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Friday, October 31st, 2025 14:51
[personal profile] hyounpark pinged me from BART this morning with the sad news that Fugakyu is closing, after 27 years.

It feels like I've been going there forever, even though honestly the last time I went there was probably when we still lived in Boston. But I'm like 80% certain I've gone on dates there with all of my major boyfriends (if I dated you for at least a year, that's the defining line in my headcanon). A bazillion times with [personal profile] hyounpark during our Boston era. Plenty of times with [personal profile] noghri, both while we were dating and then when we became friends. I thought I'd brought [livejournal.com profile] kallmir2000 there, but I double-checked and it was Ginza I was thinking of. Which, admittedly, I'd also eaten sushi at with even more of the people I've dated, hahaha, including both Punsterboy and Choirboy! 😁 (Even though Ginza's been gone for well over a decade now.) And [livejournal.com profile] theconvictor and I had our Valentines' Day 2000 dinner at Fugakyu when we spent the weekend in Boston on a romantic getaway from campus, feeling ever so grownup, removing our shoes to sit at one of the traditional low tables in the fancy embedded booths.

Fugakyu was even where I introduced multiple friends to sushi ([livejournal.com profile] fes42, [livejournal.com profile] jennifer, [livejournal.com profile] david_grana, Adam); where my girlfriends took me after devastating breakups and meh second dates, because sushi would be followed up by ice cream at JP Licks, and then a visit to a certain little shop down the way (also long gone, alas; I'm hoping this recent rise in romance-specific bookstores brings an appropriate replacement to the neighborhood) because that was definitely better than moping over guys!

And now it's closing, for "personal reasons."

Damn, am I gonna miss their pinetato (pineapple and sweet potato) maki. And the kinuta. And the hotate hokkayaki. And the giant boats of sushi that I would split with my friends. I know where to get sushi; honestly I may just pop down to our neighborhood sushi joint before the trick-or-treaters start arriving. But mostly, finding out that Fugakyu is closing next week is just making me miss everyone in Boston. Even knowing that many of the friends I mentioned don't live there anymore, like us.
Friday, October 31st, 2025 13:54
Happy Spooky Season from us at Wiscon!

cut for image )
Thursday, October 30th, 2025 19:29
1. I worked from home again today, which was nice, but the reason was not so much. I'm sick again. D: Yesterday afternoon I started to feel a tickle in my throat that just continued throughout the evening, but it was super dry yesterday so it was the sort of thing that could have just been due to the weather. Unfortunately when I woke up this morning it was definitely more of a proper sore throat. So far testing negative for covid, but I'll keep checking. (I will say that the time last year when we actually did have covid, it showed up on the tests right away. But I know it doesn't always, so I won't take an early negative as a sure thing.)

2. Our new coffee table arrived and is all set up! It was not a full DIY table like Ikea, just had to attach the legs, so it was very quick to do.

3. Finished up another puzzle today. This is one of the ones we got at Target recently. It's 500 pieces but felt easier than a lot of the other ones of that size we've done, though the foil made it annoying at times since the light would kind of glare off it.



4. Jasper is such a handsome guy.

Thursday, October 30th, 2025 22:11

I supplied knives and fine motor control; the toddler supplied art direction; the toddler's resident adults supplied outlines for me to cut around (and candles, and matches, and in fact all of the cutting of the tiny pumpkin).

one large and one small pumpkin, carved, with candles, in the dark

Wednesday, October 29th, 2025 19:16
1. I had a dentist appointment today (just a cleaning) and didn't want to go to work afterwards, so I just worked from home. Today is the hottest day of our heatwave, but it wasn't too hot in the house and I even took a walk in the afternoon, which I definitely wouldn't have been able to do at work because it's hotter down there plus there's hardly any shade in the neighborhood whereas the streets right around our house have a lot of tree coverage even midday.

2. Carla made pot roast for dinner. It was in the slow cooker, so it didn't heat up the house too much. It turned out really tasty! Haven't had pot roast in ages. It would have been nicer if the weather was still cool, but it still tasted good.

3. When Carla was moving stuff around to put books in her new bookcase, she moved some stuff out of this other bookcase and as soon as her back was turned, Chloe came to settle on the middle shelf lol.

Wednesday, October 29th, 2025 21:48

I have, in the latest book, got to The Obligatory Page And A Half On Descartes, but this one makes a point of describing it as a "reductionistic approach".

The Thing Is, of course, that much like the Bohr model (for all that's 250 years younger, give or take), for many and indeed quite plausibly most purposes, The Cartesian Model Of Pain is, for most people and for most purposes, good enough: if you've got to GCSE level then you'll have met the Bohr model; if you get to A-level, you'll start learning about atomic orbitals; and then by the time I was starting my PhD I had to throw out the approximation of atomic nuclei as volumeless points (the reason you get measurable and interpretable stable isotope fractionations of thallium is -- mostly! -- down to the nuclear field shift effect).

Similarly, most of the time you don't actually need to know anything beyond the lie-to-children first-approximation of "if you're experiencing pain, that means something is damaging you, so work out what it is and stop doing that". The Bohr model is good enough for a general understanding of atomic bonds and chemical reactions; specificity theory is good enough for day-to-day encounters with acute pain.

The problem with specificity theory isn't actually that it's wrong (although it is); it's that it gets misapplied in cases where Something More Complicated is going on in ways that obscure even the possibility of Something More Complicated. The problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that it doesn't get presented with the footnote of "this isn't the whole story, and for understanding anything beyond very short-term acute pain you need to go into considerably more detail". But most people aren't in more complex pain than that! Estimates run at ~20% of the population living with chronic pain, but even if we accept the 43% that sometimes gets quoted about the UK, most people do not live with chronic pain.

There's probably an analogy here with the "Migraine Is Not Just A Bad Headache" line (and indeed I'm getting increasingly irritated with all of these books discussing migraine as though the problem is solely and entirely the pain, as opposed to, you know, the rest of the disabling neurological symptoms) but I'm upping my amitriptyline again and it's past my bedtime so I'm not going to work all the details of that out now, but, like, Pain Is Not Just A Tissue Damage, style of thing.

Anyway. The point is that I still haven't actually read Descartes (I've got the posthumously published and much more posthumously translated Treatise on Man in PDF, I just haven't got to it yet) and nonetheless I am bristling at people describing him as reductionist (derogatory). Just. We aren't going to do better if we also persist in wilful misunderstandings and misrepresentations for the sake of slagging off someone who has been dead for three hundred and seventy-five years instead of recognising the actual value inherent in "good enough for most people most of the time", and how that value complicates attempts at more nuance! How about we actually acknowledge the reasons the idea is so compelling, huh, and discuss the circumstances under which the approximation holds versus breaks down? How about that for an idea.

Wednesday, October 29th, 2025 19:09

Purple Pikmin in an airplain, next to a pikmin with a Carreg Dhu mountain badge. Photo of Grafitti saying Peace Monkey Graffit, Withingon, Manchester, with two pickmin with yellow flowers on their heads down the front. Bunch of Mii's in a mixture of outfits, most with sunglasses, celebrating 100063 steps. View of a road layout showing a red mushroom, and various planters. A blue pikmin an a 3 cupcake holding a cherry

It's remarkably difficult, at least I find it so, to take screenshots of one's iPhone. As a result capturing good images of Pikmin proced challenging.
Tuesday, October 28th, 2025 19:41
1. Back to work today was fine. Morning was mainly catching up on email/messages and I had a meeting in the afternoon, but otherwise just had time to myself to get stuff done.

2. I brought home sushi from work for dinner and it was very tasty. There's a seared salmon sushi that all our stores carry and Carla often gets from the location nearest us, but that location doesn't have an in-store kitchen and gets all their packaged food delivered. But the Gardena location makes it in-house and theirs tastes so much better (at least in my opinion; Carla didn't notice that much of a difference). They go heavy with the blowtorch to sear them and you can really taste the grill flavor.

3. So far this week's heatwave has not been as bad as predicted. Hopefully that holds true for the rest of the week! (It's supposed to be back to cool weather this weekend.)

4. Gemma has perfected the disapproving look.

Tuesday, October 28th, 2025 19:17
We keep thinking about how we should go to Knott's, but never going. We've only been once this year, during the Boysenberry Festival, and we really did want to check it out during Halloween, but their hours are so limited (even on nights when they don't have Scary Farm (which is not only a separate ticketed event, but one we have zero interest in), they close at like 6pm, which makes a dinner trip difficult to plan. But I had the day off yesterday, so we went down for lunch.

Read more... )
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2025 18:25
Video appointment with chemotherapist today. I'm done with immunotherapy! The scan says I've been stable.

I still have:

* bone strengthening (not marrow encouraging) med every 12 weeks, infused
* Scans every 3 months

So that means a trip or two to the cancer center every 3 months, although if they keep it at 3 months for the one and 12 weeks for the other, they may fall out of sync.

I should probably celebrate this?
Tuesday, October 28th, 2025 21:26

Sarah Russell of The Ostomy Studio, the person who made such an enormous difference to my general State Of Being just over a year ago via the medium of a private Pilates lesson pre-surgery, has just announced publication of the new Exercise and Physical Activity after Stoma Surgery best practice guidelines that she's been working on for literal years along with some amazing collaborators!

The principles here are the bedrock for the private lesson I had before surgery, and are also what I used as my foundation for rehab despite not after all needing to work with a stoma; I've not read them in full, but if you know folk they might be of interest to then please do pass the link on <3

Monday, October 27th, 2025 19:14
1. We went to Knott's Berry Farm for lunch today! This is actually only the second time we've gone this year. ^_^;; It just feels like there's never a good time to go, since there's not much we're interested in doing there other than checking out the food. We plan to go again a time or two during the Christmas season (especially during the last ten days of the year when we're blocked out from Disneyland), but I don't think we'll renew our pass next year.

The food is so good and if we lived closer, it would make sense to just pop in whenever, but the park hours suck, so we can't do early mornings or later in the evening like we do with Disneyland to avoid the crowds, the parking situation is often bad, and there is nowhere in the park to escape the constant noise of rollercoasters. Plus the park is so small that you don't really get that satisfying a walk out of it. I will miss the food, though! Next year we're thinking of maybe getting a Universal Studios pass and seeing how we like that (we'll go once to try it out first as neither of us have ever been).

2. It was nice to have an extra day off. Not super looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, but on the bright side, now it's just a four day week!

3. Tuxie tried to hide behind the charcoal when I went out to garage lol.

Monday, October 27th, 2025 19:00
We skipped the majority of the mix-in time and got into the park a little after five. There were still some non-event guests, but going by the amount of costumes, it was mostly other Oogie Boogie folks already.

Read more... )
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Monday, October 27th, 2025 18:56
Goodness it is ages since I did a meme and, I suspect, even longer since I actually managed to write any fanfic, however the A-Z meme got me curious so without more ado.

Monday, October 27th, 2025 10:01
[The folks at [community profile] holly_poly wanted a little exchange primer for people who haven't done things before, and since I'm helping out a little bit on their socials side, I thought I'd put one together, based on my extensive experience over the years in participating. If you've never taken part in one, I highly recommend it, they're fun. And if you have additional information to contribute, please do!]


So, you're thinking about participating in a fandom exchange, and you're not entirely sure how this process all goes? Don't worry. Here's a walkthrough of what exchange participation looks like, from the first parts of nominations to the joys of reveals. Since a fair number of exchanges are run on the Archive of Our Own, this guide assumes you already have an account there to sign up with. If not, they're free to get, but they might take a little while to get to you in the queue, so getting one now, before the meat of an exchange starts, will ensure that you're ready to participate.

Let's get into it with the first phase of an exchange - nominations.

Nominations



Nominations is the part of the exchange where you get to suggest what kinds of things should be included in the exchange's tag set. Nominating does not obligate you to sign up afterward, but a lot of people will if their nominations get through because then they know they'll have something they'll be excited to write about. Most nominations are also finite, so even if you're brimming with things you want to see, you'll only get to put in so many into the tag set.

Nominations have to fit the exchange's focus and format. For something that's just a general exchange, anything might be possible, but most exchanges focus on specific fandoms, characters, situations, or relationships. Holly Poly, for example, is a polyamory-focused exchange. Holly Poly nominations must include more than two entities in them, otherwise it wouldn't be a polyamorous relationship. And since it's about polyamory, they want "/"-type relationships that are romantic or sexual, rather than "&"-type relationships that are platonic and don't have romantic or sexual components to them. If I Fics, I Sits, however, says that anything can be done, so long as there's a cat in the relationship, since it's focused on cats.

Where possible, try to use the canonical tag on AO3 for nominating. Two things to remember when you're doing nominations for Holly Poly or any other exchange hosted on AO3:
  1. AO3 does not do ship names, so if what you want is Zutaraang, you have to put in "Zuko/Katara/Aang." Yes, they make you spell it out.
  2. All canonical AO3 ships are in alphabetical order, by last name, if the character has one, and by their only name if not, so that Zutaraang relationship is in the AO3 database as "Aang/Katara/Zuko". The autocomplete can try to help you some if you put in at least one of the participants, but you'll have to wade through the dropdown to get to the thing you want if AO3 thinks you're looking for something else first.


Make sure you also check anything the exchange mod has posted about any deviations they might be making from AO3 canonical tags for their exchange. Sometimes a tag tries to slide into another place and the mod has to change the tag to make it stay in place, or separate shows / games set in the same continuity are being combined into a single universe tag. Or exchange moderators will ask you to nominate the most specific version of the character or relationship as possible, because characters and their relationships do change between media adaptations, and sometimes fans have strong opinions about which version they want to see.

Once you've nominated, keep your eyes out for any "clarifications" posts, because those happen when the exchange moderators detail the problems they're having with nominations. It can be something as simple as having nominated characters and relationships under the incorrect fandom, and sometimes it's as complex as trying to disambiguate which of the six canonical versions of a spandex-clad superhero was intended in a nomination, or whether it will be up to the people signing up to work it out for themselves which one they want. If you're the nominator, then you get to provide additional information to help the moderators place your nomination correctly. Moderators will also usually provide a threat to make sure that information comes in a timely manner, with the idea that either a nomination will be selected to be something, or the nomination will be rejected from the tagset, if clarifying information doesn't arrive by the deadline.

Signups



Set some time aside when it's time to do sign-ups.

More than that.

Still more.

Why? Because unless you're here only for the things you nominated and nothing else, you're going to want to spend some time looking at the tag set. Even if you are here just for the things you nominated and nothing else, you want to look at the tag set. There are a lot of gems in there, from properties you haven't thought of in years, or other popular things, or pairings that you might not have thought of initially, but there's a germ of an idea in your head about what you could write if you were assigned that, and now you're interested.

I'd also look in on the Crossovers and the Original Works tags, if you want to see some of the really fun ways that people imagine relationships and what kinds of worlds they envision or want to collide together. Original Works is also where a lot of the Omegaverse prompts live, but even if you're not an Omegaverse fan, some of the prompts in there can be creative sparks without having to try and figure out how to make existing characters work with it.

If you don't have enough from your nominations and the tag set by itself, some people start looking at the sign-up summaries, once they're posted, to see what other people have posted in their optional details field. It's still true that Optional Details Are Optional, but hearing someone describe what they do and don't want to happen in a work can help someone decide whether they want to offer that combination, or possibly stay away from it if the person who is offering it has Do Not Wants that would conflict if they were assigned that recipient.

Between nominations, tag set looking, and sign-up summary reading, it should be possible to build enough things to request and offer that meet the minimum requirements the exchange has set forth. So let's look at the sign-up form. It's split into two major sections: requests (what you would like to get) and offers (what you're willing to make for a potential recipient). There's a minimum number of each that you'll have to provide to successfully sign up for the exchange. The AO3 matching code works better with more options than fewer, so signing up with as much as you can is preferable to signing up with the minimums, but you should always only sign up with things you'll want to create or receive. The AO3 matching algorithm has the Bastard's sense of humor, and if you put in something that you're only half-hearted about, it will ensure that you match with your recipient or your gifter on that thing and nothing else.

On the requests side, the form will ask you for what fandom your request is in, then what relationship(s) from that fandom you're requesting. Both fandom and relationships should match exactly what's in the tag set, or your sign-up will be rejected with errors. The autocomplete dropdown will try to help you get the exact tag from the tag set, but on those rare occasions where the dropdown isn't helpful, copying and pasting the tag exactly as it is from the tagset should still allow it to go through.

After that, choose from the tickyboxes about what kind of thing you would like to receive. Common items there are fic (written), art (still drawings and/or comics,), vids (video content, usually re-cut footage set to music or some other audio track), and podfic (an audio track recorded by the gifter or the gifter and others). Most exchanges, if they're not specifically about vids or podfic, will usually just have fic and art in this space.

After saying which fandom you want, which relationship(s) you want, and what form you'd like to receive a gift in, there's the Optional Details section. The first rule about Optional Details is that they are optional. The person who is creating for you is not obligated to follow any of your optional details, but many people who are looking to make gifts will find those details useful to give them a direction to go in. A good reason to provide optional details in some form is that if you don't, the person gifting you the work is likely to write what they will enjoy, and there's no guarantee that your tastes will line up completely, even if you match in the algorithm. If you don't leave anything as a guide, you are tempting fate, and if I haven't mentioned it enough already, the AO3 algorithm has the Bastard's sense of humor and will give you someone who can complete an assignment that fulfills all the requirements and may not be anything like what you wanted.

The one exception usually granted to the Optional Details Are Optional (ODAO) rule is the Do Not Wants (DNW). Do Not Wants are the stuff that if it appears in a gift work will sour it immediately and permanently, no matter how well it's done, how tastefully it might be done, or how small the quantity of it is. You know people who have allergies so severe that they go into anaphylaxis even at the slightest inclusion of an ingredient in their meal or the presence of it in their environment? That thing that causes them such problems is a Do Not Want. It's poor form to use your Do Not Wants to box your gifter in to giving you something that is extra-tailored to you, if those things really aren't Do Not Wants, and some exchanges will say explicitly that they won't enforce Do Not Wants they consider unreasonable. Better to say what you do want and hope your gifter will follow that and leave the Do Not Wants for those specific things that will just turn you off the gift completely.

In your Optional Details, you can also indicate whether you'd like to receive treats, works created by someone other than your assigned gifter that otherwise meet the requirements of the exchange. Treats are generally pretty neat to receive, but sometimes a person doesn't want them, for their own reasons. If you do want treats, you'll also want to make sure that your AO3 account preferences have "Allow anyone to gift me works" checked, or any possible treats will fizzle.

The last field on the requests side is a place to link to your "Dear Creator" letter. Some people find it easier to put all of their optional details into a single entry, whether on Dreamwidth or Tumblr or somewhere else, and then point their gifter to that letter for things like what they like, what they dislike, possible prompts for their gifter to work off of, and the like. The "Dear Creator" letter is considered to be part of the Optional Details, and many times, exchange moderators say they won't enforce any Do Not Wants in a creator letter, because the letter itself is not required to be read, so make sure that you put your DNWs in the Optional Details box, just to be safe.

Okay, time for the offers side. The offers side works mostly the same way as the requests side, with choosing a fandom, relationship(s), and media, but for what you want to offer to someone else. Same rules apply about only offering what you want to create, because the AO3 matching algorithm is even more perverse on this side of the sheet than it is for request matches. It will almost unerringly choose the one that you were least enthusiastic about. The optional details field may still be Optional Details, but in some places it's re-titled as "Notes to Mods." This may be a place where you can mention if there are particular users that you don't want to match with, for whatever reasons you may have for this. There's no guarantees that such preferences can be accommodated, but those who are forewarned will do their best.

Once you've made your sign-up list and put in your details, click submit and wait. If you've forgotten something, or AO3 balks at something, the sign-up form will return, with highlighted spots where the errors are. If you succeed, you'll go to the sign-up summary page, and you'll see your own sign-up now in the list for other people to peruse and see if they can gather anything from your sign-up to assist their own.

Your Assignment



In normal circumstances, the AO3 algorithms will generate matches in such a way that every valid sign-up set will have one match of a fandom/pairing/medium trio in their requests with a fandom/pairing/medium trio in someone else's offers. In rare situations, a sign-up's request set may have no matches in anyone's offer set, or might only be able to match with someone who has already been matched with someone. In such rare cases, the moderators will reach out to the unmatched user and ask if they want to add requests to their sign-up. Adding additional requests and re-running matching often reshuffles everything so that everyone is matched. On the occasion that someone isn't matchable and doesn't change their sign-up, they'll usually head to the pinch hit list.

In any case, after matching, you should receive an e-mail from AO3 with your assignment for the exchange. Your recipient has matched you on at least one fandom/pairing/medium trio. Sometimes it's only one, sometimes there's more than one compatible match in the set. Your responsibility, once you have an assignment, is to produce a new work that meets one of the requests on the list, avoids the stated DNWs, and is sufficiently long/detailed to meet the requirements of the exchange. You don't necessarily have to create the thing that you matched on if something else catches your fancy, but you do have to create something off the request list put in front of you. The match is there to make sure there's at least one thing on the list that you said you wanted to create and they said they wanted to receive.

Your assignment is a secret.

Your assignment is a secret.

Because there's a good chance that you're in the same social spaces as your recipient, and you don't want to spoil the surprise! Even oblique hints about what you're creating might be enough for your recipient to deduce that you're their gifter. Run silent, run secret. The secret period extends from your assignment through the reveals of the works to the point where the authors of the works are revealed. Therefore, in your assignment, you cannot use the Notes or any other means to identify yourself as the creator of the work. Not even obliquely. Don't talk about the work anywhere during the anonymous period. Don't reveal who your recipient is.

If you have questions about your assignment, or need clarification on anything, contact your exchange moderators. If needed, they'll relay your question to your recipient, usually with some obfuscation in the form of other relevant questions to their sign-up and requests so as not to tip off the recipient about which of the things being asked about is the important one. Then they'll relay the response back to you.

Your assignment also comes with a deadline. Your completed work that conforms to the requirements of the exchange must be submitted to AO3 before the time posted as the deadline. The deadline is often something like midnight or 11:59pm on a specific day, but check the time zone. If it's UTC, that may mean you have more (or less) time than you think. I generally try to have my assignment done and submitted the day before the stated day of the deadline, just so that I don't potentially trip over any time zone issues.

To fulfill your assignment, you'll need to log in to AO3, and then choose "My Assignments" or "Assignments". You'll be presented with a list of all the exchanges you've received an assignment for. Scroll to the right assignment and click "Fulfill". At this point, you'll be taken to the AO3 New Work page, with a couple of key details already filled in about what exchange you are submitting this to, and who the gift recipient will be for the work. Everything else you fill in just as you would for any other AO3 work, with one exception. AO3's anonymity mask does not extend to series. If you put your work as part of a series, your recipient can click on the series title and be brought to the series page, with the author of the series unmasked, spoiling the anonymity. Series must be edited in after the anonymous author period expires.

If you know you're not going to get something done in time, or that you can't make the requirements, on your assignment page, there's a "Default" button next to the "fulfill" button. Most exchanges have a "no-fault default" deadline around a week before the deadline. Defaulting on your assignment means that you're saying you're not going to be able to complete something on time that meets the requirements. It happens, whether it's the well of creativity running completely dry, or life events conspiring to ensure that you have no time to complete your assignment, or any other reason. If you're not going to make it, and you know you're not going to make it, hit the default button as soon as you're sure. Doing it before the default deadline usually means you won't incur any penalty or be required to do make-up work before you can sign up for the next incarnation of the exchange. Default after the default deadline, or miss the assignment deadline, or turn something in that doesn't meet the requirements or hits someone's Do Not Wants will also likely incur a default, and there's a strong likelihood that you'll have to sit out an exchange round, or complete your assignment properly and give it as a gift, or otherwise pay a penalty of some sort before you're allowed to sign up again. Eject at the earliest point you are certain you can't complete the assignment to avoid being penalized for it.

Pinch-Hits



("Pinch hits" here refers to the baseball practice of substituting a different batter for the scheduled batter in the lineup, usually because the pinch hitter will have a higher chance of successfully getting on base and generating scoring potential.)

Every unmatchable assignment and recipient who has their gifter default and who has not defaulted themselves gets put on a list of people who need to have someone give them a gift. (Most exchanges run on the rule of "If you complete your assignment and gift someone else a work, then you must also receive at least one gift work based on your own requests.") This is the pinch hit list. ("Initial" pinch hits are unmatchable assignments, and "post-deadline" pinch hits are those that happen after the assignment deadline.)

Pinch hits are usually posted to a specific place, and will contain the entire requests portion of the sign-up for all interested parties to look at and make decisions about. Pinch-hitters are not limited to those who have signed up, but those who have signed up can collect pinch hits. (There may be a rule that you have to have completed and submitted your assignment before you can have a pinch hit assigned to you.) Initial pinch hits and early defaults will usually have the same deadline imposed on the pinch-hitter as regular assignments. As the assignment deadline approaches, pinch-hit deadlines will start to move past the initial deadline, but they will try to stay close to it. Pinch-hitters are often very good at turning around works quickly, sometimes because they see the request and go "oh, I know exactly what to do with that."

This may seem obvious, but no, you cannot pick up your own pinch hit. Even if it seems like that would be the easiest and most effective way of making sure it gets filled.

Betas



No, not the Omegaverse ones. Beta-readers.

It's not required, but it is recommended that if you have the time to do so, you run your assignment's draft form(s) past another pair of eyes to catch things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar (SPaG) errors, to have someone with lived experience in a specific community read the work to make sure that it doesn't perpetuate awful stereotypes about that community (sensitivity reading), or to see if the plot coheres and the timelines work, and the characterization makes sense for the fandom, and other such things that will improve the quality of the end product. There may be channels and places where you can make these requests, but remember, your assignment is secret. You cannot directly advertise for a beta because you might be tipping off your recipient with your request.

The Yuletide exchange has created the "hippo" system to deal with the necessities of keeping assignments secret while also getting beta requests publicized, and most other exchanges use a similar system. The "hippo" is usually someone with a specific role, whose purpose is to obfuscate who is making the beta request. Use private messaging to tell the hippo the important details of who your recipient is, what you need for your work, how long the work is, and what the turnaround time you need for the betaing is. Longer turnaround times have higher success rates, because most hippos are also working on assignments. The hippo will then make a post to the channel / community, passing along those details and asking for interested parties to message them directly and privately with their interest. On the high likelihood that the recipient offers to beta, so long as there are others willing to offer and one of them is selected, the hippo can politely decline the recipient with the excuse of "another's offer has been accepted," preserving the anonymity of the exchange, with the recipient none the wiser that they've offered to beta their own gift.

If you can, getting a beta reader / viewer is helpful and often can make the final product stronger. But it does require you to be more on top of your assignments such that you can take advantage of the extra time for polish. For some people, this will be impossible, which is why betas are usually recommended rather than required for your gift works.

Reveals!



Once everyone who has completed an assignment has a gift, the deadline has passed, and the exchange maintainers and moderators have checked and made sure that all of the gifts themselves meet the requirements of the exchange, the works are released!

However! The authors of the works are not. This is to preserve a period of time where the recipient, the participants, and any and all interested parties can enjoy the works without having their enjoyment influenced by whether or not the creator is well-known, a Big Name, a Professional Name using a pseudonym, or any other factors where the prestige of the person doing the work might overshadow the work and the work's enjoyment itself. During the anonymous period, any comments on the work by the work author will be noted as "Anonymous Creator."

In the rare case where a work is incomplete and was not caught by the exchange maintainers, or steps on a Do Not Want and wasn't caught by the exchange maintainers, let the exchange maintainers know as soon as possible! That will likely produce an emergency pinch hit need, but everyone is supposed to have a gift that meets the requirements and avoids the Do Not Wants.

By accident, I did a work that trod upon a Do Not Want. The recipient let the exchange creators know, and in this case, thought the work was excellent and accepted it and enjoyed it, but still let the maintainers know, so that I was duly chastised about it. I did offer to write something that would not be that, but it was not required of me. When I wrote something that hadn't been requested by a recipient, and they pointed this out, I wrote something that did match, with a certain amount of cussing out my inability to read. These things do happen, and they are often accidents, so giving the opportunity to make things right as soon as possible is the best thing for everyone.

If you have received a gift that conforms to the requirements of the exchange, it is customary to leave an indication that you have viewed/listened to the work that someone has gifted you. For some exchanges, more may be required of you, such as leaving a comment on the gift work, but the customary indication of something having been enjoyed, even if without any further comment, is the kudos button. Comments are lovely and very much appreciated by creators, but we also know that sometimes the recipient doesn't have anything to say, or doesn't feel like they can put it down in a coherent comment. All the same, please do indicate that you have at least viewed/listened to the work in question.

Once you've gone through your gift work (or works), then it's time to explore the rest of the collection! There might be more things in there with your favorite fandoms and ships, or you might discover a new ship or fandom to check out by reading the works in the collection. While the anonymous author period is still going on, you won't know who made it, but sometimes it's a good challenge to try and get through as much as you can before the author reveals happen.

Some writers also take this opportunity to manually set the date of publication for their work. In a fast-moving fandom or a popular ship, things can fall off the first page of "Arranged By Date" very quickly. With the period of time between when something is submitted and when reveals of works are, a work might finally appear on page two or three once reveals happen. Generally, if a work is being re-dated from the original submnission date, it can be brought forward to the reveal date of the works, so it will have the opportunity to at least exist for a little while on the front page. (For less popular ships, even with the delay, the work might still be the top of the first page. You never know.)

Author Reveals!



Usually seven days after the works are revealed, the author anonymity period ends, and you can see who all the writers were. That might mean that you have some new people to follow and subscribe to. At the point the author anonymity ends, all the people who have subscriptions to you will also be notified that you've written something new, and the rest of AO3 will have the opportunity to see it regularly, instead of in the anonymous period.

With the reveal of the authors, the exchange is usually finished, with the exception of any post-event question and answer sessions or feedback requests. There's all the stories to be enjoyed, the comments and kudos to be had, and the brainstorming for what you might want to write about next time around. Or to go off with a fistful of new fandoms and possible pairings and canons to look at.

Congratulations for participating in the exchange!
Sunday, October 26th, 2025 23:19
1. We had a good time at Oogie Boogie Bash tonight. I'm feeling very tired, so I'm glad I've got another day off work tomorrow.

2. Carla has started moving some of her books into the new bookshelf, freeing up space on the shelves in my room. Between books and legos and other knick knacks the shelves in my room were verrrrrrry overcrowded, so I'm looking forward to being able to space things out a bit more. (I was also able to dust the parts of the shelves where she took books from, which I usually don't do because too many knick knacks.)

3. Molly!

Sunday, October 26th, 2025 21:19

Reading. Two things finished, various things picked up and put down again.

Ouch!, Kerr & McRobbie: the subtitle is Why pain hurts, and why it doesn't have to; it's indicative of my current preoccupations that I was actively surprised that it is not, in fact, about chronic pain, except in passing, in that it's mentioned in the introduction in the context of pains the authors have experienced, and then it just sort of... vanishes again. What it actually is is more-or-less a tour of the sociology of acute pain, from a variety of perspectives and contexts, and an invitation to reshape your relationship with pain, optionally via the medium of sports.

It's very much aimed at a general audience (by which I mean both "not people with any particular pre-existing knowledge about pain" and also "not chronic pain patients"), with the infuriating-to-me feature of having not an actual bibliography but instead a "selected references" section, i.e. any claims I wanted to actually check required digging and then guessing (and in one case working out that they were actively wrong about which year the thing was published in, at least for referencing purposes). I did nonetheless get some useful information and vocabulary out of it (I'm especially here for the pointer to the 3P approach to pain management), and it prompted another couple of articulations.

Overall: not a disrecommendation; plausibly a light read if you have, you know, a recreational interest in pain; verify any specifics you want to rely on.

The Old Guard: Opening Fire, Rucka et al. A's conclusion was Well It Was Better Than The Second Film; mine was mild spoilers? )

and would be very happy to see that show up in an extended cut of the first film. The library doesn't have the second volume and I think we're unlikely to seek it out.

DW catch-up: halfway through September!

Playing. Inkulinati, mostly watching A play and occasionally making Suggestions. Does not work as well as a Shared Activity as I'd hoped (annoyingly I think I'd need to play basically all of it hands-on myself in order to internalise mechanics and strategy, rather than being able to e.g. swap who's driving for every level) but I am enjoying it happening in my vicinity. Today we also read the PDF of the art book together, which I am not counting as Reading because it was mostly looking at the pictures in another context.

And after six months I GOT UNSTUCK ON I Love Hue! The Ascension/Air/1, extremely gratified that searching for it revealed someone who'd managed to complete everything but that, and bolstered by this knowledge I turned brightness all the way up and the phone upside down and FINALLY managed to sort out the yellows, on my nth attempt... in way fewer than the average number of moves. VICTORY.

Cooking. Read more... )

Saturday, October 25th, 2025 18:35
1. Nice farmers market haul this morning, including a big bag of dried persimmons. I had some this afternoon for a snack and they are excellent. The only problem is the same problem I have with all dried fruit: being careful not to eat too much at once!

2. I finally put the Billy bookshelf together today. We got one in blue, so it matches the other blue Ikea cabinet and bedside table in Carla's room (I don't remember the name of that series, something not as easy to remember as Billy, that's for sure). I was dreading putting the doors on because I hate hinges, but the hinges on this are the easiest Ikea hinges I've done. (Rather than having to hold up the doors to screw them on, these hook on first so they can kind of help hold themselves up.)

3. Speaking of furniture, we've been wanting to get a coffee table for the garage and just not gotten around to it, but I have some Lego Christmas sets that I want to display on a coffee table, so now is the time. I poked around online a bit this evening looking for something and we settled on this one from Target, which lifts up like the one we have in the house, to make it easier to work on stuff while sitting on the sofa.

4. We had another baked potato with a Trader Joe's frozen topping tonight, this time it was chicken mole. WOW. This was even better than the birria. Would definitely get this again for baked potatoes.

5. Ollie's soaking in the sun.

Saturday, October 25th, 2025 08:42

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

Saturday, October 25th, 2025 11:33
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/scrap-the-bathroom-ban

From TransActual and Trans+ Solidarity Alliance. Produces a template letter to your MP which you can customize as much as you can or want to.

Article by Jane Fae of TransActual (who have been absolutely kicking ass):

https://www.scenemag.co.uk/jane-fae-a-director-of-transactual-writes-on-the-eve-of-launching-a-new-campaign-to-get-mps-to-reject-the-ehrcs-bathroom-ban/

There are now a bunch of Labour MPs who are worried and making noises at the government, even if it's only about the impact on businesses of rules which are possibly illegal and impossible to follow without getting sued:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/23/dozens-of-labour-mps-warn-of-chaos-for-firms-over-gender-recognition-advice

It's alleged that Bridget Phillipson was sitting on the guidance because she was worried it'd scupper her bid for the deputy leadership, whereas Powell is actively trans-friendly and has called for MPs to have a chance to debate and vote on the guidance.

The below may be an overly optimistic view but it seems clear there's tension and conflict between the EHRC and government:

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/frightened-and-desperate-ehrc-anti (warning for Substack, in case you are boycotting it)

So this is a moment when leverage is possible, and letters to your MP may actually do something.
Friday, October 24th, 2025 19:36
1. Not only is it the weekend, it's a three day weekend! We're going to Oogie Boogie Bash on Sunday night so I decided to take Monday off since we'll be out late (ish).

2. I love this picture of Jasper so much. Those big eyes! The little glimpse of pink tongue!

Friday, October 24th, 2025 17:56
Recently Finished
Murder in Matrimony
The ending of this felt like it was wrapping up the series, which is fine because I'd already decided not to read any more. antisemitism )

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
Finally finished this! It was actually really interesting, I just kept not reading it in favor of other things. In school Prohibition was passed over as basically like "it happened and then they repealed it", with the main focus of the early 20th century going towards the World Wars and Great Depression. I had no idea that Prohibition was so tied to the revival of the KKK, for example.

Artistic Buildings and Homes of Los Angeles
A very short book that is mainly pictures of buildings and houses in LA in the late 1800s, built by architect Joseph Newsom. The book has a forward and introduction written in 1988, and then the rest is a direct replica of a book put out by the architect to showcase his work, complete with ads that ran alongside the photos. It's very neat. Found it in a Little Free Library in the neighborhood.

Don't Hang Up
An Audible Original by the author of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone. He's done quite a few Audible Originals (the one below being another) and they're all short and free with my subscription, so I gave them a try, but none of them have been great. This one was interesting enough, but the MC was an asshole. He's a radio DJ who's been recently demoted to the midnight shift and one night gets a caller who tells him to stay on the line or a woman gets killed. Had some good twists, but it was just fine, not amazing.

Find Us
I really wish he would stick to writing stories set in Australia. This is the second one of his set in the US and there are always nitpicky things that bug me lol. Also if I'm reading an author from another country, it's because I want to read stories set in that country or at least with characters from that country (especially with an audiobook). But that's just minor stuff. This one felt like it really should have been longer (it's four hours, so about novella length). The MC is a former police detective, now working secretly for the FBI, trying to find school killers before they act by approaching kids who show red flags on social media and forums. One day her own kids go missing and she doesn't wait for the police, convinced she can find them herself. This had some interesting twists but I felt like the aftermath could have used more focus.

spoilers )

My Home Hero vol. 4
Friday, October 24th, 2025 17:42

Two hexangonal looking turrents joined by a battlemented wall.  Each turret has a mini-turret on top of it.
Caernarfon
Friday, October 24th, 2025 11:50
This is a bit different because I'm not complaining about my meds, I'm complaining how difficult in the last couple of months it's been to GET THEM.
1st, it was filling delays. They were either out, on order or some other excuse but it never was more than a couple days without. Supply chain issues. Now, it's getting worse. This month I've run out of Cardiac, Diabetes and HIV meds(the latter still hasn't been filled. "Backordered"). Thankfully, the Diabetes meds that were out were the oral so I could titrate with my Insulin.
Last month, after going through Withdrawal symptoms when my Lyrica was out I started weaning myself off it. I'm down to once a day and no more withdrawal. I'd been doin my BP meds every other day until it got filled. Now, it's been almost a week since I've been out of 2 of my HIV meds. 1st time since the late 90's I've missed ANY doses.
A positive situation is that my Partner of 30 yrs is in a nursing home and our last cat died of Cardiac insufficiency so no one depends on me. Well, I feed the neighbor cats but I'm pretty sure they're indoor/outdoor cats so they'll be ok when I'm gone.
I used to joke that when Chuck and the cats were gone I'd just go on Comfort Measures but it looks like it might not be a choice.
Sincerely,
Pat
Friday, October 24th, 2025 15:51

Summary: nobody seems to have done the data analysis I actually want, because data collection is hard and then actually making it internationally comparable ditto, but the proportion of chronic pain cases that are primarily attributable to back pain Of Some Kind seems to be very roughly in the region of 20%-50%, depending.

Read more... )

Friday, October 24th, 2025 08:30
Hey you. Want to volunteer for a Feminist Inclusive Convention?

https://wiscon.net/volunteer/concom/

#WisConCommunity #WisCon #WisCon2026 #FeministSFF #Volunteer

Thursday, October 23rd, 2025 20:10
1. I took a walk after lunch today and while the sun did peek out a few times, it was mostly overcast and made for very pleasant walking. Right now I've been trying to do a midday walk at least twice during the work week, but once we get into cooler weather I'll definitely be upping that, maybe even to daily. I do so much more sitting in one place in this current position than I did as area manager, and it's nice to get out and move around a bit.

2. I finished up another puzzle today. This is our third Disney villains puzzle, but it seems to be a very popular theme, going by the fact that when I was looking at puzzles at Target the other day, there were two other villains ones that were not the same as the ones we have. This one is a 750 piece one (only the second puzzle I've done this large) so it has room for more villains. Of course there's overlap in all the puzzles, but it's always interesting to see which ones they pick. This one has the main baddies on the V and their henchmen/women on the border, which was a fun design.



3. Look at that fluffy fur!

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 20:56
This week at my place of work has been instructive in the kinds of patience that you need to have with adolescents, and also an excellent example of how adolescent brains work, and how much they still seek connection with their peers even when, by themselves, they might recognize that a particular course of action is a bad idea.

First, however: For those of you who did not have the penis game as a part of your own adolescence, the penis game is essentially a form of chicken, where when it is your turn, the options available to you are to escalate the situation or to forfeit. Someone starts the game by saying the word "penis" as quietly as they would like. All the other participants (which can be pretty ad hoc) then have an opportunity to say the word "penis" louder than the first person. The game ends when nobody says the word "penis" louder than the last, or when the game is stopped by responsible adults who do not want young people saying "penis" loud enough to be heard. The collective goal of all the players is to say the word "penis" as loud as they can without getting into trouble with anyone else, even if the individual goal is to be the person who last said the word and didn't get in trouble for it.

Unsurprisingly, this is a favored game of young people who have penises and have been raised in a manspreading sort of culture. If you find people who are drawing penises on every available surface, they're probably also playing the penis game. The game is not segregated, however - those without penises can join in the game at any time and may end up being the person winning the game, simply because they'll be the last person to say it loudly without getting themselves or the group in trouble.

So, while I am at the help desk in my primary workplace, which was built as someone's homage to cathedrals and churches, with the attendant acoustic properties, loud and clearly from the teen area, I hear the word "penis!" As I am moving to handle the situation, I am thinking to myself, "Someone's playing the penis game. That's not a very smart decision in the library." By the time I get the space where I heard the word, I've got a bit ready to go about how playing the penis game sounds like fun for everyone involved, but it's a game that someone always loses. However, another co-worker has already been talking to them, and lets me know that this is the second strike assessed to this group for inappropriate language. So I have a message to deliver to our working staff when I get back to my spot, but before I can type up the report, once again, loud and clear, and possibly louder and clearer than the last one, the word "penis!" rings out again, and the teen librarian is immediately on the way, and I'm on my way to inform her that this is three, but by the time the staff converge, the group of teens has packed up and left.

What would possess young people to do something like this, in a space where they're definitely going to get caught and punished for it? To quote Agent Kay:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

Also, we have a significant amount of brain research into adolescents and have been able to get the idea that the adolescent brain, through the teenage years, is very focused on building social connections and alliances so that when they get out into the world as adults, they have backup and peer connections and other people who they can use to get work, crash space, income, romance, and all the rest of the things that adults have and they want. That brain research has provided us adults with a couple of useful things to keep in mind when working with teenagers:
  1. If you can, separate a teen from their peer group if you want to get them to change behavior. If you discipline a teen in front of the peer group, they may front and become deliberately difficult because they're more interested in saving face with their friends than in doing the thing that they would otherwise do if alone.

  2. A group of teenagers together is more prone to make worse decisions than those individual teens would by themselves. Because games of chicken like this are also ways of demonstrating both loyalty to the group and a willingness to keep the fun going or not be the person who wusses out. Sometimes being the kid who can articulate "hey, this isn't going well, we should stop" can get the stop that everyone wants, but sometimes it only gets you made fun of. So, y'know, the whole peer pressure thing is real, and it often can drive teens to do things that in the aftermath they know are foolish and wouldn't have done individually.

Knowing all this allows us to tailor our messaging to target the behaviors that are not acceptable in the space, but also to know that if the teens are playing the penis game, or throwing food at each other, or getting up to one of the myriad ways they make mischief, sometimes even unintentionally, odds are good that it only got this far because peer pressure, and if they take a cool-down day or a cool-down set of laps, they'll come back to the library with a better attempt at behaving like people who know how to exist in public places. Which they mostly do.

Working with people and child development was not a required course in my library concentration. I picked up a lot of it from taking a course from the School of Social Work, instead, figuring that having a solid grounding in child development and their environments would help me understand what I was doing in the library. It didn't give me "classroom management skills," which I was apparently supposed to have picked up along the way as well, despite my classroom everything supposedly being limited to times where teachers or librarians would be there. It didn't give me much about how to deal with the people that I was going to encounter, outside of reference interviews, and I didn't get anything about managing subordinates or other volunteers, either. Admittedly, I don't want to ever have to manage anyone, but I appreciated being able to level up my game for how to handle difficult situations and difficult people once I was out in the working world as a professional. Most of that training, though, came after my first manager had already come within an inch of getting me fired for not having all these skills I was assumed to have and for not being able to people well in ways that she expected me to. I won't be surprised if at some point, I officially end up getting upgraded to AuDHD if and when that becomes relevant and necessary, but even the more neurotypical people in my profession don't get a lot of training about managing people, both from the position of the supervisor and from the position of the supervised, when they're in library school. And so many of them definitely don't get anything at all that has to do with how children and teens develop, unless their specific remit is children or teens, and that can cause serious friction unless the people who do have the training share it with everyone else to make sure that they're all on the same page and consistent with what they're doing to do when teenagers in their library start playing the penis game.

(Yet more reasons for us to think hard about the state of education for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) positions and what's actually needed and what has been held on to because it makes the people who work in GLAM feel learned and professional.)
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 18:28
1. My meeting today was also shorter than planned, which was nice.

2. It's pretty windy today, and temps are down again, so it's feeling like fall. We were supposed to maybe get some rain last night, but didn't, but as long as the temps stay down, that's good for me.

3. Carla was able to get two cases of the apple tea she really loves at one of the other Japanese markets in the area (sadly, mine does not carry it, or I would have been able to get my employee discount). She's mostly been buying it a few bottles at a time, but last week was able to place an order for a couple cases and picked that up today.

4. Until we adopted Gemma, I'd never heard of cats having a curly tail. I've seen a couple pics here and there in the years since, but it does seem to be pretty rare. I love her little tail knott, though. (And it doesn't seem to cause her any issues.)

Thursday, October 23rd, 2025 00:36
It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.
Tags:
Thursday, October 23rd, 2025 00:33
I'm listening to the rain pattering on the window outside.

How's everyone else doing?
Tags:
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 21:35

One of the things I'm sure I've come across repeatedly in the books I've read so far is the idea that a very high proportion of Chronic Pain Cases are down to either back pain or headache. This is important because back pain genuinely is something that has a massive nociplastic component, especially in the lower back, that is unequivocally worth treating (despite myself I remain grudgingly impressed with the Boulder Back Pain Study; and, to be clear, I do myself have a grumbly section of lower back following an injury a few years ago that I am practising all my Theories on!).

This is an Important To Me framing device because my point is that treatments aimed purely at nociplastic pain/central sensitisation cannot be expected to work as well for people with ongoing or recurrent tissue damage/injury... but why it's worth using some of these approaches anyway, with the understanding of the actual scope of what effects to hope for or expect. Which means I'd like to know where they're GETTING those numbers from.

Mindfulness for Health )

The Way Out (... long, bonus tangential rant) )

The Painful Truth )

... aaaaaaand it is now definitely past bedtime so I'll finish Revisiting Books tomorrow. (My notes on Explain Pain, consistent with it being generally competent, are that it doesn't go anywhere near talking about what The Most Common Forms Of Chronic Pain are; might have a quick flip through when I'm next in the same place as my copy. Also couldn't find anything in Touch. Will be revisiting the current book, Ouch!, in the morning...)

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 21:28
According to the internet (or, at least, the approx 20 people who consistently voted in this poll). The bestest Doctor Who companion outfit ever is Romana's costume in Destiny of the Daleks.


Selection of images of Romana's outfit from Destiny of the Daleks.  It is a pink version of the Doctor's clothes.  A pink coat with dart pink detailing around lapels, cuffs and pockets.  A long white scarf.  Brown knee-lenght boots folded down at the top with pink trousers tucked in.  A white shirt.


Thank you everyone so much for playing. I have really enjoyed this!!
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2025 18:08
https://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 by [personal profile] robynbender established that he actually had said antifascist cat painted on all his planes:

http://www.hatfield-herts.co.uk/aviation/gleed.html
Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 22:56
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... )
Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 19:50
1. I had meetings that were supposed to go till five today but we got done by around 3:30!

2. Carla bought some baking potatoes the other day and I realized it was the perfect way to use the package of Trader Joe's frozen birria that we've had taking up space for like a year and a half at least, if the expiration date is anything to go by lol. It was a good amount for two servings (half a potato each, piled high with beef and cheese and plenty of broth). Not quite as good as the birria baked potatoes we had at Disneyland, though I feel like some cilantro would have helped on that front (forgot to buy any when we bought the cheese). Still, very tasty and very happy to use up something from the freezer.

3. Molly loves sitting on my lap, but she has not figured out how not to be completely awkward about it.

Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 22:27

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... )

Tuesday, October 21st, 2025 21:45

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.
Monday, October 20th, 2025 23:04

and that's why we had to have pasta for dinner.

Monday, October 20th, 2025 17:22
1. Got my hair cut this morning. It doesn't seem like a month since the last time, but that's how I schedule it, so I guess it is! Due to the AWS outages, they were unable to take payment through their system and their backup of Venmo was also down, but I do have a card on file with them, so they were able to offer the option of just charging that card as soon as things were up and working again, which they seem to have been this afternoon, as I did receive an email receipt from them.

2. I'm glad I always download audiobooks to my phone to listen to rather than streaming from the app, as apparently Hoopla was also affected. I happened to finish the book I was listening to right as I arrived at work, and opened the app to return the book, and it the app wasn't working at all (though it had still been playing while I was driving).

3. Tomorrow and Wednesday are likely to be long days at work, but I was able to finish up early today, which was nice. I think I got home around 4:30ish.

4. I love how Tuxie's legs look like a fish tail here.

Monday, October 20th, 2025 15:45
AWS had an outage today and Signal was unavailable for some users for a while. This has confused some people, including Elon Musk, who are concerned that having a dependency on AWS means that Signal could somehow be compromised by anyone with sufficient influence over AWS (it can't). Which means we're back to the richest man in the world recommending his own "X Chat", saying The messages are fully encrypted with no advertising hooks or strange “AWS dependencies” such that I can’t read your messages even if someone put a gun to my head.

Elon is either uninformed about his own product, lying, or both.

As I wrote back in June, X Chat genuinely end-to-end encrypted, but ownership of the keys is complicated. The encryption key is stored using the Juicebox protocol, sharded between multiple backends. Two of these are asserted to be HSM backed - a discussion of the commissioning ceremony was recently posted here. I have not watched the almost 7 hours of video to verify that this was performed correctly, and I also haven't been able to verify that the public keys included in the post were the keys generated during the ceremony, although that may be down to me just not finding the appropriate point in the video (sorry, Twitter's video hosting doesn't appear to have any skip feature and would frequently just sit spinning if I tried to seek to far and I should probably just download them and figure it out but I'm not doing that now). With enough effort it would probably also have been possible to fake the entire thing - I have no reason to believe that this has happened, but it's not externally verifiable.

But let's assume these published public keys are legitimately the ones used in the HSM Juicebox realms[1] and that everything was done correctly. Does that prevent Elon from obtaining your key and decrypting your messages? No.

On startup, the X Chat client makes an API call called GetPublicKeysResult, and the public keys of the realms are returned. Right now when I make that call I get the public keys listed above, so there's at least some indication that I'm going to be communicating with actual HSMs. But what if that API call returned different keys? Could Elon stick a proxy in front of the HSMs and grab a cleartext portion of the key shards? Yes, he absolutely could, and then he'd be able to decrypt your messages.

(I will accept that there is a plausible argument that Elon is telling the truth in that even if you held a gun to his head he's not smart enough to be able to do this himself, but that'd be true even if there were no security whatsoever, so it still says nothing about the security of his product)

The solution to this is remote attestation - a process where the device you're speaking to proves its identity to you. In theory the endpoint could attest that it's an HSM running this specific code, and we could look at the Juicebox repo and verify that it's that code and hasn't been tampered with, and then we'd know that our communication channel was secure. Elon hasn't done that, despite it being table stakes for this sort of thing (Signal uses remote attestation to verify the enclave code used for private contact discovery, for instance, which ensures that the client will refuse to hand over any data until it's verified the identity and state of the enclave). There's no excuse whatsoever to build a new end-to-end encrypted messenger which relies on a network service for security without providing a trustworthy mechanism to verify you're speaking to the real service.

We know how to do this properly. We have done for years. Launching without it is unforgivable.

[1] There are three Juicebox realms overall, one of which doesn't appear to use HSMs, but you need at least two in order to obtain the key so at least part of the key will always be held in HSMs
Monday, October 20th, 2025 17:52
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.
Monday, October 20th, 2025 10:11
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.
Monday, October 20th, 2025 09:37
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.
Monday, October 20th, 2025 00:11
The Document Foundation, responsible for the LibreOffice suite of office tools, posted a blog post in anticipation of the end of Windows 10 support with 10 reasons to ditch Windows and go to Linux instead. I appreciate their advocacy for such things, but I think their ten reasons are not actually good ones for the adoption of Linux, but realizing this means that I'm probably going to have to put down a blog post about it, rather than a social media quip. So, here we go once again, and I'm going to once again be a regular Linux user about this, rather than some superuser sysadmin.

It's a Not Top Ten List more than a Top Ten List )