A robin decided to build her nest behind our front porch light this year. In past years we’ve had phoebenests up there, but robins build their nests differently (more grass, less mud) so we knew something different was up this time. The blue eggs were kind of a giveaway too. I don’t know why birds keep nesting there: it’s pretty sheltered, but they bolt and cuss us out every time we enter or leave. In any event, the cowbirds didn’t get to the robin’s nest the way they did with phoebes’ nests in previous years, and all the chicks hatched. Every so often Jennifer takes a no-look shot, as unobtrusive as she can, to mark their progress. Like most birds, robins grow fast: I’ve read that chicks leave the nest after two weeks, which means they’ll be gone some time late next week. Robins build a new nest for every brood, so with any luck we’ll soon be able to turn on the porch light, or leave the house without scaring a bird.
As some of you know, we live on nearly an acre of partially forested land. We’ve encountered lots of different species of wildlife since we moved here in 2017. Here’s a page that lists the ones we’ve been able to identify so far. It’s a work in progress and not remotely exhaustive: there’s still lots to add on the insect, mushroom and plant front (the word “Sisyphean” comes to mind for some reason).
I’m now on Bluesky, about which I am so far cautiously optimistic: for better or worse, it seems to have recreated a lot of the Twitter vibe, but with less of the Twitter horror. Said vibe is looser and freer than Mastodon’s (which to be sure I’m still posting to), again for better or worse. It’s an oversimplification and subjective as hell, but as I posted at one point, near as I can figure, Bluesky is for people who miss Twitter and Mastodon is for people who don’t.
I’m hardly ever on Twitter any more and I certainly don’t post. I could shut down my accounts at some point, I suppose. I’m no longer mirroring these posts on Tumblr either; I am, however, still mirroring them on Dreamwidth.
After musing about it for more than eight years, my Patreon finally went live last week. The goal is to move The Map Room, the map blog I started back in 2003 (!), to a reader-supported model so I can turn off the ads (which, honestly, have gotten to be a bit much) but still pay the bills. (My Ko-fi page also works for monthly as well as one-off contributions.)
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the debut performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. A lot has been written to mark the anniversary, and about the Ninth in general, but rather than linking to any of that, or adding to the verbiage, how about we let the music speak for itself. Earlier today, WDR broadcast a concert that recreates the original performance from that night in 1824: the musicians of the Orchester Wiener Akademie are playing the exact same repertoire, and with period instruments. They could only have matched that first performance more closely by performing it at Vienna’s Theater am Kärntnertor, but it was torn down in 1870; they’re making do with the Stadthalle in Wuppertal.
Update: Well, that’s annoying: they’ve made the video private.
In “We Need to Rewild the Internet,” Maria Farrell and Robin Berjon look at the current state of the internet through an ecological lens, and compare it to an overly managed forest whose biodiversity has been scraped away in favour of a monoculture.
That impulse to scour away the messiness that makes life resilient is what many conservation biologists call the “pathology of command and control.” Today, the same drive to centralize, control and extract has driven the internet to the same fate as the ravaged forests. […]
Our online spaces are not ecosystems, though tech firms love that word. They’re plantations; highly concentrated and controlled environments, closer kin to the industrial farming of the cattle feedlot or battery chicken farms that madden the creatures trapped within. […]
Technologists are great at incremental fixes, but to regenerate entire habitats, we need to learn from ecologists who take a whole-systems view. Ecologists also know how to keep going when others first ignore you and then say it’s too late, how to mobilize and work collectively, and how to build pockets of diversity and resilience that will outlast them, creating possibilities for an abundant future they can imagine but never control. We don’t need to repair the internet’s infrastructure. We need to rewild it.
A few years ago I opined, on the subject of international speed-typing competitions, that there really ought to be a movie or series about the subject. Turns out there already was such a movie: Populaire, a French romantic comedy that came out in 2012. The reviews seem to find it fun and frothy, which is likely another way of saying slight. In any event, as is often the case with recent French movies, it’s hard to find. The streaming services don’t seem to have it; I’ll probably have to grab a second-hand DVD or Blu-Ray and then hope it doesn’t have the wrong region code. [Robert Messenger]
Because venom is complex and differs from species to species, there’s no broad treatment for snakebite: only various monovalent and polyvalent antivenoms that target a single species or group (e.g. similar snakes by region, like North American pit vipers). A new studypublished in Science Translational Medicine raises the possibility of a universal antivenom, based on monoclonal antibodies rather than animal serum.
Researchers tested a human antibody against the venom of four elapid snake species—the many-banded krait, black mamba, monocled cobra and king cobra—and found that it was almost completely effective at blocking the three-finger toxins (3FTx) found in all their venom. Less so with king cobra venom, owing, the researchers think, to other toxic components found in that snake’s venom. It was still more effective against king cobra venom and black mamba venom than standard antivenom treatment, and just as good against monocled cobra venom. (Animal testing was involved, and mice in the control group did not have a good day. Look: snakebite kills 100,000 people a year.) This study focused on a single antibody and a group of toxins found in a single snake family, and there are a lot of other toxins to deal with (again: venom is complex), so that universal antivenom is still a ways off. But it’s looking a lot less impossible.
I can’t imagine an eventual treatment based on monoclonal antibodies to be cheap—the monoclonal antibodies currently used to treat autoimmune disease sure as hell aren’t—but then antivenom tends to be either expensive (in the U.S.) or scarce: there’s a global shortage of the stuff, and for some species there isn’t actually an antivenom available.
It was only a few years ago that China seemed to be in the grip of piano mania: tens of millions of children taking lessons, hundreds of thousands of pianos sold (something like 80 percent of the entire world market for pianos). But if this report, originally published in the Chinese-language Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, is true, the Chinese piano bubble is bursting: “Weak market demand, worsening inventory pressure, declining birth rates, the ‘double reduction’ policy (reducing the burdens of homework and after-school tutoring) and other factors have led to a decline in the development of the entire industry.” Schools and stores closing, sales plummeting, millions of pianos sitting idle in warehouses.
So what happened? The report cites a number of factors, but what jumps out is a 2018 education policy change that eliminated the ability to gain bonus points from the arts for a child’s zhongkao (high school admission exam). Prior to that change, parents had been signing their kids up for piano lessons by the millions to take advantage of those bonus points and improve their kids’ chances of getting into a good school.
The ups and downs of China’s piano market show that the demand for pianos is dependent on the graded examination market, which is in turn largely driven by the public’s expectation that the ability to play the piano will help propel them into a higher social class. But the problem is that the vastly different economic and social situation now has dampened the dream of upward mobility, and impractical piano dreams no longer serve middle-class families.
In other words: the boom in piano lessons (and, as a result, piano sales) was less about music and more about class aspirations—something that Westerners ought to find familiar.
I took a hiatus from writing in 2023: no fiction, no articles, not even any book reviews. (Heck, I practically took a hiatus from reading: I only read fifteen books this year, of which only two were novels.) This was a year in which I had other things to pay attention to. Significant things. Life-changing things. But they were also things I didn’t much talk about. Twenty years ago it would have taken me, like, sixty blog posts to cover what I’m about to sum up in just this one post here. But I’ve been reevaluating how much I want to share online (increasingly, it’s been a lot less). And to be honest I’m still processing what to say.
The big news this year, one I’ve been sharing in some letters and in person—and I’m months behind on my letters so many of you have yet to hear this news—is that I no longer appear to have ankylosing spondylitis. Back in April a doctor told me there was no evidence of inflammation in either my blood work or my X-rays, and after twenty-five years (I was diagnosed with AS in 1998), there really ought to have been something. Either he was wrong, or I was misdiagnosed back then, or it’s gone into remission or burned itself out. The point of the X-rays and tests was to build a case for going on biologics, because I needed to stop taking the NSAIDs I’d been on since diagnosis: the side effects were starting to be a problem. No evidence of inflammation meant no case for biologics.
So then what? I reasoned that if there was no sign of inflammation, and the problem was the anti-inflammatory drugs, what would happen if I just stopped taking them? I tested this out in mid-April. It turns out, not much: it’s not that I was pain-free, it’s that it wasn’t something NSAIDs could work on. (Again: no inflammation.) My doctor approved of this stunt after the fact and prescribed acetaminophen to take off the edge; in May I also started physiotherapy, which is ongoing. AS may have gone away, and underneath all the NSAID use I may have missed the exact moment of departure, but it left behind a mess for physio and reconditioning to clean up. Meanwhile, I’m grappling with the idea that the disease that has shaped me for literally half my life might not be there any more. If you’re thinking that I’m in the midst of a bit of an identity crisis, you wouldn’t be wrong.
The other big news is a comprehensive return to piano playing. Not that I ever stopped, but my playing picked up this year, and I discovered that piano didn’t take up the same headspace as writing, blogging and reviewing, so taking time at the piano wasn’t a zero-sum game. But with that uptick came two realizations: that if I wanted to progress any further than the messy noodling I’d been indulging in, I needed to start taking lessons again; and that I’d reached the limits of my existing 15-year-old Roland digital piano, and so I needed a new piano. By August I’d found a teacher in Renfrew and started taking lessons for the first time in 35 years. We’re targeting the RCM level 9 exam, not so much because I want the credential, but because I respect the pedagogy: I’m behind on my technique and theory, and understand that I need to catch up if I want to play more advanced pieces. I’m now four months in and I’ve made more progress than I have in all my noodling since high school. I’m frankly having the time of my life at this.
It helps that I now have a piano sufficient to the task. (Good thing, too, because the Roland was starting to hurt my hands with all the extra playing.) Months of research and a little in-person shopping led to the conclusion that a grand piano was not only possible—i.e. we actually had the space and quite possibly the budget—but also essential: when it comes to keyboard action, there is simply no substitute. In the end, after a certain amount of worrying about how to finance a new piano, I settled on a lightly used 2012 Kawai GE-30 baby grand from Capital City Keyboards in Nepean. It arrived at the end of September. It’s a bit rough around the edges, and still needs a bit more regulating and voicing (this is actually normal for a newly arrived piano, even one with a previous owner), but it is absolutely sufficient to my needs, and at a cost of about a third of what its new equivalent would run. And it’s an absolute joy to play. The change from a digital to a grand is transcendent, and moreover playing the grand for hours on end doesn’t hurt my hands. (It does, however, hurt my neck, because my posture has to be good now—over to you, physio.)
So the news on both the medical and musical fronts is tremendously positive. It’s also been a lot. Hence my lack of communication.
But what else happened this year?
We got a turntable at the end of 2022 and spent a good chunk of this year getting into vinyl and learning its arcane ways (most of which seem to involve cleaning the damn records). We managed to avoid buying any more typewriters this year but still had three more given to us. We lost two snakes (Spook, our grey rat snake, and Trouser, our anerythristic corn snake), to old age: both were over 20; this was not unexpected. And we nearly ended up with a third cat: a stray or dump who first turned up at our neighbours, but ended up with us when the neighbours’ incumbent cats objected, and when said cat started being aggressive with our cats we realized this was an Only Cat and needed another home; after nine days a former co-worker of Jen’s took this cat in with absolute enthusiasm (if not outright thirst), and now the cat is doing great in his new home.
We got hit by the ice storm in early April, but not as bad as some: we lost electricity for 33 hours and about a half dozen trees, including our largest, but at least they didn’t cause any damage coming down (not all our neighbours were as lucky: some went without power for six days). We had to deal with smoke from the wildfires in northern Quebec, some of which weren’t very far from here. It cleared enough for Jennifer to celebrate her 50th at a big outdoor party in our back yard, where people climbed on the massive fallen tree out back. My digital life got a long-overdue-by-years reorganizations: cleaning up my photo libraries and setting up iCloud Photos went without a hitch; cleaning up my web hosting—I’d been running two hosting plans for years, and it was getting expensive—did not, and took a few days and several gnashed teeth to sort out. But my web hosting is now cheaper and simpler, and my photos sync properly across devices. Should’ve done it years ago.
Seven weeks after getting our sixth COVID vaccines, COVID finally caught up with us at the end of November: it hit Jennifer like a bad cold, me a little harder, like a bad case of the flu. The worst passed after a couple of days, then milder symptoms (and positive test results) lingered for a week or two before we recovered. We’re pretty sure how we got it, and (more importantly) we’re pretty sure we didn’t give it to anyone else. And just last week, a fire broke out across the street in a neighbour’s shed. The fire department responded within ten minutes, and it was far enough away, and wet enough, that neighbouring houses (like ours) were not at risk; all we had to deal with was losing internet for a day because the line passed above the shed and was burnt. Like the ice storm in April, and like COVID last month, another close call for us, if not for others.
When iridium-tipped nibs aren’t made of iridium: Joshua Danley looks at the history of using iridium in fountain pen nib tipping, and discovers that modern fountain pens advertised as being iridium-tipped actually aren’t. “In an effort to seek clarity on this issue, I reached out to Pelikan directly, contacting Jens Meyer, Pelikan’s Global Marketing Manager for their fine writing instruments. After consulting with the relevant parties, Jens was gracious enough to confirm that Pelikan’s nibs are in fact tipped with an alloy of tungsten and ruthenium, something of an industry standard these days.” Ruthenium is similar to iridium but a lot cheaper; it seems that “iridium” is now a term of art that doesn’t have much to do with the periodic table.
Pilot makes 16 different sizes and types of nibs for its Custom line of fountain pens, but until recently only a few of the more specialized nibs were available in the North American market.1 But now the Custom Heritage 912 is now available in North America with its full set of 15 nibs,2 and Pilot’s been sending out review units of said full set: see Brad Dowdy’s review on The Pen Addict and Mike Matteson’s reviews on YouTube. (For my part, I’ll have more to say about the Waverly nib, which I have in both a Custom 742 and a Custom Heritage 912, at some point in the future; suffice to say that I adore that nib.)
Speaking of the CH 912, Yoseka Stationery compares Pilot’s extremely fine Posting nib to the Platinum 3776 Century’s ultra-extra-fine nib, plus the extra-fine nib found on the order-of-magnitude cheaper Pilot Kaküno. All of which enable extremely tiny writing.
Jonathan Crowe
Map blogger. Piano maniac. Science fiction and fantasy critic and writer. Snake whisperer. Typewriter fiend.
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