labingi | Network

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk

A Financial Times article discussed a cultural change during the holidays in Britain, as smart TVs and non-TV viewing by a younger generation means that there is much less viewing of holiday specials, which had been a national tradition. Instead "data shows children as young as four spend longer watching YouTube each day than all PSB services combined", and that ratio is even worse with young teens. The article notes the situation is equally dire for other European broadcasters.

In the article, the concern is that younger viewers are turning away from content that is authentic to and about their own country. In the U.S., too, public television is under threat. Are there TV traditions that are disappearing due to the shift in viewing? What might be gone in another generation or two?

wickedgame posting in

icons

Fandoms: 9-1-1, Cobra Kai, Crazy Handsome Rich, Dead Boy Detectives, Heated Rivalry, Legend of the Seeker, Maxton Hall, Ransom Canyon, Stay By My Side

rest HERE @

mundodefieras

michifugu

Just finished my endoscopy!
I ended up tired and sleeping without realizing I woke up at midnight (I sleep at 7 pm)
thankfully, there's nothing bad and just good ol' gerd.

Current Mood: awake

susandennis

Today is no rain so far and the snow capped mountains are back and it's not yet 8 and there is enough daylight to see those mountains. Ooops we're losing winter.

I slept really well last night. My bed (95), Fitbit (89) and I agree. Good thing cause I got stuff happening today. I hope.

The closet designer is supposed to be here at 10. I have received 2 phone messages and 3 emails telling me so. I'm guessing they have a lot of customers who request appointments and forget??? I have this niggly suspicion that they are going to not be/do what I want them to be/do. But, there are other closet people I can call.

So when I met with my doctor last week, she explained two semaglutide options (I know there are more and she likely would have been willing to discuss more but we talked about two) - wegovy and zepbound. She explained the differences kind of briefly and we left it with 'make an appointment for April and we'll decide then'. Yesterday, I sent her a note telling her I was ready to start now and asking her if I should make an appointment for now. I got a message back within the hour that she had sent my prescription for wegovy to NovoCare and that I should get a text in a few hours. I did not. But the NovoCare website agreed with her - that I would get a text to start the onboarding process.

I have two phone numbers - both ring and text on my phone. One is a Google voice number and one is a MintMobile number. I've never used text with this doctor so I did not know which number she had. I went to the online portal and tried to enter my cell number for verification. You had to give them your name and your number and then pick from a fairly limited list of cellphone companies. Of course neither of my cellphone companies was on that list so no joy. At all. Finally at the end of the day, I sent her a new note with both numbers and she replied that she had sent in yet another request with the second number (implying the first had been with the first number) and if I didn't hear today to let her know.

So far. No text on either number. I think if I don't hear anything by the time the closet person leaves, I'll try calling the NovoCare number. (Yes, I know there are all manner of different alternatives to similar drugs available in all manner of ways but for now, I'd like to stick to what my doctor recommends for me which is, apparently, Wegovy and NovoCare. IF one or both fail, I'll consider alternatives.

I did spend way too much time combing through Reddit last night in a what to expect when you are expecting kind of troll. It was interesting and I think I learned a lot.

Oh and my doctor did say that she wants to know how much I weigh at various steps along the way so I asked Amazon to please bring me a scale. It should arrive today.

Also it is house cleaning day.

Last week so so much fun with Bill here and soooooo productive. He'll be back in June. I suspect the Todo list will be way shorter.

philomytha

The Dark Invader, Kapitänleutnant Franz von Rintelen (available on Gutenberg Australia)
The autobiography of one of Germany's most successful secret agents in WW1. One of the good bits from my previous book was the mention of this autobiography in the author's note at the end, since Rintelen appears as a minor character in 'The Spies of Hartlake Hall'. So I looked it up and read it, and what a read it was. Rintelen is an absolute lunatic; what he most reminded me of was a German Miles Vorkosigan, including the bit where his superiors ship him off to cause problems for the enemy instead of having him meddling in politics at home. He likes coming up with wild ideas and carrying them out, he has bucketloads of chutzpah, he's not above creatively delaying his obedience to orders, he's not afraid of wading into just about anything and he's very cocky. He is exactly who you don't want as a coworker in headquarters, but exactly who you do want to send off to sabotage the enemy.

And since he spoke excellent English - the memoir is written by him in English, not translated from German - the Germans sent him to America to do something about the fact that America, though neutral, was supplying huge volumes of ammunition to the Allies. And so he sets about arranging the manufacture of time-bombs to put in the holds of cargo ships carrying munitions, he looks for ways to sabotage harbours, he tries to send money and weapons to Mexico to encourage them to invade the USA, he gets involved in organising strikes among dock workers and munition workers, and he makes friends with Irish nationalists and encourages them to help him with all of this. And, because this is real life and not fiction and he's not quite as lucky as Miles Vorkosigan, eventually he gets captured by the British on his way back to Germany, and put in a POW camp, and then later was sent for trial and imprisonment in the USA for his crimes there - he doesn't get back to Germany again until 1921, after four years of hard labour in pretty grim conditions which he makes plain in his memoir that he felt was extremely inappropriate as an enemy soldier.

But he did very obviously adore the British officers who captured him, he's incredibly Anglophile and the whole description of his being captured is interleaved with a description of him spending Christmas with one of the officers involved years later and how well they got on ('dearly beloved ex-enemies' is his phrase); he loves England and the British. He found that Germany wasn't the place for him when he got out - not least because von Papen, the Weimar chancellor, was his fellow naval attache in the US embassy while he was carrying out all this sabotage and they hated each other's guts and, according to Rintelen, Papen deliberately let his name leak out so that the British knew who he was and could arrest him. So Rintelen moved to London and settled there, and according to the Wikipedia article about him, it's possible that when WW2 came around he helped train SOE operatives in sabotage work, this being something of his area of expertise.

The memoir is very obviously written with his own biases and interpretation and grievances about various things, but it's a fantastic read and honestly even though he was clearly a complete nightmare in so many ways, I couldn't help but like him.

jazzfish

JOE: We're gonna have to live with them eventually.
HARRY: Who?
JOE: The Protestants, Harry. The other half of the population.

Watching a film set in the Troubles on the eve of travel to Minneapolis and after doing some reading about Palestine may not have been the wisest course. Then again, maybe it was. No time like the present.

"The Boxer" is mostly about Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson's characters' relationship, but there's a lot of focus on Harry the IRA warlord and Joe the more political-minded IRA leader as well.

HARRY: And what are you offering, Joe?
JOE: Peace, Harry. Peace.
HARRY: Well, I'm sure you can deliver.

I'll be doing bus-stop watch for a couple of days, making sure kids can get home from school or seeing where they get taken if they don't. It's scary out here.

prettygoodword

If yesterday was an edge case, this one’s completely off the edge — when I was compiling the week’s words, I failed to notice this one is not Polynesian but Micronesian, and while the two groups do make up the Eastern branch of Oceanic languages, it’s still off topic. My bad. Especially as the history is too interesting to give up:

bikini (buh-KEE-nee) - n., a close-fitting, two-piece women’s bathing suit that does not cover the midriff.

The history is easier to explain in chronological order. One of the northernmost of the Marshall Islands is a coral atoll called Pikinni (stress on the first syllable) in Marshallese, from pikin, flat land +‎ ni, coconut, so (is)land where coconuts grow. When the Marshall Islands were part of the colony of German New Guinea, the German adaptation was Bikini (still stressed on the first syllable), it became known by that in English (stressed first syllable) and French (stress typically on the second syllable, following that language’s norms). Japan took over the Marshall Islands in 1914 at the start of WWI, and the USA took it over following WWII, and from 1946-1958 they test-fired 23 nuclear weapons on Bikini Atoll. [Sidebar: They relocated the ~150 inhabitants first, and since in traditional Marshallese culture wealth is based on how much land your clan controls, this impoverished them.] Four days after the first test-fire on Bikini in July 1946, French designer Louis Réard introduced a new midriff-baring two-piece swimsuit, which he named bikini (stressed second syllable) after it, the idea being that it was just as much a sensation. Um. Yeah. [Sidebar²: Thanks to the swimsuit, the atoll now is just as likely to be pronounced with stress on the second syllable. Second round of Um. Yeah.]

---L.

bell

(Context: Grelse is my sister-in-law and now roommate/house and child rearing support!)

Grelse: so on The Pit—-
L: what’s that?
Grelse: it’s a show about a doctor
L: the autistic one or the one with a cane?
Me: okay hearing you say that is SENDING me

(More context! I canonically met

zulu in House fandom. And good thing too because we never EVER overlapped in any other fandoms 😝 Anyway—-)

Me: hey, bud, you remember that Zulu and I knew each other through fandom? Well, we were both writing fic for House, so that’s How I Met Your Mama
L: oh, huh
Me: Imma have to tell Dreamwidth this L update
L: L?
Me: you know, the nickname Mama and I use for you online
L: /affronted hand to chest/ I am OFFENDED
Me: ???? What would you prefer to be called?
L: Blobby :)
Me: /laughs/ okay, I’ll call you Blobby from now on
Blobby: good!

He turned 11 last week, y’all. And the three of us have just started season 2 of ST:TNG. It’s surreal.

osprey_archer

Ahoy there, mateys! In 2026,

littlerhymes and I have embarked on a Year of Sail, starting with C. S. Forester’s Mr. Midshipman Hornblower!

(This was apparently not the first Hornblower published, but it is the first chronologically, so we decided to start there.)

In this book we meet Horatio Hornblower, a cool, logical, mathematically talented all-around doofus who gets seasick on his very first row out to his new ship as midshipman. The seasickness fades but the general awkwardness does not, as evidenced in the story where a woman offers to hide dispatches in her petticoats and Hornblower is like: discussing stays? and petticoats? with a woman???? and then there’s a glimpse of her thigh WHERE TO LOOK??????

He’s also almost madly brave, as evidenced in the story where he purposefully climbs aboard a fire ship (that is, a ship that has been purposefully set on fire in order to set other ships ablaze) in order to steer it out of the harbor. Absolute madman. But it’s the logical thing to do, so calmly he goes ahead and does it.

Over the years I’ve osmosed that the Hornblower movies starring Ioan Gruffud are good and also slashy, so I decided that I might as well give them a go too. I watched the first two, then commented to

littlerhymes, “These are good but they AREN’T slashy, the internet lied to me.”

“Watch the next movie,”

littlerhymes commanded.

HOLY COW.

So in the first movie, Hornblower and company are on their way to a surprise night attack on a French frigate when Hornblower’s friend Mr. Midshipman Kennedy has a seizure. Unable to think of any other way to keep him quiet, Hornblower knocks him over the head, which means that they have to leave him on the jolly boat as the rest of them attack the frigate, and the jolly boat is cast adrift with Kennedy still in it.

In the third movie, Kennedy returns! Specially, Hornblower is TAKEN CAPTIVE by the SPANISH and in his very cell in Spanish prison, he finds Kennedy, who greets him “GO AWAY.”

Then Kennedy turns his face to the wall. He just got out of the punishment cell which is so small that you can neither lie down nor stand up, and he can no longer straighten his legs, and he wants to die.

Naturally Hornblower tenderly nurses him back to health, which involves gently smoothing his lustrous hair from his brow. (The production team clearly threw realism to the winds with the lustrous hair, as I feel strongly that Mr. Midshipman “so depressed he’s trying to starve himself to death” Kennedy would probably not be bothering to comb his hair or indeed shave and would therefore have a beard like Santa Claus.) It does NOT involve climbing into bed with him to warm him with his own body heat, but I feel sure that fanfic has filled in this gap, and if it hasn’t (or even if it has) I might need to commit a little fic for the cause.

james_davis_nicoll

Sisters process family tensions as the world slowly grinds to an end.

Private Rites by Julia Armfield

brightly_burning posting in

pinchhits

Event: A Hand in the Hole Flash Exchange
Event link: A Hand in the Hole
Pinch hit link: Fandoms Requested: Don Giovanni - Mozart/Da Ponte, Cosi fan tutte - Mozart/Da Ponte
Due date: 6 PM CST, January 19th

If claiming, please email the mod at themonstersoflove@gmail.com.

nevanna

Some of the horror elements of Stranger Things worked better for me than others. Here are my favorite scares from each season, with no spoilers for the final one beyond the cold open for the first episode. Also please be warned for a brief mention of harm to an animal.

( Monster hunting! )

Fellow Stranger Things fans, what are some of the moments that scared you the most (or the moments that were intended to scare but didn’t)? Spoilers in the comments are expected and welcome.

poliphilo

William Allen, the Quaker polymath, scientist, financier and all-round do-gooder was an ancestor of mine. His younger brother Samuel was my several times great grandfather. Does that make William my many times great uncle? I'm not sure. Anyway we are related.

I don't think the brothers were close. Leastways Samuel doesn't get a mention in the biography of William I'm currently reading. William was a high-flier, active on the world-stage, whereas Samuel was never anything more than a respected Quaker preacher.

Here's William, wearing a Quaker hat. (I want one)

William_Allen_abolitionist_by_Amélie_Munier-Romilly_(sq_cropped).jpeg

William_Allen_abolitionist_by_Amélie_Munier-Romilly_(sq_cropped).jpeg

And here's Samuel, holding forth (gloomily?) at a Quaker Meeting.

Samuel_Lucas_(1805-1870)_-_Samuel_Allen_at_a_Quaker_Meeting_-_HITHM.5518_-_North_Hertfordshire_Museum.jpeg

Samuel_Lucas_(1805-1870)_-_Samuel_Allen_at_a_Quaker_Meeting_-_HITHM.5518_-_North_Hertfordshire_Museum.jpeg

The difference in status between the two brothers can be gauged by the quality of their portraits. William gets a delicate pencil sketch by Mlle Romilly- the distinguished Swiss painter- while Samuel makes do with a daub by his brother-in-law Samuel Lucas, the brewer.

Oh, these old time Quakers, they're so serious! William is esteemed by the Duke of Wellington and more than esteemed by the saintly Russian tsar Alexander I but wouldn't it be jolly if he'd occasionally meet a poet (there were enough of them around in his era) or attend the theatre or say something funny. He had a wonderful mind for facts but he wasn't creative or playful. He partnered the great Robert Owen in setting up schools for the poor but fell out with him over what should be taught. Owen wanted to teach music and dancing and what we would now call ecology while William wanted nothing but Bible study. Oh, Uncle William, do lighten up!'

You may gather I'm having a hard time actually liking him. A man, however mild and obliging, who wants his nieces to read Pliny to him over breakfast is never going to be my soul-brother.

But he did like the ladies! His third marriage- to a woman pushing 70 and a good decade older than himself- allowed the profane to go, "See, we always said the Quakers are randy old goats under those silly hats." Cartoons were published. Sincere and loving Friends wrote to tell him, "Don't do it!" For the first time in his life he was a cause for merriment....

Ah, unseemliness! Now that's more like it!

tamaranth

2026/007: Aberystwyth Mon Amour — Malcolm Pryce

I sat in the corner and gazed through red throbbing eyes at the lurid pageant: drunks and punks and pimps and ponces; young farmers and old farmers; pool-hall hustlers and pick pockets; Vimto louts, card sharps and shove ha’penny sharps; sailors and lobster fisherman and hookers from the putting green; the one-armed man from the all-night sweet shop, dandies and dish-washers and drunken school teachers; fire-walkers and whelk-eaters, high priests and low priests; footpads and cut-throats; waifs, strays, vanilla thieves and peat stealers; the clerk from the library, the engineer from the Great Little Train of Wales … it rolled on without end. [p. 31]

Wales is independent, and has fought a colonial war in Patagonia: the veterans haunt Aberystwyth and its environs. The town is pretty much owned and run by the Druids, as corrupt and wicked a crew as any mob. Private detective Louie Knight is engaged by local chanteuse Myfanwy Montez to investigate the disappearance of a schoolboy -- the first of several to vanish without trace. Louie, with his teenaged sidekick 'Calamity' Jane, unravels a heinous plot involving an ark, an antique Lancaster bomber and a forensic knitting expert.

I'm not sure why this didn't work for me. ( Read more... )