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veridical.bsky.social
Jane
@veridical.bsky.social
38 followers 47 following 900 posts
inheritance mysteries
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veridical.bsky.social
Best case scenario for me personally
Ike Howard scores against the Wranglers: the puck has been elevated over the goalie’s shoulder as it enters the net
November 19, 2025 at 6:22 PM
veridical.bsky.social
great news, you can see his weird mascot sneakers in this photo from Pride 🌈
Hunter the Lynx making a strong man gesture in front of a rainbow heart statue at Edmonton Pride 2025. He is wearing a curly rainbow wig, a vest with patches, breezers, and puffy blue and orange sneakers (these are not framed in the image very well)
October 17, 2025 at 12:33 AM
veridical.bsky.social
This edition is positively weird with the emphasis but I think Henry James might be embracing the genre (“They” came out 1904, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary same year)
Henry James, Turn of the Screw: I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?" She looked blank, but she colored. "Why, of HIM." "Of the master?" "Of who else?" There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know. "Did SHE see anything in the boy—?"
October 16, 2025 at 5:33 PM
veridical.bsky.social
“She thought so much about herself that it was important to have the thoughts comfortable, and many desolate hours had been made more bearable by gazing at her own reflection.” What’s a normal amount of human frailty to observe before lunch, Elizabeth
Elizabeth Taylor, The Benefactress: All the unspoken words had hurt her and those spoken ones of Eric's, too. She had such a different picture of herself from the one other people seemed to see, and she was frightened and astounded by glimpses of how she appeared to them, for they perceived traits she was sure she had never possessed—or only under the most serious provocation. She thought so much about herself that it was important to have the thoughts comfortable, and many desolate hours had been made more bearable by gazing at her own reflection. Warm-hearted, impulsive, she was sure she was herself hardly considered, and then always last, as she bustled about the country-side doing good. "No one knows what people in this
October 3, 2025 at 4:31 PM
veridical.bsky.social
The Canucks understand this.
Iain MacIntyre, also on Sportsnet, in a different article: “That all three defencemen are waiver-exempt is a huge advantage for the organization, and Allvin said Sunday there could be a "rotation" of them cycling between the NHL and AHL this season if no one player cements a roster spot with the Canucks.”
September 30, 2025 at 12:28 AM
veridical.bsky.social
This is the opposite of a solution: Holloway and Broberg (in particular) would have benefited from playing more minutes and would have perhaps felt that the org wanted them to succeed instead of playing hardball
Mark Spector, continuing to misdiagnose our problems: “Since the dereliction of duty that was the offer sheet loss of Dylan Holloway and Philip Broberg, the Oilers have a keen knowledge of the value of young, inexpensive talent.”
September 30, 2025 at 12:26 AM
veridical.bsky.social
I do not think that anyone seriously thinks that Ike Howard’s problem is confidence. That’s not true
Mark Spector saying some nonsense about development on SportsNet: “The ideal development model, he said, sees the player get only one call-up to the National Hockey League. That means, if you keep a kid like Howard - a 21-year-old turning professional this fall - you keep him knowing that he is developed enough that his first two months in the NHL will make him better, not bury him confidence-wise.”
September 30, 2025 at 12:23 AM
veridical.bsky.social
Fall was not much in evidence up at the lake; a pretty nice time tho
A grey sky hanging over mostly-green trees on the distant lakeshore and a grey-blue lake with ripples and lily pads in the midground. A sumac tree that has started to turn red for fall is in the foreground. A prominent dock jutting into a windy lake under a cloudy sky where the light makes the trees look menacing
September 22, 2025 at 1:41 PM
veridical.bsky.social
I read “They Thought They Were Free” which both the author and Richard J Evans swear is true, and yet some of the details are too perfect.
It was 8:45 or so when they got there. The fire had almost burned itself out, but the smoke still came through the half-fallen dome of the building. The fire trucks, one on the Mauerweg, one up above on Hitler-Strasse, were no longer pumping. It was drizzling. "The synagogue," said Pfeffermann, shaking his head. Hildebrandt, blushing, said nothing. The American, Henderson, a buoyant young man who was studying (not very hard) at Kronenberg University and, through Pfeffermann, had met Hildebrandt before, came over to them; he said good morning without shaking hands (American fashion), and asked, in German, "Was ist los, Herr Studienrat?" Hildebrandt shook his head, without answering. He felt himself blushing and, feeling himself blushing, blushed worse. As he entered his classroom, the class interrupted its writing to stand until he had said good morning and sat down at his desk. He opened his briefcase and took out Crime and Punishment, in French, with a plain wrapping-paper cover over the binding, to read while the class continued their examination.
September 7, 2025 at 4:43 PM
veridical.bsky.social
This was so lighthearted it felt a little like a dating profile at times (Moonshot, Smith)
"Two Klutzes on the Moon." Young and Duke worked harder than anyone else to get there and once they did, their joy was tangible. Certainly, a change seemed to come over Young. He was like a different person. So here's the mystery of John Young. His Gemini 10 partner, Michael Collins, pegs him as "the most uncommunicative" of the astronauts he flew with, saying, "I don't have any idea what flying in space has meant, or will mean, to him" (and lest we for-get, Collins flew with Neil Armstrong). At the same time, Apollo 16 Command Module pilot Ken Mattingly described him as one of the best-read people he'd ever met, while the geologists will to stand around chatting with no minidisc to mock him, until he is called to face a scrum of photographers and reporters. Then he nods bashfully, blinks away the camera flash, says hardly anything at all. And I think that maybe the Apollo-nut fascination with him stems from the fact that neither they, nor I, nor anyone else, has ever really known what he felt about anything-save for three days out of his life which he spent on the Moon, during which no one could have been in any doubt about what he was feeling, because he was just so full of joy. And for all the
September 3, 2025 at 1:08 PM
veridical.bsky.social
reading up (How Much Grammar Does it Take to Sail a Boat, David Gil)
motivated, the fact remains that language is hugely dysfunctional. Just think of all the things that it would be wonderful to be able to say but for which no language comes remotely near to providing the necessary expressive tools. For example, it would be very useful to be able to describe the face of a strange person in such a way that the hearer would be able to pick out that person in a crowd or a police line-up. But language is completely helpless for this task, as evidenced by the various stratagems police have developed, involving skilled artists or, more recently, graphic computer programs, to elicit identifying facial information from witnesses - in this case a picture actually being worth much more than the proverbial thousand words. Yet paradoxically, alongside
August 17, 2025 at 11:08 PM
veridical.bsky.social
And despite this substantial hint there’s a pretty good mystery here
ECR Lorac, Murder in the Thatch: He knew the sound of Colonel St Cyres' big Austin and of Anne St Cyres' small Morris: he could tell Mr. Gressingham's Daimler and Mr. Hesling's Ford, he could even tell whether the tractor which passed the cottage was the tractor from Hinton Mallory or that from Ridd's Farm. Furthermore, Alf was an expert on Klaxons, horns, and hooters. He could hear any motor horn sounded at the road-bend half a mile away, and Alf, like many small boys, had a precocious memory for subjects which interested him. He gave the Superintendent a full and correct list of every vehicle which had passed Corner Cottage on Saturday, April 30th, plus the approximate time such vehicle had passed. The time of Vaughan's journeyings were fixed very easily. Mrs. Dickon had an old wireless set (given to her by Anne St Cyres) and the old lady tuned in to the news at 6 and 9 o'clock regularly-she had grandsons on most of the battle fronts and liked to hear the news from France and Italy, Burma and the Pacific.
July 6, 2025 at 5:32 PM
veridical.bsky.social
the psychic linkage from the apple after her bath to St Anthony’s vision is a true panorama of art history
P Noon, Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art: “‘Today Madame Potocka has come with her sister the Princess de Beauvau. The nudity of the Femme Impertinante [Marfisa] and that of La Femme qui se peigne [Morning Toilet] has leapt to their eyes. What do you find so attractive there, you artists, you men? [she argued] What here is more interesting than any other object seen in its nudity, in its crudeness, an apple for example?’ One wonders if Cézanne recalled these entries in the published Journal of 1893 prior to undertaking his Standing Nude. Delacroix sold his painting in 1851 to Auguste Vacquerie, a journalist, author and relative of Victor Hugo. He exhibited the painting as Le Lever at the 1851 Salon, thus revealing little as to the actual subject beyond a vague allusion to countless semi-erotic, eighteenth-century boudoir scenes or the more traditional Toilet of Venus theme or, as in Cézanne's fantasies, the Temptation of Saint Anthony. The critics admired the execution…”
June 23, 2025 at 8:12 PM
veridical.bsky.social
what sff needs is more jackets
Emery Robin, The Sea Eternal: Túlio Cachoeiran proved to be a small, square-faced man, with a shaved head that made him look alarmingly like a priest. He was wearing a snow-spotted black overcoat a little too long for him, a pair of thick glasses, and a collection of silver rings. His skin was pale enough that, when he held out his hand to shake, I could see clearly where they had left green marks on his fingers.
June 5, 2025 at 3:07 PM
veridical.bsky.social
I had to miss the book club for it, but Junauda Petrus’s The Stars And the Blackness Between Them threads the YA needle with how being a teenager is not becoming an adult, it’s like being from France.
“Sequan, the singer — QWN Asantewaa — goes by ‘they’ baby," my mama said. But she didn't stop there. "And ooh, that little cutie, QWN is a fine, little tender-roni. I can see why all y'all kids be acting wild behind them," she said, revealing cougar feelings about QWN Asantewaa that nobody was wondering about. "Right, they, not she. My bad." He looked at me in the rear-view mirror, but I don't think he noticed me rolling my eyes. "They used to call 'em butch or stud back in the day. I wasn't trying to be mean, I ain't know. I did enjoy the show, though, I said that. I liked it." I just kept rolling my eyes at his fumbling. Whatever. "There are still butches or studs, but there are they and thems and more too." Mom put her hand on Dad's. "This indigo generation is next level. It took me a while to pick up on it, but I get it better now. I know you wasn't trying to be insensitive, 'Quan, but just be mindful okay, honey? They go by 'them' and 'they." After my mom broke it down in her own way, my dad and I both stayed quiet the rest of the drive.
April 29, 2025 at 9:48 PM
veridical.bsky.social
To Touch the Face of God: Space Age secularism, Mike Collins’ “wry circumspection,” Buzz Aldrin’s psychological motivations.
Sadly, Collins continued, "they wouldn't get them back to have the press conference, in all likelihood, because this trio would probably emote all the way back into the atmosphere and forget to push in the circuit breaker which enabled the parachutes to open."The currency of such perceptions in and around the NASA Astronaut Office may well explain why it took so long for those members of the astronaut corps who conspicuously maintained an interest in matters other than just flying - Bill Anders, Alan Bean, Walt Cunningham, and Rusty Schweickart-to be entrusted with prime crew assignments. So it was that when the Mercury astronauts were first introduced to the press in April 1959 and each was asked whether he held a religious faith that would sustain him through the challenges ahead, most of the seven dutifully identified the denomination to which they belonged. But it was evident from their answers that they did not look to religion for their motivation or for an assurance of success. Scott Carpenter replied that although he had religious faith, "I don't call on it particularly associated with this project." Deke Slayton took the same view: "I don't feel that any particular extra faith is called for in this program over what we normally have." "I think I should like to dwell more on the faith in what we have called the machine age," declared Wally Schirra. "All of us have had faith in mechanical obiects.” It came as a surprise to these men that religion might be thought relevant to their work. As their enthusiastic embrace of the carnal pleasures readily available to an astronaut in the bars and motels of Cocoa Beach indicates, it was not even very influential in their private lives The exception was John Glenn, for whom church, work, and family seemed genuinely to exist in a continuous feld. At that first Mercury press conference, Glenn explained his belief that if a man used his God-given talents properly, if he lived "the kind of life we…” should live," there was "a power greater than any of us" that would place opportunities in his way and ensure that he was "taken care of. ""John tries to behave," commented one of his friends, "as if every impressionable youngster in the country were watching him every moment of the day.” Still, Glenn's religious convictions were not so highly evolved that they explicitly directed his labors toward exploration of the heavens. He joined NASA with an interest in space that was both rather recent in vintage and largely motivated by secular concerns. Not the least of these was the recognition that, having never received a college degree, he was unlikely to advance much further in the military hierarchy, Hence, when NASA came calling, Glenn was most certainly in the market for a change of career. Periodically through the mid-sixties, as Mercury led to Gemini and Gemini led to Apollo, and as its spacecraft expanded to accommodate two men and then three, NASA issued recruitment calls for additional astronauts. The men who entered the astronaut corps as a result of these calls were more diverse than the Mercury Seven in their background, beliefs, and motivations. For the third call, in 1963, the agency dropped the requirement that candidates had to have served as test pilots. Though some of NASA's new recruits still counted flying as their original inspiration, embracing the space program much as they had any other kind of equipment upgrade, they now found themselves in the company of men who variously expressed a fascination specifically with rockets, a commitment to science, and an interest in the ends as well as the means of exploration. By the mid-sixties the astronaut corps, though still hardly representative of the nation as a whole, had certainly become a somewhat broader church. This was evident, appropriately enough, in the religious orientations of its members. In William Anders and Jim McDivitt the corps could now claim two devout Catholics, Frank Borman, Edward … described as a deist. 192 Edgar Mitchell had been raised as a Southern Baptist. but only the barest vestiges of that faith-"some hidden fear of God"-sur-vived by the time he became an astronaut. Kusty Schweickart was not reli-gious, and Walt Cunningham, by his own account, was "at best an agnostic in most people's eyes." And then there was Buzz Aldrin. To scan the surface material of Aldrin's life and career as he entered the space program and eventually took his place on the Apollo 11 crew would probably be to conclude that here was another John Glenn, the model of a dedicated Christian astronaut. Aldrin was an elder of Webster Presbyterian, where Glenn had also worshipped; he taught Sunday school at the church, as did his wife Joan. He donated 130 copies of a condensed version of the Bible, entitled Good News for the Modern Man, to the church in memory of his mother and presented another copy to Guenter Wendt on the Apollo launch pad just prior to his departure for the moon. Aldrin marked his arrival on the moon by serving himself communion, "symbolizing the thought that God was revealing himself there too, as man reached out into the universe. "Finally, in a television transmission as the crew was headed back to earth, Aldrin reflected on the "symbolic aspects" of the Apollo 11 mission and quoted from Psalm 8: "When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?" Something, however, did not quite fit. Unlike Glenn, Aldrin had received an advanced technological education, and there were elements of his personality that conformed more to common typologies of the engineer than to the immaculate incarnation of midcentury Christian masculinity that Glenn had offered to America in the early 1960s. Aldrin immersed himself in the theoretical and technical content of his work and achieved a measure of genuine mastery. But when he sought to engage in bureaucratic politics or to par…
April 20, 2025 at 1:02 PM
veridical.bsky.social
Watch me over-intellectualize my tennis game with this a book from 1977
What it really comes down to is this: if the pain you are suffering in losing to people is greater than the pain of making changes, then you'll try like heck to make the changes. You'll experiment, you'll have an open mind, you'll concentrate, you won't try to avoid your weaknesses as you polish your strengths - and you'll have a much better future in this game than the average person. Believe me, most people tend to stay the same once they …
April 9, 2025 at 10:07 PM
veridical.bsky.social
I read Christianna Brand’s formal puzzle “Death of Jezebel” as a caution against information. Any information at all, really.
"I don't see why you should bother to," said Charlesworth, putting into words the only thought that came into his head. "You may have had a horrid time in between and so you've forgotten it. Why trouble to remember? I should just be happy in the present and the future, get as well as you can, and start all over again..." ("This is something-or-other therapy," he said to himself. "I'm probably doing marvels if I did but know." But once again he wished he was so sure.)
April 7, 2025 at 10:30 PM
veridical.bsky.social
I know we all like to joke that Ben Affleck, in the studio system, would have made dozens of films and we would know nothing of his private life: but consider. Thomas Harris would have written a hundred movies back then.
She drove back to Quantico, back to Behavioral Science with its homey brown-checked curtains and its gray files full of hell. She sat there into the evening, after the last secretary had left, cranking through the Lecter microfilm. The contrary old viewer glowed like a jack-o'-lantern in the darkened room, the words and the negatives of pictures swarming across her intent face.
March 14, 2025 at 2:36 PM
veridical.bsky.social
this book (The Crying Sisters by Mabel Seeley) has some lucid metaphors and then there is this
"You sit there in the end and hold Cottie." The tone was genial. "But God help you if you drop him." Heaven knew I was careful; I held onto Cottie as if he were an eel in buttons.
March 10, 2025 at 6:28 PM
veridical.bsky.social
Hot girl activities (driving)
After that I just abandoned myself to being hot. Cows drooped in pastures, leaves hung as if they'd lost their skeletons, fields faded visibly as the sun scorched out the green. I drove through Minneapolis to Lyndale without even looking at the tall buildings. In the afternoon I was a cooking waffle between two irons, the steely paving and the chromium sky; heat from below pressed up and heat from above pressed down until the juice oozed out of my bones and each eye was a separate furnace.
March 10, 2025 at 6:27 PM
veridical.bsky.social
The main thing war writing is, is also nature writing.
Lt. Eric Ashcroft, 1st Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, 8th Infantry Brigade, 3rd British Division: I remember, when we were in the sand dunes, I was looking down and saw a procession of ants and thought, "Goodness me, they're not affected by the war." These silly thoughts you get.
March 6, 2025 at 3:17 PM
veridical.bsky.social
Incredible scene-setting in this MPR article about a potential state fossil www.mprnews.org/story/2025/0...
Paleontologist Alex Hastings held up a fossilized animal skull and showed it off to a couple of Girl Scouts who passed through Bad Weather Brewing on a cookie sales mission to the taproom's patrons on a sunny weekend day.
February 28, 2025 at 2:55 PM
veridical.bsky.social
Another revealing quote from Where Are Your Boys Tonight follows. I hope Chris Payne corroborated this with DH himself.
ANTHONY GREEN: It took me five or six years of touring to learn that I could go to my agent and say, "Could we not play ten shows in a row?" I was having trouble with my voice. Davey Havok from AFI was the first person who was like, "Dude, you should tell your agent. You shouldn't be singing four nights in a row. The way you're singing, you should have a day off." I was like, "Really? I don't know if I can do that. It's gonna lose money…”
February 27, 2025 at 11:01 PM
veridical.bsky.social
Un Coeur Simple: what if that’s really what it’s all about? This is the first Flaubert I have read and it knocks the doors off in this translation by Charlotte Mandell.
“At church, she would always gaze at the Holy Ghost, and noted that it had something of the parrot about it. Its resemblance seemed even more obvious to her on the brightly colored Épinal lithograph that represented the baptism of Our Lord. With its purple wings and emerald body, it really was the spitting image of Loulou. Having bought it, she hung it up in place of the Comte d'Artois — so that, with one glance, she saw them both together. They became associated in her thoughts, the parrot being sanctified by this relationship to the Holy Ghost, who became more alive and intelligible in her eyes. The Father, to express himself, had not chosen a dove, since those animals have no voice, but rather one of the ancestors of Loulou. And Félicité prayed while looking at the image, but from time to time would turn a little towards the bird.”
February 18, 2025 at 10:37 PM