A sweaty sausage

Jun. 29th, 2025 09:32 pm
dhampyresa: (Default)
[personal profile] dhampyresa
So I have tendinitis in my wrist, which means I now need to wear a brace. This is really annoying because it gets in the way of doing anything. I can't draw with it on :( Even typing is a fucking hassle. Wearing it in the heat makes me feel like a sausage. A sweaty, sweaty sausage.

still a lot of catching up to do

Jun. 29th, 2025 02:56 pm
musesfool: orange slices (orange you glad)
[personal profile] musesfool
So I watched season 4 of The Bear. spoilers )

*

Two weeks' worth of reading

Jun. 29th, 2025 03:16 pm
umadoshi: (books 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
A weekend post never happened last weekend, but here's what I'm been reading over the last couple of weeks. (Watching has been basically unchanged: we're up to date on Murderbot and continuing to slowly work through Leverage season 4.)

I finished reading Tchaikovsky's Service Model, which I thought was...fine? It was interesting enough, but if it had been my first exposure to his work it wouldn't have made me rush out and try more right away.

I read and liked Margaret Owen's Little Thieves in April, and Jenny Hamilton on Bluesky was recently talking about the trilogy as a whole (and this reminds me that now I can go read her "How to Break a Heart: Subverting the Hero’s Breakup Trope"), so when I decided a week or so ago to finally burn through all of my Kobo points and clear at least a bit of my wishlist, I included the second book, Painted Devils, which I enjoyed enough to want to read the third (Holy Terrors) right away. I try not to buy many ebooks at full price, though, given how many more I buy overall than I'm ever going to manage to read, and thankfully my library not only has it but had it available right away.

Consider that a recommendation, but beyond it I'm just going to quote the non-spoilery part of Jenny's essay that describes the series (and the essay then details how things stood at the end of book 2, so consider that the spoiler warning):
This year brought us Margaret Owen’s Holy Terrors. It’s the third in a trilogy about an angry, selfish girl named Vanja who made it through a lifetime of neglect and abuse with a crop of emotional and physical scars, a talent for picking pockets, the favor of the gods (sometimes), and a healthy hostility for rich people. Against both their better judgment, she falls in love with prefect Emeric Conrad, whom she variously describes as a “human civics primer,” an “accounting ledger made flesh,” and an “intolerable filing cabinet.”

(Here the author of this piece has been compelled to delete a ten thousand–word manifesto about the greatness of the Little Thieves series. If you like the TV show Leverage, or you enjoy digging your teeth into solid character development, or you just hate rich people, you should read it. The first book is Little Thieves. Thank me later.)

For a dramatic change of pace, I'm now reading Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 by M.E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi (also a with-points acquisition), which I keep wanting to file under non-fiction, although the title will clearly tell you that it's speculative fiction. (IIRC I learned about it from [personal profile] skygiants' post.) Its fictional interviews build a distressingly plausible picture of global collapse through this decade and the couple to come, but also offer glimpses into how we could come out on the other side, if we're willing to largely raze and rebuild ~human society~ in a way that actually takes care of people. (The book came out in...2022?...so it in no way accounts for the most recent and current forms of the political hellscape.)

On the non-fiction side, I read Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking, a book of essays and corresponding essays that I'd previously read maybe ten years ago. Colwin died in 1992 (I think I've got that right), and this book (and the follow-up, More Home Cooking) is a food-writing classic for good reason, although also very much of its place and time--very American, very '80s.

(The rest of my using-all-my-Kobo-points haul: The Hands of the Emperor, We Are All Completely Fine, Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China, and Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World. Did this put a visible dent in my Kobo wishlist [which is a relatively curated list of books I keep an eye on for preorder purposes and sighting sales]? Yes. Has the dent since been filled in? Also yes.)

Magpie Murders

Jun. 29th, 2025 07:39 am
used_songs: Shelf loaded with old books (Bookshelf)
[personal profile] used_songs
This book was recommended to me by a former colleague who loves mysteries. She was reading the author's newest book, but she said this was the book to start with since I had never read anything by Anthony Horowitz.

I thought about quitting for the entire first half of the book, tbh, but I trust her so I kept going. It was such a pastiche - Poirot meets any number of imitators, set in the post-war time period but with few period details and even fewer period attitudes. It really just had old tech/no modern tech to set in it the post-war era. Having read Lavender House recently, which is set a few years later, it didn't hit the mark when it came to implying the setting.

A bit of a spoiler )

I'm much more invested in it now. I do think it was a risk to take 213 pages to get to this point, but I am curious to find out what the hell is going on. It remains to be seen whether I will pick up any other books by Horowitz. Regardless, I will definitely finish it now (probably tonight) and we will see if it was worth it!
[syndicated profile] darths_and_droids_feed

Episode 2641: Marching to a Diffident Drum

"Marching order" is the term used to refer to a standardised arrangement of the characters in a party as they advance down unexplored dungeon corridors. The gaming term comes from the early Dungeons & Dragons rules, but ultimately stems from earlier military use, referring to the equipment, uniforms, and arrangement of soldiers as they march in formation. In fact a lot of the terminology of modern roleplaying games traces its roots back to military jargon, via the filter of Gary Gygax's wargaming background before he wrote the first D&D rules books.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Ooo! We might just get a grue! With at least one really big mouth!

Pete's got a pretty good paradigm here. But as Ben points out, all that means is that it's down to a dice roll or who the GM thinks should get attacked or trigger a trap. In which case, why not simply roleplay it? The GM might at least allow the players to test their preparedness fairly in that instance.

Though if we do end up having wild life, escaped experiments, or something else running around, that'd put a damper on my idea of this being a Dark Side pit. There's only been humans that have made appearances in them (the sleen doesn't count as it didn't attack), so a mole rat attack would be extremely unlikely if the Dark Side pit is a concept. Unless they've all got like Kylo Ren or Palpaclone faces. Now wouldn't that be a really weird idea?

Transcript

it's chopped onions all the way down

Jun. 28th, 2025 05:53 pm
jadelennox: Nate Borofsky: prickles and stars  (girlyman: nate borofsky beautiful boy)
[personal profile] jadelennox

"Academia: Staying Afloat" by Timothy Burke from the end of January made me feel warmer. It's about everything. AI slop. Fascism. Modern employment. Greed. The broad gesture at everything. Hope. Determination.

You are the right person to do what you do, know what you know, study what you’re going to study. You do it.

You are a lifeboat.

You are not the passenger being rescued from a shipwreck. You are the rescuer. Your skills, your knowledge, your experience reside in you. You have pulled them from the cold ocean where cruel and careless captains have set them adrift.

You are a lifeboat.

used_songs: (Y'all means all)
[personal profile] used_songs
On the Consolation of Philosophy

O þou gouernour gouernyng alle þinges by certeyne ende. why refusest þou oonly to gouerne þe werkes of men by dewe manere. Whi suffrest þou þat slidyng fortune turneþ to grete vtter chaungynges of þinges. so þat anoious peyne þat scholde duelly punisshe felouns punissitȝ innocentȝ. And folk of wikkede maneres sitten in heiȝe chaiers. and anoienge folk treden and þat vnryȝtfully in þe nekkes of holy men.

“Hurry up! Wheel is on!” my grandmother shouts, urging me to turn the TV on and angle it so she can see it from her seat at the kitchen table. That’s the table we end up selling in the estate sale after she dies because everyone already has a kitchen table and no one has room for more furniture.

The theme music has already started as the TV snaps on, the picture slightly cloudy, like light through a veil, and the sound way too loud.

“-and Vanna White!” the host proclaims as the blonde woman in the near background waves.

“I’ve got a good feeling about the show today, Pat,” she says with a broad wink and a trained smile. He laughs and shakes his head.

“Well, we did have a big winner just the other day, but that doesn’t mean the wheel of fortune won’t hit again today for one of our contestants,” Sajak replies with a wry grin.

“What’s the trick, Pat?” a player asks.

“To stay in control of the wheel.” Pat looks at the camera. Perhaps he means to be ironic, but you can see the desperation in his eyes, a trapped creature beating against the screen that holds him.

“And don’t forget you need to be lucky,” Vanna adds. “O Fortuna velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis; vita detestabilis nunc obdurat et tunc curat ludo mentis aciem, egestatem, potestatem dissolvit ut glaciem.”

Pat Sajak looks startled for an instant now, like the flash of a bird leaping from ground to sky, but he recovers quickly, laughing and saying, “I have a feeling someone will have powerful luck today!”

The parking lot was full of signs. Hopes. We stood in line, we went inside, we showed our voter registration cards and picture ID, we received instructions, we walked separately to the black boxes on fragile legs (theirs and ours), we touched the screens with the eraser tips of the pencils they gave us, we voted, we confirmed, we printed the ballot, we fed it into the other black box. We got a sticker. Even then, though, I knew. And I thought of quitting.

I used the touchscreen on the black box to register my vote. Let the computer count it. Why not place my trust in machines when people are so untrustworthy?

And Vanna touches the lighted rectangles and the initial letter appears. “T.” She claps and smiles. That’s not the letter I said when the wheel stopped spinning, but everyone acts as though it is. Pat Sajak grasps a card tightly and frowns.

“I thought she said K,” my grandmother says.

“I did,” I complain. “I did say K.” Onscreen the player mutters something under her breath and the camera pans away quickly, reality tucked away on the outskirts and hidden from view.

We watched the returns with hope and dread. Even then I knew because I know how luck turns, how unfair life is, how your dreams get stepped on, how there is no security – only chaos and despair.

We have been climbing up the wheel for so long, slipping in grease and sweat and blood, and in an instant we are swept down again. Centuries of striving undone in one election cycle. After a while, it becomes difficult to keep restarting. It feels futile, and, in a way, it is. This is the consolation of philosophy, but it’s an impossible way to live. Me, obsessively checking for your location, because now I have to worry you will be abducted by ICE while you are on your morning run or when you take your mom, a naturalized citizen, to the store.

Me comforting parents who have endured so much and now may not outlast this, who live in fear instead of safety.

I thought it was the smell of my grandmother’s house, but it turns out it was the smell of dust. Now my parents’ house smells the same. We are nothing. We are going to be ground up by history. But we are important to ourselves.

I would like to buy an A.

“Three A’s!” Pat exults and Vanna turns over a U.

And I am so angry.

“Would you like to solve the puzzle?” Pat asks and Vanna looks eagerly at the camera, her hands frozen in mid-air, ready to clap.

The puzzle, of course, is how we are so stupid and angry and mean and heartless and gullible. How we are so bad, so nasty and brutish. So cold. My grandmother tries to sound out the phrase as the picture goes out of focus. “’Sors i_ _ _ nis et in_ nis, rot_ tu vo_ ubi_ is, st_ tus _ _ _us, v_n_ s_ _ us se_ per disso_ ubi_ is.’ I don’t know what it is yet. Do you?” she asks me. Onscreen Vanna seems to shrug. 

I do. The chyron on the bottom of the screen speaks of tyranny. Philosophy looks at me from her seat at the table and says, “This world of ours—thinkest thou it is governed haphazard and fortuitously, or believest thou that there is in it any rational guidance?” She might be mocking me, but I think it's just that she does not care.

My grandmother, long gone, so far away that I can barely remember her voice, sighs and says from the corner, “We make up these philosophies and these religions to make ourselves feel better about the inescapable unfairness and randomness of life. The truth is, we are only important to ourselves. That’s life, riding high in April, shot down in May. The truth is the wheel of fortune.” I turn to ask a question, but she is irrevocable.

I guess the dead would know how cold the comfort really is. 

She lived through her own interesting times – two world wars, the Great Depression, Spanish Flu – people struck down by the indifference of God or Fortune or their fellow humans. I guess she would know. And now she knows that none of it ultimately matters.

But it matters.

The words on the puzzle have lasted longer than you and will be here long after you are dust. Even when they burn all of the books, the words will still be there. Even when there is no one to read them. I used to believe in societal progress. Now I know better. We are just fragile birds, flying through the longhouse, enjoying the light and warmth and grabbing the comfort we can from the shadows, until we go back out into the cold dead flat darkness unleavened by any stars.

“I’d like to buy a vowel,” I say frantically.

“Is it a U?” Pat asks, his eyebrows drawing down in an expression of cruelty. I lean back, the wheel ticking endlessly. 

“No!” I cry, unheard, from deep within a room that no longer exists. My grandmother’s little dog inches closer to the forbidden space heater and looks back at us and smiles. Dust.

My grandmother snorts. “She wasted her money, There are no other vowels.” The contestant turns away disappointed. She solved the puzzle, she won the money, but she walks away empty handed because the wheel turned.

"Sors immanis et inanis, rota tu volubilis, status malus, vana salus semper dissolubilis, obumbrata et velata michi quoque niteris," Philosophy sings from the corner, mocking my hopes.

It doesn’t matter. The wheel turns. It doesn’t matter. It does matter.
settiai: (Kes -- settiai (TriaElf9))
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

idle contemplations

Jun. 27th, 2025 12:56 pm
watersword: Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Swann from the epilogue of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, & the word "elizabeth" (Pirates of the Caribbean: epilogue)
[personal profile] watersword

Very pleased at how fast my ankle's been healing; it barely hurts at all except when I flex my toes, and I assume that will get better next week. Ice and rest doing their job as advertised! The knee is — I don't want to say getting worse, that's not true, but as the scab gets thicker and more attached to the skin, it feels more uncomfortable to move my knee through flexion/extension, and that is not fun. Botheration.

I have a dark feeling I should get PT after this; I can feel my gait getting fucked up by having both legs injured in different ways. A new adulting experience, and I already do not like it because it will involve insurance. Maybe I'll call the EAP and make them give me a to-do list or something.

While lying in bed and icing my ankle, I have re-read Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy and Fledgling; I know we've talked about it before, but wow it gets more and more noticeable how she just doesn't think of queerness as related to desire. The stuff she's interested in about gender and sexuality forces her to acknowledge the existence of same-sex sexual interactions, but nothing about them is ever anyone's first choice or pleasurable except in the ways her worldbuilding allows her to impose on the characters.

I am idly fantasizing about a shopping app that lets me:

  1. manually add items from a variety of independent vendors (i.e., not Amazon);
  2. once a month (or whatever time period I set), checks if any of the items on the list are on sale;
  3. if it finds an item on sale, it stops going through the list and purchases that item, removing it from the list;
  4. if nothing is on sale, it picks a random item from the list, purchases it, and removes it from the list;
  5. repeat next month.

Note: steps 2-5 do not involve me making decisions or receiving alerts.

Things to Get Me [referral link] is perfect at #1. Google Shopping kind of does #2 but only kind of. The rest of it, I'm fairly sure it doesn't exist and I understand why, I can easily see where this could go very wrong, but I want it for myself and I'm mad that either I gotta build it (no) or outsource to a human. Further botheration.

Sidetracks - June 26, 2025

Jun. 26th, 2025 10:24 pm
helloladies: Gray icon with a horseshoe open side facing down with pink text underneath that says Sidetracks (sidetracks)
[personal profile] helloladies posting in [community profile] ladybusiness
Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.


Read more... )

half an hour earlier tomorrow

Jun. 26th, 2025 10:30 pm
musesfool: a baseball and bat on the grass (the crack of ash on horsehide)
[personal profile] musesfool
Todd Zeile: Pete's been chasing breaking balls
My brain: don't go chasing breaking balls, stick to the sliders and the fastballs you're used to
*facepalm*

*
schneefink: Hotguy and Cuteguy thumbsup (Hermitcraft Hotguy and Cuteguy)
[personal profile] schneefink
I've barely scratched the surface of the massive MCYT AUfest Battleship works bounty, but I'll be leaving for a week-long vacation with my gf at my grandparents' tomorrow so here's part 1 of recs. 11x fic, 1x webweave, 3x comics/art; a wild mix of AUs and genres and pairings, mostly for Hermitcraft, some Life Series, DSMP, QSMP.

11x fic, 1x webweave, 3x art )

Enormous Meme

Jun. 26th, 2025 07:08 am
used_songs: (Oscar Motherfucker)
[personal profile] used_songs
Stolen from [personal profile] dine :

1. What curse word do you use the most?
fuck and motherfucker
80 questions! )

Episode 2640: Mundus Inversus

Jun. 26th, 2025 09:11 am
[syndicated profile] darths_and_droids_feed

Episode 2640: Mundus Inversus

Where does one search for secret doors? Everywhere? That'd take too long when you are trying to avoid wandering monsters, find the treasure, and get out alive before your torches run out.

Dead ends are the dead giveaway. Why would there be a dead end, unless it's not really a dead end? They're almost a signal to the players to search for secret doors here.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Hah, of course Pete would pull a lightsaber out for light. While there's half-dead flashlights that would provide better light, a lightsaber would also be useful for attack and defence. I guess nobody else has a decent light though as I'd thought Poe's light was the lightsaber for a few moments. Though perhaps that's unfair to the characters; there's plenty of other non-Star Wars movies that have problems with flashlights and lighting as well.

I guess space-time goo causing problems here is as good an explanation as any if the GM goes along with it. It's definitely a lot more interesting than "The Force did this", which is what I bet the movie has as its explanation. But even if that is the official cause, there'd have to be something else that originally made this place. It's not like the Force is a cloud of radiation that randomly builds or destroys things; Force users make it do those things. And then at some point, that kind of explanation is just "a wizard did it" which is so unsatisfying outside of comedy scenes, and it would have been better to not explain things at all.

Anyone else want to hope an unexplained Grue shows up just to keep things weird and interesting?

Transcript

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 6/25 Game

Jun. 26th, 2025 12:16 am
settiai: (Siân -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off and will be picking up next week for our in-person weekend.

Recipe: Lemon & Chili Pickled Onions

Jun. 25th, 2025 07:40 pm
used_songs: (Default)
[personal profile] used_songs
I made these last weekend and we have been eating them all week and they are delicious. So I'm sharing the recipe with you along with the changes I made.

Original recipe: Lemon & Chili Pickled Onions

My slight changes:

Ingredients
  • 1/2 large white onion, thinly sliced 
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp ancho green chili powder
  • 1 tsp salt, plus more as needed to taste once pickled
  • 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (it took me 2 large lemons)
Instructions
  1. Place onions, chili powders, salt, and lemon juice in a bowl and mix by hand to completely coat the onions.
  2. Transfer to a resealable container and gently press down onions to cover with juice.
  3. Add lid and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to allow pickling time.
  4. Eat them straight out of the container or on chalupas, tacos, wraps, etc.


On the fannish front...

Jun. 25th, 2025 08:08 pm
settiai: (AO3 -- stultiloquentia)
[personal profile] settiai
Okay, I just have two more days of work to get through, and then I have an entire week off. Nine whole days. The first five of which will hopefully be spent not leaving the hotel if I can manage it, because I desperately need to recharge. I'm even going to try to wash clothes either tomorrow or Friday so that I won't have to leave my suite unless there's an emergency of some type. A complete removal from all human interaction will do me so much good.

I'm hoping to set aside at least a few days to curl up and properly lose myself in video games, probably Baldur's Gate 3 or Dragon Age: The Veilguard although I might try something new. Or maybe something old, like a new Mass Effect playthrough. There are a lots of options. Whatever I go with, I keep saying that I'm going to play video games on the weekend, and then I don't manage it, so I'm really going to try during this break.

I also want to attempt to do some fic writing just for myself. I've had a bad habit of only writing for exchanges lately, but I have a ton of WIPs so it would be nice if I could set aside at least a few hours here and there during the break to work on getting back in the writing habit.

My Wednesday night D&D group is going to be getting together in person to play next weekend. Everyone's flying in on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, and then we're going to jump in around lunchtime on Friday as soon as the last person arrives. Then plan is that we're going to play pretty much the rest of the day on Friday, all day Saturday, and until mid-afternoon on Sunday.
musesfool: Jason Toddler shows off his new costume to Dick (everybody starts somewhere)
[personal profile] musesfool
In addition to various Spider-Man and Captain America-themed items, I ordered a Batman shirt and a Robin shirt for Baby Miss L and then I was like, but does she know who Batman and Robin even are??? So I went looking for toddler-friendly Bat-stuff, and lo and behold, there is a show called Batwheels on Cartoon Network (and HBO Max) about the Batmobile and other Bat vehicles (the Redbird, Batgirl's bike) coming to life like the toys in Toy Story! With DUKE as ROBIN and CASS as BATGIRL!!! I love this!!! (mainly because I was afraid it was going to be Damian as Robin and Babs as Batgirl and that's just weird.) I don't know if any of the other kids exist, but there is a Batplane they call Wing, so maybe Nightwing is around? I didn't watch it, just read the wiki, but I mentioned it to my niece, so maybe Baby Miss L can get started early on loving Robin, and she can enjoy Tiny Titans when she's a little bit older. (I am still sad and bitter that Tiny Titans was cancelled so unceremoniously because it was the best.)

*

Initial Air3 usage report!

Jun. 25th, 2025 02:10 pm
umadoshi: (plague doctor (verhalen))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Over a month after the arrival of our (in my case, long-yearned-for) Microclimate Air3 powered respirators, I finally took mine out on its maiden voyage yesterday. (It may result in me going more places than I have been, but it may also mainly result in me feeling safer in the places I do go.)

Yesterday there was a casual in-person meeting at Dayjob where the team properly met the two people who our office's managing editor answers to. Donuts were promised (and turned out to be quality donuts, although I opted not to bring one home with me [since I sure wasn't about to unmask to eat anything there!]. Fun times in needing to be picky about what I spend my sugar intake on). We also had a heat warning, so I was all the more glad/relieved to have a drive to and from the meeting rather than taking transit for the first time in, oh, three years or so.

I'll put most of the rest under a cut, but I do want to note--especially since probably at least one or two of you clicked on the link for the Air3, and the price looks horrifying--that I'm incredibly glad we didn't order ours immediately when they first became available, because at that point the Air3 alone (as opposed to the kit) was more like $1000 USD. The original plan wasn't for [personal profile] scruloose to get one at all, given that initial price and given that they have a respirator setup that works well for them. But then a few weeks later, the price dropped to $549(/$649 for the kit with extra stuff, which is what we opted for, as well as a few extra filters etc. in the name of minimizing future need to deal with shipping), so we got to say "Well, that's still really spendy, but it's also now not completely outrageous to get two." (And then we wound up having to contact the company because of shipping/import charge shenanigans, but those were on the courier's side, not Microclimate's, and the person [personal profile] scruloose dealt with was great, so it's all good.)

I should also note that one of the review videos I watched about this made sure to point out clearly that its price (which initially was a MAJOR jump up from how much the Air2 cost when that was available) was in line with the cost of other NIOSH-certified powered respirators. It's far from cheap, but it's not the gouging attempt it might seem like. (I do wonder what the deal was with the massive price drop so soon after its release, though!)

And now, the actual experience: )

too many large crooked numbers

Jun. 24th, 2025 09:10 pm
musesfool: the ocean (your ocean refuses no river)
[personal profile] musesfool
So this morning I updated the board chair on expected attendance at today's board meeting, and she replied, should we just switch the meeting to zoom entirely, due to the weather? So that is what we did! And as much as I would have liked to have had dinner with Friend L this evening, I was much happier not having to schlep into the city in 101°F heat. The meeting went well, and now I can relax for a few weeks.

*

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