kaberett | Reading

Thanks to being ill, and perhaps thanks to buying a Steam Deck and being able to play from the couch, I just finished this game.

It's 2030, and some years ago a sci-fi-esque disaster affected the former contiguous USA. It left behind a few individuals with superpowers, some perhaps more useful than others. And it left at least two rival authoritarian regimes.
In this game a group of nobodies sets off to cross the continent under the authorities' radar. Their cover: being a band on tour. They meet people along the way, and of course things don't go entirely to plan.

It's interactive fiction, but more interactive than some. It's a road-trip story, of course. The summary is that it's a really nice character-driven story, where the things you say and the choices you make mould the character development along the way. The people feel largely realistic/plausible, which is no mean feat in writing. Like most such games the big picture of the plot is fixed, although I think there are different ways to reach the milestones, but the evolution of the people is not.

It's a game about people, families, and relationships; also a game about resistance, and different forms that it can take.

The protagonist starts off as quite a flawed character, and I had a number of "I don't want to say any of these things!" moments near the start. But that gets better, if you have her develop that way. The pacing is perhaps a little slow in the middle, but it picks up again and makes that a very minor complaint. The art is lovely, and it has a good soundtrack.
Alongside this there's some combat which... eh, I found it fun, but it's not the strongest part of the game. And there's a note-bashing minigame, which... again, I enjoyed it, and how good you are does affect what happens, but I don't think in any major ways. Both of these break things up nicely and give changes in pace.

Good on accessibilty: combat difficulty is adjustable, and fights can be skipped altogether. There's an "easy QTE" mode. It does require a games controller, I think. It took me about 20 hours to complete in non-rushed way. It rewards you for remembering what characters say and like, so it's worth trying to play in a relatively concentrated period rather than spread out over months.

Bonus points for unremarked queer and non-wihite representation throughout, people struggling with mental health, and for a female protagonist. Actually, a majority-female cast. It got review-bombed on steam for being woke, so maybe extra bonus points for that? ;-) Recommended, either way.

This is from the soundtrack. No spoilers.

Current Mood: calm

oracne

This is a great video about making zines.

Watch on YouTube

fred_mouse posting in

unclutter

How goes the decluttering? Have you shifted anything out of the house? Found something to sort through? Had thoughts on things you can let go of?

Comments open to locals, lurkers, drive by sticky beaks, and anyone I've forgotten to mention.

Congratulations to everyone who has found and/or disposed on any clutter in the last week!

Optional extra, for those doing the low key January challenge: how go the work spaces?

bookscorpion posting in

common_nature

The snowdrops are starting to flower, I am so excited.

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

It didn't feel like a very productive week, but it looks like I actually got a few things done, including data-entry for our (HSX's) bookkeeper to close out VAT for the quarter. So I'm going to cut myself a little slack. Only a little, though, because a lot of stuff still isn't getting done.

On the other hand, I got in five walks, though one was cut short because my knee felt dicey. And the knee braces I ordered thereafter failed to arrive, due to some screw-up at the warehouse -- I got two items all right; an ethernet patch cable and coupler. :P I also fell down the Post Public Domain Day reading rabbit-hole. And I found my glasses! (Under the pile of sweaters and other warm stuff that have accumulated on the arm of the couch nearest my desk.) They'd been missing for almost exactly a month.

As part of the little burst of productivity at the beginning of the week, I upgraded Linux Mint to 22.3 Zena on (Framework 12)Lilac and (main laptop)unSable. Then I noticed that (server)Nova and (spare Thinkpad X230)Panther were still on 21.3 Virginia -- the same as Raven. Which meant in particular that Nova still had Python2.7, so could be used for posting. It required a little fixing, but it now works. So then I upgraded Raven.

I'll upgrade Panther too, but right now it's in the bedroom, and so is Bronx.

I also tracked down Nova's old mirror drive, last updated a year ago just before we left Seattle. That also required some fiddling, but I just got what looks like a clean update to it about an hour ago. Win.

On the gripping hand, I've been feeling distinctly off, in several different ways. I have a cardiology appointment on Tuesday, but whether that will prove enlightening remains to be seen.

Linkies: Red Cards / Tarjetas Rojas | Immigrant Legal Resource Center | ILRC -- if you're in the US you might want to print off a few whether you're an immigrant or not.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: not as productive as i need to be
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: not enough

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

oursin

Happy birthday,

pameladean!

ursamajor

Today has been a very bookish day for me, albeit a highly social one.

Romance book club in the morning; this month, a Regency romance (J. Winifred Butterworth's A Bloomy Head. (Reminder to self - send

minervacat the book club list, it's just in inconvenient-to-share format.) Good to shake up my usual contemporary/romantasy tendencies, and we had a fun discussion about the perils of how to introduce a large cast of characters (I compared it both to the Baby-Sitters Club *and* Pucking Around, ahahaha), and historical portrayals and understandings of nonbinary and alternate genders, but I think overall I still don't gravitate towards Regency romances in general. Also, the series is literally "Regency Cheesemakers," I would like more cheese content please!

Afterwards, I headed over to Book Passage as a friend was having an event for their book on transportation advocacy (If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight). Of course we chatted some about specific local bugbears (why do people keep trying to close SF's newest and reputedly most popular park to turn it back into a highway, how do we get things done when we're a small minority against an entrenched system, how do we get across to people that parking on a public street isn't their personal space, it belongs to all of us? how do these lessons apply in a broader context?). Then Heather and I were hungry, so after stumbling across a surprisingly long line at El Porteño (no empanadas for us!), we went down the street to Gott's to address our growling stomachs with chili and sweet potato fries and milkshakes.

Our timing meant we finished eating, looked up into a cotton-candy sunset sky, and both yanked out our cameras to chase the color for awhile. The sun had mostly set by the time we got on the ferry, but it meant we had a lovely view of the city lights as we pulled away across the bay, under the bridge. Unanimous agreement: the ferry is such a relaxing transportation option compared to BART.

And then I came home to the scent of 红烧肉 (hóngshāo ròu, Shanghai red-braised pork belly) wafting out of our kitchen. Now that our cookbooks are all organized and on shelves again instead of half of them being stacks on the floor, it's so much easier to browse through them, which is how

hyounpark spent his afternoon while I was out gallivanting around the bay :)

*

Before that, catching up with

bitty and

anirt Friday evening; an amazing rose pistachio cake at Mey Friday morning with Jen,

ladyjax, other Heather, and Cade; solid rehearsal Wednesday at choir as we work on two pieces for this spring about migrant experiences. Time with friends all the more precious now.

Current Mood: cheerful

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/17/a-photo-of-johnscalzi-no-not-me-the-minor-planet/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59129

It comes courtesy of the Cline Observatory at Guilford College (I have used Photoshop here to lower the noise in the image and to raise the relative brightness of the asteroid). The folks there took it as a challenge to find the minor planet with my name on it (figurately, not literally), and having located what looks to be it, compared the image to an earlier image of the same patch of sky to make sure that what they thought as the asteroid was indeed wandering through. Johnscalzi is currently at magnitude 17 (extremely dim), so the fact they managed to image it at all is kind of remarkable.

If you’re looking for it yourself, it’s currently in the vicinity of the constellation of Leo, near the lion’s butt. The precise location, for this or any other day, can be had by going here, then clicking on the “Ephemeris” link near the top, and having done that, clicking the “generate ephemeris” button at the page you’re taken to. It’ll then generate all the information you need to find it. That said, again, it’s at about magnitude 17 right now, so you’ll need a big telescope, or the ability to do time-lapse image stacking, or, probably both.

I have neither at the moment, so I’m thrilled that the folks at the Cline Observatory took a little bit of time out their evening to give it view. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m hugely thrilled to have a minor planet named for me. Being able to see it, even just a little, is also hugely thrilling.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/17/a-photo-of-johnscalzi-no-not-me-the-minor-planet/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59129

shewhostaples

Trying to get back on the bus with this one...

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

1. I am - not always, but often - capable of finding ordinary things utterly delightful. Like the Wendy Cope poem about the orange. I am not in that state at the moment, but it is lovely when it happens.

2. On the small scale, I think I am slightly luckier than average. For example: my hair went grey in my early thirties, but that happened to be the couple of years in which many people my age were dyeing their hair grey. We moved house the week before the first Covid lockdown, when it could have been the week after. I win raffles, and the occasional twenty-five quid on the Premium Bonds. (Or maybe I'm no luckier than anyone else, but - see point one - appreciate my luck more?)

3. I really like making things. I like that about myself.

4. Fashion aside, I do like the way my hair looks.

Current Music: The Traitors: Uncloaked

staranise

What a week, up and down the whole time. I hope I don't have the flu because I'm supposed to be starting painting classes tomorrow.

I unfortunately have to ask for money again; here's the gofundme campaign.

umadoshi

I finished Chuck Wendig's Wanderers (which according to the acknowledgements clocks in around 800 pages in hard copy) and wound up in that all-too-familiar place of "that was interesting, but I don't think I'm going to bother with the sequel". (Although by definition, I imagine the sequel must be telling a very different kind of story.) No idea why it is that I can often tell only partway through a book that I probably won't pick up its sequel and yet still want to finish the current one.

I also just read Inside Threat, the sixth of K.B. Spangler's Rachel Peng [see icon] novels. There's one more planned, and then that's it for this novel series; I think she's still intending to write a third Hope Blackwell novel (some of the events of that probably-someday book directly influenced what happened in this one, but the whole 'verse is a very twisty pretzel in terms of chronological vs. publication order). And this reminds me--I don't think I ever mentioned here that Act III of the A Girl and Her Fed comic, the core of the whole thing, wrapped up a few months ago, ending the series. (IIRC, Spangler does have ideas that could eventually turn into a fourth act of the webcomic, but has no current plans to pursue doing it. It sounds like AGAHF and the associated works understandably got harder and more exhausting to do over the last decade as the real-world US political situation got worse and worse and worse.)

There isn't a whole lot I can say about a sixth novel in a series, but Spangler's descriptions of the series when she's doing promo on Bluesky always entertain me. Yesterday she posted "It's book launch week! Spend the weekend catching up with my bargain basement cyborg hivemind. Murder, mystery, and a detective who just wants to be left alone with her poetry and bad romance novels"; here's her "what's this series about?" Bluesky thread from a few days ago.

So once again: highly recommended, and it's entirely possible to just read this set of novels without reading/knowing the comic. It means not knowing a lot of things about the world overall, but they're things that Rachel herself doesn't know at this point (and doesn't learn about until Act II of the comic, which starts after her books have wrapped up). I enjoy the comic and other material very much, but the Rachel books are by far my favorite.

And that bit got long, so just quickly:

--I'm a few more chapters into Braiding Sweetgrass and haven't picked up a next novel yet.

--

scruloose and I are current on the new season of The Pitt and four episodes into Pluribus, and just watched the season 2 premiere of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. (Now to just hope this season covers past vol. 10 of the manga, since after we finished season 1 in 2024, I read volumes 7-10 before deciding to stop reading ahead and stick with the anime. It'd be nice to get at least a bit of new-to-me material this season, given that. Anyone know offhand how many episodes S2 will be?)

--And I've technically started a new (!) video game, in the form of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (on Switch), but am not very far at all yet.

Current Mood: blank

forestofglory

Here’s another Media Roundup after not months and months! Hopefully I’ll be reading and watching things other than fic a bit more often and thus post these media roundups more often than I was.

I seem to have gotten into the habit of reading a lot of graphic novels in December and January. I currently have a big pile out from the library – and I’ve read a few of them, and hopefully will get around to even more of the pile.

Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology by Angela Hsieh— A very charming graphic novel about two girls on an adventure. Featuring charming art and very cute geo fauna! (As a Mandarin learner I did find the almost but not quite hanzi characters a little bit frustrating)

The Pale Queenby Ethan M. Aldridge—Another YA graphic novel, this one featuring an f/f romance. I really liked the fae in this book – they were a good mix of beautiful and scary. The art is also lovely!

Crush of Music— I’m still watching this very slowly, the subtitles have mostly been better for the last few episodes –so that’s nice. I’m enjoying seeing Liu Yuning and Zhou Shen interact in this – at one point they played the kazoo together!

Various Batman ect comic—So I mentioned in my 2025 media review post that I accidentally acquired a new fandom, that fandom is batfam. This is embarrassing for me because for years I've been prone to what R calls “the Batman rant” where I complain that punching people in the face is a dumb way to reduce crime rates. Plus I just feel like superhero comics are a space that's pretty hostile to me and my values. But apparently if you give me fic about a family of 3-8 adopted siblings finding each other/bonding and don't make me think too hard about the moral foundations of the universe then I'm willing to suspend my moral disbelief.

Anyways I got sucked in enough to be curious about the source material and have been reading stuff on hoopla. I'm fairly impressed with their comic reading interface too, it has a nice flow. (It doesn’t play well with my RSI issues but then neither does turning pages) The actual stories vary in quality, but some of them are surprisingly good. Even the not very good ones are surprisingly more-ish. I’m bringing a lot of emotional investment in these characters from my fic reading which also helps make the comics more engaging.

The Cross-Dressed Union—I thought that if my media theme at the moment is comfort that I should really start a new crossdressing girl drama since that's a big comfort trope of mine, So I asked around for recs and started this drama about an arranged marriage between a crossdressing woman and crossdressing man. It sounded fun but so far I’m pretty meh about it. I think my biggest problem is that the ML is the main character, and for these kinds of stories I prefer more focus on the FL. Also it's not doing enough with gender

silveradept

It's time for another

snowflake_challenge, and this one is geared more toward those of us who like to talk about the building blocks, the character types, and the storytelling pathways that link and underlie any given specific story being told.

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

( Discard the momomyth and understand that Tropes Are Tools )

Current Mood: weird
Current Music: Dove - Cymande

oursin

Honestly, we thought better of the Finns, being told how amazing a society they have: How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality While the guy involved seems to have been an absolute horror from a young age in terms of hacking exploits, doxxing and swatting people, etc, we also note that there was actually criminal negligence brought against the company holding the patient data, which sounds a bit grim in terms of regulatory procedures and oversight.

***

This is very peculiar, because you see 'catfishing' and you think it's about monetary fraud, but that didn't seem to be at stake here: How a friend request led a beauty queen to uncover Scotland's most prolific catfish:

[T]hey were all left wondering why she did it. "All of us were pretty much left with no answers whatsoever," Abbie says.

I was wondering about whether there was something similar in play to some of the prolific poison-pen letter-writers in that Penning Poison book I read last year: not all of them were 'women with nature turned sour in the veins and sometimes terrorising whole communities for years with their spite' but that was one category.

***

Now, this is creepy: Manager of women’s football club banned for 12 years after bombarding players with indecent images:

Hamilton denied 24 FA charges of improper conduct, all relating to his time in charge of the club, but an independent regulatory commission concluded that 23 of the 24 were proven. The FA received evidence from four players and a staff member, all of whom detailed examples of Hamilton trying to elicit sexual activity between May 2022 and November 2024.
....
The commission also noted “with sadness” that one of the victims appeared to blame herself, and that more broadly the complainants “feared the consequences of complaining and that it would impact on their chances of being selected”, adding: “Worst of all, some of them somehow felt that it might be their fault.”

He sounds absolutely terrible quite apart from that: “verbally aggressive and bullying management style”.

***

Dining across the divide - this week it's the Grand Canyon - not yet online - because one of the parties is a Yaxley-Lennon fanboy.

***

And this is just a minor thing that agitated the niggles and peeves when it crossed my line of sight earlier today, but if you are writing a historical novel about the first women at the University of Oxford I really don't expect it to be set in the 1920s. That was when they were first, finally, awarded degrees. They'd been studying there much longer, over 40 years.

ewx

email saying 'The name “R. Kettlewell” was mentioned in an Aesthetics paper uploaded to Academia'

Well of course it was!

(On the other hand, the less said about the mention in a Copper Slag paper, the better.)

nanila

If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?

I know there's a philosophy that experiences make you who you are and you shouldn't wish them away, but I have a few friends who have been through what I feel is a disproportionate and unfair amount of tragedy in their lives. Partner suicide, early death of parents, sudden loss of physical health, financial hardship, homelessness. I don't think any one person should have to go through all of those before the age of thirty. And yet. Here we are. So yes, I absolutely would change that for certain people if I could.
Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?

Uh, neither? Both take work! You have to listen and try to empathise and forgive and communicate. All relationships require effort, and if they don't, someone is being used.
Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?

Yes. It's not very pleasant. But occasionally necessary for the sake of self-preservation.
If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?

Barring a handful of exceptional circumstances, most of which involve an immediate threat to life, lying and making them happy. Life is difficult enough without intentionally causing pain.
Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?

The comforting lie, if it comes to that. I'd hope it wouldn't, most of the time. I'd like to believe that truths can be delivered kindly, most of the time.

jjhunter

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

=

Signal-boosting much appreciated!

oursin

Happy birthday,

ranunculus!

jack

Ultimate edition of Innovation (photo on FB), with tweaked rules and all the expansions. I didn't know there were *any* expansions.

I assumed the expansions would be more variety of base cards, but no, instead they're *all* add ons which add a new sort of card to each age. The cards from each expansion are drawn in a different way, and act differently, but can be melded into the player board somehow like base cards.

So far the extras only come up every so often, but matter when they come up.

I can't believe the new edition added a new age, age 11, prudence, after age 10, the information age. But it *does* seem to fit. More powerful than age 10, but less wildly accelerating. I guess they can add a new age every 15-20 years when real world society has moved on far enough...

This game was with cities. I *again* relied on mathematics to skip through ages, but this time managed to score just enough to get the achievements first rather than second as I went. The game ended when I got computers, internet, and a couple more cards that meld and execute a card from age 10, catapulting my board into three age 10 cards, one age 9, and one age 1.

silveradept

Let us begin with an annual roundup of things that had to be removed from rectums, because people make bad decisions about objects without flared bases.

Trans women whose culture includes the quinceañera are celebrating the rite of passage for themselves as an important touchstone of their lives.

A white suit worn by Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway in a Star Trek: Voyager episode is about as loud a billboard declaring Janeway queer as you could get away with on television at the time. I get to be part of the Lucky 10,000 in understanding that suit and its origins, and so, hopefully, do you.

People familiar with the culture and traditions of Hawai'i explain why the live-action Lilo and Stitch disrespects that entire tradition, history, and the original animation's messages as well.

The ways that humans have for expressing affection for each other are greater than sex and romance, and many of those acts that WEIRD people would classify as sexual or romantic are instead culturally appropriate expressions of affection. Because there's still not an underlying acceptance of the idea that people can be affectionate to each other without it being sexual, and extra so for people of the same perceived gender.

What we think of as local culture and tradition is global culture and tradition. We have just forgotten that things like food migrate and then integrate really well into wherever they land. Which is why you will occasionally have someone yelling that Italians of an era before the tomato migrated out of the Americas are not having marinara sauce with their pasta. The idea that there is only one human culture, and what we have are a bunch of local implementations and place-and-time specific manifestations of it, is really rather true, but because our memories and our records don't always persist over time, we forget that we have already done this before. Repeatedly.

Research into autism that has done less assuming the neurotypical is "normal" and the standard continues to find things that are classified as deficits and disorders are often strengths and consistencies, just at a different angle than the neurotypical one.

Claudette Colvin, who was getting arrested for not giving up a bus seat in a segregated South before Rosa Parks became the face of it, has died at 86 years of age.

( Murder most foul, an administration gone rogue, and techbros on the warpath inside )

Last for this entry, dressed as the pink ranger from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers / Zyuranger, Martha Root demonstrated how she had gained control of white supremacist websites, had the members talk to chatbots, and then deleted the sites live during the talk.

A plea to start posting the snippets of our lives again, rather than trying to figure out what would be the best for the algorithm or withdrawing entirely from posting because we are trying not to chase the unsatisfiable algorithm. I think that will be an easier task on sites where there is no algorithm to game, but the difficulty of getting people to those sites is that they also need to have their friends decamp to a compatible network as well, and that's not necessarily an easy sell, even if someone wants to leave a toxic environment. (And, as has been well-documented in places like the Fediverse, for minorities, it's a question of leaving one toxic platform for another, and evaluating whether or not the controls on the new platform are good enough that they won't get subjected to more harassment getting through their filters or not.)

The ways that people are using chatbots as social and erotic companions, even though a fair number of them know they're chatbots. Which is the kind of future the techbros would like - interactions as event flags with characters that aren't human and don't have human needs or changes in mood.

And a method that presumably allows you to not have CoPilot or other "AI" features in your Windows 11 install, and sets things up so that they won't reinstall themselves, either.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: ROZEN - Destati

ofearthandstars

From this week's

thefridayfive:

1. If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?
Yes, 100%, if only to take away their pain. Alas, I am not a time traveler, and we know about the risks to the timeline. So I can only hope distance and time will heal the wounds.

2. Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?
Isn't this one and the same? If a life partner is not a friend of the deepest sort, then what are they? If a friend walks with you through all the periods of mistakes and despair and growths, are they not a life partner? Of course, some friends, and some life partners, are with you for only the time you get.

3. Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?
I cannot recall having ever walked away from a friendship, but I have lost them, and I have chosen to not pursue lost friendships that were creating more friction than joy. If that's walking away...well, I have learned that I do not have to be loved or even liked by others to have worth. I can move forward.

4. If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?
I have withheld information, which is a form of a lie, but it was to avoid harm rather than to induce happiness. My mother's voice: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I am just a pretty terrible liar with a questionable memory, so I find the truth is easiest. I've also learned so much from a group of co-workers in the last year the importance of sticking around for difficult and/or uncomfortable conversations, which I think has made me a person more honest with others and more honest with myself.

5. Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?
If I am trying to walk through life living my own truth, then I would like to see yours, as well, even if it's pointy.

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/16/the-charm-such-as-it-is-of-the-charmera/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59114

Kodak did a brisk business over the holidays with their meme camera, the Charmera, which is tiny enough to fit on a key chain and takes deeply lofi photos, especially in low light. But it cost $30 and as it happens I do need a keychain, so I thought I would try one out and see what I thought.

Inasmuch as every camera must be inaugurated with a picture of a cat, here is the very first photo out of the camera:

And here is a picture of me, with said camera, in my bathroom mirror.

These pictures are pretty terrible! But admittedly they are also inside my house where the lighting is not great. What happens when we go outside?

Nope, still pretty terrible.

Which is to be expected, as this thing comes with a 1.6 megapixel sensor (1440×1080), and the sensor itself is likely the size of a pinhead. You’re not taking pictures with this camera for high fidelity. You’re taking them for glitchy lo-res fun, in as good of lighting as you can get. This also had video, at the same resolution, but you know what, I’m not even going to bother.

In addition to the primary color mode the Charmera has other “fun” modes including ones that add frame and goofy pixel art to your picture, which, you know, okay, why not. You need to bring along your own micro memory card, and it’s a real pain in the ass to get it in, so you will probably never take it out (you can connect it to your computer via USB, which is also how it’s charged), but once it’s in you can take effectively infinite number of pictures because the individual image files are so small.

The UI is not great, the little screen on the back of the camera is too tiny to be of much use, and quite honestly I’m not sure what the use case of this thing is, other than to have it, and possibly give it to an 8-year-old so they can run around taking pictures without running the risk of them damaging anything valuable, like your phone or a real camera.

But, I mean, as long as you know all that going in, yeah, it’s kind of fun. And for $30(ish) bucks, not a huge outlay for trendily pixellated photos. I’ve made worse purchases recently.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/01/16/the-charm-such-as-it-is-of-the-charmera/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59114

cosmolinguist

I did not expect that being lucky enough to have stable housing in my 40s would mean that I would spend it helping other fortysomething neurospicy queers get out of marriages gone bad.

We have me the failed foster (successful adoption! angelofthenorth always insisted on correcting me when I call myself this, heh), then P, now her.

It's ridiculously heartwarming seeing them both flourish and become more comfortable and themselves. (I imagine I must have too, but I can't see that and I have the complication of transition too old photos of me now look weird for the same reason old photos of my dad do: no beard!).)

steorra

I have long been under the impression that Ents didn't eat, they just drank ent-draughts.

But when Treebeard tells of the separation between the Ents and the Entwives, he mentions Ents eating fallen fruit:

the Ents loved the great trees, and the wild woods, and the slopes of the high hills; and they drank of the mountain-streams, and ate only such fruit as the trees let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the Trees. (The Two Towers, Book III, chapter 4: "Treebeard")

Clearly Ents' main source of nutrition was ent-draughts, not fruit. But they did eat fruit sometimes!

Side note, some people online seem to think that photosynthesis was a major source of nutrition for Ents. I don't see any textual justification for this. It's conceivable that Ents with green leaflike hair (like Leaflock ("Covered with leafy hair he is") and maybe Quickbeam ("his hair was grey-green") could do some photosynthesis, but there's no actual mention of them getting sustenance from sunlight. Also it doesn't seem like all Ents had such hair, and even for those that did, it doesn't seem like enough that it could be a major source of nutrition.

umadoshi

As so often happens, I had several things I meant to post about and now they've mostly evaporated.

But I do know my tabs situation is staggering out of control. (Reliably over 1700 for at least the last couple of weeks.) Odds that I'll get to replying to all the posts I've read but opened in a tab to reply to later on...are currently very slim.

Have a link: Sarah Kurchak wrote about Heated Rivalry for TIME recently: "Heated Rivalry Handles Autism With Love, Care, and a Touch of Awkwardness".

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Dessa — Rothko (live for The Current)

swingandswirl

RL and my

fffx fic contrive to eat all my spoons, and next week does not portend to be any better, but here, have this utter delight of an ad:

Watch on YouTube

oursin

I'd like to think, yeah, still got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were desperately scratching around for somebody who'd even heard the name of the author of once-renowned and now pretty well forgotten, except by specialists in the field, sex manual. Which has its centenary this year.

Anyway, have been approached by a journo to talk with them about this work and its author -

- on which it is well over 2 decades since I did any work, really, but I daresay I can fudge something up, at least, I have found a copy of the work in question and the source of my info on the individual, published in 1970. Not aware of any more recent work ahem ahem. The Wikipedia entry is a stub.

My other issue is that next week is shaping up to be unwontedly busy - I signed up for an online conference on Tuesday, and have only recently been informed that the monthly Fellows symposium at the institution whereof I have the honour to be a Fellow is on Wednesday - and I still have that library excursion to fit in -

- plus arranging a call is going to involve juggling timezones.

Still, maybe I can work in my pet theme of, disjunction between agenda of promoting monogamous marriage and having a somewhat contrary personal history....

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

Finding my damned glasses, which were lurking underneath the pile of sweaters, blankets, and other stuff draped over the arm of the couch nearest my desk.
Discovering that nova, my fileserver, still has python2.7 on it. The reason I wasn't able to post through it was that neither python2 nor my posting program (ljcharm) was installed.
Assuming this can be posted, being able to upgrade (Thinkpads) Raven (which I was using for posting) and Panther (which I hadn't realized wasn't upgraded).

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

rydra_wong

This collection of links to local mutual aid funds, food banks, and other organizations doing work on the ground:

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

yhlee

By way of

sovay: Stand with Minnesota, appears to be locally vetted. I've made a modest donation to one of the listed organizations.

(Still buried under health + family + work + school stuff as well, sorry - if I'm not responding or late to respond, that's why.)

oursin

Happy birthday,

msilverstar!

rydra_wong

Elden Ring also has the summons mechanic.

Which is how the fandom ended up with a sort of folk hero who appears as a naked man with a jar on his head holding two katanas and soloes the game's hardest boss for you:

IGN: We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve

YouTube: Let me solo her. 3rd summon solo Malenia (you don't have to know the game to appreciate that this is someone doing something perfectly)

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

sasha_feather

Gratitude / Self-reassurance / fighting against negativity bias!

1. The animals seem happy and content. I don't go to the barn every day and sometimes I feel bad about that, but I suspect I'm stressing over nothing, or channeling other stress into this area. The cat and dog make me laugh and are good companions. Again I stress sometimes with Sally the dog, but, it's probably easier to be crabby with her than with my family.

2. The house is reasonably clean, it's warm inside, the hot water is working, etc.

3. I have some friendly and wonderful neighbors.

4. My parents are doing well. My mom is so much better now that she's in the assisted living place rather than the nursing home. Just a huge relief.

5. I got to chat with two good friends today, Jesse and Emily, and it was a real mood lifter.

6. TV I'm enjoying: The Pitt, FallOut, Heated Rivalry.

7. On YouTube I watch the Handsome Podcast almost every single day. This is 3 queer comedians (Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin) chatting and being silly.

8. I've been playing Terra Nil on my laptop and I can't rec it highly enough. I feel like it is meditative in the best way and really helps my brain chill out. The game play is very similar to Sim City, but instead of building a city you get to reclaim wasteland and turn it into wilderness. Very easy to learn, but challenging enough to keep me engaged. Click-only means it's easy to play in bed with my beloved Left-handed mouse, and doesn't bother my right shoulder. Sound design is relaxing, the graphics are pretty. Minimal reading makes it migraine compatible for me, and i can control the motion. It's not timed. Thank you to my friend eruthros for buying this game for me.

silveradept

We're over the halfway line at

snowflake_challenge, and this challenge wants us to introspect about how we turn things out.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

( Not exactly a process that has a lot of visible things )

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown - My New Philosophy

vass

Books
So far this year (since January 1) I've read Margaret Killjoy's The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, listened to the audiobook of Alexandra Rowland's Running Close to the Wind, am reading Victoria Goddard's Plum Duff, and started Evelyn Araluen's The Rot.

Games
Quoting my own complaint elsewhere: the worst part of Hollow Knight is the runbacks. Each time my desktop switches itself off I need to turn it on again, restore my browser tabs and do other "just booted" chores, see what troubleshooting data I can get now, check what steps I can take next, then start the game again to find out whether whatever I tried this time worked. Then two minutes later my computer crashes.

Have also been doing Redactle and Squardle with

kaberett, and cryptic crosswords with

shehasathree.

Tech
As you may gather from the previous section of this post, I am having technical difficulties. So it goes.

Crafts
No active progress yet, but the yarn I ordered arrived. This is for weaving with my mother's old knitter's loom which she gave me for my birthday last year.

Actually, no, I'll share the complaints I emitted while trying to decide what yarn to order (huge thanks to Iphys on the Lays server for sorting me out on this.)

( cut for length )

Garden
No ripe tomatoes yet, but they're still alive. Raspberry bush looking very sad indeed. Harvested a little bit of parsley and oregano for cooking purposes.

Cats
Didn't enjoy the hot weather last week. Neither did I.

Nature
Hot and windy. (This is an understatement. Last week there was a heatwave and my whole state, as well as those nearest it, was at either "extreme" or "catastrophic" fire danger. I was in one of the "extreme" parts, and unpleasantly aware that on the fire danger scale they use, "catastrophic" is 100 out of 100. Meaning, your area can be at 99 and yet not catastrophic.)

It cooled down after that, but summer is very much not over, and there are places all over the state that are still on fire.

redbird

In no particular order:

*Last night, I talked with cattitude and adrian_turtle about possible text for my mother's gravestone. I emailed this to my brother today, with a note that these were what I was thinking of.

*I went to TJ Maxx to look for slippers. Disappointingly, there were none that came close to fitting: the ones that might have been in my size were all significantly too tight across the top of my foot. I was wearing thin socks (specifically, lightweight compression socks). It continues to be annoying that not buying slippers (for example) is as tiring as buying some.

*Also, my hips started hurting while I was in the store, so I decided not to look for other things, but headed home with only a quick stop at CVS, and not a grocery store.

*Today was definitely a good day to be outside; yesterday wasn't particularly, and tomorrow is likely to be a lot colder than today (with an afternoon high a little below freezing, so not horrible for January in Boston).

*I got email today from state senator Pat Jehlen, about a bill to ban the use of masks by law enforcement. This is noteworthy because I haven't lived in her district since 2019, and didn't think I was still on her mailing list.

*The skin on my fingertips, and on the rest of my hands, is doing a lot better. I will need to remember to keep applying the serious lotion, so it doesn't start splitting again. However, my shoulder is bothering me, which may be from doing a lot of mousing when I was avoiding using the keyboard.

soc_puppet posting in

queerly_beloved

How is it only the third Thursday of the year? It feels like it should be the twelfth Thursday at the very least!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

ofearthandstars

From a December post in

thefridayfive. I've been holding onto this one for a bit, waiting on life to give me some answers.

1. What is one thing about you that you hate?
I don't know if hate is the correct word, but I have been in a years-long struggle to feel like someone who is not anxious, worried, or scared. If I'm honest I think too many hard things have been placed on these bones, but these bones are also holding it all up still, at least for the time being. But those rare days where I don't wake up with my body already buzzing with anxiety and tension, well, I want to snatch them close and keep them all to myself.

2. What is one thing about you that you love?
I care deeply about, well... most things....our Lovely Planet and all of her Inhabitants, human and non-human, flora and fauna and mineral and waters, flowing or stagnant. I try very hard to walk through the world lightly without harming others. This is an impossible feat, really, but I try. And do you know what a joy it is to love the Earth and everything about her? It is a heady wine, at times.

3. If you had to change one thing about you what would it be and why?
I'd be less hard on myself, and live with more confidence. Please give me the confidence of a mediocre white man in a white collar environment. Though if I'm honest, I have learned there is a lot of power in being vulnerable with others.

4. What is one word that you would use to define yourself?
Grounded. More as in tree roots, tangled but strong, rather than centered or balanced in any way.

5. Imagine what you would look like in a perfect world...what do you look like?
I wouldn't be me if I didn't look like me, now would I? Or maybe, since we look different from day to day and year to year, maybe I'd just like to look healthy. Although "healthy" has so many harmful judgements assigned to it - here I mean... not sickly. I want to look both soft and hard and maybe vaguely androgynous - and honestly I'm already doing that pretty well, just sittin' here in my body. Or perhaps I don't want to look like anything - well, except, it would be nice if I could look like I knew what I was doing*.

*(I do not know what I am doing, at any given time.)

only by balancing move

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