(1) A Tokyo department store is offering a $91,000 solid gold figure of the alien Baltan, a villainous monster from Japan’s superhero Ultraman TV series. The perfect accessory to go with the 2007 Hugo base, except none of the winners I know can write the check!
(2) Stephen Fabian, among the most gifted illustrators ever, and whose professional career was capped by multiple Hugo nominations and a World Fantasy Life Achievement Award (2006), has put his gallery online. StephenFabian.com contains 500 drawings and paintings that he did for fan and professional publications beginning in 1965. Fabian includes autobiographical comments about each drawing or painting. For example, appended to his notes on the drawing “Born to Exile”:
And the greater wonder of it is, for me, that every once in a while I receive a surprise gift from a fan in appreciation of my artwork. In this case a fan sent me a beautiful copper etching that he made of my drawing that you see here, and that etching hangs on the wall in my drawing room. Other surprise tokens of appreciation that I’ve received from fans are; a miniature spun glass ship, a knitted sweater with an artist’s palette worked into the chest area, a neatly carved wooden figure of a “Running Bear,” that came from a missionary preacher in New Zealand, a fantasy belt buckle, and a miniature paper-mache sculptured “gnome” that keeps watch over me. I cherish them all, they give form and reality to that wonderful feeling of appreciation that comes from the heart.
(3) Enter a selfie by tomorrow for a chance to win a box of “Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms”.
General Mills announced the “unicorn of the cereal world,” Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms, is finally a reality — but there are only 10 boxes.
The cereal maker said the 10 boxes of Marshmallow Only Lucky Charms will be given out as prizes in the “Lucky Charms Lucky Selfie” contest, which calls on participants to post pictures of themselves holding “imaginary boxes of Lucky Charms” on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag, “#Lucky10Sweepstakes.”
Entries must be posted by Oct. 18, the company said.
(4) The Gollancz Festival ‘s “One Star Reviews” features Anna Caltabiano, Simon Morden, Sarah Pinborough, Joanne Harris, Brandon Sanderson, Aliette de Bodard, Richard Morgan, Bradley Beaulieu, and Catriona Ward on camera reading their most savage reviews.
(5) Then, Game of Scones is a Gollancz Cake Off with Jammy Lannister and fantasy authors AK Benedict, Edward Cox and Sarah Pinborough competing for the Iron Scone.
(6) Oneiros wrote:
I dream of the day that I’m libelled quoted by Mike on File770. Of course first I guess I’ll have to start a blog of some description.
I notice there is a lot of competition in the comments for the honor of being Santa Claus, but how many others can fix this up for you? While saving the internet from another blog? Merry Christmas!
(7) Mark Kelly journals about his Jonny Quest rewatch – a show that was a big favorite of mine as a kid.
So: the show is about Jonny Quest, his father Dr. Benton Quest, a world-renowned scientist, Quest’s pilot and bodyguard “Race” Bannon, and their ‘adopted son’ Hadji, an Indian boy who saved Dr. Quest’s life while visiting Calcutta. The episodes involve various investigations by Dr. Quest, who seems to have a new scientific specialty each week (sonic waves one week, lasers another, sea fish another, a rare mineral to support the space program on another) or who is challenged by alerts from old friends (a colleague who is captured by jungle natives) or threats from comic-book character Dr. Zin (via a robot spy, etc.)
(8) Accepting submissions – No Shit, There I Was —
Who We Are: Alliteration Ink is run by Steven Saus (member SFWA/HWA), focusing on anthologies and single-author collections, with over a dozen titles across two imprints.
Rachael Acks is a writer, geologist, and sharp-dressed sir. In addition to her steampunk novella series, she’s had short stories in Strange Horizons, Waylines, Daily Science Fiction, Penumbra, and more. She’s an active member of SFWA, the Northern Colorado Writer’s Workshop, and Codex.
Who: This will be an open call. All who read and follow the submission guidelines are welcome in the slush pile.
When: Rachael wants stories no later than 6 Jan 2016. No exceptions will be made. The Kickstarter will occur after the table of contents has been set.
What We Want From You:
Stories 2,000-7,500 words long. Query for anything shorter or longer.
All stories must begin with the line, No shit, there I was. It can be dialog or part of the regular prose.
(9) Childhood’s End starts December 14 on SyFy with a three-night event. Stars Charles Dance, recently of Game of Thrones.
John King Tarpinian says, “Hope they do not screw this up.”
I’m not completely reassured, because when I checked the SyFy Youtube channel today, this was the first video they were hyping —
(10) Today in History:
October 17, 1933: Physicist Albert Einstein arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from Nazi Germany.
(11) Congratulations to frequent commenter Laura “Tegan” Gjovaag on her award-winning photo in the Better Newspaper Contest sponsored by the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.
DSN reporter Laura Gjovaag came away with the Sunnyside newspaper’s only first-place award. She won the top award in the black and white sports photo action, or feature, category. The photo of Lady Knight softball player Jenna den Hoed appeared in the May 20, 2014 issue, and beat out all entries in the category submitted by all four circulation groups.
(12) Ultimately, Sarah A. Hoyt’s “Magical Thought” is about a particular anti-gun protest in Texas involving dildos, but on the way to that topic she writes —
The problem is that more and more — and unexpectedly — I run up against this type of thought in places I don’t expect.
We ran into it a lot over the puppy stuff. No matter how many times we told them we were in it for the stories, and because our story taste was different from theirs, they kept thinking magically. It went something like this “We’re good people, and we’re for minorities. So if these people don’t like the same stories we do, they must be racist and sexist.”
This was part of the nonsense that started Gallo’s flareup. She had some idea we’d get all upset at TOR publishing Kameron Hurley’s book. Because you know, we have different tastes than those primarily on the left who controlled the Hugos so long, so we don’t want them to … get published?
This only makes sense if the person saying it is inhabiting a magical world, where objects/people of certain valences are played against each other like some kind of card game.
This is not real. I mean sad puppy supporters might not — or might, I won’t because it’s not to my taste, but — read Hurley’s book, but we won’t recoil from it like a vampire from a cross. A Hurley book doesn’t magically cancel out a Torgersen book. Or vice versa.
On the good side, at least on that level, our side doesn’t act like that. We don’t say “ooh” at a new Ringo book because “Oooh, that will upset those liberals” we say “oooh,” because we’ll get to read it. Books are books and people are people, not points in some bizarre game.
(13) Umair Haque says he can explain “Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It)”.
Here’s my tiny theory, in a word. Abuse. And further, I’m going to suggest in this short essay that abuse?—?not making money?—?is the great problem tech and media have. The problem of abuse is the greatest challenge the web faces today. It is greater than censorship, regulation, or (ugh) monetization. It is a problem of staggering magnitude and epic scale, and worse still, it is expensive: it is a problem that can’t be fixed with the cheap, simple fixes beloved by tech: patching up code, pushing out updates.
To explain, let me be clear what I mean by abuse. I don’t just mean the obvious: violent threats. I also mean the endless bickering, the predictable snark, the general atmosphere of little violences that permeate the social web…and the fact that the average person can’t do anything about it.
We once glorified Twitter as a great global town square, a shining agora where everyone could come together to converse. But I’ve never been to a town square where people can shove, push, taunt, bully, shout, harass, threaten, stalk, creep, and mob you…for eavesdropping on a conversation that they weren’t a part of…to alleviate their own existential rage…at their shattered dreams…and you can’t even call a cop. What does that particular social phenomenon sound like to you? Twitter could have been a town square. But now it’s more like a drunken, heaving mosh pit. And while there are people who love to dive into mosh pits, they’re probably not the audience you want to try to build a billion dollar publicly listed company that changes the world upon.
(14) “3+1” — A funny claymation short by Soline Fauconnier, Marie de Lapparent, and Alexandre Cluchet.
(15) “(Give Me That) Old-Time Socialist Utopia: How the Strugatsky brothers’ science fiction went from utopian to dystopian” by Ezra Glinter at The Paris Review.
Since they started writing in the mid-1950s, the brothers published at least twenty-six novels, in addition to stories, plays and a few works written individually. According to a 1967 poll, four of the top ten works of science fiction in the Soviet Union were by the Strugatskys, including Hard to Be a God in first place and Monday Begins on Saturday (1965) in second. For at least three decades they were the most popular science-fiction writers in Russia, and the most influential Russian science-fiction writers in the world.
Their popularity wasn’t without political implications, however. Later in their lives, the Strugatskys were characterized as dissidents—sly underminers of the Soviet regime. In its obituary for Boris, who died in 2012 (Arkady died in 1991), the New York Times called him a “prolific writer who used the genre of science fiction to voice criticisms of Soviet life that would have been unthinkable in other literary forms.” This is mostly true—their work did become critical and subversive over time. But at the beginning of their career, the Strugatsky brothers were the best socialist utopians in the game.
(16) Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom discovered the 1963 LASFS Lovecraft panel:
Briefly, and in October it’s almost mandatory, particularly for a lifelong horrorist such as myself, to deal with something eldritch, but I’ve finally read the August Derleth-annotated transcript of a symposium recorded on 24 October 1963 at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, a discussion of Lovecraft and his influence featuring a panel including Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, writer Arthur Jean Cox, Sam Russell, and Riverside Quarterly editor Leland Sapiro, along with some comments and questions from the audience. Given that Bloch and Leiber were both helped and influenced by Lovecraft early in their careers and were the two most important exemplars of how to take his model for approaching the matter of horror fiction and improving upon it, it’s useful, if not as comprehensive here as one could hope, to see how they thought about that influence and their respective takes on Lovecraft’s work and legacy. Bloch unsurprisingly seems most taken by the interior aspects of what Lovecraft was getting at in his best work, the questions of identity and madness and usurpation from within; Leiber, also not too surprisingly, is at least as engaged by the larger implications, philosophically and otherwise, of humanity’s not terribly secure foothold in Lovecraft’s universe. The notion that such non-fans of Lovecraft as Avram Davidson and Edmund Wilson had more in common with him than their experience of his work led them to believe is briefly if amusingly explored. Not as significant as some of Leiber and Bloch’s other considerations of Lovecraft, but useful to read, and one’s suspicions of what August Derleth made of what he was transcribing and annotating, particularly when it touches on his own involvement with Lovecraft’s body of work, are mildly telling.
Click the link for a copy of the symposium transcript [PDF, 24 MB file]
(17) Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur is due in theaters November 25.
(18) If you click through the newly released archive of Apollo photos quickly enough you get something like stop motion animation.
[Thanks to Will R., Andrew Porter, Harry Bell, Karl Lembke, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peace Is My Middle Name.]
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Calling jam and conserves ‘jelly’ is weird and wrong and I’m judging all of you. 😉
Meredith:
Note to self: no quinces for Meredith. 😉
I like to think those are all different things: jelly is clear and, well, gelatinous (pectinous, really), like that yucky grape stuff some Americans like to ruin peanut butter with. Jam is more puree-ish, preserves or conserves are things preserved or conserved in syrup or jelly. I call Jello or jelly gelatin. I realize this is an idiolect of one, but it works for me.
I call Jello or jelly gelatin.
@bloodstone75 —
I’m not at all trying to argue Hoyt particularly, or the sad rabid generally, have a valuable or factual point of view. I’m trying to argue that the urge to label them bad is itself unhelpful, feeding into habits of categorization that aren’t well represented in the material world.
What benefit do you get from saying “bad person”, or defining just how much of a waste of carbon someone is? “Word-fame dies not for one who well achieves it” works even if you’re being the bad example, which seems contrary to the general local desire regarding the sad rabid.
A general view from compassion would note that people who have managed to misfold their reality map so badly that to exist causes them grief aren’t a good outcome. A general view from history would indicate very strongly indeed that being certain and being correct have nothing to do with each other, irrespective of the certainty.
So whence the urge to re-iterate that the angry word salad indicates a bad person?
McJulie — quite all right!
I failed a Turing test once; the people running the test had said to “answer really literally”, so I did. I’ve failed a few informal ones since, too.
@Susana S.P. —
Can I interest you in the concept of stropping one’s knives the instant they start to seem the least bit dulled?
But, of course, at the risk of the phatic working not in the affirmation of good practice, but in service of a negative, or worse, of defining others as less properly human, rather than just wrong in the instance(s). It’s the piling up of (s) that works against goodwill.
Well, yes, of course. I’m not expecting anyone to have an outbreak of liking the sad rabids; I think I’m asking why you care enough about them to waste the stomach lining. (Or, at least, the converse of “what’s the benefit of the bad label?” might be asking why they’re worth the stomach lining.) Someone who vehemently disdains facts may be a problem but doesn’t present much in the way of conversational prospects.
But your closing “is not a solution” makes me wonder, because I’m hopeful like that, do you actually see one?
In the full general society-as-a-whole case? No. In the social case? It’s possible in principle, but it takes preferring publicly acknowledging error to maintaining a false argument and a willingness to insist on argument from facts. (Those things independent of anyone’s noggin.) It’s not easy to maintain but it can happen.
@Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little —
Speaking of single malt scotch, peaty or otherwise, hubby and I just discovered something called Kilkerran which is … weird.
There’s a blend — and I am not normally much for blends — that’s bottled as “Té Bheag”, which is, due to the wonders of Gaelic orthography, pronounced “Chey Vek”. It’s unfiltered, and really good value for money. (That is, it’s much better than 40 CAD/bottle scotch is expected to be. And it’s a blend, so one can cook with it without sin.)
At the other end of the scale, there’s Highland Park’s Thor, which is unspeakably expensive and nonetheless sufficiently glorious.
That Glowforge link cost me a lot of the morning. Best toy, indeed!
I’m trying to decide whether to sit jealously by for a year or two to permit the bugs to be worked out, or whether the budget will stretch to being a beta tester.
Eeerg. That’s a lot of books.
Graydon:
I’ve been using a honing steel, whenever my impatience allows. Would a leather strop be better, or should I just stop and hone more often. I used to use the amolador [*], but, no matter how much I love the sound of their whistle (so much that I keep some useless knives around just to keep them around), I realized their usual methods would eventually lead to no knife (pretty sparks, though).
!!
I’m not that hopeful, quite, or convinced that you really are a kind swarm AI (which is how I read RedWombat’s description at first, and I like it). You’re right about the stomach lining though.
[*] knife man, as seen here:
@Graydon:
How will that information help you? If you give us more idea of how you are hoping to learn and grow here, maybe people can pitch their answers more usefully.
@Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little —
Was interested in this so looked it up. Looks like they’re a new distillery set up in Campbeltown on the site of the Glengyle Distillery which closed in 1925. They started production in the early 2000’s so the spirit will mostly still be maturing, and they’ve been bottling and releasing small batches as they go.
Also up here jelly (pronounced jeelie) is also what we would call a jam that has been strained of pips etc before setting. Bramble in particular. hence the song from Glasgow after the tenements were replaced with tower blocks:
Chorus:
Oh ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty storey flat,
Seven hundred hungry weans’ll testify, to that.
If it’s butter, cheese or jeely, if the breid be plain or pan,
The odds against it reaching earth are ninety-nine tae wan.
@Graydon:
I don’t recall anyone labeling Hoyt “bad”, although it is possible I missed it; “bad” is a little vague for my tastes — it might be applied, but it requires further embroidery. I mean, are we talking “steals the neighborhood pets” bad, or “kind of a bore you don’t want to get stuck next to at a dinner party” bad? Come to think of it, “repeatedly finds illogical ways to insult other SF/F fans because they have different political and social beliefs, and leads organized hate-mongering against same, due to apparent persecution complex” bad might apply.
How many times does someone have to kick you in the shin before you move your leg when you see them coming? When does repeated bad behavior make you anticipate future bad behavior, thus, perhaps, equating the individual with that behavior thanks to their own actions?
If “bad” is bad (my personal line might be closer to “human garbage”, but we are all individuals), I can certainly get behind “illogical”, “pointless”, “blinkered”, “underinformed”, “prone to ranting about things that make no sense”, and “ideologically hidebound”.
Why speak up at all? Easy does it, Hamlet. We are unfortunately discussing someone who has (only until year after next, we hope) the capacity to skew the Hugo nominations in a manner similar to the way in which they were skewed this year — straight into the sewer (assuming VD doesn’t just run roughshod over the Sads — again). Aye, there’s the rub.
@Susana S.P. —
I’ve been using a honing steel, whenever my impatience allows. Would a leather strop be better, or should I just stop and hone more often.
Ok. Cutting edges, of which knives are a special case, have fineness and keenness.
Keenness is the angle that forms the edge; it’s generally-but-not-always less steep than the overall taper of the blade. (in part so you can have to edge strength even in a tightly tapered blade.) Fineness is how smooth the actual edge — the line where the sides forming the angle that defines keenness meet — is. (It’s also why people haul out x10 hand lenses to look at knife edges; if the steel can’t hold a fine edge it shows.)
In former days, sharpening steels — that cross between a file and a swage — were a good idea because they were being used on dubious, or at least highly erratic, carbon steels that couldn’t hold an edge in use anyway; that you were taking lots of metal off and producing an edge that wasn’t particularly fine at all didn’t matter. (Actually helps, because you get a regular pattern that way and some “tooth”, in the same way doing your kitchen knives on thousand grit water stones gives you a degree of tooth that’s suitable for a ripe tomato.)
The modern high carbon stainless steel knife is a miracle of metallurgy; you probably couldn’t have got a production run of the things in 1980 for all the money. Such a knife will take an extremely fine edge and hold it. So a backed leather strop with honing compound (there’s at least one excellent chromium dioxide (and thus green) one out there with sub-micron grit) gives you that very fine edge, removes the minimum necessary metal, and — if you maintain a “strop before every use, strop any time it feels dull” habit — means you never need to actually sharpen your knives. (It’s hard to improve a knife by actual sharpening. There’s always a risk to the geometry of the edge, and if you’re using a powered grinding wheel there’s a risk to the temper, too.)
Plus dragging the edge down the leather strop means the leather curls back up as the edge passes, which gives a sort of ogive edge shape which is a great compromise between fineness and strength. (This is where the leather-strop-and-compound is superior to the modern ceramic hone, which can leave a very fine edge indeed but which lacks the resiliency of the leather.)
So, yes, I’d say a leather strop with the compound is better (without the compound it takes much too long) than a knife steel. Different motion, though.
It takes three passes a side before each use to keep the edge maintained; given a decent standard of knife (I’m partial to Grohmann) you get an edge sufficiently fine that doesn’t need tooth to handle that ripe tomato.
@Jim Henley —
You know how difficult to understand I seem to you? It’s very likely reflexive; that’s how difficult I find it to understand you.
So I’m just plain honest baffled by the willingness to expend so much social effort on the sad rabids. (As distinct from political effort like the EPH proposal.) I can’t see what the benefit is.
@Graydon:
Okay, you either want to get un-baffled, or you want to cling to bafflement. You should decide, then act accordingly. If it’s the former, then asking questions and making an effort to absorb the answers is the most productive use of your own time, and you should even find people willing to make the effort to inform you, since your curiosity is genuine. If it’s the latter, then you should simply say, “Man, you people baffle me,” and stop wasting people’s time with faux inquiries. Because faux inquiries are time-wasting bullshit.
It is a number of factors:
1. while File770 is a venerable and there are commentators here who predate Puppy antics, much of the current community became regular commentator here because of the Puppy conflict. It is a shared experience.
2. The Puppy actions were actions that impacted on things that people liked. So the views of notable Puppies are of interest because of what actions they may take in the future.
3. Odd ideas are themselves interesting.
4. People like to talk about people.
@Graydon
I’ve been thinking about this. I can only speak for myself, but the social effort is largely invested in this group and this community – which I value highly – and the Puppies are only one of the subjects which I discuss with the people here.
More directly, it is sometimes helpful to get reminders that yes, the Puppies really do think those things, and no they don’t usually challenge the truly outlandish and disturbing opinions amongst themselves or their supporters (e.g. Women being responsible for everything bad in USAmerican society). Given time and a lack of exposure, it would be tempting to think they can’t really have said things that were quite that bad, because such unpleasantness is soothing to rationalise away.
Its also helpful to keep an eye on people who have in the past and plan to continue to wreak havok on a much-loved institution. I want warning for whatever they try to do next. This years short-list came as a shock and I’d rather not repeat that.
But essentially, my social energy isn’t invested in the Puppies. Its invested in File770.
@Graydon
After 2016 they will be off my radar.
But at this point I am watching them in much the same way I would watch for a venomous spider in the house.
If I can’t get rid of it, I certainly want to know where it is and what it doing.
If we can set it up so that the spider can’t sting, or the puppies can’t slate, I won’t care so much about them.
@Susana S.P.
That preserve sounds delicious. Do you have a link to a recipie or is it just something you know how to do?
See, not a word of the puppies.
Anthony on October 18, 2015 at 5:19 am said:
And they are all of them, every one, worth every single penny. Wonderful books.
@Susana S.P.
Jelly to me is the wobbly stuff that you set in a mould and is often served at children’s parties. I had some very weird images of American food before I found out that the word was used differently! Not quite as weird as wondering why no-one was wearing anything on their bottom halves when wearing jumpers, but still. 😉
(looks around)
(ticks box)
(scurries off)
(for sufficiently klutzy values of “scurry”)
Graydon on October 19, 2015 at 9:34 am said:
Okay, that really made me laugh.
A buddy–Badger, Graydon, you know him, I think? Looks like Rasputin?–got me a machete for my birthday, and he had to re-sharpen the thing because the manufacturer didn’t put a decent edge on it.
I’m honestly more concerned about my shovels, though. Apparently I am supposed to be sharpening the damn things, and that seems like a helluva lot of time spent with a file.
@RedWombat —
The good thing about sharpening shovels is kinda like the good thing about sharpening rotary lawnmowers; the fineness of the edge is not much of an issue. (“formed, but not honed”)
As a hand tool, you want a proper mill bastard file with a single cut one side and a double cut the other side. (“bastard” is how coarse it is, which turns out to be “middlin'”). Axe files tend to be about 8″ long including handle; for a shovel I’d want a 12″ mill file and put a handle on it. (One can then put a hand on the back of the front of the file and get some serious even pressure on the edge being filed.) Really coarse — under 100 grit — diamond stones do a good job, too, and don’t rust, which might be of interest where you live.
Power tools, almost anything would work. I’ve seen someone freehand shovel edges with an angle grinder, but you’re not someone to whom I would recommend this practice. (Clamp the shovel in something, at the very least.)
The file version only takes a couple minutes and can be highly meditative.
(Badger is, I think, more “know of” than “know”.)
@everybody —
Thanks for all the answers about the nature of the social effort arising from the sad rabids.
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@Doire:
It’s just something I do, and my ability to describe it doesn’t actually include quantities, because I (inconveniently, for someone who loves baking) hate quantities and tend to dispense with them as soon as familiarity allows. I just called my mother (who I got the “recipe” from), but it seems I also got the non-quantifying habit from her.
So, hoping it’s still helpful anyway:
You peel and core some quinces, and set the peels and cores to boil in water (enough so they’re not crowded, not so much that they’re lonely; I want to say a liter for every kilo of quinces, but I’m not sure where I’m getting that from).
Then you cut the quinces into something like 1 cm cubes, keeping both the quinces and the cut cubes in water, so they down go brown. Take breaks, quinces are rock-hard and anyway, the peels and cores will take a while.
Simmer the peels until you can see the pectin gelling up around the seeds, then cool, and strain, squeezing, through a cloth (I like old cotton sheets for this, you don’t want any pulp coming through, but you do want that pectin).
Put the resulting liquid back in the pot, along with your cubes (but drain those first), one or two sticks of cinnamon and sugar. I don’t know how much, less than the trad. rate of 1:1 weight of sugar and fruit, but more than half. Simmer, stirring only a little, and occasionally removing any foam from the top, until the the spoon test says it’s ready.
Pour into clean jars, and try hard not to eat one per sitting. Wait, that last bit was just for me;)
@Susana S.P.
I was just starting the first batch of quince jelly last night.
(Unlikely, but if anyone else is within cycling distance of York, England and wants some quince then please find some way to message me. I’ve still got about 50 more than I’ll use in the kitchen.)
@Meredith:
Jelly/jello/gelatin molds are pretty weird even once you’ve correctly identified the substance, though.
Because I got English (like getting religion) in America, I have the perpetual problem of saying pants without thinking.
@Graydon:
Thank you! That was not just helpful. I’ll find a strop and compound (and a place for them, which, aargh, my kitchen is a couple of square meters), and try to build that habit. It really has to be habitual, or I will never do it, because cooking has to be improv, apparently.
@Camestros:
Wonderfully succinct list there. And your number 1, yes! In fact, this place is something I have to thank the skunks for. Well, and also Mike, but I don’t feel in anyway conflicted about that part.
NickPheas:
You have a quince tree? I’m insanely jealous, they’re really gorgeous.
I haven’t had a surplus of quinces in a long while, but when I did, I roasted them slowly in the oven, then froze the resulting pulp in baggies to use in quince sorbet, which is delicious and beautiful.
Because I don’t think I’d ever typed the word quince this many times in a row, I feel the need to tell you all that, here, they are marmelos, and that the fairly solid paste/jam made from quinces, marmelada, is whence you Brits got the name for the (much yummier) citrus marmalade.
Paddington bear’s hat sandwich made much more sense once I’d met the citrus variety.
Susana S.P.
As far as I can tell I have the most abundant quince tree in York. A Meeches Prolific, in place for about 18 years and it requires next to no attention. I probably got about 200-250 fruit off it this year.
I’ve made quite a lot of quince sorbet from juice (1 pint juice, a bit of honey, 6 oz sugar) but not tried roasting and pulping. May have to give that a try. May have to get my ice cream maker back from the friend I lent it to…
Camestros Felapton: It is a number of factors:
1. while File770 is a venerable and there are commentators here who predate Puppy antics, much of the current community became regular commentator here because of the Puppy conflict. It is a shared experience.
2. The Puppy actions were actions that impacted on things that people liked. So the views of notable Puppies are of interest because of what actions they may take in the future.
3. Odd ideas are themselves interesting.
4. People like to talk about people.
Yes, File770 offers catharsis. SFF fans who are upset by the violation of the Hugo spirit and ethics, and the crap they were forced to read, can get support and validation here, get it out of their system, and keep it from invading the rest of their lives.
Also, it’s just so freaking cool to be participating in a community where everyone shares their book loves and hates (and actually gives detailed, rational reasons for doing so, other than “SJWs!” “Cabals!” “make the heads of people I don’t like asplode!”), and their fandom experiences, and their perspectives on…well, on just about anything. I’m pretty much one of the Lucky 10,000 every single day here.
This place is the closest thing I’ve ever found to a con, without the hotel bills. (Also, unfortunately, without the party suites — Mike, you’ve got to work on that…)
Thank you so much Susana S.P.
I had a look online but mostly found quince paste in jelly. Your description is more than enough to try to make some; I love making preserves, and Christmas is coming.
So I shall be down the garden to see how the quince is bearing up and hoping the fruit is still good. I seem to have lost 3 weeks to a chest infection and as I’m further south than NickPheas they may be a little past their best.
Please feel free to just call me Susana. (I’m thinking I should just remove the S.P., it’s not like there’s a surfeit of Susanas around, and I’d rather just be tutu’ed.)
Doire, I’m further south than either of you, and the quinces are still good. I hope you’re feeling better.
Nick, the thought of juicing quinces had never occurred to me. I’m trying not to think about it too loudly, because my tiny juicer might just give up and die at the suggestion. Are you bletting them first?
Between the two of you, I’m seriously considering replacing the persnickety reluctant greengage that lives in my (much too) distant yard with a quince. It’s not a very attractive tree.
Also, “200-250 quinces” is what I’ll be admonishing myself with when it’s time to move out of the postage-stamp and I get all celebratory about urban living.
I chop them coarsely, put in just enough water to come through the chopped fruit so it’s visible but not covering and then boil it up until they’re soft. Then strain the pulp out.
Quinces, in York? What? I grew up on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales and I always thought that the quince was an exotic foreign fruit.
@Susana S.P. —
At the risk of irritating the moderation system,
http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=32999&cat=1,43072
is the honing compound and strop set I am thinking of. I bought a bar of the compound in 199-something and am about two thirds of the way through and about to start strop number three. One can go through a lot of honing compound using felt wheels on carving tools but not so much stropping knives. (Store in an airtight container. It’s a giant abrasive crayon and will dry out. 🙂
For me, the strop lives right next to the knives in their drawer insert (which isn’t in a drawer, but on a shelf; finding a knife block for a 10″ chef’s knife was being highly awkward and now the insert is traditional) and I’m good at being compulsive about edge tool maintenance. It takes some practice to get comfortable with the stropping motion and to work the compound smooth on the leather so the first few uses won’t be just three strokes per side per knife. The compound visibly darkens so you can see there’s metal coming off in use; it might not otherwise seem like anything is happening.
The Vale of York and the Dales have very different micro-climates.
::god stalk::
@Aaron”For all the hand-wringing the Pups do about Weisskopf, they seem completely oblivious to the fact that she gave Hugo voters no reason at all to vote for her. She included nothing in the packet, and merely pointed to the entire line of Baen books as evidence of her editing.”
And lest we forget, Toni also gave voters reasons not to vote for her: See her guest post “The Problem of Engagement” on Hoyt’s blog from last year (http://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/03/10/the-problem-of-engagement-a-guest-post-by-toni-weisskopf/)
“So the question arises—why bother to engage these people at all? They are not of us. They do not share our values, they do not share our culture.”
The puppy rhetoric frequently made it seem as if the fight was between TOR and Baen, and not just as representative publishers, but as fully engaged political entities that were, through the works they published and the smoke-filled-room influences they exerted, prime actors on the stage.
I have been wondering, for some time, how much tacit approval Toni gives to the whole thing. She certainly has not spoken out against it in any way I’m aware of. Are her decisions on how to/not to engage this “debate” based on calculations on what the PR does for sales, are they based on finding common political cause, or on something else (perhaps a personal rule against political discourse).
Since she and Baen have been invoked so much (usually as victim), I think it reasonable to at least wonder about the degree of aide and succor provided to the puppies.
I’m probably not the only one who wondered these things while filling out a Hugo ballot.
@steve davidson
I have been wondering, for some time, how much tacit approval Toni gives to the whole thing. She certainly has not spoken out against it in any way I’m aware of.
It’s a valid thing to wonder about. Although she never seems to have spoken with open approval, she has joined in discussions about the SP campaigns in her own forum and never given a hint of disapproval of what her authors are doing. I suppose she may not think it is up to her to discourage them, but she’s not obliged to give them a forum either.
Asterisk and the Banquet
Asterisk, the Gall
@Susana
That’s the best bit! If I had the space I could happily have a collection of unusual jelly moulds. Especially if there are dragon-shaped ones.
Mm, jokes about being home alone being awesome because you can walk around without pants on always take me a moment to recalibrate. 🙂
I feel you should have warning that changing your username triggers the mod filter!
@rob_matic
Growing up in London we had a quince in the front garden. It was a bit old and tired though and the fruit wasn’t very good even after the jamming process. We had an apple tree in the back garden, too, a remnant of the orchard that used to be there, but that fell over when I was a kid (luckily not onto anything important). The apples were quite nice, if a bit wormy, until then.
@Graydon
One or two links are safe – three or more trigger the filter. Trying to edit them in after the fact doesn’t work to evade it, by the way, I tried that and the submitted edited post gets treated as a new post and shunted into the filter.
@steve davidson
I tried not to take rumour into account re: Baen support of Puppies, although I suppose it might have nudged me into being a bit harsher. Certainly I wasn’t thrilled with that silly editorial. Since there was nothing to work from in the packet, I decided that if the Baen editors didn’t feel they could give me a basis to judge them then I couldn’t vote for them.
Asterisk and Obstinix
@Graydon: Thanks. I’ve sourced the compound in the UK, and I have wood, good leather and glue, so I think I can knock together a strop. I’m not as handy as I am confident, but that’s worked out ok, mostly.
@Meredith:
I meant the American side-dishes made in jelly molds, which, confusingly, were also called jello molds where I grew up. I love the actual molds, and cookie cutters and springerle molds.
I’ve never successfully made a springerle cookie, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to amass a collection. There are definitely dragon ones.
I’ll go and get stuck in moderation now!
Hi Mike! Sorry to make work for you, but I’d like to change my username. Thanks!
JJ: No party suites yet but maybe the quince jelly discussion can be a place to start…
Personally, I’ve got to say I’m pretty tired of the constant dissection of Stuff Some Puppy Said. These days I generally wait it out until people start talking about other stuff again.
The student rental next door has a huge old quince tree, and no one uses the fruit.
Sadly, I’ve had issues with the landlord, such that I’m uncomfortable going over there.
Last seen he was leaving a zoning board meeting, screaming “You’ll all regret this!” and kind of frothing at the mouth.
Makes a person less likely to just nip over and pick a few, with the result that they all just fall and rot.
It’s a very pretty tree, at least.
@Susana S.P. — as long as the leather’s not got a hard finish, that should work fine. Saddle skirting or anything else generically veggie-tanned with take honing compound; anything like glove leather with that hard (or shiny) top finish doesn’t do such a good job.
(and the wood needs to be really flat, and really stable. It’s a boxwood application if you’ve got any. Hard maple, one of the less ring-porous oaks, anything like that.)