Earth Day
Apr. 22nd, 2026 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidToday is Earth Day, and tomorrow the weekly (USian) drought monitor updates (link is to the whole US; I generally look only at MA). We’re still in drought, albeit not as badly as some weeks ago, with slow progress as we do get some precipitation.
I was thinking, though, that while we can’t do much about what the weather brings us, there are some things that humans do control that can mitigate (or not), in how we use our spaces.
One example is that paved parking lots mean the skywater we do get is runoff, rather than being absorbed where it lands. If too much of the environment is paved, that can mean flash floods even when the absolute amount of water wouldn’t predict that. I saw that up close and personal years ago when a sudden storm left parts of Somerville underwater (I slogged through water that was half-way up my calves to get to my volunteer shift that day), while Cambridge, which has more unpaved space, was totally fine. (Some parts of Somerville tend towards having the spaces around various houses and triple deckers paved, so there’s no yard maintenance. Which means other challenges instead.)
Another example is how so many places have ‘drained the swamp’ (or other types of wetlands). Fewer mosquitos tend to be a win, but really, there’s a reason for wetlands in a lot of places: they act as sponges that can absorb a lot of water if necessary/available, then release it slowly over time, so it all gets somewhere useful.
A third example is that when soil is reduced to dirt, there’s a much greater possibility of flooding and erosion, because the soil has been degraded so much (from pesticides, fungicides, even commercial fertilizers, also repeated ploughing that disrupts many underground systems, etc.) that it’s more an inert growing medium, rather than a dynamic biosystem with not only plant roots, various underground dwellers (earthworms among them), and microbes, but also mycorrhizal fungi that make soil healthy and able to use the water that comes. As with so many other things, diversity leads to better soil health, leading to more resilient systems, and food with more nutrition.
The world feels like it’s all in flames. Given that, let’s think about rebuilding with systems that aren’t wholly extractive, but regenerative of the planet.
Some related reading:
Paradise Lot, Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates
Wilding, Isabella Tree
Grass, Soil, Hope, Courtney White
Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown
The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka
Deeply Rooted, Lisa M. Hamilton
Farming While Black, Leah Penniman
A Call to Farms, Jennifer Grayson
The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer
I was thinking, though, that while we can’t do much about what the weather brings us, there are some things that humans do control that can mitigate (or not), in how we use our spaces.
One example is that paved parking lots mean the skywater we do get is runoff, rather than being absorbed where it lands. If too much of the environment is paved, that can mean flash floods even when the absolute amount of water wouldn’t predict that. I saw that up close and personal years ago when a sudden storm left parts of Somerville underwater (I slogged through water that was half-way up my calves to get to my volunteer shift that day), while Cambridge, which has more unpaved space, was totally fine. (Some parts of Somerville tend towards having the spaces around various houses and triple deckers paved, so there’s no yard maintenance. Which means other challenges instead.)
Another example is how so many places have ‘drained the swamp’ (or other types of wetlands). Fewer mosquitos tend to be a win, but really, there’s a reason for wetlands in a lot of places: they act as sponges that can absorb a lot of water if necessary/available, then release it slowly over time, so it all gets somewhere useful.
A third example is that when soil is reduced to dirt, there’s a much greater possibility of flooding and erosion, because the soil has been degraded so much (from pesticides, fungicides, even commercial fertilizers, also repeated ploughing that disrupts many underground systems, etc.) that it’s more an inert growing medium, rather than a dynamic biosystem with not only plant roots, various underground dwellers (earthworms among them), and microbes, but also mycorrhizal fungi that make soil healthy and able to use the water that comes. As with so many other things, diversity leads to better soil health, leading to more resilient systems, and food with more nutrition.
The world feels like it’s all in flames. Given that, let’s think about rebuilding with systems that aren’t wholly extractive, but regenerative of the planet.
Some related reading:
Paradise Lot, Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates
Wilding, Isabella Tree
Grass, Soil, Hope, Courtney White
Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown
The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka
Deeply Rooted, Lisa M. Hamilton
Farming While Black, Leah Penniman
A Call to Farms, Jennifer Grayson
The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer
Bundle of Holding: Voidrunner's Codex
Apr. 22nd, 2026 03:28 pmjames_davis_nicoll
The complete Voidrunner's Codex Full Digital Box Set, the spacefaring expansion from EN Publishing for the Level Up! tabletop roleplaying game and Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition.
Bundle of Holding: Voidrunner's Codex
Wednesday saw two magpies on the back fence
Apr. 22nd, 2026 07:11 pmoursinWhat I read
Finished The Tortoiseshell Cat, which was Royde-Smith's first novel, and rambles around a bit before it gets going, and the protag is really somewhat unbelievably naive about the world and its ways, but it's still pretty good and readable. Okay, there is character who turns out to be a Predatory Lesbian with a backstory of relationships with other women with masculinised names, and it got namechecked by Lilian Faderman for being bad representation of the period (1920s) but there is a certain ambivalence (VV is awful but is the sapphic desire itself bad? Gill seems to feel a certain reciprocity.). And there is a certain amount of evidence that Royde-Smith had leanings at least, and did write another novel with v sympathetic lesbian lead. Anyway, quite aside from Here Is A 1920s LGBTQ Pioneer Who Is Not Radclyffe, would read more of her if it was only available.
Some while ago picked up Le Guin's The Books of Earthsea omnibus as a Kobo deal and while I think I have all except maybe some short stories on my shelves or somewhere, it's handy to have them all together with Ursula's commentaries. Made my way through the initial trilogy, found the narrative style rather reminded me of the various myths and legends recounted in works of my youth (and probably hers too). I do wish, see earlier post, she had had some contact with Mitchison's works but I don't know if they were even published in N Am.
On the go
Took a break from going straight on to Tehanu to do my re-read of Dorothy Richardson, The Tunnel (Pilgrimage, #4) (1919) - the text I originally downloaded from Project Gutenberg was no longer playing nicely with the ereader but I downloaded the most recent version and it's fine. This is the one that is embedded in bits of London very very familar to moi - even if Euston Station looks quite different these days.
Up next
Probably back to Le Guin and Earthsea.
Poem: "When You Learn to Read"
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:52 pmysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the August 5, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from dialecticdreamer, rix_scaedu, and jake67jake. It also fills the "Somebody at the Door" square in my 8-1-25 card for the Crime Classics Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the Big One thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It is the second in a triptych, between "Where You Find Light" and "No Faster or Firmer Friendships."
( Read more... )
dialecticdreamer, rix_scaedu, and jake67jake. It also fills the "Somebody at the Door" square in my 8-1-25 card for the Crime Classics Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by janetmiles. It belongs to the Big One thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It is the second in a triptych, between "Where You Find Light" and "No Faster or Firmer Friendships."( Read more... )
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BtVS: Kid Sister [Challenge 498: Remember]
Apr. 22nd, 2026 07:09 pmbadly_knitted posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
drabble_zoneTitle: Kid Sister
Fandom: BtVS
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Buffy, Dawn.
Rating: PG
Written For: Challenge 498: Remember.
Spoilers/Setting: Early Season 5.
Summary: Buffy remembers her life with her sister in it.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
A/N: Double drabble.
Kid Sister
escapril 2026: #19 petrichor
Apr. 22nd, 2026 07:06 pmleanwellbackthe gods do not bleed
what flows through their immortal veins
is something primal
you can't get blood from a stone either
so when the earth opens up
under the pounding fists of rain
the smell that issues from the wound
could only be likened
to ichor
*
I fell behind because of work and my brain not playing ball, but rest assured I do plan on catching up and finishing all of the prompts.
what flows through their immortal veins
is something primal
you can't get blood from a stone either
so when the earth opens up
under the pounding fists of rain
the smell that issues from the wound
could only be likened
to ichor
*
I fell behind because of work and my brain not playing ball, but rest assured I do plan on catching up and finishing all of the prompts.
Wildlife
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:50 pmysabetwordsmithBruce the Parrot Landed Atop the Pecking Order, Without a Beak
In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. He didn’t stop there: Scientists reported on Monday that Bruce has now become the alpha male of his group.
And he did it by learning to joust.
I had heard about the prosthetic beak, but the jousting is new. :D
In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. He didn’t stop there: Scientists reported on Monday that Bruce has now become the alpha male of his group.
And he did it by learning to joust.
I had heard about the prosthetic beak, but the jousting is new. :D
Birdfeeding
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:42 pmysabetwordsmithToday is sunny and warm.
I fed the birds. I've seen a few house finches. Red-winged blackbirds are singing in the trees. I've seen others at the drainage ditch, so I wonder how long these will stick around.
I put out water for the birds. Honeybees have been draining the birdbaths.
I set out my small flats of seedlings.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted 4 snapdragons and a yellow-and-orange lantana in the barrel garden. I realized that I forgot to pick up the firecracker plant for hummingbirds that I meant to get yesterday. >_< I may get back to DeBurh's another day, or somewhere else might have it.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted a pineapple sage besides the barrel garden.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted a Yellow Pear tomato, a Santa (a red grape tomato), a Cherokee Purple (a slicing tomato), a Mr. Stripey (a sweet yellow-and-red slicer), and an Old German (a slicer, mostly yellow with a bit of orange or red inside) in the new picnic table garden.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted 4 'Safari Yellow' marigolds around the 'Santa' tomato. I need to watch for more marigolds; my attempts at sprouting them from seeds didn't produce many this year.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- We picked up sticks from the west end of the south lot, so that can be mowed later today. There is a big patch of ground there which is either bare or growing weeds from having the big branch on it for several years. So it needs to be mowed close, then raked and sown with grass seed. Friday looks like rain.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I watered the newly planted things.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I buffed the apothecary cabinet, so that part is done. A couple of the hanging pegs on the bottom are loose, so I want to put wood glue on those before we hang it.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted a fennel, a sweet marjoram, a curry plant, and a dill in the large trough pot on the old picnic table garden.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I raked the west end of the south lot.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I planted the Forever Purple heuchera in the forest garden and watered it.
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.
I fed the birds. I've seen a few house finches. Red-winged blackbirds are singing in the trees. I've seen others at the drainage ditch, so I wonder how long these will stick around.
I put out water for the birds. Honeybees have been draining the birdbaths.
I set out my small flats of seedlings.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted 4 snapdragons and a yellow-and-orange lantana in the barrel garden. I realized that I forgot to pick up the firecracker plant for hummingbirds that I meant to get yesterday. >_< I may get back to DeBurh's another day, or somewhere else might have it.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted a pineapple sage besides the barrel garden.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted a Yellow Pear tomato, a Santa (a red grape tomato), a Cherokee Purple (a slicing tomato), a Mr. Stripey (a sweet yellow-and-red slicer), and an Old German (a slicer, mostly yellow with a bit of orange or red inside) in the new picnic table garden.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted 4 'Safari Yellow' marigolds around the 'Santa' tomato. I need to watch for more marigolds; my attempts at sprouting them from seeds didn't produce many this year.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- We picked up sticks from the west end of the south lot, so that can be mowed later today. There is a big patch of ground there which is either bare or growing weeds from having the big branch on it for several years. So it needs to be mowed close, then raked and sown with grass seed. Friday looks like rain.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I watered the newly planted things.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I buffed the apothecary cabinet, so that part is done. A couple of the hanging pegs on the bottom are loose, so I want to put wood glue on those before we hang it.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I planted a fennel, a sweet marjoram, a curry plant, and a dill in the large trough pot on the old picnic table garden.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I raked the west end of the south lot.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 4/22/26 -- I did more work around the patio.
I planted the Forever Purple heuchera in the forest garden and watered it.
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.
Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:59 pmosprey_archerBooks I've Given Up On This Week
I regret to admit (or rather admit without regret) that I got deeply bored about a quarter of the way through Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, and have therefore taken it back to the library. Sorry, Jean-Paul! This is simply not a season of my life where I am interested in you.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
While looking for more Penelope Farmer books, as one does, I discovered that the author of Charlotte Sometimes also occasionally moonlighted as a translator from Hebrew. Specifically, she and Amos Oz teamed up to translate Oz’s book Soumchi, a wistful childhood journey through British-occupied Jerusalem between the world wars.
This is an adult book about children rather than a children’s book - the tip-off lies in the prologue, a melancholy reflection about how everything is changing all the time which is very “adult looking back at childhood.” A gentle period piece about a boy with a massive crush on his classmate Esthie and also absolutely zero common sense, as evidenced by the fact that he keeps making trades where he is fairly obviously getting the worse end of the deal.
Also continuing my Vivien Alcock explorations with A Kind of Thief, a contemporary novel about a girl whose father is arrested for theft. But before he’s marched off by the police, he manages to sneak her the information to pick up a bag at the railroad station. Does receiving these presumably stolen goods make her… a kind of thief?
I think Alcock’s work is stronger (or at least more tailored to my interests) when she’s exploring a fantastical premise. This is fun but not something I would suggest seeking out unless you’re an Alcock completist. (If you are an Alcock completist, I do own a copy and I would be happy to send it to a new home.)
Also zipped through Dorothy Gilman’s Kaleidoscope, the sequel to The Clairvoyant Countess, which I probably should have read first as Kaleidoscope is chock full of spoilers for the earlier book. On the other hand, I’ll probably have forgotten all the spoilers by the time I mosey around to The Clairvoyant Countess, so it’s fine.
Always love Gilman’s older heroines. This book is aptly named, a kaleidoscope of different fractured glimpses of other people’s lives, some of which appear once and some of which are threaded throughout the book. No strong through-line but lots of fun little interweaving stories.
What I’m Reading Now
Grace Lin’s Chinese Menu, a lavishly illustrated compilation of the legendary origin stories of many classic Chinese dishes. Just about the embark on the story of spring rolls.
What I Plan to Read Next
I know I keep saying I’m going to read E. F. Benson’s Queen Lucia, but I’m going to read Queen Lucia for real this time.
I regret to admit (or rather admit without regret) that I got deeply bored about a quarter of the way through Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, and have therefore taken it back to the library. Sorry, Jean-Paul! This is simply not a season of my life where I am interested in you.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
While looking for more Penelope Farmer books, as one does, I discovered that the author of Charlotte Sometimes also occasionally moonlighted as a translator from Hebrew. Specifically, she and Amos Oz teamed up to translate Oz’s book Soumchi, a wistful childhood journey through British-occupied Jerusalem between the world wars.
This is an adult book about children rather than a children’s book - the tip-off lies in the prologue, a melancholy reflection about how everything is changing all the time which is very “adult looking back at childhood.” A gentle period piece about a boy with a massive crush on his classmate Esthie and also absolutely zero common sense, as evidenced by the fact that he keeps making trades where he is fairly obviously getting the worse end of the deal.
Also continuing my Vivien Alcock explorations with A Kind of Thief, a contemporary novel about a girl whose father is arrested for theft. But before he’s marched off by the police, he manages to sneak her the information to pick up a bag at the railroad station. Does receiving these presumably stolen goods make her… a kind of thief?
I think Alcock’s work is stronger (or at least more tailored to my interests) when she’s exploring a fantastical premise. This is fun but not something I would suggest seeking out unless you’re an Alcock completist. (If you are an Alcock completist, I do own a copy and I would be happy to send it to a new home.)
Also zipped through Dorothy Gilman’s Kaleidoscope, the sequel to The Clairvoyant Countess, which I probably should have read first as Kaleidoscope is chock full of spoilers for the earlier book. On the other hand, I’ll probably have forgotten all the spoilers by the time I mosey around to The Clairvoyant Countess, so it’s fine.
Always love Gilman’s older heroines. This book is aptly named, a kaleidoscope of different fractured glimpses of other people’s lives, some of which appear once and some of which are threaded throughout the book. No strong through-line but lots of fun little interweaving stories.
What I’m Reading Now
Grace Lin’s Chinese Menu, a lavishly illustrated compilation of the legendary origin stories of many classic Chinese dishes. Just about the embark on the story of spring rolls.
What I Plan to Read Next
I know I keep saying I’m going to read E. F. Benson’s Queen Lucia, but I’m going to read Queen Lucia for real this time.
Day 22 check in!
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:57 pmomens posting in writethisfanficwe have reached mid-week!
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7
What are you working on today?
View Answers
Writing
4 (57.1%)
Editing
2 (28.6%)
Researching
1 (14.3%)
Something else
0 (0.0%)
Nothing today
1 (14.3%)
(no subject)
Apr. 22nd, 2026 12:43 pmmajuRecently I've had a couple of mysterious calls from some place called Advanced Radiology Consultants about a supposed appointment I'm supposed to have with them, which I know nothing about. When they called just now I had Call Assist (by Google) screen the call and the caller texted that it was about scheduling an appointment. On the screen were three buttons: answer, cancel, or reschedule, so I clicked on cancel and a message came back "cancelling referral". None of it makes any sense to me, but I'm hoping I won't get any more of these calls until or unless I talk to my Primacy Care nurse about a necessary test.
This morning I got out of my comfort zone and drove over to Costco (about 10 miles/16 km away) to pick up a membership card. I've been thinking about how I need new hearing aids and Costco seems to offer good audiology services but to access those I need a Costco membership. So now I have the membership card and now I have to schedule a hearing test. While I was out I went to WholeFoods (basically next door to Costco) and bought myself some home fries and sausages for lunch. Yum. They were so good I now wish I'd bought enough for tomorrow's lunch as well.
I've been so sequestered here over the winter that it felt like a big deal to drive to Costco; I'm quite familiar with a small area of about 2 or 3 miles radius around this house, but I'm not very familiar with anything further than that. However, the drive was fine, and now that the weather has improved I think I should start taking myself to places further away every so often.
This morning I got out of my comfort zone and drove over to Costco (about 10 miles/16 km away) to pick up a membership card. I've been thinking about how I need new hearing aids and Costco seems to offer good audiology services but to access those I need a Costco membership. So now I have the membership card and now I have to schedule a hearing test. While I was out I went to WholeFoods (basically next door to Costco) and bought myself some home fries and sausages for lunch. Yum. They were so good I now wish I'd bought enough for tomorrow's lunch as well.
I've been so sequestered here over the winter that it felt like a big deal to drive to Costco; I'm quite familiar with a small area of about 2 or 3 miles radius around this house, but I'm not very familiar with anything further than that. However, the drive was fine, and now that the weather has improved I think I should start taking myself to places further away every so often.
Tab Roundup
Apr. 22nd, 2026 04:03 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
sumana_feedThree bits and bobs that I've appreciated lately:Victoria Danclan's adaptation of Thomas Colthurst's sorting game. Caution that, if you really like recognizing patterns, putting things into categories, trivia, and similar stuff, this game is likely …
Lesbian Visibility Week MEGA itch.io Bundle!
Apr. 22nd, 2026 11:39 amduckprintspress
Happy Lesbian Visibility Week! Three Duck Prints Press titles – Moongatherer by Willa Blythe, Many Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley, and the anthology She Wears the Midnight Crown – are part of this awesome bundle of an awesome 94 sapphic and lesbian books for only $40!!
SAPPHIC E-BOOKS! GET YER DISCOUNTED SAPPHIC E-BOOKS NOW ONLY ON itch.io!
Reading, Listening, Watching
Apr. 22nd, 2026 04:36 pmpurplecatReading: The Crawling Terror by Mike Tucker. Twelth Doctor and Clara novel. I've only just started it but its already obvious that it's Giant Bugs in Rural England.
Listening: Just finished an episode of the Machine Ethics Podcast with which I have a somewhat frustrated relationship. It's proved very useful for keeping tabs on the AI Ethics landscape, but there are definitely times I want to shake the interviewer or interviewees, and a couple of times I've just had to nope out entirely because SO MUCH NONSENSE. This was a slightly odd episode, the interviewee had clearly reached out, requesting an interview in order to talk about/promote her biocomputing company. Clearly outside of the interviewer's comfort zone, and hard to know to what extent this was crossing the line from science communication into advertising.
Watching: Three weeks late we realise Have I Got News for You has started up again. It does what it does and we're the target demographic. I laughed a lot at Armando Iannuci's exasperation at people claiming that Winston Churchill was being replaced by a badger.
Listening: Just finished an episode of the Machine Ethics Podcast with which I have a somewhat frustrated relationship. It's proved very useful for keeping tabs on the AI Ethics landscape, but there are definitely times I want to shake the interviewer or interviewees, and a couple of times I've just had to nope out entirely because SO MUCH NONSENSE. This was a slightly odd episode, the interviewee had clearly reached out, requesting an interview in order to talk about/promote her biocomputing company. Clearly outside of the interviewer's comfort zone, and hard to know to what extent this was crossing the line from science communication into advertising.
Watching: Three weeks late we realise Have I Got News for You has started up again. It does what it does and we're the target demographic. I laughed a lot at Armando Iannuci's exasperation at people claiming that Winston Churchill was being replaced by a badger.
Another first contact
Apr. 22nd, 2026 09:49 ammrissa I hope you're not tired of first contact stories, because I've gone and written another one. Apparently this is what's on my mind lately? Anyway here's Waiting for Them in Nature Futures, go, read, enjoy!
04/22/26
Apr. 22nd, 2026 11:17 ammishey22 posting in abc_onceuponABANDONED IDEAS: In the episode script, Regina asks Isaac, "Are we bargaining now? Is that what's happening?" and Isaac answers, "You're quick. I always enjoyed writing you. A challenge for the intellect." This exchange is not in the final episode.
(Sorry I've missed a few days. There's A LOT going on over here)
A Big Gay Market: This Sunday (April 26) in Washington Park!
Apr. 22nd, 2026 11:15 amduckprintspress
Spring has sprung, which means it’s time to get back outside and enjoy some sunshine, pleasant temperatures, fresh flowers, and of course the first A Big Gay Market in Washington Park of 2026! The forecast is promising sunny skies and mild temperatures, and there are gonna be almost 100 vendors around the Knox Street Mall, plus a community area, kids tent, wellness section, and even live music! I’ll be there, of course, and I’ll have both our most recent projects (before they become available on our website) – Monsterotica: Tales of Unusual Courtship and Coupling and Into the Split by Tris Lawrence, along with leftover merch from both campaigns and some other not-yet-released merch. I’ll have some new deals, too, so I hope you’ll come say hi.
Check out the vendor list, schedule, and more on the A Big Gay Market website! See ya there!
My vote for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette
Apr. 22nd, 2026 10:02 ammount_oreganoThis year I found a common theme in the novelettes nominated for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association’s Nebula Awards: reconciliation with family or found family. Novelettes are at least 7,500 words but fewer than 17,500 words. The award will be presented at the Nebula Conference on June 6 at a ceremony in Chicago that will almost certainly be live streamed.
“Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh” by Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/9/25) — Colonialism upsets traditional burial practices, resulting in familial strife. But, of course, they reconcile.
“The Name Ziya” by Wen-Yi Lee (Tor) — Magic, colonial exploitation, identity, and the price of ambition and assimilation. A sad story, not a new theme, but beautifully told.
“We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue (Clarkesworld 2/25) — A trio of children embark on an ecological mission, but they are too emotionally immature to handle the interpersonal dynamics. The story ends sentimentally.
“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld 1/25) — A ship is carrying human zygotes for a corporation to colonize a planet, and it has a malfunction. Eventually, it discovers its purpose. A complicated human story with a fairly simple ending.
“The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 3-4/25) — Two friends read a trilogy together and differ about it, and their friendship flags. But time goes by… Cute, heartwarming, and fun.
My vote: “Uncertain Sons” by Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons) — A father and his somewhat dead father hunt monsters. Actually, it’s far more complex, tense, and mesmerizing. I liked it so much I decided to buy Uncertain Sons.
what i'm reading wednesday 22/4/2026
Apr. 22nd, 2026 10:00 amlirazelWhat I finished:
+ Listened to More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker.
WHAT A BANGER! I anticipated that this would be about how fucked up our tech overlords' worldviews are from a moral and public policy perspective, and that certainly played a large part in it. But it ended up being more about why they're wrong about the very tech they're hyping--why the claims they make are not actually possible given, like, physics and the nature of the universe. Which is not an angle I'd seen explored before, and I would have expected it to all be over my head. But Becker is absolutely fantastic at explaining complicated tech and science-y things in a way that I could understand--at least enough to know that these Silicon Valley guys are full of shit.
The moral arguments are woven into all of this; Becker has a lovely humanist approach to the world and a deep appreciation for the humanities. He's clearly repulsed by the perspectives and priorities of the people who are running our digital world (and, increasingly, our physical one as well), so I felt safe in his hands. I often feel alienated from STEM subjects both because math doesn't come easily to me and because the current discourse around it seems so anti-human to me. But Becker reminded me that there's really no boundary between the humanities and STEM and that if you appreciate both, you better serve whichever one you're focused on. Life, nature, the universe is one interwoven textile and needs to be understood as such.
The more I learn about the decision-making class in Silicon Valley, the more I believe that they hate all the things that make us human--art, care, struggle, nature, bodies, again, death, humility, the mutuality of relationships. All of these people are absolutely terrified of death and yet, if they did succeed in their (futile) endeavors to live forever, what would they do with all that time? They're certainly not investing in learning about the world as it is or getting to know other people or creating beautiful things or just enjoying nature. So what would be the point of living forever? They have no answer to this and if they weren't doing such terrible, terrible things to our society and nature, I would feel profound pity for them. As it is, I'm just angry. It's baffling to me that we allow the most morally vacuous people in the world to make consequential decisions about the fate of humanity.
My one complaint is that I wish Becker had read the book himself. Judging by his new podcast Dreaming Against the Machine, he's got the voice for it, and I always, always prefer to have the writer read the book if it's possible. The guy who read it did fine, but there's just no replacing the personality of a writer.
+ Read The House of the Patriarch, the 18th Benjamin January series. You may ask yourself, "Is 18 simply too many books in this series?" And the answer is "NO!!!!" There can never be too many books in this series!
For those of you who are new to my favorite currently-being-written series of books: these historical mysteries follow Benjamin January, a free man of color, in 1830s-40s New Orleans and beyond. The mysteries are good, but they're really an excuse to explore Ben's world: the complicated and colorful people he knows and loves and fears and hates, the vivid and singular and meticulously-researched world of antebellum New Orleans. These are books about power and oppression, about resisting it and not being able to resist it, about building relationships with people who are very different than you are, about how those relationships are really the only thing worth anything in a world of darkness and cruelty. I love them with all my heart.
This is one of the not-in-New Orleans books; Ben is searching for a young white woman who disappeared in upstate New York's "burnt over district" in a time of weird religious groups. A favorite topic of mine! My first thought was, "We're going to get a Joseph Smith cameo!" but no, we're a few years after he left for Illinois, so while he's mentioned a time or two he does not show up. The historical cameo we do get is much more unexpected and made me laugh. The cameos are always such a fun part of the not-in-New-Orleans books, and Hambly's writing is grounded enough that Ben never quite turns into the Forrest Gump of the antebellum US (and Mexico and Cuba and France and wherever else he goes!).
The mystery itself is engaging--I was very invested in Eve Russell, who became one of my favorite one-off characters--and, as usual, Hambly makes fantastic use of a period of American history that doesn't get a lot of fictional attention. I especially appreciated that palpable danger that the non-white characters were in even in ostensibly "free" New York--there are traffickers everywhere just waiting to capture free black people and sell them into slavery down south. No one can breathe easy because everyone is in danger all the time. Of all the fictional media I've encountered, this series as a body of work is one of the best at communicating the totality of the chattel slavery system--how it affected every single thing about life for black people, every moment of every day. How no one was ever, ever safe and how hard people had to fight for even the relative safety that a few were able to find. How it tainted the whole society, how it curdled souls. I always come away with an understanding of just why the Civil War had to happen, why the abolitionist movement probably never would have succeeded without violence. Slavery had to be ripped out at the roots.
Anyway, since we weren't in New Orleans, I missed Rose and Hannibal and Livia and Dominique and Shaw and Olympe and everybody back home, but we did get some excellent Chloe scenes, which are always a bonus! (Chloe!!!) As usual, I spent the whole book going, "When will Ben get to go home? When will he get to have a bath and a good meal and a full night's sleep and see his wife and children???" because nobody whumps their main character the way Hambly does.
But somehow no matter how dark the subject matter of these books are, they never make me feel hopeless. Heavy with the reminder of all the things that people do to each other, yes, but also fiercely grateful for all the ways we find to take care of each other. Gah, I love these books!
+ Listened to Culture Creep by Alice Bolin, a collection of essays at the intersection of feminism and pop culture. Your degree of enjoyment will depend largely on how willing you are to read personal essays that dive deep into things that most people would say "it's not that deep" about (Animal Crossing, wellness tracking, teen magazines, the Playboy Mansion). Most people's eyes would probably glaze over, and honestly I'm not sure if I would have kept up with this if I was reading it, but listening to it while working was enjoyable enough. I don't care for memoir as a genre unless the writer is really freaking fantastic, so when things are too person, I tend to check out, but this managed to be rooted enough in the texts themselves for me to never do that, and Bolin has some really sharp insights throughout. All in all a fine audiobook experience.
What I'm currently reading:
+ Listening to God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn. Well this is a unique book! It's philosophy and technology all tangled up together, at once personal and universal, about the past and the future, meaning and consciousness and nature. O'Gieblyn is incredibly smart and the book is very challenging in a way I appreciate. I also appreciate that she grew up fundamentalist and went to a Bible college before becoming an atheist; there's this one moment where she talks about how a process that took society centuries of bloody struggle (moving from Christian to secular societies) is something that those of us who were raised in rightwing Christianity have to do on our own in the course of a few years, and I have never heard anyone talk about it that way. But yeah, it's really hard to go from "the world is 6,000 years old" to "the universe is billions of years old" and all that those things imply in a short period of time! It's a lot for an individual human being, and she does an incredible job of evoking the disruption of that and also how things linger even when you don't want them to.
+ Reading Hunting Shadows by Charles Todd, 16th in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series of historical mysteries. This series is set in the UK just after WWI and has a shell-shocked Scotland Yard inspector as its protagonist. These are suitably engaging and twisty mysteries for when that's what I want. They kind of all blur together in my head, but that's fine--I don't need everything to be Benjamin January. I don't like cozy mysteries, and these are not, but they also don't lean too far into the gritty darkness either. It's a good balance, well written, and I continue to enjoy this series as I dip in and out of it.
+ Listened to More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity by Adam Becker.
WHAT A BANGER! I anticipated that this would be about how fucked up our tech overlords' worldviews are from a moral and public policy perspective, and that certainly played a large part in it. But it ended up being more about why they're wrong about the very tech they're hyping--why the claims they make are not actually possible given, like, physics and the nature of the universe. Which is not an angle I'd seen explored before, and I would have expected it to all be over my head. But Becker is absolutely fantastic at explaining complicated tech and science-y things in a way that I could understand--at least enough to know that these Silicon Valley guys are full of shit.
The moral arguments are woven into all of this; Becker has a lovely humanist approach to the world and a deep appreciation for the humanities. He's clearly repulsed by the perspectives and priorities of the people who are running our digital world (and, increasingly, our physical one as well), so I felt safe in his hands. I often feel alienated from STEM subjects both because math doesn't come easily to me and because the current discourse around it seems so anti-human to me. But Becker reminded me that there's really no boundary between the humanities and STEM and that if you appreciate both, you better serve whichever one you're focused on. Life, nature, the universe is one interwoven textile and needs to be understood as such.
The more I learn about the decision-making class in Silicon Valley, the more I believe that they hate all the things that make us human--art, care, struggle, nature, bodies, again, death, humility, the mutuality of relationships. All of these people are absolutely terrified of death and yet, if they did succeed in their (futile) endeavors to live forever, what would they do with all that time? They're certainly not investing in learning about the world as it is or getting to know other people or creating beautiful things or just enjoying nature. So what would be the point of living forever? They have no answer to this and if they weren't doing such terrible, terrible things to our society and nature, I would feel profound pity for them. As it is, I'm just angry. It's baffling to me that we allow the most morally vacuous people in the world to make consequential decisions about the fate of humanity.
My one complaint is that I wish Becker had read the book himself. Judging by his new podcast Dreaming Against the Machine, he's got the voice for it, and I always, always prefer to have the writer read the book if it's possible. The guy who read it did fine, but there's just no replacing the personality of a writer.
+ Read The House of the Patriarch, the 18th Benjamin January series. You may ask yourself, "Is 18 simply too many books in this series?" And the answer is "NO!!!!" There can never be too many books in this series!
For those of you who are new to my favorite currently-being-written series of books: these historical mysteries follow Benjamin January, a free man of color, in 1830s-40s New Orleans and beyond. The mysteries are good, but they're really an excuse to explore Ben's world: the complicated and colorful people he knows and loves and fears and hates, the vivid and singular and meticulously-researched world of antebellum New Orleans. These are books about power and oppression, about resisting it and not being able to resist it, about building relationships with people who are very different than you are, about how those relationships are really the only thing worth anything in a world of darkness and cruelty. I love them with all my heart.
This is one of the not-in-New Orleans books; Ben is searching for a young white woman who disappeared in upstate New York's "burnt over district" in a time of weird religious groups. A favorite topic of mine! My first thought was, "We're going to get a Joseph Smith cameo!" but no, we're a few years after he left for Illinois, so while he's mentioned a time or two he does not show up. The historical cameo we do get is much more unexpected and made me laugh. The cameos are always such a fun part of the not-in-New-Orleans books, and Hambly's writing is grounded enough that Ben never quite turns into the Forrest Gump of the antebellum US (and Mexico and Cuba and France and wherever else he goes!).
The mystery itself is engaging--I was very invested in Eve Russell, who became one of my favorite one-off characters--and, as usual, Hambly makes fantastic use of a period of American history that doesn't get a lot of fictional attention. I especially appreciated that palpable danger that the non-white characters were in even in ostensibly "free" New York--there are traffickers everywhere just waiting to capture free black people and sell them into slavery down south. No one can breathe easy because everyone is in danger all the time. Of all the fictional media I've encountered, this series as a body of work is one of the best at communicating the totality of the chattel slavery system--how it affected every single thing about life for black people, every moment of every day. How no one was ever, ever safe and how hard people had to fight for even the relative safety that a few were able to find. How it tainted the whole society, how it curdled souls. I always come away with an understanding of just why the Civil War had to happen, why the abolitionist movement probably never would have succeeded without violence. Slavery had to be ripped out at the roots.
Anyway, since we weren't in New Orleans, I missed Rose and Hannibal and Livia and Dominique and Shaw and Olympe and everybody back home, but we did get some excellent Chloe scenes, which are always a bonus! (Chloe!!!) As usual, I spent the whole book going, "When will Ben get to go home? When will he get to have a bath and a good meal and a full night's sleep and see his wife and children???" because nobody whumps their main character the way Hambly does.
But somehow no matter how dark the subject matter of these books are, they never make me feel hopeless. Heavy with the reminder of all the things that people do to each other, yes, but also fiercely grateful for all the ways we find to take care of each other. Gah, I love these books!
+ Listened to Culture Creep by Alice Bolin, a collection of essays at the intersection of feminism and pop culture. Your degree of enjoyment will depend largely on how willing you are to read personal essays that dive deep into things that most people would say "it's not that deep" about (Animal Crossing, wellness tracking, teen magazines, the Playboy Mansion). Most people's eyes would probably glaze over, and honestly I'm not sure if I would have kept up with this if I was reading it, but listening to it while working was enjoyable enough. I don't care for memoir as a genre unless the writer is really freaking fantastic, so when things are too person, I tend to check out, but this managed to be rooted enough in the texts themselves for me to never do that, and Bolin has some really sharp insights throughout. All in all a fine audiobook experience.
What I'm currently reading:
+ Listening to God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning by Meghan O'Gieblyn. Well this is a unique book! It's philosophy and technology all tangled up together, at once personal and universal, about the past and the future, meaning and consciousness and nature. O'Gieblyn is incredibly smart and the book is very challenging in a way I appreciate. I also appreciate that she grew up fundamentalist and went to a Bible college before becoming an atheist; there's this one moment where she talks about how a process that took society centuries of bloody struggle (moving from Christian to secular societies) is something that those of us who were raised in rightwing Christianity have to do on our own in the course of a few years, and I have never heard anyone talk about it that way. But yeah, it's really hard to go from "the world is 6,000 years old" to "the universe is billions of years old" and all that those things imply in a short period of time! It's a lot for an individual human being, and she does an incredible job of evoking the disruption of that and also how things linger even when you don't want them to.
+ Reading Hunting Shadows by Charles Todd, 16th in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series of historical mysteries. This series is set in the UK just after WWI and has a shell-shocked Scotland Yard inspector as its protagonist. These are suitably engaging and twisty mysteries for when that's what I want. They kind of all blur together in my head, but that's fine--I don't need everything to be Benjamin January. I don't like cozy mysteries, and these are not, but they also don't lean too far into the gritty darkness either. It's a good balance, well written, and I continue to enjoy this series as I dip in and out of it.
Things
Apr. 23rd, 2026 12:37 amvassOkay, well, three weeks behind is better than two months. Hi!
Books
Read T. Kingfisher's Paladin's Grace for the first time, and found it soothingly undemanding.
Listened to the audiobook of Rick Morton's Mean Streak, about Robodebt, on the strength of how excellent Morton's livetweeting was during the Royal Commission.
I found Mean Streak initially a bit hard going not just because of the awfulness of the subject matter (which I'd factored in) but because of Morton's extended literary riffs (in the first seven chapters, he draws detailed analogies with Heller's Catch-22, Kafka's The Trial, Borges' entire body of work, and Piranesi's Carceri.
Reading this as I was over Easter, I began to anticipate that any moment now he'd go "According to the Christian gospels, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by an uncaring bureaucracy. Do you know who else was crucified by an uncaring bureaucracy? Welfare recipients under Robodebt!" like a reverse youth pastor, but he never did, and eventually I came to understand the analogies as not an excessive and unnecessary stylistic choice but rather the last defences of a mind besieged by Lovecraftian horrors.
There was some levity, though: Morton and his publisher were obliged to allow some of their subjects to exercise their right of reply. He provided space for this as an appendix at the end of the book. There were no real surprises in the politicians' responses, just some unpleasant reminders for readers, e.g. Stuart Robert exists and is presumably the same species as us.
Kathryn Campbell's reply, however, was the funniest part of the whole (admittedly deadly serious) book. It was amazing.
Just knowing she paid her lawyers, plural, to draft and send this document to Morton's publishers for inclusion in his book, is such a wonderful reminder of the wide variety of people in this world.
Morton could not possibly have condemned her as harshly as her own self-defence did.
One of the allegations Campbell disputes, in this rebuttal which took 57 minutes 56 seconds for Rick Morton to read (the whole audiobook being 15 hours 32 minutes) is that she is a micromanager.
Another is that (as Morton stated) the commissioner said she "failed to address in any manner concerns about the illegality of income averaging, despite being aware of concerns about the illegality of the scheme".
Having already argued that Commissioner Holmes was wrong; and then that Commissioner Holmes' above finding was only the commissioner's opinion, not a finding of fact; she then felt the need to stipulate that Commissioner Holmes' wording was not "failed to address in any manner," it was "did nothing of substance".
She didn't say I didn't do anything at all, she said I did fuck all. Unless you correct the record to reflect that the Royal Commissioner's report into the worst public service fuckup of the century (so far) said that I did fuck all, not nothing at all, I'll sue you.
Ms Campbell either has never read Much Ado About Nothing (act IV, scene 2), or she did, and she took it as personal advice and unlike Dogberry had the power to ensure she was writ down an ass.
Currently reading: Sax Brightwell's Low Dawn and the audiobook of Rachel Neumeier's Tuyo.
Fandom
Posted a thing.
Crafts
Got around to packing up and sending another Sekrit Project.
Tech
Started watching a five hour YouTube video about data structures and algorithms, then (half an hour in) spent the evening making a number guessing game in Twine Harlowe, using binary search.
Next time I'll use Python or Javascript or something. I don't care that I don't know Javascript.
The problem is, I keep telling myself I'll just do a quick snack-sized learning activity on my phone, and Twine (or another thing I've tried recently, jsdares.com) will seem so convenient and then I'll be in a self-made hell of how unsuited their web-based interpreters are for mobile, ugh.
Garden
Bought some calendula seeds to sow.
Cats
Their previous favourite toy, the Mousie, is on stress leave: after some gastric issues it was eventually diagnosed with disembowelment.
I'm happy to say that Ash and Dory are welcoming the Mousie's substitute, the Birdie, with full lethal force.
How are you all?
Books
Read T. Kingfisher's Paladin's Grace for the first time, and found it soothingly undemanding.
Listened to the audiobook of Rick Morton's Mean Streak, about Robodebt, on the strength of how excellent Morton's livetweeting was during the Royal Commission.
I found Mean Streak initially a bit hard going not just because of the awfulness of the subject matter (which I'd factored in) but because of Morton's extended literary riffs (in the first seven chapters, he draws detailed analogies with Heller's Catch-22, Kafka's The Trial, Borges' entire body of work, and Piranesi's Carceri.
Reading this as I was over Easter, I began to anticipate that any moment now he'd go "According to the Christian gospels, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by an uncaring bureaucracy. Do you know who else was crucified by an uncaring bureaucracy? Welfare recipients under Robodebt!" like a reverse youth pastor, but he never did, and eventually I came to understand the analogies as not an excessive and unnecessary stylistic choice but rather the last defences of a mind besieged by Lovecraftian horrors.
There was some levity, though: Morton and his publisher were obliged to allow some of their subjects to exercise their right of reply. He provided space for this as an appendix at the end of the book. There were no real surprises in the politicians' responses, just some unpleasant reminders for readers, e.g. Stuart Robert exists and is presumably the same species as us.
Kathryn Campbell's reply, however, was the funniest part of the whole (admittedly deadly serious) book. It was amazing.
Just knowing she paid her lawyers, plural, to draft and send this document to Morton's publishers for inclusion in his book, is such a wonderful reminder of the wide variety of people in this world.
Morton could not possibly have condemned her as harshly as her own self-defence did.
One of the allegations Campbell disputes, in this rebuttal which took 57 minutes 56 seconds for Rick Morton to read (the whole audiobook being 15 hours 32 minutes) is that she is a micromanager.
Another is that (as Morton stated) the commissioner said she "failed to address in any manner concerns about the illegality of income averaging, despite being aware of concerns about the illegality of the scheme".
Having already argued that Commissioner Holmes was wrong; and then that Commissioner Holmes' above finding was only the commissioner's opinion, not a finding of fact; she then felt the need to stipulate that Commissioner Holmes' wording was not "failed to address in any manner," it was "did nothing of substance".
She didn't say I didn't do anything at all, she said I did fuck all. Unless you correct the record to reflect that the Royal Commissioner's report into the worst public service fuckup of the century (so far) said that I did fuck all, not nothing at all, I'll sue you.
Ms Campbell either has never read Much Ado About Nothing (act IV, scene 2), or she did, and she took it as personal advice and unlike Dogberry had the power to ensure she was writ down an ass.
Currently reading: Sax Brightwell's Low Dawn and the audiobook of Rachel Neumeier's Tuyo.
Fandom
Posted a thing.
Crafts
Got around to packing up and sending another Sekrit Project.
Tech
Started watching a five hour YouTube video about data structures and algorithms, then (half an hour in) spent the evening making a number guessing game in Twine Harlowe, using binary search.
Next time I'll use Python or Javascript or something. I don't care that I don't know Javascript.
The problem is, I keep telling myself I'll just do a quick snack-sized learning activity on my phone, and Twine (or another thing I've tried recently, jsdares.com) will seem so convenient and then I'll be in a self-made hell of how unsuited their web-based interpreters are for mobile, ugh.
Garden
Bought some calendula seeds to sow.
Cats
Their previous favourite toy, the Mousie, is on stress leave: after some gastric issues it was eventually diagnosed with disembowelment.
I'm happy to say that Ash and Dory are welcoming the Mousie's substitute, the Birdie, with full lethal force.
How are you all?
The Secret Garden, April
Apr. 22nd, 2026 03:31 pmpuddleshark
Weird weather. April is supposed to be changeable. All the weather - rain, hail, sunshine & rainbows - in the space of an hour. We're not supposed to have a high pressure system stuck overhead, no rain in prospect for the next week. And we're not supposed to have gale force winds blowing from the east. Proper gales are supposed to come in from the south-west, off the Atlantic, accompanied by lashing rain.
I thought it would be sheltered behind the high brick walls of the Secret Garden, but it wasn't - the flowers were all bobbing about madly, which made macro photography something of a challenge.
( Blurred flowers... )
kingarthurflour_feed
While sourdough starter might conjure images of crusty artisan loaves, that only scratches the surface of naturally leavened breads. Don’t stop at boules and baguettes; you can use your starter to make fluffy milk bread, chewy naan, airy doughnuts, and much more — check out our full lineup of recipes that take sourdough to unexpected places.
The post 12 unexpected sourdough bread recipes that aren't crusty loaves: From sourdough flatbread to sourdough milk bread — and even sourdough babka. appeared first on the King Arthur Blog.
WWW Wednesday
Apr. 22nd, 2026 09:43 amduckprintspress1. What are you currently reading?
- Chicago Manual of Style 18th Ed.: I'm participating in an online conference this week, and one aspect of it was setting a personal goal, and so I opted for this one, which I've been procrastinating. I wanted to really dig in and read the parts related to the work I do, cause if there's stuff I'm doing wrong that I think I'm doing right, I won't think to check it normally. So far, I'm still in the "how to format and publish things" sections and feeling pretty validated lmao. (it's over 1100 pages long, I've read most of the first 100, only skipping some parts about journal formatting that is irrelevant to me.)
- 盗墓笔记 vol. 2 by 南派三叔: pick, pick, picking away
2. What have you recently finished reading?
- Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell: I was absolutely adoring this until the last 100 pages or so, when things went off the rails for me. Oh well. It was still a decent book.
- Kisses That Taste Like Lies vol. 1 - 3 by Waka Sagami: this has absolutely terrible reviews on Storygraph and I have no idea why, I think it's a pretty good toxic yaoi con man x his mark, and much less toxic than it could be considering how quickly the mark finds out and how thoroughly the mark decides he doesn't care and wants whatever he can get.
- Pizza Witch by Stef Purenins and Sarah Graley: this was very cute but would have been better if there'd been any indication before the last page that it's not the entire story.
- Yuri Espoir vol. 3 by Mai Naoi: some of the vibes related to her forced fiance trouble me, but then, she's the main character, not him, so I guess it can't be helped.
- A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation manga vol. 6 by Misaki: this vol felt more episodic than the others have, which made it less interesting to me, but I'm still enjoying it overall and it still screams BL off the page despite all being technically platonics.
- That Time I Got Recinarnated as a Slime manga vol. 12 by Taiki Kawakami: oh, I don't remember THAT happening in the anime. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention??? I should go back and check lmao.
For work, I also finished a read-through of my own novel, A Glimmer of Hope, that I started in January. With it cleaned up, we can move on to re-issuing it. I sold a few copies during our most recent Kickstarter so getting the new version done became a pretty high priority.
3. What will you read next?
Novels: Dawning by Ice, a modern danmei in three volumes. I'd have started already if not for the CMoS reading this week.
Physical Graphic Novels (from the library): Lovely Recipe by Myra Rose Nino is next on my pile.
E-Book Graphic Novels (from Libby): Just Like Mona Lisa vol. 4 by Tsumiji Yoshimura and Yona of the Dawn vol. 29 by Mizuho Kusanagi are both due before next Wednesday, and Gachiakuta vol. 4 by Kei Urana and Hideyoshi Ando is due in 8 days, so I expect to read those this week, but tbh I'll probably read Witch Hat Aterlier vol. 14 by Kamome Shirahama first because I'm just so excited to have finally gotten my hands on it, lol.
O Maidens in Your Savage Season, volume 2 by Mari Okada & Nao Emoto
Apr. 22nd, 2026 08:51 amjames_davis_nicoll
Can the salvation of the Literature Club be something as simple as blackmail?
O Maidens in Your Savage Season, volume 2 by Mari Okada & Nao Emoto
tired
Apr. 22nd, 2026 08:15 amunicorndukeSunday was a bit rainy but I spent that time working on the pumpkin order and some sidejob work. I snuck out for a few hours for spinning guild which was lovely and I got to show off my sweater (post coming when I have a chance to type it up) but that was it. I was supposed to take monday off work but we had 21F predicted monday night and the early strawberries had buds that are vulnerable in the 21-23F range. So I spent most of monday hauling frost covers out of the barn and getting them set up in the field. I couldn't spread them out because it was too windy but I could drag them into the field so they were ready. Plus some other things that needed doing. Then monday night after crafting when the wind died down, dad and I went out and spread them over the field. They look fine so far which is good. But we might not see the damage until they bloom. This weather is so bad, I suspect all the stone fruit is gone this year.
I've run out of dinner food, I have the supplies but not the time. I come in from work around 6:30pm and my mom has already taken over the kitchen and there's no room to make my food. This is part of the problem we're having cohabiting. None of us eat the same food, my mom cooks for herself and my dad basically every night. So I can't use the kitchen at my optimal eating time pretty much every night. I think I need to do some kind of offset schedule some days. Wish they'd just freaking move out. But my dad did work on the floor the other day so there's that. Not a lot because the wood wasn't dry or something but he did do some of it. I have a desperate need for another adult presence in my life that is not my parents. this is why people get married or some nonsense I guess.
I was planning to do some baking this morning so I could have some snacks for the week and pastry cream but my dad was going to show me how to use the sprayer but he's not ready to do that yet. I can't take a full day because I have an employee coming this afternoon and I was going to work alongside him on mulching. I have employees working every afternoon this week. So I'm not baking this morning. New plan is to make rice in the rice cooker and dump beans on it plus something I can scrounge out of the fridge.
I might be able to take part of saturday off since it looks like it's going to rain. I'm definitely struggling with a lack of consistent routine, I feel like I had one last year but I can't seem to find it this year. Maybe I didn't. Maybe April sucked ass last year too. The neighbor who helps us with some tractor work snapped two cylinders on the plow yesterday and I know he feels bad but also holy crap. There are some contributing factors like the plowing tire being flat but in the end, it was probably that he was backing up with too much pressure on the back hydraulics. Two! That was all of the cylinders we had on hand, so I need to figure out where to get more or if we can repair these. I think the tractor supply store has the correct size and I can get at least one to get the plow up and moving again. We have three pieces of equipment that use those cylinders: the plow, the disks and the grain drill. Two vital things, very important. Our strawberries arrive next week, planting the first weekend in may.
My bluetooth ear protection also died the other day. It was fritzing slightly, if I poked one of the wires, it would only put sound through one headphone, but then it just died. The battery still charges but it won't turn on. I took it apart and nothing appears wrong or broken but I haven't had a ton of time to figure it out either. I ordered two new pairs which should arrive today so that's good. I tried doing earbuds under hearing protection but earbuds now hurt my ears too badly to use them anymore.
anyway, my dad is finally ready, so I gotta go
I've run out of dinner food, I have the supplies but not the time. I come in from work around 6:30pm and my mom has already taken over the kitchen and there's no room to make my food. This is part of the problem we're having cohabiting. None of us eat the same food, my mom cooks for herself and my dad basically every night. So I can't use the kitchen at my optimal eating time pretty much every night. I think I need to do some kind of offset schedule some days. Wish they'd just freaking move out. But my dad did work on the floor the other day so there's that. Not a lot because the wood wasn't dry or something but he did do some of it. I have a desperate need for another adult presence in my life that is not my parents. this is why people get married or some nonsense I guess.
I was planning to do some baking this morning so I could have some snacks for the week and pastry cream but my dad was going to show me how to use the sprayer but he's not ready to do that yet. I can't take a full day because I have an employee coming this afternoon and I was going to work alongside him on mulching. I have employees working every afternoon this week. So I'm not baking this morning. New plan is to make rice in the rice cooker and dump beans on it plus something I can scrounge out of the fridge.
I might be able to take part of saturday off since it looks like it's going to rain. I'm definitely struggling with a lack of consistent routine, I feel like I had one last year but I can't seem to find it this year. Maybe I didn't. Maybe April sucked ass last year too. The neighbor who helps us with some tractor work snapped two cylinders on the plow yesterday and I know he feels bad but also holy crap. There are some contributing factors like the plowing tire being flat but in the end, it was probably that he was backing up with too much pressure on the back hydraulics. Two! That was all of the cylinders we had on hand, so I need to figure out where to get more or if we can repair these. I think the tractor supply store has the correct size and I can get at least one to get the plow up and moving again. We have three pieces of equipment that use those cylinders: the plow, the disks and the grain drill. Two vital things, very important. Our strawberries arrive next week, planting the first weekend in may.
My bluetooth ear protection also died the other day. It was fritzing slightly, if I poked one of the wires, it would only put sound through one headphone, but then it just died. The battery still charges but it won't turn on. I took it apart and nothing appears wrong or broken but I haven't had a ton of time to figure it out either. I ordered two new pairs which should arrive today so that's good. I tried doing earbuds under hearing protection but earbuds now hurt my ears too badly to use them anymore.
anyway, my dad is finally ready, so I gotta go
so I started yapping and this got long
Apr. 22nd, 2026 02:37 pmsummerstormNightmares upon nightmares again, and earlier than usual. When I dragged myself out of sleep, it wasn't even 11 AM. Not crazy about this. I had some Monster before I showered -- I also made my mom shower before I showered -- and Gorgug did curl up under the sheets with me, briefly. Poor thing was extremely confused because yesterday I changed my sheets and folded up my winter blanket (left around just in case, I'm not that optimistic), and then slept with a smaller blanket and ended up kicking it off anyway.
My sister's been hogging the washing machine since Saturday and it seems like it may or may not rain this or that day over the next few days, so I probably need to steel myself for doing a quick load when she leaves later, so I'm sure to have clothes to wear (that I like and are comfortable... if you looked at my closet you'd be like, what the fuck, but unfortunately my cold/cool weather rota does not encompass even half of that, and it is still cool enough indoors for long sleeves) on Saturday. If I can, I'd also like to start individually washing that winter blanket, the charcoal gray blanket I'm currently using, my green winter coat, and my house shoes. Either pair. Though I may throw the one I haven't been wearing in the trash at this point, god knows how many times Ciri's peed on them by now.
Ciri was in heat last week and I was exhausted the whole time, to the point that I felt drunk when I went to the store Saturday morning. It was kind of funny because my mom had been hypocritically side-eying my picking up 5% abv cocktails in a can the day before, but also: not pleasant. I'm slowly recovering from that, but the nightmares aren't helping. Neither are the bouts of depression.
-
I've been experimenting with extremely low-grade alcohol for a couple of weeks -- and by low I mean "I don't think this counts as breaking sobriety," because the tipsiest I've felt has been 'unexpectedly happy,' twice -- to see how my body takes to it now it's been off it for three years, and also so I could try a drink I saw at Primaprix that looked right up my alley except for the 5% abv. It was delicious. They no longer stock it, of course. ( More chatter about this. )
-
Three episodes behind on The Pitt, caught up on 9-1-1 (Buck ;__;) and decided to finish 9-1-1 Lone Star for some reason. I have two episodes left and I assume they're gonna make me cry again so I've been putting it off a bit. This show is a telenovela. For all the NDEs in 9-1-1, at least you can kind of assume things will turn out okay, with one glaring exception. Season 4 of Lone Star was just melodramatic hit after hit, and Judd has been depressing in season 5. Carlos, too, to some extent. I do still really love Nancy and Marjan though. And TK and Carlos's relationship. And Paul. ( Ramble/rant, with spoilers. )
Anyway. I am trying to convince my brain mice to let me do things. I just wanna make maps and edit pictures and the mice are like, "what's that? We don't know how to open an editor suddenly." I'm halfway through Trespasser on Dragon Age: Inquisition, where I am missing most of the trophies for some reason? I'm pretty sure I did the DLC last time, but who knows. It was 2020. I accidentally locked myself out of a bunch of companion quests, but I'm just not putting myself through this game again. It would be so goddamn replayable if combat wasn't so tedious. I have it on easy! It should not take this long to defeat a bunch of bandits! At this point if they had an accessibility 'one-shot enemies' option I would take it. Goddamn. Let me shoot them in the head. Let me shoot them dead in the head, specifically. At least Veilguard let me aim.
I'm very pleased I made a guy and experienced the Dorian romance, though. He is just delightful.
My sister's been hogging the washing machine since Saturday and it seems like it may or may not rain this or that day over the next few days, so I probably need to steel myself for doing a quick load when she leaves later, so I'm sure to have clothes to wear (that I like and are comfortable... if you looked at my closet you'd be like, what the fuck, but unfortunately my cold/cool weather rota does not encompass even half of that, and it is still cool enough indoors for long sleeves) on Saturday. If I can, I'd also like to start individually washing that winter blanket, the charcoal gray blanket I'm currently using, my green winter coat, and my house shoes. Either pair. Though I may throw the one I haven't been wearing in the trash at this point, god knows how many times Ciri's peed on them by now.
Ciri was in heat last week and I was exhausted the whole time, to the point that I felt drunk when I went to the store Saturday morning. It was kind of funny because my mom had been hypocritically side-eying my picking up 5% abv cocktails in a can the day before, but also: not pleasant. I'm slowly recovering from that, but the nightmares aren't helping. Neither are the bouts of depression.
-
I've been experimenting with extremely low-grade alcohol for a couple of weeks -- and by low I mean "I don't think this counts as breaking sobriety," because the tipsiest I've felt has been 'unexpectedly happy,' twice -- to see how my body takes to it now it's been off it for three years, and also so I could try a drink I saw at Primaprix that looked right up my alley except for the 5% abv. It was delicious. They no longer stock it, of course. ( More chatter about this. )
-
Three episodes behind on The Pitt, caught up on 9-1-1 (Buck ;__;) and decided to finish 9-1-1 Lone Star for some reason. I have two episodes left and I assume they're gonna make me cry again so I've been putting it off a bit. This show is a telenovela. For all the NDEs in 9-1-1, at least you can kind of assume things will turn out okay, with one glaring exception. Season 4 of Lone Star was just melodramatic hit after hit, and Judd has been depressing in season 5. Carlos, too, to some extent. I do still really love Nancy and Marjan though. And TK and Carlos's relationship. And Paul. ( Ramble/rant, with spoilers. )
Anyway. I am trying to convince my brain mice to let me do things. I just wanna make maps and edit pictures and the mice are like, "what's that? We don't know how to open an editor suddenly." I'm halfway through Trespasser on Dragon Age: Inquisition, where I am missing most of the trophies for some reason? I'm pretty sure I did the DLC last time, but who knows. It was 2020. I accidentally locked myself out of a bunch of companion quests, but I'm just not putting myself through this game again. It would be so goddamn replayable if combat wasn't so tedious. I have it on easy! It should not take this long to defeat a bunch of bandits! At this point if they had an accessibility 'one-shot enemies' option I would take it. Goddamn. Let me shoot them in the head. Let me shoot them dead in the head, specifically. At least Veilguard let me aim.
I'm very pleased I made a guy and experienced the Dorian romance, though. He is just delightful.
Reading Wednesday
Apr. 22nd, 2026 07:04 amsabotabbyJust finished: Nothing.
Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. This is a weirdly dense book—like, not in terms of content but in terms of typography where it turns out to be much longer than it looks. So it will take awhile and I'll no doubt have very scattered thoughts on it. I'm up to a weird point just before WWII where Piłsudski has done a coup in Poland and provided some kind of respite for the Bund there, while Molly's great-great grandfather Sam is in the US, trying to make it as an artist. The revolution in Russia has almost immediately turned sour. The Zionist movement is ascendant in Eastern Europe but still looked on as profoundly unserious by the Bundist majority, who are like, "you're going to be farmers in the desert? Good luck with that and also fuck you."
This is just such an important book, right now in our history with what was once the biggest current of socialist thought in Europe being whittled down to a few of us hobbyists in 2026. It's not just hereness, but a lineage that I think most Ashkenazi Jews are lacking, even ones like me who know a fair bit about the Bund. The majority of Jews in the West have accepted the Devil's bargain of whiteness: give up your culture for safety and assimilation into the power structure, sure celebrate your holidays but now you're part of the dominant culture. There have been times, watching the livestreamed genocide of Gaza, that I have thought, "well, can I just not be Jewish anymore? I want no part of it, I want to wash my hands of it, I cannot participate if this is what most of us feel is okay," but you can't, can you? I mean you can but not in any meaningful way that helps even a single person. It's better to have a history, to know why and how that history has been suppressed, not because of some nostalgia or historical LARPing but because of the whole "first as tragedy, then as farce" of it all.
Which is to say that this book is giving me a lot of feels. You should read it, probably.
Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. This is a weirdly dense book—like, not in terms of content but in terms of typography where it turns out to be much longer than it looks. So it will take awhile and I'll no doubt have very scattered thoughts on it. I'm up to a weird point just before WWII where Piłsudski has done a coup in Poland and provided some kind of respite for the Bund there, while Molly's great-great grandfather Sam is in the US, trying to make it as an artist. The revolution in Russia has almost immediately turned sour. The Zionist movement is ascendant in Eastern Europe but still looked on as profoundly unserious by the Bundist majority, who are like, "you're going to be farmers in the desert? Good luck with that and also fuck you."
This is just such an important book, right now in our history with what was once the biggest current of socialist thought in Europe being whittled down to a few of us hobbyists in 2026. It's not just hereness, but a lineage that I think most Ashkenazi Jews are lacking, even ones like me who know a fair bit about the Bund. The majority of Jews in the West have accepted the Devil's bargain of whiteness: give up your culture for safety and assimilation into the power structure, sure celebrate your holidays but now you're part of the dominant culture. There have been times, watching the livestreamed genocide of Gaza, that I have thought, "well, can I just not be Jewish anymore? I want no part of it, I want to wash my hands of it, I cannot participate if this is what most of us feel is okay," but you can't, can you? I mean you can but not in any meaningful way that helps even a single person. It's better to have a history, to know why and how that history has been suppressed, not because of some nostalgia or historical LARPing but because of the whole "first as tragedy, then as farce" of it all.
Which is to say that this book is giving me a lot of feels. You should read it, probably.
Fanfiction: Adaptability (The Goes Wrong Show, Robert/Chris/Robert)
Apr. 22nd, 2026 11:42 amrionaleonhartI have written a lot of stupid bullshit for this fandom, but this is the stupidest bullshit yet, and I apologise.
Title: Adaptability
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 15
Pairing: Robert/Chris, Robert/Robert, Robert/Chris/Robert
Wordcount: 2,700
Summary: “In the end,” Robert says, “I concluded that I was also the most qualified person to play Juliet. Therefore, I have decided to summon myself from an alternate universe.”
( Adaptability )
Title: Adaptability
Fandom: The Goes Wrong Show
Rating: 15
Pairing: Robert/Chris, Robert/Robert, Robert/Chris/Robert
Wordcount: 2,700
Summary: “In the end,” Robert says, “I concluded that I was also the most qualified person to play Juliet. Therefore, I have decided to summon myself from an alternate universe.”
( Adaptability )
2026/059: A Legacy of Spies — John Le Carré
Apr. 22nd, 2026 11:00 amtamaranth2026/059: A Legacy of Spies — John Le Carré
...how much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom, would you say, before we cease to feel either human or free? [loc. 3719]
Published in 2017, and very much a post-Brexit novel: at one point Smiley says to Peter Guillam "was it all for England, then? Of course it was... But whose England? Which England? England all alone, a citizen of nowhere? I'm a European."
Told from Peter Guillam's point of view: he's an old man now, retired to his family's farm in Brittany, but he's called back to London to explain his actions during Operation Windfall( Read more... )
Next book: Death in the Andamans
Apr. 22nd, 2026 10:39 amthemis1 posting in girlmeetstroubleHi all
The next book will be 'Death in the Andamans' by M M Kaye, which I am hosting.
I plan to start on May 19th (due to commitments earlier in the month). I'll post every Tuesday.
There are 24 chapters, so I'll do two at a time.
See you then!
The next book will be 'Death in the Andamans' by M M Kaye, which I am hosting.
I plan to start on May 19th (due to commitments earlier in the month). I'll post every Tuesday.
There are 24 chapters, so I'll do two at a time.
See you then!
Protagonist has just met up with his estranged mother, who left him as a baby
Apr. 24th, 2026 12:13 amconulyand her excuse is "Your father and I both agreed that it was best to raise you away from my wealthy-but-toxic family, whom I was returning to". And having met the protagonist's half-siblings, I can't say that this was wrong - but what, she just loved him so much more than her younger two that she had with her new, richer, more socially acceptable husband? No matter how you look at it, she's not exactly winning the mother of the year award.
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( Read more... )
( Read more... )