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After the excitement of the museum wore off, exhaustion quickly set in. We ended up awake for nearly all of a 30 hour or so span. After taking a train and then making a connection to another train, we ended up in at a train station in the village of Bar-sur-Aube around 7 pm (or 1 pm body clock time). A few other people got off, but quickly disappeared, and we were left alone.

Town was desolate in the evening light. Every building in sight was quiet. The station building was closed, and unstaffed. And despite Joseph's reassurances to me, there were no taxis around. There was merely a sign with a list of taxi company phone numbers listed on it. I thought, this is just what I feared: we're stuck at some podunk rail station with no way to get to our hotel and neither of us speaks French. Joseph studied some in high school, but remembers almost none of it. The only real advantage he has over me in this is that he at least knows how to pronounce French words such as place names, whereas I can't even do that well enough to be comprehensible to locals. Fortunately, unlike Joseph, I had bothered to get an international calling and data plan set up on my phone before we went. I made Joseph telephone for a taxi and then sat there listening to him trying to communicate to someone what we wanted. This went so slowly I began to think things were just going to fall apart, but eventually he got off and told me they said it would be twenty minutes. Apparently they were using Google to communicate with him.

We then sat there for what felt like an excruciatingly long time, but a taxi did come. We both went to get into the back but the driver said something in French. Joseph told me he thought she was offering for one of us to sit up front, so I did. It may be that she thought I'd like to take in the view, and it was indeed rather lovely, all golden evening light across sweeping countryside and grape arbors.

When we arrived – around ten minutes' drive – she pulled out the credit card terminal and read me a price I found highly unlikely to be legitimate. I did not watch the meter, as I was so tired and discombobulated, so I don't know what she got up to, but the amount she charged me was much higher than one would expect and I pretty well knew I'd been taken. It's not the first time something like that has happened to me and I did the same as I did last time: I said "OK" and paid up and felt like I was content to pay whatever just to have it over with. She politely got our bags out and showed us where reception was for our hotel, and there we were.

I had booked us two nights at the hotel Le Moulin du Landion. The Moulin of the name is not the windmill you might be expecting, but a water-mill on the Landion creek. The historic mill and various other buildings on the rambling estate have been converted into a boutique hotel with a restaurant and spa. It's located in a village called Dolancourt, even smaller than Bar-sur-Aube, the town with the train station. In fact, as far as Google could tell me, Dolancourt only has two places to eat: Le Moulin, and the restaurants located inside Nigloland amusement park. It has no groceries or convenience stores; the closest of these are located in Bar-sur-Aube. As far as I can tell, the only two reasons to go to Dolancourt are to stay or eat at le Moulin, or to go to Nigloland.

When I had booked the trip, I wanted to stay at Nigloland's own hotel for convenience, but found that it did not seem to have a stay available for both of our intended nights, so I chose le Moulin for the fact that it seemed to be in walking distance. I was surprised by the rates there. It did not seem as expensive as I would have expected for a boutique hotel.

We checked in at the hotel's desk, which is also inside the restaurant. The clerk, who spoke some English but with a bit of hesitance, asked us if we would want breakfast or a table for dinner. I said yes to breakfast but no to dinner. We had eaten a bit at the train station, but mostly we just wanted to collapse. He gave us a key card labeled CHAMBRE 1. It turned out we were in the first of the rooms in a modern wing that had been inelegantly built out from the historic mill. I believe there are also rooms in some of the other buildings on the estate, including one that perhaps was the original home of the miller, but I assume those are the pricey rooms. Our room had a little balcony looking out onto the grounds.

At some point we had realized we did not know the password for the wifi, so we went back to the front desk and asked the person who had checked us in, "Can we please have the wifi password?" He gave the strangest answer. I am almost certain he said "No. Not in the restaurant." Joseph looked confused and didn't catch that, so he asked me what was going on. I said, "He said it isn't possible." We both made confused expressions and wandered off.

I hadn't yet taken my walk for the day (a ritual I have not missed since sometime in 2020), Joseph suggested we practice walking to the amusement park to see if it would be walkable. I had worried the roads on Google maps looked like they might not be pedestrian friendly. We began walking toward the park and noticed a rough dirt road cutting through a farm field that seemed to head toward the rides we could see in the distance, so we tried that route, though I was concerned we might actually be trespassing in a private lane. Eventually we saw a tiny little unassuming sign with an arrow pointing toward Nigloland, so it must be a possible route. That said, we later determined that taking the main paved road is more direct.

Eventually we found what we thought was likely the main entrance of Nigloland, which was a big, barred, iron gate closed over the road. From there we could not see much, just an entrance walk and some shrubs as well as a few grazing sheep. Joseph suggested I should pose for a photo in front of the gate. He said, "Do your Wally World pose." You know... referencing the end of National Lampoon's Vacation in which they arrive to find the amusement park closed. So I stood there for a photo, making an "Oh no!" gesture and a sad face. We then walked back to the hotel.

At the hotel I made a hotspot on my phone with some of my precious international data so we could use our laptops. The main thing I wanted to find out was what time Nigloland opened, so we could decide what time to set the alarm.

I was shocked by what Google told me, and I hoped it was wrong. I went to the park's Web site and checked their calendar, and had it confirmed. I sat there for a short time, afraid to speak. Then I said, "Joseph, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake..." "What?"

"Nigloland is closed tomorrow."

"Tomorrow" was a Monday. Nigloland, in early June, is only open weekends, though it would be open the following Monday for Pentecost, which might be what I had gotten confused about. I don't know. There is really no excuse for a mistake this big. I am used to American amusement parks, which by June are usually open every day, but I still should know better. First, I had hastily rearranged our first big coaster trip in 2013 the night before we left because I discovered I had planned for us to be at Waldameer on a Monday and they were closed Mondays. Second, based on our past European coaster trips, we know that they treat June as off-peak season, and tend to keep limited hours even in peak season. I should have known.

We were devastated. Nigloland was the park we most looked forward to on this trip. We had walked to the gate, and would likely never see inside it. It had been a considerable, now wasted, expense just to make our way to le Grand Est and stay two days. I proceeded to verbally beat myself up for probably an hour and a half before Joseph told me I should go to bed. I said I wouldn't be able to sleep and he said I would probably be surprised.

I did sleep rather quickly.

I'll end part 3 there and resume with our full day in Dolancourt in the next installment.



The back road to Nigloland.

Bundle of Holding: Battlezoo

Jul. 16th, 2025 02:17 pm
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The Battlezoo Bundle presents the Battlezoo line of monsters and monster hunters from Roll for Combat for D&D 5E and compatible tabletop roleplaying systems, compiled from winning designs from the annual RPG Superstars competition.

Bundle of Holding: Battlezoo
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The only fate more glorious than dying for the uncaring empire is dying over and over for the uncaring empire.

Red Sword by Bora Chung (Translated by Anton Hur)

Hate for the D.O.E? Pure racism

Jul. 16th, 2025 07:01 am
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Why all the hate for the Department of Education? Because it gave money for education to black people.

Oh sure, it was there to help 'lower income' people but to a conservative that meant black people. Urban people. Them people. Not clean white blond and blue eyed kids - but brown kids with kinky hair.

Pure racism.

Oh sure, the rabid (heretical) Christians are all slobbering over the chance to take over the schools and talk about Jesus all day- but it's Christian Nationalism they'll be preaching. White Christian Nationalism. How they saved the heathen Native Americans (infected them with diseases, waged war on them, slaughtered them whole sale, drove them from their lands, broke every treaty) and established a Shining City on the Hill - that White people rule. White men mostly. Straight white men.

Yeah, religious schools all the way - just don't expect to see any headed by a black preacher. Oh no. It's white folks all the way down. The only black folks you'll see are the ones with mops and maybe some serving in the cafeteria. Maybe a token house n***** (cough cough Clarence Thomas) but that's about it.

Black kids? Let them darkies start their own schools.

It's going to be a real pity that those rural white folks who'll feel so smug for sticking it the blacks (and liberals of course) are going to lose big time = because rural schools get lots of money from the DOE.

Don't get me started on the PBS/NPR funding. That's personal.
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So the Republicans have refused to release the Epstein files. Now, let's just assume that tRump isn't actually in there and was just visiting a good friend and dancing to bad disco songs.

You can stop laughing now.

The known list of Epstein's associates was vast. Royalty, wealthy folk, politicians, actors and musicians. Who's in there? Who are they protecting? Democrats? Bill and Hillary? Come on... if Billy boy was knee deep in under aged girls they'd be plastering that all over Fox News! If tRump isn't in the files...

... I said you can stop laughing now...

.. who is in there? Epstein had cameras, servers full of... stuff. Thumb drives. Loose hard drives. The FBI raided his house in Manhattan and his private island mansion and found lots of ... stuff. Let's wee what's on them, We have flight logs and witness statements. If the evidence exonerates tRump...

WOULD YOU STOP LAUGHING!

Who's being protected? While investigators, news persons and Congress dithers what pedophiles pedophiles are walking around free?

Because at the moment THEY are the ones laughing.

Europe 2025 Trip Report part 2

Jul. 15th, 2025 09:58 am
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The first day of my trip started at the end of May and finished in early June. It started with an overnight flight from Detroit to Paris. Hope springs eternal that one will sleep on the plane, but in fact I got perhaps 1-2 hours of bad half-sleep despite taking Ativan for my existential terror of flying, since according to my body clock the flight landed in Paris at about 1:30 am and I had recently gotten into the very problematic habit of staying up until 5 am or so. I think Joseph did a little bit better. So in Paris terms we arrived on time around 7:30 am and once we'd gotten our baggage and made it through border control (he sailed through, I ended up in a big line of people whose passport wouldn't work with the fancy new self-scanning system) it was still much too early. The plan was to take the high-speed train to the small village of Dolancourt in le Grand Est, but I had been too late making trip preparations, resulting in the earlier trains all being booked up. As a result we were stuck in Paris until 4:30 pm or so.

This turned out to be a case in which my error actually improved the trip. A month or so before the trip, I had happened to stumble upon the Web site for le Musée des Arts Forains (Museum of Fairground Art) and to my surprise, I saw that they had a salon carousel. To understand why this is important, you have to know something of my history as a carousel enthusiast. Though I was fascinated by them since I was a child, my most formative early influence was a coffee table book my father offered to buy for me when we saw it in the bookstore at Briarwood Mall when I was in high school: Fairground Art by Geoff Weedon and Richard Ward. I marked many pages of this book that had my favorite figures in it, and some of those bookmarks are still in my copy, which now is rabbit-chewed and falling apart. Unlike every other carousel coffee table book I have subsequently acquired, this one gives equal time to the American, British, and European carving shops. Most American carousel enthusiasts are only really familiar with the American carvers. Because of Weedon and Ward, I became an appreciator of European figures, particularly those of French manufacturer Gustav Bayol. Today, I own a single antique carousel figure: a small Bayol rabbit.

From Fairground Art, I also learned of the existence of salon carousels, and became fascinated by the idea of them, though I had never seen one nor hoped to. Salon carousels had a brief, glorious heyday in Europe around the end of the 19th century. They were ornate, often rococo-styled platform carousels (with the figures supported from underneath instead of hanging from an overhead mechanism on poles). They would have enormous, grandiose facades, adorned and flanked by carved figures. These would serve as doorways to an interior (I think it was most often actually a tent) in which one would find not just the carousel but a seating area, a bar, and other entertainments. Streamers and confetti would blow around inside. These amazing carousels actually traveled Europe, carted around by showmen. There are almost none extant today. I only knew of three, one of which I have now visited (at de Efteling in the Netherlands), though it is lacking its facade. I was shocked to discover a fourth I did not know about, at a private museum in Paris.

I was kicking myself because I had not planned us any time in Paris, since our destinations were in other parts of the country and I was trying to keep the trip relatively short for the sake of money and my garden. But the long layover presented the possibility: what if we visit the Musée des Arts Forains during that immense block of time we need to kill? It wouldn't be that far on the Metro from the train station we needed to get to anyway, and there is luggage storage at the train station.

So we decided that we may as well go be exhausted at the museum as in Gare de l'Est, and booked a timed tour (the only way to gain admission). The tour was in French (with a few English words thrown in here and there for the benefit of a few Americans and English people in the tour group) but they provided us with a booklet in English. That hardly mattered to me, though, because I really just wanted to see everything. Much of it I already knew about. There was stuff everywhere, much more than the tour actually covered. There were many French and German carousel figures (including a Bayol rabbit, cousin to mine but a larger model, hanging from the ceiling), and a lot of non-carousel carnival art too.

During the tour, we got to listen to an enormous dance-hall band organ, play a roll-a-ball horse-race carnival game (but an exceptionally large and beautiful one), and ride three carousels. One was a strange little platform carousel consisting almost entirely of gondolas (plus a couple of child-sized animal figures). I don't know what the story was behind it, but to me it appeared to be a home-grown construction made by putting together the gondolas from a lot of other carousels. The next was the much-anticipated salon carousel. They did not have the facade, at least not on display, though they had a vintage photograph of it. They did have the very large horse-and-rider statues that would have been put out front.

The final one was the biggest surprise of all. I gasped when I realized what I was seeing. I had seen a vintage photo of it (or one like it) in my book all those years ago, but I had no idea it was still extant, let alone that I would ever ride it. It was a velocipede carousel from 1897. Instead of horses, everyone sits on a bicycle. Instead of a steam engine, the power comes from everyone pedaling. We got to ride it, after being given some firm rules and warnings by the docent: children can't pedal, they can only sit in the passenger seats. The pedals are slippery (in fact they were round, metal pegs), so if you lose them, do not try to get them back, just put your feet up out of the way. The ride is fast, she said in English, but it is not comfortable. This was true, yet it was one of the best things I did on this trip. When she gave us the go ahead, the 12 or so adults in the group all began pedaling like maniacs. If you're familiar with Cedar Downs (racing derby carousel) at Cedar Point, it got at least that fast and I think probably faster, but with the added excitement of being on a precarious little bicycle seat. Near the end of our ride I did lose the pedals and immediately saw why you weren't supposed to try to get them back. Since everyone else is still pedaling and it's fixed gear, the pedals just continue going at full speed and if you try to put your foot back you just get whack-whack-whacked.

Sadly at the end of the tour the tour guide politely but firmly escorts everyone out and the gate gets closed behind you; there's no lingering to look at stuff as the next group comes in (though Joseph tried, which resulted in his missing out on the one chance we had all day to use a free bathroom). My exhaustion was beginning to creep up on me now, as it was around 3 pm which made it about 9 am on my body clock. We then had to navigate the altogether too many stairs involved in getting to the train station on the Metro, and then wait for a while in a station with far too few sitting areas. But eventually we were on the very fast train heading for le Grand Est and, ultimately, our hotel in Dolancourt.

I'll conclude this installment of my trip report there.


This figure may have originally ridden a carousel. Centaur figures were popular at one time.


Our tour group and our very energetic tour guide.


A European carousel horse – I think French but I am not that skilled at recognizing the different styles of European horses.


A Bayol rabbit!


The docent explaining how to play the roll-a-ball game. I needed no explanation, as I always loved these.




A 1970s roll-a-ball horse race game.


The odd gondola carousel. That mermaid figure would actually have originally been a carousel figure as like centaurs, mermaids were made by some carvers for a while.


A juvenile cat figure on the gondola carousel.


The British carver Spooner made a bunch of centaurs with the front end representing heroes of the Boer War (of all things). There is another centaur in this style at the Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky, but they have restored it. The preference in Europe is generally to leave figures unrestored, which is definitely different from the American collectors' preference.


One of the gigantic figures flanking the entrance of the salon carousel.


The salon carousel.


The tour guide presenting the velocipede carousel.

Stewardship

Jul. 15th, 2025 11:20 pm
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Several years ago, I was visited by John August of the Pirate Party as I was hosting a special dinner for visitors, and he watched with keen interest as I put together a four-course French dinner with paired drinks, music, and a multi-layered laminated menu. "You have a very organised mind", he observed kindly. Cue last Friday, and I find myself in the company of Liza D., at a multi-narrative arthouse theatrical production, "Art, War, and Other Catastrophes". It was quite an interesting show, with unexpected convergence of the past (hello Helen!) afterwards, with our discussion venturing to a slightly wayward younger friend and my consistent efforts to encourage their intellectual insight. "You would make a good father", Liza remarked, which is probably one of the nicest things that one could say to a man of my vintage. Between the two events, a moment burned in my mind is Karl B., discussing life-skills referred to what he called "shit-togetherness", the ability to manage everything from one's own mental states, to personal and household budgets, to community groups, and beyond. Karl was expressing some concern that many don't seem to acquire this skill and knowledge until their thirties, if at all.

I suggested to Karl (inspired by the skill in the Pendragon RPG, no less) that the most appropriate term was "stewardship". The word, from Old English (stigweard) itself, originally means "hall guardian". It has semi-religious overtones as well, an trend in the Judeo-Christian tradition that represents an active and responsible engagement with the environment, a point I strenously made in an address to the Unitarian Church some eight years ago, and one which our political and economic leaders have manifestly failed; we are supposed to "serve the garden in which we have been placed" (Genesis 2:15). There is a grim irony that an rational atheist and emotional pantheist finds himself appealing to Biblical verse when our nominal leaders profess a faith that they do not seem to even aspire to practise. But of course, there are very profound secular reasons as well why stewardship is the right noun to describe human interaction with our environment, rather than a protectionist laissez-faire or indifferent exploitation.

Stewardship most of all entails a sense of responsibility. Starting from oneself, it entails a sense that one will not engage in self-sabotating behaviour and put effort in making the best use of one's mind ("the mind is a terrible thing to waste") and time ("Life is short, death is long, use your time wisely"). Extended to households, whether shared or singular, it means being responsible for creating an home that is both stimulating and a sanctuary, and extended to the social world, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt, it is engagement in the public realm where social freedom, through action and dialogue, becomes manifest, within the context of the natural world as a whole. Ultimately, stewardship is the responsible and ethical planning and management of resources, whether personal, social, or environmental, and as Lamb pointed out, the greater the power, the greater the responsibility. How careless are our rulers! As Frankl remarked, without responsibility, freedom degenerates into arbitrary whims, these rampaging childish pathological monsters who crush others underfoot with their indifference.

A Maze of Stars by John Brunner

Jul. 15th, 2025 09:07 am
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An intelligent ship crisscrosses space-time to track the progress of the colonies it established

A Maze of Stars by John Brunner

Russian TACO

Jul. 15th, 2025 07:15 am
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
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So tRump has given Putim 50 days to end the war? Accept a peace deal? Withdraw from Ukraine? If not there will be Sanctions Real Soon Now.

Putin's laughing up his sleeve.

Trump Always Chickens Out

Big Mean Tariffs! Until the tariffs are reciprocal. Or the Stock Market screams. Then he 'bargains' down the sanctions-tariffs. tRump blusters, screams, threatens, but when he gets push back he folds like a cheap suit. Putin knows this. 50 days is plenty of time for Russia to wiggle out of this.

tRump will cave.

Happy Bastille Day!

Jul. 14th, 2025 11:43 pm
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May the prison you liberate have more than seven prisoners.

Europe 2025 Trip Report, Part 1

Jul. 14th, 2025 06:11 pm
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I used to write long, detailed trip reports of all my roller coaster trips for my Livejournal, including long past the time most people still had a Livejournal. (Fun fact: Joseph still updates his LJ every single day.) I fell out of the habit because it started to feel like a chore. The last one I did was my first big coaster trip with Joseph in 2013, which we refer to as Pennsylvania Parks Tour; I got partway into writing about the day at Conneaut Lake Park and I was so intent on expressing what an otherworldly experience that was, that I never felt satisfied with what I wrote and never finished it.

These days, all that work instead goes into editing my trip photos and posting them to Flickr. The captions serve as my record of the trip. But, as you've perhaps noticed, I am usually about six months behind on processing my photo rolls (though right now I've gotten it down to about four months!). By the time anyone can have a look at what I've been doing, it's very old news. So, I'm going to try out just grabbing a handful of favorite photos, mostly unedited, and writing just a few notes about each park instead of a novel, on the principle that a trip report that isn't up to my excessive standards is better than no trip report at all.

That's my prelude to telling you about my European trip from early June. It wasn't actually a roller coaster trip, though roller coasters happened in it. It was actually a trip to attend an academic conference. I have tried to get to an international animal ethics or animal studies conference around every three years, starting with Minding Animals I in 2009, which was in Australia. In 2015 I attended a conference at the University of Rennes 2, in Rennes, Brittany, France. (There is also a University of Rennes 1. At one point in its history the University split into two.) The conference was titled "Animal Liberation: Forty Years On" and was open to presentations in both French and English. The "Animal Liberation" of the title is the seminal animal ethics book by Peter Singer, who is not just a superstar of the animal ethics subfield but is probably one of the most influential and best-known living academic philosophers. Singer was at that conference and I ended up being seated next to him at both a dinner and a luncheon, so I got a rather insane amount of face-time with him. (There's also a story about how an actual recurring academic nightmare I have came true and I had to admit to him I can't really read German... but that's another tale for another rambling discourse.) When, last winter, I received a call for abstracts for an upcoming Rennes 2 conference "Animal Liberation: Fifty Years and Beyond," I said to Joseph, "I got an email from Rennes... they're getting the band back together." So, I tossed a rather impulsively chosen topic their way and then had the terror of having it accepted and having to actually write the thing before the conference in early June.

I set worrying about that aside until grades were in, figuring I'd just use May to write the presentation. I actually set up my end of term last semester so that I had the least ever final grading to do, and as a result I finished the earliest I ever have in my history of teaching. I didn't even know about the conference at the time, but was inspired by one of my colleagues telling me (with a touch of shame) that the reason he was able to get all his grading for winter term done so early is that he gave all multiple choice finals. I thought, yeah, what the hell, I've been working too hard too many years, and I did the same. I gave my usual part-essay midterms, but assigned all-Scantron finals except in my smallest seminar course.

So the last two-thirds of May was spent laboring in the word mines every night, writing a quota of text before bed (nearly a third of which ultimately ended up being cut to make my test readings fit in the time limit), no matter if "bed" didn't come until 5 or 6 am as a result. Meanwhile, I planned a trip that would, of course, hit amusement parks. When I go somewhere for work, I figure out one or two amusement parks I can do in the vicinity, so that I can get partly compensated for my travel costs from my department (I have a limit that I easily exceed, so it's really just a partial defraying) while also getting roller coasters I'd never see otherwise. Originally I had a trip planned that included Disneyland Paris and Parc Asterix, the two largest parks in France, after the conference. Then I started noticing that both parks had suspiciously longer than usual hours scheduled that weekend. I knew some holiday must be going on and checked into it. The weekend after my trip would be Pentecost, which is apparently a very popular holiday for going to amusement parks in France, approximately equivalent to Memorial Day in terms of being a start-of-summer holiday. Crowd calendars estimated the parks to be absolutely slammed that weekend. It would also be a very expensive trip, and I began thinking I wasn't willing to pay the kind of money it would take to do those parks (especially Disney) while going on an exceptionally crowded day.

So, I went looking for other parks in France and perhaps nearby countries that would be interesting and unique. I figured I may as well go somewhere smaller where even a big crowd wouldn't be as ruinous as a big crowd at a major park. I hit upon something that looked like an absolute gem, Nigloland, in the Grand Est region of France. "Niglo" is a hedgehog mascot whose name apparently derives from a Romani word for hedgehog. And the park is full of basically the Niglo version of Disney rides, including a sort of Country Bear Jamboree called the Niglo Show, their version of Space Mountain, their version of the Jungle Cruise, etc. I love that kind of home-grown weirdness so I started getting very excited about seeing Nigloland. The only thing that worried me is that I could not figure out a good way to get there. Supposedly there is a shuttle that one can take from Troyes (the capital city of that region) directly to the park during peak season, but the park's Web site just said that information on it was "coming soon" which I took to mean it wasn't operating yet and wouldn't be for our visit. I figured out how to take the train to the closest train station, but from there it would still be necessary to find a car to the vicinity of the park. The train station really looked like it might be in the middle of nowhere and I was concerned. Joseph assured me not to worry, there would surely be taxis at the train station. I tried to find coaster enthusiast trip reports to Nigloland and the only one I could find referenced taking a taxi from the train station so I figured that is what we would have to do. (Uber isn't a thing in most of France.) I pride myself in having every aspect of a trip hammered out before I go, including exactly how I will get from point A to point B at every stage of the trip, and I have a very good track record of well-planned international trips, as Joseph can attest. (At one point he told me in another life I could have been a travel agent.) So this part kept worrying at me, but I was going to have to roll with it.

For a second park, I looked instead to neighboring countries and decided to do Plopsaland, which is just over the border in Belgium, on the coast. It's rather notorious among coaster enthusiasts due to having an especially intense and strangely-themed coaster called The Ride to Happiness.

Normally I prefer to do all my touring after a conference so that it isn't hanging over me, but this time I wanted to try to do one of the parks at a time other than Pentecost, so I slated us to go to Nigloland just before my conference, and Plopsaland during the holiday weekend, since it seemed as though Pentecost, while also a holiday in Belgium, wasn't quite as big of a deal there for going to amusement parks. Joseph (who of course came with me) checked on his coaster counts and determined that he would be getting his number 300 coaster milestone at Nigloland. If everything went according to plan, it promised to be both an exciting academic experience and a once-in-a-lifetime coaster tour.

And that's where I'm leaving the introductory part of my trip report, to resume later with our first epic, elongated day of travel, during which I saw a carousel I thought I would never see.
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Charts hold back chaos, and we should sing their praises!

Why Do I Love Charts? Let Me Count the Ways.

Bundle of Holding: Hearts of Wulin

Jul. 14th, 2025 02:08 pm
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This new Hearts of Wulin Bundle presents Hearts of Wulin, the tabletop roleplaying game of Chinese wuxia action melodrama from Age of Ravens Games.

Bundle of Holding: Hearts of Wulin

Clarke Award Finalists 2005

Jul. 14th, 2025 10:27 am
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2005: The Ulster Volunteer Force struggles to grasp the meaning of the term “ceasefire”, Britain is astonished by the unlikely coincidence that every known WWI veteran is over 100 years of age, and in what some experts hope is a sign Britain has begun to emerge from chaos after the retreat of the Roman Empire, Dr Who is revived.

Poll #33355 Clarke Award Finalists 2005
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 40


Which 2005 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Iron Council by China Miéville
15 (37.5%)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
12 (30.0%)

Market Forces by Richard Morgan
6 (15.0%)

River of Gods by Ian McDonald
10 (25.0%)

The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
17 (42.5%)

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
13 (32.5%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2005 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Iron Council by China Miéville
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Market Forces by Richard Morgan
River of Gods by Ian McDonald
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Now more than ever

Jul. 14th, 2025 07:13 am
malada: Canadian flag text I stand with Canada (Default)
[personal profile] malada
Bastille Day
Available on Caress of Steel

Music: Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson
Lyrics: Neil Peart

There’s no bread let them eat cake
There’s no end to what they’ll take
Flaunt the fruits of noble birth
Wash the salt into the earth

But they’re marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Free the dungeons of the innocent
The king will kneel, and let his kingdom rise

Bloodstained velvet, dirty lace
Naked fear on every face
See them bow their heads to die
As we would bow as they rode by

And we’re marching to Bastille Day
La guillotine will claim her bloody prize
Sing, o choirs of cacophony
The king has kneeled, to let his kingdom rise.

Lessons taught, but never learned
All around us anger burns
Guide the future by the past
Long ago the mould was cast

For they marched up to Bastille Day
La guillotine – claimed her bloody prize
Hear the echoes of the centuries
Power isn’t all that money buys

Belated B-day shout-out to...

Jul. 14th, 2025 06:56 am
moxie_man: (Default)
[personal profile] moxie_man
[personal profile] allaboutweather! I hope it was a good day. I'm late 'cause I was on the road yesterday.

Huh

Jul. 12th, 2025 12:02 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
This is probably in no way significant, but it just occurred to me to check to see where WorldCon was the years I was nominated:

2010: Melbourne, Australia
2011: Reno, USA
2019: Dublin, Ireland
2020: Wellington, New Zealand
2024: Glasgow, Scotland

(I was nowhere near the ballot in 2009, Montreal)

At a guess, those are years where vote totals were a bit lower?

Read more... )

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lederhosen

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