Kat Steiner🔸

A hand holding a theatre programme for The Comedy About Spies. Behind the programme you can just see an audience and a blue stage.

Had a wonderful time at the latest Mischief (The Play That Goes Wrong people) show, The Comedy About Spies. Sort of The Play That Goes Wrong meets The 39 Steps. Laughed till it hurt!

Also "do you have a cafe or a common room for readers?", which really depends on how happy they are to hang out in the main atrium with all the patients...

I also had to check the WiFi speed throughout the library, and it turns out it varies wildly all the time, but sadly only between "so slow it doesn't count" to "just barely into the 'adequate' range".

I have to fill out an "annual census" with lots of stats about my library, and it's always tricky trying to explain the "in a hospital" aspects. Things like "do you have disabled parking?" "Well, technically there's loads, but remember this is literally an orthopaedic hospital, so it's usually busy"

My point is that a lack of truly segregated and workable infrastructure is a source of anxiety for both pedestrians and cyclists. I obviously cycle as safely (for all) as I can, but the setting makes that quite difficult.

Large metal frame with a black flat area to hold a book, a camera suspended above it, and two huge lights aimed at it.

A computer on a desk, and next to it a grey box with what looks like an ancient leather satchel in it.

A black piece of fabric with a sheet of lyrics from the Broadside Ballads collection, ready to be photographed

A 3D-printed replica of a boss from the Divinity School ceiling, complete with Tudor rose.

My team got to go on an exciting tour of @bodleian.ox.ac.uk Imaging Services department! The sculpture is actually a 3D-printed replica of a boss from the Divinity School, based on 3D photo modelling from thousands of images.

I commute on a bike lane that is basically half of the pavement with a little lip up to the pedestrian bit and a lip down to the road, and I feel nervous cycling past pedestrians (particularly with dogs) because they frequently step into the bike part without looking and can't hear me.

Lots of people commute by bike on Oxford's towpaths, and it's a gorgeous way to get to work! But it does also mean a lot of cyclists and pedestrians and dogs in very close proximity (to each other and to the river) which is quite stressful for all involved, even with good behaviour.

I guess with Tumblr, the issue is that I'm no longer <25, so I don't want to hang out with teenagers as much! I also never got to grips with Mastodon, too siloed. I really like the few Discords I'm on though.

I was never a LiveJournal person (I had a blog at school but not afterwards), I've always been a DeviantArt/Tumblr/Twitter person and I'd miss the peer connection and interaction of "microblogging". But I certainly miss reading blogs!

Does anyone have a solution to this? I yearn for the days of Early Twitter. I have friends who are totally off social media, but I don't think I have the social battery to maintain friendships without it! I'd just disappear from most people's lives😔 And that's not even mentioning work socials. 3/

like a way of giving everything about myself to Big Tech and from there to The State and the highest bidder, something I am less & less keen on. But I don't have an alternative! I hate phone calls, I don't want to pressure people into chatting with me, I'm not interesting enough for a newsletter. 2/

I'm feeling very conflicted about my continued presence on social media. I have always loved it as a low-pressure way of checking in with people who are not close friends, but who I still value communication with, as well as a source of humour and news. But it feels increasingly 1/

Review by kastrel - Perdido Street Station Wow, what a book. My copy was 867 pages long, and I sped through it in just over a week. It's ...

Book 44 of 2025: Perdido Street Station by China Miéville. Huge, sprawling, deeply unpleasant, I loved it. app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/a642...

Why Your Panic Attacks May Seem Random but Aren't Panic attacks can be scary when it feels like your body is out of control with no apparent cause. But there is a cause: anxiety about anxiety itself.

This is a really excellent short intro to why panic attacks happen, what they feel like, and what the best approach is (counterintuitively, doing nothing) www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unde...

If I answered emails the way some men do, I'm sure I would be interpreted as rude or at least, having a really bad day. It's not a clever tactic for me, even if on paper it is more efficient or succinct. When 90+% of interactions are with NTs, the heuristics don't favour autistic communication. 6/

as a default from strangers). But actually, in most day-to-day interactions it's still important to keep an eye on tone. If my boss says they're fine in a particular way, that might tell me not to raise a contentious issue that day. It's not optimal to ignore it. Plus, of course, there's sexism. 5/

It's just not as simple as "people should say what they mean and they should believe that I mean exactly what I say, without subtext, regardless of my tone". Because the rest of the world does not operate like that. I obviously have unlearned some of my upbringing (I no longer assume malice 4/

you needed to know whether that was genuine or (more likely) sarcastic and bullying. If someone said "hi", you needed to know if the tone meant "let's have a conversation" or "get the hell out of my sight". And conversely, how what I said and the way I said it would be read by everyone around me. 3/

And that really sucks! But, also, I don't know how it can be fixed at a societal level. I grew up in a setting where being able to read and replicate tone, body language and other cues was absolutely essential (an all girls' school). If someone you didn't know said "I like your socks" 2/

I have been thinking recently about communication styles, particularly between autistic and neurotypical people, because I see a lot of videos from autistic people in my social media about how NTs frequently interpret them as rude or sarcastic due to a flat tone of voice or what they say. 1/

Allan Ahlberg's books, and particularly his poetry, are indelibly a part of my psyche. Their observational humour and little witty references are comparable to other great writers like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.

Great thread and blog post - I was just thinking reading your thread that it reminds me of "resilience", a term which may be useful in therapy/psychology but is weaponised in work contexts. I think gender privilege in librarianship is complicated, though, given the demographics of the profession.

Thrilled to learn today that the term for a fracture that doesn't show up on x-ray is "occult", but if you search for it in PubMed it defaults to looking for occultism as well #medlibs

I liked it, but didn't love it, I think maybe I wasn't in the right mood for it. I also haven't actually read David Copperfield, but I don't think that particularly matters; it's an extra layer of enjoyment but not at all the point of the book. But everyone else in my book group absolutely loved it!

Demon Copperhead, by any chance?

Review by kastrel - Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter Look, I think you can tell from the title and the cover that this book is basically trash. It'...

Oops, that was book 42. Book 43 of 2025: Queen Victoria Demon Hunter by A. E. Moorat. This just isn't a book for me (comedy gore/horror) and I didn't like it at all. app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/9671...

Review by kastrel - True Grit I was given this book as a gift, and I wasn't sure whether it would be my thing at all. I'd se...

Book 41 of 2025: True Grit by Charles Portis. I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did (I don't read a lot of American fiction or Westerns) but it's absolutely great. Particularly the audiobook, which is narrated by Donna Tartt, no less! app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/88a0...

Review by kastrel - Unraveller I love Frances Hardinge's older YA/adult stuff, and this was really top notch! Creepy, weird, ...

Book 41 of 2025: Unraveller by Frances Hardinge. I love all her adult/YA stuff and this was particularly good (although I guessed nearly all of the plot twists quite early) app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/a71e...

Well they're certainly in this one, and I don't remember specifically in The City & The City but I would assume so.