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Entry tags:

financial,
personal

Investing in a pension

I had an interesting chat with a pensions guy. He pointed out that the historic performance of even relatively conservative pension funds exceeds the APR on my mortgage. So, given that my paid mortgage interest is tax-deductible on my US taxes, and that I have the tax efficiency of being a higher-rate taxpayer who can pay pre-tax salary into their pension, indeed it probably makes sense to direct any spare money (e.g., annual bonus) into pension instead of mortgage. I have other debt too that I shall prioritize but it is nice to have that bigger picture.

Frankly, I think that I should take some risk in pursuit of faster growth. My pension savings are inadequate at the moment. My suspicion is that gentle, conservative pension investing would leave me still without much of a pension. I would like to think that I have another good couple of decades' of full-time work in me; perhaps that duration, plus not soon rebalancing toward blue-chip bonds and suchlike, might mean that I actually receive a reasonable pension in the end, we'll see.

(no subject)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250808.html

One of the all-time historic skyscapes occured in July 1054, when the

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250808.html

Entry tags:

your city lies in dust my friend

I am currently sitting on twitch listening to the Convergence 27 Raid Train. It's been great for checking out new DJs and I now have a long list of bands and songs to look up later.

I'm sad about missing the people who are at physical Convergence this weekend and I really wish I could hang out with them in person, but... well you know.

Final Contractor came over last week so he could take some measurements. He's running behind on work orders (go figure) because most of his work is outside and his employees can't work a full day when the temperatures are over 30 C. Which makes perfect sense to me.

In the meantime, now that the painting is done I'm taking a break from big projects. I did zero house-cleaning while I was working on the yard and basement and the allergen level in the house is making me break out in hives on the regular. Doesn't help that I can't open the windows because the air quality is crap with all the wildfires. I'll spend August getting on top of that. And all the outstanding paperwork that's piling up on my desk around work permits and insurance claims. And catch up on appointments, if I can get that organized.

I haven't done great (yet) with scheduling exercise time, but I've putting aside time to write letters to politicians. I am so beyond pissed off at well, everything. I have no idea if it helps at all, but I figure it can't hurt and I have to do something with all this anger and frustration. And I'm too old to start a punk band.

Current Mood: sleepy

Entry tags:

Just a quick post tonight

Public

189/365: Field at evening, edge of Bewdley
Click for a larger, sharper image
Not much to report here today. I only went out for one walk, and here's a photo from it. This was in the evening, hence the low sun. It's a field on the edge of Bewdley that's well known locally as it's conserved in a low-tech fashion to encourage wildlife. Those ancient trees are the cherries -- they no longer produce fruit, but they're the last remnants of the orchards that used to cover this area a century ago, before modern suburban development. (Just behind me is a housing estate.) Under the trees is a long-abandoned tractor. Also, we could do with some rain.

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What Makes an Erotic Book Cover

Mori: After the end of my real-life bar graphing bacchanalia (lying on the floor, surrounded by books with tits and ass on the cover), I found myself having one of those 1AM conversations with my headmates: what makes a book cover truly EROTIQUE? What is that je nais se quoi and other fancy French words that give it the oomph?

( this is the horny comic book equivalent of a bunch of wine aficionados talking in snooty Boston accents about the fine details of their stale grape juice and how great it is. )

Sidewise Award Announcement

The Sidewise Award for Alternate History is looking for new judges to join the award committee.

This is the first time in the 30 year history of the award that they've made an open call for awards judges.

Apply here.

Entry tags:

gardening

the tomato that conquered Pittsburgh

This year I got three (different) tomato seedlings, all container-friendly, along with some peppers and other things. Having failed to do proper research, I allocated the tomato cages pretty arbitrarily. I should not have done that.

potted plants on a patio with a gigantic tomato plant in the middle

The giant tomato plant in the center is a Sungold. It seems to be in the process of conquering my patio, the neighborhood, and perhaps the city. It makes sweet, tasty, orange cherry tomatoes. I've had quite a bounty so far and there's plenty more to come. It was originally on that ledge with the others, but a month or so ago I realized that if I kept it there, I would not be able to harvest without a ladder. (So much for using that trellis.) At least this way I can climb up on that ledge to reach the ones I can't reach from the ground (or at least I hope I'll be able to reach them all!). Wowza. Next year, bigger cage! (They're very tasty, so I do plan to get this type next year.)

The other two tomato types are Patio Choice, advertised as good for small containers, and Mountain Magic. They both produce red grape tomatoes (Patio Choice are sweeter). On the right, not as clear in the picture, are two Cornito peppers and a banana pepper, all still working toward a first harvest. I've moved these around a few times over the course of the summer to try to optimize sunlight.

Mood theme

I can't figure out where / how I can select a mood theme. Could somebody help me? Thank you :)

Disclaimer

https://xkcd.com/3126/

You say no human would reply to a forum thread about Tom Bombadil by writing and editing hundreds of words of text, complete with formatting, fancy punctuation, and two separate uses of the word 'delve'. Unfortunately for both of us, you are wrong.

https://xkcd.com/3126/

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Recent reading

I've been reading some old stuff lately.

1. Wild Angel (Pat Murphy)
( Read more... )
2. The Pushcart War (Jean Merrill)
( Read more... )
3. The Mouse that Roared, The mouse on the moon, the mouse on wall street (all by Leonard Wibberley).
( Read more... )
4. Rimrunners (CJ Cherryh)
( Read more... )
5. Sassinak (did not finish), by Elizabeth Moon and Anne McCaffery:
( Read more... )

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Five User-Friendly Rulesets for Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Not every gamer finds joy in wildly complicated, esoteric, hard-to-learn rules...

Five User-Friendly Rulesets for Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Aurora Award Livestream

Watch on YouTube

Hosted by Mark Leslie Lefebvre and Liz May Anderson.

Sunday August 10 at 5 PM: Livestream broadcast of the 2025 Aurora Awards, Canada’s annual English-language Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards.

Hearts of Wulin by Joyce Ch'ng & Lowell Francis

Righteous characters pursue great justice in this wuxia TTRPG.

Hearts of Wulin by Joyce Ch'ng & Lowell Francis

Current Music: Martha, "1848, Yawning Discreetly"

Hope and anger in the ink and on the streets

It feels like such a cheaply sentimental connection that I must not have allowed myself to see it for years, but the first film of any lasting meaning that I saw after the dislocating and disposessing move from New Haven which marked the end of my academic career and with it the whole pattern of my life to date was A Canterbury Tale (1944), that touchstone of continuity and exile. I got up in the morning to watch it off TCM. It gave me déjà vu as if I remembered some of its strongest, strangest images, even though it seemed after the fact impossible that I should have had any previous chance to see it. It was my introduction to Powell and Pressburger and I immediately set about tracking down as many of their films as were available in my country as I had never done with any filmmakers before—I could explain it as finding something to study after suddenly having for the first time in twenty-odd years nothing assigned, but then I could have dedicated myself to just about anything encountered in those three-ish weeks including for God's sake M*A*S*H. I had just written the most Christian poem of my Jewish life and so was perhaps more than ordinarily primed to accept Emeric's cathedral. I had forgotten that the only time in my life I was in Canterbury, I had written about its layers of time, Roman roads, the scars of the Blitz, I had linked it with the archaeological eternity of DWJ's Time City. I could have imprinted on any of the characters with their griefs and doubts of lovers and livelihoods and I went straight for Colpeper, the sticky-fingered magus in his panic of losing the past, his head so far up his home ground that he has not yet learned the lesson of diaspora, how to carry the tradition wherever you go, including into the future. I had heard it myself since childhood and never had to put it so much to the test. I loved the film at once and desperately and it still took me years to see how like time itself nothing can really be lost in it, the lifeline I called it without recognizing what it held out. I keep coming back to it, still excavating that bend in the road. It had what I needed to find in it unexpectedly, the coins from the field returned in a stranger's hand.

Entry tags:

podcasts

podcast friday

Today's post is ICHH's "Dogwhistle Politics and Nazi Code Hunting." Gare and Mia take a deep dive into what is, superficially, a comparatively minor issue—that of conspiratorial thinking on the left. They take as their jumping off point a tweet from the Gestapo featuring John Gast's "American Progress." It's an overtly fascist tweet because the artwork itself celebrates the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the text reinforces that the poster thinks that this genocide is a good thing, and also because an overtly fascist organization that is currently carrying out a genocide tweeted it. If they'd tweeted a picture of kittens, it would still be a fascist tweet, because it is a fascist organization posting on a platform owned by fascists. Nevertheless, certain segments of the extremely online left and liberals have convinced themselves that there are also secret fascist messages in the tweet.

The basic thesis of the episode is, "no, you fools, they don't need to dogwhistle anymore because they are in power and doing fascism." But there's another, even more important point here, which is that we're all still basically stuck in 2016-7 and we need to be updating both our thinking and our strategies. I feel a certain way about this because for all that I mocked it back in the day, conspiratorial thinking worked very well for the right, and I sort of disagree with Gare and Mia that it won't reach a particular type of low-information voter who likes to feel privy to exciting secret knowledge. But also, it is counterproductive and has people who might otherwise be useful and productive chasing their tails playing numerology on X, the Everything App.

At any rate, it's an interesting psychological insight and as someone who is not immune from Extremely Online Thinking, it's a useful check-in.

(no subject)

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250807.html

More from Okanagan Backroads Volume One

Old Fairview: White Lake Observatory

Mile 12.1 (4.4) – Half a mile further along, the access to White Lake Observatory turns right. (White Lake itself is the alkali pond opposite the Twin Lakes turnoff.)

Because of their electrical systems, which interfere with the operation of the radio-telescope, cars are not allowed on the road to the radio telescope. The big dish itself towers above the other installations, listening eternally to signals from outer space. The maze of poles and overhead wiring back towards Oliver are another form of radio-telescope, which pick up very long radio waves. The observatory is well worth walking the three-tenths mile; what's happening is completely incomprehensible to the layman, but fascinating nonetheless.

(1975/77)

* * * * * *

This observatory still exists, under the rather grander name of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. It is, so the government website tells me, "an internationally renowned facility for radio astronomy and leading-edge instrumentation." Until just now, I had no idea that it existed.

DRAO is still, naturally, a radio-quiet site, which must be more difficult these days than in 1975.

Dave Stewart, author of Okanagan Backroads, is quite right about its fascination. I am absolutely a lay person, and yet statements like this are weirdly thrilling: "The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is Canada's largest radio telescope. ... CHIME has no moving parts, but the Earth's rotation allows the telescope to map all of Canada's visible sky every day. CHIME was designed to survey atomic hydrogen from the largest volume of the Universe to date." No real idea why that would be important to do (feel free to explain!), but I'm glad it's happening here.

They have a Perseids viewing party next week!

§rf§

Source: https://nrc.canada.ca/en/research-development/nrc-facilities/dominion-radio-astrophysical-observatory-research-facility

The Old World Character Generation

More details later but it seems the group is essentially Don Quixote in the form of a Brettonian knight's bastard who has completely bought into chivalric ideals despite the fact no true knight considers him worthy to have such ideals, and an assortment of hangers-on who see him as a meal ticket.

Which is to say, the group is centred on someone who will seek out adventure.

! Seen in email

Based on the photometry and orbital properties, the planet candidate could have a temperature of 225 K, a radius of 1-1.1 and a mass between 90-150 , consistent with RV limits.

Current Mood: sleepy

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Bridging

Public

River Severn from Worcester Bridge, 7th August 2025

188/365: River Severn from Worcester Bridge
Click for a larger, sharper image
I had to be in Worcester today for reasons that aren't interesting and took up quite a bit of the day without being especially enjoyable. Ah well, at least it didn't rain! Today's 365 photo is a classic scene that, like yesterday's pic, I've posted before but not as part of this project. It's the view down the River Severn from the main bridge in Worcester city centre. You can see the Cathedral in the distance and the "Glover's Needle" (a spire that's lost its church) to the left.