dorchadas: (Angel Azrael Art)
[personal profile] dorchadas
Charlie Kirk shot in Utah, died.

It's easy to look at this and say, oh look, the dude who spent his whole life sowing the wind has reaped the whirlwind. And you're honestly not wrong to say that, but the kind of country where people get shot at during a speaking event at a university campus is not really a good country to live in, it's the kind of country we have historically issued travel advisories about. I think it'll be more useful to look at the reaction to this vs. the reaction to the Michigan state reps who were assassinated in their homes, because I suspect it will be very different.

Also, as the reaction to the Minneapolis school shooter (and basically every shooting back to and including Sandy Hook) shows, literally nothing can happen that will make the right engage in a good-faith argument about gun violence, so this won't either.

America thinks of a civil war as two sides in different uniforms lining up and shooting each other, because that's what our civil war is like, but that's not what most civil wars are. I expect our civil war to be more like the Troubles--constantly low grade violence to the point that you never feel entirely safe. There are no frontlines, the battlefield sudden appears in ordinary neighborhoods and bars and train stations and then vanishes as the ambulance siren gets closer.

Also, on a personal note, Kirk had a three-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. They don't deserve life without a father.

Photo cross-post

Sep. 10th, 2025 09:54 am
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


Behold, Vitruvian Ducker!

(Sophia was delighted to discover that she can give Gideon piggy backs and has now been doing them whenever she can. Which is impressive when they weigh basically the same.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Reading Wednesday

Sep. 10th, 2025 07:34 am
sabotabby: (books!)
[personal profile] sabotabby
 Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: Notes From a Regicide by Isaac Fellman. I'm getting near the end of this and it's so good. By the way, fantasy authors, this is how you do worldbuilding. Fellman isn't concerned with why things work as they do, the details of how the post-apocalyptic New York functions or why Stephensport is stuck in time; everything is character, narrowed to the focus of Griffon and Etoine. Even Zaffre's rebel activities are in soft focus—we know there are revolutionary trans nuns (hell yeah) but Etoine is so hyperfocused on her, and what she represents, that the scale and scope of their rebellion are outside the scope of his understanding. 

And it's just written so well. There's a subtle strangeness to all of the language that is just weird and offputting enough to feel like journal entries of two men across a gap of time and culture, not only from us, but from each other.

Photo cross-post

Sep. 9th, 2025 02:01 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


Sophia is having her evening snack while sitting on the window ledge watching the world go by.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

voting

Sep. 9th, 2025 09:42 am
adrian_turtle: (Default)
[personal profile] adrian_turtle
Boston has a city council election today. It's a "preliminary" election, which is like a non-partisan primary, for a bunch of at-large seats. It's easy to find out which candidates approve of bike lanes and which want them ripped out. It's not that much harder to find out which one supports Trump. It's remarkably hard to figure out how any of them regard ICE or sanctuary-city policies. I did find a candidate who wants the city to clear snow and ice from old people's sidewalks as a safety measure, but Vicki is sure that's not a figure of speech.
andrewducker: (Portal!)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Yesterday I was having fun with Gideon playing with webcam special effects, and we got to one that looks like old sepia film stock with damage marks on it and judderiness and he delightedly shouted "It's footage!"

Island of apples, baskets of pears

Sep. 7th, 2025 04:02 pm
dolorosa_12: (peaches)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
Fruit trees have very much been the theme of this weekend. Someone was giving away pears from a box in their front garden on my return walk from the gym yesterday, and another person was giving away apples when I passed on my way back from the pool this morning. Yesterday afternoon Matthias and I scrambled around on a ladder, and even in the tree itself, picking all the bramley apples from the tree in our back garden. Now two shelves, plus the vegetable crisper in our fridge are entirely filled with apples. Last year they lasted us from August to March!

Everywhere in our house, there are little scattered clusters of fruit — a trio of pears and two large tomatoes ripening on the front windowsill, bowls of apples on the kitchen table, a handful of black cherry tomatoes on the kitchen windowsill in between the indoor plants — like votive offerings to household or harvest gods.

In general, the garden is making me very happy.

If that wasn't enough, after breakfast today, Matthias and I walked out to Little Downham, past hedgerows laden with sloes, rosehips and ripe blackberries, until we got to the community orchard, and filled his backpack with yet more apples and pears. The leaves are yellowing at the edges, and the air has that slightly crackly, woody autumnal scent, although it's still as warm as ever.

Last night, Matthias and I rewatched Casablanca, which I had last seen about twenty-five years ago. It really is that good, and I cried buckets, of course (although about the politics, more than the interpersonal stories). It's extraordinary to me that it was made not post-WWII, but in 1942 — an incredible act of hope and optimism, and faith in human effort turned collaboratively towards an existential struggle. It is of course incredibly emotionally manipulative, but sometimes I just want to see a bunch of traumatised exiles stand up to totalitarian bullies, you know?

This week I finished three books )

In the time since I started writing this post, the UK government sent me its (scheduled, warned-for) blaring, vibrating phone test emergency alert, and the sky outside has turned from burning blue to cloud-covered grey. The weekend is winding down, and gathering itself in, like a blanket thrown over tired legs.

Grab-bag linkpost

Sep. 7th, 2025 02:37 pm
dolorosa_12: (emily)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
Let's close some tabs:

In my country of origin, Australia, sun protection is serious business, and testing requirements for sunscreen are very strict (in Europe, sunscreen is classed as a cosmetic product, but in Australia it's classed as a medical product) — that's why there's a massive scandal brewing as a number of Australia's most popular sunscreen brands have been found to be making false claims about the protection they offer.

One of the journalistic newsletters to which I subscribe has elected to put all their material behind a paywall for the month of September, and they lay out their reasons in a clear, compelling way here. As they point out, if no one who cares about credible, responsible, independent journalism, especially from foreign correspondents on the ground, is prepared to pay for it, the gap will be filled by nefarious entities that have the funds — authoritarian states, disinformation networks. I'm not saying this to suggest everyone should fund this specific newsletter, but I am saying that (if you have any money set aside for non-essentials), you should be paying for some form of journalism.

One of the journalistic outlets which I do fund is Byline Times, and this piece they published, by historian Olesya Khromeychuk, director of the Ukrainian Institute London, is just an incredible piece of writing, weaving together personal history, contemporary politics and geopolitics, and literary analysis with searing clarity.

This essay from Rebecca Solnit is another way of describing what I've long been calling '(geo)political abuse apologism.'

Did this kid use AI to fake research about how great AI is? — basically what it says in the title.

Speaking of extractive AI, this is basically where I'm at right now.

I liked this essay on fanfic as a form of literary criticism.

I really love instances of people with niche jobs or interests who are able to communicate to interested non-experts in a way that conveys a sense of wonder and curiousity, like an invitation into a hidden world — and I'm very much enjoying [instagram.com profile] boisdejasmin's posts on perfumes and all things fragrance-related.

As always, Yuletide is abruptly upon us, and as always, it feels as if it's arrived without warning (despite being the same time every year). If you're planning to participate, the schedule and other requirements can be found at the [community profile] yuletide_admin comm.

In gratitude for impermanence

Sep. 5th, 2025 05:40 pm
rimrunner: (Default)
[personal profile] rimrunner
As I fed 15-year-old printed financial statements into the paper shredder, I found myself feeling grateful that nothing lasts forever.

A little over five years ago, right on the cusp of the COVID pandemic, I took a couple of trips back to the house I grew up in. My parents were finally preparing to sell it and move out west, precipitated by the need for a place with fewer stairs and closer proximity to their kids.

This meant getting rid of stuff. A lot of stuff. Some of it had been mine. For reference, I was in my mid-forties and had moved away permanently straight after college. I just hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of a lot of things, before I left for college or afterward.

Some of it belonged to my brother, and the rest to my parents. It’s harder to live light when you live in the same place for 45 years, I suppose. My family also has a propensity to collect things. Not necessarily particularly valuable or expensive things, just things that we like. It’s not a hoarding situation, not quite, but the reason I was feeding 15-year-old printouts into the shredder was that the stacks of paper in my home office in Seattle had finally become untenable. I’m one of those people whose brain feels cluttered when my space feels cluttered, and unfortunately I’m also one of those people who accumulates clutter.

The thing that’s finally getting me to do something about it is that we’re going to be moving. Not sure when, and the house we’re moving to will actually be bigger, but just the thought of moving all this stuff is exhausting (and faintly embarrassing, especially after having spent time in communities where entire families live in houses the size of my bedroom). When I was helping my parents get rid of stuff in preparation for their move (the staff at the nearest dump wanted to know if we were doing a major home renovation, we were there so much) I found myself wishing I had Marie Kondo’s phone number.

Later, I was wishing for it for myself. Instead of “Does this spark joy?” my guiding question became, “Do I love this enough to pack it into a box and move it?”

Like a lot of Americans, I have too much stuff. More than I could ever need or use. Much of my current endeavor is getting some of this stuff to people who could use it, or to places where people can find it (Ebay, for example, or area thrift stores or Buy Nothing groups).

But some of it, like those 15-year-old financial statements, isn’t going anywhere but the bin. (Seattle composts shredded paper, by the way—but don’t go crazy with quantities.) What’s also going in there is stuff I wrote back then. Some of it’s interesting, especially if it got revised and reused later in something that actually got published. A lot of it, though…well, let’s just say that I no longer have any doubt that I’ve improved as a writer, though even now I’m not composing deathless prose (and I definitely wasn’t back then).

If, as a book I reviewed for Library Journal earlier this year proposes, all of our lives and everything that we do is merely the universe attempting to hasten toward equilibrium, then I’m glad that at least that the mountain of stuff I’m digging through is temporal in nature. I’m weirdly delighted to uncover patches of carpet that I haven’t seen in months if not years.

And I’m really, really glad that my separation paperwork from when I got laid off from Amazon.com in 2000 is going to be fertilizing someone’s flowerbed in the coming months.
dolorosa_12: (sokka)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
Today's prompt is a somewhat silly one: tell me about the most ridiculous, absurd fictional deaths you can think of.

I feel I don't even need to be specific in my answer: I could just say 'any episode of Jonathan Creek or Midsomer Murders' and it would fit the bill.

Obviously I'm looking for examples where the tone is lighthearted or cosy, rather than serious or grim.

podcast friday

Sep. 5th, 2025 06:55 am
sabotabby: gritty with the text sometimes monstrous always antifascist (gritty)
[personal profile] sabotabby
Unlike most weeks when I hem and haw, there was no question this week when I saw the titles of these two episodes. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff covered two of my favourite historical anarchist weirdos this week, one of whom I'm quite obsessed with. Each episode is a standalone despite the format, but you're going to want to listen to both.

The Surprising Stories Behind Foosball and Air Mail Part 1 is about Alejandro Finisterre, who for my money is one of the most interesting people who ever lived. A lot about his story brings happy tears to my eyes. He's best known for inventing foosball when he was a teenager, but (spoiler) he lived to age 87—outliving Franco and Spanish fascism—and did a whole bunch of other things, all of which are also cool as hell. He was a poet, publisher, and anti-fascist activist and also, from all reports, a lovely guy. Come for the foosball, stay for what's probably the best hijacking story of all time.

The Surprising Stories Behind Foosball and Air Mail Part 2 is about Nadar, who is most famous as the guy who took the first aerial photo and was one of the first celebrity photographers, but again, he did all kinds of other stuff. I actually did know about the hot air balloon thing during the Franco-Prussian War and the Siege of Paris, as well as his politics, but Margaret goes into a lot of detail about the many incredible things he got up to. Do yourself a favour and Google his photos if you haven't seen them, and then go and learn about his backstory.

Laundry room

Sep. 4th, 2025 03:32 pm
telophase: (Default)
[personal profile] telophase
One of the things I have been doing with myself in the last three months is watching videos in an online interior design course, mostly because various things about the house bother me in a way I can't quite put my finger on. It's not mean to be a pro-level course, and there's various things I already know, but it's helped me figure out one room so far, by forcing me to slow down and first think about who uses the room, what for and how it's used.

It's the laundry room. One would think, "Laundry, duh." But it's also circulation space, because it connects the house to the garage which is the door we use 99% of the time, and it's also storage space. And I would like it to be hang-dry space as well, because the other options for hanging clothes to dry are untenable for various reasons:

1) the first and foremost is my ADHD. The more steps I have to do, the less likely it is to get done. Get out the drying rack, take it somewhere in the house or back porch, set it up, hang clothes, check if they're dry, collect them, bring them in, break down the drying rack, and put it back where it's stored? OH HELL NO.

2) drying outside also makes the clothes smell like the outside and I've never had problems with this before, but both [personal profile] myrialux and I concur that the outdoors smell we get on clothes here is not appealing. Plus, we live in POLLEN CENTRAL and would like to not be allergic to our clothes.

3) the best place to dry inside is the spare room/gym and if clothes are hanging there that I need to move before working out, I won't work out (ADHD again). The spare bath is taken up by the litterbox, and the main bath is back to issue #1, with the added problem of fitting the drying rack in the tub. Any other room gets HUMID and GROSS.

So! I have a PLAN for the laundry room, once we get the $$$ saved up. Steps:

1) hire our neighborhood appliance handyman company to stack the washer and dryer on one side of the TINY room and swap the dryer door to open on the same side as the washer.

2) measure the back wall, to allow for power and water outlets and the dryer vent in the next step, which is...

3) install simple shelving of the rails-screwed-into-studs with shelves on them type, adroitly avoiding the outlets and vents above, as well as pegboard on part of it, to allow for...

4) the wall-mounted drying racks that will require a bit of space to extend/fold out. And then finally...

5) a closet rod installed across the room for clothing that can be put on hangers and hung.

SIMPLY RENDERED PEECTURES BELOW THE CUT...
you know you want to know more about my laundry room )
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