'Your deep inner self is your brightest light'
Oct. 23rd, 2025 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oursin(Yogi Tea Bag tags, bringing the woowoo by random bollox generation long before AI started getting in on the act.)
Anyway, are we at all surprised by Millions exploited by ‘menopause gold rush’ amid lack of reliable information.
(Query: how far is lack of reliable information due to its being overwhelmed by menopause quackery, murmurs historian of medicine.)
Millions of women are being exploited by a “menopause gold rush” as companies, celebrities and influencers take advantage of a “dearth” of reliable information on the issue, experts have said. Healthcare companies and content creators saw menopause as a “lucrative market” and were trying to profit from gaps in public knowledge, women’s health academics at University College London (UCL) said. Researchers called for the rollout of a national education programme after finding a significant number of women do not feel well-informed about menopause.
You know what? I think part of this can be put on to the decline in the good old trad women's magazines, which had a) health columns written by pseudonymised health professionals b) agony aunts prepared to Do The Research and having a stack of helpful leaflets written in conjunction with qualified experts.
Brought to you by someone who was devouring her mother's magazines pretty much from the time she became literate and therefore encountered the concept of menopause decades before it became of personal relevance.
And what still gets very little play is what Stella Duffy points out in this piece:
while everyone in my research talked about physiological and emotional difficulties in the transition, once they were out the other side – even while dealing with workplace discrimination and the caring demands of their loved ones – all of them also described postmenopause as time of thriving and growing. We’re not done yet.
Margaret Mead mentioned this, but I'm not sure the 70s feminist discourse around 'croning' did a lot of favours to the idea of what happened after the pause.
Stranded, by Melissa Braun
Oct. 22nd, 2025 11:38 amrachelmanija
From the blurb:
One fellow camper will do whatever it takes to make it out of the Boundary Waters alive. Even if he's the only one.
A psychological thriller mixed with intense action.
Nah, just kidding! It's not a psychological thriller, it's a survival story. One of the teenage campers is a racist, a sexual harasser, and an attempted rapist, but he never tries to kill any of the others or abandons them to die or anything like that.
Yep! It's another disappointing survival book with a misleading blurb and gratuitous grossness towards teenage girls!
Teenage Emma is traumatized after failing to save her younger sister from drowning, so she gets her parents to book her into a teen wilderness survival course to take her mind off things. In a portentous scene, her father gives her a Swiss army knife. She's confused and concerned that he's giving her a weapon to take on a camping trip - does he expect her to be attacked? I was confused why she would think of a Swiss army knife as a weapon rather than a tool. If you don't even know what a Swiss army knife is, then you can't tell that it's a knife at all when it's folded. If you recognize it when folded, then you know that it is a multitool.
The early part of the book jumps around confusingly in time, to the point where I flipped back pages repeatedly to see if I'd missed something. No, it was just the author's pointless decision to start with them pitching their tents after the first day's walk, then jump back to them packing their supplies.
We get very little characterization, but that's okay: three of the seven are about to die! Two days in, a strange storm hits their camp. It's described in such a portentous way that I thought it was supernatural or man-made, but nothing ever comes of this so I guess not. Two of the campers and the guide are squashed by falling trees, then a wildfire starts. Instead of jumping in the lake, they run for their lives and get very lost.
At this point, we get some characterization. Chloe is the girl who isn't Emma. Her race is coyly not mentioned until Isaac, the creepy boy, gets racist at her about being black. Oscar is the boy who isn't creepy, so Emma naturally falls in love with him. Isaac constantly sexually harasses Emma, once tries to rape her, and is sadistic to animals. This goes on for the entire book.
Late in the book, Oscar and Isaac both fall over a cliff. Isaac dangles from a rock stub by one hand, and holds Oscar, who is suspended in mid-air, by one backpack strap. Emma and Chloe make a rope of clothing, with a key part being her bra. Isaac somehow grabs the clothes rope without falling. He's clinging to a rock stub with one hand and a backpack strap supporting another person. How does he get one hand free to grab the bra rope without falling? This is not described as it's not thought through. He grabs the rope - again, anchored by A BRA tied to a tree - and, it's not clearly described, but it seems like Emma single-handed pulls him and Oscar up. Is the bra made of bungee cord?
Emma ponders that Isaac was very brave and unselfish. People are complicated, she realizes. This is as close as the book comes to any resolution on Isaac sexually harassing and threatening her for the entire book, oh and also TRYING TO RAPE HER.
This book sucked.
Wednesday is World Wombat(t) Day*
Oct. 22nd, 2025 07:13 pmoursinWhat I read
I managed to plough through The Wheel of Fortune and do not think I will be plunging into a major Susan Howatch re-read binge. O all those angsty men. As for man handing on misery to man, Larkinesque-like, it deepens like the Mariana trench. Plus, the Katherine Swynford-analogue character gets no interiority, and besides being pretty much normal and sensible (unlike pretty much everybody else, no, Anna seems fairly stable) is full of deep mystical working-class Welsh wisdom. Good for her levanting to Canada (can one levant in that direction?). The last section in particular had me muttering about codfish.
O what a thoroughly delightful change to move on to Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. (1977) - you do not need heaving melodrama or even actual plot to be compellingly readable, just saying.
On to Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room (A Dance to the Music of Time, #10) (1971) in anticipation of group discussion at beginning of November. Getting faint frissons of that narrative pattern of that period which was eschewing ominiscient voice but having a first-person narrator who just happens to be in a position to see or hear Events and can reflect upon them.
Latest Literary Review.
Also finished the book for review but have not yet got round to getting any thoughts on it written, this week having been a bit of a week, so far.
On the go
Maggie Helwig, Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community (2025).
Also happened to notice Jonathan Rose, Readers' Liberation: The Literary Agenda (2018) when I was looking for something else - I think this must have been something in return for reading something for a publisher? - I don't think I actually bought it - but looked interesting in the light of recent musings about reading.
Up next
Having discovered that I do, in fact, have a copy of The Making of a Muckraker, maybe a spot of dipping into that?
***
*Wombat Awareness Organisation: World Wombat Day!
Anyway here is a cool person I didn't know about before
Oct. 22nd, 2025 06:08 pmrydra_wonghttps://bsky.app/profile/luketurner.bsky.social/post/3m35pa3ywek2h
[Image description: Bluesky post by Luke Turner reading "here is a pleasingly anti-fascist animal painted on the Hurricane of gay RAF pilot Ian Gleed", above a picture of Gleed in the cockpit of his plane pointing to the image on its side of a cartoon cat swatting at and destroying a swastika.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gleed (he may have been the fastest RAF pilot to ever make ace, in two days; he was only 26 when he was killed)
Further research byrobynbender established that he actually had said antifascist cat painted on all his planes:
http://www.hatfield-herts.co.uk/aviation/gleed.html
[Image description: Bluesky post by Luke Turner reading "here is a pleasingly anti-fascist animal painted on the Hurricane of gay RAF pilot Ian Gleed", above a picture of Gleed in the cockpit of his plane pointing to the image on its side of a cartoon cat swatting at and destroying a swastika.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gleed (he may have been the fastest RAF pilot to ever make ace, in two days; he was only 26 when he was killed)
Further research by
robynbender established that he actually had said antifascist cat painted on all his planes:http://www.hatfield-herts.co.uk/aviation/gleed.html
...p...p-p-PENIS?!!!
Oct. 21st, 2025 10:56 pmazurelunaticToday 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.
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... )
[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.
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... )
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Oct. 21st, 2025 07:03 pmlightreadsBeing Mortal
5/5. Discussion by a surgeon about how poorly we often handle mortality – care for the elderly in general, and death for both the old and young.
Excellent. I’ve had this book on my radar for over a decade, but the last time I went to pick it up, I found out literally the next day that my father was terminally ill, and I noped out. He lived another eleven months, which was about five months longer than he was expected to, but it’s taken me nearly eight years to come back to this book. I’m very glad I did, though this is depressing and infuriating and did make me cry.
It is also incredibly useful. There is an aging person in my life whom it is likely my wife and I will need to provide care for when it is needed, and this book was incredibly grounding on what that might look like, and in supplying an ethical framework to think about it. It would be oversimplifying to say that the book argues for privileging autonomy over safety, because there’s more to it than that, but the points it makes about how so many elderly care facilities are designed for the psychological comfort of the residents’ families at the expense of the residents’ comfort and happiness is sobering.
Also notable for some candid and messy examinations of how doctors do and don’t approach mortality with patients. There are no easy answers there, as patient need will vary widely. Some need to hear it to be prepared. Some don’t ever want to hear it. But he offers up some really good advice on frameworks for decisionmaking in life or death situations that can, if done right, make things vastly easier for the family making hard calls.
Highly recommended.
Content notes: Terminal illness, death of a parent, medical gaslighting
5/5. Discussion by a surgeon about how poorly we often handle mortality – care for the elderly in general, and death for both the old and young.
Excellent. I’ve had this book on my radar for over a decade, but the last time I went to pick it up, I found out literally the next day that my father was terminally ill, and I noped out. He lived another eleven months, which was about five months longer than he was expected to, but it’s taken me nearly eight years to come back to this book. I’m very glad I did, though this is depressing and infuriating and did make me cry.
It is also incredibly useful. There is an aging person in my life whom it is likely my wife and I will need to provide care for when it is needed, and this book was incredibly grounding on what that might look like, and in supplying an ethical framework to think about it. It would be oversimplifying to say that the book argues for privileging autonomy over safety, because there’s more to it than that, but the points it makes about how so many elderly care facilities are designed for the psychological comfort of the residents’ families at the expense of the residents’ comfort and happiness is sobering.
Also notable for some candid and messy examinations of how doctors do and don’t approach mortality with patients. There are no easy answers there, as patient need will vary widely. Some need to hear it to be prepared. Some don’t ever want to hear it. But he offers up some really good advice on frameworks for decisionmaking in life or death situations that can, if done right, make things vastly easier for the family making hard calls.
Highly recommended.
Content notes: Terminal illness, death of a parent, medical gaslighting
Amorous toads
Oct. 21st, 2025 03:42 pmoursinThis was in one of my inboxes this am (ironically, Mme C-C-'s):
Nice to connect beyond work
Hi,
We’ve crossed paths around the office a few times, and I’ve been meaning to say hello. I recently joined a dating site and thought it might be easier to connect there outside of work.
If you’re open to it, here’s my profile: [redacted link]
You’ll need to sign up to view it.
No pressure at all—just an invitation to chat in a space that isn’t tied to corporate email.
Either way, wishing you a great week.
Best,
A colleague
How creepy is that? (sending it in to phishing reporting).
(Or maybe run it past Ask A Manager???)
***
Actually, it is a bit of an insult to bufo bufo to characterise anyone doing this sort of thing as a toad, no? Especially when the poor things are currently suffering a good deal in their quest for LUHRRVVV: can Britain’s toads be saved from traffic and terrible decline?
(No, they are not zipping around doing dangerous driving in fast cars, parp-parp, like Mr Toad.)
They are trying to get to suitable mating areas:
toads like large ponds. Their ability to stay out of water for longer than frogs, means they can travel further to reach them – sometimes hundreds of metres, Petrovan says. They tend to stick to their ancestral migration routes – it’s common for adult toads to return to their birth pond to mate.
This is why the toad crossed the road.
I think I have heretofore mentioned the people who help toads to do this thing: in fact it's a bit of a recurrent theme.... (going way back).
(no subject)
Oct. 20th, 2025 09:19 pmskygiantsFor our friend/former roommate M's birthday last weekend he decided to host a screening of the recent two-part Three Musketeers film adaptation, D'Artagnan and Milady.
Apparently this is the first French film adaptation in sixty years?! (which I did not know before looking at the Wikipedia just now) and I think we all had a vague conception that, being French, it was likelier to be moderately book-accurate than the run of modern English film adaptations. As it turns out this was foolish and prejudiced of us. French directors have just as much fun picking and choosing their favorite bits of The Three Musketeers and jettisoning the rest as anybody else.
That said: I think most of the changes are quite fun and interesting! Perhaps most notably, this is the most successful Milady Positive Musketeers adaptation that I've yet encountered. At least 50% of the plot changes are in service of ensuring that the Musketeers continue to see Milady as a primary antagonist while ensuring that we-the-viewers are tilting our heads like 'hmm ... but is she though ......'
Case in point: the biggest plot change is that suddenly we are very concerned about Huguenots. Athos now comes from a Protestant family and has an ardent Huguenot brother who is on the other side in La Rochelle; meanwhile the whole conflict is being escalated by Gaston of Orléans, who's the real villain of the piece. Why does Gaston of Orléans need to be the real villain of the piece? So that by comparison Cardinal Richelieu is not so bad, so that the schemes on which he's sending Milady are really not so bad, so actually --
( more Milady changes, big spoilers )
The other two biggest plot changes are also very funny to me .... one is that the creative team were like "what do Porthos and Aramis have going on with the Milady plot? Well ... nothing really. So instead we are going to give them a comic b-plot about finding which hot soldier knocked up Aramis' feisty sister. Since when does Aramis have a feisty sister SINCE NOW." ( more spoilers )
The other is that midway through movie two they slide in a new semi-historical OC (semi-historical because he's based on this guy but sixty years too early) who immediately steals the show in every possible way; he drops the best one-liners in the film, saunters casually in to save the Musketeer's asses on at least two different occasions, and is also the hottest man on the screen. To be clear I love this, big ups to the New Improved Musketeer, absolutely in the spirit of Dumas Pere. It did not at all shock me to learn that the creative team were now angling to make a TV show with this guy as the lead. I hope it succeeds because I'd watch the hell out of it.
Other notes: the costuming is very brown in the way that is clearly intended to shout "historical accuracy!" while demonstrating the exact opposite. One of the friends attendant at the party is a historical costume hobbyist and she spent the whole evening glowering at the screen muttering 'where is everyone's LACE?' And then every so often someone would show up with a plasticky lace border around their neckline and we'd all shout 'LOOK! LACE!' which strangely did not soothe her.
ON the other hand, at one point a character in a fraught chase sequence is shown actually changing horses, which so delighted the horse-knowers among us that they immediately forgave Eva Green every implausible corset lugged straight off the set of Penny Dreadful.
On the third hand: no valets. WHEN will someone make a Three Musketeers adaptation with vales?
Apparently this is the first French film adaptation in sixty years?! (which I did not know before looking at the Wikipedia just now) and I think we all had a vague conception that, being French, it was likelier to be moderately book-accurate than the run of modern English film adaptations. As it turns out this was foolish and prejudiced of us. French directors have just as much fun picking and choosing their favorite bits of The Three Musketeers and jettisoning the rest as anybody else.
That said: I think most of the changes are quite fun and interesting! Perhaps most notably, this is the most successful Milady Positive Musketeers adaptation that I've yet encountered. At least 50% of the plot changes are in service of ensuring that the Musketeers continue to see Milady as a primary antagonist while ensuring that we-the-viewers are tilting our heads like 'hmm ... but is she though ......'
Case in point: the biggest plot change is that suddenly we are very concerned about Huguenots. Athos now comes from a Protestant family and has an ardent Huguenot brother who is on the other side in La Rochelle; meanwhile the whole conflict is being escalated by Gaston of Orléans, who's the real villain of the piece. Why does Gaston of Orléans need to be the real villain of the piece? So that by comparison Cardinal Richelieu is not so bad, so that the schemes on which he's sending Milady are really not so bad, so actually --
( more Milady changes, big spoilers )
The other two biggest plot changes are also very funny to me .... one is that the creative team were like "what do Porthos and Aramis have going on with the Milady plot? Well ... nothing really. So instead we are going to give them a comic b-plot about finding which hot soldier knocked up Aramis' feisty sister. Since when does Aramis have a feisty sister SINCE NOW." ( more spoilers )
The other is that midway through movie two they slide in a new semi-historical OC (semi-historical because he's based on this guy but sixty years too early) who immediately steals the show in every possible way; he drops the best one-liners in the film, saunters casually in to save the Musketeer's asses on at least two different occasions, and is also the hottest man on the screen. To be clear I love this, big ups to the New Improved Musketeer, absolutely in the spirit of Dumas Pere. It did not at all shock me to learn that the creative team were now angling to make a TV show with this guy as the lead. I hope it succeeds because I'd watch the hell out of it.
Other notes: the costuming is very brown in the way that is clearly intended to shout "historical accuracy!" while demonstrating the exact opposite. One of the friends attendant at the party is a historical costume hobbyist and she spent the whole evening glowering at the screen muttering 'where is everyone's LACE?' And then every so often someone would show up with a plasticky lace border around their neckline and we'd all shout 'LOOK! LACE!' which strangely did not soothe her.
ON the other hand, at one point a character in a fraught chase sequence is shown actually changing horses, which so delighted the horse-knowers among us that they immediately forgave Eva Green every implausible corset lugged straight off the set of Penny Dreadful.
On the third hand: no valets. WHEN will someone make a Three Musketeers adaptation with vales?
The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft
Oct. 20th, 2025 05:16 pmlightreadsThe Hexologists and A tangle in Time
3.5/5. A pair of fantasy mysteries set in an industrializing city and featuring a married couple detective duo.
These are fun, a little briskly funny, and correctly not pretending to have any real there there. The mysteries are twisty, the world building is interesting, the jokes are decent, and the protagonists have an entertaining dynamic (she does the magic and most of the mystery solving, he does the cooking and carries her bag and occasionally punches someone).
I did get annoyed with the metronomically predictable action scenes, which arrive every few chapters whether they are needed or not. It has that vibe where the author doesn’t trust the reader to stay interested without some running about and shouting and getting into plot-irrelevant peril. I think he would be better served by putting just the tiniest scrap of there in here, problem solved.
Also, I think the villain in the second book is ( spoiler I guess ) but YMMV on that.
3.5/5. A pair of fantasy mysteries set in an industrializing city and featuring a married couple detective duo.
These are fun, a little briskly funny, and correctly not pretending to have any real there there. The mysteries are twisty, the world building is interesting, the jokes are decent, and the protagonists have an entertaining dynamic (she does the magic and most of the mystery solving, he does the cooking and carries her bag and occasionally punches someone).
I did get annoyed with the metronomically predictable action scenes, which arrive every few chapters whether they are needed or not. It has that vibe where the author doesn’t trust the reader to stay interested without some running about and shouting and getting into plot-irrelevant peril. I think he would be better served by putting just the tiniest scrap of there in here, problem solved.
Also, I think the villain in the second book is ( spoiler I guess ) but YMMV on that.
Coincidence?
Oct. 20th, 2025 07:48 pmoursinAnother flare-up of lower-back issues. This will be the third time this has happened with Academic Thing impending.... (podcast particiption scheduled for tomorrow). Can do without this, really. in particular the associated insomnia.
***
Further cause of miff: thought from listing in back of an NYRB paperback that there was a Jessica Mitford volume I did not have - further delving reveals it is merely The Making of a Muckraker under a different title with a new introduction and one chapter that is not in my 1979 Quartet p/b. Huh.
***
Honestly, I look at the headshot at the top of this piece and go, 'man, he is such a square he is cubed': after 70 years of hip-shaking thrills, is rock’n’roll dead?
Come on (thanks Chuck): styles of music have their day and time moves on.
Will concede that have recently been reviewing books leaning heavily on popular music culture of the 50s-70s and its impact, but you know, that was a particular time and context, and anyone doing rock now is pretty much a tribute band or very very retro, surely?
It was clear from the works I was reviewing that The Scene was constantly shifting and moving on and developing niche scenes differentiating themselves from The Mainstream and so on and so forth.
And it is one thing to be nostalgic, and to be interested in a bygone epoch of popular music culture, and another to believe that it has to keep on being a living scene.
AWS outage
Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 amalierak posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceDW 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.
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.
I now have basically no internet or phone reception at home
Oct. 20th, 2025 09:37 amrydra_wongExcept 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.
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.
Yuletide 2025 Dear Author letter
Oct. 19th, 2025 03:19 pmellen_fremedonDear Yuletide Author:
Thank you for writing a story for me! I love it already!
If you have a story in mind in any of the fandoms I requested, go for it--I will love pretty much anything for these sources. I love worldbuilding, I love character-focused fic, I love smut of all stripes, and I love gen. I want to read what you want to write.
In all of these fandoms, I am especially interested in any or all of the following:
--Nontraditional relationship dynamics and the way people find or build a niche for themselves in a world with strict rules--about gender and relationships and everything else.
--Seeing the characters deal with actual historical figures and events and inventions--ones offstage or coming up post-canon, or more detail on events during canon.
--Material culture: how they decorate their rooms, what they have for dinner, how they dress. These fandoms are all made for lavish descriptions of fashion--the men's no less than the women's!
If you are here as a pinch hitter: I'm so sorry. I have all historical fandoms this year. Fortunately they are all fairly short: two stand-alone novels, one film, and one TV series of 6 30-minute episodes. The one that will probably need the least amount of historical research is Mademoiselle de Maupin, which is extremely vague about what year or even what century it's set in.
One general DNW: Animal cruelty. I can handle non-graphic descriptions of hunting, butchery, or veterinary work, but please, nothing with an element of punishment or betrayal--no deliberate harm to animals by people they trust.
( Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier )
( Horace - George Sand )
( Quacks (TV) )
( Impromptu (1991) )
Thank you for writing a story for me! I love it already!
If you have a story in mind in any of the fandoms I requested, go for it--I will love pretty much anything for these sources. I love worldbuilding, I love character-focused fic, I love smut of all stripes, and I love gen. I want to read what you want to write.
In all of these fandoms, I am especially interested in any or all of the following:
--Nontraditional relationship dynamics and the way people find or build a niche for themselves in a world with strict rules--about gender and relationships and everything else.
--Seeing the characters deal with actual historical figures and events and inventions--ones offstage or coming up post-canon, or more detail on events during canon.
--Material culture: how they decorate their rooms, what they have for dinner, how they dress. These fandoms are all made for lavish descriptions of fashion--the men's no less than the women's!
If you are here as a pinch hitter: I'm so sorry. I have all historical fandoms this year. Fortunately they are all fairly short: two stand-alone novels, one film, and one TV series of 6 30-minute episodes. The one that will probably need the least amount of historical research is Mademoiselle de Maupin, which is extremely vague about what year or even what century it's set in.
One general DNW: Animal cruelty. I can handle non-graphic descriptions of hunting, butchery, or veterinary work, but please, nothing with an element of punishment or betrayal--no deliberate harm to animals by people they trust.
( Mademoiselle de Maupin - Théophile Gautier )
( Horace - George Sand )
( Quacks (TV) )
( Impromptu (1991) )
Culinary
Oct. 19th, 2025 07:19 pmoursinThis week's bread (because last week's suddenly got The Mould): a loaf of Bacheldre Rustic Country Bread Flour, v nice if turned out a bit crumbly.
Friday night supper: sorta-nasi goreng with saucisson sec and red bell pepper.
Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, einkorn flour, maple syrup, dried ('apple-juice infused') blueberries: turned out particularly well.
Today's lunch: pork belly slices slow-braised in soy sauce, rice wine, maple syrup and 5-spice powder; served with slowcooked tenderstem broccoli (lime rather than lemon at the end), fine green beans and chopped red bell pepper roasted in walnut oil with fennel seeds and drizzled with elderflower vinegar, and cornbread (plain white flour + baking powder, half and half with mixture of fine/coarse cornmeal)..
Just wanted to say
Oct. 19th, 2025 09:07 amrydra_wongI very very much appreciate everyone who has been leaving me questions and comments here, and if anyone would like to add more they would still be extremely welcome.