We are essentially done at Mom’s flat. I didn’t have a lot to do today, but am still tired. We will decide tomorrow what if anything we want to do.
Leaving for Boston Monday afternoon.
We had Chinese food delivered tonight, and it was basic good Cantonese food. They included a small bag of those weird shrimp chips, which I turned out to be in the mood for.
Honestly Royal Shivadh would be thrilled to partner with Cardiff on a "Semester Shivadh" program :D Especially since, look, Wales is delightful but for a significant portion of the year it's also cold and damp, whereas if you do a winter term in Fons-Askaz, you barely need to pack a jacket.
Cardiff is an extremely good school and RSU is still kind of a scrappy small thing, so I would imagine it indeed would be a bit "Yes I'm taking my BSc in Astrophysics, but they don't offer much in the way of that, so I'm going to take some glassblowing classes and build my own telescope."
(I almost went to Cardiff for Journalism, which is a long story; I got in, but I couldn't get the funding.)
Having students from other schools do a semester at RSU means good relationships to other schools, and maybe even "semester alumni" who give when it's fundraising time. And high-achieving students who find themselves attracted to the Shivadh attitude of irreverence and sexual liberation may return after graduating, especially since the Ask has a very friendly immigration policy.
I think an exchange program with Santa Cruz might be a bit more difficult to arrange given the distances involved, but Gregory is certainly not averse to visiting Noah and the in-laws and stopping by the University of California president's office while he's there.
Funniest thing would be if RSU started sending guest lecturers to California. Like, say, some old guy with a history podcast who's willing to do an eight-week residency at UCSC teaching a special politics-and-diplomacy workshop for deserving upperclassmen...
It’s a beautiful morning to hate running! See y'all in 5K.
ALT
Finished it and didn’t die! Not my best time ever, but I’ll take what I got. The Chinatown 5K is one of the most fun of all the summer runs in Chicago, they do the best medals, and I’m so glad they’re back after a five year hiatus with a cool new route. And you can now register and take a Best Time as nonbinary which is ultra cool. A grand Saturday morning out, and now I’m gonna collapse for several hours.
The history of Romani Americans is missing. Although the experiences of other marginalized and immigrant American groups are now well-represented in mainstream historical scholarship, Romani Americans remain absent from American history. This absence has detrimental effects to Romani Americans who are placed outside historical time. It also harms scholars whose work could benefit from the placement of Romani people in the histories they tell.
In the early hours of 20 May 1852, six weeks before polling in that summer’s general election, two MPs travelled from London to woodland outside Weybridge in a bid to settle a quarrel provoked by the unravelling of electioneering arrangements in the double-member constituency of Canterbury. Frederick Romilly, the borough’s sitting Liberal MP, had issued a challenge to his Canterbury colleague George Smythe, whose political allegiances fluctuated and who had notoriously been embroiled in four previous prospective duels. The pair, accompanied by their seconds, who were also politicians, exchanged shots before departing unscathed. None of the participants faced prosecution but neither Smythe nor Romilly was re-elected.
A challenge to a duel was in fact by this time a common-law misdemeanour, and killing one's opponent counted as murder, though apparently there were few prosecutions in either case. It is perhaps disillusioning to the readers of romantic fiction to discover that politics seems to have figured so heavily as the casus belli.
Sylvanian Families has become embroiled in a legal battle with a TikTok creator who makes comedic videos of the children's toys in dark and debauched storylines. The fluffy creatures, launched in 1985, have become a childhood classic. But the Sylvanian Drama TikTok account sees them acting out adult sketches involving drink, drugs, cheating, violence and even murder.
"I liked the clothing, how they dressed, and the style," Lincoln explained. "Just the elegance of how everyone was and acted... with the time of the war, everyone had to come together, everyone had to fight, and everyone had to survive together. "Most people back then said it was scary, but it was quite fun to live then, and they could go out, help each other and apparently there's not that much stuff today that is similar to what that wartime experience was." Lincoln said he loved the music of the time, including Henry Hall, Jack Payne and Ambrose & His Orchestra. The teenager's wardrobe was also entirely made up of clothes from the era, which he said he preferred to modern-day clothes. He even cycles on a 1939 bike when out and about researching and finding items for his collection.
We wish to know whether he gets woken up by a siren in the middle of the night to go and huddle in the nearest air-raid shelter. Singing 'Roll out the Barrel'.
Four works new to me. three novels, one TTRPG supplement. Two appear to be fantasy, one SF, and one is a mystery (by an author famous for their fantasy). Two appear to be stand-alone and two are series.
The Bloody and the Damned by Becca Coffindaffer (April 2026) 12 (30.8%)
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay: Sea Wardens of Cothique by Dave Allen, Dominic McDowall, Michael Duxbury, Jude Hornborg, Naomi Hunter, Steven Lewis, Simon Wileman, et al (4th Quarter, 2025) 1 (2.6%)
Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur by Ian McDonald (February 2026) 18 (46.2%)
Enola Holmes and the Clanging Coffin by Nancy Springer (February 2026) 11 (28.2%)
We expected to finish going through Mom's papers, photos, etc. yesterday, but despite me and \mark both pushing hard, we realized in the late afternoon that we were both badly worn out, so we stopped. He left, and I got Adrian and Cattitude to tale care of me. I was worn out both mentally and physically; Adrian pointed out that \I hade worked steadily for longer that the previous couple of days. Mark will coming back to the flat a bit, but we did not set an alarm, because I needed the rest.
We reached a point yesterday that I could be satisfied just packing everyting the three f us have decided to take--photos, the gorgeous candlesticks Mom left to Adrian (officially tp me, but she had discussed them with Acrian), and a few other s,mall mementoes, but there's a stack of paper that Mark wants to take a second look at: he was lookinmg both for financial paperwork as well as photos and other mementoes. It felt like it might be 45 minutes more work today, but could take tjhree times as long if we had tried to push through last night.
I told Andy and Adrian to go out and play yesterday, so they spent the afternoon at Kew Gardens. It is raining steadily now, and foercast to do so for several hours. I#m thinking I want to do not much today, just finish the tasks here, and maybe go out and do something interesting tomorrow, before leaving for Boston on Monday.
I am very glad we saw liv on Tuesday, when we were still feeling energetic.
Boss: "So, what did you do this weekend?"
Me: "Well, my wife and I have a long-haired Siamese cat, and it was my turn to give it a bath."
Boss: "How did that go?"
Me: "Not too bad, but I just hate the way the fur sticks to my tongue."