The Wordsmith's Forge

How to weave an obelisk with Dave Jackson The Stick Smith

Dave Jackson a.k.a. The Stick Smith teaches how to weave a willow obelisk, for climbing plants; be they peas, sweet peas, runner beans, jasmine, etc.


This is a very sophisticated weaving method. It's not so much difficult as it is particular. Following these steps will give you a very consistent and durable structure. However, you could just as well make the basket ribs and do a simple over-and-under weave that would suffice for many garden purposes.

Weaving is a garden craft that lets you make many useful things. It also lets you obtain more yield from your permaculture or other garden. Many types of willow can give you a near-endless supply of excellent weaving materials. So will bushy dogwoods, hazels, and some types of maple. You can use these whips to make baskets, mats, obelisks, fences, and more depending on how thick you let them grow before harvest. Coppicing is the technique of cutting back a bush or tree so it sends up new shoots. You can do this for many years with the same plant.

icons is hosting a Spring Friending Meme.

The Novella Question, or, Wow, Marketing is Expensive in Late Stage Capitalism

Many of us are looking at the novella short lists for the popular awards (Hugos, Locus, Nebula) and going, “Ah, another Tor sweep!” When I first got into the Hugo Awards, the short fiction finalists were the magazines: Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Analog. It also included pieces from short fiction collections from when publishers still let editors put those together, with a smattering of other, lesser known (to me) outlets. I remember the Tordotcom announcement, too! We were excited and we’ve come a long way. Now I get the pleasure of paying almost $30 for a hardcover novella, which I’m not excited about. I'm not made of money, Macmillan!

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SOULMATE, YOKEMATE, HOUSEMATE, HELPMATE

In OED2, soul-mate was listed under soul, n., along with other compounds, such as soul carrier, -curer, -thief, and -twister. The new OED3 Online gives it its own headword, soulmate, n. and updates the Coleridge quotation to what you see above (whereas OED2 had the slightly different “You must have a Soulmate as well as a House or Yoke-mate.”).

Coleridge’s neology is pretty good, but the analogy is a bit fuzzy. A house mate shares your house; And two things that are yoked are indeed paired – a yokemate is just the other term in a pairing, even if the idea of the yoke also carries a connotation of a shared burden
[---8<---]
Helpmate appears about fifty years later, perhaps as a reanalysis of helpmeet, OED2 saying that applies “chiefly to a wife or husband”,


A relationship can be built on many things, so think about what you want. Someone who touches your spirit? Someone to share the burdens of life, thereby making it easier overall? Someone to live with? Someone to help you do things? If it's just based on romance or sex, it's less likely to have the staying power of a relationship built on common life goals.

Today's the last day for the 2026 Theme Poll at summerofthe69. If you haven't already voted, now's the time to choose what smut you want to enjoy later.

Contemporary Dual States: Israel, US, Russia, China, Turkey, etc.

As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely. In this domain, which Fraenkel called the “prerogative state,” ordinary law didn’t apply.

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When School Taught Me Basic Finance, Badly

The other day I wrote about the question Who should be teaching kids basic finance? Some point to schools and say schools should be teaching it; others point to parents and say it's their job. I noted that one difficulty with asking schools to do it is that they're already overloaded trying to cover basic academics. (And really the reason they're so overloaded on that is public school teachers end up spending, like, 90% of their time trying to manage behavior problems.) I also noted that schools seems ill equipped to teach it because, at least the one time a school I attended did try to teach basic finance, the whole lesson was basically a fail.


I would say that it's useful to teach basic finance BOTH at home and at school. That way if one skips or does a bad job, the other has a chance to pick up the slack.

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Bad Ass on a Budget is for Indie Filmmakers

Veteran stuntman and action filmmaker Eric Jacobus (God of War, Man Who Feels No Pain) delivers a tech-agnostic, philosophically grounded roadmap for zero-budget filmmakers to achieve high-impact action by mastering the “human universals” of physiology, psychology, and human relationships.

Badass on a Budget is a masterclass for the “Zero-Budget Action Filmmaker” (ZBAF) by veteran action designer Eric Jacobus, who draws on decades of experience from viral hits (Rope-A-Dope and Blindsided) to indie feature film production (Contour and Death Grip) to global franchises (God of War and Mortal Kombat). Rejecting gear-centric trends, Jacobus focuses on tech-agnostic “human universals”—physiology, psychology, and relationships—to provide a holistic framework for a high-impact “Action Ecosystem” where performance, choreography, camera, and editing work in perfect synergy.


Given the "human universals" I suspect this would work well for writers, artists, etc. who wish to choreograph effective fight scenes. Plus of course, a fun read for anyone who enjoys action flix and is fed up with the overuse of tech.  I also like the creative, DIY angle; it reminds me of the book Hang the Cat from Terramagne, which I wish existed in local-Earth.

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