threeringedmoon

While I was dealing with trying to figure out whether I could see my psychiatrist, and what it would cost if so, I got an email from medicare.gov about the Medicare Advantage "open enrollment" period: anyone who enrolled in a Medicare Advantage (part C) plan at the end of the previous year can change to a different Medicare Advantage plan between January 1 and March 31st. I decided that it would be worth it to get into a PPO instead of the HMO I had somehow signed up for, even though it means I'll be starting over on the annual out-of-pocket maximums for prescription drugs and for medical care generally. I put the application in this afternoon, and was told the process might take 10 days, but I also think it's supposed to be effective the first day of the month after I requested the change. My confirmation email from Medicare says the plan will notify me after they verify my information and confirm my enrollment, so I will wait and see.

Fortunately, I can afford to do this, rather than having to find new specialists who are in that stupid HMO's network, or spend large amounts to see my current doctors. (Switching now is expensive because I take one very expensive drug, the Kesimpta.)

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Wikipedia has blacklisted the site archive.today a.k.a. archive.is, .li, .ph, .fo, .md, and .vn), because Wikipedia editors discovered that the pseudonymous owners of the site were altering some archived pages. The alterations inserted the name of a blogger that the pseudonymous person who runs archive.today has a grudge against, because the blogger speculated about their identity.

Wikipedia editors were already debating whether to blacklist the site, after discovering it was being used in a distributed denial-of-service attack against that same blogger. The argument for blacklisting the site was straightforward: archive.today captchas were running malicious code on people's computers. The argument against was that it would be difficult to replace hundreds of thousands of links, an argument that made sense only as long as the saved websites were considered trustworthy.

My decidedly non-expert hunch is that using the site to look at static content behind a paywall is probably safe unless the site asks you to complete a captcha.

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meta

I've always liked word games. I played them as a child. Scrabble, crosswords, ghost. But now I have an ulterior motive. I play them to keep my aging, post-stroke brain moving. My neurologist, my speech therapist, most of my other doctors are thrilled. And surprised. Me? I still enjoy the games, but I see myself playing slower, getting lower scores, feeling more frustration. But I still keep playing.

What do I play? Every morning I play five NYT games. Politically, I'm at odds with the Times, but the games? I still play the games. I start with Wordle. I play it not to get the answer quickly, but to get it accurately. And I 'win' nearly every time. My first two words are various combinations of the letters RSTN and either L or D, plus all five vowels. So, for example SNORE AUDIT or SNAIL ROUTE. With that start I usually get it in two more tries. But sometimes it takes six. I won this morning in three.

Next is Globle. You always win Globle if you play long enough. You name a country, and the game tells you how far you are from the winning answer. This morning I played Brazil first. About a thousand plus miles off. So next was Democratic Republic of the Congo. That was closer so I went north to try Morocco, which was even closer. Thinking to knock out Europe so I could concentrate on all those Africa counties, I guessed France - and it was bright red which means it is touching the answer. Switzerland. Yep. That was it. Five guesses. A very good score for me. Usually I'm seven, or eight, or seventeen. So that's two out of five wins this morning.

Connections is the hardest game for me. You get a grid of sixteen words and you have to choose four that "go together". But the logic can be crazy. They deliberately post words with double meanings so you THINK it goes with something else. You get only six guesses. Then you lose. I lose about 50% of the time. But today I won. With only two wrong guesses. Today was good.

My fourth game is Spanogram. It's a word finding puzzle. As a kid I gave those up in about 5th grade because they were too easy. These ones each have a theme, and all the words fit the theme, and you have to use every letter on the grid and no letter twice. You can get hints, and sometimes I do, but it's not timed and you can work at it all day if you like. So, essentially, everybody always 'wins' if they want to.

And my last game is Chrono. Delayed gratification. It's the one I like best and do well at. They list six historical events and you put them in order. There's usually one ancient, one from the middle ages or renaissance, and several relatively modern. Often very close to each other in time. I've done ones where all the events are within a span of 100 years. You get three tries. If you miss, the events will light up for right answers, and let you try rearranging the wrong answers. Which came first - the invention of galvanized rubber or the Mexico-Comanche war? You get three chances. I rarely lose this one and it's my favorite.

That's it for the morning. Although I play my online "Scrabble Go" games on and off all day. Usually have five or six going all the time. I win slightly less than half, but it keeps me bouncing to make four or five plays in a row against different people. I also play a block game where you tuck small square block combinations into a larger two dimensional square being careful not to run out of space so that you can't place the next block formation. I do that on and off. Sometimes leaving it for a day or two, sometimes during commercials or while waiting for an appointment.

But mostly, at bedtime before reading, I play Sudoku. I'm not as good at it now as I was ten years ago, but I'm doing better than during the few months after my heart surgery - when my brain really didn't work at all. I use my own method. I've never investigated how one is supposed to play. My online game lets me have three errors before "losing" but it does allow me to complete the game even after losing. And I like that. I'm slow, but I do usually 'win' (again, how can you lose, when you play until you have solved the puzzle?).

My speech and cognitive therapist always asks about "your puzzles" at our weekly session and makes note of my answers. She thinks it's excellent practice. Like my daily tongue exercises, and the "word finding" exercises I do with her. The best thing about my therapist? She acknowledges that even though I still function almost entirely on an 'above average' level or better, she knows that this is not my normal level, and that it is frustrating for me. That is such a relief after having most other doctors and therapists shrug and say, "You're responding normally, why are you concerned?"

So now you know more than you ever wanted to know about the games I play. If I thought anyone was actually reading this, I would ask, "What games do you play?"

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The book I'm currently working on packing up for an old-school paper submission includes the bad guy being captured in part because he trips over a cat. Anyone who thinks that's unrealistic should see how much "help" my cats are currently giving me.

Current Mood: frustrated, but I love them
Current Music: prrrrr?

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Alun Harries, one of my dearest friends, has died after a fall at his home. It is really shocking and I can't fully process it.

I met him in April 1984 on my very first international trip. I was staying with Linda Krawecke and Greg Pickersgill in London prior to traveling to Newcastle for Mexicon 1. My hosts gave a party where I met Alun. We were both 26, a bit younger than the rest of the crowd. The next day we drove to Newcastle, a trip I really have no memory of other than there were six of us in the van. It was an amazing convention and I met a lot of other lifelong friends there. I stayed in London afterwards for two months and continued having an amazing fannish time until I ran out of money and had to return to San Francisco.

I was desperate to go back, but I wasn't earning much so I couldn't actually get there until the 1987 Brighton Worldcon. Meanwhile, I exchanged handwritten letters, mix tapes and fanzines with Alun and all my other fun British friends. He introduced me to a lot of bands I had never heard of and couldn't find in my local Tower Records (and some I could, of course). I felt so cool and hip listening to those tapes on my Sony Walkman waiting for my BART or bus home and wishing I, too, lived in London.

He achieved international fame within fandom when he and four of his best buddies were dubbed The Chicken Brothers by Linda in a fanzine article. I went to the housewarming of his new place in 1987 or 1988, I no longer remember as the years really blur together now. I went to the UK as often as I could and much more frequently after I became a travel agent. He is entwined with the best times of my youth and we never lost touch. The last time we saw one another in person was at the 2014 LonCon Worldcon. We took my favorite photo of us, an iPad selfie that made us look like louche grandparents recalling their dissolute and racy past and warning our grandchildren not to follow in our steps. It cracks me up every time I see it.

He was smart, hilarious, kind, principled, and willing to say what he meant. He was also a curmudgeon from time to time. He loved films, science fiction, a broad range of music, and had many close friends. He was single most of the time I knew him, smoked like a chimney, enjoyed traveling (the story of he and Nigel Richardson talking each other into going to a titty bar in New Orleans brought me great joy), and took me to the only tiki bar I've ever been in in London. I swear I'll find some of those photos, it is truly a fantastic memory that should be shared.

All over now, Alun dear. Thank you for being in my life. We had such a good time.

Latergram: the LonCon photo, August 14-18, 2014. Beware, children!

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alun harries,
grief

(Okay, I have an essay-review coming out on several works which deal with moral panics around coffeebars and jazz clubs and so forth in the 1960s - 'the monkey walk was good enough for us'....)

But on the one hand wo wo the yoof of today are not even getting into leg-over situations, though the evidence for this as far as the UK goes dates to the NATSAL 2019 report based on survey undertaken 2012.

And if they do, The death of the post-shag sleepover: Why is no one staying over after sex anymore?

Okay, very likely - I dunno, is the '6 people I spoke to in a winebar last week' cliche still valid or has this migrated to some corner of social media, but amounting to pretty much the same thing as far as statistical sociological validity goes?

But while it may be all about anxieties around sleep hygiene rituals, or looks-maxxing practices, which will not sit happily alongside unrestrained PASSION and bonkery -

- there is also mention that, individuals in question are living with room-mates and one does wonder whether they actually have RULES about overnight guests who might hog the bathroom wherein they perform their wellness things (apart from any other objections such as noise....)

Yes, my dearios, I am already doing the hedjog all-more-complicated flamenco about this, and thinking about a narrative theme of the 1960s of young women rising from beds of enseamed lust in order to go home to the parental roof and sleep in their own chaste bed so that they can be plausibly awakened therein. (And is there not a current wo wo narrative about young people still living with PARENTS???)

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Happy birthday,

elekdragon!

Exercises in Futility Number Five Thousand Four Hundred Thirty-Three.

Google Home Assistant: And! I can do more things now. You can ask me complex questions and I'll be able to answer with help from Gemini!

Me: Hey Google. Why did the AI companies steal my life's work?

Google Home Assistant: . . .I'm sorry. I don't understand.

Yeah, me, too, Google. Me, too.

Well.

The WIP currently stands at 129,943 words. I'm still fixing the baby fixes. Once that's done, I need to write some scenes and put them where they belong. Deadline is April 15.

I have Remarks for my event on Saturday. I have also a Reading.

It is not supposed to snow on Saturday, but it will snow on Friday night.

In the meanwhile, and as much as I haven't been around this week -- tomorrow, February 20, the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory will be closed. Thank you for your understanding.

Everybody stay safe.

Tali and Rook, birdwatching

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Hampstead’s retro cafés fight back against a revamp:

“London is a muddle” as EM Forster once observed — but one whose complexity is enjoyed by inhabitants. This bitter row over cafés, with small operators objecting to a tendering process that rewards a chain, has pitted the Corporation’s efforts to modernise facilities against those who feel protective towards their homeliness.
....
But as the campaigner Jane Jacobs, who championed haphazard urban environments, pointed out, city life is inherently messy. Imposing more rigid schemes can destroy its vitality, what she called “the intricate social and economic order under the seeming disorder of cities”.

***

Shop windows tell the story of London’s revolutionary illustrated newspapers:

Printing on the Strand in the 18th century was a major hub of London’s popular print culture, characterised by vibrant publishing activity that wasn’t constrained by rules affecting printers within the City of London.
Key sites included Bear Yard, near present-day King’s College London, which hosted significant printing and publishing operations, and a King’s College exhibition, which is free to view through the shop windows, tells their story.
The printers moved away when the area was redeveloped, hence the exhibition title, the Lost Landscapes of Print, which is a mix of objects and stories from the printers’ trade.
Although Fleet Street is synonymous with the newspapers, two of the most popular newspapers of the 19th century were printed on the Strand, not Fleet Street. They were the Illustrated London News and rival The Graphic, both trading on their revolutionary ability to print pictures in their pages.

***

More and “Better” Babies: The Dark Side of the Pronatalist Movement - we feel this is the darker side of an already dark movement, really.

***

Apparently this was found to be missing recently from Le Guin's website but has now been restored: A Rant About “Technology”:

Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.

***

And talking about people getting all excited about 'technology' me and a load of other archivists and people in related areas were going 'you go, girl', over the notes of cynicism sounded in this article about the latest Thrilling New Way Of Preserving The Record (it is to larf at): Stone, parchment or laser-written glass? Scientists find new way to preserve data.
Admittedly, I can vaguely recollect an sf novel - ?by John Brunner - in which an expedition to an alien planet found the inhabitants extinct but had left records in some similar form.

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Glad i showed myself i could follow through and -- over the past week and a half -- did get grass seed down in orchard in time for rains and warmth to help get it started. Pruned the fig and blue berries, pruned two apples and have attempted training some branches (probably using inappropriate materials). Two apple trees and the persimmon remain, well, and the elderberries but the elderberries have leafed out and they grow like weeds.

Then had 36 hours of executive function vacation.

I continue to fear whether i am productive enough, competent enough at work, which yes, evidence says yes i am, but plenty of evidence that people who seem competent and productive and critical to understanding things get laid off. On the other hand, no big layoffs seem promising. The fear makes me look closely at retiring sooner rather than later: two years and a month and a few more days is the earliest i could sensibly retire and receive what appears to be a reasonable health care benefit from my employer.

So part of my mind is saying: just hang on and then .... what.

Admittedly, part of my mind remains amazed that all the economic engines continues as they have for decades. Climate forecasts for 2030 made when i was in college were missing -- as the scientists noted then -- factors that would offset the warming the models predicted. Which was pretty dire. And peoples around the globe have made efforts to slow our impact, and the models refined and we found -- for example -- the ocean had even more capacity to be a heat sink. Nonetheless, I suspect though that i will always feel a distrust of planning for the future: particularly trusting investment income as a stable foundation.

Another part of my mind makes a loud echoing "tick" when i take my morning and evening pills and i feel the time pass. I didn't contact any family members, haven't done anything to include myself in a community that takes care of each other. Yesterday i read the yoga center in town is shutting its doors (and selling its property to be redeveloped). I know the people who make the community there, who i felt might be local community i could connect with, aren't going away, but the locus of an intention has dissolved.

I see something that i think would trigger Christine's elephants. I know she is working on her elephants, i see her improving coping skills increasing capacity. I watch the news of more anti-trans efforts come in from Erin in the Morning and can't imagine the day to day toll that puts on Christine. And i know that the anti-immigrant, racist, anti-gay, anti-women energy is there, too.

I now i can do that thing, have grief and worry and frustration and still hold in my heart the beauty of the early Crocus tommasinianus and Iris reticulata and anticipation of a Chickasaw plum (Prunus angustifolia) covered with flowers. I also appreciate my colleagues, my friends here, and my friends across the country.

May we all find the capacity to hold our personal grief and our global worries at the same time as appreciation and gratitude, that we find joy as we also open ourselves to witness others suffering and have compassion for all living things. Maybe not stilt grass in North Carolina. Nope, not sure i can find compassion for that plant. It's always something.

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morning writing

Searching the internet goes better when you know the right search term.

I ordered a garden tool that I'd seen advertised on Facebook. I was a little worried when I realised, after placing the order, that it seemed to be being dispatched from China. However, I didn't lose hope. The sun hats (also purchased from a Facebook ad and sent from China) did arrive and turned out to be excellent. Anyway, after watching the tracking, I saw that the item had left a town with a suspiciously Chinese name, then there was a little aeroplane symbol for a while and, finally, it arrived in the UK. The day before yesterday it had arrived in Chester and yesterday it turned up. Yay!

However, it needed a handle. You could buy it with a handle, but reading the comments under the advert, the handle the company provides is only a couple of feet long (60 cm) which would mean crouching or kneeling to use it and my back, knees and hips wouldn't stand that. No problem, I thought, I can buy a handle separately.

First I thought I could use the handle off a heavy stiff-bristled yard brush that I don't really use any more, but it proved impossible to remove. So plan B was to buy a new handle. But searching for broom handles didn't bring up any that were thick enough. After going round in circles for ages, I saw the words "shovel handle" and had a lightbulb moment. A quick Google on the new search term immediately brought up what I needed, and reading the reviews, it looks as though it's what other people who have bought the same tool have been buying. It will arrive on Monday and then, as soon as the weather improves, I can start removing moss and weeds from the paths.

Happy birthday,

lilliburlero!

What I read

Finished Imperial Palace, v good, by 1930 Enoch Arnold had got into the groove of being able to maintain dramatic narrative drive without having to throw in millionaires and European royalty and sinister plots, but just the business of running a hotel and the interpersonal things going on.

Then took a break with Agatha Christie, Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot, #17) (1937) - I slightly mark it down for having dreary old Hastings as narrator, but points for the murderer not being the Greek doctor.

Finished Grand Babylon Hotel, batshit to the last.

Discovered - since they are only on Kindle and although I occasionally get emails telling me about all the things that surely I will like to read available on Kindle, did they tell me about these, any more than the latest David Wishart? did they hell - that there are been two further DB Borton Cat Caliban mysteries and one more which published yesterday. So I can read these on the tablet and so far have read Ten Clues to Murder (2025) involving a suspect hit and run death of a member of a writers' group - the plot ahem ahem thickens.... Was a bit took aback by the gloves in the archives at the local history museum, but for all I know they still pursue this benighted practice.

Have also read, prep for next meeting of the reading group, Dorothy Richardson, Backwater (Pilgrimage, #2) (1916).

On the go

Recently posted on Project Gutenberg, three of Ann Bannon's classic works of lesbian pulp, so I downloaded these, and started I Am a Woman (1957) which is rather slow with a lot of brooding and yearning - our protag Laura has hardly met any women yet on moving to New York except her work colleagues and her room-mate so she is crushing on the latter, who is still bonking her ex-husband. But has now at least acquired a gay BF, even if he is mostly drunk.

Have just started DB Borton, Eleven Hours to Murder (2025).

Have also at least dipped into book for review and intro suggests person is not terribly well-acquainted with the field in general and the existing literature, because ahem ahem I actually have a chapter in big fat book which points out exactly those two contradictory strands - control vs individual liberation.

Up next

Well, I suspect the very recent Borton that arrived this week will be quite high priority!

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I realized over the weekend that I hadn't checked on those insurance/medical specialist referrals, and when I did check, they were all sitting in MyChart, but hadn't been sent to the insurance company. The insurance chat agent was able to tell me that yes, they need to be in their system, and gave me a fax number to give my GP's office. So I called this morning (yesterday having been a holiday) and asked my doctor's office to do that, urgently, because I'm seeing Dr. Awad tomorrow.

When nothing had happened by midday, Adrian suggested I call the insurance company and ask whether it would be OK if they received the referral after the appointment, on the theory that this probably happens a lot. So I called, and they said yes it would, so I'm going to cross my fingers, and didn't call to reschedule that appointment.

I also finally managed to talk to my Fidelity advisor, and set up a three-way call with him and BNY (where the inherited IRA is). That involved a lot of waiting on hold, and the agent saying he needed to check one more thing.... He then told me that it would take more time for them to figure out where that unexpected balance came from, and they had to figure that out before they could transfer the money. No, I don't know why: the balance information is from their system. So someone is supposed to call me back, hopefully soon, and then I hope they will either transfer the money to Fidelity, or be willing to send me a check for the balance and close the account.

It took me a little while to figure out why I was feeling worn out, but at least part of it is that I made multiple phone calls, and everything is still in process, if not in limbo. A bowl of Lizzy's "chocolate orgy" ice cream helped some.

On top of everything else, my gum is bothering me again ("again" because it's a problem for a day or two, then it's fine for a while, and then recurs).

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March 1 is just weeks away, so that means the kickoff to this year's March Meta Matters Challenge will be taking place soon! The challenge involves locating and copying over meta you've created to a second site in order to ensure its preservation, plus there will be some prompts for creating new meta.

Feel free to ask questions here about the challenge, locations, etc. Otherwise subscribe to

marchmetamatterschallenge and look for our opening post on March 1!

I had a dream for the third time this week about watching the 1980s live-action Batman show with my sister so I figured it was worth a DW post :P

If you don't know the 1980s live-action Batman that I apparently watch in my dreams here's a quick overview:

It was a weekly one-hour show that ran for about three seasons. It predates the age of season-long arcs but it had more than the usual number of 2- and 3- part episodes and some character growth even.
It's clearly intentionally following up on the legacy of the 1960s show because it revels in the fundamental absurdity and plays for comedy, but it was also determined to not get pigeonholed as a kids' show - it has non-cartoon violence and solid emotional arcs.
For example instead of all the silly Bat-Gadgets, they had Wayne Enterprises (TM) machines. There's a running bit where Tim always makes sure he has access to a Wayne Enterprises (TM) Automatic Soup Dispenser (TM) and nobody can tell if he's just really into soup or if he's modding it to dispense other things.
Oh yeah, despite being called Batman, it's actually mostly about Tim and Dick. Bruce shows up in every episode for at least a few minutes but is rarely the focus. (Yes, I know the 1980s is early for comics!Tim - I assume the comics character was based on the show character? - and there's no Jay in this continuity, which lets it be a little more lighthearted about their relationships with Bruce.)
Tim became Robin after Dick "retired" and Bruce finally noticed how neglected the neighbor boy actually was. In the show he's mostly traveling around playing poor little rich boy and Robinning with a rotating guest cast of Teen Titans (nearly every episode is in a different city - they must have had a huge travel/sets budget.)
Dick is 100% a civilian these days he swears. He's technically in college but never appears to attend. He's always showing up to "hang out" with his little bro, or following Kory to a show, and then having to secretly superhero it up without a costume or name. The show is constantly teasing that this is the episode he'll finally become Nightwing and never follows up.
When Bruce shows up it's usually not as Bruce, or even Batman, but as his even more useless cousin "Kenneth Wayne", who only shows up in the tabloids when he's done something so ridiculous Bruce has to send Alfred to bail him out, and therefor has an excuse to be places Bruce can't possibly be. He has absolutely 0 natural authority over the boys, who treat him as an embarrassingly untrustworthy uncle, and enjoys the hell out of this.
Dick is dating Koriand'r, but they insist they're not girlfriend and boyfriend because "Tamaraneans don't have boys and girls, she's just my Kory and I'm her Dick". This is never explored beyond that at all. (Also Kory looks a lot less human and more like Ron Perlman's Beast* (except as a hot not-girl, of course.)
Tim spends every episode excited and/or worried about the main plot interfering with or facilitating a possible or planned date with a girl. The girls are never named or shown onscreen. Dick teases him about this.

The episode we watched last night involved Tim and Dick renting out an old mansion/party house in Philadelphia that was haunted by a very lazy demon shaped like a yellow cartoon rabbit, a very large monitor lizard who was wanted by the Mob, a bunch of people having to shelter overnight in a Victorian-themed cafe in the zoo, and every single character having to dress up as Matches Malone in the same bad wig at the same time. Also the Three Stooges guest-starred. I hope I get to watch more later, I don't think there's an official DVD release.

*did I only have this dream because I did that "name all the animals" game right before bed and was thinking about Golden Lion Tamarins??

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threeringedmoon

Medicare advantage, again

PSA: archive.today not trustworthy

The Games I Play

Tokusatsu: Girls Remix Exchange Signups Open

Reality imitating fiction

Alun Harries 1956-2026

'The present generation is doing mating habits all wrong!!!'

(no subject)

Office Closed Tomorrow

Multifandom: Goreswap 2026 Sign Ups Open!

More bits and bobs

(morning writing)

Finding the right words

(no subject)

Wednesday has fixed the date for doing the condom talk

Baldur's Gate Gift Exchange 2026

Star Wars: May the Fourth Be With You 2026

unsatisfying phone calls (and web chats)

March Meta Matters Challenge 2026 Returning!

Batman: the 1980s TV show

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