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[personal profile] kaberett

One of the things I'm sure I've come across repeatedly in the books I've read so far is the idea that a very high proportion of Chronic Pain Cases are down to either back pain or headache. This is important because back pain genuinely is something that has a massive nociplastic component, especially in the lower back, that is unequivocally worth treating (despite myself I remain grudgingly impressed with the Boulder Back Pain Study; and, to be clear, I do myself have a grumbly section of lower back following an injury a few years ago that I am practising all my Theories on!).

This is an Important To Me framing device because my point is that treatments aimed purely at nociplastic pain/central sensitisation cannot be expected to work as well for people with ongoing or recurrent tissue damage/injury... but why it's worth using some of these approaches anyway, with the understanding of the actual scope of what effects to hope for or expect. Which means I'd like to know where they're GETTING those numbers from.

Mindfulness for Health )

The Way Out (... long, bonus tangential rant) )

The Painful Truth )

... aaaaaaand it is now definitely past bedtime so I'll finish Revisiting Books tomorrow. (My notes on Explain Pain, consistent with it being generally competent, are that it doesn't go anywhere near talking about what The Most Common Forms Of Chronic Pain are; might have a quick flip through when I'm next in the same place as my copy. Also couldn't find anything in Touch. Will be revisiting the current book, Ouch!, in the morning...)

Mudlarking 56 - Milk trains

Oct. 22nd, 2025 06:55 pm
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[personal profile] squirmelia
The rain stopped just for a bit and it wasn't quite dark so I headed for the foreshore. The tide wasn't far out so I just went to Blackfriars.

I didn't find a lot before it started to rain again and the light was poor.

The piece of glass is from a milk bottle from Express Dairies. I've found a piece of glass from one of their bottles before and it was then that I learnt about milk trains. The milk that would have been inside the bottle likely travelled to London on a milk train. Wikipedia has a detailed article on milk trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_railway_milk_trains

In other news, I am trying to get to grips with Instagram and attempting to post photos of some of my mudlarking finds over there. In the past I've only really used Instagram to look up what flavours of ice-cream are currently available in various ice-cream parlours, so it may take me a while to get used to it.

Mudlarking finds - 56

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

Back in blue

Oct. 22nd, 2025 05:40 pm
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[personal profile] rmc28

I am very happy to say that I'll be playing for the Cambridge University Huskies this season.

Fixture list (clashes with Kodiaks 2 games in italics)

  • 1 Nov 2025 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Oxford Women's Blues
  • 15 Nov 2025 23:15, Oxford Ice Rink, Oxford Vikings B
  • 22 Nov 2025 20:30, Planet Ice Gosport, Southampton Spitfires B
  • 29 Nov 2025 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Birmingham Lions B
  • 6 Dec 2025 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Kent Knights
  • 24 Jan 2026 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Oxford Vikings B
  • 7 Feb 2026 21:15, Planet Ice Solihull, Birmingham Lions B
  • 14 Feb 2026 21:15, Oxford Ice Rink, Oxford Womens Blues
  • 21 Feb 2026 20:15, Streatham Ice and Leisure, Kent Knights
  • 28 Feb 2026 21:00, Cambridge Ice Rink, Southampton Spitfires B
  • TBD: Varsity game against Oxford Vikings B

No guarantee I'll be on the squad for any particular game, and Kodiaks 2 will have my priority when there's a clash. But yay, getting to represent my university again.

Timmy is BACK and ALMOST ON SCHEDULE

Oct. 22nd, 2025 12:00 am
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October 22nd, 2025next

October 22nd, 2025: This continues the tale of Timmy, who you'll remember we first encountered in 2013 and then 2018! In 2018 I said you'd have to read for six more years to find out what Timmy did next and I didn't lie! You had to read for six more years and then some extra time too. Thanks to Jan for the reminder!!

– Ryan

Wrong kind of leaves

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:00 am
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[personal profile] rmc28

Latest in a series of silly non-ice-hockey injuries: I came off my bike yesterday evening on the cycle path through the woods between Madingley Road and Storey's Way. I braked suddenly to avoid an oncoming cyclist, the wheels went sideways on the damp leaf mulch, and I ended up on the ground. The other cyclist was able to stop safely, and made sure to check I was ok.

Nothing is broken on me or the bike, but some impressive scrapes to the elbow and knee I landed on. I went home via the co-op and a supply of comfort food, cleaned everything up, and ate the food.

It's all a bit tender this morning, and rather puts the random ice hockey bruises in the shade.

Soup Season

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:27 pm
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[personal profile] kaberett

I have, today, made my first Soup of the autumn: carrot and leek and celery and a couple of potatoes for good measure (and I then added frozen peas to my portion, because I like them cold and not at all cooked and definitely not reheated repeatedly over the course of a week). Bread and cheese, fruit to follow. I didn't manage Monday Morning Soup Ritual this week, as you can tell from the fact that it's Tuesday, but. Soup.

Some other bits and pieces: I have reached the stage of Squash Week where I have more recipes I want to make than I have squash with which to make them (... and one spaghetti squash) (for which I have at least some open EatYourBooks tabs). I hit refresh in my Oxfam tab aaaaaand the sale has cycled around to 30% off 3+ books. I have a chilli order ready to go as soon as my new debit card arrives OR I get over myself and see whether the credit card is actually behaving. There is a batch of onions caramelising in the Instant Pot. The current pain book is abruptly unexpectedly absorbing -- it's much more Sociology Of Pain than I'd quite been expecting, but it's potentially building to making at least some of the argument I want to from a refreshingly different angle to everything else I've come across in my background reading so far, and in the meantime in spite of my frustrations with it it's prompting lots of Useful Thoughts.

And I am wearing my Seasonal Leggings (courtesy of Mardy Bum, findable primarily on Facebook, or Instagram for a bit of an idea) and my Extremely Enthusiastic Slippers, like so. Read more... )

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
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[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

vital functions

Oct. 19th, 2025 11:00 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. No finishes, lots of fragments.

Started: The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. Their faces are WRONG and I don't LIKE it. (Shared Reading Experience.) I also don't like The Smoking, and I really feel the absence of the baklava scene.

In progress: Forgotten Fruits, Stocks, which despite saying I was going to DNF I have continued working my way through, with occasional grumpy squawks; Index, a history of the, Duncan, in very small nibbles; and I'm now a third of the way through Ouch!, Kerr + McRobbie, which is much more sociology than I was expecting when I bought it, having failed at that point to register that one of the authors is a sociologist. A bunch of the neuroanatomy is irritatingly (and unnecessarily! they could have just been less specific!) wrong; we've had a lengthy case study focussing on endometriosis but as yet no indication that they're actually considering the role of ongoing tissue damage. Not ruling out that they'll get there, though.

Dreamwidth catch-up: UP TO SEPTEMBER.

Listening. Cornish waves recording.

Cooking. Ridiculous Textures Of Beetroot from The Modern Vegetarian (good, did like); mildly underwhelmed by Bengali five-spice roasted squash, a totally acceptable meal it was very pleasant to be able to stick in the oven and forget about while I did something else; and stir-fried pumpkin with cashews from Rosa's Thai Café: the Vegetarian Cookbook.

Buttermilk continues to work. Managed some bread. Baked some crabapples and then singularly failed to actually make the ginger-and-lime caramel to coat them in, so this lot probably needs composting and I'll try again next week. Maybe. (Raymond Blanc recipe, from The Lost Orchard, which I much preferred at least so far to Forgotten Fruits.)

Eating. Particularly excited this week by Limonera pears, which are apparently DPO Spanish-cultivated Docteur Jules Guyot! All of the descriptions say "very reminiscent of Williams, flavour not as good unless you get them just right", to which I add that they are sliiiiightly firmer fleshed in a way that I think is an active plus.

I am very much enjoying yoghurt + hazelnuts + a drizzle of quince syrup.

Creating. ... took some photos of some plants?

Growing. MORE SAFFRON. Still very excited by the saffron. Also the chillis. (Home saffron also now definitively coming up, in the trough if not around the fig, but no sign of it intending to flower, alas.)

Cannot tell if the windowsill lemongrass is in fact just dried out or if it's in the Growing Many Roots stage. Grumpily aware that going digging is counterproductive. Pineapple continues pineapple.

Observing. A MUNTJAC. There was, at the plot, A Great Rustling out of the plum tree on the neighbouring plot, and I looked up and thought, for an entire moment, "gosh that's a remarkably large fox with a remarkably short tail", before my brain caught up with the data it was actually being sent. Less than twenty metres away. Think that's the closest one of them's ever been to me (at least that I've noticed)!

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[personal profile] squirmelia
Sunset was before low tide, so this was a short trip to the foreshore on a Saturday evening.

I found another vulcanite bottle stopper. This one says “F. Daniells Addlestone” on it. F. Daniells manufactured aerated mineral water in Addlestone from 1895 to 1909 so the bottle stopper is likely from then.

I found a piece of a jam jar that says “W.P. Hartley” and it's got a little bit of the lighthouse logo. I wonder what flavour of jam it contained.

I found a handle from something, a knife perhaps.

It was getting dark and I decided it was time to stop mudlarking as I wasn't able to see much. I instead turned on my UV torch and swept across the foreshore with the purple light. I did find a few tiny pieces of uranium glass that glowed brightly. It may be “custard glass” as without UV it looks kind of white. I am not going to lick it to see if it tastes like custard.

Mudlarking finds - 55

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

Mudlarking 54

Oct. 19th, 2025 10:24 am
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
A quick lunchtime mudlark. While I've mostly stopped picking up blue and white pieces of pottery, I do still pick it up if it has an interesting pattern or is a piece of Westerwald pottery.

Mudlarking finds - 54

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

some good things

Oct. 18th, 2025 11:36 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Spontaneous(ish) brunch at the localish Gail's, in that it's a thing I have been meaning to do for A While and the weather will shortly be getting cold enough (and likely damp enough) that their outside seating loses its appeal. Underwhelming hot chocolate but I really liked the sesame-cardamom bun -- think Kardemummebullar With Bonus Sesame; I got the last one and it was way better than I was expecting. (Millennial Avocado Toast also tasty.)
  2. Successfully acquired Discount Bread from the supermarket this evening, for the purpose of tomorrow's dinner (a recipe from Salt Fat Acid Heat which will use the cavolo nero from the fridge + some of the Seasonal Squash in a panzanella).
  3. And I was nearly back to baseline on the walk home from same, which is a very welcome development (I have been Lingeringly Ill for the last four weeks).
  4. Successfully read a chapter of The Old Guard comic (on loan from library) on my laptop as a Shared Activity. Consequently we are about a fifth of the way through. I prefer the film.
  5. I think the chilli plant I lost track of the label for might plausibly, finally, be a Trinidad Perfume??? Fingers crossed for it managing to usefully set fruit (and I really do need to bring All the chillis in from the greenhouse...)
  6. I am listening to Cornish waves while I get ready for bed. Is good. <3

please, practice kindness.

Oct. 17th, 2025 10:05 pm
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Posted by Wil

Next Thursday, October 23, I am speaking at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center’s 55th Anniversary Gala. We hope to raise some money to help them help our neighbors, and I’m going to share my story, which I hope inspires someone to take the first step on their own recovery journey.

We’re doing this at the magnificent Valley Relics Museum, and the event is open to the public. If you’re able to come to Van Nuys next week, I hope you’ll join us.

I’ve been reviewing some of my existing speeches, while I prepare this one, and I came across this part, near the closing of a speech I gave to the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in 2023. It’s one of those things that I say in some form every time I have the privilege of speaking to people who are trusting me with their time and attention, especially when there are younger generations in the audience.

One last thing, before I finish. I want to speak directly to any young people who are here:  This is your world, we’re just borrowing it for a little bit while you decide what to do with it. We’ve left you a real big mess to clean up, and I’m sorry about that. Believe me, a lot of us tried — and are trying — to make it easier for you, but we haven’t done enough.

I talked a bit about how afraid I was as a kid, how I felt like I was constantly on the verge of getting in trouble. One of the things I got yelled at about was doing something “on purpose,” so that’s a pair of words that have always kind of rubbed me the wrong way. For a few years now, I have taken the concept of “on purpose” and made it literal. I want to share with you some things I do “on purpose”, to literally give my life purpose and meaning, to help guide me when the path is unclear.

I’m a reasonably successful person. I don’t mean in my work, or only in my work. I mean in my life. I have great friends, I am so close to my adult children. I am married to my best friend. I get to do cool things, and I’m happy a lot more often than not. A real big part of that is committing to these choices:

  • Establish and protect your boundaries. You do not owe anyone anything. If someone does not respect your boundaries, it’s all the red flags.
  • Choose to be honest. I’m 50, and I’ve learned that the only currency that really matters in this world is the truth.
  • Choose to be honorable. This dovetails with number one. You attract to yourself what you put into the world. Dishonorable people will take everything from you and leave you with nothing. Do your best to be a person they aren’t attracted to.
  • Choose to work hard. Everything worth doing is hard. Do the hard work that sustains and nourishes relationships, that gets you the most out of your education, that gets you closer to your goals. Sooner or later, you’re going to run into something in your life that’s really hard, and you’ll want to give up, but it’s something you care so much about, you’ll do whatever you can to achieve it. It’s going to be hard, but it’s going to be less hard for someone who has practiced doing the hard things all along, than it is for someone who doesn’t know how to do the hard work because they’ve always chosen the easy path.
  • Always do your best, and know that your best will vary. Monday’s best may not be close to Tuesday’s best, and Wednesdays best may eclipse them both. Even if you don’t get the result you wanted, doing your best is really all you can ever do. We tell athletes to leave it all on the field. Whatever your version of that is, do it. And if you notice later that maybe you kinda phoned some of it in? Do your best to be gentle with yourself. We’re constantly learning and growing.
  • The last one is the most important one. If only one thing sticks, I hope this is it. This is the one I hope you’ll share with your peers: Always choose to be kind.

And just to be clear: Nice and Kind are not the same thing. Nice is about manners, and it comes from here. [I point to my head] Kind is about empathy, and it comes from here [I point to my heart]. Cruel people can be nice, but they will never be kind. Please, practice kindness.

I always come back to these choices, because they are the ones that always make a difference for me. I’m working on adding a reminder that courage is not the absence of fear; it’s when you something you know is right, even though you are afraid.

We’re going to see a lot of courage tomorrow, that’s for sure … and it’s making the right people very, very uncomfortable.

I appreciate you. Thanks for reading. If you’d like to get my posts in your e-mail, you can use this thing:

did some errands

Oct. 17th, 2025 10:53 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Debit card in amended name theoretically on its way to me. Two sets of Objects belonging to Players are now OUT OF MY HOUSE and IN THE HANDS OF ROYAL MAIL. And on the way back up the hill, when I was in less of a hurry, I paused to Observe Some Plants.

Ergo: Some Plants.

grey brick container merging seamlessly with floor, dark green hebe, firey autumnal decorative maple

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HEY! Want to help keep DORK TOWER going? Then consider joining the DORK TOWER Patreon and ENLIST IN THE ARMY OF DORKNESS TODAY! (We have COOKIES!) (And SWAG!) (And GRATITUDE!)

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[personal profile] squirmelia
I was up late at a party on Saturday so chose to go to Chelsea on Sunday where low tide was a bit later in the day.

Bus stop

Bus stop

I didn't take:

A bus stop. I waited on the foreshore, but no bus arrived. Swans dwelled for a while nearby on the water and I wondered if they wanted to catch the bus too. Where would it go, this bus, which surely must be an amphibious vehicle, and may well be magical?

A combination padlock. I did pick it up initially as I thought finding a padlock was like being in a real life escape room, but then I put it down again as it was quite heavy, and I hadn't come to a conclusion on what I would do with it.

A safe.

A brick that said “Owen”.

There seemed to be less litter and also less shells this time.

Mudklarking finds - 53.4

I did take:

A green jack, a Victorian game piece, which would have been part of a game known as knucklebones.

A Codd bottle glass marble. Codd bottles held carbonated drinks and were designed in 1872. The marble would be pushed against the washer, sealing the bottle.

A glass marble with a red swirly inside, like I had when I was a child.

A nice handle from something, maybe a hand tool.

cut for sadness )

Mudlarking finds - 53.1

Mudlarking finds - 53.2

Lots of bits of glass:

Part of a torpedo bottle. These were designed to be laid on their side and filled with carbonated beverages.

Part of a small dark blue glass bottle - possibly a medicine bottle?

A strangely bowl-shaped bit of glass which shines with rainbow colours as the glass has degraded. I'm unsure what this would have been. Any ideas?

Part of an R Whites bottle. Perhaps it could have been filled with lemonade or one of the other many flavours of soft drink from R Whites. Apparently at the beginning of the 20th century more than 40 flavours were on sale.

One bit that says “onaut” on it, which probably would have said “Argonaut” and would have been filled with hat polish. Probably Victorian. Hat polish!!

“Imperial pint” - probably from a beer bottle.
“Perth Whisky”
“This is”
Two bits that say something like “No deposit charge” on them, could again be R Whites.

Some big chunks of Staffordshire style Slipware.

Mudlarking finds - 53.3

I was not too far from the Vivienne Westwood Invader, so went to see that afterwards:
Invader - #LDN_155
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October 17th, 2025next

October 17th, 2025: Today I fly back from Paris! So far I can say it IS indeed a pretty good town. That's right: I said it. I am prepared to go on the record with the sentiment that Paris is "pretty good". CANCEL ME IF YOU MUST

– Ryan

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