boost: Jeangu Macrooy's Political Music Video That Made Me Smile
Jul. 24th, 2025 03:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Thanks to the YouTube algorithm actually paying attention, as well as petra, please enjoy this snappy video with on-screen handwritten captions:
Thanks to the YouTube algorithm actually paying attention, as well as petra, please enjoy this snappy video with on-screen handwritten captions:
Today I went for a physio appointment.
(This one was for a whole different area, yay, and a different person, and I think went quite well.)
But anyway, I walked back a slightly different way, taking me along the parade of shops on the main drag towards the Tube station, and then the parade of shops round the corner from where I reside.
And okay, there were the boutique independent coffee shops, and assorted eateries of varied ethnicities, and a rather interesting-looking poncey delicatessen I had not checked before with some rather fascinating vinegars in the window (you were temptaaaaation), and the usual things like estate agents, dry cleaners, newsagents, pharmacy, etc.
Also:
Several yoga/Pilates studios, can there really be that much of a demand??? Maybe they offer different styles, but even so.
And there are two picture-framers within half a mile of one another, what are the odds, eh? This seems to me so very niche an enterprise I was wondering if 'picture-framing' is actually a front for something else.
I have also, slightly to my horror, discovered that the florist/fruit & veg shop where I bought the aubergines the other week, is run by a 'mumtrepreneur'. What fresh hell is this.
Maybe I should make a note of what I read, so they don't all blur into one.
Recently (in the last two weeks):
Grandmother's Secrets by Rosina-Fawzia al Rawi
(1) is a novella in the Rivers of London series about Isaac Newton's line of British official government wizards. Starring Thomas Nightingale in a rare trip abroad to visit 1920s New York and hunt down the maker of an enchanted saxophone.
Very Bertie Wooster dancing the Charleston in a gay club, and it's the novella that reveals Nightingale to be asexual. A rare win for the aces :)
(2) is a children's book in which a young wizard whose only gift is for working with dough is forced to find out exactly what she can do with it when her kingdom is in peril.
It's very well written - the plot escalates smoothly and it keeps you reading without being too busy or hectic. The prose is powerful but doesn't intrude. I enjoyed it but didn't really connect emotionally.
(3) follows a slow and unworldly (third, spare, novice nun) princess as she makes/finds allies in a quest to rescue her sister from the sister's husband. He is the prince of a neighbouring, much more powerful kingdom, and having murdered their elder sister is now abusing the middle sister.
I enjoyed this one much more for its blend of realistic dynastic politics and weird wizardly powers. I liked the characters more too, and they combined with the excellent workmanship of the author in a way I almost had feels about. (Not quite - my feels don't get engaged much any more, sadly.)
(4) A dead man turns up inside a hermetically sealed house run by a powerful AI, and a detective goes inside the house to try to solve the murder. This turns out to be a mistake. I enjoyed Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace) so I thought I might enjoy this too.
I am finding it haunting, and I appreciate her attempts to construct intelligences that are not human, but this one feels a bit like there is no plot, just an experience. And it's not a particularly pleasant experience. Rose House is not a particularly likeable character, even if its murder was in self defense. (Or was it?)
(5) A non-fiction book, partially a treatise on the origin of belly dancing and partially an autobiography.
I appreciated this as coming from within the culture where raqs sharqi originated, and it is a beautiful memoir of the author growing up with the dance. It was interesting to think of it as a private, indoors thing done by the women of the household chiefly for each other