Matthew's Journal

We no longer have a cat.

This evening I am having A Headache. It's an annoying headache; it's definitely a distracting headache; but it's "just" A Headache. No other symptoms that I'm noticing.

... except that it's Exactly The Right Time For A Migraine, and yesterday I had a bunch of migraine prodrome symptoms. (Being Too Warm. Wanting to close my eyes a lot. Nausea. Overwhelming despair.)

I find myself Wondering whether my regular menstrual migraines actually started on 1^st January 2021, or if that's just the point at which symptoms tipped over into very obviously photosensitive migraine. At that point I was on continuous acute pain relief, and it is slowly dawning on me that An Annoying Headache with no other symptoms distinguishable from background noise (anxiety, depression, thesis-related stress, ...) is the kind of thing I'd have just merrily ignored, and for that matter that I'd still be ignoring if I weren't now Keeping A Headache Diary...

1. China's 450km/h bullet train is the fastest ever built

(tags:trains speed china )

2. Two Major Studies, 125,000 Kids: The Social Media Panic Doesn't Hold Up

(tags:children socialmedia )

3. AI-generated art can't be copyrighted after Supreme Court declines to review the rule

(tags:art ai copyright law usa )

4. Beyond Oil: The Strait Of Hormuz And The Global Food Risk

(tags:food trade middle_east doom USA Iran war )

5. This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won't (check the date)

(tags:politics USA middle_east history )

6. The Siege of Cuba

(tags:cuba usa oil )

This is possibly my favourite photo yet of me playing ice hockey:

1. In women's hockey I am big
2. We play non-checking, that doesn't mean non-contact. I am entirely legally shoving that attacking player away from the net.
3. See how far the goalie is from the net? My linemate and I cleared the puck on that occasion. The visiting team scored 20 goals on us (ouch), but not that one.

1. Reminder that unless there is something that you can actively do to make things better, there is no point inflicting the horrors on yourself

(tags:news comic horror )

2. Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees.

(tags:copyright art usa law OhForFucksSake )

3. Endometriosis in the UK - diagnosis takes a decade and dozens of visits

(tags:endometriosis NHS healthcare UK OhForFucksSake )

4. Why Britain is Quietly Spending £725 Billion to Rebuild the Country

(tags:UK investment labour )

5. Women's Institute vows to keep welcoming trans women

(tags:women transgender LGBT UK GoodNews viaPatrickHadfield )

6. The Greens are nearly first with YouGov (and 5% ahead of Labour)

(tags:polls GreenParty uk )

7. U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for "Armageddon," Return of Jesus

(tags:religion military USA OhForFucksSake armageddon Iran christianity )

1 photo every year
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/blog/p/to-update-blobs-or-not-to-update-blobs/

A lot of hardware runs non-free software. Sometimes that non-free software is in ROM. Sometimes it’s in flash. Sometimes it’s not stored on the device at all, it’s pushed into it at runtime by another piece of hardware or by the operating system. We typically refer to this software as “firmware” to differentiate it from the software run on the CPU after the OS has started¹, but a lot of it (and, these days, probably most of it) is software written in C or some other systems programming language and targeting Arm or RISC-V or maybe MIPS and even sometimes x86². There’s no real distinction between it and any other bit of software you run, except it’s generally not run within the context of the OS³. Anyway. It’s code. I’m going to simplify things here and stop using the words “software” or “firmware” and just say “code” instead, because that way we don’t need to worry about semantics.

A fundamental problem for free software enthusiasts is that almost all of the code we’re talking about here is non-free. In some cases, it’s cryptographically signed in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to replace it with free code. In some cases it’s even encrypted, such that even examining the code is impossible. But because it’s code, sometimes the vendor responsible for it will provide updates, and now you get to choose whether or not to apply those updates.

I’m now going to present some things to consider. These are not in any particular order and are not intended to form any sort of argument in themselves, but are representative of the opinions you will get from various people and I would like you to read these, think about them, and come to your own set of opinions before I tell you what my opinion is.

THINGS TO CONSIDER

• Does this blob do what it claims to do? Does it suddenly introduce functionality you don’t want? Does it introduce security flaws? Does it introduce deliberate backdoors? Does it make your life better or worse?

• You’re almost certainly being provided with a blob of compiled code, with no source code available. You can’t just diff the source files, satisfy yourself that they’re fine, and then install them. To be fair, even though you (as someone reading this) are probably more capable of doing that than the average human, you’re likely not doing that even if you are capable because you’re also likely installing kernel upgrades that contain vast quantities of code beyond your ability to understand⁴. We don’t rely on our personal ability, we rely on the ability of those around us to do that validation, and we rely on an existing (possibly transitive) trust relationship with those involved. You don’t know the people who created this blob, you likely don’t know people who do know the people who created this blob, these people probably don’t have an online presence that gives you more insight. Why should you trust them?

• If it’s in ROM and it turns out to be hostile then nobody can fix it ever

• The people creating these blobs largely work for the same company that built the hardware in the first place. When they built that hardware they could have backdoored it in any number of ways. And if the hardware has a built-in copy of the code it runs, why do you trust that that copy isn’t backdoored? Maybe it isn’t and updates would introduce a backdoor, but in that case if you buy new hardware that runs new code aren’t you putting yourself at the same risk?

• Designing hardware where you’re able to provide updated code and nobody else can is just a dick move⁵. We shouldn’t encourage vendors who do that.

• Humans are bad at writing code, and code running on ancilliary hardware is no exception. It contains bugs. These bugs are sometimes very bad. This paper describes a set of vulnerabilities identified in code running on SSDs that made it possible to bypass encryption secrets. The SSD vendors released updates that fixed these issues. If the code couldn’t be replaced then anyone relying on those security features would need to replace the hardware.

• Even if blobs are signed and can’t easily be replaced, the ones that aren’t encrypted can still be examined. The SSD vulnerabilities above were identifiable because researchers were able to reverse engineer the updates. It can be more annoying to audit binary code than source code, but it’s still possible.

• Vulnerabilities in code running on other hardware can still compromise the OS. If someone can compromise the code running on your wifi card then if you don’t have a strong IOMMU setup they’re going to be able to overwrite your running OS.

• Replacing one non-free blob with another non-free blob increases the total number of non-free blobs involved in the whole system, but doesn’t increase the number that are actually executing at any point in time.

Ok we’re done with the things to consider. Please spend a few seconds thinking about what the tradeoffs are here and what your feelings are. Proceed when ready.

I trust my CPU vendor. I don’t trust my CPU vendor because I want to, I trust my CPU vendor because I have no choice. I don’t think it’s likely that my CPU vendor has designed a CPU that identifies when I’m generating cryptographic keys and biases the RNG output so my keys are significantly weaker than they look, but it’s not literally impossible. I generate keys on it anyway, because what choice do I have? At some point I will buy a new laptop because Electron will no longer fit in 32GB of RAM and I will have to make the same affirmation of trust, because the alternative is that I just don’t have a computer. And in any case, I will be communicating with other people who generated their keys on CPUs I have no control over, and I will also be relying on them to be trustworthy. If I refuse to trust my CPU then I don’t get to computer, and if I don’t get to computer then I will be sad. I suspect I’m not alone here.

Why would I install a code update on my CPU when my CPU’s job is to run my code in the first place? Because it turns out that CPUs are complicated and messy and they have their own bugs, and those bugs may be functional (for example, some performance counter functionality was broken on Sandybridge at release, and was then fixed with a microcode blob update) and if you update it your hardware works better. Or it might be that you’re running a CPU with speculative execution bugs and there’s a microcode update that provides a mitigation for that even if your CPU is slower when you enable it, but at least now you can run virtual machines without code in those virtual machines being able to reach outside the hypervisor boundary and extract secrets from other contexts. When it’s put that way, why would I not install the update?

And the straightforward answer is that theoretically it could include new code that doesn’t act in my interests, either deliberately or not. And, yes, this is theoretically possible. Of course, if you don’t trust your CPU vendor, why are you buying CPUs from them, but well maybe they’ve been corrupted (in which case don’t buy any new CPUs from them either) or maybe they’ve just introduced a new vulnerability by accident, and also you’re in a position to determine whether the alleged security improvements matter to you at all. Do you care about speculative execution attacks if all software running on your system is trustworthy? Probably not! Do you need to update a blob that fixes something you don’t care about and which might introduce some sort of vulnerability? Seems like no!

But there’s a difference between a recommendation for a fully informed device owner who has a full understanding of threats, and a recommendation for an average user who just wants their computer to work and to not be ransomwared. A code update on a wifi card may introduce a backdoor, or it may fix the ability for someone to compromise your machine with a hostile access point. Most people are just not going to be in a position to figure out which is more likely, and there’s no single answer that’s correct for everyone. What we do know is that where vulnerabilities in this sort of code have been discovered, updates have tended to fix them - but nobody has flagged such an update as a real-world vector for system compromise.

My personal opinion? You should make your own mind up, but also you shouldn’t impose that choice on others, because your threat model is not necessarily their threat model. Code updates are a reasonable default, but they shouldn’t be unilaterally imposed, and nor should they be blocked outright. And the best way to shift the balance of power away from vendors who insist on distributing non-free blobs is to demonstrate the benefits gained from them being free - a vendor who ships free code on their system enables their customers to improve their code and enable new functionality and make their hardware more attractive.

It’s impossible to say with absolute certainty that your security will be improved by installing code blobs. It’s also impossible to say with absolute certainty that it won’t. So far evidence tends to support the idea that most updates that claim to fix security issues do, and there’s not a lot of evidence to support the idea that updates add new backdoors. Overall I’d say that providing the updates is likely the right default for most users - and that that should never be strongly enforced, because people should be allowed to define their own security model, and whatever set of threats I’m worried about, someone else may have a good reason to focus on different ones.

https://codon.org.uk/~mjg59/blog/p/to-update-blobs-or-not-to-update-blobs/

Because I have sensitive teeth (or am a big wuss) my kindly dentist anesthetizes me before the scaling. This leaves my mouth rather numb for quite some time afterward.

This latest time, I noticed that I could still say some words before the anesthetic much wore off even if others remained a challenge. For instance, we don't seem to need our lips at all to say, succulent delicacy; I surmised that may be an easy utterance in ventriloquism too.

Lips remain helpful for drinking such that all the liquid goes down the inside of my neck rather than some trickling down the outside.

Recently, I stumbled upon an article about Commodore Business Machines' line of calculators. I have owned plenty of Commodore hardware, going back to the PETs that my secondary school retired, but no calculators. I was amused to read that, back in the 1970s, some calculators were marketed as being electronic slide rules. I still have my father's slide rules, he also had a desktop mechanical calculator and, later, one of the first version of the TI-30, with the red glowing digits that would show some thinking going on as it evaluated a trigonometric function.

I determined that I might enjoy occasionally using a decent ancient scientific calculator, ideally with a reverse-Polish interface. However, looking around online now, I don't see any particularly sweet spots in what one can buy of Commodore's calculators. I like how, say, the Commodore SR-4190R even has hyperbolic functions and probability distributions but it's not as if examples in good condition remain abundant and rarer models like the M55 appear indeed to be inconveniently rare.

Remembering mst3kmoxie's HP 12C, which can calculate some of the financial things that now form part of my day job, I explored the alternative of investigating the older HP and Novus range. However, things like the Novus 4510 don't seem to have existed in the UK and international shipping costs plenty. In dropping the nostalgia and taking a look at modern offerings, I discovered the SwissMicros DM15L which could be fun to play with. They seem to be out of stock right now but, worse, Parcelforce fees for importing one would mean it wasn't worth it.

So, the obstacles are broadly those of availability at all, or of getting the calculator from there to here. Ah well, it's more an idle fancy anyway rather than a pressing need. I seem to be in the wrong place and considerably the wrong time.

I had a little run of "brief meetings with old hockey friends" in the last two weekends. A few words, a hug, sometimes just a wave in passing while we both briefly occupied the same ice rink. All of them put a smile on my face.

Saturday before last was the Varsity matchup between Oxford Vikings A and Cambridge Narwhals at Cambridge rink, before my Kodiaks 2 team played visiting team Invicta Dynamics. Three of my tournament buddies from Biarritz were on the Vikings team. The next day Kodiaks were away at Bristol. I had an expected brief chat with my friend C from Hull camp but also complete surprise appearances from M who coaches Hull camp and goalie J, both of whom are tournament buddies. M was there with the away team for the previous game, J now lives in Bristol, which I theoretically knew but had forgotten.

Saturday just gone I had an evening game in Peterborough with Warbirds. I arrived a bit early and saw the previous game in progress: Phantoms Dev women were playing Streatham Storm Dev (my first ever hockey team). I recognised the jerseys first, and then a bunch of the faces. I dumped my kit in the changing room and went to lurk next to their bench and cheer them on for their last ten minutes. The timing worked out for me to see the end of their game (they won!) and walk with them back to their changing room before I needed to join Warbirds in ours.

1. UN Human Rights Council Castigates The EHRC For Their Proposed Trans Exclusion

(tags:UnitedNations rights transgender UK bigotry )

2. How to write (and, frankly, understand what it's like to be) women

(tags:women writing )

3. New iron nanomaterial wipes out cancer cells without harming healthy tissue (in mice)

(tags:nanotech mice materials cancer )

4. Keir Starmer's statement on Iran in full as US granted access to UK bases

(tags:usa uk iran war )

5. A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator

(tags:design business video funny awful norway )

... is a placeholder; apparently getting the bus to a hospital appointment today ate my entire brain, and I need to be up early tomorrow morning for a different medical appointment for a different body part in a different place. (Why am I being sent to get an ultrasound four stops down the Piccadilly line instead of five minutes up the road? A MYSTERY.)

Reading. Progress on my pile of tabs, mostly in the form of short stories! ( Read more... )

And finally Library Books In Progress:

• What Is Queer Food? (James Birdsall): gradually plodding along; I'm enjoying learning about how many of the people involved in various culinary anecdotes with which I was previously familiar in outline... were queer, but so far (a little over halfway through) the attempts to construct a narrative or category of Queer(ed) Food feel quite contrived to me. Possibly this is because I have yet to come across an instance of Academic Queering of Whatever that, like, speaks to me, you know.
• A Physical Education, Casey Johnston (in audio?!). ADORING THIS. Probably gonna buy myself a copy. Fuller notes to (possibly) follow (look, I've written some of them up at this point--). (Actually finished at the time I am filling this post in, though it wasn't at the point at which initial post was made, so I am absolutely holding out a bit on writing up...)

Writing. I continue to eke out words. :|

Watching. One (1) episode of Farscape (S2E08), while bleaching A. It sure was a Farscape episode.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac! And also (see Reading) A Physical Education, Casey Johnston.

Playing. ... we are tentatively trying an Inkulati run with Exploders at max difficulty. It's... working? I'm suspicious about how well it's working (so far) (and I am also annoyed that I couldn't make my beloved foxes work this well).

Eating. Enjoyed discovering Kiernan's Coffee at Wimpole; particularly appreciated the cinnamon bun but the multi-inch stack of whipped cream on top of my hot chocolate was also extremely welcome (albeit messy). That was not my only ridiculous pile of whipped cream of the day; I also got Birthday Cake later on in the afternoon...

Exploring. Had a good poke around Wimpole on Saturday. Enjoyed the Walled Garden feat. nonsense petticoat daffodils out in force, and also bimbling round Home Farm, where there were sleepy Shires and tiny (squeaky) piglets.

May I speak in the name of the living God who is Source of All Being, Eternal Word and Holy Spirit.
I wonder what your reaction to the phrase “born again”?

Maybe you’ve been asked “have you been born again?” by Christians – possibly in the street but also at church.

In the last 50 or so years it has become a phrase associated with a particular type of experience of the Holy Spirit, often involving speaking in tongues, and sometimes it seems to be used to imply people who have not had that exact experience are lesser Christians, or maybe not Christians at all.

Tonight we are heard the passage from which this phrase comes. The NRSV (the translation we use for our readings) opts for “born from above” but other translations go for “born again” – the Greek allows both interpretations. And it is “born again” that has entered our discussions of faith.

Here we have a Pharisee, Nicodemus, seeking out Jesus, who may have been a fellow Pharisee although one who was perhaps going further or in a different direction from his fellows. Nicodemus recognises Jesus as a teacher who has come from God, because of the signs that he has been doing.

Looking back at the first two chapters of John’s Gospel, we have so far seen Jesus being recognised by John the Baptist when he was baptised; calling disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip, Nathanael; then turning water to wine at the wedding at Cana; and at the Passover turning over the tables in the Temple, and maybe other signs – for John says “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.” Were there healings perhaps? Signs seems a bit broader than two actions.

Certainly enough to get Nicodemus’ attention. Who seeks him out, “at night”, when it was quieter and maybe less open to being observed by others. Some commentators read a spiritual significance into the “dark” but these make me uncomfortable both for anti-semitic implications (of the Jews being in spiritual darkness) and the way tropes of light and dark have fed white supremacy and the lie that people with darker skins are inferior to those who are fairer, a point made by the South Asian Bible commentary on this passage.

A friend of mine who is autistic has pondered whether Nicodemus might be autistic. In that reading, maybe seeking out Jesus by night was about being in a less sensory overwhelming environment – not in a large crowd and only the light of the moon – which was presumably still fairly full as we are at or just after Passover.
Nicodemus’ response to Jesus’ statement about being born again is a literal one – ‘How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?’ which is not what Jesus was talking about. He is talking about spiritual birth. “no-one can enter the kingdom of heaven without being born of water and Spirit” – does the reference to water here point to baptism? Jesus was himself baptised by John at the start of his ministry and it is the way that we are incorporated into the church. There are strands within Christianity which would say no this isn’t about baptism, that is an empty ritual which doesn’t guarantee spiritual birth. But that’s not been my experience of baptism. I was baptised as a baby at 2 months old and have grown up within the family of faith and come to claim that faith for myself. Others I know have been baptised after a conversion experience. Our journeys are different – the wind/spirit blows where she wills – but we encounter the spirit and something happens. For some that may involve signs such as speaking in tongues, but they are not compulsory. Paul writes about this in his first letter to the church at Corinth. He values tongues, but points to a more excellent way, the way of love. And Jesus here shows the cost of love as he points to his being raised up like the serpent in the wilderness so that that the world, the cosmos, is not condemned but saved. Something I talked more about when I preached on this passage on Holy Cross Day in September.

The passage we heard from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome has a similar theme. It’s not what Abraham did that was important but his belief/trust in God.

I struggle at times with Paul’s theology, or maybe with Calvinist readings of Paul which have dominated a lot how we read Paul. As with the language around being born again, there are those who use Paul’s words about faith and works to condemn other expressions of Christianity. To say claim that we’ve got it right and those people over there have got it wrong. But Christianity shouldn’t be about oneupmanship! We aren’t born again to smugness. The spirit blows where she will.

It’s hard to talk about this without ending up implying I’ve got it right and those people over their claiming their right are the ones who are wrong. But I think it’s about humility. It’s not about us, but about what God has done. We can tell others about the way in which Jesus’ death and resurrection has taken the pain and wrongness that we inflicted on the world and broken that cycle of violence.

And yet, we still see the cycle of violence continuing in our world. War is still happening. Christians support Trump who yesterday caused the bombing of a girls school in Iran. And Christians have been involved in horrors such as slavery and boarding schools for indigenous people and mother and baby homes.
So this Lent, what do these passages say to us, in 2026, in uncertain times? How do we build community that includes? That lives in the light of cross and the breaking of the cycle of violence? That says to those who would divide us that God came to save the world, not just Christian? That seeks to understand rather than hate?

Well once again I prove that I sort of suck at keeping my new years resolution but better late than never. The truth is, I am struggling right now. The state of the world aside, it's not even my work right now even though I am adrift in a sea of deadlines.
It's that I am in my mid 40's and what is depressingly common is that I am not sure about whether I will still be employed this time next year. That's right, not even having won a fellowship and a couple of other bids and somehow having some degree of seniority in one's field does not mean you have anything resembling job security. Why some people think that this is an acceptable way to treat researchers is beyond me.
I can assure you, having me spend a good 30 - 40% of my working time looking for bids, researching for bids on the off-chance I might be eligible given that I've aged out of Early Careers but no permanent position, which is so much fun since there is nothing quite like a funding kaiso trap.
There are fewer more tedious things than hearing about how your field of research is so important and then see that talk is cheap but actual funding is expensive.
As for motivation = a big fat NO. I still can lock in when I'm in the zone but there is nothing quite like the creeping feeling of apathy when you see nothing but uncertainty nevermind the absurdity of research on long-term infrastructure projects that somehow you are supposed to do in 6 month - 2 year increments. There is nothing quite like the feeling of being a fraudster when doing outreach about how awesome a life is in science when all you see is a cliff edge.
Rant over for now - I hope other people have more luck and some of that is contagious.

Books on pre-order:

1. Platform Decay (Murderbot 8) by Martha Wells (5 May)
2. Radiant Star (Imperial Radch) by Ann Leckie (12 May)
3. Unrivaled (Game Changers 7) by Rachel Reid (1 Jun 2027)

The release of the third Heated Rivalry book - which was only announced in January after the TV adaptation got wildly popular - is pushed back by eight months. I'm assuming this is to allow Rachel Reid more time to finish it and/or engage with the adaptation of the second book, The Long Game.

Books acquired in February: none (wow)

Borrowed books read in February:

1. The Hidden Oracle (Trials of Apollo 1) by Rick Riordan [3]
2. Camp Half-Blood Confidential by Rick Riordan [3]
3. The Dark Prophecy (Trials of Apollo 2) by Rick Riordan [3]
4. The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo 3) by Rick Riordan [3]
5. The Tyrant's Tomb (Trials of Apollo 4) by Rick Riordan [3]
6. Camp Jupiter Confidential by Rick Riordan [3]
7. The Tower of Nero (Trials of Apollo 5) by Rick Riordan [3]
8. The Singer of Apollo (Percy Jackson and the Olympians 5.5) by Rick Riordan

It's been a really intense month, mostly with ice hockey commitments, so what reading I have managed has been entirely the ongoing Riordan read-through. Trials of Apollo successfully grows Apollo from intensely irritating in the first few chapters of the first book to someone I cried over in the last book. Plus I have now watched both seasons of the Disney+ adaptation of Percy Jackson and the Olympians and oh boy do I have Opinions, especially on the second season. They get a lot of details right, the casting is excellent, and yet they get the heart of the story so so wrong. (Will I still watch season 3 when it comes out? Probably! Maybe they won't mess it up as badly?)

Anyway. Onward into March.

[3] Physical book

I routinely use generative AI in my workplace, my employer encourages it and pays for it. It works well, it's a definite help. At least for the meantime, it requires my expert supervision, close monitoring, to do good work but it's actually rather clever at times even if often rather dumb too. Where my work strays beyond my expertise, it fills in for me.

I have probably mentioned that I like the description of computer programming as mathematical engineering, it captures what I enjoy most about it. It's rewarding to devise and express good solutions. I love to create systems that do well at behaving in desired ways.

So, sometimes, for those parts of my work tasks to which I was looking forward, I've typically been working with the AI enough that it has the context to say, hey, you still have this bit unfinished, shall I do it? and I'm like, no, let me!

For the moment, I can still capture some crumbs of what I love to do. However, I wonder how obsolete that's becoming, the future's arriving faster than I expected. You could drop me back into the 1980's and I could be very happy writing software but these days nobody wants programmers who could hit the ground running in that kind of environment. Given the speed at which coding assistance has become rather good, I can't help but wonder if the 2030's will largely have only jobs for people who can direct the constellation of artificial agents well. That's a thing I'm sure I can do competently to support my family but … how much do I want to?

I love to learn about what clients actually need, figure out how I can meet those needs by creating software, then to deliver something valuable to them. But what I love most is the part of the process that machines may soon do maybe not quite as well but far cheaper than I.

I find myself looking back to things I once did and appreciating that at least I had the chance. I have loved doing simple things like feeling the hot, dry breeze in Death Valley, driving a rusty pickup truck through the Ohio countryside in the sunshine, walking along the beach in Aberdeen, and frequenting the AANI weekend market in Taguig. Or, in this case, the chance, repeatedly, to be paid to solve interesting problems by creating software by my own brain and hand. Of course, I can still do what I like as a hobby though it feels emptier if it just means that I am doing something the hard way. I also wonder how healthy it is for one's likes to be overly nostalgic. I have an elderly relative who probably feels as if the world has gone downhill since the 1950's. I don't want that to be me someday, I should find more ways to embrace the future.

Having learned of exchanges of fire in the Middle East, I can't help but worry for the innocent people in the region. Further, I found myself quickly jumping to: what's the off-ramp for Iran? Whenever attacked, it responds. These exchanges typically fizzle out but if Trump welcomes distraction from Epstein then goodness knows how far this will go before he lauds himself for some paper victory.

Incidentally, it occurs to me that if Oriental is a rather Western-centric term for a region then Middle East is no less so.

Both finals ended up being USA-Canada. Both finals I expected USA were more likely to win, actually wanted Canada to win, felt it was possible Canada might actually win for a majority of the game, only to have USA win in 3v3 OT. I didn't manage to watch either game entirely conventionally.

The women's final was on at the same time as Women's Blues "strength and conditioning" at the university sports centre. (The team gets an hour a week in term time in the Team Training Room, supervised by a personal trainer who's developed a programme for us to follow that's tailored to the needs of ice hockey. I love it, it's such a great perk of playing for the university.) My friend C and I arrived early and asked Will the PT to get the game up on the big screen, so we could follow it while we trained, and it was very exciting. A hardcore of about six of us then watched the last five minutes or so of the second period on a laptop at the end of the room, and then scattered at speed to bike to our respective destinations before the third period started.

The men's final took place while I was driving a large vehicle full of Kodiaks to Bristol (nine people: eight players with kits, one coach). My phone was paired to the car sound system, and I had the iPlayer coverage playing through it from our last pickup point (because obviously I didn't want to be messing with my phone while on the motorway). We had about half an hour of curling commentary that we only half-listened to, and then I turned up the volume for the game itself. With excellent timing, the game-winning goal was scored when we were a few minutes away from arriving at Bristol ice rink. I would still like to watch back at least the highlights of the game and actually see the bits of skating that had the commentators get especially excited.

1. Behold the wonder of The Naked Mole Rat!

(tags:rats nature comic )

2. Earth's heat to produce electricity for homes in UK clean energy first

(tags:heat electricity UK )

3. AI and Dreamwidth

(tags:dreamwidth ai )

4. "Pretty Lethal" Trailer (captured ballet dancers kick arse. Blood and quips, looks like a lot of fun)

(tags:movies trailer video ballet viaLilysea )

5. What is going on with Britain (and the US) on the Chagos Islands?

(tags:UK USA diplomacy )

6. Liberal Jews denounce bill to ban non-Orthodox prayers at Western Wall

(tags:Israel Judaism religion OhForFucksSake )

1. Got libgourou working (link to follow), with thanks to simont for bringing it to my attention and me_and for making sympathetic and encouraging noises while I stared muzzily at the documentation this evening. Happy to report that I have successfully downloaded Adobe DRMed ebooks from my command line without any Windows install or emulators at all.
2. I am enjoying A Physical Education so much - SO much - that I have gone out and bought a book it recommends (Starting Strength; very wordy descriptions of which muscles one should be using for what, apparently, i.e. exactly my kind of thing). Acquiring my own copy once I've given the library's back is a definite possibility. It's really interesting in terms of both the pain Project (memoir about embodiment!) and in terms of my own movement-related special interests (e.g. the gulf between my experience of largely self-led Pilates vs the version available via mainstream contemporary classes embedded in diet culture). Lots of content notes but I'm really really liking it. Gratitude to buttonsbeadslace for posting about it (... link to follow...)
3. Stupid Little Walk yielded both very cheap pistachio croissants (MORE BREAKFAST NONSENSE) and a very cheap "cinnamon danish with vanilla fondant icing" I've been vaguely eyeing up but was also very suspicious of. I am glad to have tried it and probably won't get it again, even if it is only 19p.
4. This evening's tofu was particularly cooperative with being cooked. (Thanks be to evilsusan for the specific combination of courgettes, tofu and garlic that I still make regularly lo these many years later )
5. I hit refresh on Oxfam Online and discovered that the rotating sale has migrated back around to "30% off 3+ books". Thus now on their way to me I have: the first edition of Explain Pain for an astonishingly reasonable price (I want to do the deeply nerdy thing of a side-by-side comparison with the second edition, and also to revisit its structure while the second edition is on loan to a physio friend...); a book entitled Science of Pilates, which I'd previously eyed up but that time it sold before I got around to it; a book about allotments and cooking; and a probably questionable out-of-print 1980s cookbook...