estirose: A girl in odd clothing dances in front of some fuzzy creatures (Erion)
[personal profile] estirose
Just like the original 3DS game, when you accomplish enough to get to the rank of Master, you get something special.
Small spoilers )
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

Response to Activation of Troops Under Insurrection Act____

“Quaker House is a manifestation of the Friends’ Peace Testimony.” This first sentence of our Mission Statement establishes the fact that we are opposed to all war, all militarism, and all senseless act of violence. Quaker House is opposed to the use of military personnel and resources in reaction to an imagined insurrection in California and other regions. We understand the use of these resources to be in violation of federal laws, the Constitution, and the basic human right to protest unlawful actions by a government. We are working with partner institutions to identify options and resources for military participants and civilians to oppose these actions and any potentially illegal orders given to the activated troops.

It is not clear what orders have been, or might be given, to military participants, which means that it is not possible for anyone to know what is or isn’t an illegal order. Quaker House and our allies are prepared to give the best advice and counsel that we can to anyone who has questions about any aspect of their participation, including any actual orders that have been received. No information provided by Quaker House or the GI Rights Hotline is intended to be legal advice and we are not qualified to give legal opinions.

Any current military participant looking for information and counseling should contact the GI Rights Hotline at 877-447-4487 or girightshotline.org https://girightshotline.org.

The Military Lawyers Task Force has issued a statement that can be accessed here https://nlgmltf.org/military-law/2025/mltf-statement-on-the-use-of-national-guard-and-active-duty-troops-to-control-opposition-to-ice-dhs-attempts-to-remove-undocumented-workers/.[1] The lawyers of MLTF are working to develop some kind of guidelines based on the available law for what may or may not constitute illegal orders.

 [1] https://nlgmltf.org/military-law/2025/mltf-statement-on-the-use-of-national-guard-and-active-duty-troops-to-control-opposition-to-ice-dhs-attempts-to-remove-undocumented-workers/

runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
They Never Asked: Senryū Poetry from the WWII Portland Assembly Center, edited and translated by Shelley Baker-Gard, Michael Freiling, and Satsuki Takikawa:

An anthology of senryū poetry written in spring and summer of 1942 by Japanese Americans held captive at the WCCA Assembly Center in North Portland, Oregon. Senryū shares haiku's 5-7-5 sound unit form, but deals more directly with the business of being human, whereas haiku's focus is on nature and only tangentially references, or implies, human emotions.

The WCCA is the Wartime Civilian Control Administration, the government body set up to implement the mass forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. From the Densho Encyclopedia: "In addition to engineering the logistics of removing some 110,000 people from their homes and businesses in a short period of time, the WCCA also quickly built and administered a series of seventeen temporary detention camps to hold those who had been removed through the spring and summer of 1942, before overseeing their transfer to more permanent camps administered by the War Relocation Authority by the end of fall 1942." In North Portland, the temporary facility was previously the Pacific International Livestock Exposition Center, the horse stalls converted into living spaces for those detained there.

This book has a thoughtful design and a conscientious attempt to put this poetry—and the people who wrote it—into context, providing historical background and examining the cultural relevance of poetry in Japanese communities, including an exploration of the individual poets incarcerated at the camps as well as the poetry groups held at WCCA camps, and an explanation of the form itself. The book has several introductory pieces, an afterword, two essays on haiku/senryū, a timeline of relevant events, end notes for references, a full bibliography, and biographies of the poets. The one thing it doesn't have is an index, which I found myself wanting multiple times over the six months it took me to read this.

The poems are presented with the Japanese script given prominence in a bold vertical line down the center of the page, one poem per page, and then a transliteration of the Japanese and, finally, the poem translated into English, in three lines. Each poem has a footnote with a "literal" translation and any translation notes, including occasions where kanji have been simplified since the writing of the poem, or instances where the poet (or transcriber) seems to have made an error. However, the literal translations are anything but. They're of a more conversational nature than the actual choppy bits of language you usually get when Japanese is translated literally into English, and in some cases, I found them more interesting or nuanced than the final translations, which could feel a little melodramatic at times. But it's entirely possible that's just my bias for haiku showing up. Here's a poem by Jōnan that really struck me because of the way it mimics a common structure in haiku and through that offers an extreme understatement of human misery:

even autumn
comes on command here—
assembly center

This book was published in 2023 by Oregon State University Press, and I checked it out of the Multnomah County Library.

Daily notes

10 June 2025 10:33 pm
fred_mouse: a small white animal of indeterminate species, the familiar of the Danger Mouse Evil Toad (startled)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

Today (Tuesday)

  • second day of uni - more focused. Met two other PhD students, and a said hello to another who didn't actually talk to me, so I'm not sure if they are staff or student (we are in a locked office space, because of research reasons, which is quite nostalgic. The card scanner makes the same beep as the ones at the Telethon Institute did)
  • I'm kind of keeping up with other parts of my life, but not in any way that makes it look like I have my shit together. The lounge has a teetering mound of clean washing, there is a pile of stuff on the bed I need to sort before I can go to sleep (by which I think I mean 'dump back on the floor'). I've taken some of the necessities in to the new office, and tomorrow I'll organise a locked cubby for keeping things in, which means I can bring any books in that make sense.

Yesterday

  • Didn't quite make it to bed before 11pm last night, but it was close. Awoke naturally at 6:50am, which meant that I could relax for a little bit and laze about until the alarm went off. I didn't, in the end, getting up after about 2 minutes, and getting in the shower.
  • Past me had a work day morning packing checklist, which was greatly appreciated this morning, as there were a couple of things that I would otherwise have forgotten. There are a couple of items that I've managed to misplace, and maybe I'll have time to sort them tonight, but I'm not optimistic about that. I was enough slow getting ready that I missed the 7:45am bus, so [personal profile] artisanat dropped me at the train station. Youngest gave me two options for public transport from there--either the circle route (longer, relies on Leach Hwy not being clogged), or train to Canning Bridge and either the 100 or 101 bus. I did the latter, and once I found the right stand at the interchange, got the first bus that came past.
  • Good meeting with supervisors, I have ideas of what is to come. I spent more time sorting out logging in to things than I had allowed for, including a trek to the library IT help desk, where it turned out that what I was assuming was one problem turned out to be four separate issues, one of which was solved by changing my password in Outlook. I also went and asked questions of the Library Helpdesk person, who gave me a personalised tour of all the things on the Library Webpage that might be of use to me, and pointed at things to follow up.

Sunday

  • Went boating on the river with [profile] buggs_jenny, their partner P, and their parents (G, K). This was a somewhat last minute invite, they organised for there to be a kayak for me to use, and I had a lot of fun. I hadn't allowed for the timing of how it would all fit together with the fact that it was a recorder group Sunday so it was a bit of a rush to head off and I didn't help with the clean up. I now have to work out how to get involved and go more often (this is not an every weekend thing; I could at best do the off weeks from recorder) given that the car we are looking to sell is the one with the roof racks, but I can't get our kayak on to it on my own. Although, having said that, it is some years since I've moved that kayak and I have no idea how heavy it is relative to my current strength--it is possible that all the shoulder work that I've been doing would be enough.
  • Recorder with G and [personal profile] ariaflame; L has injured their shoulder and P isn't yet back from visiting their sibling in the eastern states. G is now calling us the A minors; I gather this is a joke that is related to the name of another group they are in. We worked through several trios that I'm not sure that aria has seen before, with some swapping around of parts so that they were sight-reading the easier of the C recorder parts (ie. soprano or tenor).
  • Dinner with [personal profile] chaosmanor. One of those weeks where it turns out that we have gone through the veggie stash much faster than usual, and I under measured the amount of cabbage to cut to fill the gap for the stir fry. Fortunately, chaosmanor wasn't all that hungry, artisanat was out dancing and got dinner there, and Youngest and Eldest are able to raid the fridge if they are still hungry. And I had had one serve of each of the options at afternoon tea at recorder - G had made two things, and aria had brought one, and I have no ability to resist that kind of temptation. Particularly when G had made a serving specifically for me, because they had made a Bakewell tart (which is similar to the version I make but didn't have coconut in, which might mean that I've conflated two recipes) but had realised at the last minute that their pastry wasn't GF, and had cooked a generous serve in a ramekin.
spikedluv: jessica at typewriter (msw: jessica at typewriter by sarajayech)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Another Jessica crossover! I hope you enjoy it.


Title: One Good Hoax Deserves Another
Author: Spikedluv
Fandom: Murder, She Wrote (tv)/V (1983) (tv)
Rating: PG13/Gen
Pairing/Characters: Jessica Fletcher & Juliet Parrish (appearances by Mike Donovan and Elias Taylor)
Length: 3,380 words
Spoilers: Takes place during ep 1.04 Hooray for Homicide of Murder, She Wrote and during the first V (1983) mini-series.
Summary: Jessica Fletcher’s trip to Los Angeles turns out very differently than she’d expected.
Author’s Notes: Written for Round 37 of [community profile] smallfandomfest for the prompt: Murder, She Wrote (tv)/V (1983), Jessica & Writer's Choice, Jessica happens to be in LA when the truth about the Visitors is revealed
Feedback: Would be greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me.
Posted: June 10, 2025

Read Fic @ AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66375037
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I spent most of the day at the hospital, which I talk about below if you want to skip it. I did some hand-washing of dishes and scooping of kitty litter when I got home. I finished the Amelia Peabody book while sitting in the waiting room. It felt weird when I was finally sitting on my bed, NOT to make my daily call to mom.

Temps started out at 59.2(F) and reached 75. It was weird coming out of the window-less waiting room (for trips to the cafeteria or restroom) to see that it was still light out.


Mom Update:

Thank you so much for all of your good wishes for mom's surgery yesterday! I really appreciate it.

cutting for those who don’t want to read )

Chilly Update

10 June 2025 03:00 pm
mergatrude: a gang gang cockatoo eating red berries. underneath is "mergatrude" in red text (merg_gang gang)
[personal profile] mergatrude
We had the traditional burst of winter weather over the long weekend (King's Birthday observance), with snow on some of the lower slopes right here in the city! I tried to embed a video )

Spent the weekend doing as little outside as possible and running the clothes dryer (something we normally manage to avoid). I'm not looking forward to our gas bill next quarter (cue grumbling about mining companies selling all our gas cheaply overseas). Good soup weather, and we have pumpkins in the shed! Also made chicken and galangal soup from the Thai cookbook, and a batch of gf cupcakes.

I made a little progress on two separate knitting projects, both of which required some tinking I'd been putting off. I disassembled the latest jigsaw before getting much past the borders because I wasn't feeling it. I also did a lot of extra sleeping. \o/

Last week I went to the danno's school for a concert put on by the music students. He's switched to the drums and this was part of his assessment. He and a mate were playing Man In The Box by Alice in Chains (it was a metal-heavy program) but had issues with their backing track and got out of time with it, but stayed in time with each other. Some of the other performers were very good. Some of them need a lot more practice, particularly with ensemble playing. All in all it wasn't a bad effort for a concert thrown together in a couple of hours.

Today's photo is my completed Lego "The Four Gentlemen" collection. :)
The-Lego-Noble-Virtues

(no subject)

9 June 2025 02:23 pm
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!
 
Video encouraged but not required!
 
Topic: Crafting Hangout
Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
 
Join Zoom Meeting
 
Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

umadoshi: (kittens - on windowsill)
[personal profile] umadoshi
Cat Herding: Our beloved Jinksy!bear turned twelve on Saturday. Twelve! He's (by a margin of a good few years) the second-oldest cat I've ever had, and continues to be just the sweetest, softest boy. May he be with us in good health for years to come.

It was also Claudia's birthday, of course, and I always think of her on their birthday. Oh, my darling baby cat.

*The oldest was Jenny, the cat of my childhood who was still with my parents for years after I moved out. She made it to nineteen, most of that time in rock-solid health, and never really forgave me for moving to Toronto and thus straight-up vanishing from her life for months at a time.

Reading: I finished reading Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, which remained an interesting read right through, and read Adrian Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances, which I think is only the second thing of his I've read? (Elder Race is the other one I'm sure of.) Having finished it, I'm in a position that's annoyingly familiar, where I liked the book quite a bit and am curious about what happens next, but am not sure I cared enough that I'll ever actually get around to picking up the sequel.

(The thing where I've almost entirely been reading books I own for years now doesn't really help, where I've often picked up the first book of a trilogy of series or whatever on sale in ebook because I've heard it's good, and then am not sure I'm invested enough to pay full price on the next one when I own literally hundreds of yet-unread books. Feh.)

Watching: [personal profile] scruloose and I are up to date on Murderbot and have seen the first episode of Kingdom season 2.

In the case of the former, I'm skeptical about the nqqvgvba bs n punenpgre jub qbrfa'g nccrne va gur obbxf ng nyy--juvpu V'z abg vaureragyl ntnvafg, tvira gung gur fubj vf pyrneyl vgf bja guvat, naq V'z thrffvat fur'f gurer gb pbairl fbzrguvat gung jbhyq'ir orra gevpxl gb qb gur fnzr jnl va guvf sbezng nf va gur abiryyn. Ohg fur'f naablvat, naq V'yy cebonoyl xrrc svaqvat ure naablvat jurgure fur vf va snpg freivat jung V pheeragyl guvax vf ure cebonoyr shapgvba (rarzl ntrag znfdhrenqvat nf nyyl) be fbzrguvat zber vagrerfgvat. [ROT13] Guess we'll find out soon!

Working: Thank goodness the manga I'm working right now is (as usual) a fairly easy rewrite and not a tight deadline, because scrounging the mental energy for freelance work has been frustratingly hard recently. I'm almost halfway through my draft and have about a week and a half left with it, so it's fine, but. :/

Weathering/Householding: We've had a lot of gray days and some high-ish temperatures combined with humidity (which I hate), and the air quality, while not remotely as bad as it is in a lot of places, has been fluctuating significantly...and the AC function of the heat pumps is essentially nonfunctional. >.< This is crappy timing, given how much of the time over the last several days has required having the windows closed (and the air purifiers running for good measure, although they don't address some of the nastiness from wildfire smoke). And for bonus fun, while the heat pumps are still under warranty, the company we bought them from went under a few months ago, which complicates things. (I think possibly the main person died. :/)

That said, [personal profile] scruloose made a bunch of calls today and we have reason to hope that someone can come in and take a look at them soon, if that particular company has the parts in stock. And while it's been uncomfortably warm inside some of the time because of this, at least it's not full summer yet. Hopefully we can get things dealt with by the time summer heat arrives in earnest.

And on a purely pleasant note, a couple nights ago we were in a phase of "somehow the air quality is fine outside right now, so we can just open the windows and run fans" while it was pleasantly cool and raining atmospherically and the wind was doing a wonderful job of wafting the smell of the lilacs into the living room.
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
I can set my loom up in the shed to weave on it. The shed is dry and it has lights. I can just weave in the shed!!!!! The actual difficult part will be finding all the materials i need but I'm willing to dig around. I'm going to collect the few things I know I'll need from here at the house and go over in a bit after finishing reading my book that I got halfway through waiting for my truck inspection

holy shit!!!

(this post brought to you by helping my dad laying flooring last night, one half of the smallest of three rooms + hallway is now laid *upside-down smiley face emoji*)

Mom Update

9 June 2025 07:09 am
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
It's surgery day. All positive thoughts welcome. Thank you!!
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
I did a load of laundry, ran a load in the dishwasher and then emptied it (!!), did the usual amount of hand-washing dishes, and scooped kitty litter. I baked chicken for the dogs’ meals and made brownies. I mowed the lawn.

For fun stuff I watched the current ep (season finale *sniffle*) of Leverage: Redemption and an HGTV program, read more in Amelia Peabody, and talked with mom on the phone.

The water in the pond has gone down to normal levels, thankfully. Pip used the shop vac in the basement, but stirring up that water made the entire house stink. Not sure what else we’ll need to do.

Temps started out at 55.0(F) and reached 78.4. It was nice and sunny all day, with a slight breeze. Tomorrow: more rain. Ugh!
mific: (Murderbot reddish)
[personal profile] mific
I've been reading reviews of the five Murderbot eps to date, by William Hughes. They gel with what I'd been thinking and give some interesting meta. Worth checking out, if you're into the show.
https://www.avclub.com/murderbot-premiere-recap-episodes-1-and-2
https://www.avclub.com/murderbot-recap-season-1-episode-3-risk-assessment
https://www.avclub.com/murderbot-recap-season-1-episode-4-escape-velocity-protocol
https://www.avclub.com/murderbot-recap-season-1-episode-5-rogue-war-tracker-infinite

We've had a cold snap here - temps down to 7C (45F) - which I know is nothing to you tough Northeners but it reminded me how much I prefer summer. I broke out my oodie (a massive hooded sweatshirt of velour fleece lined with fake sheepskin fleece - mine has slices of pepperoni pizza on it) which was amazingly warm and comforting for a while, then when I'd warmed up, rapidly became claustrophpbic. I'm keeping it in reserve for more wintry dips in temperature.

deep red plush hooded garment covered with a pozza slice pattern in orange-red.


Discussion of an NSFW artwork and TMI
I'm working on a NSFW artwork of John Sheppard and Rodney McKay as "always a girl" lesbians, and managed to turn myself on! Unusual - it can happen when I write sex scenes, but never before with a high-rated pic I've been drawing. I really want the pic to work so will need to run it by at least one art beta when it's a bit more finished - John/Joan's hips are proving elusive. Meredith's looking nicely lush though.

Lots of podfic-related activity lately - the longer one I'm recording is going well, plus the regular Voiceteam festival had an archiving challenge so we've been hit with >600 podfics to archive, some in weird, tiny, Yuletidey fandoms that are a puzzle to categorise.
I had a brief brain melt and panicked that the due South Big Bang deadline was June 16th (it's August 16th), and having come to my senses, relievedly abandoned the punishing podficcing schedule I'd invented. But I do need to get onto my into-a-bar fic asap. Writing - so much harder for me these days, goddamnit.

The Mexican sunflower is still flowering up a storm, even in the cold and rain. It's a keeper! Not a lot of choice about that as with big ones like mine the roots can be several metres deep, and they come away again cheerfully when cut back.

I had a moment in a comment over on [personal profile] minoanmiss's journal, when I realized the phrase "trumped up" charges now has a horrible new meaning. So I've written an imaginary future entry in Etymology.com:

trump (v.2)
"fabricate, devise," 1690s, from earlier trump "deceive, cheat, impose upon" (late 14c.), from Old French tromper "to deceive," a word of uncertain origin.
Trumped up "fabricated out of nothing or deceitfully; forged; false; worthless" is recorded by 1728. Since 2025 the origin has become conflated, especially in the US, with the second Trump presidency (January 2025 to his September 2025 impeachment) in which Trump and his lackeys were notorious for illegal executive orders, false charges, and widespread abuse of power.


Hope you're all keeping warm, or cool, depending!

OCs

8 June 2025 06:09 pm
esteefee: Sun burst with caption Fair Trade san francisco, CA (fair_trade)
[personal profile] esteefee
I just had an interesting question from a reader, who asked what actor or famous male I was thinking of when I was visualizing my OC. I don't! I mean, I do visualize people, but they are people of my own invention (I believe). I don't think they are real people, just features I come up with.

How about any writers out there? Do you choose actors or people you know? Or do you make up your OCs in your mind palace?

Neurodivergent reward cycle

8 June 2025 07:33 pm
petra: A blonde woman with both hands over her face (Britta - Twohanded facepalm)
[personal profile] petra
My brain reward cycle is fucked, and the longer I think about it, the more I recognize that it's always been this way.

Case in point: I performed recently after preparing for 5 months.

My mother said, "It went well! That must feel good."

Me: "..."

It didn't. It never really does, not unless someone else gives me external validation.

Whenever I do something hard, my brain's response is, "Well, I did it, so how hard could it have been?"

This applies to excelling academically (which I have done frequently), excelling at my job (which I have done on occasion), every type of performance I've ever undertaken (and there have been a lot), every form of art/craft I've ever done (writing, knitting, crocheting, etc.), and helping friends.

Mostly I just feel relief that it's over, and my brain isn't going to give me the constant round of "You should work on [thing]!" anymore. Nah, the shoulds will switch to something else, but at least it'll be new at first.
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

Good news: No emergency medical visit for 7 days! Carrie's been to the vet twice after coming home. Healing well.  We're getting better at bandaging the open wounds. Carrie is off fentanyl, so she's gotten better this weekend at getting out of the muzzle and pulling the pads out of the bandage. So, i need to up my skills at wrapping.  I do wonder how long we need to keep bandaging. Two open wounds are each about a square inch, another is about four square inches. I think it will take a while.

 Sister in law D thinks she will be a widow in a week. Saturday morning i sent B a close up of an  elderflower cyme, all snowy petals wet from the rain with prominent creamy stamens. Later, checking the rain gauge, i saw that the white cala lily had bloomed and the flowers lay on the ground. I picked the two, dislodging the tiniest of snails, and then added a few lizard tail (Saururus cernuus) and an orange hummingbird mint (Agastache Poquito Orange) to make this morning's bouquet.  Elderberries are just beginning to ripen.

Other good news: i'd bought a bottle to deliver very targeted drops of herbicide to noxious plants (wild briers that have multiplied around the fig tree and on the other berm, honeysuckle twining on fences and out of control, trees on the septic field, poison ivy) and could not find it. I finally ordered a replacement, months after it should have been in use. And then i found it. And i was able to cancel the order in time. Yay.

Sequentially:

I left work early on Friday. ADHD rejection sensitivity probably is amplifying feelings about a meeting. I was just too emotional and so very very tired.  After an afternoon of reading, a visit with my Dad, and more reading, we watched the documentary about Ocean's Gate, the Titan submarine ... hubris, and the guy who ran Ocean's Gate sounds just like the exec director who is involved in my distressed feelings.

I did get a good bit done in the yard on Saturday, flame weeding while it was wet. Moved woodchips a short way to mulch an area at the end of the sidewalk that has been annoying to mow. Then i planted some annuals (coleus and lantana), some Trimezia gracilis ... babies? propagules? , and transplanted a chrysanthemum that survived the winter and has started blooming.   The lemongrass is in real soil for the first time in years, and i hope it multiplies. Finally, the native plants i bought are all in the new heavily mulched bed around the front yard apple tree.

Christine's been telling her siblings that "Carrie is avenged." I found a coiled copperhead in the woodchip pile when working yesterday, and killed it. I don't feel good about it but i would do it again.  There are brush piles in the woods and that's for them. But this was a little too close.

I then went on to have an ocular migraine and then a bad headache. Today has been less outside. I picked sochan and mint, spending time thinking about where i was putting my hands. I've got several Talenti gelato containers full of blanched sochan in the freezer, mint and bee balm on the dehydrator, and elderberry flowers hanging by the water heater. I imagine gifts of mint-elderflower tea.

I also made whipped cream cheese with the lavender syrup and pulverized dehydrated mulberries from last year. Very purple, not over sweet, and only mildly flavored.

I haven't seen the hawk this past week, and wonder if the smelly snake repellents have repelled the hawk. Instead, i've seen a rabbit almost every morning.

  I am avoiding feelings and reading and reading and reading. It;s been a fight not to go to the book and finish this.

spikedluv: created by tarlan (misc: tv talk by tarlan)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Leverage: Redemption: Good ep! spoilers )


Murderbot: This ep was just okay for me. spoilers )


Resident Alien: Good ep! spoilers )

#659, Bashō

8 June 2025 09:42 am
runpunkrun: john sheppard and teyla emmagan in uniform and standing in a rocky streambed (hold the stillness exactly before us)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
don't be like me
even though we're like the melon
split in two
     -1690

Translation by Jane Reichhold.

俳句 )
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
[personal profile] spikedluv
Today was supposed to be parade/chicken dinner day at mom’s. Unfortunately, we had a huge amount of rain that caused ditches and creeks to overflow their banks. The parade was canceled because of flooding but the chicken bbq was still on so my siblings and I gathered at mom’s for chicken dinners. My brother came, when he doesn’t normally come for the parade and other festivities, because he wanted to see my mom before her surgery. We sat on the screened-in porch and listened to it rain outside, which was surprisingly nice when we weren’t getting wet.

I managed to do three loads of laundry, the usual amount of hand-washing dishes, and scooped kitty litter. I also watched the current ep of Resident Alien and an HGTV program, read some more Amelia Peabody, and still talked to mom on the phone. I also got extra sleep because I slept in until 8am for the first time in ages! (Going back to bed after getting the dogs back inside, of course.)

In bad personal news, we even had flooding at our home, which is unheard of because we’re not near any creeks. What happened, in two instances, was a matter of blocked drainage. The drain outside the basement got plugged, so our basement flooded for the first time ever. (Back when Hurricane Irene gave us about 13" of rain, a tiny bit of water entered the basement through a crack in the floor, but nothing before or since, until now.)

The other was the pond. Pip puts a mesh wire over the spill pipe in the spring so the baby geese don’t get sucked down it, and that mesh got blocked, so the pond built up until it spilled over the banks. A lot of fish were caught in the spill, unfortunately. And that’s in addition to the normal build-up of water we get in a line across the property (where the slight down hill from the house meets the down hill from the hill where the pine trees are). There was so much water.

Pip has been squeegeeing the basement, but a squeegee can only do so much. He’s going to have to jack hammer an actual hole into the basement floor for a sub pump and squeegee the water into it. What a pain in the ass. (Thankfully Pip had a change of plans! He’s going to try to vacuum the water out with a shop vac ~before he goes to the effort of jack hammering a hole in the floor!) He also had to go in the pond several times to unclog the mesh so the water could flow out the way it was supposed to. (In addition to the rain, the pond fills with run-off from the hill above it, and there was a LOT of run-off.)

Temps started out at 63.0(F) and reached 76.4. Thankfully the rain ended mid-afternoon and the sun came out.

The Shelves

7 June 2025 09:20 pm
azurelunatic: Operation 'This will most likely end badly' is a go. (end badly)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
I got the standards and brackets for that shelf system, and we are currently at Home Depot, after buying what I sincerely hope is the right configuration of board feet for eight shelves. It's secured to the roof and we're using surface streets.

It's too close to bedtime to start on repair plating the 8 foot boards to the 2 foot boards, probably.

Singing at the farmers market

7 June 2025 06:42 pm
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
[personal profile] sonia
One of the women in the Balkan community choir signed up to sing at the local farmer's market, and invited people to show up. Totally casual and disorganized, but it turned out well. About eight of us showed up (I was busy singing and didn't count, and people left and arrived at different times.) Everyone proposed songs at the same time and we all paged through our music. I had just alphabetized mine in its folder, but it still takes time to find things, and of course now I have to alphabetize it all over again.

We did manage to choose songs, and I awkwardly blew into my pitch pipe for starting notes, and we didn't even discuss who was singing which part, and we sounded pretty good. It was so casual that I wasn't even nervous about performing. It felt more like a private singing gathering that some people happened to hear.

It was a cool foggy day, so the market was uncrowded, and several small children watched us with pleased attention. Adults applauded, and even left money in the hat one of us put out.

Then there was an argument about what to do with $32.70 from the hat, and we ended up donating it to a homeless services center nearby, since there's an encampment right by the market. I bought my veggies and fruit for the week, and then sat with a few folks as they ate lunch and chatted.
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[personal profile] shadowkat
CNN Aired An Exclusive Live Broadcast of the Broadway Play: Good Night and Good Luck - adapted for the stage from the film of the same name. The reason they aired it is made clear upon the airing - at the very end, Edward R Murrow, the CBS News See it Now broadcaster who famously took on McCarthy, during the Black List and McCarthy Hearings, stands front and center in front of a screen displaying multiple screens of the news. He states in a halting speech, enunciating each word, with a slight tremor to his voice, "we've seen what happens when power goes unchecked, that's not the question before us now, the question is - what will you do about it?"

I was thinking as I was watching it live on MAX (I no longer have access to CNN), that evil is like a spider, sitting in the dark corner of the room, smoking a cigar, wih a red top hat and tails smirking. And asking in a whisper of a voice, low and barely audible, "what do you want?" And indicating with a smile - "come into my parlor my dear and I shall give it to you, with a price of course".

It's insidious, and shadows egos. Self-importance. Self-righteousness. Power. Fame. Fortune. Wealth. Beware the righteous, and the self-important, and most of all the arrogant and narcissistic hunting awards and acknowledgment and power.

I don't know what I personally can do to check the power or stop it. I've been pondering it. I can write, I can post, I can draw, I can paint, I can do my job at a public agency. And I can hope people listen.

People aren't very good at listening? Have you noticed that? Too busy thinking about themselves or what they are going to say next or how they'll respond. Too filled up with thoughts to hear...ones that lie outside of their own minds and brains. I tell people a story and they tell me their own back again, and mine....slides off unheard, lost somehow within theirs? The meaning gone. And they tell me theirs and I tell them my own, and it happens all over again from the other side - with their story being lost.

I did social group therapy once - and we were for the most part forced to listen, but everyone tended to flounder at it. Either they'd ask pointed questions, correct the person's choice of words or syntax or speech (which isn't listening by the way - it's judging, and helps no one), interrupt, direct the conversation to themselves, provide advice, try to fix whatever it was, dismiss it as already solved or playing the victim, but seldom did they listen.

And once on a fan discussion board - we fell into a discussion about writing carefully, and I thought - no that's not the problem here or not that alone, we also need to learn how to read carefully. And people don't? Too busy reading quickly, flying through or past the text, to see it clearly let alone truly comprehend it? Now, for example, raise your hand if you just skimmed this passage and oh so many others? Be honest? How many have you skimmed, jumping over words and phrases and reacting to a sentence here or a paragraph there - but not seeing the whole? I know I do. Try a little experiment, if you will? Read just one paragraph of a post, or the unhidden bit. Then take a moment, and read the rest later, has your opinion of it changed?

We live in an age of content overload, and we surf and read and look at so many things simultaneously. Texts fly by. Our memory of them fleeting or garbled. And more often than not - people just read blurbs. If I post something with information below a "cut tag" - how many will read what's below the tag, and just respond to the top of the post? Losing the point of it. Or respond to the post, without reading the comments below? We don't read carefully - and most mistakes are made because of it. They were on the discussion boards. 90% of the arguments online are the result of "miscommunication" or the inability to politely ask for clarification prior to snarking, judging or condemning.

I think the flaw in the human brain is a tendency to assume everyone thinks the same and perceives things the same? When no one does? And well...a failure to communicate as a result?

**

You'll have to excuse me, I'm exhausted. But the weather is shifting, and I'm hurting less all of a sudden - which means the arthritis isn't being pinged by the human weather vane.

I'm also frustrated with my fellow humans. And perhaps with myself and my own limitations. And a touch depressed, no more than a touch, as a result. But hey at least I don't hurt as much as last night. So maybe the back brace is helping?

It's a warm spring evening. The sky has cleared of clouds, and it's sliding towards dark, from twilight. Nine PM on the East Coast. But I can still see puffs of cloud moving slowly across the pale blue sky, lit from within by moonlight. Our swiftly turning planet in the vacuum of space, surrounded by stars and galaxies which far too many of us take for granted as we bumble upon it babbling and gurgling at one another as is our way.


isis: (squid etching)
[personal profile] isis
Paul Krugman talks with Ada Palmer about her new (nonfiction) book Inventing the Renaissance. I came at this from the Krugman side (he's a Nobel-winning economist who used to write for the NYT, and I subscribe to his substack) but I figured some of you would be interested from the Palmer side (I never got into Terra Ignota, though). I found it really interesting! I read the transcript, but there's a link to the video conversation as well.

Speaking of Nobelists, a v. v. srs study found that countries with greater per capita chocolate consumption produce more Nobel laureates - so eating chocolate makes you smarter, right? :-)

Anyone want some good news?

7 June 2025 11:41 am
shadowkat: (Default)
[personal profile] shadowkat
Snagged from various places, mainly svgurl: 72 questions to ask a fan
(She says fangirl - but I just took Gender Identity Training (web module) this week and it kind of goes against the grain to use gender exclusive as opposed to gender inclusive language at the moment.)

Also, the Good News Report...

As always, good news is often in the eye of the beholder, but hopefully something makes you smile, outside of the link to the fan questions. Which I may or may not try to answer at a later date. I'm weirdly private about my fandoms.


1.Breakthrough in search for HIV cure leaves researchers ‘overwhelmed’
Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the body.

Via the Guardian

"Exclusive: Melbourne team demonstrates way to make the virus visible within white blood cells, paving the way to fully clear it from the body."

2. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sues Alina Habba, alleging ‘false arrest and malicious prosecution’. Alina Habba's criminal case against Ras Baraka collapsed quickly. Now, the tables have turned, and the Newark mayor is suing the prosecutor.

Via Democracy Docket

3.Judge says some migrants sent to an El Salvador prison must have a chance to challenge their detention. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide hundreds of migrants sent to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, the opportunity to challenge their detention and removal. The ruling is related to deportations ordered under the Alien Enemies Act.

Via NBC News

This doesn't apply to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man whose deportation became a focal point of Democratic resistance to Trump's immigration policies.

4. The Trump regime has returned a Guatemalan man who was improperly deported to Mexico, obeying a federal judge’s order.

Via Politico

5. More than a century after the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the most horrific episodes of racial violence in U.S. history, the city’s mayor announced a $105 million reparations package on Sunday. It is the first large-scale plan committing funds to address the impact of the atrocity. Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols on Sunday unveiled a $105 million reparations plan for the descendants of the Tulsa race massacre — the deadly 1921 attack by a white mob on a Black neighborhood.

ABC News

Via NY Times

the rest )

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