wrog

It's not possible for me to keep track of the hundreds of political prisoners terrorised by dictatorial authoritarian Keir Starmer and his Starmtroopers for terrible crimes such as sitting peacefully in public holding a cardboard sign opposing the nation state of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Palestine. Of course, Starmer has a long record of abusing his positions of power to persecute his political enemies, such as mildly left of centre Jewish members of the Labour Party whom Starmer disproportionately targeted for removal from the party - no other Labour party leader has intentionally silenced so many Jewish voices (and the Starmtroopers' obsessive misogynoir goes without saying).

Full text of a news article for archiving purposes. The Sky News headline covering the same events is "890 people arrested at Palestine Action protest - including 17 on suspicion of assaulting police officers" although I note the only evidence of violence produced so far demonstrates police violence against members of the public (oddly police almost never arrest themselves for violently assaulting the public with batons). All the usual respected international human rights organisations continue their support for Keir Starmer's political prisoners and also for the millions of victims of the nation state of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Palestine.

Kerry Moscogiuri of the human rights campaign group Amnesty International UK said: “When the government is arresting people under terrorism laws for sitting peacefully in protest, something is going very wrong here in the UK.”
“Criminalising speech in this context is only permitted when it incites violence or advocates hatred. Expressing support for Palestine Action does not, in itself, meet this threshold.” Although I note that many of the people arrest were expressing support for "Palestine action" or "palestine action", neither of which is afaik an arrestable offence (unless onerous bail conditions have previously been imposed, probably illegally, by the police or other abusive institution).

Police Fail to Arrest Two-Thirds in Biggest-Ever Protest Against Palestine Action Ban
‘A huge embarrassment.’
by Harriet Williamson
7 September 2025

An estimated 1,500 people in London have taken part in one of the largest acts of mass civil disobedience in British history, to protest the ban on Palestine Action. The Metropolitan Police arrested just over half of them, in what has been described as a “huge embarrassment” for commissioner Sir Mark Rowley.

At 1pm on Saturday, more than 1,300 protesters, the majority of them over 60 and some visibly disabled, sat down in Parliament Square and wrote “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine action” on cardboard signs. By 9:15pm, the Met said officers had managed to arrest “more than 425” and called its operational plans “effective” – despite having failed to arrest everyone, as it had claimed it would.

( Archived news article. )

yhlee

(cross-posted with slight adjustments from

foxmoth at

communal_creator)

Howdy! I’m Yoon, an MFA student in media composition and orchestration. I am here today to talk to you about sampled orchestral mockups in composing music.... It’s a niche field even in (media) composition due to the cost + tech barriers to entry. I thought folks might be curious (and maybe interested in trying their hand at a lower-cost version of it).

To the extent that I have musical training (mostly Obligatory Asian-American Piano Lessons by volume), it’s classically inflected. Even folks who hate classical music :) probably know it exists. A more “traditional”/conservatory approach to writing for (symphony) orchestra might involve pen-and-paper composing to generate sheet music. This is my background and I still do a lot of sketching on staff paper.

This inherently means you’re reading (Western classical) music notation (of which more anon) and often means you’re wrassling explicitly with music theory and related topics.

However! These day, hiring a session orchestra is semi-doable by a dedicated individual if you have the money lying around. ( Read more... )

So most mortals who are doing orchesstral or hybrid orchestral scores for film or TV and especially non-AAA video games are using sampled orchestra mockups.

Note: unless otherwise specified, if I say “music notation” or “music theory” I’m referencing more or less common practice Western (European-derived)-style music notation simply in the interests of avoiding unwieldiness in this overview. ( some further observations )

Hiring a session orchestra may be surprisingly semi-doable by a normal human but most work in orchestral media composition (film, TV, video game scores) is now done in software via sampled orchestral mockup. This includes classical-ish, e.g. John Williams everything or Carlos Rafael Rivera’s score for The Queen’s Gambit, or hybrid orchestra (e.g. Two Steps from Hell) with synth or “modern” instrumentation elements.

A quick and dirty (incomplete) overview of terms you might come across in this space, with simplified explanations. There’s a LOT of jargon, some of which is obscure or confusing even to e.g. classical musicians entering this space! ( Read more... )

This has all been in the way of preliminaries, apologies! This is an extremely technical field so the jargon alone is A Lot.

These days, composers often write (in that workflow) using engraving software. In this context, this means “music typesetting for sheet music,” and for session work specifically there are strict formatting rules to save time (money). The other workflow for computer-based composition + production (i.e. not tracking live instruments, of which more discussion later) involves taking everything into the DAW and producing realistic-sounding mockups in software. I will (in future posts) run through DAW examples of this (hopefully with video + audio capture so you can see the workflow).

Happy to answer any questions; it’s almost impossible even to gesture at a bunch of the music or tech stuff in a small space, and I have almost certainly missed some useful jargon because it's UNENDING. :p

oursin

Happy birthday,

replyhazy!

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250907.html

How much of planet Earth is made of water?

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250907.html

minoanmiss

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kaberett

Reading. Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie: finished the Radch stories; on to The World Of The Raven Tower!

The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman: in progress; not yet Cross with it but also not yet Impressed by it.

More Dreamwidth catchup.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac!

Eating. SO many tomatoes.

Exploring. Poked around Preston a very little!

Growing. ... SO many tomatoes. More watering system established at plot (so hopefully all the peppers will still be alive and well upon my return). Sowed some probably-past-it seeds.

Observing. A saw a deer on the drive up to Preston! A proper big one with antlers and all! We were very impressed.

Also the local owl Yell.

yhlee

Perhaps overly ambitious for a project, but I'm doing this as a fun hobby fidget with no expectation it'll turn out "well." (In real-life, this is fiber-based trolling.)

I started this a few years ago but life got busy.

(Technical details posted elsewhere to

prototypediablerie.)

oursin

Bread held from last week held out for several days, and then there were leftover rolls.

Friday night supper: (as previously mentioned) sardegnera, with Milano and Napoli salami.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe. 70/30 strong white/wholemeal flour, dried cranberries, maple syrup, turned out nicely.

Today's lunch: I'd actually ordered lamb ribs, got lamb cutlets as a substitution, did with them much the same: marinated overnight in olive oil + white wine with crushed garlic, salt, 5-pepper blend, thyme and rosemary, today sauteed chopped onion in oil and briefly browned the drained cutlets, poured on the marinade, heated up and then covered and put into a very moderate oven for 2 and a half hours - very nice; served with sticky rice in coconut milk with lime leaves, white-braised tenderstem broccoli tips, extra fine green beans and red bell pepper, and stirfried tat soi.

spiralsheep

- Word of the season: aftermath, meaning the second growth spurt plants in temperate climates have, after the dry season, when rain and nourishment become more available again.

- Pleasing occurrences and habitat improvements overlap:
( me me )

yhlee

I figure if I'm spinning anyway, I may as well entertain myself by spinning my own silk thread (largely the white on the left, mulberry/bombyx, with a random foray into the darker yellow on the left, eri silk) for needle lace.

(Ignore the red/yellow nonsense on the bobbin, which is sari silk; I was too lazy to reel it off because my bobbin situation is hilariously dire.)

oursin

Happy birthday,

valancy_jane!

naraht

I had a visitor this week: a very earnest German Shakespeare scholar and teacher who I met last year on a writing retreat. She was swinging through Oxford to attend a conference and stayed in my guest room for a few nights.

When she came into my sitting room she first admired my bookcases, as one does, and then did a double take: "Oh! You have a really big television! What do you watch?"

"Cycling, mainly," I said, but this didn't help. Didn't compute. I could practically see steam rising off the top of her head as the gears clashed. And actually she's the second friend of mine who's been visibly perplexed by my TV.

No doubt they had assumed I'd be the sort of elitist literary snob who wouldn't allow such a thing into the flat. Whereas in fact I am such a massive elitist literary snob that I don't feel any lurking status threat from the presence of a 55" flatscreen. (Plus my favorite cycling commentator is a devoted fan of Fitzcarraldo Editions, so.)

Very minor anecdote but I've never seen anyone so obviously realizing in mid-stream that they'd gotten their assumptions about my preferences and habits all wrong. Do you ever find that you surprise people by liking something that you "shouldn't" like?

minoanmiss

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squirmelia

A sign on the gate at Gabriel’s Wharf warned that the foreshore was unsafe and to keep away, but I'd read elsewhere these weren't official signs and no-one knew what was more unsafe than usual about it.

I walked through the gate anyway and headed onwards, waiting for the tide low enough to get to the patch of foreshore outside the National Theatre.

While I was waiting I found what I thought was a coin, but things are deceptive on the foreshore and when I got it home, it had transformed into something else, although I don't know what.

A pair of tourists sat on the steps by the locked gate, chatting loudly.

In front of me on the waves were seagulls bobbing and I could hear the clink clink sound of boats, and the clatter of the waves against the pebbles. I felt happy to be there, by this river.

I found some large pieces of what were once pots of some kind. One with the letters, “ING” which was probably another Maling marmalade jar. One with “London” and some other indecipherable words, and one which probably once said “pottery” and “Derby”. That may have been for ink.

I found a lot with letters on! Numbers also: a thing that has “55 14” on it. A letter ‘T’, on a piece that was reddish with a cross. An ‘E. Letters that probably once spelt ‘England’.

These are all in the first picture:

In the second picture:

A cat bread sticker, looking particularly strange.

A wooden thing. Is it something carved and used by humans or just a bit of tree root that ended up in the Thames?

A domino. But where are the rest of the dominoes?

A blue pottery sherd with what looks like ‘TS’ on it.

A pottery sherd that looks like it says "fex" on it, but that seems unlikely.

The metal brown circle.

A tip of a pipe, and a decent bit of pipe and bowl.

In the third picture:

An Aynsley China sherd.

A little button.

Some nice colourful pieces of glass.

A shard of glass that says “Pepsi” on it.

The sun was getting low in the sky and the light was fading as I walked back across to the beach by Gabriel’s Wharf, before the tide came back in.

(You need a permit to mudlark or search on the Thames foreshore.)

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250906.html

fred_mouse posting in

unclutter

I've rather dropped the ball on check in posts. I'd like to claim that I'm going to be doing weekly posts (and I'm going to put it back in my reminders, so maybe!).

With that said: what have you achieved in the declutter sphere? Have you done a tiny thing? Something marvellous and magical that has transformed your life? Made a plan but haven't yet carried it out? Tell us, tell us!

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

emperor

This is the last of this year's Hugo Award shortlist for dramatic presentation long form. It's very strange. Owen and Maddy are disaffected teenagers who bond over their obsession with The Pink Opaque. How much of it is warping their perception of reality or actually warping reality is left unanswered; the whole film proceeds at a very slow pace, and that plus the occasional breaking of the fourth wall give it a dreamlike or nightmareish quality. I think it is talking about fandom, queerness, and gender, but I didn't really get it. And the end was a damp squib.

I didn't vote in this category, but if I had I think I would have ranked Flow first; it came second behind Dune.

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: embarrassed

oursin

Kafka, thou shouldst be living at this hour? Non-smoker fined £433 for dropping cigarette butt in Manchester: Steve Jones was hundreds of miles away in Maidstone arranging family funeral at time of alleged offence:

He told the council it was a case of mistaken identity and he had not dropped any litter, but the prosecution went ahead regardless in his absence, and he received a collection order in the post for £433, which included a fine and costs. In July, he was sent a pack of evidence by Manchester city council, including a letter that said: “You have been charged with an offence of dropping litter”, and that a single justice procedure notice had been issued by the local authority in March.
....
Jones contacted the council to explain their error, and his email correspondence with council officers “went back and forth and back and forth for ages”, he said, “and then they had to go and find the guy’s camera evidence and that took a few days, and then eventually they realised that it wasn’t me”.... Jones said he initially struggled to get the council to provide a written apology, but had thought the matter was closed after he received an email apologising for the “administrative error”. However, Jones then received a further letter in the post, dated 28 August, saying he had been convicted and fined. “I just find it incredible that I’ve been convicted in my absence,” he said. ‘“I mean, that sounds really serious.”

***

Noted rather far down in this piece on new owners forcing a traditionally nudist resort to 'go textile' (infaaaamy) there is a mention of a homicide on the property.

Which evoked in me the question, has there ever been a murder mystery set in a nudist resort? I have read ones involving all sorts of weird cults, and the occasional health spa, but I don't think actual naturism has featured.

Which led to the further question, which fictional shamus would you pick to strip off and boldly go to investigate in such a circumstance?

***

Talking of textiles, this is rather lovely: A secret garden’: National Theatre turns roof into riot of colour with dye plants. Textile artists are reshaping how the theatre makes its costumes with the aim of replacing harsh synthetic dyes

I'm slightly raising my eyebrows at the whole 'luvverly nachral dyes' thing though (as opposed to those narsty post-aniline synthetics that cause 'dyer's nose') is that I've read at least one murder mystery in which dying featured, though I think it might have been the mordants employed to set the colours rather than the actual dyes themselves which were dangerous.

yhlee

At this point, because life is too short, I block on sight people I see recommending anything by/to do with the serial racist TERF harasser Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Zen Cho's summary), who now writes as "Maria Ying" (with someone else)? (WinterFox, Requires Hate, whatever the hell other pseudonyms and/or monikers). There's a chance current readers/recommenders/etc. have no idea and just haven't heard, but like I said, life is too short, so why give any more time of day than "nope, blocking" to someone running around reccing a harasser?

(I was in her targeting crosshairs but fortunately only in a glancing fashion, unlike people I know whom she harassed in pretty awful ways, in an ongoing pattern of behavior.)

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wrog

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In which Keir Starmer has 1500+ political prisoners after 430 days in power

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I cannot even with this man

vital functions

needle lace WIP

Culinary

In which Our Heroine improves her habitat, week 36, the aftermath

latest spinning WIP

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That sort of person

Please help me write a story

Mudlarking 42 - A domino and cat bread

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I Saw The TV Glow

Pride goeth before a burn

Straying thoughts

ah, yes, this again

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