": How Pioneering Women Scientists Have Been Written Out of Science History
- (tags:science women history patriarchy )
- 3. SARS-CoV-2 Leaves a Lasting Mark on the Immune System
- (tags:immune_system Pandemic doom heart )
Tags:
- doom,
- goodnews,
- heart,
- history,
- immune_system,
- law,
- lgbt,
- links,
- nhs,
- pandemic,
- patriarchy,
- science,
- transgender,
- uk,
- women
A depowered witch discovers she is just one zany scheme away from regaining her power... provided her estranged mentor does not intervene. Which of course he will.
A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
It should be fairly obvious to anyone who's been paying attention to the tech news that many companies are pushing the adoption of "AI" (large language models) among their own employees--from software developers to management--and the push is coming from the top down, as C-suite executives order their staff to use AI, Or Else. But we know that LLMs reduce programmer productivity-- one major study showed that "developers believed that using AI tools helped them perform 20% faster -- but they actually worked 19% slower." (Source.)
Another recent study found that 87% of executives are using AI on the job, compared with just 27% of employees: "AI adoption varies by seniority, with 87% of executives using it on the job, compared with 57% of managers and 27% of employees. It also finds that executives are 45% more likely to use the technology on the job than Gen Zers, the youngest members of today's workforce and the first generation to have grown up with the internet.
"The findings are based on a survey of roughly 7,000 professionals age 18 and older who work in the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand. It was commissioned by HR software company Dayforce and conducted online from July 22 to August 6."
Why are executives pushing the use of new and highly questionable tools on their subordinates, even when they reduce productivity?
I speculate that to understand this disconnect, you need to look at what executives do.
Gordon Moore, long-time co-founder and CEO of Intel, explained how he saw the CEO's job in his book on management: a CEO is a tie-breaker. Effective enterprises delegate decision making to the lowest level possible, because obviously decisions should be made by the people most closely involved in the work. But if a dispute arises, for example between two business units disagreeing on which of two projects to assign scarce resources to, the two units need to consult a higher level management team about where their projects fit into the enterprise's priorities. Then the argument can be settled ... or not, in which case it propagates up through the layers of the management tree until it lands in the CEO's in-tray. At which point, the buck can no longer be passed on and someone (the CEO) has to make a ruling.
So a lot of a CEO's job, aside from leading on strategic policy, is to arbitrate between conflicting sides in an argument. They're a referee, or maybe a judge.
Now, today's LLMs are not intelligent. But they're very good at generating plausible-sounding arguments, because they're language models. If you ask an LLM a question it does not answer the question, but it uses its probabilistic model of language to generate something that closely resembles the semantic structure of an answer.
LLMs are effectively optimized for bamboozling CEOs into mistaking them for intelligent activity, rather than autocomplete on steroids. And so the corporate leaders extrapolate from their own experience to that of their employees, and assume that anyone not sprinkling magic AI pixie dust on their work is obviously a dirty slacker or a luddite.
(And this false optimization serves the purposes of the AI companies very well indeed because CEOs make the big ticket buying decisions, and internally all corporations ultimately turn out to be Stalinist command economies.)
Anyway, this is my hypothesis: we're seeing an insane push for LLM adoption in all lines of work, however inappropriate, because they directly exploit a cognitive bias to which senior management is vulnerable.
So much awful stuff happens to the protagonists in the last third of the show that I often don't make it all the way through. It's worth it, though - my favorite character suddenly gets enough growth to become my favorite character, and the villain dies in a very satisfying way, allowing me to say ( Read more... )
******************************
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
*********
Link
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
Link
Last night I hosted the annual Murdoch University Alumni meeting for Melbourne at the Arts Centre with plenty of excellent and intelligent conversation, as would be expected at such an event (well-catered too, I must add). As part of the formal proceedings, we held a panel discussion on what Murdoch University meant and how it changed us. Our panel, quite remarkably, had graduates from every decade of the university's existence, including a foundation student, Dr. Trevor Hogan, and the remarkable story from Lem Bagout, who came to Australia as a refugee from Sudan; he now teaches physics.
For 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!
For 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!
"Against We", by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution (11/28/25)
Quoting the author:
I propose a moratorium on the generalized first-person plural for all blog posts, social media comments, opinion writing, headline writers, for all of December. No “we, “us,” or “our,” unless the “we” is made explicit.
No more “we’re living in a golden age,” “we need to talk about,” “we can’t stop talking about,” “we need to wise up.” They’re endless. “We’ve never seen numbers like this.” “We are not likely to forget.” “We need not mourn for the past.” “What exactly are we trying to fix?” “How are we raising our children?” “I hate that these are our choices.”
…“We” is what linguists call a deictic word. It has no meaning without context. It is a pointer. If I say “here,” it means nothing unless you can see where I am standing. If I say “we,” it means nothing unless you know who is standing next to me.
…in a headline like “Do we need to ban phones in schools?” the “we” is slippery. The linguist Norman Fairclough called this way of speaking to a mass audience as if they were close friends synthetic personalization. The “we” creates fake intimacy and fake equality.
Nietzsche thought a lot about how language is psychology. He would look askance at the “we” in posts like “should we ban ugly buildings?” He might ask: who are you that you do not put yourself in the role of the doer or the doing? Are you a lion or a lamb?
Perhaps you are simply a coward hiding in the herd, Martin Heidegger might say, with das Man. Don’t be an LLM. Be like Carol!
Hannah Arendt would say you’re dodging the blame. “Where all are guilty, nobody is.” Did you have a hand in the policy you are now critiquing? Own up to your role.
Perhaps you are confusing your privileged perch with the broader human condition. Roland Barthes called this ex-nomination. You don’t really want to admit that you are in a distinct pundit class, so you see your views as universal laws.
Adorno would say you are selling a fake membership with your “jargon of authenticity,” offering the reader membership in your club. As E. Nelson Bridwell in the old Mad Magazine had it: What do you mean We?
…If you are speaking for a very specific we, then say so. As Mark Twain is said to have said, “only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms ought to have the right to use we.”
I could go on. But you get the drift. The bottom line is that “we” is squishy. I is the brave pronoun. I is the hardier pronoun. I is the—dare I say it—manly pronoun.
I agree.
So much for the "royal we" among the Decembrists — the novel, not the band.
The Decembrists (Russian: Декабристы, Dekabristy) is an unfinished novel by Leo Tolstoy, who finished three chapters. Its hero was to have been a participant in the abortive Decembrist Uprising of 1825, released from Siberian exile after 1856. It was intended as a sequel to War and Peace, and the second part of a planned trilogy, whose third part would be set in 1856.
The band's name refers to the Decembrist revolt, an 1825 insurrection in Imperial Russia. Meloy has stated that the name is also meant to invoke the "drama and melancholy" of the month of December.
As I have stated elsewhere, my wife (Li-ching Chang) would do anything to avoid the use of the first-person singular pronoun ("I" / "Wǒ 我"). However, she was not averse to the second-person pronoun, whether singular or plural.
Selected readings
- "Me, myself, and I" (4/5/22)
- "Why We?", by Jeremy Gordon, Pacific Standard (11/7/13)
[h.t. Leslie Katz]
The third array of recent standalone tabletop roleplaying games using the Forged in the Dark rules system based on John Harper's Blades in the Dark from One Seven Design Studio.
Bundle of Holding: Forged 3
Did you miss these books the first time around? Good news!
Five Freshly Reprinted SFF Books and Series
Six works new to me: four fantasy, one horror, and one SF (also ttrpg). Four are arguably series.
Books Received, November 29 — December 5
Poll #33929 Books Received, November 29 — December 5
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 26
Which of these look interesting?
View Answers
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 5 edited by Oliver Brackenbury (December 2025)
3 (11.5%)
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 6 edited by Oliver Brackenbury (December 2025)
3 (11.5%)
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 7 edited by Oliver Brackenbury (December 2025)
2 (7.7%)
Black River Ruby by Jean Cottle (January 2026)
7 (26.9%)
The Flowers of Algorab by Nils Karlén, Kosta Kostulas, and Martin Grip (January 2026)
8 (30.8%)
Headlights by C J Leede (June 2026)
4 (15.4%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
21 (80.8%)
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December 8th, 2025: If you're looking for Christmas gifts, might I recommend... THE DINOSAUR COMICS STORE?? We got a Christmas sweater! :0 – Ryan | ||
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