Larry’s Pretty Good Journal

Links of varying relevance, both to currency and each other:

The ‘3.5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world. BBC summary of an academic study with historical data. Pull quote: “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.” For perspective, for the US that’s about 11 million people, to give a totally random example. (via janni)

Nicely thinky New Yorker profile of Martha Wells (archive version). CW: inconsistent misgendering of Murderbot (mostly in one paragraph). (via /r/murderbot)

Interview with the production designer of Murderbot, who is nicely thinky. (via marthawells)

---L.

Subject quote from We've Got You - i: Spark, Vienna Teng.

I have watched Avatar: The Last Airbender enough times that I have a favorite episode.

("The Boulder's over his conflicted feelings.")

In lieu of the usual monthly TBD report, which I haven’t pulled together,*** a single anecdatum:

TBD found the pilot of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic so scary they didn’t watch another episode until a week later, and only after parental prescreening confirmed it's much less dark.* The ponies nonetheless immediately became part of pretend play, with scenarios being routinely interrupted by everyone turning into My Little Ponies for a detached adventure, before turning back into whoever they were beforehand. Rainbow Dash is definitely Favorite Pony—right after watching episode 2, I was told TBD wants to be Rainbow Dash for Halloween next year.**


* The pilot is darker than either Frozen or Moana. Surprisingly so.

** We already have this year’s costume, Batgirl.

*** I'll double up next month.

---L.

Subject quote from "Watershed," Vienna Teng.

TBD is three years and seven months old.

(Meta: I've been avoiding gendering TBD online, including personal pronouns, but many observations of late are about gendering. Because, well, we're at that age. I think I will continue this bit of privacy, limited though it is, and shorten the public report. As it is, we are rapidly approaching the age where TBD will able to knowledgeably consent or not to even this much sharing.)

Achievements unlocked: mugging for the camera, slide switches, working larger buttons, continuous scissors cutting (long strips), peeling oranges, consistent recognition of the numerals, and pronouncing terminal -th. Plus while it's not an achievement per se, we now appreciate routine "You remind me of a man" "What man?" "A man with power." etc. -- and, of course, want the infinite joke to keep going. (Time for "This is the song that does not end"?) More simple puns.

Current Monster Threat Level, after an SF con with hall costumes (Jabba the Hutt was especially impressive) and maternal outpatient surgery, is elevated but relaxing: Last night during bedtime I had to chase away threats of a scary tomato and a bad bed, among others. (I ate the tomato and changed the bed.)

Speaking of anxieties, I forgot to mention, a few months ago, that after the last grandparental visit, TBD took that they are getting old/slow and need medicines to keep them healthy, and worked out that this means they will eventually die. That brain, always thinking, thinking. (Another example: late in the day, taking me to task for running a yellow light early in the morning -- thought it through, and based on the guidelines we'd explained, decided I should have played it safe.)

We're in a phase of strongly wanting to help in the kitchen, to the point that cooking dinner takes half again as long (at least). Some dishes strain our ingenuity, finding ways to be assisted.

Current favorite tv: "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That" -- which is not as emotionally smart as Daniel Tiger, but is at least better than average and has a lot of natural history goodness. Daniel hasn't been abandoned, mind, but is asked for less. Interestingly, now that the Curious George books have been discovered -- and my, there are so many! -- we haven't watched a single episode of the show.

Scatological humor is big right now, especially to try getting a rise from us. Developmentally appropriate, we tell ourselves. As was repeating a cuss word -- that it was "darn" made it hard not to laugh. "Darn darn darn darn."

Other talking, talking:

TBD: "I want to read about the girl who went first."
Me: "Which book is that?"
"The one about Clinton."
(Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead) (TBD was disappointed to learn that she would not, in fact, be first)

(shopping for a birthday present for Mommy)
"If we don't get her a toy, she'll be sad."

(in line at grocery)
"I'd like a kitten sometime."

"Why do fire trucks water plants?"
(question word with verb! -- those suddenly appeared) (also: huh?)

"Why do dinosaurs honk when we do this?" :squeezes a stuffie's tail:
(it was a short tail on a triceratops -- I wondered later if this was confused with the horns, thus the honk)

"Maybe I want cookies for breakfast."

TBD: "Every time you walk you say Dum dee dum dee dum."
Janni: "Dum dee dum dee dum."
"Don't! Because every time you talk you get spines in your mouth."
"Oooooooh."
"You talked! Now you have a spine in your throat."

"Butt, butt, Butty is a butt!"
(the tune for this managed to earworm me)

"Hi, we're going to the tow truck. Why? Because we are, silly goose. Said the fireman."


We are all silly geese around here of late. *honk*

---L.

Subject quote from "The Village," George Crabbe.

TBD is two years and nine months old, and looking and acting even more like a small child.

I've only recently come to appreciate how much repetition is essential to toddlers -- not just for comfort, but how they process this big, confusing world. It's developmental. Conversations and questions are repeated because that's how the content gets internalized, confirming that things haven't changed in at least this one way. Ditto all the play working on processing emotional subjects and states.

The book collection is getting out of control -- we've 'sploded the bookcase in TBD's room, and piles are constantly falling off the coffee table. Books are starting to be requested, especially ones advertised in books in hand -- and if the library doesn't have something, "Bookstore?" Needless to say, the solution is not fewer books but better storage. "Daddy, read book" is a hard plea to resist, as is "More book." As for subjects, non-fiction is trending, and not just about trucks and construction equipment but the natural world.

Favorite TV right now is Ponyo, and we sometimes play-act Ponyo searching for Sousuke or the reverse. Other media enjoyed include Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and some Winnie the Pooh movies, but they're running a very distant second at the moment.

As for speaking, for a couple weeks TBD sometimes swapped syllables in unexpected ways: "holeman" for manhole, "backypig" for piggyback. This seems to be passing, though. OTOH, stumbling over words while trying to get out a complete sentence continues, and remains adorable. Emotions are getting more expression, directly, in conversation, and in play. And this time, I did manage to note more talking, talking:

( Enough of them, they get a cut for length )

As you can tell, there's more singing. Music class has started a new term, to TBD's joy, and the song parts of library story-time get all the interest. That, and picking out another two books to check out. *glances again at book piles*

And so it goes -- life as fast as a toddler on a bicycle.

---L.

Subject quote from "Tightrope," Janelle Monáe.

Administrivia: I've turned on captchas for anonymous comments in an attempt to minimize comment spam, at least for now. Cleaning out 30 a day was getting too annoying.

Someone has stitched together photos by Curiosity to make a portrait of Curiosity. Awesome. (via)

An annotated episode list for Cosmos, with video links.

Stayin' Alive in the Wall, a Pink Floyd vs Bee Gees mashup with video. This works disturbingly well. (via) (If you need to cleanse your pallet after that, there's always the original 1969 video for David Bowie's "Space Oddity.")

---L.

1. Department of It Never Changes -- the opening of P.G. Wodehouse's A Damsel in Distress, published in 1919:

Inasmuch as the scene of this story is that historic pile, Belpher Castle, in the county of Hampshire, it would be an agreeable task to open it with a leisurely description of the place, followed by some notes on the history of the Earls of Marshmoreton, who have owned it since the fifteenth century. Unfortunately, in these days of rush and hurry, a novelist works at a disadvantage. He must leap into the middle of his tale with as little delay as he would employ in boarding a moving tramcar. He must get off the mark with the smooth swiftness of a jack-rabbit surprised while lunching. Otherwise, people throw him aside and go out to picture palaces.

You would think that when people say "You can't afford a leisurely start to your story any more" that they would start dropping the "any more" given they've been saying it for at least almost a century.

B. In the first three seasons of The Muppet Show, the most successful guests were not those who good-naturedly went along with the muppety chaos around them, however amusing they might find it. Instead, it was those who dived into the scrum and threw the ball right back into their felt faces. John Cleese and Spike Mulligan are prime examples of outdoing the hosts at their own game, but other less anarchic guests like Danny Kaye who actively controlled the pace and disorder of their scenes did just as well. And for that matter Raquel Welch, though she used *cough* rather different tactics.

iii. Is it wrong of me to look at Heike monogatari and Genji monogatari beside each other on a shelf and wonder, even if only briefly, whether the equally fat volumes on either side ought really to be called Clarissa monogatari and Bloom monogatari?

d. Speaking of which books, a poll:

[Poll #1728399]
V. ... don't stop believin' / hold on to the feelin' / streetlights, people / don't stop believin' / hold on

---L.