dog-days

Me too. Had no idea it was eighteen not sixteen for photos. Media still seems very OTT about it, unless there's worse stuff we don't know about.

Haven't played BG3 yet, but I normally prefer games without a voiced protagonist. It leaves more space for me to imagine what they could be like. I guess once it could also have created more room to add extra dialogue options without the budget considerations of the extra voice acting limiting everything to paladin/cold pragmatist/joker, though I'm not sure how much that would hold true with the AAA games of today. In other news, I'm still playing The Witcher 3. It's been...three months?...since I started. Level 34. I haven't even touched the expansion packs. Still not in love with the writing, but enjoy the exploring and monster killing enough to keep going.

Somehow I had the feeling that might be the case. The total silence in all the usual places I snuffle around for recommendations and the pristine condition of the library books were warnings.

I can't decide whether this recreation of a Pompeian pizza sounds delicious or horrendous. I'm sure it's a question that's going to give me some disturbed nights thinking about it. Though possibly not as disturbed as they would be if I'd eaten the pizza (ingredients include: figs, dates, anchovies, cheese.)

Glad it's good. Been thinking of signing up to Netflix again to watch it.

Read The King's Evil by Andrew Taylor. It's the second in the Marwood and Lovett series set in Restoration London. Started with the second book because my library didn't have the first. Nothing about it was terrible; at the same time, it did feel by-the-numbers. Rather as if someone had told ChatGPT to write a historical detective novel. Everything had a baseline level of competence, but there was a lack of depth, a shallowness to it that made me long for Sansom to take over and do it better.

That does sound brilliant! May check it out myself. I'd like to be prepared for any problems with the spacetime continuum.

Had a look at the UK thread (Twitter-town) in incognito mode and I could still see them.

You're doing well for yourself to have a freezer compartment. I think only the Boss of All Bosses at my organisation has one of them. The mighty giveth, that BFC may distribute the bounty. This could be proof that asset redistribution – taking from the CEOs and sharing with BFC – leads to more effective management.

I must be remembering the library staff room of a university I used to work for. Everyone joked that it hadn't been redecorated since the library was built in the seventies – well, they'd joke, then they'd pause and say actually and look at the grimy brown carpet.

Thought that might be the case. Can they at least promise you comfy armchairs without nicotine stains in the staff room, and space in the fridge?

New Futurama coming next month. Not hugely optimistic, but will definitely watch it.

Writing this late at night by my standards so apologies for incoherence, anyway – I think forming lasting connections of any sort in adulthood is difficult, especially so for the demographic of people in which you and I likely sit. But outside our own experience, there are plenty of stories in the media reflecting this (here's just one of many examples.) This is why I try and join evening-class-type things, where not much is expected beyond that you turn up every week and refrain from setting fire to the classroom. Because social bonds tend to take RL time to develop. In the case of your contact, it's hard to know what was going on with her; it sounds as if she may have had her own issues, which she will need to deal with. But yes, if she wanted further contact, she would have messaged you.

Yes, sorry.

Good luck! Hope they make the correct choice and employ you with multiple perks to keep you happy and motivated. I have a bit of a history of getting the unexpected/less wanted job. As in, I apply for jobs I want with the big organisation whom I'm already working for, and don't get them. But I apply for a job on a whim that is either less suited to me, or is in a somewhat different field, and I'm offered it the next day. I don't know if it's because when I go for a job that I really want and think I'm suited to, the nerves get me in the interview. Or because going for a less obvious choice of job makes me appear more enthusiastic, since I'm not applying for more of the same. The insecure side of me says that it's because no organisation that I work for would want to keep me. Applied for a job last week and didn't even make it to interview, but on balance I'm not disappointed, because my current job is better suited to me and interests me more, even if it has its frustrations. If HR gave me a large pay raise, and would let me work remotely thus closer to my hometown, I wouldn't be looking for another job at all.

I blame the combustion engine. This kind of mistake didn't happen before the spread of motorised transport.

OK, I've Googled and checked the name in different languages and still don't get it: @A Horse Named Stranger, why do you call Belarus, Belarusk? Am I missing an obvious pun?

Detecting AI: Think it could be quite difficult to do given that AI doesn't copy text. It builds content based on likelihood, so follows patterns. Which sounds to me a lot like how humans write. I've got my job history stored on my CV and on LinkedIn. If I was less lazy I'd also have recorded details about what those jobs in involved. Given that material, then with some careful formulation of the task, I guess you could get a decent supporting statement out of ChatGPT.

Think part of the sense that the WWDITS seasons come around fast is that they hit the USA in summer, and the UK in late autumn. I mostly end up catching up on it during the Christmas break. They feel more present for more of the year than if the broadcasters would do the sensible thing and release it everywhere at the same time.

Has anyone read Andrew Caldecott's Rotherweird books? My library service has all of them. I remember Waterstones pushing them heavily a few years ago, and the covers are certainly beautiful, but I can't recall seeing them mentioned with praise or otherwise here. I mean, I guess I could just read them myself and make up my own mind... Wait. Nah. ETA: Finished the audiobook of Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self by Andrea Wulf. I enjoyed it deeply, though didn't feel it was quite as effective as her 2015 biography of Alexander von Humboldt. It kicks off in 1793 with Karoline Böhmer widowed, pregnant out of wedlock, and imprisoned at Burg Königstein for her support for the French army and Mainz Jacobins, and finishes with the Battle of Jena in 1806. In between, we follow the lives, disputes, liaisons and squabbles of the loose gang of philosophers and poets who for a time came together in Jena, for a while the leading liberal university town at the dog-end of the Holy Roman Empire. So we meet Goethe, a voice from an older and more measured generation, as well as the Schlegel brothers, the von Humboldt brothers, Novalis, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schiller. There is no one central character, but the heart of the book is probably owned by the translator and salonnière Karoline Michaelis-Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling. Wulf wants to convince you of her subjects importance – of the significance of their work – but often the work pales in comparison to their loud, busy lives, even if the insecurity and touchiness of their feuds is absolutely reminiscent of 21st century digital communities. (Friedrich Schlegel wrote a negative crit of Schiller. Schiller never spoke to him again, and froze out his brother for good measure). There are some wonderful fragments that I expect will stay with me, often bits more of social history than literature. In the epilogue, Wulf describes how inconvenient the ladies of Weimar found it when Goethe finally married his lower-class mistress: they would be obliged to invite her to their entertainments at the same time as her famous husband. Smelling salts all round. Johanna Schopenhauer was an exception: "If Goethe gives her his name, we can surely give her a cup of tea." I wanted it to go on and not to end, and I think that's one of the best things you can say of a book.

I got caught by this today. Was quite relieved to get home and find I could log in and post after spending part of the afternoon wondering if I'd logged into the board while sleep-walking and got myself banned.

As I was ostensibly shelving some books in a library some years ago, I came across a collection of photographs of remote mining communities in mid-twentieth century South Wales. A lot of it was quite shocking. Much more raw than anything I'd seen on the Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru's flickr archive. Unfortunately I didn't make a note of the details or photographer. [Abe Simpson voice] Though that reminds me... my favourite photography collection was put together from the work of Werner Kissling, a German photographer active in the Hebrides in the first half of the twentieth century.

Indeed, though sadly no room for a Marshal Zhukov/Jason Isaacs type character in this latest one.

Saw something on the BBC about Wagner troops being pardoned and being able to choose (or not) to sign contracts with the MoD. How that will play in reality I've no idea. But I'm not sure I'd be that thrilled with Pirgozhin now if I was a Wagner Merc.

Mate, it's all just AI. They faked it all on Adobe Firefly.