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.

A c-novel recommendation: I Am Average and Unremarkable, a xianxia by Yue Xia Die Ying (“butterfly shadow beneath the moon”). I’ve enjoyed four other novels by the author, including serious historical romances and the lighthearted xianxia Ascending, Do Not Disturb. If you like the latter, you will likely enjoy this, as it has much the same sense of humor—and more of it.

Our Heroine, Jiu Hui, is a young yao, a word that can mean anything from spirit to monster to demon, but in this world, spirit comes closest—in this case, she’s a plant spirit, specifically a garlic chive spirit. (Yes, that’s a lol.) Other yao in this world are animals and sometimes plants that have absorbed enough power to attain sentience and, for the more advanced, the ability to take human form. Most humans, however, believe yao are inimical monsters as dangerous as demons (also present in this world), so she always presents as human.

The story starts with Our Heroine seeking to join a human cultivation sect because she’s reached the limit of what her remote yao village can teach her about human-style cultivation. Because the larger righteous sects are very into being righteous scourges of both yao and demons, she joins a small, relaxed sect. (Very small: five masters and ten disciples.) This turns out to be an excellent fit, as her apparently weak sect emphasizes evasion and deception techniques, and its interactions with other sects are best characterized on a sliding scale from mooching to grifting—and she, too, is very much a trickster figure. The story doesn’t use the term, but I think of them as specializing in the Dao of Shamelessness, though like many literary Tricksters, they stand with what’s right when it counts. Meanwhile, her Junior Sect Brother, recruited at the same time, turns out to be, ah, let’s call him socially awkward—as in, not well socialized—and he is hardly the only character with a background that is not simple.

It’s a fun book, rolled out with solid pacing. (The author notes are hilarious.) It also has a carefully laid plot that’s the spine of a surprisingly serious thematic core for a xianxia—it examines, from multiple directions, the question of when a sacrifice for the greater good, both willing and not, is morally acceptable. That there’s a literal Omelas situation is only one thread of this. Deep spoilers for the ending in rot13: Gur puvyq va gur onfrzrag vf na vzcbegnag punenpgre, naq gur abiry pyvznk vf onfvpnyyl Bhe Urebvar tbvat ‘jub gur shpx frg hc guvf ohyyfuvg gebyyrl ceboyrz’ naq qrslvat gur urnirayl qnb sbe orvat hawhfg.

I highly recommend this to anyone who’s already read a couple xianxia—it’s probably not a good starter story for the genre, as it leans heavily on convention to avoid explanations, even more so than Ascending, Do Not Disturb. It doesn’t help that the fan translation is a little wobbly (the translator particularly has trouble with verb forms). But if you have the background and can tolerate imperfect prose, this is a great read.

---L.

Subject quote from Teardrop, Massive Attack.

In conversation, I was about to mention that no matter what color the cat, their hairballs are always grey—but then I realized, I’ve never lived with a white cat. So a question for anyone who can confirm:

Do white cats have white or grey hairballs?

---L.

Subject quote from Snow on the Beach, Taylor Swift ft. Lana Del Rey.

A few important bird links, plus a beautiful one:

OwlsInTowels.org. (via)

How to pick up a duck. (via)

Woodblock prints of Hasui Kawase, an artist who was a major influence on Hayao Miyazaki.

… in a wonderful balloon

---L.

Subject quote from Joyride, Roxette.

For Poetry Monday, might as well get in a posthumously published short from the third of the three great 2nd Gen Romantics:

“This living hand, now warm and capable,” John Keats

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.


Written in November 1819 beneath the draft of stanza 51 of The Cap and Bells; or, The Jealousies: A Faery Tale (final title still TBD when he abandoned it after almost 800 lines) and first published in an 1898 edition of his collected poetry. The initial romantic-with-a-small-r interpretation was that this was a complete poem addressed to his fiancée, Fanny Brawne, but current consensus is that it’s a fragment he jotted to reuse in a later work, possibly a drama. What is certain is that it was written around the time he recognized undeniable symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him (as it already had his mother and youngest brother) fifteen months later.

---L.

Subject quote from Pictures of You, The Cure. Which, yes, plays into the Great Romantic Myth of Keats, but tonally fits the poem.

For Poetry Monday, another posthumously published short from a 2nd Gen Romantic:

“Music, when soft voices die,” Percy Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.


Written in 1821 but not published until the 1824 Posthumous Poems edited by Mary Shelley and Leigh Hunt, under the title “To ——”. To be fair to the editors, Shelley used that title for a couple other enigmatic love lyrics also not written to Mary.

---L.

Subject quote from Zeur niet!, Annie M. G. Schmidt, tr. de_eekhoorn.

For Poetry Monday:

“We’ll go no more a-roving,” Lord Byron

So, we’ll go no more a-roving
    So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
    And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
    And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
    And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
    And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
    By the light of the moon.


Written 1817 when Byron was 29, while recovering from his first Carnival season in Venice, in a letter sent to Thomas Moore. It remained unpublished until Moore, as Byron’s literary executor, published Letters and Journals of Lord Byron in 1830, after which it was added to editions of Byron’s collected poems. Its refrain is adapted from “The Jolly Beggar,” a traditional Scottish song (Byron’s mother was a Scot). (TIL current Baron Byron, the 13th of that office, published a novel in 2021, the first Baron Byron to publish a book since The Byron.)

---L.

Subject quote from Every Little Bit, Patty Griffin.

For Poetry Monday:

Epitaph for a Tyrant, W. H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.


Written 1939.

---L.

Subject quote from Época, Gotan Project.

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not Jewish.

janni and Eaglet are, however, and our household observes Passover—and because Eaglet loves matzah brei, I’ve learned how to make it, or at least an approximation of the version Janni’s family made. Here’s how I do it.* It scales easily—each square of matzah is a serving. Depending on the size of your frying pan, making more than 4 servings at a time might not be feasible. This is scaled for two servings:

Take 2 squares of matzah and crumble into a bowl until the biggest pieces are around 1in/2cm in size. Cover with water and let sit while you get everything else ready, approximately 1-2 minutes.

Get out 2 eggs (same number as matzahs) and butter. Place a pat of butter in a frying pan, just large enough to lightly coat the bottom when melted.

When the matzah has soaked enough to be soft with just a hint of crunch in the larger pieces, drain the water. Start warming the pan on medium-high heat (same as if scrambling eggs). Mix the eggs into the matzah, then let sit until the butter has melted.

Pour the mix into the pan. Scramble as you do eggs. As soon as the egg portions are cooked (no longer gleaming as if wet), plate, salt to taste, and serve. Sour cream or applesauce are traditional toppings, but we often eat it just salted.

Feel free to teach me alternate versions!


* Present tense intentional, despite Passover being over, as we have a box and a half left over to use up.

---L.

Subject quote from MacArthur Park, Richard Harris.

I totally forgot to post this yesterday, which is possibly indicative of … something. So here, have it for Poetry Tuesday instead:

what if a much of a which of a wind, e. e. cummings

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives truth to the summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend:blow space to time)
—when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror;blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
—whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t:blow death to was)
—all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die,the more we live

---L.

Subject quote from On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble, A. E. Housman.