Tuesday @ 12:01 pm
Dec. 3rd, 2024 12:01 pmTuesday @ 10:03 pm
Dec. 3rd, 2024 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alisxSo I started playing Palia out of a vague desire to actually find some use for our Switch (I got it as a Christmas bonus gift from work years ago), made a character, played it for like two minutes . . . and then immediately downloaded it on my PC and played it for real.
Me and handheld are just . . . never going to be BFFs, it seems.
Wednesday @ 11:10 am
Dec. 4th, 2024 11:10 amalisxAbsolutely smashed after my old person day yoga class. Destroyed by a room full of 80 year-olds. Oof.
Wednesday @ 11:09 pm
Dec. 4th, 2024 11:09 pmalisxSo somewhere between the yoga, floating about in the pool, a massage and not spending sixteen hours of the day sitting at the computer, my hips have stopped hurting for the first time in . . . a decade? More?
So this was what it felt like to not be in pain all the time. Huh. Weird.
Communication
Dec. 4th, 2024 06:08 pmysabetwordsmithI got to talking with someone about the bad form replies that come from writing to your representatives.
I've noticed that politicians are increasingly poor communicators. Part of that has to do with volume, but really, they could at least tell the people or programs that sort their mail to batch things by topic for more constructive results.
( Read more... )
I've noticed that politicians are increasingly poor communicators. Part of that has to do with volume, but really, they could at least tell the people or programs that sort their mail to batch things by topic for more constructive results.
( Read more... )
What We Weading Wednesday
Dec. 4th, 2024 06:11 pmwhite_asterI have finished Echo, which was...compelling. Very compelling and very unusual in both bad and good ways. This book is A Lot. It's about mountain climbing AND family trauma AND a cosmic horror in the form of a mountain slowly taking over a man and infecting those around him AND it's about loving someone who is being possessed. Sprinkled in are recurring horror motifs (the creepy animals, the horrors of your past, the threatening shadowy figures, interacting with people who might be ghosts, a truly wildly inventive evil power centered around mountain-specific dangers like altitude sickness and hypothermia and falling) and a lot of side characters. The book was compelling, and some parts were really super creepy.
But the structure and nonlinear storytelling led to a lot of disjointed parts and dropped threads. Overall, I was left with the feeling that there were some very powerful scenes that were written at disparate times and for different parts (and perhaps different versions) of the story. There are maybe three very good novellas in this book, but setting them in competition and having to link them together in this novel just felt like they were stealing each other's thunder. Still, if it sounds interesting, I'd say go for it. Maybe what annoyed me will annoy you less.
I have picked up The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei (former art thief is dragged out of her bad attempt at retiring to go off on a quest to find an alien artifact, so far) and Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard (novella-sized bite of romance plus solving a mystery and tracking down a dangerous space creature that has escaped from subspace). The former is going ok (and I liked Kitasei's first, unrelated effort, The Deep Sky well enough). The latter is...eh. The characters are just not grabbing me, and the novella format is not long enough to give me enough to sink my teeth into. The romance is happening quickly and for no real reasons that I can discern, and honestly I can't wait until they just get to the dangerous space creature. It is short, though, and I am still mildly interested enough to finish it.
Oldest Alphabet
Dec. 4th, 2024 04:57 pmysabetwordsmithOldest known alphabet unearthed in ancient Syrian city
Archaeological findings suggest alphabetic writing is some 500 years older than thought. Researchers have discovered evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history. The writing was etched onto clay cylinders discovered during a dig at an ancient Syrian city.
This is an exciting find. :D
Archaeological findings suggest alphabetic writing is some 500 years older than thought. Researchers have discovered evidence of the oldest alphabetic writing in human history. The writing was etched onto clay cylinders discovered during a dig at an ancient Syrian city.
This is an exciting find. :D
Children have opinions, news at 11
Dec. 4th, 2024 01:54 pmysobel posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntHow do we get our 4-year-old to stop negotiating and respect our rules?
Hi Meghan: My 4-year-old is pushing boundaries, as she should. She’s also a fast learner. She’s taken to turning the same approaches we use on her back on us.
For example: She would not go into her room at bedtime. Parent said if she did not go into her room, she would lose one minute of screen time the next day. A few minutes later, she said if parent did not do something they had already said we would not do, parent would lose five points tomorrow. Funny, usually. But not when we say “I’m asking you to do X” or “I need you to do Y” and the response is often “No, I’M asking you to do [some unacceptable thing].”
How do we balance respecting her right for autonomy and her (frankly very good) negotiation techniques with the need for her to respect rules and do what we say when necessary?
— Mini-negotiator
Mini-negotiator: Negotiation requires not just talking through something but compromising on what you want. Sure, you can have some discussion with a 4-year-old, but compromise? That requires a good bit of maturity and the ability to consider another person’s viewpoint and, it turns out, 4-year-old children aren’t so hot at that.
( Read more... )
Hi Meghan: My 4-year-old is pushing boundaries, as she should. She’s also a fast learner. She’s taken to turning the same approaches we use on her back on us.
For example: She would not go into her room at bedtime. Parent said if she did not go into her room, she would lose one minute of screen time the next day. A few minutes later, she said if parent did not do something they had already said we would not do, parent would lose five points tomorrow. Funny, usually. But not when we say “I’m asking you to do X” or “I need you to do Y” and the response is often “No, I’M asking you to do [some unacceptable thing].”
How do we balance respecting her right for autonomy and her (frankly very good) negotiation techniques with the need for her to respect rules and do what we say when necessary?
— Mini-negotiator
Mini-negotiator: Negotiation requires not just talking through something but compromising on what you want. Sure, you can have some discussion with a 4-year-old, but compromise? That requires a good bit of maturity and the ability to consider another person’s viewpoint and, it turns out, 4-year-old children aren’t so hot at that.
( Read more... )
Word: Sexton
Dec. 4th, 2024 04:29 pmstonepicnicking_okapiWednesday's word is...
...sexton.
[ˈsekst(ə)n]
noun
a person who looks after a church and churchyard, sometimes acting as bell-ringer and formerly as a gravedigger.
example
But as the sexton was a secret disciple of the opposition they had him hid away near the church, and at a given signal he was to appear with the keys.
History of the First African Baptist Church, From its Organization, January 20th, 1788, to July 1st, 1888. Including the Centennial Celebration, Addresses, Sermons, Etc. Emanuel King 1888
origin
Middle English secresteyn, sexteyn, from Anglo-French segrestein, from Medieval Latin sacristanus
--
I was listening to this earlier today by my favourite ghost story narrator. A bit of Christmas Dickens.
...sexton.
[ˈsekst(ə)n]
noun
a person who looks after a church and churchyard, sometimes acting as bell-ringer and formerly as a gravedigger.
example
But as the sexton was a secret disciple of the opposition they had him hid away near the church, and at a given signal he was to appear with the keys.
History of the First African Baptist Church, From its Organization, January 20th, 1788, to July 1st, 1888. Including the Centennial Celebration, Addresses, Sermons, Etc. Emanuel King 1888
origin
Middle English secresteyn, sexteyn, from Anglo-French segrestein, from Medieval Latin sacristanus
--
I was listening to this earlier today by my favourite ghost story narrator. A bit of Christmas Dickens.
Birdfeeding
Dec. 4th, 2024 03:16 pmysabetwordsmithToday is partly cloudy and cool, up from several days of 20s F.
I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, a pair of cardinals, a tufted titmouse, and a fox squirrel.
I put out water for the birds.
Surprisingly a few plants are still alive: dusty miller, some lobelia, and some snapdragons.
EDIT 12/4/24 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
As the sun is setting, I am done for the night.
I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of sparrows, a pair of cardinals, a tufted titmouse, and a fox squirrel.
I put out water for the birds.
Surprisingly a few plants are still alive: dusty miller, some lobelia, and some snapdragons.
EDIT 12/4/24 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
As the sun is setting, I am done for the night.
Book reaction: A Court of Thorns and Roses (Sarah J. Maas)
Dec. 4th, 2024 02:34 pmbrithistorianOver lunch I just finished A Court of Thorns and Roses, the first book of Sarah J. Maas's series of faerie books (I bought a Kindle omnibus of the first four books in the series when it went a sale earlier this year). All in all, I enjoyed it. There were parts in the beginning where it dragged a little, but once I got about halfway in, it seemed that she'd done enough explication of the worldbuilding that things could move forward at a better tempo. I've got the second book (A Court of Mist and Fury) in my Kindle ready to go, and I'm looking forward to seeing where things go from here.
The only thing that worries me — and feel free to let me know if this is the case, so I can make an informed decision about reading further — is I can easily imagine the erotic parts of the story overwhelming the other parts. In other words: Does Sarah J. Maas become the Laurell K. Hamilton of faerie?
The only thing that worries me — and feel free to let me know if this is the case, so I can make an informed decision about reading further — is I can easily imagine the erotic parts of the story overwhelming the other parts. In other words: Does Sarah J. Maas become the Laurell K. Hamilton of faerie?
The season has begun!
Dec. 4th, 2024 02:15 pmbrithistorianThe Holiday Season has officially begun! Yesterday I.O.I alumna[1] Chung Ha released the first K-pop Christmas song of the year!
It's a 2-song single:
ETA: Another new addition to the K-pop Christmas songs list: Blackpink Rosé covering Wham's "Last Christmas" on BBC Radio 1. (Radio 1 assures us that this doesn't count for Whamageddon.)
[1] For those of you who don't know, or don't remember, I.O.I was a K-pop girl group created through a survival show. Other I.O.I alumnae include Weki Meki's Choi Yoojung and Kim Doyeon[2] as well as Pristin's Im Nayoung and solo artist Jeon Somi.
[2] Come on, did you really think I was going to make a K-pop post without mentioning Weki Meki? While I was always kind of resentful (on behalf of the other members) of the amount of extra attention that Yoojung an Doyeon got because of their time in I.O.I, in retrospect I have to admit that it did help Weki Meki.
It's a 2-song single:
- The A-side is"Sleigh" (link goes to the music video). It's a fun song, but the pun that the chorus is centered around isn't noticeable unless you see the lyrics (or at least the title of the song) written down — "I sleigh" for "I slay."
- The B-side is "There Goes Santa Claus" (link goe sto the audio at YouTube — there is no video ☹️). It's yet another case where the B-side should have been the single — this song sounds it's always existed. It sounds like something Brenda Lee could have recorded around the time of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree."
ETA: Another new addition to the K-pop Christmas songs list: Blackpink Rosé covering Wham's "Last Christmas" on BBC Radio 1. (Radio 1 assures us that this doesn't count for Whamageddon.)
[1] For those of you who don't know, or don't remember, I.O.I was a K-pop girl group created through a survival show. Other I.O.I alumnae include Weki Meki's Choi Yoojung and Kim Doyeon[2] as well as Pristin's Im Nayoung and solo artist Jeon Somi.
[2] Come on, did you really think I was going to make a K-pop post without mentioning Weki Meki? While I was always kind of resentful (on behalf of the other members) of the amount of extra attention that Yoojung an Doyeon got because of their time in I.O.I, in retrospect I have to admit that it did help Weki Meki.
Well, it's finally happened
Dec. 4th, 2024 03:16 pmconulyMy sister has banned me from giving her news updates the rest of the day.
It was only two articles!
French government toppled in no-confidence vote brought by opposition
Gunman at large after UnitedHealthcare CEO fatally shot in Midtown in ‘brazen targeted attack,’ police say
It was only two articles!
French government toppled in no-confidence vote brought by opposition
Gunman at large after UnitedHealthcare CEO fatally shot in Midtown in ‘brazen targeted attack,’ police say
A small mishmash post while my brain shifts gears
Dec. 4th, 2024 03:57 pmumadoshiUsually when I open the Create Entries page I have some idea of what I'm going to (try to) post about, but I've just finished Dayjob work for the day and my brain is a bit slushy. I need to read through the translation for my next rewrite, and it would be helpful if my brain would click over into that mode, please.
It wouldn't make much difference to my yearly reading stats one way or the other if I included the books I work on, so it's unimportant, but I don't remember for sure how or why I decided not to. I guess probably so I don't have to keep track of whether a given license has been announced or not.
Oh! December 3rd Advent chocolate: milk feuilletine praline. (Did I have to look up "feuilletine"? Yes. Wiki tells me it's "a crispy confection [...] made from thin, sweetened crêpes.")
Circling back to the fact that I don't like alcohol or boozy-tasting things, I really hope cherries are as good with alcohol as it seems given the number of chocolate cherries made with alcohol. I really like chocolate-covered cherries! And so often the regular boxes of them (if available at all) are mediocre, while the fancier kinds are boozy. (This thought brought to you by the chocolatier that made my Advent calendar having holiday chocolate-covered cherries made with kirsch. Woe, alas, etc.)
[see also (???): I really need to make an appointment for an A1C test]
In happy December news,scruloose and I are both taking time off between Christmas and New Year's. I still have some unaccounted-for PTO in addition to that (thank goodness for overtime), so I'm trying to decide whether it'd be better for my mental health to add to that chunk of time off and have a longer single break, or to take another week sometime before the "spring" crunch starts at Dayjob (whenever that turns out to be). (Technically I could even do both, I think, but if I can carry any PTO forward into the next fiscal year, that would also be nice. Overtime availability is so erratic these years.)
It wouldn't make much difference to my yearly reading stats one way or the other if I included the books I work on, so it's unimportant, but I don't remember for sure how or why I decided not to. I guess probably so I don't have to keep track of whether a given license has been announced or not.
Oh! December 3rd Advent chocolate: milk feuilletine praline. (Did I have to look up "feuilletine"? Yes. Wiki tells me it's "a crispy confection [...] made from thin, sweetened crêpes.")
Circling back to the fact that I don't like alcohol or boozy-tasting things, I really hope cherries are as good with alcohol as it seems given the number of chocolate cherries made with alcohol. I really like chocolate-covered cherries! And so often the regular boxes of them (if available at all) are mediocre, while the fancier kinds are boozy. (This thought brought to you by the chocolatier that made my Advent calendar having holiday chocolate-covered cherries made with kirsch. Woe, alas, etc.)
[see also (???): I really need to make an appointment for an A1C test]
In happy December news,
scruloose and I are both taking time off between Christmas and New Year's. I still have some unaccounted-for PTO in addition to that (thank goodness for overtime), so I'm trying to decide whether it'd be better for my mental health to add to that chunk of time off and have a longer single break, or to take another week sometime before the "spring" crunch starts at Dayjob (whenever that turns out to be). (Technically I could even do both, I think, but if I can carry any PTO forward into the next fiscal year, that would also be nice. Overtime availability is so erratic these years.)
What I'm Doing Wednesday
Dec. 4th, 2024 01:27 pmsageHere's me at the Holiday Love Meme!
books
still reading Proust. Just finished Sarah Kendzior's Hiding In Plain Sight. I want to say how remarkably prescient she is, but her response to that is "It's in the public domain." She's just ballsy enough to publish it. For those of you who don't follow her, she does NOT view Trump as a fascist, as he has no devotion to his country whatsoever. Instead, she views him as a mafia kleptocrat. And she's made an excellent case for it. She's also on Substack. Next up might be The Myth of American Idealism: how US foreign policy endangers the world by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson. We'll see.
thanksgiving
we overdosed on football, which I didn't think was possible for Dad, but even he got tired of it. (All SEC rivalry games.) It was good to hang out with my brother. I spent the whole time yarning, putting up the xmas tree (which I did entirely alone this year and was on my feet for nearly four hours, ouch), helping my brother put together the parents' new recliners (so heavy), and managing my shop & its social media from my phone. Dad's birthday was nice -- I got him a bag of pistachios and some Voltaren, because at 81 he doesn't really need anything else.
etsy
I've earned my Star Seller badge back! They seem to have fixed the bug that was giving incorrect delivery dates, knock wood, and I've been selling a bunch of stuff. The discount is a bit deeper than ideal, but I don't want to raise prices and I dread a tariff trade war driving up costs of my materials. I'm getting everything I can now, so I can take the tax deduction, but it is worrisome. But! I confirmed one of my catnip suppliers is domestically produced, not Canadian, so that's one less thing to fret over.
yarning
I've made kickbunnies in patchwork rainbow, blue and gray, brown and tan, and burgundy and gray, and the lingering green one finally sold. I'm working on a tan and brown one now. It would be nice if some more cat ornaments and amineko kitties would fly out my door. Not sure how to make that happen, but there's no harm in letting them wait for the right customers to come along. I need to get the donation kickbunnies in the mail today.
( healthcrap )
yuletide
I have zero motivation. This is a problem. I'm spending my time on Bluesky (@ sageshandmade) or crocheting while listening to Proust, neither of which is getting me in the headspace of writing fic. I've got to remedy that asap.
other stuff
I'm waiting on the Canadian postal strike to end so I can mail out my secret santa card. That has delayed my thinking about other international mail, oops. So that's yet another thing I need to get done whenever my head clears.
books
still reading Proust. Just finished Sarah Kendzior's Hiding In Plain Sight. I want to say how remarkably prescient she is, but her response to that is "It's in the public domain." She's just ballsy enough to publish it. For those of you who don't follow her, she does NOT view Trump as a fascist, as he has no devotion to his country whatsoever. Instead, she views him as a mafia kleptocrat. And she's made an excellent case for it. She's also on Substack. Next up might be The Myth of American Idealism: how US foreign policy endangers the world by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson. We'll see.
thanksgiving
we overdosed on football, which I didn't think was possible for Dad, but even he got tired of it. (All SEC rivalry games.) It was good to hang out with my brother. I spent the whole time yarning, putting up the xmas tree (which I did entirely alone this year and was on my feet for nearly four hours, ouch), helping my brother put together the parents' new recliners (so heavy), and managing my shop & its social media from my phone. Dad's birthday was nice -- I got him a bag of pistachios and some Voltaren, because at 81 he doesn't really need anything else.
etsy
I've earned my Star Seller badge back! They seem to have fixed the bug that was giving incorrect delivery dates, knock wood, and I've been selling a bunch of stuff. The discount is a bit deeper than ideal, but I don't want to raise prices and I dread a tariff trade war driving up costs of my materials. I'm getting everything I can now, so I can take the tax deduction, but it is worrisome. But! I confirmed one of my catnip suppliers is domestically produced, not Canadian, so that's one less thing to fret over.
yarning
I've made kickbunnies in patchwork rainbow, blue and gray, brown and tan, and burgundy and gray, and the lingering green one finally sold. I'm working on a tan and brown one now. It would be nice if some more cat ornaments and amineko kitties would fly out my door. Not sure how to make that happen, but there's no harm in letting them wait for the right customers to come along. I need to get the donation kickbunnies in the mail today.
( healthcrap )
yuletide
I have zero motivation. This is a problem. I'm spending my time on Bluesky (@ sageshandmade) or crocheting while listening to Proust, neither of which is getting me in the headspace of writing fic. I've got to remedy that asap.
other stuff
I'm waiting on the Canadian postal strike to end so I can mail out my secret santa card. That has delayed my thinking about other international mail, oops. So that's yet another thing I need to get done whenever my head clears.
Rec-Cember day 4 sans linkspam =)
Dec. 4th, 2024 08:19 pmgoodbyebirdChronicles of Riddick Series
a constellation of dark, new stars by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
howlingmoonrise (10,038 words).
I love the world in this, and my what a satisfying conclusion!
He opens his eyes, only to close them again. Instinct, of course. It’s a painful thing. Usually.
Because the world is bright.
Bright, and foreign, he thinks, as he opens them again, as he pushes himself past the screaming in his head telling him to look away, that the light burns, that there will be nothing but agony in looking into anything lighter than twilight. In the planets he’s visited, the galaxies he’s run through, there have been plenty of strange sights - near-invisible fauna, gravity-defying constructions, rainfall of diamonds or glass - but the strangeness does not come from things unusual.
No. It looks familiar. Familiar, in the way of a forgotten dream, or a hallucinated vision when fever or poison hits and things are at their worst. Familiar in a way that tells him this is not a place he’s ever been in.
“Might as well get walking,” he tells himself.
So he does.
a constellation of dark, new stars by
I love the world in this, and my what a satisfying conclusion!
He opens his eyes, only to close them again. Instinct, of course. It’s a painful thing. Usually.
Because the world is bright.
Bright, and foreign, he thinks, as he opens them again, as he pushes himself past the screaming in his head telling him to look away, that the light burns, that there will be nothing but agony in looking into anything lighter than twilight. In the planets he’s visited, the galaxies he’s run through, there have been plenty of strange sights - near-invisible fauna, gravity-defying constructions, rainfall of diamonds or glass - but the strangeness does not come from things unusual.
No. It looks familiar. Familiar, in the way of a forgotten dream, or a hallucinated vision when fever or poison hits and things are at their worst. Familiar in a way that tells him this is not a place he’s ever been in.
“Might as well get walking,” he tells himself.
So he does.
Bundle of Holding: Forged in the Dark 2
Dec. 4th, 2024 02:02 pmjames_davis_nicoll
An all-new array of recent standalone tabletop roleplaying games that use the Forged in the Dark rules system based on John Harper's Blades in the Dark from One Seven Design Studio.
Bundle of Holding: Forged in the Dark 2
Nonfiction
Dec. 4th, 2024 01:49 pmrivkatAnne Kustritz, Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction: ( slash and fandom more generally )
Christian B. Long, Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Film, 1968–2021: ( images of subways, sewers, etc )
Alfred L. Martin, Jr., Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences: ( enjoyment, recognition, and power )
Carrie M. Lane, More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn’t Working: ( professional organizing as a response to social dysfunction )
Brian Klaas, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us: ( evo-psych diagnoses and some mild solutions )
Christian B. Long, Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Film, 1968–2021: ( images of subways, sewers, etc )
Alfred L. Martin, Jr., Fandom for Us, by Us: The Pleasures and Practices of Black Audiences: ( enjoyment, recognition, and power )
Carrie M. Lane, More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn’t Working: ( professional organizing as a response to social dysfunction )
Brian Klaas, Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us: ( evo-psych diagnoses and some mild solutions )
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