Reading Wednesday

Jul. 2nd, 2025 07:35 am
troisoiseaux: (reading 6)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Continued my nostalgic re-reads of 2000s middle-grade/YA novels with I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You by Ally Carter, the first book in the Gallagher Girls series, set at an all-girls boarding school for TEEN SPIES. As you can imagine, this was my jam in middle school; however, my primary emotion on re-reading this book as an adult was second-hand embarrassment, since main character Cammie (a superspy nepo baby, whose mom is the headmistress of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women and whose dad died tragically on a top-secret mission) mostly puts the lessons learned in her Covert Operations class - that one man's trash is another's treasure trove of the first guy's secrets, how to build and maintain a cover story, etc. - to practical, if ill-advised, use by.... well, stalking some cute normie boy and then sneaking out to go on dates him. (I know, I know, this is a YA novel, but COMPLETE waste of an elite spy education, if you ask me.) The climactic sequence where Cammie and friends take their CoveOps practical final - a late-night heist, of course - was fun, though.

C’mon, man. Just pay me.

Jul. 2nd, 2025 06:49 am
joshuaorrizonte: (Default)
[personal profile] joshuaorrizonte
It’s July 2nd, no money from disability yet. C’mon, guys. Push the button. It’s not that hard.

It’s really fucking annoying that the disability website will let you go through all of the login steps before saying “lol no, it’s too early for this.” Fuckers, tell me that before I put in my password and whatnot. Just make the site inaccessible until it’s time. Fuck.

I got a bit of writing done last night, as well as a little bit of Breath of Fire 3. I got too annoyed with the vinegar well mini game and just put in a code for all items + infinite items. That’ll show this damn game. I hate that mini game, it’s nearly impossible.

Coming up, though, is the shallows mini game, and I’m not sure I can cheat my way through that. We’ll see in just a few seconds, because I want to play before anything else.

Just One Thing (02 July 2025)

Jul. 2nd, 2025 09:22 am
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila posting in [community profile] 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!

Icarus and the Equinox Sun

Jul. 2nd, 2025 12:01 am
[syndicated profile] epod_feed

Solar-scenic-cyprus-ayia-napa-icarus-20250315

Solar-scenic-cyprus-ayia-napa-icarus-20220409

Photographer: Anthony Ayiomamitis

Summary Author: Anthony Ayiomamitis 

One of the most beloved myths from Ancient Greece involves the father-son duo of Daedalus and Icarus who were jailed by King Minos in Crete after the latter had asked for the construction of a complex labyrinth by the crafty Daedalus for the jailing of the Minotaur (illegitimate son of the King's wife).



The older Daedalus came up with the ingenious idea to construct wings made of wax and bird feathers so that he and his son could fly their way out of prison and away from Crete. Prior to their dramatic escape, Daedalus advised the younger Icarus not to fly too close to the Sun since the heat would melt the wax and lead them to their demise. Similarly, he advised Icarus not to fly too close to the sea since the moisture would dampen their wings, thus making them heavier and which would also lead to a destructive ending.



Although the escape went as planned, the younger Icarus was so excited by their ability to fly that he soon forgot his father's advice by flying higher and higher and which eventually led to the melting of the wax and his ultimate demise where he tragically fell into the Aegean Sea. Daedalus located his son's body and buried Icarus in the immediate vicinity of his tragic drowning and named the nearby island Icaria in honor of his cherished son.



Featured above (at top) is a stunning stainless steel statue depicting Icarus with the spring equinox Sun setting in the immediate background. The bottom photo required seven trips to Cyprus to get the alignment just right because of the greater distance from the statue than the top photo as well as various nuances due to the weather and a broken tripod connection. Top photo taken on April 9, 2002; bottom photo taken on March 15, 2025.

Photo Details: Top photo - Canon EOS 6D camera; Baader BCF2 filter; Baader ND5 filter; Canon EOS EF 50mm/f1.8USM lens; f8.0; 47 x 1/320 second exposures; ISO 200; Digital Photo Pro V4.6.30.0; Photoshop CS5. Bottom photo - Canon EOS 6D camera; Baader BCF2 filter; Baader ND5 filter; Canon EOS EF 70-200mm f/4 L; 200 mm/f14.0; 11 x 1/60 second exposures; ISO 640; Digital Photo Pro V4.6.30.0; Photoshop CS5.

 

Boardwalk, Ayia Napa, Cyprus Coordinates: 34.981898, 34.001602 

Related Links:

Equinox Sun at Pegasus of Corinth

Anthony's Website

 

 

Jeremy Greer

Jul. 1st, 2025 09:25 pm
radiantfracture: (Orion)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
Of all the things to be grieving right now, this is a weird personal parasocial one. You have been warned.

Jeremy Greer )

§rf§

(no subject)

Jul. 1st, 2025 09:01 pm
ursamajor: Tajel on geeks (geeks: love them)
[personal profile] ursamajor
When [livejournal.com profile] belladonna shares a tweet that got screencapped and put up on Insta:

@ madisontayt_: imagining a vegan who won't drink nyc's tap water because of the microscopic shrimp
@ TheWappleHouse: The what now


and I was like "Yeah! There was this whole thing about NYC's tap water possibly being not kosher because of copepods in the water supply a few years back. Which might've meant that NYC bagels, whose lauded taste and texture were credited to the tap water used to boil them, were potentially treyf. But then other rabbis weighed in and said as long as the proportion of these microscopic crustaceans was less than 1/60th of the total volume, it was okay by the principle of בטל בשישים (bitul b'shishim/beteil beshishim), thank you Shabot6000."



... and then I realized "a few years back" was 21 years ago.

Paprika, before

Jul. 1st, 2025 11:04 pm
kihou: (Default)
[personal profile] kihou
Finished reading the original novel of Paprika. I love the movie (see: Dreampunk) so it was really fun to read the book it's based on. Definitely glad I did!

In some ways it was a bit of a let-down: I was wondering if it'd explain stuff that the movie glosses over, and it did, sorta, in that it had a lot of exposition but also not really stuff I was interested in. It explained the logistical origins of the Paprika identity, e.g., but not the emotional circumstances/how Chiba felt about creating this alter ego and the emotional dynamic. (It did also explain that "DC Mini" stands for "Daedalus Collector Mini", though, so it's got that going for it.)

Paprika the movie is intensely visual and also makes great use of the soundtrack, so I was wondering how the dream world would feel in the book, and I do think it's not as compelling in prose text putting words to everything. And the central dream motif of the parade was invented for the movie.

That said, I do think the book gets to dive deeper into corporate sexism and fatphobia/disability stuff, and in general exploring most of the same stuff with a lot of direct reference points but from a different perspective made it a very interesting read. (E.g., in the book you see the antagonist perspective much earlier, making more stuff dramatic irony rather than a big reveal.)

I do think the book makes Paprika's competence a bit more of an informed trait, since a lot of the time she's getting saved by men, despite supposedly being the best at dreams. That and some other things do make the author come across a bit sexist despite also commenting on sexism.

The ending is weaker than the movie, being more of an "outlast the bad guy and embarrass him once" than anything symbolically satisfying.

What's most interesting to me is the two bartenders, Jinnai and Kuga. They're side characters, and seemingly completely mundane (unlike in the movie), but seem to be author favorites: they're unreasonably competent and helpful, and also they close the book for reasons that aren't well-explained. It sorta feels like I'm missing a reference: why is Kuga such a natural at dream stuff that he invents time travel all by himself? Am I supposed to take them as literally Buddhist figures contrasting with the antagonist's Christian cult status? Why do they play the song P.S. I Love You constantly? I sorta like them, and I'm amused that I was being all "these guys feel like author inserts" before I realized they were literally voiced by the original author and by the director respectively in the movie. But I do feel like they contribute to "men overshadowing Paprika", and while it doesn't really seem they're trying to imply a secret dark ending in the last scene I'm not sure what they are trying to imply.

But regardless, glad I read the book and it gave me a lot to think about.

(P.S., apparently the same guy wrote the novel of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I also like, so clearly I need to read that sometime too.)

clamp / median / range

Jul. 2nd, 2025 02:45 am
fanf: (Default)
[personal profile] fanf

https://dotat.at/@/2025-07-02-cmp.html

Here are a few tangentially-related ideas vaguely near the theme of comparison operators.

Read more... )

...well, hardly ever...

Jul. 1st, 2025 05:18 pm
ysobel: A kitten on a piano keyboard (music)
[personal profile] ysobel
So I was listening to an audiobook of Agatha Christie stories

and one character mentioned the "why and wherefore" of something

which *immediately* got "Never Mind the Why and Wherefore" from HMS Pinafore going through my head [https://youtu.be/fz00Ru9RXA8?si=_iW2jYRH-8RW_w49]

which of course meant I had no choice but to listen to the whole of HMS Pinafore [https://youtu.be/N6iNGprcxFI?si=B-vFtrypguIKurHv for example]

and now various of those songs keep popping up ... for at least week now ... only the lyrics are starting to scramble, which tends to happen when something is stuck in my head long enough.

("I am the captain of the minotaur~~" wait no)

Anyway my plan for dealing with this is to watch the 1983 film version of Pirates of Penzance, which is an extremely solid plan with no possible down sides.

Michael Rosen

Jul. 1st, 2025 10:09 pm
hunningham: Beautiful colourful pears (Default)
[personal profile] hunningham

When you get married they ask you to write an inscription. Think of it as being like taking out a subscription.
You should sign it with a feeling of elation and hope it won’t end with a cancellation.

Michael Rosen

I wish I could remember where I found this piece of doggerel, it wasn't in a book. Guardian maybe? Past me did a copy-and-paste into commonplace notepad (but at least I noted the author's name)

And yeah, I still like the sentiment, good wedding poem.

[personal profile] cosmolinguist

I could barely do the morning chores I usually feel neutral-to-positive about this morning -- I open the curtains, unload the dishwasher, make a pot of tea, get breakfast for myself... Things that are always the same and always different. It can be very grounding.

Today I wasn't especially tired and I wasn't in pain or anything, I just didn't want to. I couldn't imagine doing the first tiniest step.

This is a sign of burnout. I need a break. I was telling my counselor this evening that a break for me has to be somewhere away from my house, because my house is full of reminders of chores I need to do, things that get on my nerves, etc. I am not good at relaxing, but when I can do it it doesn't tend to happen at home.

I did an okay amount of work today but near the end of the day I was in this focus group about "inclusion" in our workplace. These things can be kinda therapeutic but by the end I was thinking that we keep having surveys and stuff like this, where we tell some nice external person all our woes and we're assured that the feedback is anonymized into themes that cannot identify us, but all that means is our specific nuanced articulations all get flattened in to "we all have good colleagues who care about their work but the executive team keep letting us down," and we're going to get the same kind of response from said executive team about how impressed they are at everyone's honesty and how committed they are to addressing these themes, and then we'll do this all over again in a year or two.

I felt really tired by the end of it, which wasn't great because it was almost time for my first counseling session in almost a month. A real "let me explain, no there is too much let me sum up" kind of situation.

My counseling happens on the phone and usually in my bedroom; I normally come right back downstairs in search of dinner, but this time I just lay on my bed for something ridiculous like an hour. I kept trying to get up and go back downstairs but again: so many steps. And it was relatively peaceful just lying there.

Since I had to come downstairs and try to eat dinner I'm feeling more depersonalization, so maybe all of this has been more stressful or triggery than I realized. I hate it; is probably the most uncomfortable symptom of my anxiety/depression.

oursin: a hedgehog lying in the middle of cacti (hedgehog and cactus)
[personal profile] oursin

Wot a saga, eh, wot a saga, first time I have ventured significantly forth these many years -

And to start with, MAJOR HEAT EVENT.

In anticipation, I had - or so I thought - prudently booked a taxi via taxiapp, with a certain amount of leeway, just in case -

- which turned out very prudent, as when I went to check the booking this morning the app was showing 'network error' and this was clearly on their end rather than mine, and a little looking about suggests that this is not their first rodeo server problem.

So when, at designated time, taxi cameth not, I set out towards the Tube, not without some hope that a black cab might pass me on my way, but that Was Not To Be -

And on reflection, I should perhaps have waited for a Bank train, because getting out on Charing X platforms at Euston involves rather too many stairs.

However, Avanti kindly texted me the approx time my train would be boarding, and this all seemed set - although my (1st class) seat was aisle, backwards, there was nobody in the other 3 seats so I switched -

HAH.

When we reached Coventry, choochoo sighed and gave up, and we had to debouch and take the next Birmingham bound train - which was delayed....

At Birmingham New Street had considerable faff trying to discover a Way Out that would take me to a taxi rank.

When I finally arrived at hotel booked by conference organisers there was an immense performance trying to find the right group booking, as it was not under any title that I might have thought of but that of some hireling booking agency.

However, I am now in nice cool room and have had tasty room service snack. Even if I have had to wrestle with getting my laptop to talk to the free wifi...

Knitting Pattern Preferences

Jul. 1st, 2025 02:26 pm
buttonsbeadslace: A white lace doily on blue background (Default)
[personal profile] buttonsbeadslace
I finished fruit slice #3 and that means now I'm putting together the pattern for all the fruit slice variations. So I have some questions:

1. If you download a knitting pattern from a website, do you print it out to refer to while you're knitting, or do you read the pattern off of a device?

2. If you read patterns off a device, is it a phone, tablet, or computer? Screen size is what I'm curious about here.

How do you decide what to read?

Jul. 1st, 2025 10:43 am
kareila: a lady in glasses holding a stack of books (books)
[personal profile] kareila
I just finished watching John Green's latest video, in which he talks about the vagaries of the NYT bestseller list and how you will miss out on a lot of excellent books if you use that as your primary source of book recommendations. So that got me to wondering how other people discover the books that they want to read.

Personally, I am such a F/SF devotee that a huge number of the books I end up checking out are sourced directly from Tor's lists of new releases. They publish the lion's share of my current favorite authors and seem to be responsible for the majority of recent Hugo nominees.

I also rely heavily on my local libraries. There are two in particular with good F/SF sections and I am able to find most of the books that I want to read in their collections instead of having to purchase them. I also regularly browse their nonfiction new releases and recommendations for younger readers.

The other major source of recommendations for me is social media - mostly you all here on Dreamwidth, but also Bluesky, Facebook, and Discord. I'm always paying attention to what my friends are into.

Occasionally I'll see an interesting book on the shelf at Target or Barnes & Noble, but I'm not located near any independent bookstores, alas.

June Progress

Jul. 1st, 2025 10:47 am
vysila: Jawa recycling -  decluttering (jawa recycling)
[personal profile] vysila posting in [community profile] unclutter
Not nearly as productive a decluttering month as May, but still got a few things done. Most of my efforts this month went toward managing a big project, the upstairs renovation. Still, made a bit of progress on the decluttering front.

• Sold my riding lawnmower to a neighbor. That was serendipitous. I had never planned on moving the mower (an icky lawnmower in with my furniture and clothing, ugh!) and will have a lawn service do the mowing until I move.
• Have amassed a small pile of things to go – the last of my Star Wars collectibles, some drapes & curtain rods, ignored new cat toys, unused office supplies – but haven’t actually gotten around to listing them as yet
• Also took a look around the basement and decided that all the leftover materials from various home improvement projects can also go, but again, have not done anything further than identify the items
• I have accumulated a lot of excess toiletries over time, so am currently trying to use them up. Have managed to clear out a couple of small bottles of things so far.

Will try selling things if possible, to recoup a little money, but if not, it will all get donated.

The Big Idea: Matthew Kressel

Jul. 1st, 2025 01:50 pm
[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

Hop on board for author Matthew Kressel’s newest ride through the galaxy, Space Trucker Jess. In this Big Idea as he takes you through not only his writing process for this particular story, but on a journey through a high-concept sci-fi world viewed through the eyes of a teenage girl.

MATTHEW KRESSEL:

I was a feral kid. Both my parents worked full-time jobs, and I’d come home to an empty house. I had no supervision. I went off with friends and we, ahem, did things. Stupid things. Really fucking stupid things. And when I look back on those days I’m like, How the hell did I make it out alive?

But that freedom was glorious. You could do whatever you wanted. Go anywhere. You had the feeling that anything could happen. And it often did. The good and the bad.

That’s the kind of feeling I hope to evoke in Space Trucker Jess. The joy and spontaneity of discovery. In my childhood, we got into trouble all around the neighborhood. In my novel, Jess gets into hijinx across the galaxy. 

Like Jess herself, I began the book with a simple premise: Screw the “rules.” 

In my past stories and novels, I labored over every paragraph, sentence, word, and punctuation mark until I’d wound myself into a Gordian knot a million words long. In Jess, I felt the need to loosen the bridles, to let my idea run wild, like that feral kid who got into trouble around the neighborhood. What emerged was Jess, a take-no-shit foul-mouthed kick-ass teenaged girl who’s smart as hell, caring and empathetic, who solves problems not with violence but with brains and determination. Though too often for her own good, Jess’s curiosity gets her into trouble. Big trouble.

Think Natasha Lyonne narrating 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There’s lots of high-concept SF, and, yeah, Space Trucker Jess has all the tropes: starships and FTL travel, alien gods, missing planets, galactic secrets. But I wanted to tell the story a different way. Not from an omniscient or a dry and distant third person, but from deep in the point of view of a sensitive and expressive girl who’s journeyed across the Milk and back a thousand times and who knows more about starships than most people know their own nose. 

And so you get high philosophy and fart jokes. Orthodox religion and irreverent sacrilege. Weird inscrutable aliens and deadbeat dads. All told from a foul-mouthed over-confident, wicked-smart and sometimes willfully naive girl who just wants, at the end of the day, to be left the hell alone.

Space Trucker Jess is also about identity. I wrote a good chunk of the book during the first Covid lockdowns. Cut off from friends and family, from work and all the many inter-personal relationships I took for granted, I felt my sense of self drifting. Without those external interactions reflecting my identity back to me, I didn’t know who I was anymore. It was very disconcerting. 

A lot of that experience makes its way into the book. Jess’s worldview expands enormously throughout the novel, sometimes suddenly and violently, and she is forced to reckon with a new sense of self and a greater awareness. 

Also, Space Trucker Jess is about family. Jess loves her deadbeat dad, and she and him have been grifting their way across the galaxy for years. But she knows he’s an asshole, he knows he’s an asshole, but she just can’t let him go. The relationship is, from the start, highly dysfunctional. Jess just wants stability, away from him. But getting away is harder than it sounds. Without getting too personal, I had a lot of turbulence in my childhood home, and I wanted to explore the contrasts between the family we’re born with and the family we choose, and how those dynamics can alter the course of our entire lives, for better or worse. 

So if you want to go on a fun adventure alongside a bad-ass genius girl head-firsting her way through the galaxy who’s just looking for some peace in an uncaring universe, while encountering alien gods, missing planets, galactic secrets, and more, well then, Space Trucker Jess might just be your ride.


Space Trucker Jess: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s

Author socials: Website|Facebook|Instagram|Bluesky

Arty stuff in London

Jul. 1st, 2025 02:22 pm
[personal profile] swaldman
HOT

But aside from that, partly in search of a/c, I went to the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Mostly it was stuff that did nothing for me, but clearly thought very worthy. That’s OK, art is about personal taste. THe things I liked were generally £15000 or more, but that's also OK, as I didn't go in with the intention of buying anything - I know that buying art at the Royal Academy isn't for the likes of me.

Except, right at the end, there was a screenprint of wind turbines that spoke to me; it really captured the amount of energy in the air in a way that photos of a wind farm can’t. I bought a limited edition print for a just-about affordable amount.

The next day I met up with friend L and we went to see the musical of Benjamin Button. I was a little sceptical of this, but it won me over: An intimate show in a small theatre, and not a typical West End show. Musically it's folky, trying (and succeeding) to be anchored in Cornwall. There is no orchestra per se. The actors all play instruments - usually more than one - and switch between singing, acting, and playing, fluidly, sometimes within a line of a song. Must have been a nightmare to cast for. If I have a criticism it's that the lyrics don't have great depth, but that doesn't really matter. It's good music, it's good storytelling with impact and humour, it's nicely lit, and most of all it is really well directed - with the exception of the titular character it's an ensemble piece where the audience’s attention has to be guided slickly around the stage, and it accomplishes this with ease.
Worth a visit if this appeals to you. Act 2 is a tearjerker...

Yaaaaay

Jul. 1st, 2025 07:29 am
joshuaorrizonte: (Default)
[personal profile] joshuaorrizonte
I finally got my disability debit card, and my app is all set up. Now is the waiting for the funds. God, I hope there’s backpack in that payment.

I”m not feeling well today. I think it’s going to be a take-it-easy day. I tried to go back to sleep just now but my head hurts and I was BORED, so that’s a good sign that I don’t need more sleep. The boredom part, not the head hurting part. But I can’t get comfortable. Might go for a quick walk once the medicine kicks in.

Apparently there was a thunder storm last night that I slept through. Unusual for me.

I’m gonna go see if I can have some of Dad’s Tums. I don’t have much to say now, anyway. 

"Rabbit rabbit rabbit!"

Jul. 1st, 2025 11:25 am
mdlbear: Three rabbits dancing (rabbit-rabbit-rabbit)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Welcome to July, 2025!

It's worth noting that "happy" is a very rare mood tag these days. The last time I used it was in 2019, after Mom's 99th birthday party.

The Moon that Never Sets

Jul. 1st, 2025 12:01 am
[syndicated profile] epod_feed

P03ab_2M

Photographer: Meiying Lee

Summary AuthorMeiying Lee



It turns out that those of us living in the mid and low latitudes have only been seeing half of the Moon's trajectory! We're used to the Moon rising in the east and setting in the west. If we observe closely, we'll notice that its path shifts north and south every month, while the Sun only shifts north and south once a year. From February 22 to March 7, 2025, I traveled to northern Norway, around 69 degrees north latitude. The first few days I was there, I found that I couldn't see the Moon at all, day or night. It then dawned on me that because of how far north I was, the Moon's path was too far south for me to see. 

However, in the latter half of the trip, on March 4 and 5, I discovered that the waxing crescent Moon stayed in the sky all day and night! In fact, if the weather was clear enough, we could observe this waxing crescent remaining near the level of the horizon for five to six days, much like the phenomenon of the Midnight Sun during the summer solstice, where in the vicinity of the Arctic Circle the Sun stays on the horizon continuously.

Unfortunately, due to the weather and my travel schedule, I couldn’t capture the entire trajectory of the Moon across the sky. But during the early hours of March 5, while photographing an aurora, I managed to capture two segments of the Moon's path. The left image shows the time from 12:30 to 1:52 am (local time) on March 5, and the right image is from 2:48 to 4:07 am. In the left image, the Moon is still descending, while in the right image, it appears to be moving horizontally just above the horizon. From the position of the North Star (at the center of the concentric circles), we can see that the Moon has reached its lowest point and is beginning to rise again, though the movement is so subtle it’s almost imperceptible.

Additionally, the Moon that appeared in the northern low sky at this late hour was a waxing crescent Moon, which shouldn't have been visible at this time and direction. This phenomenon, where the Moon never sets, is actually the other half of the Moon's trajectory below the horizon. It's a sight that people living in the mid to low latitudes have never imagined and is truly fascinating! Photos taken on March 3, 2025.

 

Senja Island, Norway Coordinates: 69.2965, 17.6459

Related Links: 

Perspective of the Moon from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres

Meiying's Facebook page 

 

 

 

Recent reading

Jun. 30th, 2025 11:36 pm
troisoiseaux: (reading 5)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Following a conversation with [personal profile] sovay about formative mermaid media, spent the evening re-reading The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler - a 2003 middle-grade novel about a girl who discovers she can turn into a mermaid - to see how it holds up as a recommendation for a young reader 20+ years (oof) later. Emily's mermaid adventures include but are not limited to befriending another tweenage mermaid, exploring a sunken ship, and discovering that her long-lost father is a merman and sneaking into the underwater prison (!) where he's been languishing for the past 12 years (!!) for breaking the law against fraternization with humans (!!!). (Also, that her mom's memory of their relationship was wiped (!!!!) and their family friend the creepy lighthouse keeper has been an agent for the anti-human-fraternization king of the merfolk the whole time. (!!!!!)) So, yeah, the plot is kind of bananas, but it's charming and, most importantly, the descriptions of how cool it would be to swim in the ocean as a mermaid and explore kelp forests and sunken ships, etc., are great. Verdict: it holds up! I don't think I'd noticed as a kid how many of the throwaway minor (human) characters had punny or otherwise nautical names like "Sandra Castle" and "Mrs. Brig"; I definitely had never realized that the author is British and therefore the book presumably takes place in England rather than, like, Florida (as I'd pictured as a kid) or Maine (as I imagined it this time).

Made some progress in the Dune audiobook over the weekend; I'm through Book One (of three). Unfortunately, so far Book Two has mostly involved Paul being rude about his mom not being able to follow along with whatever Space Jesus logic-connections-as-revelation thing he has going on, which I'm finding less interesting than the Space Medici politics and backstabbing of the first third.

Just one thing: 01 July 2025

Jun. 30th, 2025 05:47 pm
[personal profile] jazzyjj posting in [community profile] 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!

Close To Home: Grist

Jun. 30th, 2025 08:47 pm
[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

Have you ever had one of those places you want to go to, but never get around to checking out, and suddenly a year has passed and you’ve still never been? That’s how it was for me and Grist, a restaurant in downtown Dayton that I had heard about from so many people and had been meaning to get out to for literal months. Well, I finally made it happen, and I’m so glad I did.

Bryant and I were going out to dinner, and I asked him what kind of food he wanted. He picked Italian, which, in my opinion, is the hardest cuisine to get around this area. At least, good Italian, that is. There’s always Fazoli’s, and TripAdvisor has the audacity to label Marion’s Pizza as the number one Italian spot in the area, so pickings are slim for Italian ’round these parts. But I wanted something nicer than Spaghetti Warehouse.

Eventually my searching led me to Grist, which was labeled as Italian, and looked pretty dang amazing from the photos provided. Plus, I’d heard from numerous Daytonians in the past that they liked Grist, and I trust my sources. So, I made us a reservation for that evening, excited to try somewhere new.

Located on Fifth Street, it’s just down the street from the Oregon District, and close to the Dayton Convention Center. There’s a parking garage right across the street from it, and some street parking, too.

Upon walking in, the first thing I noticed was how bright and open it is. The large wall of windows let in so much natural light, and you immediately get to see all the baked goods in their glass display case.

A shot of the display case holding the desserts and baked goods. You can also see wine glasses and stacks of dishes in the background, and in the very back is a huge bookshelf type wall.

I immediately loved the decor and vibe in Grist. It was like sort of rustic but nice at the same time. Like fancy Italian farmhouse vibes? It was really cute.

A huge bookshelf/cabinet set up that takes up an entire wall, and is painted a really pretty sea salt blue. The bookshelf looking portion is filled with jars of pasta, bottles of olive oils and some t-shirts for sale. There's also a really nice stand/shelving thingy on the other wall with wine bottles on it.

And there was even a selection of wine for purchase:

A rack and cooler of wine bottles.

I didn’t get a shot of their other indoor dining area or their little patio, but it does have a super cute patio.

Grist has casual service, so you can either place your order at the counter or order at your table using your phone, and they bring the food out to your table. I chose to use my phone because there was a pretty steady flow of people ordering to-go stuff from the register.

Here’s what they were offering on their dinner menu:

A paper menu, with two sections. One for starters and one for entrees. In the starters section there's rosemary and parmesan focaccia, mushroom pate, meatballs, shrimp melange, roasted carrots, apricot and hazelnut burrata, and spring chopped salad. For the entrees there's tagliatelle alla bolognese, squash blossom halibut, pork raviolini, sweet corn agnolotti, risotto cacio e pepe, and squid ink orecchiette.

It’s basically a law that you have to try a restaurant’s bread. The bread a restaurant offers is a window into all the rest of their food, and also into their soul. So we split the half loaf of rosemary and parmesan focaccia:

A beautiful loaf of focaccia cut in half long ways, and sliced into shareable slices. A round puck of butter sits beside it. It is served on a wood serving platter.

Bryant and I both loved the focaccia, and there was more than enough for both of us. The outside was just a little bit crispy and the bread inside was soft and chewy. It wasn’t overwhelmingly herbaceous, and was definitely worth the six dollars in my opinion. The only acceptable reason to not try this bread if you visit is if you’re gluten intolerant.

We also shared the house-made meatballs:

A small black bowl with five sizeable meatballs, all covered in red sauce and parmesan cheese grated on top.

I can’t say I’m like, a huge meatball fan. I don’t really eat them that often and they’re not something I crave regularly or think about all that much. However, these meatballs were really yummy! I was impressed that there were five of them, and they were quite sizeable. I think the portion size is honestly pretty good. They definitely tasted like they were made fresh in-house, and had just the right amount of sauce on them. I would be more than happy to have a meatball marinara sub made with these meatballs.

And our final appetizer was the mushroom pate:

Three slices of toasted bread served alongside a small white bowl filled with the mushroom pate, which is topped with pickled shallot and sesame seeds.

First off, I love how toasty the ciabatta was, it’s like the perfect shade for toast. The mushroom pate was packed to the brim with mushroomy, umami flavor. Total flavor bomb, and a little goes a long way. The pickled shallots added a wild contrast, and there was a lot of interesting textures. It was seriously delish.

To accompany the starters, I decided to try their sweet wine flight, which came with three wines for fourteen dollars:

A slim wooden flight board with three small glasses of wine. One red and two white.

I can’t remember what the red one was, but the two whites are a Riesling and a sparkling Moscato. I did not care for the red at all, in my opinion it wasn’t even remotely sweet, but I generally prefer white anyway so maybe it just wasn’t my cup of tea (or wine, I suppose). Normally I like Rieslings but this one was kind of a miss for me, too. The Moscato was the bomb dot com though. I loved the bubbles and the sweetness level was perfect. It was so smooth and delish, I ended up polishing that one off but didn’t really drink the other two.

Choosing an entree was pretty dang tough, but Bryant ended up picking the Cacio e Pepe Orecchiette:

A large white bowl/plate type of dish with a large portion of risotto, drizzled with some sort of cream sauce and with chunks of baked parmesan and pepper on top.

I absolutely loved the presentation of this dish, and I’m a huge risotto fan, but I honestly didn’t care for this dish. It just really didn’t taste like much to me, but then again I only had one bite and Bryant said he really liked it, so maybe it was a me issue. I’m glad he enjoyed it!

I opted for the Sweet Corn Agnolotti:

A black bowl containing about thirteen pieces of Agnolotti. Fresh parmesan is shaved on top.

I actually wasn’t sure what type of pasta agnolotti was, but it’s basically just a stuffed pasta, kind of like a ravioli. These little dudes were stuffed with a delicious, creamy filling that I totally burned the frick frack out of my tongue on. They had a great corn flavor, you could definitely tell it was sweet corn. I noticed on the menu it also said it had black truffle in it but I actually didn’t notice any truffle flavor at all, so that’s kind of odd. I really enjoyed my entree, and I think next time I’d like to try the squid ink pasta since I still have yet to try squid ink.

Of course, we had to save room for dessert, and you can’t eat an Italian dinner without ending it with tiramisu:

A small white plate with a big ol cube of tiramisu on it. It is a heck of a solid block of creamy white goodness and cocoa powder.

Funny enough, Bryant’s favorite dessert is tiramisu, so he definitely wasn’t gonna pass this up. He was kind enough to let me try a bite, and I feel confident saying it’s a pretty good tiramisu! It was creamy and rich, and honestly didn’t have any sort of alcohol-y boozy type flavor. No complaints, solid tiramisu.

I went with the apricot and passionfruit tart with pepita crust:

A long and narrow slice of a tart, the filling of which is bright orange and topped with dollops of toasted meringue (at least I think that's what it is?).

Oh my DAYS! This bloody thing was loaded with flavor. Holy cannoli this thing literally punched my tastebuds into next week! The passionfruit flavor is absolutely bonkers on this sucker. Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious. It was sweet and tart and the crust was awesome and the meringue on top was fantastic and wow. Seriously wow. It took me three separate tries to eat this after I took it home, because I would take one bite and be like, okay that’s plenty for now. But don’t misunderstand me, it is very good!

Before leaving, I simply had to get one of their incredible looking cookies to take home, and I picked the white chocolate pineapple one:

A big cookie with flaky sea salt on top, being held up by me in front of a light purple wall.

This cookie was dense, chewy, perfectly sweet with pieces of pineapple throughout, and the flaky sea salt on top really was the cherry on top, or I guess it was the flaky sea salt on top (I know, it’s not a funny joke). Definitely pick up a cookie on your way out, you won’t regret it!

Grist is open Tuesday-Saturday for lunch and dinner, with a break in between the two. You can make reservations for dinner but not for lunch, and you can order online for lunch but not for dinner. While I was there I learned that Grist also hosts cooking classes on Sundays, so that’s neat! I’d love to check one out sometime.

All in all, Grist was a great experience. Though we didn’t have waiters and whatnot, the service we got from the people at the counter and from the chefs that brought our plates out was extremely friendly, and also the food came out really quickly. We both really loved the food and the vibes, and I also like the prices. I definitely want to come back and try pretty much everything I didn’t get to this first time around.

Have you tried Grist before? Which dish looks the best to you? Do you have any recommendations for nice Italian places in Dayton? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day! And be sure to follow Grist on Instagram.

-AMS

1SE for June 2025

Jun. 30th, 2025 10:04 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila


I can't quite believe how much has happened this month. At least 60 days of stuff were packed into June's 30. And now we're halfway through the year. Dear Time, Please slow down, Love, Me.

More Doll outfit pictures!

Jun. 30th, 2025 01:42 pm
forestofglory: patch work quilt featuring yellow 8 pointed stars on background of night sky fabrics (Quilt)
[personal profile] forestofglory
I have been sewing a lot recently! It's really fun!

many pictures )

Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

Readercon 2025 Schedule

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:50 pm
oracne: turtle (Default)
[personal profile] oracne

My schedule is finalized! I didn't list participants in case there were changes.

Who will I see at Readercon next month?

The Works of P. Djèlí­ Clark

Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 1:00 PM EDT

Our Guest of Honor P. Djèlí Clark rounded out his first decade as a published author with a Nebula and a Locus for his fantasy police procedural novel, The Master of Djinn, and both those awards plus a British Fantasy Award for his monster-hunting novella Ring Shout. His short story "How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub" is short-listed for the Hugo this year. As a History professor at University of Connecticut, he investigates the pathways leading from West African storyteller/poets (griots, a.k.a. djèlí) to the American abolitionist movement. Help us celebrate the works of our honored guest!

The Purposes of Memorable Insults in Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Salon I/J Friday, July 18, 2025, 5:00 PM EDT

Some of the most quotable lines in science fiction and fantasy are zingers. Wit can do a lot to build a character, a world, and a universe, and has the ability to either support or undermine reader expectations. This panel aims to explore and elaborate on the use of wit—and especially takedowns—in literature, exposing how a verbal jab can serve as more than just a punchline.

Moving from Traditional Publishing to Self-Publishing [I'm moderating this one]

Salon G/H Friday, July 18, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT

It's becoming increasingly common to hear of authors whose self-published work was so successful that they were picked up by a traditional publisher. But what of the authors who have gone the other way, by turning their backs on traditional publishing and going into self-publishing? Panelists will survey the varying reasons for making this transition, how authors have navigated it, and what this might say about the state of publishing overall.

Kaffeeklatsch: Victoria Janssen

Suite 830 Friday, July 18, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT

Meet the Pros(e) party

Salon F Friday, July 18, 2025, 10:15 PM EDT

Program participants are assigned to tables with a roughly equal number of conferencegoers and other participants, and then table placements are scrambled at regular intervals so that everyone gets to meet a new set of people in a small-group setting. Think of it as a low-key sort of speed dating where you need never be the sole focus of anyone's attention, and the goal is just to get to know some cool Readerconnish people. Please note that this event will include a bar and is mask-optional, unlike most other programming.

The Works of Cecilia Tan [I'm moderating this one]

Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 12:00 PM EDT

Our Guest of Honor, Cecilia Tan, has a publication history that spans Asimov's, Absolute Magnitude, Ms. Magazine, Penthouse, and Best American Erotica, among others. Writer and editor of science fiction and fantasy, especially as they intersect with erotica and romance, she is also the founder of Circlet Press, an independent publisher that specializes in speculative erotica. Her own writing earned a Lifetime Achievement for Erotica in 2014 from Romantic Times magazine. She also contributes to America's other pastime, baseball, in her role as Publications Director for the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Come hear our panel discuss Cecilia's many talents and accomplishments.

Un-Kafkaesque Bureaucracies [I'm moderating this one]

Salon I/J Saturday, July 19, 2025, 7:00 PM EDT

In fiction, bureaucracies are generally depicted as evil in its most banal form, yet many of the actual bureaucracies that shape our lives exist to protect us from corporate greed. How can—and should—we tell other stories about bureaucrats and bureaucracies, particularly as the U.S. stands on the precipice of disastrous deregulation? And might fantasies of bureaucracy (such Addison's The Goblin Emperor and Goddard's The Hands of the Emperor) be the next cozy subgenre?

The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction

Create / Collaborate Saturday, July 19, 2025, 8:00 PM EDT

In an article of the same name (https://www.fansplaining.com/articles/endless-appetite-fanfiction), Elizabeth Minkel discussed how "2024 was the year [fanfic] truly broke containment—everyone seemed to want a piece of the fanfiction pie, leaving fic authors themselves besieged on all sides." Attempts to steal and monetize fanfic proliferated, as did reviews treating living authors as distant and unreachable. What do these trends say about larger changes in attitudes toward stories and creators? How can fans of all kinds nurture supportive connections to authors?

umadoshi: (lilacs 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
With Canada Day rudely falling on a Tuesday, [personal profile] scruloose and I both booked today off. I haven't managed a whole lot of manga work yet, but hopefully between today (as soon as I finish this post) and tomorrow I'll get a reasonable amount done. While I'm doing at-my-desk things, [personal profile] scruloose is working on the next step(s) in getting a dedicated hose set up for our individual townhouse.

Last night we finally got around to switching the desk chairs in our offices, cut for the uninterested )

It occurred to me very late in the game that I might do better at spending non-work time at my desk (where, y'know, most of my writing used to happen) if I didn't hate my chair; I've been attributing the fact that I spend 95% of my evenings down in the living room these days to the fact that Sinha's such a lapcat, and that's definitely a huge factor, but...being able to sit comfortably in here would sure help.

Another pleasing tech-related development has to do with my phone keyboard. again, cut for the uninterested )

Speaking of things that feel so much better now, Saturday also involved Ginny chopping my hair off for me. I've been leaving it alone (other than the undercut) since whenever the last time we buzz cut it was, and maybe a month ago I found that it was long enough to easily ponytail. That was pleasantly novel for about a week, even though the front bits weren't long enough to get into the ponytail and quickly started to need clips or something when it got hot. By last weekend, I was very, very done with the whole thing, and this weekend Ginny was able to deal with it. Such a relief.

My younger nibling and their spouse of eight months or so stopped by a few days ago to pick up a few years' worth of my spare comp copies from Seven Seas. Only one box, since I've technically scaled back my freelance workload (and I think there's also a backlog of comps that I should be getting sooner rather than later), but a hefty box that was bulging a bit at the seams, so it's nice to have that all sent off to a new home. It was lovely to see my nibling and meet their spouse, however briefly. (They politely rolled with the "we're going to stand in our driveway and chat while masked and overheat more than a little" element.)

A final thing before calling this a post and getting to work: last weekend [personal profile] scruloose and I gave the Sensation lilac a long-overdue aggressive pruning (and it should probably get the same amount cut out of it in a year). The poor thing was all spindly limbs and mostly-high-up blooms, so hopefully this will help it for next year.But what to do with the mutant hybrid? )
konsectatrix: (Default)
[personal profile] konsectatrix
I thought "hey, I have a free morning! Maybe I'll install the car cams," but it was already hitting 90f at 8 am, so yeah, guess who wasn't outside playing with their car today? No gardening, either (which is fine, after this weekend I'm kinda over plants, and I'm right back at it tomorrow, swapping out some displays).

In cinema news, our class had a lecture by Michael Uslan, a Jersey local who is credited with being an exec producer on every Batman live action movie ever made, starting with Batman (1989). He had bought the rights when he was still just a twenty-something back in 1979 and went on a decade long mission to find a studio that would honor his vision (he was considered absolutely nuts and was turned down by every single one). The man is a fantastic storyteller, absolutely hilarious, but also deeply sincere in his quest to have Batman (and by extension, comics in general) taken seriously as a medium with powerful stories to tell.

I think you could say he was ultimately successful, which is very cheering in a world that is constantly messaging that giving a fuck about art is stupid and pointless in a desperate attempt to devalue all the labor that goes into it (all the while, we should note, profiting from it like mad).

The class itself is great; there's a lot to process (and there's another quiz today that I should review for). If animation has a million moving parts, live action is that times 3000x these days. I gotta say I do miss the industry in general, and it's kinda interesting seeing how all the random side quests I've been on all this time relate to practical experience points now that I'm coming back to peer at it again. It's been a rather unorthodox journey, to say the least, and it's far from over.

Oh wait, let's backtrack a bit--my production class is being taught by a line producer recently back from LA whose specific expertise is in unscripted shows. He's been pretty upfront about using the class to train PAs/take note of prospective PAs for future projects (normally production roles are learned on the job and the learning curve can be steep for the PAs and a source of frustration for the production office), so that's neat, too. I may go ahead and jump in on his production accounting class as well; collecting any and all related certifications seems like a sensible move in the gap between now and the major studios getting up and running.

Also, and more importantly: it doesn't matter what field you're going into, knowing how the money works in that world is a big deal. If there's an opportunity to find out, always find out.

Joint Union Statement

Jun. 30th, 2025 05:53 pm
lnr: Halloween 2023 (Default)
[personal profile] lnr

We did finally meet with the university senior management on 10th June, over a month after we originally requested a meeting. It wasn't a complete success, but we did come out of it with assurance that the existing policy on gender reassignment was still in place, and trans people can continue to use the toilets that match their lived gender, that no-one should be challenging people in the toilets, and that any changes to the policy would not happen until after the EHRC guidance is published in the autumn, and would involve a proper consultation, and a full Equality Impact Assessment of the changes

We asked them to respond to the EHRC consultation as an institution, and gave them a deadline of 20th June to communicate the above facts with all members of staff, including information on how to seek advice and support (other than just the staff counselling service!)

Instead they published a statement on Sharepoint on Tuesday (24th June), which did not meet our requests. The unions have put out a joint statement today (drafted last week, but it took a while to get it online) as a result:

https://www.ucu.cam.ac.uk/joint-trade-union-statement-on-the-supreme-court-ruling-on-the-equality-act/

EHRC Consultation

Jun. 30th, 2025 05:49 pm
lnr: Halloween 2023 (Default)
[personal profile] lnr

Finished my response and submitted at 11:30 last night, having had to start from scratch on Sunday because a browser refresh had lost my previous attempt. I copied and pasted my responses into a document before submitting, as I'd been warned it wouldn't save them or send them to me. Tired now, and too hot today too, but glad I got it done.

Not sharing it all here, but from the final question:

Overall, as a trans inclusive feminist woman, I find this Code of Practice to be incredibly upsetting. I want to be able to include trans people in my life. I want to accept them in their lived gender. I'm happier with women's places which include trans people than I am with ones which exclude them. I want to have advice on how I can do this, and it's completely lacking here.

The Code is unclear in many places not just on how trans inclusive policies can work, but also on how the suggested trans *exclusive* policies can work in practice. It relies too much on the idea that you can always tell which people are trans and which people are not, and it seems willing to change existing practice significantly even where this will disadvantage trans people.

I don't think this is what the ruling in the Supreme Court was trying to achieve. The changes here are so incredibly broad, and so much at odds with other legislation, that they seem to go far beyond what is necessary, and it feels like an ideological stance to exclude trans people. If this is not the intention than it needs re-writing considerably.

Oneonta Gorge

Jun. 30th, 2025 11:14 am
yourlibrarian: Small Green Waterfall (NAT-Waterfall-niki_vakita)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] common_nature


Our next stop on the trip that day was Oneonia Gorge. It has a tunnel through the rock in between the trees, though we didn't go through it. Instead, we stopped just before it to take pictures of the creek and gorge.Read more... )

Wicked (2024 film)

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:25 pm
emperor: (Default)
[personal profile] emperor
This is the first in a two-part adaptation of the musical of the book (which is in turn a re-interpretation of The Wizard of Oz investigating the Wicked Witch of the West's backstory). It's a very long time since I saw The Wizard of Oz, and I've not read the Wicked book nor seen the musical. review, with spoilers )

The songs are reasonable (though none of them have stuck in my head), the leads are very good, and it's very pretty. And I was pleased to recognise Peter Dinklage by his voice :) But I don't think I'd recommend it as a film.
oursin: Grumpy looking hedgehog (Grumpy hedgehog)
[personal profile] oursin

How is it the end of June already? Where did it go?

And tomorrow I have to travel to Birmingham for a conference.

I am telling myself that I survived the Hot Summer of 76 in an un-airconditioned office where, if one opened a window in came the noise and fumes of a heavily traffic-polluted thoroughfare.

Of course, I was Much Younger in those days.

I see that it is supposed to get somewhat cooler (and wetter) on Weds.

mdlbear: (rose)
[personal profile] mdlbear

I have heard the sad news from several friends, who heard it from a friend of a friend, that [personal profile] acelightning passed away suddenly two days ago.

Sadly, I never got to meet her IRL; all I knew of her was her signature purple posts and comments that occasionally brightened my days. I was always glad to see that flash of purple on my reading page, and now it's gone, never to be seen again.

Farewell, Ace -- perhaps I'll see you again, with Colleen and Ame, somewhere over the rainbow bridge. The purple rose icon I made for Amethyst has rarely been so appropriate.

rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
* SAVE OFTEN, especially in the early game when you may be very fragile and the game's auto-save is infrequent.

BUT -- don't reload from a save unless you actually die or otherwise hit a "game over."

This game is about failing, and it rewards you for playing forwards through failure. Some of the best moments in the game come from failed checks. There are always alternative routes and ways forwards. If you tried to savescum it, you would miss most of the game and all of the point. Embrace failure.

Okay there are those two specific checks where failing is so emotionally devastating I would not judge anyone for savescumming. But apart from those.

* You can just pick one of the Archetypes for a starter build, and leave messing around with custom character creation until you've seen the stats in action and understand how the system works. Don't stress about it. Or, if you want, you can throw yourself into custom character creation despite not having a clue how it works, and you will also have a fun time. Your initial build and your later choices about what you put points into will radically change your experience of the game, but you can't do it "wrong"; there are no optimal builds which are "better".

* Press tab to highlight objects you can interact with, or activate "detective mode" in the settings to do it automatically. Yes I know this is the sort of thing that is probably obvious to people who have played video games before.

* If your Health or Morale (displayed on the lower left of the screen) fall to zero, you have about 5 seconds to apply a healing item (if you have one) by clicking the cross above that stat.

This is the one timed element in the game, and also the one mechanic that some of us initially have trouble grasping.

With all the other mechanics in the game, you can not only learn them by flinging yourself in and floundering about, this is IMHO the best and most enjoyable way to learn them. No idea what the Thought Cabinet is or what Internalizing A Thought means? Try it and find out!

* Perhaps the most important tip of all:

If you feel you are flailing around and failing on most of the checks you try and you've just been informed you have acquired a Thought you can internalize in your Thought Cabinet and you have no clue what that means or maybe you just had a heart attack and died before you even got out of your hotel room or you had a nervous breakdown because a child insulted you and you have no idea what you're doing and it's been three days and you still haven't got the body down from the tree --

THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME "BADLY". THIS IS IN FACT THE UNIVERSAL DISCO ELYSIUM EXPERIENCE AND MEANS YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME CORRECTLY. WELL DONE.

I can’t think of a title

Jun. 30th, 2025 08:23 am
joshuaorrizonte: (Default)
[personal profile] joshuaorrizonte
I had an okay day yesterday. I’ve got a method for cleaning up the mess that the bug on 4thewords left, and that seems to be working well.

Tomorrow will be July 1, and I still don’t have my debit card from the state. I have the option to call or email, and maybe this is a mistake, but I’m going to wait until I haven’t gotten it in the mail tomorrow to do so. Hopefully I get it in the next two days.

I showered last night and (gently) scrubbed down this time. I feel better having done that; I was just getting in, splashing a bit int he water, and then getting out (and washing my hair when it was time). That works in a pinch but it was nice to soap up. My hands DID NOT like it, though, so I ended up using my aquaphor, too. 

I need a haircut. 

Anyway, I’m most of the way through Breath of Fire 3, and now the question will be: will I actually play through BoF 4 and 5? I’m sure going to try.

Weekend... listening post?

Jun. 30th, 2025 08:30 pm
highlyeccentric: Slightly modified sign: all unFUCKed items will be cleared by friday afternoon. FUCK you. (All unfucked items will be discarded. Fu)
[personal profile] highlyeccentric
I spent most of this past weekend hyperfocusing on little pixelated men (Age of Empires). I have also contemplated my family-ish medical-logistics. I have considered where I might fit within this. I must now contemplate my own, after seeing specialist 1 and finding out he can't do much until I've dealt with the domain of specialist 2.

I do not have solutions.

I do have this recommendation, which I have seen aggregate-classiified as both country and punk:



I saw, somewhere deep in the #proofofcat or #caturday feed on Bluesky, someone recommend this in response to a "look at my asshole cat who just waltzed back in after I've been putting up Lost Cat posters for days". The recommender was a friend of one of the band members, and apparently the song is about a prodigal cat.

I bought the whole album and am enjoying it.

Packing

Jun. 30th, 2025 10:03 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Regrettably, we have to go home again this afternoon. I am packing with the intention of leaving our luggage at the hotel while we do one last amble along Southsea beach.

Swag count:

  • 11 pens
  • 9 commemorative guidebooks (to the various ships, museums, and the dockyard as a whole)
  • 2 notebooks
  • 2 postcards
  • 1 travel mug
  • 1 fridge magnet
  • 1 birthday card from the Spinnaker Bar staff

Also some chocolate from the Lindt outlet store. My suitcase was fairly full when we came. I'm sure I can make it all fit ... somehow.

The seed for choosing Portsmouth for this getaway came from seeing a sign for "Explosion Museum" while driving a bunch of hockey players to Gosport rink back in May. I'm very glad I went with that impulse, it's worked out well.

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kaberett

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