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Gimme a quilt!

Dear Eric: My sister-in-law made quilts for two of her nieces. They unwrapped them to oohs, aahs and applause on Christmas Eve at my house. My daughter did not receive a gift. I sent a polite email to sister-in-law explaining that my daughter was disappointed. I received a snail mail reply that included a gift certificate and a note. Sister-in-law wrote that I was a bully and stated that she would never set foot in my house again. She hasn’t for several years. What should I do?

— Stitchy Situation

Situation: Your sister-in-law’s reaction was a bit extreme, all things considered (or at least all things detailed in your letter). This suggests to me that maybe there’s something else under it for her, whether it’s other issues she has with your relationship or a sensitivity around the particular gift. Or maybe her feelings were hurt by your email, even though it was polite.

The best way to sort it all out is by asking. It’s been years and she hasn’t come back, so I’m curious what your relationship is like outside of visits. Has this escalated to grudge territory? Does she speak to you at all? If she doesn’t, you may have to make a bigger gesture in order to reset things. Telling her, “I don’t like what happened between us” and “I’m sorry for my part” could help lay a foundation for reconciliation.

Try, if you can, not to let the conversation get too caught up in what happened years ago, though. The gift card, the email, et cetera. All the details can become places where you both get stuck relitigating and rehashing. Instead, focus on the objective of the conversation — you want to re-establish contact. It will also help to have a concrete goal, as well as an emotional one. Perhaps something like extending an invitation for her to come for lunch.

If she’s not receptive to a phone call or face-to-face conversation, an email or letter will work, but a spoken conversation is vastly more effective.

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Media Round Up: June 23, 2025

Here's so thoughts about things I've been reading and watching recently:

The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon by Grace Lin— Read out loud to the kid. I loved Grace Lin’s other MG books so I was very excited for this! It was very charming. As always I enjoy the author’s illustrations. I enjoyed having Chinese mythical creatures in a modern city. I don’t love it quite as much as some of the author’s other work, but it was good and worth reading.

The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann Leblanc— I heard about this novella from a WisCon panel on recent trans SFF. It's about a space cheese maker who finds out the asteroid that houses her cheese cave is about to be yeetted into the sun. She is one of many people who is a copy of an original human, including the person she sells her cheese to and the woman she goes to for help. This book was maybe not as weird as it was presented to me, and some of the politics are exactly like current earth queer community debates. Still I loved all the details about food, and the bits of community building that were present around the edges of the story.

The Truth Season 3 cases 6 and 7— This is labeled as two cases but it's really one very long case! I was a little disappointed to have to wait a week for resolution. This case also featured some upsetting queer phobic violence as part of one character’s backstory. But there were a lot of fun things too. They fought zombies with bubble guns!

The Treasured Voice Season 6 ep 1 — I started watching this while I was waiting between episodes of The Truth. It’s a singing reality show featuring people pairing up to sing songs. It’s got Liu Yuning! I’ve only seen the first episode but it seems pretty chill so far though there are some judges who make negative comments.

( Maiden )

Of the Shining Underlife by Carl Phillips

Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.

Then they’re branches again—hickory, I think.

—It’s not too late, then.

******

Link

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Miss Forensics 我亲爱的法医小姐 Read Along: Chapters 11 to 20

Discussion for Chapter 1 to 10 here.

The link to the novel on JJWXC can be found here.

You can also follow the novel through the audiobook on Himalaya, though there may be slight changes and ommissions from the original.

Well, at least Iran is limiting themselves to legitimate military targets

Can't wait to hear the exaggerated anger at how dare they retaliate....

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Neuromancer; Sprawl Trilogy (William Gibson): Shears, by LizzyChrome.

Fandom: Neuromancer | Sprawl Trilogy - William Gibson
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Sally Shears | Molly Millions & Yanaka Kumiko
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 1,225
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply (but a character’s dark backstory is hinted at.)
Creator Tags: Cyberpunk, razor girl, Friendship, Mentors, Mentor & Protégé, Yakuza, Missing Scene, Female Friendship, Backstory, Fanon
Creator Links: (AO3)

LizzyChrome; (BlueSky):

lizzychrome; (DeviantArt)

lizzychrome; (Facebook)

LizzyChrome; (Instagram)

lizzy_chrome
Theme: Female Relationships, Backstory, Book Fandoms, Female Friendship, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Older Characters, Worldbuilding

Summary: How do Molly's claws and lenses actually work? Kumiko pries. (Missing scene from "Mona Lisa Overdrive.")

Author’s Notes: If you havne't read MLO yet, I won't spoil anything. I'll just set the scene, without giving anyway any important story elements: Molly is now middle-aged, goes by "Sally Shears," and is working as a body guard for a Japanese girl named Kumiko.

I do not own "Mona Lisa Overdrive."

This oldie was written probably over ten years ago. I originally posted it to Fanfiction.net, then took it down, feeling it was pointless. But in light of the new "Neuromancer" show coming out, I want to preserve this little ficlet, to see how my fanon explanation for how Molly's claws work compares to what (if anything) the show gives us regarding that explanation. After a quick re-read, I decided that no edit was needed. What you see here is what I originally posted ten or eleven years ago.

Reccer's Notes: This vignette expands upon an exchange in Mona Lisa Overdrive between aging cyborg mercenary Sally Shears (AKA Molly Millions, Cat Mother, Steppin’ Razor, Rose Kolodny, and Misty Steele—this lady’s got more names than a Wuxia hero) and her charge Yanaka Kumiko; Sally confides measured bits of her backstory to the crushstruck Kumiko, including stripping to bare a torso-long scar (from a near-fatal cagefighting injury, kept “to remind her of being stupid.”)

It’s a precious moment of trust, an elusive commodity in both women’s lives; LizzyChrome elaborates upon this to let Sally hold forth on how her prosthetics work—a question that Gibson chose to bury under Rule of Cool, and that’s challenged two generations’ worth of illustrators and cosplayers.

With the upcoming Neuromancer series on Apple+TV, Molly finally leaves the roster of visually iconic SFF characters not yet defined in the popular imagination by a screen adaptation (1). The Molly in my head admittedly didn’t resemble Briana Middleton, but I look forward to seeing her interpretation of the role (as well as how faithful to the spirit of the book the script gets to be, now that Hollywood has gotten their hands on

(A) a Beloved Property™,

(B) whose cyberpunk dystopia is feeling uncomfortably real in a number of respects—thanks in no small part to megacorporations like Apple.)

(1) Gully Foyle from The Stars My Destination and Elric of Melniboné also come to mind.

Fanwork Links: Shears, by

LizzyChrome.

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Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)

Flashing forward 75 years from The Autobiography of an Androgyne...

Stone Butch Blues is an autobiographical novel following Jess Goldberg, a queer working-class Jewish kid from upstate New York. It covers her 1950s childhood in which she is punished and rejected by her parents for not conforming to gender norms, her coming-of-age and finding a place as a butch in the lesbian community despite relentless police brutality, her decision to pursue medical transition, her partial detransition when she realizes she's neither a man nor a woman, her loves and losses, and her political awakening as a union organizer.

So, I came out as trans in the late 1990s, and two questions I soon grew to hate hearing were "Have you seen Boys Don't Cry?" and "Have you read Stone Butch Blues?" No, I hadn't, because I was already having a difficult time and I did not think I would find it helpful to consume media about people like me being raped and murdered, thanks. Well, I still haven't seen Boys Don't Cry (not planning to!) but now I have read Stone Butch Blues and I think I was right that reading it back then wouldn't have helped, except in that it would have given me more context for what some of the older people in the queer community had been through and why some of them treated me the way they did.

( Cut for length and content: hate crimes (in the book) and in-community hostility towards nonbinary people (in my own life). This post is more about me than about the book. )

Stone Butch Blues is available for free on Feinberg's website.

Nonfiction

Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945: China fought imperial/Axis Japan, mostly alone (though far from unified), for a long time. A useful reminder that the US saw things through its own lens and that its positive and negative beliefs about Chiang Kai-Shek, in particular, were based on American perspectives distant from actual events.

Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia: Interesting story of imperialist ambition and forced labor in a place marked by previous American intervention; a little too focused on reminding the reader that the author knows that the views he’s explaining/quoting are super racist, but still informative.

Alexandra Edwards, Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom: ( fun read )

Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins: Wide-ranging argument that claims about prehistory are always distorted and distorting mirrors of the present, shaped by current obsessions. (Obligatory Beforeigners prompt: that show does a great job of sending up our expectations about people from the past.) This includes considering some groups more “primitive” than others, and seeing migrants as a “flood” of undifferentiated humanity. One really interesting example: Depictions of Neandertals used to show them as both brown and expressionless; then they got expressions at the same time they got whiteness, and their disappearance became warnings about white genocide from another set of African invaders.

J.C. Sharman, Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World: Challenges the common narratives of European military superiority in the early modern world (as opposed to by the 19th century, where there really was an advantage)—guns weren’t very good and the Europeans didn’t bring very many to their fights outside of Europe. Likewise, the supposed advantages of military drill were largely not present in the Europeans who did go outside Europe, often as privately funded ventures. Europeans dominated the seas, but Asian and African empires were powerful on land and basically didn’t care very much; Europeans often retreated or relied on allies who exploited them right back. An interesting read. More generally, argues that it’s often hard-to-impossible for leaders to figure out “what worked” in the context of state action; many states that lose wars and are otherwise dysfunctional nevertheless survive a really long time (see, e.g., the current US), while “good” choices are no guarantee of success. In Africa, many people believed in “bulletproofing” spells through the 20th century; when such spells failed, it was because (they said) of failures by the user, like inchastity, or the stronger magic of opponents. And our own beliefs about the sources of success are just as motivated.

Emily Tamkin, Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities: There are a lot of ways to be an American Jew. That’s really the book.

Roland Barthes, Mythologies (tr. Annette Lavers & Richard Howard): A bunch of close readings of various French cultural objects, from wrestling to a controversy over whether a young girl really wrote a book of poetry. Now the method is commonplace, but Barthes was a major reason why.

Robert Gerwarth, November 1918: The German Revolution: Mostly we think about how the Weimar Republic ended, but this book is about how it began and why leftists/democratic Germans thought there was some hope. Also a nice reminder that thinking about Germans as “rule-followers” is not all that helpful in explaining large historical events, since they did overthrow their governments and also engaged in plenty of extralegal violence.

Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York: Mostly about La Guardia, whose progressive commitments made him a Republican in the Tammany Hall era, and who allied with FDR to promote progressivism around the country. He led a NYC that generated a huge percentage of the country’s wealth but also had a solid middle class, and during the Great Depression used government funds to do big things (and small ones) in a way we haven’t really seen since.

Charan Ranganath, Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters: Accessible overview of what we know about memory, including the power of place, chunking information, and music and other mnemonics. Also, testing yourself is better than just rereading information—learning through mistakes is a more durable way of learning.

Cynthia Enloe, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War: War does things specifically to women, including the added unpaid labor to keep the home fires burning, while “even patriotic men won’t fight for nothing.” Women farmers who lack formal title to land are especially vulnerable. Women are often told that their concerns need to wait to defeat the bad guys—for example, Algerian women insurgents “internalized three mutually reinforcing gendered beliefs handed down by the male leaders: first, the solidarity that was necessary to defeat the French required unbroken discipline; second, protesting any intra-movement gender unfairness only bolstered the colonial oppressors and thus was a betrayal of the liberationist cause; third, women who willingly fulfilled their feminized assigned wartime gendered roles were laying the foundation for a post-colonial nation that would be authentically Algerian.” And, surprise, things didn’t get better in the post-colonial nation. Quoting Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas: “Defending women’s rights ‘now’ – this now being any historical moment – is always a betrayal of the people, of the revolution, of Islam, of national identity, of cultural roots . . .”

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: American history retold from a Native perspective, where interactions with/fears of Indians led to many of the most consequential decisions, and Native lands were used to solve (and create) conflicts among white settlers.

Sophie Gilbert, Girl on Girl : How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves: ( Read more... )

Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message: Short but not very worthwhile book about Coates navel-gazing and then traveling to Israel and seeing that Palestinians are subject to apartheid.

Thomas Hager, Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia: While he was being a Nazi, Ford was also trying to take over Muscle Shoals for a dam that would make electricity for another huge factory/town. This is the story of how he failed because a Senator didn’t want to privatize this public resource.

Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World: What is the role of records in imperialism? Under what circumstances do imperialists rely on records that purport to be about the colonized people, versus not needing to do so? Often their choices were based on inter-imperialist conflicts—sometimes the East India Company benefited from saying it was relying on Indian laws, and sometimes London wanted different things.

Thomas C. Schelling The Strategy of Conflict: Sometimes when you read a classic, it doesn’t offer much because its insights have been the building blocks for what came after. So too here—if you know any game theory, then very little here will be new (and there’s a lot of math) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t vital. Also notable: we’ve come around again to deterring (or not) the Russians.

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In which there are Dosso Dossi and the allegorical paintings of doom

I feel as if I haven't been inflicting enough questionable moments from history on y'all recently so... to the art mobile!

One of my favourite aspects of art is that even if one broadly shares many cultural influences with an artist it remains possible to be completely mystified by wth they were thinking when they painted THAT... ?! Anyway, meet Dosso (nickname for Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri) whose patrons, male and female, liked him to paint cryptic allegories, i.e. even if you know the stories that inspired them you won't necessarily be able to decipher the message... if there is a message and the artist wasn't just messing with viewers... or drunk... or whatevz. All links to wikimedia, obv.

An allegory of Fortune, 1530-ish, in which a naked woman with only one sandal blows a giant bubble and a gravity defying gold cloth out of her... self, apparently, while staring at a handful of scratch-cards being waved by a man with slightly more dignified drapery.

An allegory of Music, 1522-ish, in which a partially naked woman (two sandals tho) stares at another naked woman's breasts, while a guy with the worst mankini in recorded history is distracted from retuning stringed instruments WITH A HAMMER by an angry arsonist toddler.

1535-ish, Hercules playing with a desk toy while a woman with her naked breasts in a fruit bowl stares at a goat... or possibly the head of the woman next to her who is sporting a marginally more fancy hat. IDK. Post your own explanation in comments plz. P.S. Beware of the baby magpie cos its got a knife... and some... I want to guess cheese? Cute dog tho.

( Don't go yet... I have four more.... )

Seven seems like enough bogglement for one day, or one bogglement for every day of the next week and then if you're good I might share a few portraits from my collection of unlikely nuns.

2025.06.23

'Swedes like generous, personal, lived-in spaces': The Scandi homeware style that Swedish people love
Dominic Lutyens
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250620-the-true-scandi-style-that-swedes-love

How the Grateful Dead built the internet
Allegra Rosenberg
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250618-how-the-grateful-dead-shaped-social-media

Some beaches closed in Hennepin County after water test results
By Kilat Fitzgerald
https://www.fox9.com/news/beaches-closed-hennepin-county-water-test-results ( Read more... )

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inkingitout (and the state of writing in general) status report

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

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SGA: Five Women Who Never Wanted Teyla Emmagan by tielan

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: (attraction only) Teyla Emmagan/Sora, Teyla Emmagan/Elizabeth Weir, Laura Cadman/Teyla Emmagan, Teyla Emmagan/Kate Heightmeyer, Sam Carter/Teyla Emmagan
Rating: G
Length: 2928
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply
Creator Links: tielan on AO3
Themes: Female relationships, Female characters, Friendship, Ambiguous relationships

Summary: Desire is a fine line. Five women in Pegasus walk it with care.

Reccer's Notes: This is a well-written exploration of how five women on the Atlantis expedition or elsewhere in Pegasus feel about Teyla. As a twist on the title, they all do or did want Teyla, even if they can't pursue that attraction for a number of reasons. It's also unclear if Teyla reciprocates any of their feelings. Excellent character pieces that ring true.

Fanwork Links: Five Women Who Never Wanted Teyla Emmagan

Golden

I remember a blind man telling us that what he saw- in his mind's eye- was not darkness- as we'd presumed- but a "wonderful golden light".

A "wonderful golden light " is what I "see" when I close my eyes in the Meeting House.

"Golden" is not quite right. There are other colours there. You know when you look at a sunset and you can't tell where one colour ends and and the next begins and you call it golden because words fail? Well, its a bit like that- only the colours don't shade into one another but are all present at once. Also it's soft and deep, as gold, the metal, isn't.

And I don't just see, I also hear and feel. And all these verbs are approximate. The light is bound up with the silence and has dimensions beyond the senses. It has consciousness, an internal movement as of motes in a sun beam- and is somehow involved with Peace and Love....

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Location: Munich

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Meanwhile...

Real Life (not mine, personally, mine is just very busy) in terms of global politics being a continued horrorshow, I find myself dealing with it in vastly different ways in terms of fandom - either reading/watching/listening to things (almost) entirely unconnected - for example, this YouTube channel by a guy named Elliot Roberts whose reviews of all things Beatles as well as of musical biopics of other folk I can hearitly recommend for their enthusiasm (or scorn, cough, Bohemian Raphsody, cough), wit and charm - , or consuming media that is very much connected to Current Events. For example: about two weeks ago there was a fascinating event here in Munich where an Israeli author, Yishai Sarid, who is currently teaching Hebrew Literature at Munich University was introduced via both readings from several of his novels, many, though not all of which are translated into German, and via conversations. While the excerpts of already published novels (and the conversations around them) certainly were captivating, and led me to reading one of them, Limassol, which is a well written Le Carréan thriller in the Israel of 2009 (when it was published) context), the novel he talked about which I was most curious about hasn't been translated into German yet, though it has been translated into English: The Third Temple.

This was was originally published in 215 and evidently has been translated into English in 2024, with an afterword by Yishai Saraid in which he basically says "people thought I was kidding or writing sci fi in 2015. I wish. I could see where this is going then, and now you can, too". If I tell you that a reviewer back in the day according to google described the novel as "if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child", you may guess what it's about. I will say that if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child, I wouild expect it to be a female rather than a male narrator, but yeah, other than this. ( A spoilery review ensues. )

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life

Thank you!!

Thank you so much to everyone who left comments on my solstice/anniversary post. ♥ ♥ ♥ I don't know whether I'll manage to reply to you all individually, but I have been loving reading them!

Connexions (8)

A very agreeable surprize

Viola, Duchess of Mulcaster, looked across the coach to her stepson, Beaufoyle, Lord Sallington, that was perusing the latest Speculum.

Essie dear, I hope you were not too bored at Sir Hobday Perram’s as we discoursed of the Persians and their art and poetry and music &C?

He looked up and grinned. Not in the least! I had a fine rummage among the works of European art that his forebears collected, and fancy I may advize him that there are some several vendable and will quite pay for that matter of a leaking roof. A few things to interest me in particular.

I am delighted to hear it. But what fine things he acquired during his sojourn in Persia – and I hope he will get his treatise on the music published – I apprehend Mr Davison has opened diplomatic negotiations with the press in Oxford –

I wonder, she mused, whether one might set those ghazuls that I translated and dear Agnes Lucas has rendered into good English verse.

I am like to think, Essie responded, that one might have to adapt the music somewhat for our English ears.

Very like! Viola leaned back. Well, I am a good deal easier in my mind over Bella. I did give some thought to her spending a little time on Jupp’s farm, but 'tis rather too close to Town – and indeed to Hackwold – so nothing could be more suitable than Attervale for her recruiting in country airs, since you are not at Nitherholme at present.

Essie sighed and remarked that even was he not now obliged to perform brotherly duties about the Season’s social occasions still felt it dutiful to assist his father as much as he could.

Hmm – with Bella off my hands mayhap I might take up some of my own neglected secretarial duties! But even were you at at Nitherholme I should be somewhat reluctant to have Bella there, hearing such reports of the uproarious behaviour of young Drew Fendersham in his father’s continued absence. Polly Fendersham will say there is no harm in Drew himself but thoughtlessness, but is less confident about the set around him. So I should be a little uneasy.

Especially as Polly, that might be some restraint, is so shortly off to Peru. Essie nodded.

They fell back into silence reading. Occasionally Viola glanced up. Essie did not greatly resemble his father: he favoured his mother, Kitty, Biffle’s first duchess, that had died at his birth. She had been given out plain, and her portrait at Qualling did not depict any conventional prettiness. But Sir Zoffany Robinson had caught something of character, intelligence, warmth, that one might also discern in her son.

But here they were, at last, drawing up at Mulcaster House. How daunted she had been when first entering it as a very young bride.

O! there, standing at the top of the steps, to her amazement and delight, darling Gillie! What a very agreeable surprize – had supposed him still in the far North – perchance no longer frozen by this season?

He ran down to embrace her as she descended from the carriage. Mama! jaunting off after Persian relics they tell me, as well as taking Bella into countryside retreat.

Why, Sir Hobday’s place is so close to Attervale, seemed the perfect opportunity – Essie’s friend Mr Davison had made an introduction – one saw that he was delighted to show off his fine things. But, my love, shall you be with us long?

She took his arm and they ascended through the portico into the house itself.

Gillie sighed. Alas, I have been accorded a brief holiday here, but – I must say 'tis very gratifying – am destined for Paris very shortly.

Paris! Well, one quite apprehended that that was quite the accolade – now a new Buonaparte had taken the reins it quite disturbed such order as had been coming about since ’48, caused considerable concern both for France and for wider questions.

Gratifying indeed!

But – there is also – he lowered his voice as they walked up the magnificent staircase to the first floor – a small discreet mission I have been desired to undertake – courier work – can you provide some familial excuse for my absence –

She squeezed his arm. My dear! Silence to the death! She raised her voice a little and remarked that was he returned to England there were certain aged relatives he should call upon.

He made suitable groans of protestation.

What I meant to ask, Mama, is, who are these young women about the place?

La, of course, you have been away so long! – but you must have some recollection of Chloe Ollifaunt, that was a schoolfellow of Bella’s – daughter of Sir Thomas and Lady Ollifaunt, that was Bess Ferraby, that runs so many theatres? I offered to give her a Season or two along with Bella, she has been the most excellent influence. And Sybil Vernall was another of their schoolfellows: Dr Asterley’s ward, her mother was his stepmother, died in Calcutta some years ago. Has the finest command of Bengali as well as the common Hindustani, undertakes secretarial duties for me. Is exceeding useful now your father and I take an interest in these Bengali reformers.

He turned, and clasped both her hands in his. Mama, truly you do not look a day older since I was last in Town! But you have just been traveling and I should let you go recover from that ordeal. Have a few presents from my own travels for you – Baltic amber &C – but that will wait. He stooped to kiss her cheek.

Dearest Gillie – so handsome, so like his father – Viola kissed him and went about her way.

Although she greatly wished to hear more of his adventures – those of them he was at liberty to discourse of – first once she had washed off the dust of the journey and changed into fresh garments, the proper responsible thing would be to go see Sybil to discover were there any urgent matters demanding her attention.

She found Sybil together with Chloe, their heads together over some piece of writing –

They jumped up and made little curtseys, hoping her visits had been agreeable and the journey bearable.

Why, Sybil, is this another tale of yours?

Sybil blushed. Her tale in last year’s Casket album had been much praised, Mr Lowndes had already taken a couple of shorter pieces for The Ladies’ What-Not, and Hannah Roberts had solicited Sybil for another longer tale, that would have elegant illustrations, for this winter’s Casket.

No, cried Chloe, 'tis not Syb, 'tis I become an author, or rather, a critic.

Oh yes: there had been some mention of Chloe inditing theatrical criticism for Steenie’s Helicon.

Sybil grinned and said, Mr Lowndes himself – we fancy young Mr Ferraby Lowndes may be a little biased in his opinions – Chloe blushed – saw Chloe’s pieces in the Helicon and offered that her opinions would be very welcome in The Oracle. So I was just looking over her fair-copies –

Syb being a published author, added Chloe.

Viola smiled benevolently. While the Ollifaunts had been grateful for Chloe to be given some experience of Society and conveyed a little polish, Viola fancied they did not have any particular ambitions towards a grand match. And marrying into the increasingly influential well-thought-of Lowndes press was unlikely to meet with disapproval!

Excellent well! she said. But now I am returned from seeing Bella into safe harbour, and indulging myself a little with Sir Hobday’s fine Persian things, I should to business.

Chloe took up her papers, saying they were just about done, anyway, and hoped that Her Grace had found all well at Attervale?

Viola sat down at the desk, as Sybil took out the diary and various letters and documents. Nothing of any great urgency, she said.

This turned out to be a very just assessment of the state of affairs. That being so, Viola considered that she ought to go make a visit to her sister-in-law Lady Jane Knighton. It was some while since they had been in company together, even though Jane was now out of mourning for the Admiral. And Viola’s joy at the unexpected advent of Gillie had made her think of what it must be like for Jane with Horrie – at sea about the Hydrographic Survey, no-one knew precisely where, letters very intermittent from lack of opportunity to send 'em –

So the following afternoon she took the carriage to that unfashionable but entirely respectable area where Lady Jane had a pleasing set of apartments adjacent to those of Amelia Addington, the Second Siddons. Indeed, there were signs that this part was coming up.

She found Lady Jane seated at her desk, not, as one might have anticipated, about one of the many philanthropies in which she interested herself, but sorting through a box of old papers.

Viola, my dear! Jane rose – forgive me for not shaking hands, mine are a little dusty from this task – and stooped to kiss her sister-in-law’s cheek. I will go ring for tea.

Once they were seated with tea and cinnamon toast between 'em, Jane explained what she was about.

Some old papers of mine from Nitherholme – Essie found 'em when he was there last and brought 'em to me. I had almost forgot about 'em, but here are my late great-uncle’s letters from Mrs Carter, the great blue-stocking –

I am like to think Hannah Roberts would be exceeding interested in those! Has writ some pieces on the French salonnières that were her contemporaries.

That is an excellent thought! Especially now there is this movement for the higher education of women.

Viola was about to allude to Vicky Jupp that she apprehended Jane was convoking with upon the classics, when a draught blew a sheet of paper to the floor. She stooped to pick it up. Could not repress a blush as she handed it to Jane – that setting by the late Grace Billston of Jane’s own translations from Sappho, that Viola had so embarrassed herself singing when she had been a foolish young girl endeavouring to ingratiate herself with the so very eligible Duke of Mulcaster’s sister.

But Jane did not seem to recall the event – looked wistfully at the music, sighed, and said, wondered should she ever hear this sung again? Miss McKeown declares her voice is no longer fit for public performance –

Perchance, thought Viola, one might make enquiries of Meg Knowles – or Dodo Brumpage, the Countess Casimir, sure one could not contrive to pronounce her married name – o, mayhap Zipsie Rondegate? – about one that might undertake a private performance.

Current Mood: hopeful

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2025/096: Stateless — Elizabeth Wein

2025/096: Stateless — Elizabeth Wein

...turning your back on your family, I knew, wasn’t nearly as terrifying as turning your back on an entire nation. [loc. 3643]

Stella North is the only female contestant in Europe's first ever youth air race. It's 1937, and the European powers are desperately trying to avert war: 'No one who fought here twenty years ago and survived wanted to see their sons come of age and go straight out to fight another war'. Meanwhile, the young men who are Stella's (male) competitors seem to be obsessed with the war records of their instructors and chaperones. She's especially vexed by the French pilot, Tony Roberts, who strongly resembles the German pilot, Sebastian Rainer. Tony flew in Spain, during the Civil War: Sebastian has never heard of Guernica.

( Read more... )

June 22, 2025

Posted by Heather Cox Richardson

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-22-2025

Last night, exactly a week after his military parade fizzled and more than five million Americans turned out to protest his administration, President Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, Natanz, and Esfahan. He assured the American people that the strikes “were a spectacular military success” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” “Iran,” he said, “must now make peace.”

For the first time in history, the United States dropped its 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs)—twelve of them—on another country.

It was a triumphant moment for the president, but as reporter James Fallows noted, the bombing of Iran would never seem as “successful” as it did when Trump could still say the nuclear sites were obliterated and Iran and its allies had not yet made a move.

Today administration officials began to walk back Trump’s boast. The Wall Street Journal reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said it was “way too early” to assess the amount of damage. International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said that “no one, no one, neither us, nobody else, could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”

Tonight David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported that there is evidence to suggest that Iran had moved both uranium and equipment from the Fordo site before the strikes.

In last night’s speech to the nation, Trump appeared to reach out to the evangelical wing of MAGA that wanted the U.S. to intervene on Israel’s side in its fight against Iran. Trump said: “And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

But while the evangelicals in MAGA liked Trump’s bombing of Iran, the isolationist “America First” wing had staunchly opposed it and are adamant that they don’t want to see U.S. involvement in another foreign war. So today, administration officials were on the Sunday talk shows promising that Trump was interested only in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, not in regime change. On ABC’s This Week, Vice President J.D. Vance said explicitly: “We don’t want to achieve regime change.” On X, poster after poster, using the same script, tried to bring America Firsters behind the attack on Iran by posting some version of “If you are upset that Trump took out Obama’s nuclear facilities in Iran, you were never MAGA.”

This afternoon, Trump posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”

On ABC’s This Week, Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) said: “It's way too early to tell what the actual effect on the nuclear program is, and of course, it's way too early to tell how this plays out, right? I mean, we’ve seen this movie before. Every conflict in the Middle East has its Senator Tom Cottons who promise us mushroom clouds. In the Iraq war it was Condoleezza Rice promising us a mushroom cloud. And initially—and this is true of every one of these wars in Libya, in Iraq, and Afghanistan—initially, things looked pretty good. Saddam Hussein is gone. Muammar Qaddafi is gone. The Afghan Taliban are gone. And then, over time, we start to learn what the cost is. Four thousand, four hundred Americans dead in Iraq. The Taliban back in power. So bottom line, the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”

There are already questions about why Trump felt obliged to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites right now. In March, Trump’s director of national intelligence, who oversees all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that the intelligence community assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. and Iran have been negotiating over Iran’s nuclear program since April, and when Israel attacked Iran on June 12, a sixth round of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran was scheduled to begin just two days later, in Oman.

After Trump announced the strikes, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: “I was briefed on the intelligence last week. Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States. Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.” He added: “We know—for certain—there is a diplomatic path to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The Obama agreement was working. And as late as a week ago, Iran was back at the table again. Which makes this attack—with all its enormous risks—so reckless.”

On Friday a reporter asked Trump, “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community had said they have no evidence that they are at this point.” Trump answered: “Well then, my intelligence community is wrong.” He added: “Who in the intelligence community said that?” The reporter responded: “Your director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.” Trump answered: “She’s wrong.”

At the end of May, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Gordon Lubold, Dan De Luce, and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that Gabbard was considering turning the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) into a video that looked like a broadcast from the Fox News Channel to try to capture Trump’s attention. At the time, he had taken only 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week (in the same number of days, President Joe Biden took 90). One person with direct knowledge of the discussions said: “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read.”

On June 17, Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen of CNN noted that while U.S. intelligence says Iran was years away from developing a nuclear weapon, Israel has insisted Iran was on the brink of one. A week ago, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Fox News Channel: “The intel we got and we shared with the United States was absolutely clear, was absolutely clear that they were working, in a secret plan to weaponize the uranium. They were marching very quickly.”

What will happen next is anyone’s guess. Iran’s parliament says it will close the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil travels, sending oil prices upward, but that decision can be overruled by the country’s Supreme National Security Council. Iran’s foreign minister announced today he was on his way to Moscow for urgent talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote this afternoon that “A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.”

The Department of Homeland Security has warned that “[t]he ongoing Iran conflict is causing a heightened threat environment in the United States.” It linked those threats to the antisemitism the Trump administration has used as justification for cracking down on civil liberties in the United States.

One pattern is clear from yesterday’s events: Trump’s determination to act without check by the Constitution.

Democrats as well as some Republicans are concerned about Trump’s unilateral decision to insert the United States into a war. The Constitution gives to Congress alone the power to declare war, but Congress has not actually done so since 1942, permitting significant power to flow to the president. In the 1973 War Powers Resolution, Congress limited the president’s power as commander in chief to times when Congress has declared war, Congress has passed a law giving the president that power, or there is “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”

That same resolution also says: “The President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances.” If an emergency appears to require military action without congressional input, the president must brief the Gang of Eight—both party leaders in each chamber of Congress, and both party leaders of each chambers’ intelligence committee—within 48 hours.

Democrats and some Republicans maintain that while no one wants Iran to have nuclear capabilities, the strikes on Iran were not an emergency and the president had no right to involve the U.S. in a war unilaterally. Administration officials’ insistence that the attack was a one-shot deal is designed to undercut the idea that the U.S. is at war; Trump’s call for regime change undermined their efforts.

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said in a statement: “Trump said he would end wars; now he has dragged America into one. His actions are a clear violation of our Constitution—ignoring the requirement that only the Congress has the authority to declare war. While we all agree that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, Trump abandoned diplomatic efforts to achieve that goal and instead chose to unnecessarily endanger American lives, further threaten our armed forces in the region, and risk pulling America into another long conflict in the Middle East. The U.S. intelligence community has repeatedly assessed that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. There was more time for diplomacy to work.

“The war in Iraq was also started under false pretenses. It’s clear that President Trump has been outmaneuvered by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who opposed the JCPOA negotiated by President Obama and has long favored drawing America into a war against Iran. The United States has rightly supported Israel’s defense, but it should not have joined Netanyahu in waging this war of choice. Instead of living up to his claim that he’d bring all wars to an end, Trump is yet again betraying Americans by embroiling the United States directly in this conflict.”

Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) posted on social media: “This is not about the merits of Iran’s nuclear program. No president has the authority to bomb another country that does not pose an imminent threat to the US without the approval of Congress. This is an unambiguous impeachable offense. I’m not saying we have the votes to impeach,” he added. “I’m saying that you DO NOT do this without Congressional approval and if [Speaker Mike] Johnson [R-LA] doesn’t grow a spine and learn to be a real boy tomorrow we have a BFing problem that puts our very Republic at risk.”

But Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX) told Maria Bartiromo of the Fox News Channel that Trump did not have to notify Congress because “[w]e do not have trustworthy people in Congress especially on the left side of the aisle.” If you give information to Democrats and those Republicans who oppose the president, he said, “you might as well put the [ayatollah] on the phone as well.” There is no basis for this statement.

In a quirk of timing, the satirical media outlet The Onion took out a full-page ad in the New York Times today that looks like a newspaper with the headline: “Congress, now more than ever, our nation needs your cowardice.” Journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket got an exclusive look at the insert and reproduced its front page. It read in part: “Our republic is a birthright, an exceedingly rare treasure passed down from generation to generation of Americans. It was gained through hard years of bloody resistance and can too easily be lost. Our Founding Fathers in their abundant wisdom, understood that all it would take was men and women of little courage sitting in the corridors of power and taking zero actions as this precious inheritance was stripped away—and that is where we have finally arrived.”

Congress members will have a copy of the ad in their mailboxes tomorrow when they get back to work on the Republicans’ enormously unpopular budget reconciliation bill.

—

Notes:

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/trump-addresses-nation-after-u-s-attack-on-iranian-nuclear-sites-242042437863

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/21/donald-trump-us-bombs-iran-speech-transcript/84304350007/

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/damage-extent-from-u-s-strikes-on-irans-fordow-nuclear-site-unclear-b86b9a58

Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, June 21, 2025, 7:50 p.m.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tulsi-gabbard-wrong-iran-nuclear-program/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/gabbard-considering-ways-revamp-trumps-intelligence-briefing-rcna209805

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/17/politics/israel-iran-nuclear-bomb-us-intelligence-years-away

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-says-countries-now-ready-supply-iran-nuclear-weapons-2088979

https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-june-22-2025

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/does-the-president-need-congress-to-approve-military-actions-in-iran

https://www.vanhollen.senate.gov/news/press-releases/van-hollen-statement-on-trump-decision-to-attack-iran

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/donald-trump-bombs-iran-and-america-waits

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5362973-iran-approves-closing-strait-of-hormuz/

https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/exclusive-the-onion-nyt-ad-congress-cowardice

https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-foreign-minister-abbas-araghchi-russia-vladimir-putin-us-strikes-nuclear-sites/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-stockpile-whereabouts.htm

https://apnews.com/article/iran-united-states-nuclear-negotiations-talks-82d23c70e0890808c64794487651f532

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The Week Ahead

Tuesday will be the third anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, the case that stripped American women of their right to get an abortion. At the time, that felt like a new low in modern-day America. Since then, however, the country reelected Donald Trump to the presidency…

a day ago · 341 likes · 40 comments · Joyce Vance

SeanCasten/status/1936581574188782026

BulwarkOnline/status/1936801030978642045

Bluesky:

thebulwark.com/post/3ls7fox7gbc2b

ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3ls7yid6hhk22

meidastouch.com/post/3ls7nkklh7i2v

atrupar.com/post/3ls7atae7s227

chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3ls7qufdbz22q

chrismurphyct.bsky.social/post/3ls6bsrr3422u

jfallows.bsky.social/post/3ls7fotwa2k2b

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-22-2025

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mini-reactions to Dog Man, and to Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death

World news is spiraling. Here’s a distracting post about movies. At least it’s something to break up the doomscrolling.

Dog Man: Cute and fun. I kept noting and appreciating the characteristic Dav Pilkey humor. (“Lil’ Petey is actually Petey’s son!…in a coincidence so obvious, it’s not really a coincidence.”) Not actually sure how to describe it, but the guy sure can write a line.

One of the subplots is about an evil psychokinetic cyborg fish, and I love that everyone just…calls him “psychokinetic.” It’s the one word that’s blatantly outside the target audience’s reading level. Nobody asks what it means. Nobody casually mentions the definition. You can figure it out from context, or you can look it up — and what a fun word to look up, you know?

Another subplot involves “evil” cat Petey, trying to raise his child clone Lil’ Petey. The kitten insists on seeing the good in Petey, who’s the classic “soft heart underneath, will team up with the heroes when given a chance” kind of antagonist. But there’s also a subplot where he eagerly tries to reconnect Petey with his deadbeat dad…who turns out not to be on a redemption arc, he just slums around the lair for a bit, then finally runs off with all Petey’s stuff.

Which leads to a scene where Petey tells the kitten “Kid, it’s not you. Some people just won’t change.” A rare message to see in a kids’ movie — characters who are estranged from a relative, especially a parent, almost always learn a lesson about how they were being too harsh and unfair — and a really nice one. Young viewers should get to hear that if you go on a Plucky Child Reconciliation Quest and don’t succeed, it’s not because you weren’t nice/forgiving/plucky/open-hearted enough to deserve it.

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Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death: I heard about this movie when it was featured in This Movie Exists. Can’t top Moviebob’s summary: “a zero-budget spoof of jungle adventure movies that improbably crosses a legitimately insightful satire of late-1980s “battle of the sexes” culture-war politics with campy jungle-girl bikini babe action.”

I’ve seen the serious version of this movie on MST3K any number of times. The parody is amazing. Genuinely laugh-out-loud funny on a regular basis. The climactic battle in the village of the cannibal women is between two ethnographers, wielding swords (“I studied ancient weaponry at Berkeley”) and wearing slinky leaf mini-dresses, trading insults like “Your field methodology is sloppy!”

And most of it has aged shockingly well. If it had come out in 2025, as a period-piece satire of sexism in the 1980s, rather than a contemporary satire of sexism in the 1980s…it could’ve done basically all the same jokes.

(Honestly, the only bit I would change is, there’s an attempted sexual assault that goes down a little too casually. It’s clearly a bad thing, our protagonist stops it by showing up with a gun, it’s just portrayed more as “ugh, another of these sexist annoyances that pop up throughout the movie” than “narrowly-averted serious traumatic violence.”)

As of now, you can stream the Avocado Jungle on Tubi. Worth a watch.

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Stuff I did this weekend:

- Went to the physiotherapist. As I suspected, the injury that put me out of judo since the beginning of June was a sprained tendon in the elbow area. Current plan is to rest and recover during summer, and pick up judo again in September when the new season starts. In the meantime, no pushups, planks, or breakfalls for me. (Or carrying heavy groceries with that particular arm for that matter)

- Went to a pride event. Drag brunch put on by the local drag group, the Oil Royals! Some of my acquaintances are involved in that, so it was cool to see them perform. They'll also be performing at the pride festival next Saturday, I think. Anyway, it was nice. I think I'll see if I can coordinate with somebody next time - it was fun by myself, but stuff like this is more fun with somebody else, too.

- Worked on a fic. Felt good. This particular draft is kind of meh, but it has one line that's absolutely amazing. I'm kind of hoping I'll be able to massage the overall result into something that I'll be more satisfied with on the whole. Ain't that always the way.

- I'm going to feel kind of relieved when pride month is over. I've been going to a lot of events, and it's been super fun, but I think I've been over extending myself a bit (and that's after cutting back on some of the things I'd wanted to go to).