Did some work

Nov. 25th, 2025 10:23 pm
silver_chipmunk: (Default)
[personal profile] silver_chipmunk
Despite the face that due to the heat being on all the time, it's hotter than hell in here. I got some stuff done.

Got up at 10 and had breakfast and coffee. Then I swept and mopped the living room floor. I only had Pine Sol to use so I shut Oreo in the bedroom til it was dry, because that stuff is poisonous.

I ordered Middle Brother's Star Wars calendar from Barnes and Noble. More expensive than Amazon, and shipping costs, but I didn't use the Evil Empire.

I managed to get the kitchen window and one of the living room windows open a small distance so it's a little cooler in here. I can't open them wide cause I have no screens in the windows to keep Oreo from getting out. But this is better than nothing.

Then I took the plastic recycling out and, despite that it was raining, walked around the block.

After that I was done, and I just killed time, having the leftover chicken I brought home from [personal profile] mashfanficchick's, and puttering on the computer, til it was 7:00 and time to Team the FWiB. There were technical difficulties from both his end and mine, so it took us a long time to connect, but finally we did.

Then at 8:00 I tried to Zoom my Al-anon meeting. Again, serious technical issues, I turned over the meeting to S to run cause I kept either freezing up or getting kicked out of Zoom. It was a pretty good meeting though, But M wasn't there.

Then I had a little bit to eat, and went into the bedroom and lay down. I called the Kid and she actually answered. She is going to call on Thanksgiving when she is ready to go to the diner and wew will leave then, so we shouldn't have to wait there.

At 10:00 I got up and fed the pets, Christie ate, which makes me very happy. Then I cleaned the kitty litter pan, but obviously didn't take the dirty litter out yet. I'll do that just before I go to get Middle Brother tomorrow.

Then I started here. And that's all.

Gratitude List:

1. The FWiB.

2. Clean living room floor.

3. Open windows making it cooler.

4. My meetings and the people there, particularly S.

5. My box fan and the little fan in the bedroom.

6. Almost Thanksgiving.

This week on FilkCast

Nov. 25th, 2025 07:14 pm
ericcoleman: (Default)
[personal profile] ericcoleman
Phil Mills, Windbourne, Rhodri James, Rhiannon's Lark, Bill Maraschiello, Wyld Dandelyon, Char Mackay, Andrea Dale, Eli Bar-Yahalom, The Unusual Suspects, Boogie Knights, Valentine Wolfe, W Scott Snyder

Available on iTunes, Google Play and most other places you can get podcasts. We can be heard Wednesday at 6am and 9pm Central on scifi.radio.

filkcast.blogspot.com

Delights from Japan

Nov. 25th, 2025 04:17 pm
lovelyangel: Sana Fridge Interview Teaser (Sana Fridge)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Yesterday I was shopping in the Nike Company Store, as I wanted to check out the new Nike Pegasus Premium shoes, and I was surprised by some music that started coming over the overhead sound system.

I was thinking that’s TWICE! And a recent song... maybe “Strategy”? Then, a moment later... ah, no! It’s “Do not touch” by MISAMO! Amazing! I could never have imagined a MISAMO song being played in a store in the United States.

(Admittedly, Nike works hard to keep up with current trends, especially in music. Their store music is on point, moreso than most places. Vibes are pretty important in sales.)

Last Friday, MISAMO announced their first full album, Play, would be released on February 4, 2026. MISAMO continues to up their momentum (somehow, in spite of being in the middle of a TWICE World Tour).

Tangentially related, today CDJapan notified me of the reissue of the Sound Collection of Gunbuster. I have the first two Gunbuster CD releases, but I don’t have this third release. The content of this 3-disc set has a big overlap with the first two CDs, but there is some material which is on neither. I was eager to place the preorder... but...

I realized the release date for the Gunbuster CD set, January 28, 2026 – just a few days before the MISAMO album release. The MISAMO Play album is not yet available for preorder. If I wait until it is, I can order the Gunbuster and MISAMO releases at the same time, and get them in a single shipment (coincidentally in time for Angel’s Month). I am now waiting... waiting...

Book list for Rhincodons

Nov. 25th, 2025 01:55 pm
lb_lee: A colored pencil drawing of Raige's freckled hand holding a hot pink paperback entitled the Princess and Her Monster (book)
[personal profile] lb_lee
Everyone ignore this; this is a book list for Rhincodons whose email keeps bouncing me.

Read more... )
bluerosekatie: 3D render of a Bionicle character wearing a purple mask. (Default)
[personal profile] bluerosekatie posting in [community profile] smallfandomfest
Title: Animate Objects
Author: bluerosekatie
Fandom: Tron (movies)
Pairing/Characters: Gridbug/Bit
Rating/Category: Gen, Other (genderless creature shipping)
Prompt: Tron (movies), Gridbug/Bit, Animate Objects
Spoilers: Set post-Tron (1982) but nothing major
Summary: A bit runs into a gridbug, and an unlikely romance blossoms.
Notes/Warnings: Fic is archive-locked to avoid AI scraping.

Read it on Ao3 here!

Survivalism PSA and writing report

Nov. 25th, 2025 04:33 pm
rolanni: (Default)
[personal profile] rolanni

PSA RE: (1) Survivialism/Survivalist (2) Cancer Survivorship Program

. . . on account of I'm tired of answering the question "What is a Survivalist?"

Those who have been with me for a little while know that back in 2020, I was diagnosed with cancer and had my left breast removed. Just about a month ago, after about 5.5 years, my surgeon declared me "cancer free," and cut me loose from her care.

This makes me a Cancer Survivor (also, apparently, "a warrior"; make of that what you will).

At the Lafayette Cancer Center in Brewer, Maine, when one has achieved 5 years cancer-free, one is given over to the Survivorship Program, which files under Oncology.

The head of the Survivorship program has been called in my hearing the "Survivalist." At the Lafayette Cancer Center, this person is a Certified Nurse Practitioner; there is also a Nurse Navigator attached to the program, and of course the backing of the entire Oncology Department.

The mission of the Survivorship Program is to provide education and support to help cancer survivors maximize their health and quality of life after having had cancer and treatment for cancer. The program is individualized, and covers such things as a yearly examination -- physical, mental, and emotional -- referrals to other specialists sometimes needed by surviving warriors, such as psychiatrists or nutritionists; connections to social services, and support groups. Advice about diet, exercise, and all those other tiresome things is available.

The Survivorship Program also keeps track of my mammograms and orders the next one for me; and is just another cord in what is, in Central and Northern Maine, at least, a Very Thin social health network.

You now know everything I know about Survivalists, Survivorship, and Survivalism.

Here ends your PSA. We now return you to your irregularly scheduled flights of fancy.
#
Managed to trim +/- 2,000 words from a section of the WIP which probably needs to lose some more words. There's an "obvious" bit that I can rip out that will lose me another 500 words, but I'm ... reluctant to do that. It's more than I just like the bit (though I do, and "kill your darlings" is not Eternal Wisdom, so nobody go there, 'k?), so the bit gets to stay.

For Now.

Did a little bit of house straightening this afternoon and will shortly be heading out in the Stygian Darkness of 4:30 pm to go to needlework.

Tomorrow will be writing in the morning, some more straightening of the house, and a bit of playing with glass.

I'll say goodnight for now, and see y'all tomorrow.

Stay safe.

Here, have a picture of Rookie overseeing my shoddy impersonation of a working writer:


Politics

Nov. 25th, 2025 02:03 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
To restore trust in government, this Belgian town opened a lottery that elects 30 random citizens to power. It's working.

In 2019, Ostbelgien, a town in Belgium with about 80,000 residents, took a gamble on a new approach to governing: The city’s parliament voted to establish a permanent Citizens’ Council and Assembly, giving randomly-selected citizens the power to make decisions.


Gosh, I never expected to see anything like that on Earth. It's something done on the Common Ground colony in my science fiction. They have elected seats too.  Now I have to wonder if politicians will start keeping fish to demonstrate their grasp of ecology.

Birdfeeding

Nov. 25th, 2025 01:59 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy and cool.  It rained again last night.

I fed the birds.  I haven't seen any activity today.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/25/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 11/25/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 11/25/25 -- I started chopping down the pile of berry canes to put in the firepit, and filled one trolley.  There is still a lot left.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

emotional support coding

Nov. 25th, 2025 01:43 pm
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Lee Brodie's Starting FORTH, on the Forth programming language; m5stack Cardputer v.1.1 running ryu10's M5CardForth (Github)

I have Forth (programming language - see e.g. Leo Brodie's Starting Forth) running on this smol M5stack Cardputer v.1.1 (ESP32-S3) courtesy of ryu10's M5CardForth, which is also faster than my spending the next decade teaching myself ESP32-S3 assembler. :)

Next step: write a very smol choose-your-own-adventure-style text adventure in Forth.

Next step after that: ???

Next step after that: Considering porting either the Shuos Academy text adventure WIP [1] or Winterstrike (originally written for Failbetter Games for StoryNexus, which will be sunsetted by Jan 2026) to M5CardForth for the CardPuter because I am a TROLL. It could be a dumbass household game experience. :) :)

Heck, I could port some version of turnabout's fair prey or The Amiable Planet (Twine) to this! I love the thought of making TINY parser IF / text adventures for this smol device.

(All of these are my games. I give myself permission?!)

[1] I was writing/coding this for Choice of Games but we mutually agreed to cancel the contract because I was flooded out that year and it was no longer a doable workload alongside...finding new housing etc. I still have like 60% of the codebase already written in ChoiceScript and outline, though! I'd have to refactor but hell, I'd have to refactor anything. I can pretend it's pseudocode. :)

(I need a break from the current schoolwork, what can I say.)

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Nov. 25th, 2025 11:16 am
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
A post-Earth society ruled by giant corporations called Concerns whose only goal is to spread vat-grown wage slaves out across the galaxy to exploit resources for profit.

A frozen moon shrouded in eternal darkness and heavy gravity populated by sightless creatures who evolved to live in both.

Like many of Tchaikovsky's novels, this is a story told from two perspectives: the humans whose pod has crashed on a hostile alien planet they can barely make sense of, and the locals who encounter a seemingly idiotic Stranger (a "savant clown beast") that bumbles around, communicates in grunts, and doesn't know enough to come out of the ammonia-methane rain.

The world building and the alien design are, of course, meticulous. The interaction and cobbled together understanding between the humans and the aliens was my favorite part because only the reader knows the full story. Unfortunately the humans, in their duress, aren't all that interesting. The middle sections that focus on them in their pod feel the weakest and, because of that, overlong, but the story picks up again in the last third.

I spent most of the middle in mild agony, thinking there was only one way this story could end, but then I remembered this is Adrian Tchaikovsky, and he doesn't write those kind of stories.

Contains: blood, violence, threat of genocide; no work-life balance.

TV Tuesday: Ha, ha?

Nov. 25th, 2025 12:40 pm
yourlibrarian: FunnyXander-mangofandango (BUF-FunnyXander-mangofandango)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] tv_talk

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk



Comedic trends have come and gone, but some have changed how comedy is done. Do you have any thoughts about which comedy shows might have been particularly influential?

Or which comedies have influenced your own sense of humor?
flamingsword: a shadow demon child says, "YAY I'M HELPING!" (YAY! I'M HELPING!)
[personal profile] flamingsword
H’okay, so: when I was 7, I had a daydream that when I grew up I was going to have a boyfriend who was already married to someone else, so that nobody would have to rely on me to be a functional human being and I would have people to be good to who weren’t putting all those needs on me that ““normal”” people have that I didn’t understand. And right now I do basically have that! And it’s great! But also it is of course much more complicated, not being a child’s fantasy of what adult life will be like.

I am well adjusted to this situation, in that it provides a variety of experiences so I stay interested and don’t get bored and thus divested; it means that even when people have needs I can’t meet I don’t get left behind because they can probably get that need met with one of my metamours.

In the current polycule, most of the discussions happen with ~5 or less of us at a time because lining up every schedule among 12+ busy adults is An Herculean Task. Like, cleaning the Augean Stables level task. It reminds me of trying to get a D&D group together: you need to have software that can handle people’s schedules to even get to the negotiating stage - even if you’re just joining into an already-established polycule. If you didn’t have an app for that, you would need one person with fully-operational executive function in your polycule, just to handle scheduling which … if one of my metamours has that, let’s just say I’ve never met them.

So instead, we have things like Google’s Calendar and Jamboard applications for getting together or for collaborative idea generation for non-simultaneous communication when getting together is an unsolvable problem.

Nota Bene: Google apps are being scraped for AI training data, and so you should be somewhat careful about putting sensitive information in them. Other apps are available:
https://www.weelplanner.app/calendar-for-polyamory
https://www.lovepye.com/
https://write.ellipsus.com/
https://cryptpad.org/

Time for the deep questions:
• How do I make myself communicate things I’ve been burned before by expressing? Can I trust these specific people?
• How do I learn boundary-setting? Do we just try the most restricted limits first and then reevaluate every couple of months?
• I know the books all say to ensure the safety of the person with the most to fear. But how do we collectively navigate jealousy and insecurity in a polycule? How do we make sure everyone feels respected, safe, and seen?
• How can I tell if ethical nonmonogamy is for me? Was it this style of relating making me unhappy or was it that relationship specifically that was making me crazier?
• Do I need community engagement to get advice and second opinions? How do I do that without violating privacy boundaries?
• What do I want? What values about relationships do I have that dictate the ways I can comfortably relate? What are my deal-breakers?

Once you, as a collective, have ideas about answers to most of these questions, other stuff can be negotiated - except for people’s safety boundaries. Please don’t let people try to negotiate you out of your feelings of safety - it doesn’t work in the long term and will just breed anxiety and resentment.

White bird dreams of the aspen trees

Nov. 25th, 2025 08:48 am
rolanni: (Default)
[personal profile] rolanni

Tuesday. Chilly and dim. Trash and recycling at the curb.

Breakfast was cold pizza. A milestone. I had what I believe to be my first pizza since Steve died on Sunday night, post-interview. It would have been something we might have done. This being so, I had cold pizza for breakfast, also for the first time in more than a year. ... It was good. Pairs well with Scottish Morn tea.

Woke up this morning with a short story in my head, so I need to map that out before I hit the WIP.

I have finished writing the Holiday Letter; it is now cooling before I reread and (probably) revise. Firefly helped me find the cards, and then we all had to sit around and explain to Rook about cards, and let him sniff them. He got green glitter on his nose.

Still reading The Thursday Murder Club (yes, yes: slow reader). One of the things I'm especially enjoying is the acknowledgement that all of the club members had Done Stuff -- even a lot of stuff. They did not just manifest one day as Old People, their pasts either irrelevant or a blank.

And of course, it's wonderful to see them manipulate the "clueless and helpless old people" perception.

I'm a little scared of Elizabeth, though.

So! This evening is needlework. This morning is writing.

I'm gonna need more tea.

What's on your schedule today?

Today's blog post brought to you by David and Linda LaFlamme, "White Bird"


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