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A lovely dinner with friends

Woke at 08:00 (so 8.5 hours sleep) And did my morning pliates. Then I finally solved a weeks old problem. Some weeks back I bought an e-book through the Swedish company Adlibris. When I tried downloading/opening it the app said that for this book I need to activate Adobe ID on the phone. I was quite certain I had previously done that, so I looked up the password, entered in my email address and password, and got a cryptic error message (en fel inträffades). So I tried the "if you don't have Adobe ID already, sign up here" button, which took me to a login page, where the above mentioned email address and password worked. Tried opening the book, right back to the same "you need to activate" message. I cycled through that a few times that day, gave up, and ignored it for some days, tried again, same result, then tried again yesterday, still didn't work, so I emailed Adlibris customer service. This morning I had a reply suggesting two other apps I could use other than their own, tried one, and it worked just fine. Of course, I have no time to actually read the book in the next few days, but now I could, if I wanted to, and that is good.
Solving that problem took us to time to get ready for work, so I packed lunch (less than I normally bring, since we had a dinner date, and my only hope to be able to eat is to make certain I don't get enough to eat during the day, as I know that the second my body thinks it has had enough food for the day it totally loses intresset in food).

We started our day up at the longhouse, as Keldor needed to borrow the cordless drill so he can patch the hole in the cauldron, and it was with the woodcarver's stuff there, and I needed to meet Elisabeth to discuss her thoughts for the soapstone carving workshop we are having during the Viking Festival.

Then we went down the hill and set to work. Keldor determined that the cauldron is in even worse shape than he had thought, as the plate next to the one he was patching is so thin that it started to split from the vibrations when riveting on the patch.

But he carried on, got the patch in place, and then gently hammerd together the split. Hopefully, if they cook a nice thick oatmeal in the pot the porridge will fill the remaining cracks and make the pot water tight for a little longer. They want the cauldron for plant dying of fabric during Festival.

I started the day by going over to the cafe and getting some cardboard and making a couple templates to show the correct inner and outer curves of the soapstone pot I am working on.

When I started the pot three years ago I first set it asside after a day or two of carving so I could make the forge stone. Then I had a day or two after finishing the forge stone to work on the pot again. So I went for speed carving, knocking the corners off as quickly as possible, and making it kinda round on the outside.

"Kinda round" as used in that sentence is nothing like the shape it should be. So, once I had the template I set it against the outside of the pot, saw that while the corners were rounded away, it was still a little more square than round. So I decided to stay with narrow strip in one of the corners, and began tapping away the high bit, then used the file, then checked the template on it, determined which part was still too high, took that down a bit, and repeated, till I had a trough in the edge just enough wider than the file to be able to slide the file back and forth through it. By the time the outer surface of that trough had the right curve it was more than 1 cm deep at the deepest point.
Then the fun bit started! Taking the chisel to the side of that trough to extend the curve around the side of the pot. By the time I had worked my way 1/4 of the way around the side of the pot (to what had been the side of the squarish block when I started) I only needed to remove a few millimetres of material, as opposed to the well over 1 centimeter thick that needed to be removed from what was left of the corner.

Of course, as I worked so many different people had stopped to ask what I was doing that I only managed to fix the outer curve of one qudrant before our shift ended and it was time to pack it up for the day.

Then we hurried home, showrred off the rock dust (me) and forge soot (him) changed to clean clothes, and headed over for dinner with Rod and Lucy.

My trick of stopping eating when still hungry worked, and I was able to eat, but I was also feeling ~~kinda~~ rather grumpy towards the end of my shift, not having had my normal regular pauses to eat a little whenever I was hungry, and I had to work very hard (with variable success) Not to take it out on Keldor, who, being warned that I was trying the experiment, was very tolerant of my failures to maintain a pleasant tone while my tummy was being a drama queen, convinced that we were dying of starvation, so we managed to avoid bickering.

Of course, as soon as we arrived it was such a delight to see Rod again and start to get to know Lucy it was easy to maintain my personality on a pleasant setting as the bustled around with the final preparations of the meal.

They fed us spaghetti with two sauces to choose from, one vegetarian (which I took), and one with meat (everyone else) and a lovely fresh baked bread, about as thick as focaccia, but a nicer texture, and a lovely garlic oil coating. I ate far too much of it, but my mouth was happy, and mt tummy decided we aren't going to die. I even managed to taste a little bit of the desert cake wirh extra cream. (Everyone else had a larger piece of cake than I took.)

They are staying in a cute little cottage that is now an AirBnB, and was likely the orginal house on the property (it sits next to a larger house, where the hosts live). It is on the shores of a lake across the fields and on the far side of the strip of woods from the museum. I have no idea if there is a short cut to the museum through that forest, but if so, it would be much faster to walk than going around by the road (but the road is only a couple of minutes by car).

Rod had a pile of his knives for sale. The man identifies as a blade smith, and he really is tallented. These are all period appropriate style for the Viking Age, and very fine grained pattern welded. So beautiful! Nice sheaths, too!

He also showed us the tools he made for doing chainmail, and clearly, he also has points in "make tools", as they are stunning. There are some surriving examples of Viking Age chainmail, and they are much finer size rings than is currently popular in reenactment. So Rod's tools are designed to work with the smaller rings, and they have some maile i progress as a demonstration.

Their rings are as tiny as the aluminium rings that Daniel uses for his art (like Keldor’s banner), but made of iron (steel? I didn't ask about the carbon content).
The cutter he made has a tiny slot in in, just big enough for the wire they use, and they cut the rings with a overlap. Then they use one of the other tools to crimp them together. The interlace pattern is quite dense, and I can see how a large piece would be very effective armour. (I will try to remember to get photos during festival)

We stayed and chatted with them till after 22:00, then headed home so they could get some sleep before they set up for festival tomorrow.

We were both tired enough thst we didn't join our colleges for a birthday party after dinner, but hust came back to the house, where I typed this till too tired to type more, did a very short yoga session, went to sleep and woke atround 04:00, took my morning vitamins and resumed typing

Now it is neatly 05:00 I will post this and do my morning pilates and then go back to sleep for however long I feel for, as we have the say off.

Its ok if you’re married to the child

If Epstein had been married to one of his victims, it would have been legal.
Child marriage is state-sanctioned statutory r@pe.
“…is legal in 34 states, Nearly 300,00 children were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018. The vast majority were girls wed to adult men.”:

Child Marriage in the United States - Equality Now

https://equalitynow.org/what-we-do/womens-rights-around-the-world/womens-rights-in-north-america/child_marriage_us/

Spelmansstämman

This is my first Spelmansstämman in several years. The year I moved to Lövånger, I still made it back for the event and performed with my folk dance group, as we had been practicing together all winter, and I was still working some days each month in Luleå, which meant I got in some occasional practice with them.

But then Keldor and I spent a couple summers traveling to lots of SCA events, and weren't home on the correct weekend to take the trip up for it, and I missed it, though I also had ever so much fun with the things we did instead.

Then I got to talking with Tania, and we agreed that this was finally the year she would make the visit to Sweden, and we choose Spelmansstämman, as the timing was perfect, falling on a weekend they didn't have any performances scheduled.

They were scheduled to arrive on Thursday and stay for a week. Since we would be attending Spelmansstämman, I contacted my old folk and they said I could join them for the performance.

On Tuesday Mike came down with Covid, and they had to cancel the trip. This made us all sad, and I felt sorry for Mike, who was also sick. Tania managed to re-book the flights to visit between Cudgel War and when we leave for Lofoten, abd I look forward to that.

But, since they weren't coming this week, I moved those vacation days to when they are actually going to be here, and worked on Friday, getting in some good progress on the tutorial video for filtering and exporting data from the database.

Keldor suggested Friday morning that I pick him up after work and we could head north from there. His eork day ends at 15:00, which would mean my leaving at 14:30. But it turned out to be one of those days when they were waiting for parts, which clearly wouldn't be delivered on time, so he quit early and just came home, which meant I could work right up to 14:30, after which I baked some naan bread to take with us, it being fast, and travels well.

That plus packing took longer than I wanted, so we started driving just after 16:00. I expected us to be late to the concert, but we made good time, and arrived to Gammelstad at 18:05, pulling into the parking lot at the same as Barbara, so Kelsor was able to give her the directly the package we pucked up at Double Wars, and he recieved a bag of Robinie wood from a tree her dad had cut down. He will, of course, make knife handels of it.

The consert opened with a group of students (I think) Who played a number of lovely pieces, and then Nina Nordvall, who is described as a "Jojkare, accordeonist, kompositör & artist" on the program. I really enjoyed both, and I sent Tania short films from each performance, since they couldn't be there.

Then we went to the dance, and I danced till 23:00, and had so much fun! Then we headed back to David's to sleep (but had to wait for him to get home, as Caroline was already asleep and had locked the door, luckily, he was only a couple of minutes behind us)

Saturday I put on my folk costume and we returned to Spelmansstämman and I participated in the march from the church to the stage. Ellinor was there, also in her folk costume, so she waited with me for the start of the parade, and walked with me. It was good to catch up. I hadn't heard that she had split up with he child's father, and I hope that it goes well for her going forward.

I watched a number of performances, sending short video clips to Tania as they went, and attended the folk song workshop, which is always fun. Keldor filmed our dance performance as a single 15 minute film, so I couldn't send it to Tania, the file was too big. I should do something about that. Perhaps if I put it on the computer, open it in Lightworks, and break it into individual dances, I can save each one.

Entry tags:

obsidian,
soapstone

much better weather today!

Went to bed at a reasonable time, slept till 08:30, meaning almost 10 housrs of sleep! (Not counting going to the toilet a few times, and taking my morning vitamins for the study.) Woke thinking of another way that might work to cut a bliaut out of the purple and blue silk fabrics I bought at Cudgel.

But, of course, before sitting down with the computer and drawing program to confirm that it would work, I did my morning pilates, as I like not waking up in the night with sore hips, and the best way to keep doing this is enough of the right sort of movement.

I did try playing with the drawing program after, but it mostly convinced me that the chunk of blue really is a little too small for this morning's idea, and I will probably go with the plan I came up with last time I had the program open.

Since we don't start till noon today, we even had time to run to the local store before work, so now I have frozen berries and a few other things I wanted.

Today's temperature was much nicer than yesterday, and it even rained occasionally.

Therefore I made some progress on the pot. I am fixing the problem with the outside curve. When I removed the rim and grove just under the rim, so we will be able to rivit on the handel, the sides became somewhat pumpkin like in their curvature. Now I am trying to straighten out the upper walls of the pot, so it looks like the surviving artefacts in part because trying to make the inside curve to make the walls uniformly 1 cm thick sounds harder if I don't.

Rod, the other Blacksmith arrived today. It is good to see him again. We will join him and his travelling companion for dinner tomorrow after work. I will just need to try not to eat during the second half of the day, to make it possible to be hungry thst late. Sleeping in may also help, which, given our work schedule here, is doable.

As we were driving home today we saw one of our colleagues walking down the street carrying a big bag of empty cans and bottles to return to the store for their deposits, so we gave her a ride. It is a couple blocks out of the way, but I wouldn't have wanted to carry that bag that far.

In other news, I am really loving the program Obsidian. I fell for it for the graph showing connections between notes, and I love that it is open-source, but the "daily note" feature has really made a difference in my posting regularly. Especially as I added a template with properties, so I can open the note in the morning, set the property "published" = "not yet", and add to it here and there during the day, then post later in the day, changing its published status to "yes".

Now I want to find an easy way to download all of my old Dreamwidth posts, and import them into Obsidian, preferably with tags and timestamps intact.

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A very warm day. Ok, hot is a better description

I woke 04:00 because my hip was aching, so I did 35 minutes pilates, took a hot shower, and went back to sleep for another three hours.

Once I finally got up, I baked a dozen bread pockets so I will have easy to take with food for a couple of days. I made the dough from the liquid in a box of chickpeas, some yoghurt, a dash of salt and enough flour to make a soft dough. The filling contains the chickpeas themselves, a box of crushed tomatoes, some dried kale, some mushroom powder and beetroot powder, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds, almond meal, and some artichoke hearts, plus spices. They are yummy!

The house was still a nice temperature when it was time to get ready for work, so I didn't think about my short-sleeved tunic. This would have been a good choice for such a hot, sunny day. Luckily, my work corner is shady and thus much nicer than out in the sun. Luckily we have a hose, and I could regularly soak my clothing, which helped. Even so, I wasn't as productive as I probably would have been under reasonable temperatures.

Keldor, who is more tolerant of the heat than I am, was much more productive, getting the patch for the iron cauldron ready to attach and making (or finishing up previously started) a variety of small forged items.

But by about 16:00 the sun had worked its way around far enough as to shine directly under his sunshade and onto where he was working. As he isn't stupid, he decided that was an excellent time to head up the hill with various metal things that needed grinding and polishing so he could do that in the shade, using power tools.

I stayed in my shady corner and kinda made a little more progress carving, but after about an hour with no visitors stopping by I packed away my stuff, wet down my tunic again, and walked up the hill. After checking in with him, I continued up the hill to the long house, and ckocked us out there, about five minutes earlier that our shift was to end.

We tried swinging by the store on the way home, but today is Sunday (we had bith forgotten), and very few shops in Norway are open on Sundays. So no bags of frozen fruit for me today, darn it!

Instead I took a cool shower and washed my hair, then hand washed the linen tunic I had been wearing today (stone carving in a wet tunic = a tunic that turns the wash water black four times before rinsing reasonably clear).

Then I mended his tunic and wahed it too. Since he uses it at the forge I didn’t even try to take it to clear wash water, but stopped after the fourth sink full if water, figuring that would solve the problem with the smell, anyway.

Now I will turn the filling that didn't go into the bread pockets this morning into a soup. By the time that is done I can do yoga and see if the bedroom is a sleepable temperature.

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Carving again

- woke 6:45 so I could join my sisters on our fortnightly zoom call. It has bern some weeks since we all four could attend one with one or more of us travelling lately (often me), so it was nice to catch up with them.

- I went back to sleep for another hour and a half after we spoke, then got up to do my morning pilates, have breakfast, and baked some naan bread to take with us today.

- we arrived just before out 12:00 start time, but couldn't log in at the café, as the tablet we use for that had re-started in the night, and no one knew the pin to wake it back up. So we set up our work stations and then one of the other workers mentioned there is another log-in tablet over at the boat house, so I walked down and clocked us both in for the day.

- carving progress for the day: got rid of the last of the ridge around the outside of the pot, and started working on the inside again. Had enough conversations with visitors that I didn't do so many hours of carving, but I probably need to adjust something in my work station as my back was sore by the end of the day.

- highlight conversation of the day was a family from Colorado, with a teen, Oliver, who wants to go to university in Europe to study archaeology. I shared what I know of studying in Europe, and gave them my name to look me up on the Umeå University web page.

- after work I was too tired to even go to the store, so the evening was spent with yoga, relaxing on FB and updating my logs.

Entry tags:

road trip

Lövånger to Stenbro

- Keldor does car maintenance and picks up cat sitter, Elisabeth, from the Skellefteå airport, Riia packs and does laundry

- Riia takes Tania and Mike to Umeå, has lunch with them, leaves them at hotel near airport, and gets glasses fixed. Home again 15:00. Keldor packs and continues laundry. Power fails, and comes back erratic

- both pack. Keldor sleeps, Riia continues packing.

- 19:00, car loaded, start driving, double back directly for the electric scooter

- really start driving 19:15. Stop often to drop of things at various homes, including.

- Pernilla

- Alfarinn & Ranghild (and Adrian & Sofie, who were also there, saving us one stop)

- Egil

- Cinder

- ICA kvantum

- Barbra & Nils

- David & Caroline

- Keldor drove till he finally needed to change drivers at ~ 23:30

- I drove till we arrived at the rest area at Stenbron at 01:46, were we slept in the back of the van

animals seen:

- fox, 2

- moose 2 (one of which stood in my lane, and I had to step on the breaks and slow way down)

- rabbit 2

- sheep 1, grazing on the side of the road, no sign of a fence in the area

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Bø to Myre and 'home' again

I woke 06:00, did 30 minutes Pilates, went back to sleep for another 1.5 hrs, after which I had a lovely, leisurely breakfast with Þora and Keldor.

We took off for adventures just after 10:00, and soon stopped at a second hand store, where Keldor found a large enough tea mug (there are none in his preferred size at the house we are staying at, and I found a couple of wooden boxes in a good size to take lunch with me while working at the museum (since we had forgot mine in Sweden). Then he found an electric planing machine for 100 kr). Their cafe had just baked cinnamon rolls, so of course we got some of them, too!

Our next stop was Nyksund, which is located at 69 N, 15 E.

location sign

It is a cute little fishing village that had become a ghost town in the 1970s, had a failed few attempts to resurrect it over the years, but didn't really wake back up till fairly recently, and is now a tourist destination.

Nyksund

With some nice views from the hill overlooking the town.

the view

After a quick walk through the village we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. A cute place that clearly does double duty as a pub at different times of the day. I ordered the tomato carrot soup with bread and butter, which was ok, but nothing to write home about. Þora had the fish and chips, after double checking that the fish is locally caught and breaded and fried on site. She seemed quite happy with it. Keldor had the goulash of the day, which the server first said contained fish (which is why I didn't order it, but he did), but a very short time later the server was back to say that it wasn't fish today, but rather whale. He said that was fine. Þora commented to me that I should try some, as whale is red meat, not fish. However, they eat fish, so even if one doesn't consider them "people", if one doesn't like the taste of fish, I strongly suspect that one isn't likelyto like something that eats fish. Keldor, however, said that the goulash was very good. He offered me a spoonful of just broth, I smelled it, and it didn't smell like anything I would enjoy, so I didn't taste it.

After lunch we started walking back through the village and saw that the second hand store, which had been closed the first time we passed it, was now open. They must do a fair few trips elsewhere to get stock, I can't imagine that such a small and isolated community can generate that much in the way of antique and old stuff. Keldor saw a cute little cast iron cannon, perhaps 30 cm long, with no price marked, and at the same time I noticed a thin purple shawl with swirly yellow etc paisley like patterns that felt like it might be wool, that also had no price marked. So we asked. The guy said he didn't know, but then decided on 650 kr for the cannon and 70 kr for the shawl. So we left the cannon there, and Þhora took the shawl.

From there we walked down the street, and saw that the ice cream place, which had also been closed before lunch was also now open. What amazing ice cream! They drop frozen berries plus vanilla ice cream into an extrusion blender thingie. The sign advertised raspberry, blueberry, and black currant. I couldn't decide, as I love all three, but chose the black currant as I have never had it as an ice cream before. I thought I had to choose, as I assumed that the flavours were pre-mixed. Nope! Then I saw them drop the berries in the thingie with the ice cream, and regretted not asking for all three types of berries, which I think would have been even better. Oh well, I will just have to go back someday.

As Keldor had a gass of a beer with lunch I had to drive home, which was mostly fine, and occasionally scary, because narrow mountain roads, sometimes under construction, plus traffic.

We paused just over half way at a place we had spotted (and marked on the map) on the way north so that he could do some fishing, and I could do a bit of yoga. Then I just leaned back on the mattress I had carried down to the rocks to make yoga more comfortable, and enjoyed the view whilst typing up this, though posting had to wait till we got back to the house and onto the computer, so I could look up a URL for photos to include.

nice yoga spot

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road trip to Vesterålen

- woke at 07:30, did half an hour of Pilates

- got out my computer for the first time since arriving. This meant I was able to go back an finally post a back-dated blogpost which I had started typing on the day, got interrupted, and never finished (2025-06-22 a delightful visit).

- then we went out on adventures north to Vesterålen, the islands just north of Lofoten to visit my friend Þora.

- what a beautiful drive!

- once we arrived we made a yummy lentil curry for dinner, then she took us on a drive around the island, showing us the old family farm, where the farm's boathouse used to be, before a storm took it away, and proved to us that there isn't anywhere on the island that doesn't have an amazing view. Beautiful. 100% could live here, if I had a way to support myself.
- did my evening yoga at 23:13, and was in bed just before midnight

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Cake contest

- woke 05:00, did 30 min Pilates, went back to sleep till 08:00

- got up, made a sign from the almond paste with letters of chocolate sprinkels, saying "The 300g Anvil" to add to the base of the cake for tonight's contest.

- breakfast, pack lunch, get text message saying that I can start at 11:00 (same time as Keldor) today, the 10:00 start was when they thought I would be working in the long house, but now that I am down the hill by the forge, 11:00 is better, as most visitors take time to wander that far from the entrance.

- first "full day" Stone carving this year. A regular stream of visitors to chat with meant frequent breaks, of course. One the the most common questions I get is how long does it take to make such a pot. I reply that it os tough to estimate, as my job is both stone carving and talking to visitors, but I have worked on it at least three different weeks. Perhaps someone focusing on the carving could finish one on a week?

- Keldor was a little stressed today, as he thought he had brought his phone with him, but didn't have it when we arrived. He tried going home to check, but the house door was locked, and without the phone he couldn't send a message to learn the code for the key box. So he just returned to the museum and got the smithy set up and functioning and started working.

- As our shift ended I was seriously looking forward to the cake contest night, and he was thinking that if he doesn't find his phone he will want to just stay home and feel sorry for himself. Luckily, he had, in fact, simply left the phone on the bed when we went to work, so he happily relaxed with the phone for a half an hour before we went to the Longhouse for the gathering.

- Wow, were there some amazing cakes!

our cake wasn't a pound cake (1 lb each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour), but rather used 300 grams of each, so I called it a 300 g Anvil. In between the layers is raspberry jam, the coating is almond paste, and the sides of the tree stump are chocolate sprinkles.

This one, the Secrets of Borg (where the museum is located) is an interpretation of a burial mound, with a chocolate cake layer for the ground, and a really yummy spinach cake layer for the vegetation layer, as well as some archaeological remains.

viking baking

This one, Everyone was Viking Baking, had a theme song (written to the tune of everyone was Kung-Fu Fighting--that song is not arranged the way it used to be when I was little, so I gather they filked a more recent re-make than the version I know)

This one, The Lamb Soup, is a beautiful re-interpretation of the lamb soup, bread, and thick cream that is served in the long house every day for lunch. It really looks pretty much like this, only not made of candy.

This one, Tiramisuggdrasill, is not only a lovely representation of Uggdrasil as a tiramisu, but also has the (not edible) Midgard Serpent, and was accompanied by a reading from the sagas, with music on the lyre, and "translations" of all of the allegories into prose.

There were many more cakes, but this highlight will do.

Entry tags:

home improvements and a delightful visit

Back in February I got a FB message from Martin, a guy in An Tir who wants to move to Sweden, and who had gotten my name from a mutual friend. I was, of course happy to answer all of his questions and enthusiastically encourage the idea.

We have chatted off and on since then, and he and his partner, Molly, flew over for a week's visit to check out a few cities in Sweden and see where they might like to live. The started in Gothenburg, drove over to Stockholm, since they were in that area at the right time I sent them over to the first day of the combined birthday, birthday, midsummer party at Stigot's, which they really enjoyed. Then they headed north to a campground in Orsa where they caught a Midsummer festival.

At the same time, Keldor and I went to Umeå for a Midsummer bbq, and whilst in town we picked up a free second hand computer, and a bunch of party pavilions. Our job is to sort out the pieces, figure out how many there are, set up one or more in our yard for the summer to provide shade for me, and/or make a place to store the lawnmower.

On Saturday Martin and Molly started the long drive north to visit us, and we started a home improvement task.

The City Council recently decided to change how trash is collected. Instead of our needing to take away our recycling ourselves to a local collection station, they traded out our trash bins to new, larger bins with divided interiors, one for each catagory (compost, paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, coloured glass, clear glass, and everything else (unless it needs special treatment, such as electronics, paint, etc)).

With this change we realised that we no longer need the closet full of large plastic bins to sort recycling. So instead we emptied and cleaned the under sink area. Then we put a few small containers there to collect small piles of sorted glass plastic and metal before we take them to the large bin in the yard. We left one large plastic bin in the old recycling closet in which to hold things like electronic scrap before we take it to the city dump, and we left the paper bag to collect cardboard scrap next to it.

Then we moved the vacuum cleaner from the cupbord near the loo to the old recycling cupboard, standing it o top of the electronic scrap bin. The shelf in the cupboard near the loo, that used to hold the vacuum cleaner mow has all the cleaning supplies, which is much easier to access, as it is waist height.

We managed to get everything moved just before Martin and Molly arrived, which was perfect timing, as the house was presentable, and we were both relaxed a d feeling accomplished.

Their visit was fun. They stayed two days, during which we went into town and wandered around and looked at the museum. They want to move to Sweden, so a goal for this trip was to visit a variety of cities in a variety of parts of the country, and get a sense for the feel of each, so they know where they would prefer moving to. Keldor and I hope they wind up in northern Sweden, but, of course, it is where the job market takes them that will most matter.

Entry tags:

Lofoten day two

- woke up just after 08:00, but didn't manage to roll out of bed till almost 09:30

- still did my 30 minutes pilates workout before eating breakfast, packing lunch, changing to Viking clothes etc.

- arrived at the museum just before our shift started at 12:00. Checked the long house, my soapstone pot in progress was still there. Checked the barn, the pallet we had prepared yesterday to be delivered down the hill to our work station was still there.

- walked down the hill, no sign of anyone who might know anything.

- Keldor walked back up the hill to fetch his axe and a few useful items

- while he was gone I ate my pastie. Then one of the guys working for drift drove by, so I chatted with him. He suggested I just call Elisabeth, so I did.

- a bit later she sent a message saying that stuff was on the way.

- Keldor returned just before the pallet of stuff arrived, so we unloaded it, put the pallet in the little viking storage tent we put up yesterday, then put the boxes of metal bits for forging, and the bags of charcoal inside on the pallet, to keep everything dry if it rains. We put the benches and my box of tools in my work area, and hid my sandals and our lunch bags inside. (I changed into my viking shoes after we arrived. I know they will eventually wear holes in the soles, but I would like to put that day off as long as possible, so I use my Birkenstocks for the 1 km walk down the hill)

- then we checked that it would be ok, and got out the tent that they discovered had gotten moldy and opened it up to make a large, oddly shaped, flat roof over the stack of syones that is the forge.

- to do that he used his axe to cut poles with a forked ends. They worked very well.

- the anvil delivery happened directly after the pallet, and they said they would be back with the bellows and my soapstone. They were. At 16:30.

- the time between finishing the roof and getting that delivery went slowly. The time after went much faster, as I was both working on my stone carving and occasionally lending a hand as he worked on getting the bellows set up.

- when I started making this pot, I added a bit of a rim around the edge to make it easier to hold and lift. However the museum bought a handle for the pot, so it can be suspended over a fire. In order to rivit that to the pot I have to take away that rim and make the top of the pot flat. Luckily, I hadn't finished the inside, so I have enough stone available to do this.

- our shift ended at 19:00, and we walked back up the hill to where we had parked the car, then stopped by the store on the way home, where we picked up cat sand (which he will use to get the smithy working tomorrow), yoghurt so I cam make naan bread, and baking paper to roll out the almond paste we had coloured last night.

- after a short break we went to work on our cake for tomorrow, the *300-gram anvil.*

- the anvil is cut from layers of pound cake wirh raspberry maremlade between, and covered with a bluish grey almond paste. It sits on a tree stump, also made from layers of pound cake and raspberry marmlade, but covered with brown almond paste, and with bark made from chocolate sprinkles. We also lay bits of green almond paste around the base of the tree stump.

- now it sits in the fridge and waits for tomorrow evening's cake decorating contest. The name? Because my pound cake calls for 1 pound each of butter, sugar eggs, and flour, but i chose to use 300 grams of everything, as that is an even 5 eggs.

Entry tags:

pets

The gooshy food

I mentally send the best of gooshy food to the cat of a friend, now traveled over whichever metaphor she prefers for him.

Entry tags:

Lofoten day one

- 30 min pilates

- breakfast with Keldor

- drive to the store, buy a loaf pan for the cake contest, and some food

- pack lunch

- answer email from Jens, whom I met at the Soldier's Hut, cutting gras with a sythe, when I was out for a walk with Tania and Mike

- drive to meet Elisabeth at 10:00 at the museum administration building.

- after dealing with paperwork, walk down the hill to the outdoor smithy area.

- see the hole in the ground where the old smithy used to be, think "if we put a tent over the top of that it would make a delightful place to do my stone carving this summer", then Elisabeth suggests doing exactly that.

- get one of the extra viking tents and set it up over the hole.

- set up one of the tiny viking tents by the smithy area, so there will be a dry place to hide the charcoal.

- started refurbishing the pile of stones that is the outdoor smithy

- went to to the barn and filled a pallet with tools and supplies we need them to drive down for us

- went to the long house at 17:00 to clock out for the day, passed the cauldron of soup just as they were about to throw away the leftovers. Volunteered to help eat the leftovers. They also gave us bread and thick cream to go with it. Yum!

- visited with a few of the other craftspeople after clocking out

- returned to the house to start baking (Keldor went fishing). Baked a pound cake for Wednesday's cake contest. (Will decorate tomorrow)

- while cake baked started a pot of soup

- wanted to add some mushroom powder, but we are out. So I turned down the heat under the soup, took the jar of dried mushrooms, powdered them, and put them back in the jar. The bits that fell on the counter under the process wound up in the soup.

- then I turned the heat back up to get the soup properly boiling, made the egg noodle dough and tossed them in, followed by butter and fresh broccli.

- cleaned the kitchen and packed the soup into one plastic box, and the cake into another

- did 30 minutes of yoga

- now it is time to post this and get some sleep

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Wheel of Time is kinda really expensive fanfiction, much like the LotR movies

Posted this on other social media, and am also posting it here in case anyone is interested.

Wheel of Time (TV): I don't know if anyone has done a back-of-the-envelope analysis of the demographics of people who LOATHED the TV series.

I have a thought: the series, like any movie/tv adaptation, changed some things around. I have a lot of commentary on the LotR movies, for example, but I still enjoy them. But there were a number of people who thought the WoT adaptation was completely horrible.

One of the things that the series did differently from the books was to make it more of an ensemble show from the start; the first book is mostly centered on Rand, although that changes a lot with books 2 & 3, and onward - there are at least a dozen viewpoint characters. One of the effects of this is to give the women more prominence in the series. Moiraine (the blue wizard, who is also not young) gets good screentime, plus the two young women from the village, not just the three young men.

I'd be interested in the demographics of the people who loathed the show vs. demographics of people who like the books. Are men much more likely to not like the series than women? Is this because the male characters aren't the only ones in the spotlight? (If it is, not many men would admit to it.)

Running second to this is the inclusivity of race/skin color in the show compared to the assumed white European people in the books. Are there as many people annoyed with Lan being Asian as they are with more women in a central role?

So for the analysis, I'd want to see comparison of fan percentages, which might be something like this if my hypothesis holds water:
Fans of WoT: 55% male, 45% female
Fans of WoT TV: 30% male 70% female

So this would show a drop of 25% favorability amongst men compared with the books. I stress again that these are entirely made-up numbers.

That drop could then be compared to a different adaptation that doesn't have the gender emphasis changes -- what if the LotR movies only had a 10% drop in male fans compared to the books? One could then conclude that the difference (15%) might well be due to the race or gender emphasis.

I did find this, which is interesting, especially as I think the genre categories are extremely porous, so separating them might not be as useful as Harris thinks they are:

"the Harris Interactive study on 2015 adult reading habits shows that fantasy might be slightly more popular among women, with 25% of female survey respondents having read a fantasy novel in the past year compared to only 23% of male respondents. This is only a sliver of a difference, though, which means it is more likely that men and women read fantasy at mostly even rate. Science-fiction is a completely different story, though, with men reading novels published in that genre almost twice as often (35% to 19%). "

Re: porous: IMHO, if you're going to separate this into two categories, I'd want SF to have very solid science at its base -- and there are a lot of alleged strong-SF which do NOT have strong science underpinnings; a lot of the "SF" category is Science Fantasy. But this isn't the place for that argument - I'm sure you can find plenty online, by professionals in the field, if you're interested in the topic.

If you've seen any hints of this kind of demographic analysis for any WoT item, please mention it.

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civics

Arguing despite bad faith from fascists, and the paradox of tolerance

I'm bringing together a couple of related things here.

First is the essay linked below. It addresses a frustration I have inside my own head -- how can regressive/evil politics be fought against when much of it is presented in a slick and appealing format? When it seems the loudest proponents are outright lying, they know it, but pretend otherwise?
Fighting on that ground is against my religion! We must treat bad faith as disqualifying.

How Liberalism Sabotages Itself Our intentional blindness to bad faith is a loophole fascists use to gain respectability and power. -- Brian Beutler

CV summary: You can't win a discussion with people who view deception as fair means to their political ends. Liberal freedoms are merely loopholes to exploit in their pursuit of power.

Quote: "means-to-an-end-style of bad faith in discourse is endemic on the right—not just among ascendant fascists—and has been for a long time. ... Estelle lays out the method plainly: Rightists appeal to whomever they can with whatever false commitments they intend to break, knowing that, once delivered to power, they will pull the rug."

https://www.offmessage.net/p/how-liberalism-sabotages-itself

The related second idea is in the graphic below. Here is the text (which of course I corrected punctuation, because I can't not do that.)

The paradox is: should you be tolerant of people who are IN-tolerant? The people who are jerks will insist you tolerate them.

thoughtportal wrote:

The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance, not as a moral standard, but as a social contract.

If someone does not abide by the terms of the contract, then they are not covered by it.

In other words: The intolerant are not following the rules of the social contract of mutual tolerance.

Since they have broken the terms of the contract, they are no longer covered by the contract, and their intolerance should NOT be tolerated.

commasameleon replied: As someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox of Tolerance. I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this. This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this to my classes now. Philosophically and rhetorically, this completely resolves the Paradox of Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity, and I am angry I never saw it before!