Picture Diary 102

Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:59 am
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 Picture Diary 102

1. Encountering the Dragon

K6S1omlWsJH2JWKt1IB0--0--le20e.jpeg

2. Eagle and Snake

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3. White, white, white, yellow, white

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4. After rain

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5. Stargazing

ImKjzFaoXPt7gr6JWYgV--0--82xha.jpeg

6. Masks

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Revisiting

Sep. 3rd, 2025 08:19 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 I dream that I'm revisiting a seaside town- where an old lady reproaches me with having seduced her on my first visit. I can't remember this happening so I consult the book I wrote about my younger days. I find no reference to the supposed affair but it's full of pictures- and in particular pictures of the Indian guru who was very active back then and is now a smiley, silver-haired old gent living in retirement in a little suburban street.

Hello Autumn

Sep. 2nd, 2025 08:59 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
Goodbye August. Hello Autumn.

I was the hospital yesterday for the follow-up to some eye tests I had done a month ago. The chap I saw explained that I have a condition that could lead to something that isn't macular degeneration but might just as well be. However it seems it t's getting better all by itself- and I walked away from the consultation feeling twenty years younger.

While I was waiting to be seen I couldn't help overhearing a doctor in a nearby cubicle trying to explain to a woman who wasn't listening that he was an eye specialist and she'd have to see someone else about whatever it was she was bending his ear about. I could hear from his tone of voice that his patience was being tried. "you're going round in circles," he said as she started up again about her eyelids.

I don't particularly fear physical deterioration (though I'd rather hold the tide back for as long as possible), but what I really don't want is to turn into the sort of silly old fool for whom allowances have to be made.....

You know how it goes.....

"He can't help it." (Pitying sigh.) "It's his age....."

Not Dead Yet

Sep. 1st, 2025 09:07 am
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 I don't suppose the US President is actually dead but when rumours to that effect are circulating and having to be denied (but not by the man himself) you can be sure that something is going on that they don't want us to know about.....

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Accepting The Challenge

Aug. 31st, 2025 08:59 am
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 This is what Remembrance of Things Past looks like

IMG_8288.jpeg

Whole lot of reading matter there.

Should keep me going until Christmas.

Bits And Pieces

Aug. 30th, 2025 09:10 am
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 You lay in loads and loads of food for guests and they eat some of it- and some of it they don't and the food that's left goes beyond its use-by date and you have to throw it away. I hate wasting food. It's immoral. It's disrespectful. 

Fab and Dafni return to Liverpool today. We haven't seen much of them. They emerge from their cave to eat and then go back again.  Isn't young love wonderful!

There's more and more junk turning up on my You-Tube feed. You can tell its junk because it comes with hooks designed to scare the bejasus out of you. I was watching a vid this morning about the proliferation of sites featuring fake near death experiences- at least some of which are pushing Hell and Damnation and an Angry God. My, but faking NDEs is low!

Shoo!

Aug. 29th, 2025 07:59 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 I got a letter in the post from the local council telling me "a local resident"  has lodged a complaint about me "feeding large birds". It informs me that feeding large birds isn't against the law but would I, please, desist- for various reasons. 

Oh, OK. OK....Next time I see a swan or a heron in my garden I'll chase it away.

Shoo!

I assume that this is the latest move in a campaign of harrasment by our next-door neighbour- the Seventh Day Adventist.

But of course I can't be sure....

All of us are afraid of losing control of our world and some of us are so very afraid that we resort to curtain twitching and lodging anonymous complaints with the authorities. 

Such a shame.....

Hurrah For Scott Moncrieff

Aug. 28th, 2025 07:57 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 No, I decided, it's not good enough to wait for a copy of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu to just turn up. Synchronicity is definitely a thing, but maybe this is an instance where I should try and meet the Universe halfway- so I looked online and found a three volume set in the right translation at a reduced asking price in an eBay sale with half an hour to run. I bought it and it should be here over the weekend.....

The right translation is the one by Scott Moncrieff. It may not be the most accurate but it has the merit of being contemporary- of coming out of the same time frame and culture. It's been said that Moncrieff's English is even more elegant than Proust's French. 

Moncrieff took liberties. That's obvious from the titles he assigned to the books. Remembrance of Things Past is not a faithful translation of A la Recherche- but it has a more of a lilt to it than In Search of Lost Time- which is what most later translators have opted for. Within a Budding Grove is a genius rendition of A la Ombre de Jeune Filles en Fleur- which comes out awkward and more than a little creepy if rendered word for word. The Sweet Cheat Gone- a line lifted from de la Mare- is a long long way from Proust's Albertine Disparue- but is so very much more poetic......

The Last Alp Left Unclimbed

Aug. 27th, 2025 06:12 pm
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 One of these days I mean to read Poust. I'll know the time is ripe when I come across a cheap secondhand edition of Swann's Way- in English of course, because while I have a little French it doesn't stretch much beyond newspaper articles.

Until I get that sign I'll read other things.

Once upon a time I maintained that there were too many books in the world still unread for me to waste time on old favourites, but now most of the things I read are things I've read before. At the moment it's the Allan Quatermain books. I'm reading Child of Storm (which I think the best of them) for the third time and after that I'm going back to the beginning with King Solomon's Mines. It's not just about comfort (though that figures) because re-reads can reveal things you'd overlooked or not been equipped to see earlier. For instance I find Rider Haggard is deeper, smarter and trickier than I'd once have given him credit for. On a sourer note I tried to re-read one of Iris Murdoch's later novels- one I used to love- and found it quite insufferable. All that dinner party philosophy! I know the intention is partly satirical but that stuff and the people who spout it interest me so little now that I'm not even going to stick around to laugh and point.

Have I reached the end of the shelf of books I want to read? Not quite. Because there's still A La Recherche du Temps Perdu....

The Numbers Lessen

Aug. 27th, 2025 10:11 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 Most of the visitors have gone now- leaving only the young lovers- who are old enough to care and cater for themselves but still young enough to like playing board games. His heritage is Cameroonian, hers is Greek. She cooks toasties for her breakfast while watching Rick and Morty on her phone....

God, but Rick and Morty is frenetic! 

Yesterday, while we were all out, a young woman from the Council stopped by and asked Damian if she could take pictures of our garage conversion. He said that on the whole he'd rather she didn't. He suspects our next door neighbour- who hates him- has lodged a complaint with the Council in the hope that we'll have contravened some regulation or other. Which we haven't.....

Patient

Aug. 26th, 2025 01:43 pm
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 There have been moments over these past couple of weeks when I've wanted to scream, "Why don't you all just fuck off and leave me in peace," but I'm happy to say that outwardly I've been Patience personified.

In Memory Of Keith

Aug. 26th, 2025 08:19 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 The temperature yesterday reached 27 degrees centigrade which is 80 Farenheit. That's  by official reckoning. I bet it actually went higher. We were down on the beach because Frances, wanting to do all the things she used to do with Keith, had asked to be given the chance to paddle and then eat fish and chips. In the event, though she and I struggled down to the tide line, she found her bad knee made paddling too difficult to be worth persisting with. The fish and chips- from a beach kiosk- was good. 

Keith also used to fly a kite. She hasn't asked me to do that. Just as well. I've never managed to get one off the ground. 

She goes home today.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Like Venice

Aug. 25th, 2025 08:35 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 Frances wanted to go to go to Sovereign Harbour and watch the yachts come in through the lock gates so that's what we did. Sovereign Harbour is pretty. "Like Venice," I said, "If you got rid of all the crumbly buildings and replaced them with nice new ones." I was hoping to get a rise out of my companions but neither of them took the bait.

Talking about bait the thing that excited me most about the harbour was seeing the big fish swimming backwards and forwards by the walls of the walkway. I imagine the water is warmer there. Also that people drop crumbs. I don't know what kind of fish they are. Just big.  Long as my fore-arm. Grey, with a suggestion of irridescence along their backs. There's no fishing allowed so they're safe.  

Visitors

Aug. 24th, 2025 08:16 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 I find I can cope with having all these people around just so long as every so often I can slope off and sit where they can't talk at me.

Last night we had a BBQ. Lots and lots of food which- as a vegetarian- I can't eat. I'd prepared for it by having a very big lunch. When the time came I ate chips and trifle (but not together)

Odi told Fab to get the BBQ started- and I discovered that today's yoof have never been taught how to light a fire......

Today the visitors are splitting up. Odi and the bigger kids are going to the Notting Hill Carnival and Ben and the younger kids are goig to a fun day at Herstmonceux Castle. We, meanwhile, will be taking Frances to the Meeting for Worship....

Manoeuvring

Aug. 23rd, 2025 10:17 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 1. I noticed- on the way back from Wilmington- that the trees are beginning to be tinged with brown. For, "Summer's lease has all too short a date...."

2. We have eight people staying with us currently- and the ninth is on her way. Thus far we've manoeuvered round one another quite elegantly and there have been no collisions.

3. Frances (that's Keith's friend) was telling me what she believes about the current state of world affairs. God, she says, is "sifting" humanity, but don't worry because he has a great future in store for us. This is is what I think too- only I wouldn't put it in theistic terms. That future, she goes on to say, will be pioneered by Britain and Israel- and here she loses me. "Why Israel?" I ask. "Because it's the centre of the world....."

4. The six year old breezes round singing to himself in what sounds like a proper language but probably isn't (though who knows?) In my days as a religious loony we used to call this "speaking in tongues". 

Tent

Aug. 22nd, 2025 10:00 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 Odi and crew are coming back from France today and will be joined here by an old lady who has nothing to do with them. The old lady will require a bedroom of her own which means some of the others (do we get them to draw straws?) will be displaced to a tent in the garden. The boys may, of course, leap at the option of sleeping out. We'll see. 

Ben has a tent and we have a tent. Ours is brand new- bought in anticipation of this eventuality. It's made of very thin plastic and cost us £13. We thought we ought to know how it works so we put it up this morning.

First thing that happened was the cat went and sat in it.

IMG_8273.jpeg

Orange tent, orange cat. They were made for one another.....

The old lady is Keith's friend. That's Keith who kept the Meeting House going during the post-covid crisis and died last year. She used to visit him in Eastbourne and wanted to keep coming- and we said, "So stay with us". We've only met her a couple of times- once at the funeral- and hardly know her. We warned her that we'd have a full house over the Bank Holiday weekend and she said, "Sounds like fun"....

Unchained

Aug. 21st, 2025 08:52 am
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[personal profile] poliphilo
 The Internet offered to show me Hercules Unchained- starring Steve Reeves- a movie I adored when I was nine and haven't seen since-  and I said, "OK". 

It would be pointless to take it apart. The innocent and uncritical nine year-old mind doesn't see how lifeless the direction and acting are; it just goes, "Greek Galley! Spooky lady! Hand to hand combat! Big Battle! Chariots! Siege tower full of soldiers falling over!" and has a whale of a time. As Tom Hood remarked, "I remember, I remember/But now 'tis little joy/ To know I'm further off from Heaven/ Than when I was a boy."

Footnote: Just about the most convincing performance comes from Primo Carnera- one time heavyweight champion of the world- as the giant Antaeus, son of the earth Mother- who gains new strength every time he hits the ground. Hercules finally figures out his shtick and picks him up and chucks him in the sea. He is ugly, he is expressive, he is dangerous- and in real life he'd have made mincemeat of body-builder Steve Reeves.....

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