Ladies and Ladies: The Bluestocking is open: again

[DeanElderberry]

Newly renovated, beautifully appointed. Food and Beverages, excellent (if sometimes unexpected service), delightful clientele, special accommodation for invalids, pedants, readers and normal people.

Ceol agus Craic

Entertainment!

! Gerbils beautiful gerbils!

❤🐀🎧🐀🎺🐁🎷🐖 ❤

all furry!

! ❤AI and Scientists❤

less furry !

All women welcome

well behaved male visitors from the Staunch Ally are welcome in the stableyard but not across the threshold of the main building

ooops. posted too soon

there ye go

Uncannily accurate.

But of course no lights because of electricity not working, and UNDER the blankets because cold.

I tried telling AI there was no electricity so it put you outside 😂🤣😂

With a glow from an invisible lamp. 😂🤣😂

I said there were no lamps and it was cold because there was no electricity. So it out in TWO lamps.

Images courtesy of Artificial Stupidity.

I’m glad you are back on the grid, @DeanElderberry. I can’t help feeling that, as we have dodged power cuts with all of the storms we’ve had whilst we’ve lived here, our luck is bound to run out.

I made sure all my devices were charged up on Thursday night - including the kindle, so I would have something to read. They I smacked myself upside the head and reminded myself of the whole room full of books that I have, none of which require a battery. Sometimes I am seriously dim.

Except you would need a light to read your books by at night...

This is the only reason torches were invented.

I have been buying small battery-powered LED lanterns when they turn up in Lidl/Aldi in the summer, so between them and the battery fairy lights I'm running down I was able to navigate the house and read - I finished a Georgette Heyer mystery and have nearly finished the most recent Sara Paretsky - also read quite a lot about the lore around St Brigid's Day, so it wasn't a completely wasted couple of days. Did make me appreciate kettles.

Myrtle's outdoor AI does reflect the apparent size of darling pussycats in the darkness of night. The being pinned down by massive paws either side of my head looks familiar too.

Double gin and tonic please. The Guardian has completely lost the plot https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/25/trump-executive-order-sex

And of course the Graun doesn't allow comments on articles like that...

That article has really annoyed me! Paragraphs of bilge, then one sentence each on the ICC going after the taliban for their treatment of women (message to the taliban: the aforementioned paragraphs of bilge provide a possible defence), how Sudanese women refugees face 'a living hell' in Libya and how child marriage is legal again in Iraq. To cap it off there was this paragraph

Men got taller and heavier at twice the rate of women over the past century, study shows
Researchers think this is down to sexual selection. “[W]omen tend to prefer taller men,” one of the study’s co-authors told CNN, while, “in contrast, women’s height isn’t so important”. He added that: “This is one of the first studies to make a connection between the evolution of humankind as driven by sexual selection in combination with the effects of environment on ultimately our phenotype.”

How the fuck the scientists, most of whom 'now reject the idea that sex is strictly binary', managed to find any men to conduct their research on, she doesn't explain!

Arrrggghhhh!!

Anyway...

Do the gerbils realise they put the whipped cream and sprinkles on top of the lid of the lidded cup?

Not exactly insightful journalism, is it? Waffle, waffle, waffle, bung a few sentences in at the end which leave the reader confused about whether they are teasers for other stories or actually supposed to add something meaningful. Not that any of the waffle means anything.

And yes, I did wonder about the cream and sprinkles on top of the lid.

I suppose the Graun thing is under "Opinions'.

I was going to scoop the cream etc off with a spoon and lob it into the hot chocolate. Then lick the lid. A bit more work for me, but hey...

There's probably a label on the back of the cup, 'some assembly required'.

Got bored half way through the drivel fest.

For 'the night that's in it', as we say in Hiberno-English, some of my favourite lines from Burns:

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it.

But my guilty pleasure is:
In Se'enteen Hunder'n Forty-Nine
The Deil gat stuff to mak a swine,
And coost it in a corner;
But wilily he chang'd his plan,
An' shap'd it something like a man,
An' ca'd it Andrew Turner.

Happy Burns Night, Stockingers!

I bloody hate Burns Night
It's trying to take over my birthday!
And haggis is filth.

Signed: a grumpy old git.

I was in a shop today, in England, and happened to notice they were selling a vegan haggis*. I think it's great that there's an option for the McVegan's but it seems wrong.

*what's the correct plural for haggis?

Quick! get Fuzzy a large hot choc with some of that there Giarmees brandy, marshmallows and all the trimmings!!

A crack team of bar gerbils is on it, Sah Ma'am! <snaps a smart salute, bruises forehead>

If I were to object to 'Sir' and 'Madam/Ma'am', on the grounds that I was non-binary, could I demand to be called 'Your Excellency'?

Or go all French Revolutionary and insist on 'Citizen'. (Though of course the revolutionaries replaced Monsieur and Madame with Citoyen and Citoyenne, grammatically gendered terms.)

Comrade @Chersfrozenface?

Or go all Irish, the Irish equivalent of 'Dear Sir or Madam' is 'A Chara' -
'Friend', male or female. I always get a French Revolutionary 'Citizen' vibe when I write 'A Chara'.
And the Irish for 'The Rights of Man' is 'Cearta an Duine', which literally means 'The Rights of the Person'

I've just thought of another bit of Burns I like:

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,

because it suggests that the Scots' menstrual cycles coincided with Wallace's, from spending so much time together.
Shame about the gory bed, though, they should have nipped into the Gents where there would have been an ample supply of sanitary goods.

And it mentions Wham too! What's not to love?

Vegan haggis can be very nice. Either made from scratch or bought in.

The spices and oatmeal work well for that kind of thing.