petra: Text: "Gotta be one around here somewheres. Try the liberal call, boy." (Bloom County - Liberal Call)
[personal profile] petra
Feed the hungry? Heal the sick? Stop the war? Naaaaaah. Let's BUILD BIG ART.

Is it to celebrate Trump getting the FIFA Peace Prize? JD pwning the Pope?

Trump Admin triumphs: footage not found.

The mere concept of building a big monument to fuckall while we are actively at war illegally bombing another country without the consent of Congress, with no victory conditions and less motivation than the average divorce, offends me to the core. Triumphing over common sense is not a triumph.

Planter and seeds acquired!

16 April 2026 09:14 am
umadoshi: (garden - hands in dirt (lovelyhip))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Our planter is here! Getting it wasn't actually a saga, but it felt a bit like one. TL;DR: delivery service annoyance )

We also both took yesterday off (and I'm off the rest of the week, but got up at my usual workday time today in hopes of getting a fair amount of manga work done), and ventured out to buy veg seeds for the planter. (We also still need to get soil/fertilizer/etc., but want to read up on it more first. I think I might order a hard copy of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, which I got on sale in ebook recently and like so far.)

Yesterday's important lesson: when noting down which seed varieties we like the looks of, include the source, because our local store, at least, has separate displays for each originating company, and knowing that would make it much easier to check for the various varieties. Anyway, here's what we wound up with (descriptions are in my last post):

Basil: Devotion.

Cabbage: Early Golden Acre (green) and Serpentine F1 (savoy).

Spinach: Bloomsdale and Renegade.

Lettuce: Brighton (Butterhead), Black Seeded Simpson (green leaf), Red Salad Bowl (red leaf), Grand Rapids (green leaf), Freckles (romaine), and Drunken Woman.

Update

16 April 2026 11:19 am
mergatrude: eucalypt flower (eucalypt flower)
[personal profile] mergatrude
Reading: I finished listening to the audiobook of Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch, after having read the text version last year. I'm wondering which almost unintelligible accent Aaronovitch is going to make Kobna Holbrook-Smith do next. ('Straya, please! We have so many ancient places the genius loci would be amazing!) I thought Shvorne Marks did an amazing job, and it was fun to hear Abigail's version of Nightingale's accent as compared to Peter's. cut for possible spoilers and self-indulgence )

Currently, I'm listening to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary, and I'm glad I saw the movie first. I think I would have struggled with the amount of maths and science without the context of the film, and without my pre-established fondness for the characters. It's a reminder (to myself) that the 'book vs film' debate is mostly wind as both mediums have different strengths.

Watching (and listening): I haven't been watching anything with intent recently. We bought a huge-ass TV with our leftover christmas fund (we put money every fortnight into a christmas club account which can only be accessed in Dec/Jan) and I find it kind of repelling. Dude has been playing me a bunch of Gorillaz videos on youtube, catching me up on the lore following the release of The Mountain. I love the album (I've always had an interest in Indian music) and have been listening to it quite a bit. Dude is currently into collecting CDs and has bought a couple of earlier Gorillaz albums, which have been fun to listen to.

Making: I've been slowly working on a sweater for my brother, but it's lots of boring knitting. I'm itching to spin something, but I don't know what. I used up some leftover multi-coloured yarn with some white Cormo to make fingerless mitts for a colleague and they turned out well. The (free) pattern is Prisma Mitts and is great for a gradient yarn.

fingerless mitts for Amy

I need to do more two-colour knitting rather than trying to dye all my colours into a single yarn. *g*

Other: We're upgrading our solar system, adding more panels and a larger battery which we hope will zero-out our electricity bill. The feed-in tariff has dropped to 4 cents/kW and we expect it to drop further, so more storage is our goal.

Work is still a schmozzle. The Uni featured heavily in a recent Four Corners exposé about governance in the tertiary sector, however I don't see them rolling back the (ridiculous, terrible) organisational changes any time soon. Sigh.

Autumn is finally here. After a long summer the nights dropping to below 5C is a bit of a shock. The cat is unimpressed and insists on being wrapped in her blanket.

ashah in grey blanket

wednesday reads and things

15 April 2026 05:28 pm
isis: (vikings: lagertha)
[personal profile] isis
What I've recently finished reading:

After I finished The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, I idly looked for fanfiction. There are all of two fics: one is Una/Owen smut, and the other is not actually for The Everlasting but is a sort of fusion, Palamedes and Camilla from The Locked Tomb Series in a plot drawn from The Everlasting...

...and I really liked it! Camilla Everlasting by [archiveofourown.org profile] DullestProdigalSon, about 23K, lots of very short chapters. You do have to have read Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, as it's very firmly based in those books, but I thought the translation of the Everlasting plot to the Locked Tomb world was very cleverly done. (You don't need to have read The Everlasting. There's some reference to "The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex" but you probably don't need to have read that.) In this story, Palamedes is the scholar/necromancer from the future who is sent back in time to help the famous Camilla Hect become a Lyctor. What's really cool is that in this fic, Palamedes was not the necromancer of the original narrative, but essentially overwrote that narrative to be the story we read in the novels, which I thought was very in keeping with the way that Harrow the Ninth rewrites the story of Gideon the Ninth, and also echoes Cytherea's actions in the first book. The character voices and general tone and style felt super-true to the Locked Tomb, too - overall an enjoyable read!

And...that's about all. I'm currently eyeball-reading The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, and listening to Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor (book 4 of the Bobiverse).

What I'm currently watching:

We noped out of Fallout S2 after two episodes, and are now about midway through 1923, one of Taylor Sheridan's numerous Yellowstone prequels. I had not been really inclined to watch it, but B roped me in with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, who I must admit are excellent here; however, the narrative strand dealing with the Indian boarding school is the most compelling (and horrifying) to me. (Living in Indian country now - Southern Ute land, near a college that is free for tribal members, who make up about half the student population, which incidentally was originally on the site of an Indian boarding school - I'm much more aware of this terrible part of our country's past.)

What I'm still playing:

I think I'm getting close to the climax of the second act (of three) of Ghost of Tsushima.
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
The lyrics to 365 songs written by John "The Mountain Goats" Darnielle, including some that are unreleased, accompanied by musings on their poetics, musicality, and personal meaning. Darnielle is a thoughtful, funny, devout man who has lived a lot of different lives, and while he resists making this a memoir, it is, though you just as often see him decline to explain the personal significance of a song. I respect his honesty, and his self-reflection, and even his coyness. If he were a character in a book, I'd say he had interiority, which isn't something you can say about everyone who's written a memoir.

I really enjoyed this, even as it's basically just really, really thick liner notes. The book gave me a new appreciation for my favorite songs and even introduced me to some new ones. I bought "Horseradish Road" after reading the lyrics and listening to it on YouTube; I learned he had an album that came out in 2022 that I'd never heard of—probably because we had some other stuff going on at the time—and which I will be buying soon, and in the four months it took me to read this, I've been listening to the albums I already knew I enjoyed (Transcendental Youth, All Eternals Deck, We Shall All Be Healed) and those I never quite clicked with (Beat the Champ, Get Lonely). I did not listen to Goths, Jenny From Thebes, Dark in Here, Getting Into Knives, In League With Dragons, All Hail West Texas, or Ghana, but there's still time. And I don't need an excuse to listen to Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree, The Life of the World to Come, or Heretic Pride, as they are my absolute favorites and I'm listening to them all the time anyway. Also do not sleep on the Babylon Springs EP.

If you're a The Mountain Goats fan, or a fan of Darnielle's social media presence, and/or a poet, songwriter, or storyteller, there's plenty to think about here. Darnielle shares what he finds interesting as an artist, the phases and trends he's gone through in his career, and the echoes he finds in his work. He recommends reading one entry a day, thus the format, but I had to read several a day because this was a library book, and huge, but it definitely benefits from being read in small bites, like poetry, so you can sit with it a while.

Contains (in part): references to child abuse, drug use, addiction, overdose, suicide. The ebook duplicates the print book's index, but does not bother to link any of the song titles to their entries, which is bullshit.

Status Updates from Goodreads )
shadowkat: (Peanuts Me)
[personal profile] shadowkat
Decided to celebrate with a rewatch of The Prom, and a bit of a listen to Once More With Feeling.

Link to an insane amount of meta on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

(There may be some fic in there?

And a dialogue drabble :

Pesky television characters - they never do what you want them to... )

the road goes ever on and on

14 April 2026 10:52 pm
pensnest: Piglet sleeps and the Heffalump rampages (Heffalump dreams)
[personal profile] pensnest
Beast and I just watched 'Smoke', a series on (I think) Apple TV about an arson investigator and a police detective who have a couple of arsonists to chase.

Taron Egerton is really, really good in it.

*

The rest of this post is about twenty-five years out of date! )

The Coat

14 April 2026 01:06 pm
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
I finished it in March but didn't have the energy to take pictures but I got it out yesterday and got some nice photos. They could have been better but I was working with what I had, which was my phone on a box on the tailgate of my truck, held upright by the handle of a 300ft measuring tape. I really ought to get a phone mount for pictures, I had one but it disappeared in the move.

A picture of a man wearing a thick, knee length grey peacoat in front of blueberry bushes.

process rambling below the cut )
It is such a warm coat and I was sweating by the time I got all these photos taken yesterday. But coat! It's done!

julian: Picture of the sign for Julian Street. (Default)
[personal profile] julian
On Sunday, we had Ny's Online Thing. (Wake. Memorial.)

It was very good; full of singing and poetry and science facts and art and memories and sadnesses. and made me sort of/almost cry at various time periods, but because I was the Official Zoom Host I felt like I couldn't, like, take breaks, which is of course Never True. Once it finished, I ended up with a dyspeptic-and-congestion-related headache that took a bit to clear out, but it did eventually.

There were a thousand small details that I didn't quite think of, which makes sense because generally I'm not the one hosting large Zooms, or, for that matter, organizing memorials. And also, the sad.

The general inchoate "we" of the Discord have been hashing out ethical stuff about posting and/or linking to the video of the memorial. Because, it was a semi-public event, but also private, and the simultaneous chat in particular had a lot of linking up wallet names and online handles that is perfectly fine in a semi-private space, but less so in the wider world. And yet, one of the things I appreciated about Ny was that she created a life where she could, to the extent possible, be as much herself as she could, out loud, and I don't want her life's celebration muffled.

But, we didn't quite make it clear that it might be posted later, or ask people if they were OK with it being posted (see above re: small details), and in the general sense, we're fans of opt-in rather than opt-out. So we've come to a (current) compromise. I am quite positive there will be further movement later. (For all I know, someone'll make it a Project to ask everyone who was there if they're OK with it being public, or if they'd like their identities ambiguated. I'm sure not doing it, though, because I have overdue client notes to write.) But anyway, for now, we're not sending out the chat, but will send out the video. So!

If you're interested, either

a) email vicka about it, and she can send you the video. (vicka's the one with the Ny Page, which was where I originally found out about the dying-of-COVID part. Her email is findable on the wider andor pages.)

or b) PM me/comment here/email me/send me a carrier pigeon, and I can send you a link to the video, which is on Mega, which is how I got it to vicka because I decided I wasn't up to figuring out SCP. I'm not including the chat there because of the aforementioned linkages.

Or c) [personal profile] gingicat is, soon, going to post the link to the announce-list, if you're on that.
duskpeterson: The lowercased letters D and P, joined together (Default)
[personal profile] duskpeterson

If you are not visiting the palace in order to attend the Chara's court, then chances are that you are here to visit the council. As you enter the east doors of the palace, turn right, then left, then immediately right. The long corridor before you leads north to the council chamber and council quarters.

Upon reaching the end of the corridor, you will once again find yourself facing high doors, this time plated with copper. Unless you are actually attending a council meeting, the door you want is to either the left or the right of the council chamber. Enquire with the guards as to how to reach your destination. Mainland visitors are likely to be escorted, under guard, to the room they are seeking.

Attendance at meetings of the Great Council are by invitation only. If you are invited, arrive early. If you have been asked to speak with the council, you will be shown to a chair at the bottom of the council table. Do not be insulted. This is where the Chara himself sits, when he is invited to speak with the council.

Remember those high doors? They were designed to keep out the Chara and his guards, back in the days when animosity still simmered between the Chara and the Great Council. These days, the animosity takes less blatant forms, but the Chara is still not permitted to enter the council chamber except with permission of the Great Council's High Lord.

If you are not here to speak with the council but wish to attend a council meeting, you will be shown to a chair at the back of the room. (If you are not accustomed to sitting in chairs, it is best to practice beforehand.) As in the court, your job will be to stay as quiet and motionless as possible. At only two points in the meeting should you move: rise from your chair when the High Lord of the Great Council enters the chamber, and rise again when he leaves. A herald will announce when this is necessary.

After the council meeting, you may wish to visit the council library, just off the head of the chamber. This lovely, light-filled room was added during the reign of the Chara Purvis, at the beginning of this century. It is considered the finest law library in the world, containing hundreds of books of commentary on matters related to the law. Do not to touch the books unless you are here to do research. To Emorians, law books – even books of commentary – are sacred objects.

Northern mainlanders should be aware that stealing a law book can be punished by death. If you must steal something in the palace, confine yourself to objects unrelated to the law.


[Translator's note: In order to visit the Great Council in session, as well as its law library, read Law of Vengeance.]

Some things and feelings

13 April 2026 02:27 pm
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
The farm has abruptly moved from winter to summer mode and my to-do list is long and complicated. I have moved into pruning raspberries which is way more unpleasant than blueberry pruning in that the raspberries will try and stab me in the face a lot. A baseball hat helps protect my face but my arms take a beating even with long sleeves. But I'm making good progress. I need to contact all of our workers from last year and figure out scheduling. I have started plowing. I'm currently digging up old drip tape. Doing cleanup of things we didn't get done in the fall. 

We are t minus 3 weeks to strawberry planting so there's a ton to do. Technically we are ahead of where we were last year but also ack. 

The bobcat was down longer than anticipated but all the parts were found and it only took an hour to fix. Ha. It took five hours to take the damn cylinder apart which was a process that we ended up using an eight foot breaker bar attached to a chain around the hitch of the truck via a come along to crack the nut holding things together. Like, human power was simply useless even with the 8 foot bar. But the actual seal replacement and putting it all back together took about an hour. But since I was working with my dad on it, that was a whole day of work that I was set back. I'm trying not to resent it because it was extremely valuable time for learning mechanical skills and spending time with him but also I know how much shit needs to get done and a whole day is a ton of time. 

I have a lot of sidejob work built up that I'm struggling to get through without a lot of time off work. My evenings are pretty busy between crafting, game night and the farm meetings we keep having late at night because that's when we have time to meet. 

I went up to the pottery studio to see if my stuff had been fired but apparently that was happening today despite being assured it would happen within two weeks when I was there a month ago. But the person who owns the studio had done a bulk buy with Azure so I got to ask her a bunch of questions and assured me it was easy to sign up and do. and I know [personal profile] ranunculus has used them before, so I've committed and I'm going to buy a bunch of bulk goods because I've been needing bulk baking supplies. 

I nearly had a meltdown in the grocery store today, I knew going was a bad idea but I needed food and timing wise, I needed to be there later than I would like to be. I'm just tired and not handling things well. 

I have been trying to write up my feelings on the house situation so I stop being mad but honestly my dad used my toothpaste last night because he "couldn't find any other toothpaste" and that is just icing on the annoying cake. The worst part is that they aren't deliberately using my stuff or piling things in front of my stuff or moving my stuff to piss me off. They literally just cannot imagine something in their house not being theirs to use or move around as they want. 

Seriously the most inconsiderate roommates I've ever had and that includes the ones that got busted for smoking pot in the dorm room at college. Part of the problem is that my previous roommates all had schedules that were offset somewhat from mine, so they would be up and using the common spaces slightly offset. They also had social lives and would leave me the fuck alone. Previous roommates also didn't sleep in the living room constantly or if they did, they didn't expect me to be quiet about what I was doing. At least 2 hours, probably closer to 4 hours a day either one of my parents is sleeping in the living room. It's nuts. They had two whole ass bedrooms to use in two different houses, but no, they have to sleep in the room that is joined to the two rooms I use the most (crafting room, my office). Probably I've never just had very inconsiderate roommates? I don't know but my autistic ass is not handling this well. The week while they were away was so lovely. 

I'll admit, I am not exactly coping well with current work stress, parents and also the wider world although I have to say, trump beefing with the pope is just making me laugh so much. Fuck the catholic church but also shoutout to the pope for getting his ass. other than that, fucking stressful.  

jesse_the_k: foggy playground roundabout kissed with sunlight and rainbows (Clouds lost youth)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

I attended [personal profile] minoanmiss’s online memorial yesterday afternoon. It was strengthening to share our sorrow. Witnessing the depth of our online connections bolstered my resilience. The children she co-raised loved her and knew her. I’ll link to the recording when it’s public.

One mourner has worked in public health for 40 years, and made it very clear that

  • [personal profile] minoanmiss had asymptomatic COVID which caused her death
  • that wasn’t documented in the hospital record and there’s almost zero chance to change that
  • many people are still dying due to COVID, which is systematically not being reported
  • continuing to mask is a fundamental contribution we can make to the health of our communities

There were lovely stories and slides and recipes — a poem and a song in the cut.

Every Land and Acts of Creation )

(morning writing)

13 April 2026 07:46 am
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

Worried my comment about yay for low humidity seems heartless. We are in a severe drought and other parts of the state are in extreme drought. The low humidity just makes the fire danger worse and dries out the environment even more. So, yeah, the low humidity and heat are working together in a problematic way. I cut back two young redbuds yesterday i suspect of loosing significant woody growth due to the drought.

  • https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/exper/ndfd/ndfd.html -- see where temperatures are likely to break records

  • https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records -- how many records have been broken (the high min points to not cooling off over night)

  • https://yaleclimateconnections.org/topic/eye-on-the-storm/ -- coverage of extremes with recent headlines "The world just had its second-warmest March on record" and "The year so far: hottest and driest in U.S. history"

(morning writing)

13 April 2026 07:33 am
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

I spent much time on Saturday trying to figure out why over ten hours on Friday there was a cancelled order for a $2000 Amazon gift card, three gifts of a Max account on a service i use to myself (charges pending at the bank), and my instagram account alertement me to suspicious activity and was forcing me to change my password. The all used different emails and authentication patterns and it's a struggle figuring out what happened.

It became clear that there is no way that you can get anything out of Amazon or the other company's security people. Amazon kept resetting my password when i attempted to get IP address, payment method, and what purchase system (website? app (which i don't use)? alexa(which i don't use)? I found a stack of others on reddit who had similar exploits around gift accounts

In the end i at least excluded some vectors of attack, added MFA to many more accounts and Christine will take on disputing the bank charges this morning. This morning i woke to find Facebook had changed my password because of suspicious activity.

--== ∞ ==--

I did call my dad and talk to him; it had been a week since i waved off his last minute Easter restaurant lunch. Between feeling sick and the combination of depressing venue and no reservation i couldn't bear the to  join them.

--== ∞ ==--

Mowing mowing mowing all Sunday. Thank heavens for the low humidity with this ridiculous warmth. And thank heavens for the leaves now on the trees because i was generally able to be in the shade for my efforts in the afternoon.

Riches

13 April 2026 03:09 pm
mific: (Hockey sticks)
[personal profile] mific
So I'm into hockey fics now, and just realised there's a treasure trove of Helenish hockey rpf to be read. HR has taught me the basics of the hockey world, which makes the rpf easier to get into even if I don't really know the players. And I'll follow Helenish pretty much everywhere.

Two recs for now, Leon Draisaitl/Connor McDavid. Both locked to AO3.

Obligations. A long, slow burn story in an alpha/beta/omega-verse, and Helenish's worldbuilding within that is extraordinary, just as good as the way 'Take Clothes Off As Directed' deepened BDSM-verse. They're teammates on the Oilers, interacting with a mass of assumptions, miscommunication, hopeless denial, and obliviousness, so most of the fic is pining and unspoken longing badly hidden behind defences. They get there in the end, despite knowing how bad it'll be with the Press and twitter and their coaches and agents (the reactions of others plus their own idiocy replace RL homophobia as barriers), and there's finally some gorgeous hot as hell sex to enjoy after being edged for the rest of the story. It's from Leon's pov, and ends with a quiet paean to the hockey life. (17,681)

Silver Lining Playbook. Connor's pov, set at and after the recent Olympics. Non-linear plot, starting with them hooking up angrily and fake-casually, and only later we learn they used to be together then broke up due to the usual miscommunication and stubbornness. The ending's hopeful rather than resolved, and Connor's characterisation is excellent. Where the fic above was all repressed feelings and eventual fucking, this one's all fucking until eventually they talk about feelings. Very nice. (7212)

petra: CGI Obi-Wan Kenobi with his face smudged with dirt, wearing beige, visible from the chest up. A Clone Trooper is visible over one shoulder. (Obi-Wan - Clones ftw)
[personal profile] petra
Primus Inter Sub-Pares: The Crisis in Leadership on Naboo in the Declining Days of the Galactic Republic (175 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Sheev Palpatine, Padmé Amidala, Jar Jar Binks
Additional Tags: Abstract, in this essay I will, political science, History, article
Series: Part 4 of Star Wars Prequels in 2020s Media
Summary:

The abstract of a historical journal article.

umadoshi: (lettuce 01 (leesa_perrie))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Our impending new raised planter is still showing as scheduled to arrive tomorrow while we're both home/not working, so here's hoping!

We just spent a while sifting through some seed listings on the Halifax Seed website (and I mostly kept myself from looking at tomato seeds, since we are not growing any tomatoes from seed*).

*I really wish there were some indication of what tomato varieties will be offered as seedlings, and also wish I knew if the different plant nurseries tend to offer similar varieties of tomato seedlings or not. (ALSO-also, we need to decide whether to focus on trying a few different types to see how we like them vs. focusing on a few determinate plants with the intention of just processing most/all of the fruit into sauce.)

(The seedling sale from a relatively nearby nonprofit that I'm hoping to make it to does offer a short list of potential varieties of things, with the caveat of "These are all the options that we have intended to grow but as all farmers and gardeners know, not every crop pans out. We apologize in advance if some of these options are unavailable, or not ready." For tomatoes, it says "Roma, Brandywine, Scotia +more! / Tropical Sunset, Sungold, Red Torch +more!")

But as noted yesterday, we don't plan to put tomatoes in the actual planter anyway. Thoughts for the actual planter so far: thoughts + variety notes )

HR vid rec - To be a princess

13 April 2026 01:54 am
mific: (Shane crowned)
[personal profile] mific
Ok I lied about going to bed.

Hilarious vid “To Be A Princess” -
set to some musical song, possibly Disney? By theburialofstrawberries.

https://www.tumblr.com/mific/813728132898177024/shane-as-princess

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