vital functions
6 Sep 2026 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett... are a placeholder, because I have spent most of today fighting either The Cobnuts or The Apples, so here is proof of life & I will hopefully come back and edit this post tomorrow. <3
kaberett
some things!
5 Sep 2026 10:42 pmkaberettToday I have not made sage cobnut salted caramel (recipe courtesy of the National Trust but not alas online anywhere that I can tell), nor gone on to use it in a medlar sticky toffee pudding, but I have got a puck of medlar pulp out of the freezer and I have got a carrier bag containing 2.2kg of cobnuts husk and all down to a much smaller bowl containing approximately 640g of cobnuts in the shell. I theoretically require 300g of shelled cobnuts. I am at this stage in proceedings plagued by the nagging feeling that last time I bothered doing anything with cobnuts, Several Years Ago, I declared it fun as a one-off but far too much like work.
I have managed to run a full dehydrator of apple slices, though, and we have more negatively priced electrons tomorrow, so sticky toffee pudding is now a Tomorrow Job.
... as is another load of apples for dehydrating, and hopefully the second batch of fig jam, and ideally also a bunch of stewed apples.
Meanwhile this evening has included introducing A to The Man In Seat 61, or rather thinking "I should tell A to look at..." and then looking over to see A had already got there. Excellent! I thought, and commented more or less the foregoing.
... A had not previously been aware of this site -- it had merely come up high in the search results for a journey they're thinking of making. There now exist A Number of Open Tabs...
today's achievements have almost all involved food
3 Sep 2026 11:19 pmkaberettI have Gathered, inter alia:
- a 2kg bag of cobnuts (still VERY MUCH in their husks so usable weight is going to be... less), destined for some combination of sage & cobnut salted caramel (to go with medlar sticky toffee pudding)/blackberry and cobnut jam/an Ottolenghi courgette and cobnut salad (made with allotment squash but not alas my own basil)
- cream, to make said caramel
- not quite as much flour as I wanted (1.5kg each of wholemeal and white bread flour; 1kg spelt) because the shop was inexplicably out of 1.5kg bags of flour
- some ... fascinating ... discounted-because-no-one-had-bought-them Quorn Protein Snacks, which we turn out to not actually hate
I have also: strained the yoghurt (slightly more than I intended but nobody is exactly going to object); converted the resultant whey into two proto-loaves of bread (one wholemeal fig & pumpkin seed & spelt, one mostly-white poppy & caraway) to be baked tomorrow morning while our energy supplier will pay us to wiggle electrons; Had Therapy; spent time with The Child. Sleep now? Sleep now.
kaberettAssociative, not causative, but I am abruptly feeling rather more hopeful about the way I think the migraine's been Worse over the past few months; I'd been quietly concerned that maybe it was just... continuing... to escalate... but maybe there is an addressable Issue after all!
(I've not been managing to keep a headache diary, or indeed keeping up with much in my notebook. I have today successfully taking steps towards unfucking said situation and am feeling much better. Fingers crossed it sticks.)
This one feels bigger than other ones, for some reason. - Late August 02026
30 Aug 2026 09:40 pmsilveradeptWe begin with something moderately urgent - opt-out of having your Twitch streams and content used to train a model. Because even when confronted with the truth, and admitting they know the truth, that nobody would opt-in to such a feature, they turned it on anyway and made it opt-out instead. (And they can get away with it because walled gardens, network effects, being the only large player in the sphere, etc. The kind of thing that should trigger trustbusters to come by and say hello and suggest that monopolism is bad.)
Also, patch your Macs, some vulnerabilities were discovered and exploited to install crypto miners on affected machines.
Laws have consequences, and legislators in Idaho and everywhere else that's trying to stuff trans people, and especially trans kids, back in the closet have decided that the death of children is an acceptable consequence. And every legislator who votes for such legislation and says it is for protecting children is a liar and a murderer. The article is a description of how laws and their effects drove a child to taking her own life, and how a lawsuit challenging that law then had to dismiss itself because the plaintiffs were all either graduated, and therefore no longer subject to the policies, or dead, and thus also no subject to the policies any more.
The people who wish to work this great evil are sufficiently convinced of the rightness of their cause and the approval of whatever power they appeal to that they are entirely open about the reasons for their persecution and discrimination, and they expect the people around them will not care, because it's not them, or secretly approve and will let them be the executors of the evil they have in their own hearts.
They don't always let their evil just sit there in the daylight, though, and dare us not to look. Sometimes they decide to manufacture a controversy or stage publicity stunts so that they can keep their views in circulation, and do so despite a complete lack of involvement by anyone at all they're making the controversy supposedly about. A cis woman expressed her opinion about trans women playing in her sports league, and that managed to metastasize, thanks to outrage machines and those looking to use that opportunity to express their own opinions, all the way into a stunt where two men who played in the men's basketball league decided they could maliciously declare themselves women and play in the women's league, trying to force the league into some form of action…despite there not being any trans woman wanting to play in the league at all, and no trans women complaining they are barred from the league, either. Everybody watches women's sports, yeah, but this seems like the purest form of baiting, to try and make a sports league either agree with them, which they can use, or disagree with them, which they can also use. I suspect the W was waiting until someone wanted to play who might have an eligibility question before they were going to put down their definitions of eligibility, which is fairly smart, given how so many other systems in place turn out to be inadequate, flawed, or otherwise produce the problem of classifying someone as ineligible that absolutely is eligible. Because it's damn near impossible to define what a man or a woman is using any kind of physical characteristic or trait that won't exclude people who should be in that category, based on that trait. Not that it's stopped some of those same outrage manufacturers from insinuating-to-saying that women athletes with athletic builds are actually men, and isn't it convenient how so much of that is directed at women of color or women whose builds are not the kind of feminine they expect to define womanliness?
Laws have consequences, and legislators in Arkansas and everywhere who pass bans on medical care for women because they want to champion themselves as advocates for life have decided that the death of pregnant women from preventable causes is an acceptable consequence. And every legislator who votes for such legislation and says it is for protecting children is a liar and a murderer. This article is one of many descriptions of women who are having miscarriages, but who cannot receive life-saving treatment, the standard of care, for managing the situation, because they live in states that have passed total abortion bans in the wake of the federal standard being shredded by the conservatives on the Supreme Court of the United States. The hospital administrators in question are too cowardly to provide care, because they feel the risk that they will be prosecuted and bankrupted from the fines and the lawyer fees. The doctors are more than ready to provide the necessary care, but they cannot go forward.
( I had to put a cut somewhere, okay? )
Last out for tonight, Kool Herc was DJ for a house party 53 years ago, and from that house party came what we now know of as hip-hop. Admittedly, a lot of my exposure is through the music side, with a little bit of the breaking side. And my fondness for pithy statements means I'll keep in mind "Guns, bitches, and bling were never part of the Four Elements, and never will be." as a good measuring stick for how well things might be going for any particular person who wants to be part of hip-hop.
On attempting a more formal definition of spite, to show how it is very much alive in art, if rarely ever acknowledged.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man turns out to be a winning idea for New Yorkers (and the rest of the country) specifically because of his human-ness and his New York-ness.
Coming back from at least six months spent in microgravity requires more than just physical readjustments to the Earth, but also a reintegration process that brings an astronaut back into life on the outside. I wonder if the astronaut cohort, the prison cohort, the inpatient psychiatric services cohort, and the military cohort should be trading notes about reintegration processes and the physical and psychological things they observe about those who spend significant portions of time away from the society around them and then have to come back to it, with some expectation that they find their footing and reintegrate both smoothly and quickly.
And sometimes you can understand yourself and your feelings better if you think of yourself as a character that you're trying to keep in a good mood and give tasks to.
(Materials viaadrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
Also, patch your Macs, some vulnerabilities were discovered and exploited to install crypto miners on affected machines.
Laws have consequences, and legislators in Idaho and everywhere else that's trying to stuff trans people, and especially trans kids, back in the closet have decided that the death of children is an acceptable consequence. And every legislator who votes for such legislation and says it is for protecting children is a liar and a murderer. The article is a description of how laws and their effects drove a child to taking her own life, and how a lawsuit challenging that law then had to dismiss itself because the plaintiffs were all either graduated, and therefore no longer subject to the policies, or dead, and thus also no subject to the policies any more.
The people who wish to work this great evil are sufficiently convinced of the rightness of their cause and the approval of whatever power they appeal to that they are entirely open about the reasons for their persecution and discrimination, and they expect the people around them will not care, because it's not them, or secretly approve and will let them be the executors of the evil they have in their own hearts.
They don't always let their evil just sit there in the daylight, though, and dare us not to look. Sometimes they decide to manufacture a controversy or stage publicity stunts so that they can keep their views in circulation, and do so despite a complete lack of involvement by anyone at all they're making the controversy supposedly about. A cis woman expressed her opinion about trans women playing in her sports league, and that managed to metastasize, thanks to outrage machines and those looking to use that opportunity to express their own opinions, all the way into a stunt where two men who played in the men's basketball league decided they could maliciously declare themselves women and play in the women's league, trying to force the league into some form of action…despite there not being any trans woman wanting to play in the league at all, and no trans women complaining they are barred from the league, either. Everybody watches women's sports, yeah, but this seems like the purest form of baiting, to try and make a sports league either agree with them, which they can use, or disagree with them, which they can also use. I suspect the W was waiting until someone wanted to play who might have an eligibility question before they were going to put down their definitions of eligibility, which is fairly smart, given how so many other systems in place turn out to be inadequate, flawed, or otherwise produce the problem of classifying someone as ineligible that absolutely is eligible. Because it's damn near impossible to define what a man or a woman is using any kind of physical characteristic or trait that won't exclude people who should be in that category, based on that trait. Not that it's stopped some of those same outrage manufacturers from insinuating-to-saying that women athletes with athletic builds are actually men, and isn't it convenient how so much of that is directed at women of color or women whose builds are not the kind of feminine they expect to define womanliness?
Laws have consequences, and legislators in Arkansas and everywhere who pass bans on medical care for women because they want to champion themselves as advocates for life have decided that the death of pregnant women from preventable causes is an acceptable consequence. And every legislator who votes for such legislation and says it is for protecting children is a liar and a murderer. This article is one of many descriptions of women who are having miscarriages, but who cannot receive life-saving treatment, the standard of care, for managing the situation, because they live in states that have passed total abortion bans in the wake of the federal standard being shredded by the conservatives on the Supreme Court of the United States. The hospital administrators in question are too cowardly to provide care, because they feel the risk that they will be prosecuted and bankrupted from the fines and the lawyer fees. The doctors are more than ready to provide the necessary care, but they cannot go forward.
( I had to put a cut somewhere, okay? )
Last out for tonight, Kool Herc was DJ for a house party 53 years ago, and from that house party came what we now know of as hip-hop. Admittedly, a lot of my exposure is through the music side, with a little bit of the breaking side. And my fondness for pithy statements means I'll keep in mind "Guns, bitches, and bling were never part of the Four Elements, and never will be." as a good measuring stick for how well things might be going for any particular person who wants to be part of hip-hop.
On attempting a more formal definition of spite, to show how it is very much alive in art, if rarely ever acknowledged.
Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man turns out to be a winning idea for New Yorkers (and the rest of the country) specifically because of his human-ness and his New York-ness.
Coming back from at least six months spent in microgravity requires more than just physical readjustments to the Earth, but also a reintegration process that brings an astronaut back into life on the outside. I wonder if the astronaut cohort, the prison cohort, the inpatient psychiatric services cohort, and the military cohort should be trading notes about reintegration processes and the physical and psychological things they observe about those who spend significant portions of time away from the society around them and then have to come back to it, with some expectation that they find their footing and reintegrate both smoothly and quickly.
And sometimes you can understand yourself and your feelings better if you think of yourself as a character that you're trying to keep in a good mood and give tasks to.
(Materials via
adrian_turtle, azurelunatic, boxofdelights, cmcmck, conuly, cosmolinguist, elf, finch, firecat, jadelennox, jenett, jjhunter, kaberett, lilysea, oursin, rydra_wong, snowynight, sonia, the_future_modernes, thewayne, umadoshi, vass, the meta_warehouse community, little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)
vital functions
30 Aug 2026 11:21 pmkaberettCelebrating. RAIN. MULTIPLE PROPER DAYS OF IT.
Reading. I have given up on Weathering (Ruth Allen), in that I had struggled through only a little of the first post-introduction chapter when it autoreturned to the library a second time, and by this point I'd taken several screenshots to send to people for yelling purposes. ("To put therapy in a replicable, familiar, closed box of a closed room, in a clinical environment, is to say an individual thing got broken and now must be shut away to get fixed ... Therapy has no echo in nature when you see it behind closed walls, sealed in to medicalised or clinical environments, disconnected from the messy edges of the encroaching world"!!! THE COCOON METAPHOR IS STARING YOU IN THE FACE.) It has had its second chance; I think alas it is not for me.
HOWEVER. I am back on my EatYourBooks indexing bullshit! And have thus read Jams with a Twist (Kylee Newton, National Trust), which I will be keeping, at least for now; and I am most of the way through Notes from the Jam Cupboard (Mary Tregellas), which I will ALSO be keeping, because in addition to the fine Brythonic surname she............. has a Mitteleuropäische family history of the form "her mother moved to Devon from Czechslovakia, For Love", followed by spending a fair bit of time in Austria as an adult, and I am finding her very soothing company. Not quite finished this one (I have yet to actually read the final chapter on breads), but aaaaalmost! Almost. I swear the next book will be one I am going to actually give back to the charity shop--
And meanwhile, in another part of the forest, I have also made a start (thank you the library) on Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (Laura Spinney). I have thus far greatly enjoyed the introduction and a good chunk of the first chapter (on Proto-Indo-European's own parent language); there are many excellent Language Facts and also many excellent facts that are not directly about language; I am Having A Good Time and Do Recommend.
Listening. We've wrangled a whole pile of potions for the upcoming last event of the year! We have therefore also listened to a bunch more Hidden Almanac! We're just edging into summer 2017. Georgina is being Threatened but has not yet Arrived...
Playing. More Color Bus Trip, and also Tukoni: Forest Keepers!!! Or at least our first run through; there are 9 Steam Achievements we have not yet Achieved so we will be doing at least one more in the relatively near future, and it is just as soothing and delightful as the prologue and does a really good job of incorporating but largely not repeating the material from the prologue. V v v happy about this.
Cooking. The veg box brought us multicoloured beetroot, so, a variant on the caramelised onion and butternut squash tart, with rings of sliced beetroot in Colours Various and also rosemary in the custard. Since I was making pastry I made a double batch and turned the other half into approximately apricot-pistachio squares, with some figs in addition to apricots; this time I did double the frangipane, or rather all of its ingredients except the sugar, and this was very satisfactory. Will attempt to remember to do again in future. (Hi, future Alex who is looking for notes on this topic!)
I have also made Fig Soup, by which I mean Approximately Fig Jam But I'm Working Myself Up To Boiling It Up Some More. Alas I do not think half sugar to the weight of fig is sufficient for my textural purposes so plausibly I will just... empty everything back into the pan and add... another kilo of sugar. (And then I desperately need to repeat the process with the rest of the figs...)
Eating. FIGS. Strawberries. More of my mother's beans. A has been making akuri. Generally it is a season of abundance and feasting that I am greatly enjoying.
Making & mending. Iiiiii need to actually tie off the ends for patch #1 and move on to patch #2.
Growing. DID I MENTION THE RAIN.
I have furthermore sown some kohlrabi and some fennel. We Shall See.
How Are You? (in Haiku)
30 Aug 2026 06:10 amjjhunterPick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.
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Signal-boosting much appreciated!
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Signal-boosting much appreciated!