Health update

Oct. 22nd, 2025 07:49 am
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

Went yesterday for my annual physical and vaccinations. I’m pleased to report that I’m in better health than I was this time last year! I got my flu and COVID vaccinations, and after drowsing off and on all afternoon and evening yesterday, I'm feeling human again. Most of my labs are within normal limits, and the ones that aren't are much closer to normal that they had been. The only issue that needs any sort of intervention is I got a referral to podiatry for hammertoes. (Sing it with me: "Think it's time to Stop! Hammertoes!")

I hope you're all doing well, and if you have the means to follow up on your healthcare, I hope you're doing it.

Wrong kind of leaves

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:00 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Latest in a series of silly non-ice-hockey injuries: I came off my bike yesterday evening on the cycle path through the woods between Madingley Road and Storey's Way. I braked suddenly to avoid an oncoming cyclist, the wheels went sideways on the damp leaf mulch, and I ended up on the ground. The other cyclist was able to stop safely, and made sure to check I was ok.

Nothing is broken on me or the bike, but some impressive scrapes to the elbow and knee I landed on. I went home via the co-op and a supply of comfort food, cleaned everything up, and ate the food.

It's all a bit tender this morning, and rather puts the random ice hockey bruises in the shade.

E is 20 and one day now!

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:24 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
It's wrong and bad and wrong and I don't like it. She was little just yesterday! Now she is not little, and her sibling is even less little, and I just don't understand how that happened.

Happy birthday to her, I guess.
gingicat: Bengal tiger looking peeved (anger/protectiveness - tigerbright)
[personal profile] gingicat posting in [community profile] thisfinecrew
Just attended the livestream - recording can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/4v2p3NwsMg0

Lots of talking and encouragement, also a lot of stories and photos from Saturday. On the livestream:
Moderator: Ashlee-Woodard Henderson (activist)
Speakers: Ezra Levin (co-executive director of Indivisible), Hunter Dunn (LA Host, National Press Coordinator 50501), Lisa Gilbert (co-executive director, Public Citizen), Maribel Hernández-Rivera (National Director of Immigrant Community Strategies), Jiggy Geronimo (Narrative Strategist)

Final message: find your local community.

Resources linked:
- https://brandfolder.com/indivisibleproject/no-kings-know-your-rights (cards to print and distribute in English, Vietnamese, Traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Haitian Creole, French, and Arabic)
- Text SHUTDOWN to 30403 to get a script from the Working Families Party to leave a message with your Senator to encourage them to hold the line during the shutdown and keep fighting against Trump's health care cuts and price increases, followed by them calling you to connect.
- There's also a QR code in the video to connect you to the Stop the Healthcare Heist! Week of Action.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
told me that one of them, the friendliest, died today. Poor baby. The person who was supposed to trap them hasn't been in touch, apparently, so I'll talk to some people.

*********


Read more... )

Dear book character:

Oct. 19th, 2025 01:11 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
You apparently are flabbergasted that two of your students have asked you not to call CPS on one of them. "I would never do that! Why is that your first thought!"

Well, maybe it's their first thought because you have a moral and legal responsibility to inform the authorities if you know that children are being as badly neglected as your nephew and his sisters are? I mean, if you wanted to solve this without getting a social worker involved, you had four years in which to do that.

I'm just saying, that might be why both of them thought you'd do that. Because that was what you were supposed to do, and shame on you for instead choosing to do nothing for so long. You are not the hero of this story, no matter what the author seems to think.

****************


Read more... )

sign of the season

Oct. 21st, 2025 11:26 am
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
I was going absolutely insane, trying to figure out which of my 50-odd tabs was playing holiday music. Nothing showed up on the tab list. Finally I hit command-option-escape, to list what was open, and discovered that the very nice holiday advent calendar a friend sent me had decided to serenade me. I shut it down; sanity restored.

10.21.2025

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:51 am
wispywillow: (game controller)
[personal profile] wispywillow


10Punisher2The CreepAugust 1988October 17, 2025JJDD 59
🐢Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesThe Movie II: The Secret of the OozeAugust 1991October 18, 2025
392Thor1Quicksand Kills!June 1988October 18, 2025JJDD 59
393Thor1The Blaze of Battle!July 1988October 18, 2025JJDD 59
394Thor1...And How Shall Mortals Know Ye?August 1988October 18, 2025JJDD 59
395Thor1Enter the Earth Force!September 1988October 18, 2025JJDD 59
259Daredevil1The Children Are Watching YouOctober 1988October 19, 2025JJDD 60
260Daredevil1Vital SignsNovember 1988October 20, 2025JJDD 60
hudebnik: (Default)
[personal profile] hudebnik
[personal profile] shalmestere and I came home from two weeks in Europe with colds. We didn't pick them up on the plane: we both woke with scratchy throats last Tuesday morning, the day we were supposed to fly home. Anyway, after various misadventures we got on a plane Wednesday morning, we wore masks on the plane to somewhat-reduce the chance of infecting anybody else, and got home Wednesday afternoon, still with scratchy throats but nothing worse. (I had an intermittent, unproductive cough, as I have been since a bout of COVID in July, but that's become "the new normal".)

[personal profile] shalmestere spent most of Wednesday afternoon and much of Thursday and Friday in bed -- partly jet-lag, partly having a familiar, comfortable bed for the first time in two weeks, and partly cold symptoms, which always hit her hard. I still had only a scratchy throat, so I went about the usual post-vacation chores: triaging two weeks of accumulated mail, re-stocking the refrigerator, picking overripe raspberries off the vines in the back yard, paying bills, etc.

Somewhere in the two weeks' worth of work e-mail was an automated complaint from ${EMPLOYER} that I had been physically in the office less than two days a week in Q3, "well below" the three-day-a-week standard they'd issued last year, and they were informing my manager and my grand-manager. Nevertheless, I worked from home Thursday and Friday because I figured I was probably contagious, being only two or three days out from first symptoms.

Saturday I went to a "No Kings" march and rally, on my own because [personal profile] shalmestere was still too sick. Marching and standing outside in the sun for hours are tiring at the best of times, but I had picked the march/rally two miles away rather than the one in Manhattan, so I got home quickly, drank a lot of water, and collapsed. That evening I noticed that I was getting physically tired more quickly than usual, and coughing and sneezing more often than normal, and having some general all-over body aches. (And [personal profile] shalmestere was still alternating between the bed and the living room couch, getting tired out by the slightest exertion.)

Sunday it hit. Walking the dogs around the block tired me out. Re-heating lunch or dinner tired me out. General body aches, nasal congestion, headaches, frequent coughing-and-sneezing spasms, all that. Sunday night both of us woke up every few hours to cough, blow our noses, pee, and drink, usually not at the same time.

I officially called in sick to work Monday, thinking I might get some programming work done in between naps and reheated meals, but not at all confident of that, and not wanting to further exacerbate the hybrid-work-policy issue by working-from-home too much. Again, general body aches, nasal congestion, headaches, getting tired quickly, frequent uncontrollable coughing-and-sneezing. Monday night was the same as Sunday night: we both woke up every few hours to cough, blow our noses, pee, and drink. And I feel about as good this morning as yesterday morning.

To add to the angst, between the 4:30 and 6:30 wake-ups last night, I had a nightmare.

I was walking down the street in a fancy, rich neighborhood and saw a small black boy and a white woman walking together. I asked the boy "And where is your house?", and he proudly stopped in front of one of the grander houses and replied "Right here!" There was a small slab of rock in the front yard, under which were a couple of plants he'd been taking care of, and I helped him plant another one. And I walked on, preparing a standard-issue lecture in my mind about racial prejudice.

But the next block was our own block, and our house wasn't there. I recognized all the houses on the street, but there wasn't even a gap between our neighbor on the left and our neighbor on the right. It seemed that other houses were missing too, although I wasn't sure which ones, because again there was no gap where they should have been. This was now seriously scary.

Conveniently, Pennsic was a short walk away, so I went there, to check on our encampment, and our pavilion wasn't where it should be. I saw Cariadoc in the marketplace and asked him about the phenomenon: he was aware of it, and had identified several people we both knew who seemed to have vanished not only from the site but from the memories of other people we knew. He said he was "going into town" and asked whether there was anything he could pick up for me, and I replied "Well, all our food is in our pavilion, which is missing."

Before I could elaborate on that, I thought I saw (in another market stall in the distance) [personal profile] shalmestere, in modern clothes, so I ran to catch up with her. But it wasn't her, and I realized there was a substantial chance that she too had vanished completely.

I saw Thor (from the Marvel movies -- I guess we're in the middle of "the snap") standing and talking to his girlfriend on a cellphone. She too was worried about all the missing people and houses, and was calling him "Chris", so I guess this is an out-of-universe girlfriend. But at least they could find one another.

I have a bajillion tabs open....

Oct. 18th, 2025 12:50 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
and they're pretty much all fanfic right now? I've clearly been falling behind.

(Don't ask how long this has been the situation, just do not ask.)

*********************************************


Read more... )

Cassandra by Louise Bogan

Oct. 17th, 2025 08:29 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.


**********


Link

It had to be done. . .

Oct. 20th, 2025 09:13 pm
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

A., L., and I are rewatching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. As we were sitting down to watch tonight, L. asked "Do you think there's Brooklyn Nine-Nine fanfic on AO3?" As A. and I assured her that there certainly was, I picked up my phone so I could tell her how many there were. As it turned out, there were 6,999 of them. So of course after we finished watching, I wrote a drabble to bring the totally up to an even 7,000. If you're interested, go check out "Dance the Night Away", in which one Sergeant Terrence Jeffords attends a TWICE concert!

Radio Free Monday (October 20, 2025)

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:47 am
thelaughingmuse: (radio free monday)
[personal profile] thelaughingmuse posting in [community profile] radiofreemonday

...nothing. No submissions. Hopefully that's because folks were either at the No Kings protest, or had other good reasons for not submitting anything this week. (I did doublecheck the form.)

Drink water, rest, be on the lookout for ways you can help your community, and don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it yourself.

=======================

This has been Radio Free Monday. Submit items for my attention through this link (English-language submissions only, please.)

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

In case you've not heard about yesterday's theft of some of the French Crown Jewels from the Louvre yesterday, CNN has a good article about it. There is one paragraph from the article that I have issues with:

Christopher Marinello, the founder of Art Recovery International, said that if the thieves are just looking to get cash out as quickly as possible, they might melt down the precious metals or recut the stones with no regard for the piece’s integrity.

I suppose it's technically true that they might do this; I just don't think it's at all likely. I don't think the thieves will be looking to cash out quickly because, given the degree of planning that apparently went into this operation, I think the items were sold before they were even stolen. I think it likely that their new owner, who probably lives in Russia or the Middle East, has already taken possession of them. (And if I were one of the thieves, I'd be extremely worried that said owner might decide that their generous payment for the items wasn't sufficient to ensure my ongoing silence.)

QOTD: On exihibitions

Oct. 20th, 2025 08:33 am
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

“Exhibitions, like dreams, are temporary phenomena — but, also like dreams, they leave indelible traces in our experiences. Through a dialectical short circuit, exhibitions draw from the material culture of the past, are situated in the present, and anticipate futures.” (Adam Szymczyk, in “Passages: Koyo Kouoh, 1967-2025,” Artforum, Sept. 2025)

This was something I really enjoyed learning about in my museum studies classes. An exhibition tells a story. Sometimes it's a simple story, like people "People like Monet and our museum needs money." (Although hopefully even an exhibition like that can still tell a deep story.) Sometimes its a more complicated story, like "Here are some interesting and/or controversial things that contemporary artists are doing. You may find some of them shocking, but you should see them anyway.". And sometimes, an exhibition tells a story that can totally change the way people things about something, such that the exhibition lives on in peoples minds long after the wall tags have been taken down and the objects have been returned to storage.

For example, I would be very surprised to find someone who'd studied art history or museum studies in the US who had never heard of the 1992 Maryland Historical Society exhibition "Mining the Museum". This exhibition was mentioned in several of my classes, to the point that as soon as we heard "1992" and "Maryland" together, we'd start nodding, knowing what was coming next. In this exhibition, conceptual artist Fred Wilson combined items from the museum's collection that would typically be found in an art exhibition with items that are tied to the state's slave-owning past and would usually be hidden when discussing the art of the era. One photograph from the exhibition has become a shorthand for the whole thing. It's of a case labeled simply "Metalwork, 1793-1880," which contains a number of elaborate silver cups and pitchers as well as a pair of iron slave shackles.

The story that the exhibit designer is trying to tell is generally summarized in the large wall text at the beginning of the exhibition, which I've observed many people to skip over in their rush to get to the "good stuff" (i.e. the objects). If you're someone who skips over the wall text at the beginning of an exhibition, I'd like to urge you to do not do that — the experience of viewing the items will be even richer if you have this story in your mind as you view them. And if you're someone who already reads the wall text (thank you!), try keeping that story further to the front of your mind as you view the exhibition. You'll come to see that not only do the individual items have meaning, but the order in which you encounter them as you move through the exhibition and they ways in which they're juxtaposed spatially will also contribute to telling the story.

rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
Except very occasionally if I can locate a spot that currently has reception.

So while that's going on, replies to anything may be delayed, but I'm reading when I can and distractions are still very much appreciated.

ETA: may now be fixed, I am deep in spoon debt and would like to be allowed to falldowngoboomnow.

(no subject)

Oct. 19th, 2025 09:41 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
Today I went to the Renaissance faire!

Yes, this means MD faire, _obviously_. I should maybe try out King Richard's again sometime, since I'm running on decade+ old memories, but honestly, nothing I've heard about it since has implied that I actually should try it out. So if I want to go to a rennfaire it means I pack a bag and get on the train and head down to Maryland!

I went with my mom, and my partner Tuesday, and also Tuesday's mom and sibling and sibling's-partner. We saw some shows! We ate some food off of sticks! I bought some pretty shiny things! It was a good time!

I have forgotten that I pretty deeply hate attending jousts, which is a shame. I enjoy the part where there are impressive feats of horsemanship. I really _really_ do not like the part where we are baying for the death of the competitors. Stage combat is neat and fun to watch from a technical and talent perspective! It feels...it feels pretty uncomfortable to be in the stands surrounded by people who do not seem to be appreciating this aspect of it and instead just want violence.

Also very loud and overstimulating. I would enjoy more being much further onto the edges of the crowd.

I was very happy to get a new coin necklace, and was excited by more designs than would fit on one coin, which feels hopeful for the future. I own five of them now! And also one of the new designs this year was _spider_ which feels amazing prescient for a year in which I'm increasingly using these as The One Official Jewelry I Wear Like From A Spellcraft And Ritual Perspective. Good to have a spider included!

I also bought matching fidget rings for me and Tuesday, because they're quite lovely. And two pairs of hairsticks! One set from Kathleen (although she herself wasn't present) at least in part as a reminder to go buy a bunch more from her through the internet. The other set is really nice maile flowers that I quite liked and obtained from a place near the jousting field. It's possible I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long at faire, or I will find nice things to use to put up my hair :3

And the weather was perfect to wander around! Sitting was good, standing was good, there was nice breeze so I wasn't ever overdressed but I also wasn't chilly -I brought my gloves and didn't need them, and decided at the last minute to leave the midlevel cloak in the car (I wore the lightlevel and didn't even consider the heavy one)

We watched the Skum perform Othello, which was especially interesting because I don't actually know that one --got a much better idea now though! And later we watched Hilby the Skinny German Juggle Boy, who Tuesday and I saw when we came to faire together two years ago. He remains _extremely_ funny. I also saw a few swords get swallowed, and quite enjoyed some Piper Jones from afar.

And I stopped and had a nice conversation with Miss Nancy, and we saw Pepto in passing (with an amazing viking ship wagon for her kids), and I chatted a bit with the Beef Jerky Guy.

So it was overall very good! I am pleased to be home now though, which is to say, at Cameron and Jake's place in Bal'mer. Tonight I need to finish some sub plan stuff, so that tomorrow I get to stress-free ride a train back home. (I do like riding a train, except when they have two hour delays that start late enough that mom already kicked her friends out and started driving to the station to pick me up. Looking at you, way down.)

I hope your life is also good.

~Sor
MOOP!

AKICIDW: Guitar repair

Oct. 19th, 2025 05:39 pm
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

OK, I need help from my guitar-playing friends - hopefully one of you will have the answer for this.

Lots of detail here, because I don't know what's relevant and what's not: About 10-12 years ago, I bought one of those Walmart super-cheap guitar and amp combos, then I never got around to learning to play it, devoting my time to learning ukulele instead. Today I remembered I still had that guitar down in the basement, and I realized that if I took off the 1st and 6th strings, then tuned the middle strings to G-C-E-A (from low to high), I would have converted this guitar into an electric ukulele. So I tried it. While I was at it, I moved the peg for the guitar strap to the other side so I could play it left-handed. I also ground 2 extra slots in the nut, so that the strings stayed the same distance apart for the entire length of the neck (like I'm used to on the ukulele). I put on the strings and tuned them with a digital tuner that I know to be accurate. The open strings were all tuned correctly, but any chord I fingered sounded wrong. So I fingered an F chord and played each note, looking at the tuner. On a ukulele, this has 3 open notes: G, C, and A, and 1 fretted note, F (1st fret on the E string). The G, C, and A were right, the F was sharp. Thinking that my changing the path of the strings might have changed their length relative to the placement of the frets enough that it might be throwing the fretted notes off, I tried putting one of the strings through the original slots so that it was the proper length. The open string was fine, but each fretted note was sharp. Oddly, each fretted was sharp by a different amount.

At this point, I've put it aside in hopes that one of you sees what's going on here. I see three possibilities:

  1. There's something wrong in how I'm pressing on the strings, and if I learn the right way, everything will be right.

  2. There's something wrong with the guitar that can be adjusted to make the notes come out right.

  3. There's something wrong with the guitar that's just a side effect of "cheap guitar" and it's really not fixable. (Or at least, not fixable without massive amounts of time and effort.)

Ideas?

May 2025

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