Hurrah For Scott Moncrieff

Thursday, 28 August 2025 07:57 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 No, I decided, it's not good enough to wait for a copy of A La Recherce du Temps Perdu to just turn up. Synchronicity is definitely a thing, but maybe this is an instance where I should try and meet the Universe halfway- so I looked online and found a three volume set in the right translation at a reduced asking price in an eBay sale with half an hour to run. I bought it and it should be here over the weekend.....

The right translation is the one by Scott Moncrieff. It may not be the most accurate but it has the merit of being contemporary- of coming out of the same time frame and culture. It's been said that Moncrieff's English is even more elegant than Proust's French. 

Moncrieff took liberties. That's obvious from the titles he assigned to the books. Remembrance of Things Past is not a faithful translation of A la Recherche- but it has a more of a lilt to it than In Search of Lost Time- which is what most later translators have opted for. Within a Budding Grove is a genius rendition of A la Ombre de Jeune Filles en Fleur- which comes out awkward and more than a little creepy if rendered word for word. The Sweet Cheat Gone- a line lifted from de la Mare- is a long long way from Proust's Albertine Disparue- but is so very much more poetic......

The Last Alp Left Unclimbed

Wednesday, 27 August 2025 06:12 pm[personal profile] poliphilo
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 One of these days I mean to read Poust. I'll know the time is ripe when I come across a cheap secondhand edition of Swann's Way- in English of course, because while I have a little French it doesn't stretch much beyond newspaper articles.

Until I get that sign I'll read other things.

Once upon a time I maintained that there were too many books in the world still unread for me to waste time on old favourites, but now most of the things I read are things I've read before. At the moment it's the Allan Quatermain books. I'm reading Child of Storm (which I think the best of them) for the third time and after that I'm going back to the beginning with King Solomon's Mines. It's not just about comfort (though that figures) because re-reads can reveal things you'd overlooked or not been equipped to see earlier. For instance I find Rider Haggard is deeper, smarter and trickier than I'd once have given him credit for. On a sourer note I tried to re-read one of Iris Murdoch's later novels- one I used to love- and found it quite insufferable. All that dinner party philosophy! I know the intention is partly satirical but that stuff and the people who spout it interest me so little now that I'm not even going to stick around to laugh and point.

Have I reached the end of the shelf of books I want to read? Not quite. Because there's still A La Recherche du Temps Perdu....

The Numbers Lessen

Wednesday, 27 August 2025 10:11 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Most of the visitors have gone now- leaving only the young lovers- who are old enough to care and cater for themselves but still young enough to like playing board games. His heritage is Cameroonian, hers is Greek. She cooks toasties for her breakfast while watching Rick and Morty on her phone....

God, but Rick and Morty is frenetic! 

Yesterday, while we were all out, a young woman from the Council stopped by and asked Damian if she could take pictures of our garage conversion. He said that on the whole he'd rather she didn't. He suspects our next door neighbour- who hates him- has lodged a complaint with the Council in the hope that we'll have contravened some regulation or other. Which we haven't.....

Patient

Tuesday, 26 August 2025 01:43 pm[personal profile] poliphilo
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 There have been moments over these past couple of weeks when I've wanted to scream, "Why don't you all just fuck off and leave me in peace," but I'm happy to say that outwardly I've been Patience personified.

In Memory Of Keith

Tuesday, 26 August 2025 08:19 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 The temperature yesterday reached 27 degrees centigrade which is 80 Farenheit. That's  by official reckoning. I bet it actually went higher. We were down on the beach because Frances, wanting to do all the things she used to do with Keith, had asked to be given the chance to paddle and then eat fish and chips. In the event, though she and I struggled down to the tide line, she found her bad knee made paddling too difficult to be worth persisting with. The fish and chips- from a beach kiosk- was good. 

Keith also used to fly a kite. She hasn't asked me to do that. Just as well. I've never managed to get one off the ground. 

She goes home today.
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I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

Like Venice

Monday, 25 August 2025 08:35 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Frances wanted to go to go to Sovereign Harbour and watch the yachts come in through the lock gates so that's what we did. Sovereign Harbour is pretty. "Like Venice," I said, "If you got rid of all the crumbly buildings and replaced them with nice new ones" I was hoping to get a rise out of my companions but neither of them took the bait.

Talking about bait the thing that excited me most about the harbour was seeing the big fish swimming backwards and forwards by the walls of the walkway. I imagine the water is warmer there. Also that people drop crumbs. I don't know what kind of fish they are. Just big.  Long as my fore-arm. Grey, with a suggestion of irridescence along their backs. There's no fishing allowed so they're safe.  

Visitors

Sunday, 24 August 2025 08:16 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 I find I can cope with having all these people around just so long as every so often I can slope off and sit where they can't talk at me.

Last night we had a BBQ. Lots and lots of food which- as a vegetarian- I can't eat. I'd prepared for it by having a very big lunch. When the time came I ate chips and trifle (but not together)

Odi told Fab to get the BBQ started- and I discovered that today's yoof have never been taught how to light a fire......

Today the visitors are splitting up. Odi and the bigger kids are going to the Notting Hill Carnival and Ben and the younger kids are goig to a fun day at Herstmonceux Castle. We, meanwhile, will be taking Frances to the Meeting for Worship....

Manoeuvring

Saturday, 23 August 2025 10:17 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 1. I noticed- on the way back from Wilmington- that the trees are beginning to be tinged with brown. For, "Summer's lease has all too short a date...."

2. We have eight people staying with us currently- and the ninth is on her way. Thus far we've manoeuvered round one another quite elegantly and there have been no collisions.

3. Frances (that's Keith's friend) was telling me what she believes about the current state of world affairs. God, she says, is "sifting" humanity, but don't worry because he has a great future in store for us. This is is what I think too- only I wouldn't put it in theistic terms. That future, she goes on to say, will be pioneered by Britain and Israel- and here she loses me. "Why Israel?" I ask. "Because it's the centre of the world....."

4. The six year old breezes round singing to himself in what sounds like a proper language but probably isn't (though who knows?) In my days as a religious loony we used to call this "speaking in tongues". 

Tent

Friday, 22 August 2025 10:00 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Odi and crew are coming back from France today and will be joined here by an old lady who has nothing to do with them. The old lady will require a bedroom of her own which means some of the others (do we get them to draw straws?) will be displaced to a tent in the garden. The boys may, of course, leap at the option of sleeping out. We'll see. 

Ben has a tent and we have a tent. Ours is brand new- bought in anticipation of this eventuality. It's made of very thin plastic and cost us £13. We thought we ought to know how it works so we put it up this morning.

First thing that happened was the cat went and sat in it.

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Orange tent, orange cat. They were made for one another.....

The old lady is Keith's friend. That's Keith who kept the Meeting House going during the post-covid crisis and died last year. She used to visit him in Eastbourne and wanted to keep coming- and we said, "So stay with us". We've only met her a couple of times- once at the funeral- and hardly know her. We warned her that we'd have a full house over the Bank Holiday weekend and she said, "Sounds like fun"....

Unchained

Thursday, 21 August 2025 08:52 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 The Internet offered to show me Hercules Unchained- starring Steve Reeves- a movie I adored when I was nine and haven't seen since-  and I said, "OK". 

It would be pointless to take it apart. The innocent and uncritical nine year-old mind doesn't see how lifeless the direction and acting are; it just goes, "Greek Galley! Spooky lady! Hand to hand combat! Big Battle! Chariots! Siege tower full of soldiers falling over!" and has a whale of a time. As Tom Hood remarked, "I remember, I remember/But now 'tis little joy/ To know I'm further off from Heaven/ Than when I was a boy."

Footnote: Just about the most convincing performance comes from Primo Carnera- one time heavyweight champion of the world- as the giant Antaeus, son of the earth Mother- who gains new strength every time he hits the ground. Hercules finally figures out his shtick and picks him up and chucks him in the sea. He is ugly, he is expressive, he is dangerous- and in real life he'd have made mincemeat of body-builder Steve Reeves.....

Pushing It

Wednesday, 20 August 2025 09:23 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Most doctors, says Ailz, would prefer not to live beyond 75. They know, you see, what comes after.

I'm 74. I'm thankful I can still walk distances, still run short distances if pushed, still have my own teeth.....

Picture Diary 101

Tuesday, 19 August 2025 05:16 pm[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Picture Diary 101

1. St George


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2. Elders of the tribe

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3. Crow

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4. Asset

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5. Jung's last dream

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6. Greeting

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It's Very Quiet This Morning

Tuesday, 19 August 2025 08:21 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Our visitors have taken themselves off to Paris and will be back here on Friday. When they were planning the trip Odi asked the kids what they particularly wanted to see and they said things like, "Well there's this big shopping centre" and "We want to see if a French Lidl is the same as an English Lidl." I'm not sure if they were winding her up or being serious....

Fireman

Monday, 18 August 2025 03:53 pm[personal profile] poliphilo
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 This my latest purchase from the tip shop.

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He stands a little short of a foot high and is made of some sort of composite material. He carries nothing in the way of a manfacturer's mark. 

Usually I have no trouble in getting the internet to tell me what a thing is, but with the Fireman I'm drawing a blank. I'm not finding any object that resembles him, nor any picture of an actual fireman of any nationality wearing comparable gear. I have the feeling he's not English but I could be wrong- and he's obviously been around for a while.

Anyone out there have any idea?

Quakers For Peace

Monday, 18 August 2025 08:02 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Five of us walked down to the Peace Garden in our blue Quakers for Peace tee-shirts and took up position by the monument to civilian victims of WWII.  Only Jacky really tried to engage the general public. After a while she moved off, leaflets in hand, to see if she could find any military men to challenge. The rest of us looked at one another and agreed that her kind of active evangelism wasn't for us.

After we'd stood about for what we considered long enough we drifted off- either to have lunch or watch the aerobatics.....

The Miracle Of Flight

Saturday, 16 August 2025 07:34 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 We live about a mile from the epicentre of the Air Show. From an upstairs window I watched the tiny little planes doing their aerobatics above the chimney pots- first a Spitfire, then a jet I couldn't identify. Once or twice I thought I'd seen one of them come into view only to realise after a couple of seconds that I was looking at a gull. 

The jet made a fearful racket and left behind a reek of aviation fuel. I don't have the affection for jets that I feel for planes with propellors.

As Zen As Possible

Friday, 15 August 2025 09:31 am[personal profile] poliphilo
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 Starting tomorrow we'll be having house guests coming and going for a fortnight. At the max there'll be nine of them vying for beds. There's a plan to put some of the younger ones in tents in the garden.

I reckon that the more of them there are the more they'll be taking care of one another. 

This weekend is Eastbourne's busiest of the year- owing to the Air Show. Traffic will be horrendous.....

Busy, busy, busy. I'm going to be as Zen as possible- and let go and let be.....

Lancaster

Thursday, 14 August 2025 05:59 pm[personal profile] poliphilo
poliphilo: (Default)
 The Eastbourne Air Show started today.

A shadow flickers over the space I'm occupying and I look up and see a huge, slow-moving, flying behemoth moving away from me- and identify it as a Lancaster bomber. I'm a Quaker and a peacenik but I'm also the kid who grew up in the fifties- when we were impoverished and exhausted from the experience of four years of total war and keeping up our spirits by telling ourselves how well we'd done in standing up to Adolf- and I can't see one of our old warplanes and not want to jump up and down and wave my arms about.....

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