kiya: (gaming)
[personal profile] kiya
Three lunatics and a paladin, once more.

Dramatis Personae:

Viepuck and Izgil, who have complicated magical theory shit going on
Celyn and Robin, who hit things and heal people

When we left off we had retrieved an evil sphere and yelled for help answering what to do with it.

So we sorted out what to do next. )
sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)
[personal profile] sovay
Tom Lehrer had entered my household's dialect before I was born. That's not my department. I am never forget the day. Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air. Only be sure always to call it please research. More, more, I'm still not satisfied. Lucky Pierre! Who's next? Songs not on rotation in my parents' record collection could be encountered lyrically and traumatically in Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer with Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle (1981). One could in fact call him one of my idols since childbirth. With just a handful of music, he touched the hearts of millions, and in the spirit of his own liner notes, I hope he died mad about it.

RIP Tom Lehrer

Jul. 27th, 2025 04:02 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
Tom Lehrer, a satirical songwriter and professor of math and musical theater, has died, age 97. A lot of his songs are satirical, often about then-current events, but most of those songs hold up pretty well, I think.

The Universal Hub post about Lehrer's death links to several videos.

Lehrer placed all his music in the public domain, including performance rights and the right to publish parodies and distortions, in the public domain a few years ago. Everything is available for download, though the website includes a notice that it will be shut down at some date in the not too distant future (relative to 2022.

Oh, and Lehrer also wrote my favorite song from the PBS program The Electric Company, "Silent E."

Culinary

Jul. 27th, 2025 07:03 pm
oursin: Frontispiece from C17th household manual (Accomplisht Lady)
[personal profile] oursin

Last week's bread held out pretty well, though unfortunately not quite long enough to extend to frittata for Friday night supper.

Instead I made the somewhat ersatz 'Thai fried rice' with saucisson sec.

Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, 50:50% wholemeal/white spelt, Rayner organic barley malt extract, and dried blueberries ('apple juice infused' WTF): turned out quite nicely.

Today's lunch: stifado of diced lamb shoulder, served with Greek spinach rice and gingery healthy-grilled baby courgettes and red bell pepper (teriyaki sauce rather than tamari).

Percy Jackson

Jul. 27th, 2025 04:48 pm
ailbhe: (Default)
[personal profile] ailbhe
I'm partway through book 3 and I just want to note that Hippocampi is a terrible, terrible, terrible pun.

(no subject)

Jul. 27th, 2025 12:48 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] fjm and [personal profile] wildroot!

XMEN100 IS BACK

Jul. 27th, 2025 03:10 am
flareonfury: (Madelyne Pryor '97)
[personal profile] flareonfury posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo
 xmen100
[community profile] xmen100 is a weekly drabble challenge for the X-Men!

o1. Join the community & you can JOIN AT ANYTIME!!
o2. Read the rules/FAQ. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.
o3. Once you're a member and have read the rules, be prepared to join a team.
04. Start writing once the prompt is posted!

This first prompt will be last two weeks, from July 27th to August 10th.
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
[personal profile] sovay
It has not been a good week for sleep in the sense that I have managed about three to four hours out of every twenty-four and generally not when it's night out, but it has been an excellent week for ocean. After contemplating the question and decisively answering that she would rather be a dragon than a cat, my niece who was part of this afternoon's excursion with out-of-town family to Castle Island showed her fire by the sea.

Alas, new glucometer

Jul. 26th, 2025 05:40 pm
azurelunatic: "Sanity" St. John's Wort flower.  (the good drugs)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
As sent to my primary care, who I actually do like:

United Healthcare, in their omnibenevolent wisdom, sees fit to drop the One Touch Ultra from my preferred drug list as of September. They have offered several alternatives.

My primary goal with a glucometer is to not require a smartphone to do the simple task of marking whether any reading is before or after a meal. Out of their list of suggestions, the Contour Plus Blue meter meets my requirements and is not discontinued.

Joy. And happiness.


(This is the primary care who, upon learning which insurance I had, while we were trying to solve a problem, asked whether I was up to date on the then-recent news about their CEO, then said "You'd think they'd have learned their lesson." She's from Canada.)

[Edit: I am not currently in need of a CGM, I just want to be able to enter whether a reading is before or after a meal without involving an app.]
silveradept: A head shot of a  librarian in a floral print shirt wearing goggles with text squiggles on them, holding a pencil. (Librarian Goggles)
[personal profile] silveradept
It's prompt Number 7 for the [community profile] sunshine_revival, and the carnival/fair theme continues, this time with one of the rides that you can usually see from a distance. (And one of the ones that always makes me nervous when it stops and I'm not on the ground.)

When I see this prompt I can't help but think about how what was once old is new again with the rise of neocities websites and newsletters becoming more prominent in fandom. Like a blast from the past, I'm finding character shrines, fanfic archives, game blogs, and maybe it's inspired me to make my own site as well c:

Whether you started with secret mailing lists or only discovered online fandom this year, we all have a journey to call our own. It only feels appropriate our last prompt of the month is...

Challenge #7:

The Ferris Wheel
Journaling: Life in fandom goes through ups and downs. Reminisce about the "wild ride" of your time in fandom or in other online communities.

Creative: Create an image or a photo with the theme "let's go for a ride".


That which is old is new again. Often because the new has been disappointing. )
jesse_the_k: Full explanation: <a href="https://is.gd/DPflag">is.gd/DPflag</a> (disability pride flag)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

I go to this annual celebration because it’s a time and place where I am entirely comfortable. That I can do some things and can’t do others is a given. Almost everyone there has been through the process of accepting their disabled self—the non-disabled people are in my experience, enthusiastic allies.

Folks sell things they’ve made, organizations advertise for participants or employees, political folks recruit advocates, there’s music, there’s free food. It’s a hoot!

https://www.disabilitypridemadison.org/festival-2025

I was thrilled to run into half of the staff of adhdcleaning.com, who proclaim they will Clean All The Things and invite passers-by to share their special enthusiasms.

Their promo material is brimming with disability pride:

Accommodating, Compassionate Help Tailored to Your Needs

  • Flexible Scheduling, Easy to Cancel
  • Allergy/Asthma-friendly vacuum with fully sealed HEPA filtration system
  • Keep two disabled adults happily employed!
  • Commercial steamer for chemical-free clean
  • We care about you and your pets
  • No guilt or judgment, ever

They continue with cleaning tips for cool, imperfect humans

five important points )


This pair of people were dressed up to spread joy

what a couple! )


From an earlier festival, I captured a Disability Pride Strawberry, in two photos

whole and dissected )

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
The quoted material below is quoted material.

I wrote in 2022 that the election system used by WSFS should be changed. At present, the rules for electing the Mark Protection Committee, the body charged with ensuring that the intellectual property of WSFS is protected, are set out in Standing Rule 6.2:

Voting shall be by written preferential ballot with write-in votes allowed. Votes for write-in candidates who do not submit written consent to nomination to the Presiding Officer before the close of balloting shall be ignored. The ballot shall list each nominee’s name. The first seat filled shall be by normal preferential ballot procedures as defined in Section 6.4 of the WSFS Constitution. There shall be no run-off candidate. After a seat is filled, votes for the elected member shall be eliminated before conducting the next ballot. This procedure shall continue until all seats are filled. In the event of a first-place tie for any seat, the tie shall be broken unless all tied candidates can be elected simultaneously. Should there be any partial-term vacancies on the committee, the partial-term seat(s) shall be filled after the full-term seats have been filled.

I warned that this carries the risk that a single faction with roughly half of the total votes could win every single seat and squeeze out other viewpoints.

My warning has come dramatically true.

Life. Oy.

Jul. 26th, 2025 11:04 am
sine_nomine: (Default)
[personal profile] sine_nomine
Well, on the plus side, there is noticeable difference in my legs. But that (plus all the other body changes have pointed up the size of my arms. Wow. I had no idea. Thankfully, dealing with them is the final surgery. And that might be January, not March. Dr. Surgeon made a change in his surgical plan with this last surgery, and we might be at five procedures not six. That would be astounding. Because then there's 2 months of 4 day a week MLD followed by cutting back on that (though, ostensibly, using the pump a bit, too) AND having time for a bit of PT.

SO. Still home in May (i.e. 7 months later than planned) but possibly looking like a very different human.
oursin: The Delphic Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel (Delphic sibyl)
[personal profile] oursin

This is all a bit Dept Groucho Marx here - would anyone who is not of these awful people's leanings want to live within 100 miles of them anyway, and in fact are they not a creepy cult in the making? The settlement sprawls over 160 acres and it's called Return to the Land. Its founders say it is an "intentional community based around shared ancestry". (And I think we can predict what the position of women within it is before even getting to that part of the write-up, no?)

(You can get brucellosis from 'warm fresh goats' milk', you know.)

***

Dept, have none of these issues manifested before travelling together??? You be the judge: Should my partner stop obsessively cutting costs when we travel? We discover that although they've been partners for seven years they don't live together, so possibly they really haven't come up against this sort of clash of styles:

I don’t want to share Persephone’s suitcase because she doesn’t pack properly and I find that stressful. I may put all my stuff in one backpack, but it is very well organised. Persephone’s packing style is hectic and she doesn’t have a separate laundry bag for her unclean clothes, she just throws them all in together. I don’t want dirty laundry touching my stuff, thanks very much.

And one is a foodie and one is not, and there's a real clash of priorities going on there that you'd think might have come up in 7 years....

At least last week's YBTJ contestants seem to have discovered the flashpoint of difference fairly early on: should my flatmate start using the spice rack I made: and honestly, what is the point of a poncey hand-carved spice-rack with matching jars that he hasn't got round to labelling? I am team shop-bought packaging that can actually be identified without opening it up and sticking one's nose in.

***

Dept, the Fifties were actually quite anomalous: In the longer–term context, then, it is the mid-20th century which looks unusual, and it is worth considering why:

There is no doubt that the percentage of families which are headed by a lone parent has increased since the mid-20th century, and this has often been equated with the breakdown of the nuclear family system. However, it is not clear that the nuclear family is actually in decline. Most children are still living in two parent homes, and the percentage of lone parent families in the 19th century was not very different to the percentage today – although as explained below, such families were very differently formed.

***

Dept, the annual PSC deviation into sense: This may seem radical to you, but a woman does not need a penis in order to be satisfied. Okay, it's depressing that the couple come 'from a conservative background; we believe that sex before marriage is a sin and saved ourselves until we got married in our early 30s' but don't seem to have done any due diligence on how to do ye conjugalz - there have been books on how to have a happy fulfilled Christian marriage since the 1920s at least. Sigh.

Books Received, July 19 to July 25

Jul. 26th, 2025 09:13 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Eight works new to me. Mostly novels but there are two tabletop roleplaying rule books in there. Four are fantasies (including the ttrpgs), one seems to be horror, one non-fiction, and two are SF. Four could be said to be series books and other four appear to be stand-alone.

Books Received, July 19 to July 25


Poll #33429 Books Received, July 19 to July 25
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch (July 2025)
34 (59.6%)

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold (July 2025)
33 (57.9%)

They Call Her Regret by Channelle Desamours (February 2026)
4 (7.0%)

Sky on Fire by E. K. Johnston (July 2025)
15 (26.3%)

The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel (February 2026)
10 (17.5%)

Warhammer: the Old World Roleplaying Game, Gamemaster’s Guide by Dominic McDowall and Pádraig Murphy et al (Q1 2026)
4 (7.0%)

Warhammer: the Old World Roleplaying Game, Player’s Guideby Dominic McDowall and Pádraig Murphy et al (Q1 2026)
4 (7.0%)

Starlost Unauthorized by D G Valdron (October 2024)
18 (31.6%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
36 (63.2%)

A walk to Dothill

Jul. 26th, 2025 12:35 pm
cmcmck: (Default)
[personal profile] cmcmck posting in [community profile] common_nature
Dothill is on the moorland side of town and is an interesting combo of marshland, wetland and lakes.

This path takes you in once you walk through Donnerville Spinney to get there:



More pics! )

(no subject)

Jul. 26th, 2025 12:42 pm
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] shewhostaples and [personal profile] mrissa!

Canadian immigration question

Jul. 26th, 2025 03:11 am
staranise: A star anise floating in a cup of mint tea (Default)
[personal profile] staranise
I have an American friend who would strongly prefer to move their family to Canada. 2 adults, 4 children; both adults have degrees and professional credentials that would transfer across the border. They're currently looking for work, both abroad and in bluer states than theirs.

The question they asked me was:

Is immigrating to Canada something we can do on our own or do we need an immigration lawyer? I have been looking at requirements and it all seems straightforward enough, but I don’t want to be unpleasantly surprised


Any thoughts on the process would be welcome, like if/when a lawyer is needed, or if/when agencies that promise to help with the moving process are actually worth their fees.

Thanks! Comments are screened for people who'd rather stay private, and I'll pass the messages along.

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Elise Matthesen

April 2025

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