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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!

farsidecomics_feed

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/0

“I’m worried about Frank these days. … It seems he just can’t unwind.”

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/0

farsidecomics_feed

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/1

“Sally, this is Larry and his brother, Eddie. ... Larry used to be an only child until the gardener hacked him in half.”

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/1

farsidecomics_feed

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/2

“Now this is our dead beetle room, and some of these babies are 50 times an ant’s body weight. … ’Course, we’ll want to start you out on dried ladybugs.”

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/2

farsidecomics_feed

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/3

“Oh, I see! You return covered with blond feathers, and I’m supposed to believe you crossed the road just to get to the other side?”

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/3

farsidecomics_feed

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/4

“This ain’t gonna look good on our report, Leroy.”

https://www.thefarside.com/2025/11/25/4

spikedluv

I got up early today. Or rather, on time. I forgot that we didn’t have to get up at 5am today, so I got up a few minutes ahead of the non-existent alarm to go to the bathroom and feed the cat, then I was like, crap! By then my brain was working enough that I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep, so I stayed up.

I hit Walmart and Agway while I was downtown, then later Stewart’s on the way home from mom’s. I also stopped at the vet’s to get Ti’s special dog food and the library to pick up a book.

I drove mom to her treatment, hand-washed dishes, went for a couple walks with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, scooped kitty litter, and showered. Last night’s roast chicken dinner was so good (we both loved it) that we had leftovers for supper tonight.

I read more fanfic and watched Tracker. Dr. Pol was my background tv in the evening.

Temps started out at 36.3(F) and reached 45.3. There was some sun in the afternoon, but it was still cool.

Mom Update:

Mom was not feeling well today. ( more back here )

calimac

Ursula K. Le Guin, A Larger Reality, edited by Conner Bouchard-Roberts (Winter Texts, 2025), 339 p.

"A Larger Reality" is the title of an exhibit on UKL's life and work going on right now at the Oregon Contemporary Museum in Portland. Since I can't get there, I ordered this book, advertised as "the companion volume for the show," hoping that it would be the usual museum catalog of the exhibit.

It isn't. It's an anthology of UKL's writings, all previously published, with some interspersed essays by others, most of them also previously published though unseen by me. There are also some illustrations by UKL, possibly not previously published.

The contents include several stories - "The Day Before the Revolution" and "On the High Marsh" among them - some essays including "Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown," and three tranches of poetry from different spans of years. The essays by others include Harold Bloom's introduction to the Library of America edition of UKL's collected poetry, in which Bloom calls Yeats her major influence and quotes, in their entirety, some poems also included in the poetry sections of this book, so why didn't the editor make a different selection?

David Naimon also contributes a more impressionistic, less academic essay on Le Guin's poetry, and adrienne maree brown, who apparently spells it that way, includes in her essay a UKL letter to an unnamed local paper expressing her distress at the felling of a tree near her house - unmentioned in the commentary, this clearly is what's also commemorated in "The Aching Air," which I consider UKL's finest poem but which is not in this book.

Nisi Shawl writes about the story "Solitude," which story is also included, and the most interesting and useful essay is Mary Anne Mohanraj's on UKL rethinking her own work and publicly modifying her views when they've changed.

A list of UKL's other works includes six other "Winter Texts Collections," so this is evidently not this small press's first venture into repackaging Le Guin. It's a nice memento, and a convenient way to dip into some of her less-acclaimed work, but it's not what I was hoping for and not even an inadequate substitute for visiting the exhibit.

irregular_comic_rss3_feed

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2959.html

In case it's not clear, Gollum's speech bubble is not the same colour as Draak's. I wouldn't want anyone to get any strange ideas about Gollum being the same character as anyone else.

2025-11-25 Rerun commentary: In hindsight, this would have been better if there was also a speech bubble from Draak going "Zzzz..." in the final panel. But I'm not sure how many syllables "Zzzz..." is.

https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2959.html

ysabetwordsmith

Rats are snatching bats out of the air and eating them

Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) figured out how to get inside the kiosk and climb up to the bats’ landing platform at the entrance, using a curtain the researchers placed inside the kiosk for filming purposes. From August to October 2020, cameras captured the rodents — standing on their hind legs and using their tail to balance — grabbing bats mid-flight, killing them with a bite and dragging the carcasses away. The rats also caught bats as they landed on the platform.

Rats, especially brown rats, can be vicious little predators. It will be interesting to see if A) rats evolve further in predatory directions and B) bats learn to avoid them. Hats off to Dougal Dixon, you called it dude.

Note from birdhouse architecture: don't create a platform or perch near an entry hole that predators can stand on. Fliers can typically enter without it. Probably the rats can't climb upside down, but you might want to check that.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Thanks to a donation from

fuzzyred, there are 31 new verses in "An Inkling of Things to Come." As the worldbuilding class discusses setting, Shiv tries to figure out what a genre is.

Current Mood: busy

sonia

mrissa posted about her contributions to The Vertigo Project, a generous handful of poems and stories (and journal prompts, and more).

I especially loved the last two stories:

She Wavers But She Does Not Weaken (story), when the waves hit you even on dry land, it's good to have someone who's willing to swim against the current for you

The Torn Map (story), rewriting the pieces of the former world into something new

sonia

The Right to Say "No" by Audrey Watters. A rant about AI, eugenics, and Epstein (no details).

There is a real rot at the core of many of our institutions – and certainly at the core of those powerful players operating within and adjacent to them. "Artificial intelligence" emerges from this rot. It cannot be a bulwark against it.

Why Science’s press team won’t be using AI to write releases anytime soon by Emily Underwood at The Last Word On Nothing.

Every time a translator takes a book and puts it in their own words, they are interpreting the material slightly differently. What we found was that ChatGPT Plus couldn’t do that. It could regurgitate or transcribe, but it couldn’t achieve the nuance to count as its own interpretation of a study.

I think that’s because ChatGPT Plus isn’t in society — it doesn’t interact with the world. It’s predictive, but it’s not distilling or conceptualizing what matters most to a human audience, or the value that we place in narratives that are ingrained in our society. [...]

Now, after this experiment, we’re very against using it. After a year of data, we know it can’t meet our standards. If we ever did plan to use it, we’d have to implement super rigorous fact-checking, because we don’t want to lose reporters’ trust.

The AI Invasion of Knitting and Crochet by Jonathan Bailey in Plagiarism Today.

Creating a pattern requires considering the entire work; each step has to fit with and work with all the others. Blindly selecting the next step without that consideration will, more often than not, fail. This is especially true since AI can’t “test” the pattern after writing it, which is a big part of what humans do. [...]

However, the best and simplest advice is to buy from patternmakers that you trust. If you know someone who is a human making high-quality patterns, turn to them first. Rewarding known human creators rather than chasing the cheapest pattern is the best way to avoid buying AI slop.

ysabetwordsmith

This poem is spillover from the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Aroace" square in my 6-2-25 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These are the notes for "Rigor, Innovation, Accessibility, and Accountability."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem is spillover from the May 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from

fuzzyred and

dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Power(ful)" square in my 5-1-24 card for the Superpower Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

sweetsorcery

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: clumsy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the June 4, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from

mama_kestrel. It also fills the "Nonbinary / Intersex" square in my 6-1-24 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with

fuzzyred and

librarygeek. It belongs to the Finn Family thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

hannah

In folding laundry, I found I'd lost a wash cloth. In going down to the laundry room to check, I found the woman who only had bills, no quarters, hadn't seen it either. In talking her through my decision making process and to not waste an elevator trip, I take her up to my apartment with me to trade her a roll of quarters for the appropriate amount in small bills.

In checking what I'd already put away, I found the missing wash cloth.

One of those strings of events where I can't find it in myself to be upset about the inciting inconvenience.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: nothing now

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収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

cheers, love - the cavalry's queer!

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Just one thing: 25 November 2025

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Interesting Links for 25-11-2025

The Day in Spikedluv (Monday, Nov 24)

more posthumous Le Guin

Irregular Webcomic! #2959 Rerun

Wildlife

New verses in "An Inkling of Things to Come"

Stories! The Vertigo Project

Links: Anti-AI

Poem: "Preparing Every Nook and Cranny"

Notes for "Rigor, Innovation, Accessibility, and Accountability"

Poem: "Rigor, Innovation, Accessibility, and Accountability"

How do I do it?

Poem: "To Form a New Idea"

Narrative.

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November 2025

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