me_and | Reading

I really appreciate when authors of longer fics occasionally put a note in the author's notes at the end of a chapter saying it's a good break point if you're binge-reading. Because yes, sometimes I do find it hard to stop, and it helps to have the author say that the next few chapters are intense and flow closely and you might prefer to pause before them rather than in the middle of them.

kaberett

Between one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.

... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.

It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.

And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.

There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.

Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.

davidgillon

I had one of those login challenges: someone in X is trying to log into your account, if it's you enter the code we just sent.

I'm used to X being well outside the local area, but the latest one sets a new record. Rather than Kent it was "someone in East Kilbride", so outskirts of Glasgow and only 435 miles out!

Mood: Boggle
Location: No, not there

kaberett

Reading. Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie: finished the Radch stories; on to The World Of The Raven Tower!

The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman: in progress; not yet Cross with it but also not yet Impressed by it.

More Dreamwidth catchup.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac!

Eating. SO many tomatoes.

Exploring. Poked around Preston a very little!

Growing. ... SO many tomatoes. More watering system established at plot (so hopefully all the peppers will still be alive and well upon my return). Sowed some probably-past-it seeds.

Observing. A saw a deer on the drive up to Preston! A proper big one with antlers and all! We were very impressed.

Also the local owl Yell.

kaberett

Or at least "the other line I meant to highlight from the Wikipedia article":

There is increasing evidence that the smooth muscle that lines the airways becomes progressively more sensitive to changes that occur as a result of injury to the airways from dehydration.

I had only taken 700ml of water with me; I'd blithely assumed I'd be able to top up at the café and then had Too Much Social Anxiety to ask or even check whether they had a jug out, because that's a thing my brain is definitely Doing at the moment. ... and then on the way back I was desperately thirsty and stole most of A's water, and I am just personally finding it Very Interesting that the thing my body wanted me to do most was More Fluids.

kaberett

Have a Wikipedia link.

( Read more... )

kareila

A rustle in the kitchen woke me up around 4:30am, and I couldn't get back to sleep. Upon emerging from the bedroom, I heard voices upstairs, which meant both kids were awake. So I went to investigate, and found them playing a DS game.

I mentioned something to the effect of being glad that they could still play their old video games, and Will expressed interest in revisiting some of the CD-ROM games that they played on the ancient iMac when they were little. That machine is buried downstairs in the office closet, but its box of games was nearby, so we looked through that.

Will then asked where the Myst CD was, and I said that I had moved it back into my box of PC games when we were packing. So I opened up that box, and the boys boggled over its contents. I told them that most of those games would only be playable on my old Windows 95 laptop, or in emulation.

Then I realized that the aforementioned Windows 95 laptop was right there, so I got it out and plugged it in. The hinge can't support the screen any more, but otherwise it still works.

And that's how I ended up playing the original version of You Don't Know Jack with my oldest kid, who wasn't even born when it was released. But it held up surprisingly well! And we were pretty evenly matched.

I didn't find much left on there in the way of personal documents, apart from a copy of the release notes for the final version of the ChaoticMUX source code, oddly enough.

Mood: nostalgic

kareila

A good friend of mine (who reads as much as I do, if not more) recently sent me his current top 5 list and when I tried to reciprocate, I had such a hard time narrowing my list down that this is what I came up with, in roughly reverse chronological order.

The Murderbot Diaries series (7 books to date) by Martha Wells (2017-2025)

The Ambit's Run series (2 books to date) by L.M. Sagas (2024)

The Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik (2020-2022)

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood (2020)

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone (2019)

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (2019)

The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club trilogy by Theodora Goss (2017-2019)

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (2019)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (2019)

All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (2016)

The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie (2013-2015)

The Old Man's War series (6 books to date) by John Scalzi (2005-2015)

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (2012)

The Martian by Andy Weir (2011)

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011)

Honorable mention: Seanan McGuire, T. Kingfisher, Becky Chambers, Jim Butcher, Katherine Addison

And yes, I know that there's a new Old Man's War book coming out later this month, but I have plenty of other books to read in the meantime!

Mood: thoughtful

kaberett

Have achieved More Event Prep: both the arrows catalogue updating (albeit not printing), and Folding All The Potions ~~that printed successfully~~.
Friend is watching Orphan Black for the first time. I am getting Yelling. It's DELIGHTFUL.
Yesterday, leaving the lower limbs class that has been prescribed in an attempt to reduce the risk of reinjuring my ankle again, I... turned my ankle. (This is not the good bit.) In more or less the same way I did in April, that was the motivation for the current round of physio, but whether it was the exercises having actually helped anything at all or the fact that I was wearing different (and more supportive) boots or just pure luck, while it's a bit sore it is not e.g. refusing to bear weight any time I don't pay adequately close attention to how I load it, so I'm counting that one as a win.
We forgot New Elephant Day on Monday (Sheldrick Wildlife Trust calendar) so instead had New Elephant Day today... AND IT AN ADORABLE BABY RHINO. 13/10, etc.
I am nearly at the point where I think I might be able to read the Wikipedia page on action potentials and derive meaning from it? I'm definitely slightly less confused about the cell biologist's definition of depolarization than I was even yesterday...

azurelunatic

It turns out that there is a timeout to the "let's test your equipment" for the browser-based telehealth appointments with my therapist. That timeout is 5 minutes. I had to switch to my phone, which is always vexatious for me.

Recently, Belovedest hauled Dad's old machine (dubbed Galumph, after the imaginary draft horse stallion Dad always talked about as his preferred riding beast) out to test it and see if it would run. (The massive monitor that came with it did not run, but I have found a suitably crusty-looking TV and other screen based appliance repair shop to attempt a repair.) Galumph ran. Belovedest looked at the specs. "That's a freaking RACK SERVER masquerading as a desktop!!!" they said, or words to that general effect.

So after we returned from the Michigan trip, I told Belovedest that it was time to take them up on their offer to rebox my poor old suffering machine.

I accidentally gave them the wrong figures for my C: and D: drives, so there was a bit of a flurry at first, but after they switched them, they were able to get to a login screen. I opened my Chrome / User Data / Default / Sessions folder, copied the most recent Tabs_* and Session_* files to a subfolder that I've named "Explicit Distrust" and launched my browser.

All 1,5XX tabs opened.

I've been trying to decrease them a little bit ever since, starting with my Main window, where the tabs tend to proliferate with abandon. (Trying to do this on the old hardware took forever, in addition to me getting distracted by shiny things.)

azurelunatic

United Healthcare sent me a letter, dated August 26, to tell me that they were taking away my primary care of record (not actually my real primary care) -- retroactively not covered since May 16. And assigning me to someone whose UHC profile shows that he only takes 0-17 year old patients.

"If you have any questions" I could call in. Where I learned that there were a lot of those letters sent out in error.

I requested that the UHC phone agent quote me with any creative profanity she'd like to attribute to me when conveying my displeasure to her supervisors.

I called the schedulers listed for my "new primary care", who instructed me to call UHC back to say that I wanted to keep my actual primary care doctor (who I've had since my former nurse-practitioner went into Infectious Diseases. And gave me the "MPI" number of my current doctor, and further instructions on how to make this happen. (But it can't continue happening until tomorrow, because both of them close down their phones at 5.)

Kudos to that agent, who was on the phone with me past her scheduled departure time. I thanked her for that.

havocthecat posting in

pokestop

I do kind of feel like a Kanto revisit is a low-effort Niantic activity, but at least they're bringing Keldeo back. I kind of like Keldo. And the quest is easy.

Though I won't be making 50 by October. And I've heard from the SilphRoad folks that the XP timed research track only gives 7mil XP so that won't make much of a dent in anything at this level.

I almost hope I have a reason to stop playing sometimes, except it does get me motivated to get out and walking.

kaberett

multiple colours of sliced tomatoes, prominently featuring some blue-black with red stars

(By "today's" I mean not "all of those harvested today, nor even yesterday" but rather "the tomato course with dinner".)

I really love the ridiculous stars on the tops of the Blue Fire.

azurelunatic

I picked a hotel based on price and reviews, and I think I picked poorly. Housekeeping was by request only, but they communicated that exactly bloody nowhere. The staff were universally friendly and courteous, but the lack of communication about that vital issue was overwhelming. I had to request housekeeping on Sunday twice, and the second time the person who arrived with fresh towels and to take away the garbage said something peculiar, about having us on the housekeeping list the next morning. I inquired, and learned that it is a lingering Covid safety policy. I would rather have universal masking as the lingering Covid safety policy.

Spicy mango frozen margaritas are delicious. We went to a local brewery, I think on Friday after the parish hall setup for the party. S & Z went for the frozen margarita "flight" and we passed the little goblets around for tasting. I tried the raspberry daiquiri (non frozen) and found it too sour. But I was able to enjoy the hot rim on the mango margarita, to the extent that I looked up recipes and got a bottle of Tajín after we got home. We played Sushi Go (except for Mums) and Wizard (except for me). There was no duckie in the big fishbowl drink as they were out. Alas. Hot Rim is our new band, and all the titles of the songs are double entendres, each followed by a B-side entitled "... Vociferously!"

Pips' partner H came for Saturday and Sunday, and it was very good to meet them. Belovedest has a sticker on their water bottle reading "I'm the enby sheep", and H is another such enby sheep. And Goth. We took to each other immediately.

The anniversary party was a hit. I even convinced Belovedest to dance with me to "I Will Survive", which I named as "our song" — not incorrect, but it's my song from nerd camp, and I believe their song by way of yeeting the evil ex, rather than our song together.
Cleanup on site was very swift, and we didn't actually have to stack all the chairs. Afterwards at home (the parental home), V and Mums put away leftovers and sorted the salad (cucumber and tomato separate from the lettuce) while the rest of the kid generation gossiped and played games and I carefully pulled the photos off the science fair board and sorted them back into their ziplock bags.

There was Sunday brunch, and I think we may not go there again — both of us and perhaps more of the party had mild food poisoning symptoms that afternoon. It didn't ruin our days fully, but I was glad to have my fully stocked medical kit on hand.

Squaredle is one of the family preoccupations. It's a NYT game that resembles Boggle, except it's a composed game rather than random, and the boards vary in size and shape. (One recent one was a 5x5 doughnut, with the middlemost letter missing.) There were also games of Boggle.

I did have the new folding power chair for the trip, which saved my strength for the important things. The acquisition is its own story, with the Bastard & Our Lady's own lucks. (This is a distinct entity from the folding scooter, which should arrive later this month.)

Crochet updates:
My #10 crochet cotton super Goth beaded choker is finished with the structural crochet work and needs the final outside beading. I'm waiting on more of the beads.
The self-striping granny triangle shawl has the first triangle complete, and I could wear it like that if I wanted to. Now that I know how it's sized, I've started the second triangle of three to make it a trapezoid.
Secret #10 crochet cotton project with a due date: I need to make a crucial measurement, but I found the perfect button in my collection. Awaiting the first chain. And I am pleased beyond measure to have been commissioned it.

Yellface is extremely glad we're home. She lectured us at length about having left, in tones I've never heard from her before. That was the extent of her displeasure, fortunately.

I experimented, and got us a first class upgrade on our way out. There was almost enough foot room for Belovedest, and enough elbow room for me. I even napped some. There was a cheese plate, and I felt secure enough in my prophylactic meds to partake. The only problem was the combination of my swoopy sleeves with armrest cup holders, so my right sleeve became saturated with ginger ale for a while.
Coming back was very crammed, even though we were in the premium seats with some extra foot room.

I'm glad I went.

cesy

Happy news of the day: Whoopi Goldberg wants people to watch more women's sports. So if you sign up for a free account on Pluto.TV and search for AWSN (All Women's Sports Network) you can watch a selection of women's sports matches and news and documentaries for free. Huzzah!

Thanks to The Happy Newspaper for the tip.

silveradept

Because the state of Mississippi has no idea what protecting children online actually entails, and are instead hoping that queer content will simply disappear off the Internet so they don't have to see it, but are threatening fines of $10,000 USD for each time a minor accesses something the state considers age-restricted, which goes far beyond the official and still-in-force Miller test for obscenity, Dreamwidth will be temporarily unavailable in the State of Mississippi starting September 1, 2025, and lasting until the State of Mississippi is injuncted against enforcing their overbroad and unsafe law. Because the state requires not only age verification of minors, but permission slips obtained and then all of that identifying information and documentation to be retained, along with special flags set for minor accounts that will make it obvious to a casual profile viewer that they're looking at a minor account (and therefore a possibly very juicy target), Bluesky has decided they are blocking Mississippi from using their service until Mississippi can be told that their law is overbroad, unconstitutional, and does the opposite of what they want it to do. The reason that this is happening in the first place is because despite at least one Justice saying outright that the challenge to the law was likely to succeed on the merits, the Supereme Court of the United States allowed it to go into effect because the conservative majority (or Justice I-Like-Beer-and-Boobies himself) said that the plaintiffs hadn't demonstrated sufficiently that they would be hurt by the law. Which sounds much more like an encouragement to Mississippi and others to pass these laws, even if they are eventually shut down, than someone taking into account the likelihood that the law will be judged unconstitutional and permitting preliminary injunctions to stay in effect while the case is argued, so that the state doesn't get the opportunity to try and collect its fines.

( Federation, Professional Experience, and What Can Be Done )

It also turns out that Tennessee passed a similar, if less draconian, law, and therefore Tennesseans under 18 will be temporarily barred from registering accounts on Dreamwidth until their law can be thrown out, because, in a similar way, people decided that while the law was likely to be axed, somehow there wasn't sufficient showing of injury to injunct the law immediately, so instead it gets to cause damage until rendered moot. So this particular conflict has to be fought on multiple fronts, in places passing laws and in places trying to pass them. Having seen the damage that happens when those places are allowed to pass laws, if your locality hasn't done it yet, it may be worth telling them what political ramifications await them if they do.

Mood: angry
Music: Lily Allen - Fuck You

silveradept

Let us begin with a promise from the company distributing the movie The Toxic Avenger to erase at least $5 million in medical debt, with each additional million past 5 made at the box office resulting in another million dollars' worth of medical debt destroyed. (The debt itself will not cost $1 million to acquire, as much of the outstanding debt is bought from various debt collection companies for significantly lower than face value.)

If you're looking for something that takes most of the strangeness of a comic book universe and lets it be strange and odd, while also being very entertaining, The television adaptation of The Middleman is available to stream and download from the Internet Archive. There aren't enough episodes of it, and it would do well with a revival, but you can enjoy it for the moment.

If you are on a Typepad-hosted or Typepad-managed blog or service, export all necessary data and assets before September 30, 2025, otherwise all of your material will be inaccessible permanently. Typepad is shutting down, and this is their attempt to allow people to export everything before they turn it all off.

( These always feel like so much happens in such a short time )

Last out, a spiky dinosaur that new fossils suggest may have grown spikes from the neck at least a meter long, in addition to all the other spiny points.

A web application designed to tell you what kinds of animals you are picking up and putting down with authority, based on what weights you tell it you can lift and put down with authority. What Animal Do You Even Lift, Bro?

And a story of stones, and reforging the rings around them as the people who those stones were given to reforge themselves closer and closer to the people who they are. Nate and Lee have a wonderful relationship, and this shows in in so many ways.

(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.)

Mood: discontent
Music: 3OH3 - Starstrukk

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

kaberett

Reading. ( Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )

Skimmed several more pain-related papers.

... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.

Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".

I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.

Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).

Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).

For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)

Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.

Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!

Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.

Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where ( breathing, everything is fine )

such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.

Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!

Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?

Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.

Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!

denise posting in

dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Meandering on

Always learning, never knowing

I <3 fandom

BATS

Close. Ish.

vital functions

[embodiment] that was the other thing I meant to say about EIB

[embodiment] some notes on exercise-induced bronchospasm

That was rather bizarre.

my top 15 works of fiction from the past 15 years

all things very

Galumph!

United Healthcare is at it again

Kanto Region...again?

today's tomatoes (before the spring onion and balsamic vinegar)

Returned from Mitchagain

no subject

DW will be temporarily unavailable in Mississippi (and account signups restricted in Tennessee)

Getting It Done Before Labor Day - Late August 02025

Code deploy happening shortly

vital functions

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

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