It's Always More Complicated

But hey, after A WEEK I have a new passport! - their website says may take up to three weeks, so I am very impressed with this. Also have the old one back (sent separately). The photo of course strongly resembles a headshot from a C19th volume of an institution for the criminally insane at which the head doc had taken to photography and theories of physiognomy, but don't they always?

***

In the world of spammyity-spam-spam:

Really, I am quite tempted to 'deliver an oral talk' (? as opposed to doing a presentation in the form of interpretative dance?) at the 13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (ICGO-2026 Asia) as it's in Kyoto: 'adorned with early autumn foliage, offering a serene backdrop for academic exchanges, you’ll have the chance to experience traditional tea ceremonies, stroll through ancient bamboo groves, and engage with a city that values both heritage and scientific progress'.

But am not at all tempted (more DESTROY THIS WITH FIRE & EXTREME PREJUDICE) by this solicitation:

Imagine if, instead of being buried in PDFs, your work could answer questions directly, 24/7. Not just to students, but to anyone curious, anywhere in the world.
When corporate companies, grant providers, grad students, journalists ask AI about your field, they get up to date info and not outdated summaries.
Today, your Google Scholar profile just sits there. No one can ask it questions. No one can discover the depth of your work through AI search.
AI is becoming the new search engine for expertise. And academics are invisible.
We built something to fix this. Your own .cv domain. LLM optimized. SEO optimized. Analytics. Branded URLs. Digital Chat Twin.

Ask ME the questions, please. Because, and I quote, 'No one can discover the depth of your work through AI search'. Many a true word.

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And, in fact, this week has been quite the flurry of that Dr oursin being relevant - apart from query on scholarly listserv which was well in my wheelhouse but had me going 'would be helpful to indicate what reading - apart from google search - you had done before asking for suggestions' -

Request to referee a paper on topic on which I am somewhat reluctantly considered a Nexpert, for journal in an area in which I am not.

Query from researcher about sources for a possible project of theirs.

Invitation to go and talk about the History of 'Engines of Love' (as the condoms found in William Empson's college rooms were described) in connection with an exhibition in the summer.

Have also had agreeable email exchanges with Elderly Antiquarian Bookseller friend.

***

On the downside, printer is acting up, doing both being fussy about toner cartridge AND thinking there's a paper jam in Tray 1. Sigh.

At least, I found a whole foods supplier which had - among other things like wheatbran which looked like it would not be like the sawdusty stuff Ocado have lately been purveying under that name - things like Medium Oatmeal! Wheatgerm! and POMEGRANATE VINEGAR!!! which I have been complaining everywhere were No Can Haz. Also kasha (I did have kasha but on recently examining the package found that its BBF was way back last summer).

And conveyed to me with remarkable expedition even if I didn't pony up for the expedite delivery option.

Slight whinge at DPD for just leaving it on the step and not even ringing the bell.

Also, I discovered that my library card for Former Workplace expired several years ago. On emailing about renewal (as I have a need to Go In and Consult Things) got a next day response saying they can renew if I send in scan of appropriate ID and address verification, and pick up card when I go in.

This somewhat makes up for:

a) the two reviews I did last year which still sit in limbo with the relevant editors.

b) the two feelers put out for books to review, ditto, such that I am hesitant to put out another for a different book to a different journal in case I end up yet again with stack of books for review.

c) local history society which I contacted last year apropos 2 volumes of its proceedings which are Relevant to My Interests and which after some initially encouraging response has gone silent.

Am still miffed about either inadvertently deleting or not being sent Zoom link for the last Dance to the Music of Time discussion.

and am baffled by the ongoing situation 'The server is taking too long to respond' of the Mastodon instance I frequent, which has now pertained for nearly 5 days.

Let's All Remember When We Saved The World:

Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer - signed 16th September 1987 and entering into force on January 1st 1989, [became] the first universally ratified treaty in the entire history of the United Nations....
Much smarter people than I have spent the last 2 decades trying to understand exactly why it was such a resounding success, and let’s be clear here, I am just an idiot with a newsletter. But a couple of details stand out:
The agreement didn’t wait for all the science to be completely firmed up before implementing regulation - which is a good job, because early conclusions about ozone depletion levels were significantly underestimated. Instead, it adopted a “Precautionary Principle” that was enshrined in the Rio Declaration in 1992 - acting on likely evidence to avoid consequences that may be catastrophic or even irreversible if any delay is sought. (This is markedly different from how some politicians seem to think science should work - if their words can be believed, of course.)
Negotiations took place in small, informal groups, to give everyone the best chance of being heard and being understood. More than anything else, this reminds me of Dorsa Brevia, and how utterly exhausting that conference was for all the characters involved. Who knows how many such talks led to Montreal being accepted? But every one of them counted.
There was a clear economic benefit for the industries using CFCs to move away from them - not just on principle or to avoid public backlash, but because CFCs were old tech and therefore out of patent, and shifting to new alternatives would allow companies to develop ozone-friendly chemicals they could stick a profitable patent on.
And so the world was saved - just in time for its next challenge.

“A remarkable discovery”: Rare fern found in Welsh valley 150 years after being wiped out by Victorians:

The plant's disappearance from Cwm Idwal is thought to have been driven by the Victorian fern-collecting craze known as 'Pteridomania', which stripped sites of rare species.
Its rediscovery suggests that the holly fern may be recolonising from spores carried within the national park, or that a hidden population survived undetected.
“This is a remarkable rediscovery," says Alastair Hotchkiss, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland’s Wales Officer. "The cliffs around Cwm Idwal are seriously challenging terrain for botanists to explore, but the fact that this species remained undetected for over a century and a half is a powerful reminder of how much we still have to learn about our upland flora – and how much we still have to protect.”

Goodness knows we could do with something that's good news and Doing Things Right: Morning-after pill to be offered without charge at pharmacies in England: Government announces move in effort to reduce ‘postcode lottery’ of free access to emergency contraception. And so it should be, given that contraception is free under the NHS (I can get critque-y about the loss of the kind of specialist service the quondam FPA provided, but there is still this).

Coincidentally, this flashed across my screen the other day: group review of several books on Commerce and modern reproduction, two of which are by mates of mine.

***

Also we were chuffed to read this: Youth Demand says more protesters have signed up since Quaker house raid.

***

I'm pretty sure (but what do I know?) that the quagga, described in this review of Peter Heywood. The Life, Extinction, and Rebreeding of Quagga Zebras as a 'funny-looking zebra', is not the focus of excited attempts to bring it back from extinction in the way that dodos and mammoths have become poster-children for such enterprises, but apparently there have been endeavours to bring this creature back:

It is not really about the quagga. What scientists and conservationists learned about rebreeding and reintegrating species into habitats they once inhabited will be important for protecting endangered species on the verge of complete disappearance.

***

Ths drew my attention the other day: a virtual tour of Conway Hall:

one of only two surviving buildings in the UK built by and for the non-religious. A humanist building, this was a place where non-religious people could gather, to come together and find community. A community specifically of people who wanted to share ideas, to work for a better world, and to enjoy music, the arts, and each other’s company.

The weird taskbar thing that was happening on my desktop seems to have remedied itself yay.

Did I ever mention that my GP surgery notified me that they were scheduling the next round of boosters + flu shots? - admittedly it turned out that these were several weeks ahead, but I am now scheduled at least.

A young person solicited my advice on their research and came back to my response with effusive gratitude.

However -

Editor of volume to which I am contributing chapter I have already writ substantial portion of responded to my email saying that I was not going to make it by original deadline (which I was assured was not at all hard), but within a few weeks probably, with what I consider rather belated sending of editorial guidelines. Which include reference system I do not like at all and which means unpicking referencing I have already done, moan, groan.

***

In other news: save the hedgehog by giving them additional Protected Wildlife Status.

***

The people in Cheshire who will tell you they 'know' the Earth is flat: I had to play that video of Flat Earther singing in a different browser and honestly, it is not much improvement over the hymn of the real (rather than spoof) Flat Earthers in Kipling's 'The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat' - 'Flat, and Flat for ever more'.

Well, actually, I suppose they must have some knowledge of Who I Am, or they wouldn't have asked me to provide content for their web project, but:

a) maybe they expected me telepathically to intuit what they actually wanted?

or

b) they thought I would be quite okay with somebody editing rewriting mangling/garbling the text I'd provided in order to improve, allegedly, accessibility, and to express the ideas in simple language not academicese.

I have a sense that here and there the underlying ideas have been misunderstood? I think there's some contextual stuff there that needs to be there in order to understand that person and their career and why they did certain things.

But if you want it in shorter sentences and simpler words, tell me!

I concede that one of my pet peeves is biography that is not context-sensitive. I have finally finished the very long biography ms that I had been sent and hooray, that is not a charge that can be levelled against it. I also thought it was fair to its subject while seeing that there were areas of Problem. One or two tiny niggles picked up, and the nerdy divorce timing thing, and I quite lately in a chapter in the Mitchison book discovered they had a connection that wasn't mentioned, but overall, pretty yay!

And in the realm of yay! heard today that somebody I had provided a letter of recommendation for for a research fellowship has got it, lo, my wordz have POWAH.

So, the other day I was looking in the tottering piles for a book to chase up a quotation about birth control activists in the 1920s as painted Jezebels smoking cigarettes (the women in question were, one suspects, dowdy worthy workers in Good Causes) to insert into a post for the academic blog I was writing that I have been thinking about for ages and finally got motivated to Do Something about -

And purely perchance and by happenstance managed to turn up a book about which I was wondering where my copy was, and whether it was worth looking for, on the grounds that slender 1960s Pelicans are very likely indeed to get lost in the morass and it might just be less hassle to see whether there are copies about on Bookfinder.

Which was very useful, not just because I need to put in rather more specific references for a thing I am writing, but also because rather late in the day we have been sent revised instructions about The Thing and it might actually come in useful for making more substantive changes (which one would rather not at this late stage, but will show willing).

In other gratifying news, the issue I raised with one of my credit cards over a charge with an online seller for goods which never arrived and about which there was no communication, and means of contact on online seller's site did not actually communicate, has, if not actually been entirely resolved, at least credited pro tem.

I also managed to get a zombie subscription removed from another card - I did try to cancel it on the original site but it went back so long that my login was a really ancient email address.

That thing with Amazon over misclassification of one of my volumes is still silence reigning, so I have contacted via website rather than trying to get a response from the email bots.

In the absolute shipwreck that is the NHS at present, one still gets sent routine screening tests. I have done mine and been out and posted it. Whether anything then happens, i.e. it actually then gets processed, I know not. Perhaps there is some still quiet corner where pathologists go about their business.

I have been sent letter for Freedom Pass Renewal and one merely needs to fill in details online. No need for new photo. Yay?

Okay, okay, I am really, really chuffed, like chuffed to the max, over the kind words for Madame C- on Ask A Manager the other day.

Had a little run of minorly nigglesome stuff -

Yesterday my watch appeared to have stopped, and I was, how am I going to get a new battery inserted? - and then later on I picked it up and it had started again, I dunno, what is this thing that this thing is?

And today I had a thing when I was working in a document in Word and it suddenly started going Word Is Not Responding and being weird and then shut down and I found that it did not even have autosave of the edits I had made when I re-opened the document, annoying. Fortunately it was not a lot of text, but still annoying.

Then I was thinking that it seemed a while since I had had a statement for one of my credit cards, and looking into this found that I had overlooked it since it had been sent enclosed with Some Other Communication which was not an actionable item...

Pah.

However, chasing around for various books to have on hand for editing a paper which I am turning into a chapter for a book which has been a prospect that had gone very quiet for several months, and is now A Go, I have managed to lay hands on them: except one, which I find is anyway out in a new edition with critical intro at eligible price.

Also on matters academic, there is a call for papers which seems very directed towards the subject matter of a paper I have been touting around several conferences - I suppose I should fancy up an abstract and send it off...

But over the past several weeks I have been making as is my usual wont, yeasted breads, and I am finally coming to the end of a supply of fresh yeast laid in well before everything locked down -

- and really, it has been the fresh yeast supply That Could, it is still going strong, which is fairly remarkable given that it must have been early March at the latest when either of us went to the organic wholefoody place that sells it, and that the best before date on the label is actually a month ago.

I am not sure whether there is quite enough left, or whether it will indeed hold out that long, for this Saturday's breakfast rolls, but it did for today's loaf.

Dept of Small, slightly miraculous, Things.

Also, in life admin matters, I was having some problems at the end of last week logging in to A Financial Institution, and although today I was obliged to reset a password, I did not have to undertake what I feared would be tedious telephonic communications.

And although I was startled this morning to find that I had No Email coming to my main inbox and my websites were down (but at least I had broadband) this little problem was very expeditiously dealt with by the ISP (it was by no means unique to me but some issue to do with one of their servers) and order is restored.

That was a great conference, even with the AV and IT hitches along the way.

Much good humour along with the vibrant intellectual exchanges.

Great conversations, some useful connections made.

However, although I enjoyed the closing reception, and initially agreed to go on with a group to a restaurant, even though I wasn't hungry, the refreshments at the reception having been adequate to my needs, but I thought I could nibble something small and sip a drink, but then there was the perhaps inevitable people actually not being very good at getting it together to go even though there was a lift in a large vehicle being offered. And then I wondered whether I was really entirely up for the indefinite lingering and not-sure-how-I'm-getting-back fret, and suddenly feeling the strain of two early mornings and two and half intense full days of conference.

So called the hotel and although there was some problem with the shuttle, somebody kindly came and picked me up in their car.

Am going floppppp.