14-04-2025
I sprinted to the end of Les Miserables, hurdling irrelevant paragraphs and maudlin speeches, luging swiftly through the chapters on sewers, eventually reaching the ridiculously melodramatic finish line of Jean Valjean's death. Thank God for that.
Definitely didn't enjoy this as much as Zola's Germinal, mostly because of the second half. The best parts are the beginning about the bishop, Valjean's change of heart and how he grows rich, and Javert pursuing him. Everything before Cosette grows up is much more interesting than after she grows up (into a total airhead). The best parts of the second half are M. Mabeuf's sad story of sliding into destitution in old age, and the gradual reveals about how low the Thenardiers have fallen materially and spiritually.
Most people know that Les Miserables has a revolution, which it doesn't. It has one barricade in one minor rebellion, and it's the most baffling part of the book. None of the main characters are interested in politics, so a bunch of bit-part randos die at the barricade for no compelling reason while you wonder why they didn't all just go home and bugger this for a lark. The actual main thrust of the narrative at this point is the most insipid romance ever between stupid drippy Marius and stupid drippy Cosette, who will probably go on to have a really toxic marriage. Some minor interest arises when Javert wrestles with his morality, but don't worry, Victor Hugo will kill any enthusiasm you have for this with mountains of repetitive paragraphs, and then kill Javert. I think it would be more interesting for Javert to go on a redemptive journey inspired by Valjean, as Valjean went on a redemptive journey inspired by the bishop, but RIP I guess. The extremely pedantic note to management he leaves before dying is pretty funny.
I'm glad I read this because there are a lot of character nuances and little substories which can never come across in the musical, but boy, what a slog.
30-03-2025
Check out these posts about Cornwall's submarine mines which extend more than a mile out to sea:
Descent into a Cornish submarine mine in 1850 (min-eng.blogspot.com)
Cornwall's Submarine Mines (min-eng.blogspot.com)
The process of getting down the ladders was not very pleasant. They were all quite perpendicular, the rounds were placed at irregular distances, were many of them much worn away, and were slippery with water and copper-ooze. Add to this, the narrowness of the shaft, the dripping wet rock shutting you in, as it were, all round your back and sides against the ladder - the fathomless darkness beneath—the light flaring immediately above you, as if your head was on fire—the voice of the miner below, rumbling away in dull echoes lower and lower into the bowels of the earth—the consciousness that if the rounds of the ladder broke, you might fall down a thousand feet or so of narrow tunnel in a moment—imagine all this, and you may easily realize what are the first impressions produced by a descent into a Cornish mine. ...
The mine is not excavated like other mines under the land, but under the sea! Having communicated these particulars, the miner next tells us to keep strict silence and listen. After listening for a few moments, a distant, unearthly noise becomes faintly audible—a long, low, mysterious moaning, which never changes, which is felt on the ear as well as heard by it—a sound that might proceed from some incalculable distance, from some far invisible height—a sound so unlike anything that is heard on the upper ground, in the free air of heaven; so sublimely mournful and still; so ghostly and impressive ... At last, the miner speaks again, and tells us that what we hear is the sound of the surf, lashing the rocks a hundred and twenty feet above us, and of the waves that are breaking on the beach beyond.
I've visited Geevor mine that's discussed in the second post and really enjoyed it, definitely recommend a visit if you're near there.
Also, did you know that Cornwall and Devon have high levels of naturally occurring radon gas from granite? And sometimes the level of radioactivity rises, for example in 2020 reported by Cornwall Live (ads and cookies warning!). Dartmoor prison in Devon had a reading of 3,123bq/m3 in one area, 10x higher than the action level, and is no longer in use as of 2024 due to radon: Prison staff's 'health worries over radon' (bbc.co.uk)
27-03-2025
I'm valiantly wading through Les Miserables, a book which seems to be 20% story and 80% interminable references to wars, politicians, rich people, philosophers and debates you've never heard of and can't even Google because the reference is so oblique. I mean it definitely gives you some perspective, all the big things we argue about today will be incomprehensible to people hundreds of years in the future, while the poor will go on living in much the same conditions... and there are some beautiful insights scattered in between the reams of namedropping if you can manage to focus your eyes long enough to take them in.
Anyway, one thing I did Google was a reference to Needham's eels, one of the attempted proofs of spontaneous generation (LibreTexts link). In short, Needham puts some boiled stuff in a flask, then observes that 'eels' (microorganisms) are visible after a few days, thus proving that intelligent life spontaneously generates from sterile matter and God isn't necessary. Obviously someone else immediately disproves this spontaneous generation and shows that he just didn't sterilise the stuff well enough. Voltaire also gets mad about the eels (uci.edu link) and points out, quite rightly, that it doesn't prove anything anyway because God could have put those eels in there.
The funny thing is that Needham was clearly wrong in his proof, but if you don't believe in God then you have to say that he was basically right to believe in life spontaneously emerging. So now we have the term spontaneous generation to mean "the old wrong way that people thought life arose from non-living matter", and the term abiogensis to mean "the modern correct way that we think life arose from non-living matter". Poor Needham - born too early to be right!
P.S. animalcule is a really cute and fun name for microscopic organisms and I propose we bring it back.
17-03-2025
For no particular reason I picked up Superman: The Golden Age Omnibus. I'm not a comics reader. I don't like Marvel movies or anything like that (except the Watchmen film, which it turned out I liked for reasons the director definitely didn't intend). So I don't really know anything about superheroes.
I'm actually kind of loving it so far. Some observations:
- Superman is a jerk on a personal level. He's like a videogame player with cheats on - if he wants to talk to you he'll rip down your door, if he wants to move you he'll pick you up under his arm, if he thinks you're a bad guy then he'll torture you just for the fun of it. He'll rescue Lois Lane but he'll tell her to shut up while he's doing it. He's a jerk!
- At the same time, he's so absurdly woke that these comics would absolutely be opposed by modern Redditors. He makes a munitions seller fight in the war he's created. He fights for a crippled miner's disability pension. It's not what I imagined Superman getting up to. Is this why Batman exists? To rehabilitate the image of rich people in comics?
- It's not exactly clear why Superman pretends to be a total dweeb in his daily life since he's completely invincible, but it's funny so I accept it.
- I love the artwork. Faces are nothing but a couple of expressive lines. Even the letterer seems to be rushing breathlessly through the comic without time to spell out long words. Nothing is there that doesn't need to be drawn. Total simplicity of line and colour.
15-03-2025
Here's a fun read about fandom drama from 1988. The fandom is Blake's 7, a British sci-fi program I've never seen; the drama is a bit of everything from monetisation and the relationship of actors to fans, to slash fiction and anonymous gossip. Give this a look if you like r/hobbydrama writeups.
The War That Almost Broke a Classic Fandom (Fansplaining)
17-02-2025
Currently addicted to Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The first one, but the second one looks great too. I've had it for ages but never gave it much of a chance since the only thing I ever heard about it was 'realistic swordfighting' and 'creator has weird politics'. I thought it was going to be Skyrim-y or Mount-and-Blade-y where you mostly just wander about getting into combat. It's CRIMINAL that the right marketing for this game never reached me. It's nothing like that. It's slow-paced, narrative-heavy, there actually isn't much combat unless you go looking for it (and much like real life you don't actually need all the fancy sword combos you can learn because real fighting tends to lead to one side's death very quickly), the characters are charming and likeable (it's so cute to encounter a main character wandering around town and have them greet you enthusiastically), it's lovely to be able to gather herbs I actually know and to have to learn to read before I can do any alchemy, even the requirements to eat and sleep and bathe and mend your clothes don't annoy me which is a first for any RPG... it's quickly becoming my second favourite game world to just hang about in (my first favourite will always and forever be Morrowind).
Anyway, must get back to poaching deer and gathering poppies now...
11-02-2025
Here's a YouTube video about a cute Japanese PS2 game where you raise a family: Bokura No Kazoku (PS2) Is Beautiful, Sad, and Happy (gnosis on YouTube)
You play as a man keeping a journal about his family. (Well, kind of - it's all a bit abstract.) You as the player make decisions like how many children to have, when and how to spend time with your kids, whether to spend money on activities or save up for later, what traits to encourage in your children - and as your children grow to adults you get to see what choices they make for themselves about education, work, marriage and their own families, choices that are influenced by how you cared for them and all the little decisions you made as they grew. Sadly no English translation, there are a couple more videos and a playthrough on YouTube but it's still a bit hard to follow as this is an entirely menu-based game.
09-02-2025
I was watching this ComicTropes YouTube video about Vince Colletta, a comic book inker. He mentions Colletta working on romance comics. This is one of those interesting genres, like Westerns, that were hugely popular but are now almost entirely extinct. It's hard to imagine many people picking up a comic about cheesy soap-opera affairs and flings now. There also don't seem to be that many retrospectives on these comics online, so I guess not many people are looking back at these with fond nostalgia either. It's actually a bit odd that they've never been revived in a more modern form, since people love romantasy books and BL manga and stuff, but American comics don't really seem to be capitalising on this.
The Wikipedia page gives a good overview and there's also this blog post about them: How American Romance Comics Died a Slow Death and No One Seemed to Care (Bloom Reviews blog). The Comics Code of 1954, eschewing racey stories and suggestive poses among other things (including, somewhat bizarrely, werewolves and ghouls), put paid to the romance comics. DC and Archie actually kept up the code until 2011, which is crazy!
Could romance come back around after the superhero craze finally dies out?
