azurelunatic: melting chocolate teapot (418)
Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 ([personal profile] azurelunatic) wrote2025-10-21 10:56 pm

...p...p-p-PENIS?!!!

Today Belovedest had to bust the teenagers for playing "the penis game" in the library.

[You say the word increasingly loudly, in turns, until someone loses the game by being told to cut it out or being asked to leave.]

The weather's getting colder, but I have evolved myself an outfit to wear outdoors for lounging while the weather's in the high 50s F -- my slightly ratty plush bathrobe underneath my much more windproof corduroy floor length duster. And the ta'al fingerless mgloves Mama knitted for me, in rainbow stripes. They're just the thing for keeping my hands warm while I'm on the phone.

I've discovered I do enjoy cauliflower "wings", even though I don't enjoy chicken wings.

The scooter has arrived. I am plotting how best to bedazzle it. It does have its own USB power outlet! It also has head and tail lights. It's better for approaching counters than the wheelchair, since the tiller is so close to me.

[personal profile] norabombay points out that given all the poorly supervised international visitors who have been in and out of the White House, they're going to have to take it down to the studs when they refit it for #48 to use. So the general devastation in the East Wing is small potatoes as far as outrage fodder. And anywhere that the last major update was 1947-ish must really need some yanking out of the century of the fruitbat.

My legs are doing better. In part this is because I stuck ibuprofen in my nightly pill box, since I'd been waking up with aching legs and shouting knees pretty consistently.

Medication: the medication definitely has some activity. The main activity seems to be that my appetite has been fading in and out of "did we recently have chemo?!" mode. I'm tempted to give myself a week off every few weeks.

Makeup: currently waiting on a liquid formulation of the eyeshadow that promised to match the eyeliner, because the color is fantastic and I want it in a wide brush. I guess the powder can work for blending it out. (The powder just does not want to cooperate and layer on thick enough to get the color shift effect, even with a wet brush.) My skin continues to behave itself better than my ability to use foundation; there are only a few spots where I want to color correct if I'm doing Full Battle Makeup.

Games: keeping up with all the Gems of War events is sometimes tiring, but it does make winding down my brain at night much easier than other things I could be doing.

Perfume: went through my massive perfume spreadsheet and filled in the formulation for all the BPAL (which is the same except for that one spray). Cracked myself up at some of the descriptions I've left. One particular exceedingly long-lasting one
Read more... )
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-10-21 10:27 pm

Soup Season

I have, today, made my first Soup of the autumn: carrot and leek and celery and a couple of potatoes for good measure (and I then added frozen peas to my portion, because I like them cold and not at all cooked and definitely not reheated repeatedly over the course of a week). Bread and cheese, fruit to follow. I didn't manage Monday Morning Soup Ritual this week, as you can tell from the fact that it's Tuesday, but. Soup.

Some other bits and pieces: I have reached the stage of Squash Week where I have more recipes I want to make than I have squash with which to make them (... and one spaghetti squash) (for which I have at least some open EatYourBooks tabs). I hit refresh in my Oxfam tab aaaaaand the sale has cycled around to 30% off 3+ books. I have a chilli order ready to go as soon as my new debit card arrives OR I get over myself and see whether the credit card is actually behaving. There is a batch of onions caramelising in the Instant Pot. The current pain book is abruptly unexpectedly absorbing -- it's much more Sociology Of Pain than I'd quite been expecting, but it's potentially building to making at least some of the argument I want to from a refreshingly different angle to everything else I've come across in my background reading so far, and in the meantime in spite of my frustrations with it it's prompting lots of Useful Thoughts.

And I am wearing my Seasonal Leggings (courtesy of Mardy Bum, findable primarily on Facebook, or Instagram for a bit of an idea) and my Extremely Enthusiastic Slippers, like so. Read more... )

purplecat: Martha Jones from Doctor Who (Who:Martha)
purplecat ([personal profile] purplecat) wrote2025-10-21 09:45 pm

Martha Icons


Martha from Doctor WHo.  Face with hair down. Martha from Doctor Who, in the dark.  Looking stern. Martha from Doctor Who, in medical coat.  Side view of head. Martha from Doctor Who, hair up, smiling and looking to the side. Martha from Doctor Who, looking up at the camera, looking determined.


Snagging is free. Credit is appreciated. Comments are loved.
ysobel: (Default)
masquerading as a man with a reason ([personal profile] ysobel) wrote2025-10-20 05:28 pm
Entry tags:

DW S1 E28

...Ian just did a Vulcan Death Grip. *squints*

(also my dryer has fantastic timing. Dramatic scene ends with "let him die", dryer promptly tootles a cheerful triumphant tune...)
wychwood: Sheppard tossing a coin (SGA - Shep choices)
wychwood ([personal profile] wychwood) wrote2025-10-20 07:19 pm

love reaches out and holds open-hearted it demands attention it is in a world of its own

I have been enjoying the slightly calmer pace of life; being back in a work routine has really helped, so that even being out every evening last week was not actually that stressful! However it looks like I'm going to be spending next week, or possibly the week after, at my mother's while dad goes to shut up the house in France for the winter, so I shall be all out of sync again... The plus side is that the main thing I miss when I'm there is my computer gaming, and right now I am doing basically zero of that (well, a couple of hours of The Sims 4 at the weekend, but that barely counts).

The second attempt at my annual diabetic retinopathy check was rather more successful, and I came out with a clean bill of health (yay!). Tomorrow I have my flu and COVID jabs, although the NHS has reduced the criteria so extremely this year (even dad doesn't get one, and mum only does because she's literally just finished chemo!) that I'm going to have to pay for it. There's definitely more fun things I could do with that £75, but I'll take it.

Work has also calmed down slightly, to the point where I can actually find some time to spend on the urgent things my boss wants me to work on, instead of purely on emergent... stuff. I am solidly three months behind on reporting, but the big testing project I was supposed to be doing this month has shrunk because most of the work is not in fact ready for testing yet. The next round, early next year, will therefore be much worse, but that's next year's problem (and hopefully I should have more support from the rest of the team then, because it's not the start of the academic year! or so I can dream).

And now I need to run around and get things ready for the cleaner tomorrow, instead of accidentally doing nothing for another hour.
purplecat: Kate O'Mara as the Rani (Who:The Rani)
purplecat ([personal profile] purplecat) wrote2025-10-20 05:52 pm

Rani Icons

No sooner does one make a whole load of icons of the Rani than two more come along.


The Punjabi Rani in her Red Bavarian dress and cloak. Mrs Flood in her black dress with white collar and cuffs, arms crossed. Mrs Flood in her red Jacket.  Head and shoulders Mrs Flood and the Punjabi Rani - face to face looking at camera.  Publicity shot. The Punjabi Rani in her read leather jacket.  Waist up. Close up side view of the Punjabi Rani's face.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-10-19 11:00 pm
Entry tags:

vital functions

Reading. No finishes, lots of fragments.

Started: The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. Their faces are WRONG and I don't LIKE it. (Shared Reading Experience.) I also don't like The Smoking, and I really feel the absence of the baklava scene.

In progress: Forgotten Fruits, Stocks, which despite saying I was going to DNF I have continued working my way through, with occasional grumpy squawks; Index, a history of the, Duncan, in very small nibbles; and I'm now a third of the way through Ouch!, Kerr + McRobbie, which is much more sociology than I was expecting when I bought it, having failed at that point to register that one of the authors is a sociologist. A bunch of the neuroanatomy is irritatingly (and unnecessarily! they could have just been less specific!) wrong; we've had a lengthy case study focussing on endometriosis but as yet no indication that they're actually considering the role of ongoing tissue damage. Not ruling out that they'll get there, though.

Dreamwidth catch-up: UP TO SEPTEMBER.

Listening. Cornish waves recording.

Cooking. Ridiculous Textures Of Beetroot from The Modern Vegetarian (good, did like); mildly underwhelmed by Bengali five-spice roasted squash, a totally acceptable meal it was very pleasant to be able to stick in the oven and forget about while I did something else; and stir-fried pumpkin with cashews from Rosa's Thai Café: the Vegetarian Cookbook.

Buttermilk continues to work. Managed some bread. Baked some crabapples and then singularly failed to actually make the ginger-and-lime caramel to coat them in, so this lot probably needs composting and I'll try again next week. Maybe. (Raymond Blanc recipe, from The Lost Orchard, which I much preferred at least so far to Forgotten Fruits.)

Eating. Particularly excited this week by Limonera pears, which are apparently DPO Spanish-cultivated Docteur Jules Guyot! All of the descriptions say "very reminiscent of Williams, flavour not as good unless you get them just right", to which I add that they are sliiiiightly firmer fleshed in a way that I think is an active plus.

I am very much enjoying yoghurt + hazelnuts + a drizzle of quince syrup.

Creating. ... took some photos of some plants?

Growing. MORE SAFFRON. Still very excited by the saffron. Also the chillis. (Home saffron also now definitively coming up, in the trough if not around the fig, but no sign of it intending to flower, alas.)

Cannot tell if the windowsill lemongrass is in fact just dried out or if it's in the Growing Many Roots stage. Grumpily aware that going digging is counterproductive. Pineapple continues pineapple.

Observing. A MUNTJAC. There was, at the plot, A Great Rustling out of the plum tree on the neighbouring plot, and I looked up and thought, for an entire moment, "gosh that's a remarkably large fox with a remarkably short tail", before my brain caught up with the data it was actually being sent. Less than twenty metres away. Think that's the closest one of them's ever been to me (at least that I've noticed)!

echan: rainbow arch supernova remnant (Default)
echan ([personal profile] echan) wrote2025-10-18 08:54 pm

midlife crisis: achieved (??)

I bought a car on Monday, and sold my motorcycle on Friday.

Giving up the motorcycle feels like failing, despite everything. Lately, though, the universe has seen fit to emphasize the risk of riding a vehicle that can't keep itself upright -- the roads on the mountain have had a lot more dirt on them than usual. Nothing to trouble a vehicle with four wheels and enough wisdom to not go crazy fast around all the blind turns. But for two wheels that take turns at a lean, surprise dirt in the back half of a blind turn can a great way to have the bike slide out from under you, and if you're extra unlucky, you and the bike fall off the edge of the road and tumble down the side of the mountain. I've been safe, I haven't had any accidents, but I don't want this much worry or risk on a regular drive.

I bought a car. FINALLY. I paid more than I planned, but less than I feared, and finally can stop browsing car listings. It has all the cameras and driving assistance features a person could want, which sounds great, but considering my last car was from 1990, it is A LOT. I've dealt with it so far by skimming 800+ pages of manuals and making a mental list of the things I want to prioritize learning about (starting with, how to turn off all the driver assist features that are terrible at steep twisty mountain roads so they don't cause a crash) and Not Worrying About all the other features I'll figure out later.

I wonder if anyone designs & installs car wraps based on astronomy images...
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-10-18 11:36 pm

some good things

  1. Spontaneous(ish) brunch at the localish Gail's, in that it's a thing I have been meaning to do for A While and the weather will shortly be getting cold enough (and likely damp enough) that their outside seating loses its appeal. Underwhelming hot chocolate but I really liked the sesame-cardamom bun -- think Kardemummebullar With Bonus Sesame; I got the last one and it was way better than I was expecting. (Millennial Avocado Toast also tasty.)
  2. Successfully acquired Discount Bread from the supermarket this evening, for the purpose of tomorrow's dinner (a recipe from Salt Fat Acid Heat which will use the cavolo nero from the fridge + some of the Seasonal Squash in a panzanella).
  3. And I was nearly back to baseline on the walk home from same, which is a very welcome development (I have been Lingeringly Ill for the last four weeks).
  4. Successfully read a chapter of The Old Guard comic (on loan from library) on my laptop as a Shared Activity. Consequently we are about a fifth of the way through. I prefer the film.
  5. I think the chilli plant I lost track of the label for might plausibly, finally, be a Trinidad Perfume??? Fingers crossed for it managing to usefully set fruit (and I really do need to bring All the chillis in from the greenhouse...)
  6. I am listening to Cornish waves while I get ready for bed. Is good. <3
ari_linn: (warrior - normal)
Ари Линн ([personal profile] ari_linn) wrote2025-10-18 05:56 pm

О недействительном адресе и размере кроссовок

Пару лет назад одна финансовая контора, на сайте которой у меня был аккаунт, вдруг начала слать мне на электронную почту сообщения о том, что мой аккаунт недостаточно кошерен по причине того, что я указал в нём недействительный почтовый адрес. Я удивился и пошёл проверять, что я там указал. Никаких неправильностей в своём почтовом адресе я не обнаружил, но решил на всякий случай сделать "нулевую правку" типа добавления пробела к названию улицы, рассчитывая, что это сбросит недействительность адреса. Но сайт просто не дал мне сохранить адрес с нулевой правкой. Ничего больше я сделать не мог, и начал просто игнорировать периодические уведомления о якобы недействительности своего адреса.

Так продолжалось года полтора, и финал оказался эпичным. В один прекрасный день я получил от этой финансовой конторы бумажное письмо, пришедшее по обычной почте на мой "недействительный" почтовый адрес и уведомлявшее меня... о недействительности моего почтового адреса. Ну да, логично: если чей-то адрес неправилен, надо послать письмо на неправильный адрес, чтобы сказать человеку, что у него неправильный адрес. Оно же обязательно дойдёт! После бумажного письма мне это надоело, и я позвонил в финансовую компанию и потребовал, чтобы они вручную отметили мой адрес как верный. И только после звонка они наконец прекратили меня задалбывать уведомлениями о некошерности адреса. >>> )

ari_linn: (warrior - normal)
Ари Линн ([personal profile] ari_linn) wrote2025-10-18 05:35 pm

О российском зрителе-расисте

Вычитал на сайте gazeta.ru статью о том, что некий кинокритик Антон Долин в интервью российскому оппозиционному ютюб-каналу "Популярная политика" заявил: "Российский зритель в своем большинстве расист". Естественно, я немедленно подумал, что Антон — гандон неправ. Однако поскольку статья на сайте gazeta.ru всё-таки не давала хорошего представления о том, что же именно такое сказал Антон Долин, я взял на себя труд найти это конкретное интервью Долина и самостоятельно заслушать, что там несёт кинокритик. Интервью немедленно нашлось, и я списал оттуда субтитры по вопросу расизма в российском зрителе, каковые субтитры привожу ниже практически в первозданном виде (выделение жирным шрифтом моё): >>> )

altamira16: A sailboat on the water at dawn or dusk (Default)
altamira16 ([personal profile] altamira16) wrote2025-10-18 07:54 am
Entry tags:

Table for Two by Amor Towles

This is a book of short stories, except the second half of the book could have been a novel.

Towles writes a bunch of stubborn women in his stories, and they were really good. In one of my favorite stories, a man sneaks off once a week to do some forbidden thing. His wife thinks he is cheating, but he is not. She asks a relative to follow him and then changes her mind. The relative finds the truth which is charming and hilarious.

The novel at the end of the book is about old Hollywood. Two women go to Hollywood. One has an interesting scar. In Hollywood, one gets minor roles, and it is not quite clear what the first woman is doing. When the first woman is blackmailed, there is a lot of mystery, crime, and intrigue. I got a little confused about the number of characters that entered this story.
swaldman: A zebra (zebra)
Simon ([personal profile] swaldman) wrote2025-05-18 11:03 am
Entry tags:

Catching the bus.

Catching the bus to work today, as I like to do sometimes. As I would do most of the time if it were cheaper. The return has gone up from £7.60 to £8.50. It costs me about £2.50 by car.
I'm willing to pay a bit more for public transport, but this is crazy, and largely down to how the Scottish government reimburses bus companies for free travel.

I have a colleague who was previously of the "only public transport!" persuasion, but this price rise has broken him and he's looking for a car. Ultimately the majority of people on the bus now are those who get free travel, and those with no choice. And tourists.

We - as a society - can say as much as we like about net zero and about active travel, but if we price people off public transport then we're heading in the wrong direction.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
kaberett ([personal profile] kaberett) wrote2025-10-17 10:53 pm
Entry tags:

did some errands

Debit card in amended name theoretically on its way to me. Two sets of Objects belonging to Players are now OUT OF MY HOUSE and IN THE HANDS OF ROYAL MAIL. And on the way back up the hill, when I was in less of a hurry, I paused to Observe Some Plants.

Ergo: Some Plants.

grey brick container merging seamlessly with floor, dark green hebe, firey autumnal decorative maple

purplecat: Averbury Stone Circle.  A large stone close by and smaller markers leading away. (General:Prehistory)
purplecat ([personal profile] purplecat) wrote2025-10-17 07:29 pm

Random Neolithic Stones on a Friday


Me, taking a selfie with a large stone at my back.
Avebury (not that you could tell)
ljgeoff: (Default)
ljgeoff ([personal profile] ljgeoff) wrote2025-10-17 04:47 am
Entry tags:

Focus

I fell asleep early last night and slept well. I was scrolling FB last night and someone I admire posted a short essay about the world maybe changinging, people standing up against hate and fear, and that there is hope for a new day. Before bed last night, I wrote a reply:

"Honestly, I think that this century will be a charnel house. I think that when the arctic turns blue, our weather systems will so impact farming that billions of people will starve. Our economic systems will collapse and useless, vain struggles for power will finish off billions more. I dont know what kind of world our grandchildren's children will make. What future might they envision? How can we people, we small folk who are trying to hold onto our homes and live through sickness and old age with less and less resourses, how can we prepare our grandchildren's children for the coming chaos? What should we be talking about to our children and our grandchildren. What should we be telling them right now?

Perhaps something better is coming. I really want to believe that. I'm 65 years old now, and a nurse still working at a hospital. The way things are going, I dont think I'll have access to the medications that our elders currently have, the blood pressure, heart, and thyroid medications that let us live into very old age. So I figure I have maybe ten or fifteen years of usefulness left in me. But in fifteen years, we'll be in the thick of it, the craziness of the blue arctic, so maybe not that long.

I tell my grandchildren - be kind to one another, be alert and watch out for each other, pool your resources, don't put your faith in easy solutions and the people who are trying to sell them to you.

How do you survive a hurricane, a war, and a famine that comes all at once and lasts a generation? That is what is coming."

This morning I thought about my conversation with Carl last night, just before bed. He had to spend $700 out of pocket for one of his kid's dental care, and thinks now he can't afford to come up to The Land in 3 weeks, to help Mike clear an area for our first building, our planned pole barn.

Im sitting here in my 2017 Dodge Grand Caravan, sitting on the twin bed we put in back, and my scrubs hanging clean and ready on the little hanger-hooks, getting ready to go work a very well paying nursing shift, and for a moment the feeling of defeat falls on me. Gently, a whisper. The meadery ran into a hitch, I have five years to pay off one big loan and five years beyond that to pay off the Negaunee house. And Carl probably wont be able to come up north, Carl with his sharp mind, big heart, ready laugh. What shall I do?

Without me directing it, my hand reaches for my hairbrush and I begin getting ready for my day. The me that sits like a stone castle behind the ephemeral me, the me that is stone and steel, says "Focus".

Alright then. Onward.
tcpip: (Default)
Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath ([personal profile] tcpip) wrote2025-10-17 11:37 am
Entry tags:

Climate: A Grim Prognosis

For the past several weeks, I have delved deeply into the content produced by scientific climate change deniers. By "denier" I mean those who argue that global warming is below the range expected by mainstream studies and by "scientific" I mean that handful of actual active researchers in climatology, rather than unqualified opinions. Without exclusion, I've found that these scientific deniers engage in extraordinary selection biases, unfounded speculations, and flawed logic. But, to the untrained eye, I can certainly see how they could be convincing; they appeal to ideological confirmation biases and, of course, they appeal to certain vested interests. Their influence is profound; there are very few climatology journal articles that are in the denier category, but the content makes up the overwhelming majority of related advertorials. The result is a profound disparity between an misinformed public opinion compared to scientific research, which, in a capitalist democracy, is reflected in the politics of demagoguery.

Two days ago, the World Meteorological Organization reported the largest recorded level of atmospheric CO2 and the largest increase in a single year (a reminder that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for a very long time). It follows Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2016 Paris Agreement, which sought to preferably limit global warming this century to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, with a long-term objective of below 2.0 degrees. As COP30 approaches it increasingly becomes clear that voluntary agreements to a global problem is biased toward unenforceable lobbying even when adaptive and mitigative technologies exist and even when our first major tipping point (coral reef losses) looms, a situation that has been warned about for years even as fossil fuel subsidies increase - your taxes at work.

I am now in my third year as a climatology postgraduate, after many years of debating the issue and engaging in autodidactic research. When I started formal studies, it quickly became apparent to me that, despite international agreements and technological change, the most accurate trajectory was the RCP8.5 scenario; high-emissions, high-growth, high-population, the highest plausible temperature increase, i.e., the worst case scenario. Maybe it's the risk engineer disposition in me, but I think we should prepare against worst-case scenarios, especially when the costs are high. The problem is that they are so incremental; people understand the accretion of warming as explained by the popular metaphor of the "boiling frog" story that describes how people do not effectively react to creeping changes. Whilst it is a strong and appropriate metaphor, it is also a myth. A frog will react when the water is too hot for comfort. But I wonder whether humans are as clever as a frog.
swaldman: A sparkly bauble. (pretty)
Simon ([personal profile] swaldman) wrote2025-10-16 11:26 pm
Entry tags:

Brains are weird.

I spent this morning achieving nothing while WFH, with no motivation and no focus for anything.
I went to the office to see if that would make any difference. It didn't. I had a big task I had to do, and I couldn't do it, and I also couldn't do anything else.

Then I got the big task started with some GenAI help[1], and it became easier - if not easy - to finish it. And having done that seemed to unlock things, and I've been ticking off minor stuff for the rest of the day.

Brains are weird.

[1] Yes, I used some GenAI. Don't hate me. I fed it a failed research proposal of mine and asked it to turn it into an advert for a PhD studentship for the same project, and it did a half-decent job at a first draft to improve upon.
I still have enormous ethical problems with LLMs, and I still feel like their energy use is undoing everything I work for. And they've broken university learning and assessment in a way that we haven't figured out how to handle. But also, I recognise that complaining about that isn't going to stop it, at least until the bubble pops. And my university is all-in on "use it use it use it use it". This is the first time that I've actually found it useful.
purplecat: Drawing of the Tenth Doctor. (Who:Ten)
purplecat ([personal profile] purplecat) wrote2025-10-16 07:28 pm

Tenth Doctor Icons


The Tenth Doctor standing in front of the Tardis door. The Tenth Doctor.  Head and Shoulders.  Looking to one side with a slight smile. The Tenth Doctor.  Head shot.  Looking sternly at the camera. The Tenth Doctor walking across a sandy environment. The Tenth Doctor holding up the sonic screwdriver


Snagging is free. Credit is appreciated. Comments are loved.