Water in a plastic cup - sensible and obedient knowing such acquiescence in rigid form or in the color of earth - yielding and forgiving - remembering its supplication to the potter's hand.
All those pieces that scatter to the floor you scramble to pick them up while knowing that many are simply unrecognizable shards (pottery from some long-forgotten civilization) It is difficult to know to which plate or cup they belong and even if you did figure it out would you know how to reassemble them?
* * *
My dad made this pot when I was young and it is one of my favorites. He made it for my teacher who made us fried tortilla chips and salsa...long before they were ever sold in bags and jars. I loved them so much she made me my own special batch. She passed away several years ago and her daughter gave the pot to me.
My GI doctor says the celiac test is negative. This is both unsurprising and a relief: the doctor ordered the test because of comorbidities, not because there were any signs of celiac, but celiac is common enough in people with collagenous colitis that it was worth checking.
I do still need to contact her office tomorrow and ask about that follow-up appointment.
You see, I read the first two paragraphs, had a lot of feelings, and promptly decided the way to Maximise Feelings would be to do the reread I didn't set off on immediately after first finishing it.
Thus far I am going "my goodness, I forgot a lot of the detail here". ( Spoilers... )
I have also listened to a little bit more of Furiously Happy (Jenny Lawson). There are definitely aspects I don't love (like, as someone who is taking an antipsychotic for non-psychosis reasons, and someone who can at this point go entire years plural without any significant episodes of even very mild psychosis, the way antipsychotics are discussed makes me... a bit twitchy), and I'm annoyed by how much more disruptive needing to reread sentences is in audio than in text (and how much more frequently I'm needing to do it), but also it turns out rather to my own surprise to be a thing I can listen to when I'm not doing anything else with my brain, provided I don't mind not really retaining any of it for longer than about five minutes.
Eating. I have been fed a slightly ludicrous amount of (more-or-less responsibly harvested) wild asparagus this week, which has been A Delight.
A Variety of other things, courtesy of having someone else doing meal prep all week. Still suspicious of Nutritional Yeast, mind.
FIRST STRAWBERRIES from the plot.
Growing. Swung by the plot this evening (courtesy of significant support from A) and in addition to STRAWBERRIES: ( Read more... )
My relationship with my much younger sister, “Charity,” has always been a volatile one. Recently, our grandmother passed away and Charity stole some jewelry that had been promised to me, likely when she last visited our grandmother’s place before she went into hospice. She claims not to know where it is, but a friend who works at a restaurant she frequents said she saw her come in wearing our grandmother’s necklace; Charity, of course, is saying she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. My 15-year-old daughter, “Zarra,” knows how upset I am about the whole thing and is just as angry. However, I didn’t expect that she would take matters into her own hands—and oh my god did she…
Last week, I learned through my mother that Charity broke up with her fiancé because she learned he was cheating on her and had fathered a child with another woman. When I told Zarra that her aunt had gotten a dose of karma, she replied, “Thanks to me.” I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach and asked her what she meant. Zarra explained that she had given her friend “Lisa’s” college-age brother money to purchase a burner phone for her. She then had Lisa call up Charity pretending to be a woman who was trying to track Charity’s fiancé down so she could sue him for child support. Zarra said Charity had been so furious that they could hear her screaming at Lisa through the phone from four feet away. She laughed and said she’d never expected the prank to actually work, but was glad it did.
I am truly at a loss as to what to do here. On the one hand, Zarra did a very devious thing and involved her friend and her friend’s brother in it. But on the other hand, if I’m being honest, it was extremely gratifying to see my bitch sister finally get a taste of her own medicine—she’s spent her life taking advantage of people and is an all-around shitty person. My husband thought the whole thing was brilliant. Should I punish Zarra and inform Lisa’s parents of their kids’ role in what my daughter did, or is this one of those things that cancels itself out?
Growing up, I had tons of friends and was always on the go and immersed in extracurricular activities. My 7-year-old daughter, “Maisy,” simply isn’t interested in people. She has exactly three friends and would rather spend her time reading and studying the birds, squirrels, bugs, and plants in our backyard. She doesn’t have much use for cartoons, like other kids; she would sooner watch science and nature documentaries. I had her tested, and she’s not on the spectrum, so that’s not what Maisy’s problem is. I feel like she’s missing out on so much by not being more sociable. How can I convince her that being the smartest person in the room won’t do her a bit of good if people don’t like her because she has no idea how to interact with other humans?
My 11-year-old son, “William,” has been interested in magic and illusions for about a year. For his last birthday, my husband and I got him a magic set. William had been greatly enjoying it until my moronic brother “Justin” said something disgusting to him that Justin insists was “just a joke.” After Easter, for which the entire family had gotten together, I came across William’s magic set in the garbage. I asked him why he’d thrown it away, and he said Justin had told him that all magicians are gay and that if he keeps doing magic, he will turn gay too. This upset him (unfortunately, the kids at his school have reached the phase where “gay” is used as an insult). I told him that what Uncle Justin said wasn’t true: People don’t “turn” LGBTQ+, they are born that way, and in any case, there is nothing wrong with being LGBTQ+. I then gave Justin a call.
My brother howled with laughter when I told him that William had thrown out his magic set and why. Justin claimed he’d said it, “just said it to mess with him.” I told him he needed to set the record straight with William, make it clear that he’d made it up, and confirm what I’d already told him about how being LGBTQ+ is not a bad thing. Justin claimed I was making too big a deal over it. He said William should take this as a lesson in learning not to believe everything people tell him. I told him that until he was ready to apologize and tell William the truth, we would be taking a break from seeing him, and I hung up. My parents think I’m in the wrong and that I’m making too much of “a harmless prank.” They are accusing me of causing problems in the family. I don’t think I am. My husband agrees with me and says he’ll support whatever I feel is right. Is this the best option, even if it gets me on the wrong side of my parents?
Welcome to June's monthly theme post. This month we're thinking of the smaller areas within a larger space with the theme 'nooks & crannies' - interpret this how you will but a few examples could be little used drawers, shelves you haven't checked through for a while, the space beside a cupboard/chair or behind a seating arrangement.
Basically anywhere that might not get looked at very often will fit the bill for this month - it may be that all the space needs is a clean to be free of dust, or it might actually be an easily forgotten space that we use as a temporary measure for storing things we plan to deal with later - if you are anything like me, they'll be things I've soon forgotten about.
So we'll tackle a different room each week and try to check up on the forgotten spaces or the forgotten clutter. We'll start this week with the bedroom. Here's hoping that unexpectedly most of the spaces will just need a bit of a clean!
Just in case I miss a week or am late posting, here's the monthly plan:
Week 1: Bedroom Week 2: Kitchen Week 3: Lounge/Living Room Week 4: Your choice but could be bathroom/spare room/study/cupboard in the hallway/garage/loft or attic space or even a garden shed! Or if you feel like you're making good progress and would rather revisit one of the earlier rooms that works too.
Have a good month - I'll post as often as I can - tell us how you get on.
I'm hoping the universe is done with sending us to the emergency room for a while. Carrie has spent the night at the veterinary hospital because she was bit on her front left ankle by a presumed copperhead yesterday morning between 9 and 10 am -- probably more like 9:45? And she's probably going to be OK, but there will probably be a long rehab of some sort with skin and tissue damage on that leg.
I am suspicious that maybe Carrie didn't see the snake? And that's how her foot was bit? Marlowe is so tiny, so Christine has insisted on keeping her in, but i don't know that that's actually going to help unless we plan to keep her in forever. Once Carrie is home and we need to let her out in the back yard, Marlowe is going to dash out. However Christine's got to work through her anxiety and i need to let her take the lead on this.
I think the best we can do is the snake repellent (that Christine had distributed before she left to spend the afternoon with B--) and trying to keep the weeds down.
I'm off to meet my sister and dad to drink coffee in memory of my mom at the hospice where she died, and get my sister's weed burner/flame thrower. Mine had it's final failure when the control knob fell off somewhere in the yard yesterday as i burnt it all -- well as much as i could of the stilt grass, particularly at the fence line. I didn't burn it all : i kept noticing poison ivy and worrying that i was going to send myself to the emergency room by burning then inhaling the urushiol. I am not that sensitive to poison ivy. I occasionaly get blisters that i suspect are from blowback from fragmented leaves in the weed whacker, but i know i've brushed by intact plants and had no reaction.
In the past week I've watched a hawk survey my garden and other parts of the front yard for prey, and have clearly seen it carry off two snakes. I assumed it was mainly getting DeKay's brown snakes: it's welcome to all the copperheads it and its brood can eat.
(While on the topic of pests: Christine's found two ticks - before they could attach - but so far my pants-in-socks seems to have discouraged any interest in me.)
Over multiple generations of CMIP models Arctic sea ice trend predictions have gone from much too stable to about right. Why?
The diagnostics highlighted in our model-observations comparison page are currently all temperature based, and show overall that climate models have being doing well on these trends for decades. But there has been increasing attention to trends in non-temperature variables, and there, model performance is more mixed (Simpson et al., 2025). As we’ve discussed before, model-observation discrepancies can arise from three causes: the observations could be wrong (unrealized biases etc.), the models are wrong (which can encompass errors in forcings as well as physics), or the comparison could be inappropriate.
One of the most high profile ‘misses’ in coupled modeling over the last few decades was the failure of the model projections in CMIP3 (circa 2003/4 vintage) to match the rapid losses in Arctic sea ice that started to become apparent in the middle of that decade (Stroeve et al., 2007), and were compounded by the summertime record losses of sea ice in 2007 and then 2012. With an additional decade, how does that look now?
Figure 1. Percent change in March (red) and September (blue) Arctic sea extent w.r.t. 1979-1988 in the CMIP3 ensemble and NSIDC observations. Spread is the 95% CI (with a 10 year smooth to reduce visual clutter). Solid lines are the ensemble mean. Historical forcings are used to 2000, and the SRES A1B scenario subsequently.
In a word, the CMIP3 Arctic sea ice projections were, and remain, terrible. The ensemble mean predicted rate of change of September Arctic sea ice extent is less than half that observed (-4.5 %/decade vs. -11 %/decade for 1979-2024), and there are only five single individual model simulations (out of 46) that have a loss rate greater than 10 %/decade (95% spread is [-12,-0.7] %/decade). The March trends are also under-predicted, but by a lesser degree. There is no real ambiguity in the observed trends, nor in the comparison (though extent is a little trickier than area to compare to), and so these discrepancies were very likely due to model failures – insufficient resolution to capture the polar sea ice dynamics, too simple sea ice physics, biases in the Arctic ocean simulations etc. Analyses have shown that errors in the absolute amount of sea ice were correlated to the errors in the trends as well.
Development of the CMIP5 models was ongoing as these discrepancies were manifesting, and there were improvements in sea ice physics and dynamics, increased resolution and a reduction in the overall climate biases. The simulations in CMIP5 were conducted around 2011-2013, and used historical forcings from to 2005, and scenarios subsequently. Did that make any difference?
Figure 2. Percent change in March (red) and September (blue) Arctic sea extent w.r.t. 1979-1988 in the CMIP5 ensemble and NSIDC observations. Spread is the 95% CI (with a 10 year smooth to reduce visual clutter). Solid lines are the ensemble mean. Historical forcings are used to 2005, and the RCP4.5 scenario subsequently.
Closer, but no cigar. The spread in the CMIP5 models is larger (a function of greater variability), and the observations are now more within the spread, but the September ensemble mean trend (-8%/decade) is still a bit too low. But nearly 40% of the 107 individual simulations (95% CI is [-20,-1.4]%/decade) now have losses greater than 10%/decade. The March trends are mostly well represented, but there are still large variations in the absolute extent.
There was a longer gap before CMIP6, but those models were developed through to 2017/8 or so, and so developers were well aware of the ongoing discrepancies (Stroeve et al., 2012). Again, there were improvements in sea ice physics, dynamical schemes, forcings (the addition of black carbon impacts on snow and ice albedo for instance), and again, improvements in resolution and in the base climatology.
As a minor aside, from 2007 to 2014 there was a spate of un-peer reviewed claims from a few scientists (Peter Wadhams and Wiesław Masłowski notably) that used non-linear statistical fits to the observed sea ice indices to predict essentially ice-free conditions by 2013, or 2016 or so. These predictions were not based on any physical insight or model, were heavily criticised by other scientists at the time (I recall a particularly spicy meeting at the Royal Society in 2014 for instance!), and (unsurprisingly) were not validated. But this kind of stuff is perhaps to be expected when the mainstream models are not providing credible projections?
Anyway, back to CMIP6. Third time’s a charm?
Figure 3. Percent change in March (red) and September (blue) Arctic sea area w.r.t. 1979-1988 in the CMIP6 ensemble and NSIDC observations. Spread is the 95% CI (with a 10 year smooth to reduce visual clutter). Solid lines are the ensemble mean. Historical forcings are used to 2014 (466 simulations), and the SSP2 4.5 scenario subsequently (247 simulations).
Actually, this isn’t bad. The CMIP6 ensemble mean for September area trends is now -11 %/decade (observed 13 %/decade) and the March trends are spot on. Note that the observed loss in ‘area’ is slightly larger than the trend in ‘extent’ (13 %/decade vs. 11 %/decade) and I’m using area here because that is what is available. The spread for September trends is [21,3] %/decade which is slightly tighter than in CMIP5, and 40% (again) have losses greater than 10 %/decade.
What lessons can be drawn here?
As we have often stated, models are always wrong, but the degree to which they can be useful needs to be addressed – by variable or by model generation or by model completeness etc. The utility of the CMIP6 ensemble (and presumably the upcoming CMIP7 models) for Arctic sea ice is clearly higher than the CMIP3 ensemble, but there doesn’t appear to be a single thing that needed to be fixed for that to happen. Rather, an accumulation of improvements – in physics, resolution, completeness, forcings – have led to a gradual improvement in skill (not just in the sea ice trends!).
As Simpson et al (2025) noted, there are increasing numbers of climate quality diagnostics that have long enough time series and emerging signals of change, such that there are an increasing number of tests for the model trends. The history of Arctic sea ice comparisons shows that it might be premature to conclude that any specific discrepancies imply that something is fundamentally wrong, or that climate modeling is in a ‘crisis’ (Shaw and Stevens, 2025), it may well be that these discrepancies will resolve themselves in the course of ‘normal’ model development (and as the observed signals become clearer). Or not ;-).
Note on sources: CMIP3 (Mar,Sep) and CMIP5 (historical,rcp45) processed extent data are from Julienne Stroeve and Patricia Derepentigny, and the CMIP6 area data is from the U. of Hamburg data portal (courtesy of Dirk Notz). Ensemble means are over the whole ensemble with one simulation = one vote. Also I haven’t screened the CMIP6 models by climate sensitivity (as I’ve done for the temperatures). These choices might make small differences, but not effect the main conclusions.
References
I.R. Simpson, T.A. Shaw, P. Ceppi, A.C. Clement, E. Fischer, K.M. Grise, A.G. Pendergrass, J.A. Screen, R.C.J. Wills, T. Woollings, R. Blackport, J.M. Kang, and S. Po-Chedley, "Confronting Earth System Model trends with observations", Science Advances, vol. 11, 2025. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adt8035
J. Stroeve, M.M. Holland, W. Meier, T. Scambos, and M. Serreze, "Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 34, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2007GL029703
J.C. Stroeve, V. Kattsov, A. Barrett, M. Serreze, T. Pavlova, M. Holland, and W.N. Meier, "Trends in Arctic sea ice extent from CMIP5, CMIP3 and observations", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 39, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012GL052676
There's an entire trans-and-nonbinary cast production of Twelfth Night, with Sir Ian McKellen providing an opening for it, and they have livestream options (and access to the stream for up to two weeks after the performance) as well as the live performance one. July 25 is the day in question. Ticket tiers start at 10 GBP, so you may have to add in currency conversion and currency conversion fees to your ticket price.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that what books a public library carries in its collection are government speech, and therefore subject to being curated as any government employee likes without repercussions or First Amendment challenges. Which gives a massive amount of power to any library employee with collection responsibilities to shape the collection exactly as they desire, without having to worry about keeping collection balance or ensuring a diversity of viewpoint or any of those other things that are generally accepted principles of collection development. I look forward to the library that decides to remove every conservative author from their collection, the one that decides their collection will be composed sole of Black trans women, and the library that completely depopulates their religion section of everything that has to do with Christianity in it, and the courts siding with them based on this precedent, telling the people complaining that it's too bad they don't have a library whose values align with their own, but that book curation is government speech and they don't have standing to challenge it.
(This is a foolish ruling, and they should know better, but fascists and the fascist-friendly rarely believe that the tools they are building to enforce their will on others will be used equally as well to suppress them once they are no longer in power. Or once they're not sufficiently fascist to be in the in-group any more.)
Going out of this post, The Sesame Workshop has made a deal with Netflix to continue Sesame Street, allowing new episodes to premiere simultaneously on Netflix's streaming service and PBS stations (and the PBS Kids app.) The format of the show will be changing with the new season, but there's something fundamentally rotten at having had Sesame Street end up needing to make deals with a corporate partner for significant time, rather than being fully funded (including the research apparatus that helps keep Sesame Street educationally appropriate for the target audience) through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other public dollars for all of their runtime. Surely there's some fighter jet or tank that could be not built and that money appropriated for keeping a quality educational program on the airwaves, and to pay the researchers that help keep it quality.
Yesterday, on the drive, we found the greater part of a small light blue eggshell. (Dunnock? Starling?)
We have also, with the rain, been seeing (and relocating) lots of gastropods, so I suggested we move the eggshell into gastropod territory.
Checked back this morning, and while the blue is mostly intact the inside surface has been very clearly significantly monched. V v pleased to have provided delicious snack and also by CREATURES in general :-)
3. What sets you apart from your coworkers/fellow students?
4. What is the one thing about you that is most unique?
5. What is your most interesting quality?
Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.
If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
A hundred years from now, chroma key colors are going to be considered unlucky to wear in a set of professions like newscasting, and nobody is going to quite realize why.
When I came back later to show my partner, we talked to another birder who said this nesting platform has been there for a long time but in past years Ospreys have only stayed for a short time and not fledged any young. This year they've stayed much longer than usual so hopes are high for a baby! The other adult was perched in a tree nearby.
Ospreys eat only fish. (The platform is above a river.) It's interesting that small birds seem to realize they're no threat, and completely ignore them. While we were there, we saw a flock of blackbirds furiously mob and chase away a Cooper's Hawk while the Ospreys calmly looked on.
I'm fine, as far as I know everyone's fine, but my trip to get blood drawn was more exciting than anticipated: the bus driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid either a bicycle or a pedestrian crossing in mid-block. She did that, checked to make sure that everyone on the bus was OK, then drove to the next corner, pulled over, and asked again if everyone was sure they were OK.
A few stops after that, someone asked me where he should get off the bus to get to "the little mall with Trader Joe's and MicroCenter." It took me a moment to figure out what he meant, because the bus we were on doesn't go there. So first I told him I wasn't sure, because this bus didn't go there, and then I started thinking about the problem. He said he wasn't good at directions, so I suggested a route that involved more walking but less chance of getting lost. I wound up signaling for his bus stop, and then telling him I was sorry, I'd forgotten they'd moved the bus stop, so [revised directions]. I should note, he didn't ask me for most of this, just what bus stop to use, and I was in the mood to do the extra bits.
The rest of the trip to Mt. Auburn to get blood drawn went smoothly. Once I got there, I had very little wait, and the phlebotomist did a very good job; I made a point of telling him so. On the way back, I stopped in Harvard Square to put more money on my Charlie card; buy and eat a slice of Otto's mashed potato and bacon pizza; and then went to Lizzy's to get Adrian a pint of non-dairy chocolate ice cream.
I was going to withdraw some cash from the ATM at the 7-11 at Comm Ave and Harvard Ave, but when I got there the screen said "windows 7. Press ctrl-alt-del to log in," which was literally impossible with the numeric keypad, so I just came home.
six months on from surgery: what's recovery looking like?
this is actually secretly mostly (but not entirely) about Pilates
grousing about getting the Framework actually set up Adequately under Debian (power management noooot doing what I want it to and the GPU seems to keep falling over; have not yet had time/brain to sit down with either the guide to Debian 12 or cross-referencing the way the Linux battery life tuning thread disagrees with the various guides for Ubuntu (which is an officially supported distribution)
What I Am Up To This Week
But everything is Very, so for now you just get the list.
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