Monday Word: Labret

Sep. 29th, 2025 06:55 am
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[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi posting in [community profile] 1word1day
labret [ley-bret]

noun
an ornament worn in a pierced hole in the lip.

examples
1. Someone taps me on the shoulder then and I turn around and find myself staring at this unspeakably hot twenty-something girl with a labret piercing, flaming red hair, and boots up her calves. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

2. A “labret” of ivory or even of wood they valued at four or five dollars—or asked so much as that at first.Young Alaskans in the Far North by Emerson Hough

origins
1855–60; < Latin labr (um) lip + -et

Jungkook of Korean music group BTS revealed he removed his labret piercing recently


siderea: (Default)
[personal profile] siderea
Hey, quick temperature check. I've been reading a lot of media I don't expect my readership to read, and now I'm a little disoriented to who knows what.

Poll #33668 Geopolitics awareness check
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 28

What country do you currently live in?

What is your age?

12-19
0 (0.0%)

20-29
2 (7.4%)

30-39
3 (11.1%)

40-49
8 (29.6%)

50-59
9 (33.3%)

60-69
2 (7.4%)

70-79
3 (11.1%)

80+
0 (0.0%)

To the best of your knowledge, if the US were to go to war tomorrow, against what country would it most likely be?

Accidentally worked 9 days in a row

Sep. 28th, 2025 05:52 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
and now Callie is angry at me.

**********


Read more... )

Osprey's Koseret Green

Sep. 28th, 2025 06:18 pm
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
[personal profile] sonia
I bought a maroon Osprey Sojourn rolling backpack about 15 years ago. Recently it came back from checked luggage with some frayed areas, so I looked up repairs. Turns out Osprey will repair or replace their products no matter how long it's been. I paid $25 to send it in, they decided it wasn't repairable, and sent me a new one in Koseret green. I don't love the new color, but it's better than trying to spot a black item in a sea of black items.

When I asked the customer support person about the color name, I got back what I'm pretty sure was AI slop, so I guess they just picked it because it sounds interesting. Koseret, Lippia abyssinica.

Grateful to have a new pack! In addition to being a different color, they've made slight improvements, but it's essentially the same.

I don't know what to make of this

Sep. 28th, 2025 08:37 pm
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The Cherryh titles I dropped into ngram fell into 3 patterns:

Ones whose titles don't play nicely with ngrams. I dropped those.
Ones where the mentions per year decline fairly steadily year to year.
Cyteen. What's up with Cyteen? Did Jo Walton mention it on tor dot com around 2009?

LInks: medical (EDS, ME/CFS, Covid)

Sep. 28th, 2025 05:10 pm
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
[personal profile] sonia
Prevalence of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome in Transgender and Gender Diverse Individuals: A Retrospective Cohort Study by Tomasz Tabernacki, Lydia McLachlan, Matthew Loria, Shubham Gupta, Swagata Banik, Kirtishri Mishra, and Megan McNamara.
TGD individuals demonstrated a significantly higher prevalence of hEDS and HSD than cisgender individuals (OR: 18.45). The prevalence among TGD individuals assigned female at birth was 2.62%, and among those assigned male at birth, 1.00%, compared with 0.16% and 0.04% in cisgender females and males, respectively. Hormone therapy status was not associated with significant differences in prevalence.


Exciting New Research Sheds Light on hEDS Biology, study by Griggs M, Gensemer C, et al..
The researchers found 35 blood proteins that were different in people with hEDS compared to those without. Most of these changes were in proteins linked to the immune system, blood clotting, blood pressure, and inflammation. The largest group of changes involved the complement system, which helps the body fight infection and control inflammation.


Factsheet: The immune system and ME/CFS by ME Research UK.
ME/CFS is no longer viewed as a complete “mystery.” A simple PubMed search reveals hundreds of biomedical studies showing measurable differences between people with ME/CFS and healthy controls.


The symptoms are coming from inside the house. (& Long Covid Prevention Tips!) by Nyx Mir. Lots of good info!
COVID is most often transmitted via the air, not droplets like we thought early in the pandemic. As such: Fresh air will be your easiest and most effective option, assuming climate safety. Even a slightly open window will be MUCH better than closed windows.


Indefinitely Ill – Post-Covid Fatigue by Maria.
If you have had Covid-19 (tested or not), and are getting to a month or two on and still feel like you’ve been hit by a bus, please, for the love of God, rest.

CONVALESCE.


Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time by James Gallagher.
The new treatment is a type of gene therapy given during 12 to 18 hours of delicate brain surgery. [...] "We never in our wildest dreams would have expected a 75% slowing of clinical progression," she said.


Mortality caused by tropical cyclones in the United States by Rachel Young & Solomon Hsiang.
We estimate that the average Tropical Cyclone generates 7,000–11,000 excess deaths, exceeding the average of 24 immediate deaths reported in government statistics6,7. Tracking the effects of 501 historical storms, we compute that the TC climate of CONUS imposes an undocumented mortality burden that explains a substantial fraction of the higher mortality rates along the Atlantic coast and is equal to roughly 3.2–5.1% of all deaths.

Short Story

Sep. 28th, 2025 07:11 pm
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
The audio version of “Data Ghost” my short story from the recent Storyteller: the Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology is now online at Pseudopod!

https://pseudopod.org/2025/09/26/pseudopod-995-data-ghost/



Also, Queen Demon, the sequel to Witch King, will be out on October 7, in ebook, hardcover, and audiobook narrated by Eric Mok.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/queen-demon-martha-wells/b7abd63577bd30a5?ean=9781250826916&next=t

Birdfeeding

Sep. 28th, 2025 02:24 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
Today is mostly sunny and hot.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/28/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/28/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 9/28/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is suppertime, I am done for the night.

Weird dream channel, September 2025

Sep. 28th, 2025 01:26 pm
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

I've had a couple of weird dreams over the last two nights. I'm recording them more for my own reference than anything else, but if you decide to read them, I hope you enjoy them. In case you are (as I am) someone who doesn't enjoy reading other people's dreams, I'm putting them behind cuts.

To help distinguish states: IRL = "in real life" (obviously), ITD = "in the dream."

Night of 26-27 September:

Read more... )

Night of 27-28 September:

Read more... )

Done Since 2025-09-21

Sep. 28th, 2025 04:35 pm
mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Welcome to (Northern Hemisphere) Autumn. This last week appears to have gone quickly and left very little in the way of a lasting impression. Perhaps that's for the best. (Hopefully guitar practice, at least, will stick around, and the bits of paperwork will have wound up where they're supposed to go.)

N and I have now been beshotted. Pfizer. Flu and pneumonia are week after next. Hopefully the effects of those will stick around as well. We've also scheduled studio time over the next couple of weeks. (He says after suddenly remembering to make sure we didn't get double-booked. Apparently not. Whew!)

I have not been logging my thrice-daily servings of what Colleen used to call "pill salad" as carefully as I ought to. But there's nothing still in my pill sorters today, so apparently I've been taking them. This week, anyway -- I remember there have been a couple of weeks when I missed one. I also haven't been very careful with logging my sleep. Not really all that surprising; I tend to walk over to my computer and promptly fall down a rabbit hole rather than making whatever log entry I intended to make.

Hopefully you won't need to know How to Set Up and Use a Burner Phone, but these are perilous times.

Notes & links, as usual )

sovay: (Mr Palfrey: a prissy bastard)
[personal profile] sovay
Every time I watch Heat and Dust (1983), I want to write about its beautifully patterned expectations and ironies, its women who confront or evade them, its last extraordinary melding of time done with nothing more than a window that contains one decade and reflects another while the snow-flanked mountains stand behind them both, and it seems that I am writing about Harry Hamilton-Paul.

I shouldn't be surprised. In a film much concerned with cultural codes and transgressions, he's the most liminal character, the oddest man out, the last living memory of the scandal that rocked the Civil Lines at Satipur in 1923 when British India was the jewel of the never-set Empire of which he was most definitely not a builder. He's the storyteller, partly narrating the past thread of the film from his future as a tobacco-tanned old India hand who can't resist giving the same colonial advice about water and fruit and salads that he never heeded in his youthful days as—a meaningful, veiled word—the guest of the Nawab of Khatm. His presence at diplomatic functions is ambidextrous, dinner-jacketed at a state banquet, turbaned at a palace durbar, as likely to be found on his own time in an angarkha as a tennis shirt, belting out enthusiastically amateur selections from Pagliacci and acidly losing at cards to the ladies of the zenana. His role in them is blatantly unexplained. Nickolas Grace gives him such an arch, pointed face, his eyes ironically lidded even when flat on his back in a fever of homesickness and his serious statements edged like light comedy, he's impossible to imagine as even a one-time appendage of the repressive civil service which in any case considers him to have rather disgracefully let the side down, but neither does he seem, like his secretarial antecedents of E. M. Forster or J. R. Ackerley, even pretextually employed at the court of the Nawab. The British colony pronounces the censorious last word: "No Englishman has any business living in that palace." But of course he does, if a man as brilliantly virile and vulnerable as Shashi Kapoor's Nawab wants him there. Like a kinder revision of Cyril Sahib in Autobiography of a Princess (1975), Harry admits the possibility of queerness into the double-tracked heterosexuality of the plot. Bonding over the absurdities of imperial ritual with Greta Scacchi's Olivia Rivers, he drops the courteous hairpin of complimenting the playing-fields-of-Eton looks of her assistant collector of a husband, but his cynically comfortable company offers more than a diversion from the crashing propriety incumbent on a junior officer's wife: he's the dangerous proof that a sojourn in the subcontinent doesn't have to be circumscribed by casually racist platitudes and the insular summer exodus to Simla, that she too might meet something of the less tamely glamorous, princely India under the veneer of the Raj in the reciprocal person of the Nawab, for whom she is no more the typical memsahib than Harry is anything other than "a very improper Englishman." What she cannot see in her reckless innocence is the difference in the risks they run, how much more inflammatorily her cross-cultural desires intersect with the implacable conventions of both sides of the colonial project. Harry's situation is sufficiently ambiguous that the Nawab can claim him as if with the bridal cliché that his mother has gained rather than lost a son, but Olivia's unchaperoned visits to the palace set the rumor mill grinding even when their ostensible object is her heat-stricken countryman, reading all the London-fogged Dickens he can get his hands on. No political value is set on his virtue. And yet for just a little while before the tide of empire engulfs Khatm and strands its principal players in a flat in Park Lane, a chalet in Gulmarg, the denuded ghost of the palace left like a rain-stained shrine to its ruler's deposition, the triangulation of the friendship between Olivia and Harry and their mutual importance to the Nawab makes the three of them look like a ménage across borders, the charmed space of a triad not so totally unlike the tripartite composition of their writing-directing-producing team. The appeal of a hand on a shoulder, a fumble with unfamiliar undergarments. "We've left British India. Now you're in my power, like him. I'm only joking."

The production that broke them out on the international scene, Heat and Dust was model Merchant Ivory, produced by Ismail, directed by James, and closely and imaginatively adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her own 1975 Booker winner with a cast as sumptuous and astringent as its dual-layered portrait of India. As the captivating Nawab, Kapoor gets to strike evasive, reflective, funny as well as mouthwatering notes, while Christopher Cazenove's Douglas Rivers may be a dutiful empire-builder, but we meet him first weeping for his wife: Scacchi's Olivia with her blossoming, owl-boned face moves against her colonial obligations out of defiance as well as naïveté and it suits a film so attentive to the limits of female autonomy that the resolution of her predicament should lie with Madhur Jaffrey as the regally chain-smoking Begum. By dint of wrapping itself around a mystery, the 1982 thread can't help feeling like a frame story even when interwoven with deliberate, blurring touches like a municipal office suddenly faded out of a bungalow, but Julie Christie and Zakir Hussein give the affair of Anne and Inder Lal enough of its own casual chemistry that it makes a contrast, although Ratna Pathak as Ritu is just sketched as the spouse this time around; the film seems more curious about the would-be sanyasi of Charles McCaughan's Chid, whose dead-end self-actualization lightly tweaks the latter-day colonialism of cultural appropriation. Walter Lassally shoots painterly set-ups and candid camera streets with equal assurance, including the introductory shot of Olivia looking straight out through the fourth wall of the letters to her sister that started Anne off on the whole quest to retrace her great-aunt's scandalous footsteps, whose bookend is an elegantly enigmatic, portrait-like moment where record and recollection have run out, leaving only the woman herself. The fact remains of my affection for Harry, who bridges the threads of time and when faced with the turmoil of dacoits and riots and the murky intrigues of the man he loves, admits frankly, "Well, when all these kinds of things happened, I just gave up and ran away to Olivia's house and begged her to play some Schumann." Fortunately, he and his film are prolifically available on various forms of streaming and more than one region of Blu-Ray/DVD. It only took me since before the last glaciation to get around to them. This indiscretion brought to you by my improper backers at Patreon.

Sunday Word: Invidious

Sep. 28th, 2025 12:18 pm
sallymn: (words 6)
[personal profile] sallymn posting in [community profile] 1word1day

invidious [in-vid-eeuh-s]

adjective:
1 calculated to create ill will or resentment or give offense; hateful.
2 offensively or unfairly discriminating; injurious
3 causing or tending to cause animosity, resentment, or envy.


(click to enlarge)


Examples:
In truth, the PGA of America put Bradley in an invidious position by appointing him long before his days at the top of the game are done. (Iain Carter, 'Bradley avoids sporting masochism to make Europe's Ryder Cup harder', BBC, August 2025)

I am concerned today with Alfas and a section of the Ulama who engage in mercantilism and invidious rapprochement with occultic powers in order to be up ‘there’ in the world. (Afis A Oladosu, Of prosperity-preachers and materialism, Guardian Nigeria, September 2025)

The committee of the Bureau point out in their letter to the Government of India that in a matter of such importance to all the communities it is better to avoid any invidious distinction as was unfortunately made, and the committee hope that in connection with similar conferences in future Indian representatives will be invited. (Afis A Oladosu, Cotton and wheat conferences, Guardian Nigeria, September 2025)

He believes that awards are 'offensive', and describes them as 'invidious comparisons of works of art'. (Maya Binyam, Percival Everett Can't Say What His Novels Mean, Guardian Nigeria, March 2024)

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt. (Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things)

The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the economic differentiation to the point at which a marked distinction is made between the occupations of men and women, and this distinction is of an invidious character. (Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class)

Origin:
c1600, from Latin invidiosus 'full of envy, envious' (also 'exciting hatred, hateful'), from invidia 'envy, grudge, jealousy, ill will' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Fittingly, invidious is a relative of 'envy.' Both are descendants of invidia, the Latin word for envy, which in turn comes from invidēre, meaning 'to look askance at' or 'to envy.' These days, however, invidious is rarely used as a synonym for 'envious.' The preferred uses are primarily pejorative, describing things that are unpleasant (such as 'invidious choices' and 'invidious tasks') or worthy of scorn ('invidious remarks' or 'invidious comparisons') (Merriam-Webster)

Feeling very virtuous

Sep. 27th, 2025 08:13 pm
sonia: Quilted wall-hanging (Default)
[personal profile] sonia
This morning I went to the farmers market, and stopped at the hardware store on the way to pick up earthquake straps for my two 6' tall bookshelves. I swear I was thinking about it before the recent 4.3 earthquake just a couple miles up the road, but now everyone is after getting shaken awake at 3am. Fortunately there were still strap kits available.

I had cleared off the downstairs bookshelf and was working on marking where to drill, when CVS called. Their system let me schedule my Covid vaccine across their lunch break, so they were calling to say I could come in now, or an extra half hour later than I expected. I put down my tools and walked right over. Still on Team Moderna. They didn't ask me any extra questions or hassle me at all, and didn't ask for payment. Hopefully United Healthcare will cough up the payment for it.

Came home, struggled with drilling the holes and getting the long screws to go all the way in. I'm not sure they're anchored as firmly as they should be, but hopefully it's better than nothing.

My stud finder was giving me mixed signals, so I took it apart to check the battery, and then couldn't figure out where an extra piece went. Finally looked it up on youtube, found exactly the video I needed, with a lot of comments from people who had been exactly in my situation. Whew. Anyway, that's why I'm not sure if I picked the best places for the screws.

I put the shoe bins, bags, and cookbooks back on the bookshelf, and took a break by sitting on the front step in the sun and caught up with my accounting.

Then I tackled the bigger bookshelf upstairs. Found a few boxes to put books in, filled them, and made piles from even more books. Wrestled with locating studs again, and got the big screws most of the way into the wall. Sadly scratched the heck out of the wood floor moving the bookshelf on my own. :-( I wanted to find a handyperson to do it for me but just haven't found one. Oh well, now I get to go back to the hardware store and see if there's anything I can do to smooth over the scratch.

I put most of the books back. My arm is starting to feel sore from the vaccine, so I'll deal with the rest tomorrow. But it feels good to have the earthquake strapping done, even if not perfectly. And it feels good to have gotten my Covid vaccine too, although physically it won't feel great for a day or two.

When Process Stops Being Smooth

Sep. 27th, 2025 08:26 pm
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[personal profile] jreynoldsward

Over the past five years, I’ve somewhat evolved a writing process that really worked for me, using Scrivener and Word together. Scrivener was where I put my worldbuilding details. Character notes. Oddball stuff like any weirdnesses about time, including timelines for the stories where timing was crucial. Synopsis. Anything that I needed to know about the backstory, all in one place, with easy access for reference purposes.

At the same time, I would draft a chapter in Word, with Scrivener open to let me refer back to the synopsis, or any other worldbuilding details—mainly because certain formatting things are easier for me to do in Word. As I finished each chapter, I pasted it in Scrivener, because I found it so much easier to look something up in an individual chapter rather than scroll through a full manuscript or open multiple documents to find a niggling continuity detail—or fix a continuity detail that became problematic later on in the story. I also devised methods for updating the synopsis as the characters changed and evolved, documenting the whole process. Oh yeah, I had it together. Really together. Not just for the Martinieres but for a couple of standalone books plus a couple of novellas.

Then 2025 happened.

I had finished the final work in what I had started calling the Martiniere Multiversal Family Saga. There wasn’t anything else I wanted to write in that world (after twelve books). Along with that also came the need to spend time not writing because we had a major project happening elsewhere. Plus, I needed to do something to revive interest in my backlist books. I spent time writing up some essays about my stories and…well, thinking about the next project.

Problem was, what I was facing for the next project was…something I had been poking at for five years (the Martinieres as well as several other writing projects between 2020-2025 kept me from having to deal with That. Damned. Project). I looked at other ideas and…none of them were adequately fleshed out to be ready to write. Either they required more work than the Damned Project or…they needed to cook for longer.

Sigh. The work in question is a followup series to my high fantasy series Goddess’s Honor, set in the world of the Seven Crowned Gods. I’d poked at the notion for five years, because while I had wrapped up the major threads of the Goddess’s Honor series arcs, there were still…things left dangling. I had intended to get back to the followup series but…it was a mess.

Yes, the Big Bad Emperor was dead. The hero(ine) who killed him in a magical duel (spoiler: he cheated first), also died but was raised up to be a Goddess. The fated hero(ine) became Empress. Meanwhile, in the new Empress’s homeland over the ocean, the Empress’s mother had defeated another Big Bad.

All well and good, except…it was clear within the story that the Empire was a mess. The Emperor had been covering up a lot of problems and they all showed up at his death. Over the ocean, that particular Big Bad showed signs of being defeated for now, but lurked as a potential problem.

I had written a few chapters. So once I was finished with the Martinieres, I blew the dust off, did some revisions, and…reached the 30k word mark, whereupon I realized that nope, what I was writing was more exposition than storytelling. I was facing the infamous “muddle in the middle,” plus…it just wasn’t falling together.

After the ease of writing the Martinieres, this was absolutely frustrating. I’d also started the story too late. Deep breath. Instead of that lovely writing process I had been using for the past five years, I needed to go back and rip everything apart. Expand events that I’d just mentioned as asides into scenes. Damnit.

And life just kept yanking me away from writing, so that I couldn’t give this book the concentration it needed.

Then I ended up with a nice cover for a previously released book from 2018 that I wanted to overhaul for various reasons. The process for doing that revision dragged me back into working exclusively in Word.

I didn’t like that. Especially since I’d gotten used to my combined Scrivener/Word system. Nonetheless, despite everything, I got it put back together, adding about 24k words to what was originally a 62k story. Filled in a few holes, added more material at the beginning, then completely rewrote the ending as well as setting it up for sequels. Klone’s Stronghold: Reeni, is a much stronger book than the original (if you want to check it out, it’s available at https://books2read.com/klonesstrongholdreeni).

But then it was back to the fantasy project. The more I hacked at it, the more I realized that the material I had originally considered sufficient for one book is…more like two books. There were conflicts I needed to expand upon, especially since my original concept was for a trilogy—and I couldn’t figure out where on earth the material for the next two books would come from.

I lacked subplots and subarcs.

Well, it was time to do the pantser thing. I had 30k, and too much of it brushed over what I had originally dismissed as not important to the main story. I’d made a big mistake.

So I returned to carefully expanding the story. But something happened as I worked. The stubborn, evasive story started coming to life. More backstory started hollering at me. Before I knew it, all the revisions expanded that initial 30k to 50k. I had a credible early arc, along with development of deeper themes and richer characters.

I’m now at the point where I can start ripping apart the synopsis for this fantasy novel and revising it. Back on track for my original methodology—once that synopsis is written. But at least I’m back on familiar territory, with a method that works for me. And I figured out the problem 30k into the book, rather than falling apart later. Definitely an improvement from my earlier writing days. Both books are stronger, thanks to those revisions. But it’s taken me…several decades of off and on writing to get to this point.

The lesson, of course, is that no one writing process is carved in stone. Different books will require variations in the process. I’ve been known to develop extensive and detailed scene matrices, but that won’t be necessary for this trilogy. The key is remaining flexible, and meeting the needs of whatever the story requires.

Sometimes those needs require a more structured process. Other times…a more flexible process. After twenty-four books, I’m still learning lessons about drafting my stories and—each book is a different lesson.

Which is as it should be. A good writer should never stop learning.


conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
but it was a set of two regular palmsized scrubbie brushes for dishes. Which was disappointing, but E made the amazing discovery that they are really fun to smash together, bristle to bristle, so that's all right.

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


Read more... )

(no subject)

Sep. 27th, 2025 04:54 pm
ribirdnerd: perched bird (Default)
[personal profile] ribirdnerd posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
Titmouse on my camera feeder this morning, posting very nicely!






Birdfeeding

Sep. 27th, 2025 12:42 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
Today is mostly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/27/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/27/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

The cornfield across from us has been harvested.  It's a bit of a wreck though, looks like Bubba Fail the Farmer set his blades too high.

As it is suppertime, I am done for the night.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Six works new to me: four fantasy, one mystery, one non-fiction (from an unexpected source)... unless you count the fantasy-mystery as mystery, in which case it's three fantasy and two mysteries. At least two are series. I don't know why publishers are so averse to labelling series.

Books Received, September 20 — September 26

Poll #33662 Books Received, September 20 — September 26
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong
12 (29.3%)

Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst (July 2026)
12 (29.3%)

Following My Nose by Alexei Panshin (December 2024)
11 (26.8%)

The Fake Divination Offense by Sara Raasch (May 2026)
7 (17.1%)

The Harvey Girl by Dana Stabenow (February 2026)
7 (17.1%)

Scarlet Morning by ND Stevenson (September 2025)
16 (39.0%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.4%)

Cats!
30 (73.2%)

Two Q [writing, DW]

Sep. 26th, 2025 07:17 pm
siderea: (Default)
[personal profile] siderea
1)

Is there a term for the part of a large non-fiction writing project that comes after the research – when you have a huge pile of sources and quotes and whatnot – and before the actual "writing" part, the part that involves making sure you have all the citations correct for the sources, maybe going over the sources to highlight what passages you will quote verbatim, organizing them (historically by putting things on 3x5 cards and moving them around on a surface), and generally wrangling all the materials you are going to use into shape to be used?

I think this is often just thought of as part of "research", but when I'm doing a resource-dense project, it's not at all negligible. It takes a huge amount of time, and is exceptionally hard on my body. I'd like, if nothing else, to complain about it, and not having a word for it makes that hard.

2)

I don't suppose there's some, perhaps undocumented, way to use Dreamwidth's post-via-email feature with manually set dates? So you email in a journal entry to a specific date in the past? This doesn't appear among the options for post headers in the docs.

I am working on a large geopolitics project where I am trying to construct a two-year long timeline, and it dawns on me one of the easiest ways to do that might be to set up a personal comm on DW and literally post each timeline-entry as a comm entry. But maybe not if I have to go through the web interface, because that would be kind of miserable; I work via email.

errands and a bit of exercise

Sep. 26th, 2025 06:32 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
For reasons, I ran some errands today so Adrian and Cattitude could stay home.

The main goal was to take a bathrobe to the Zipper Hospital, and ask them to replace the damaged zipper. So I did that, and was surprised by the sign saying they took cash and checks. Cash only would have surprised me less; in practice, I doubt they're being given many checks these days. They want payment in advance, but I had enough cash to cover it, so I didn't need to ask them for the location of the nearest ATM.

I then went to LA Burdick's, for a cup of hot chocolate, and a bag of chocolate-covered orange and lemon peel. The hot chocolate was good, but I spilled some on myself when I opened the takeout cup. So, I drank the hot chocolate, carefully; went to Trader Joe's; and then took the trolley home.

The trip wasn't a huge amount of walking, but it's the most I've done in the last couple of weeks. I did a little PT this afternoon as well; I've been keeping up with that pretty well.
pegkerr: (Mischief managed!)
[personal profile] pegkerr
This week, as another Year of Adventure event, Pat Wrede and I (at Pat's suggestion) took a road trip to Kellogg, Minnesota to visit Lark Toys. I'd never heard of the place before, but it was an enjoyable jaunt indeed. It was started by a man who was interested in creating a market for his carved wooden toys, and over the years it has grown to be a remarkable place. Besides being a toy store, it is a toy museum. It was great fun to wander down the corridor of "Memory Lane" and identify old toys that I had as a child, that I haven't thought of for years: Spirograph, the game of Life, Chinese Checkers, Operation, spin tops, etc. There was an impressive little bookstore, too, with thoughtfully curated books for adults as well as children.

The centerpiece is a truly extraordinary carved carousel, created by the original owner. There was a cafe, and a fudge emporium, and had we been inclined, a miniature golf course.

It was a lovely drive, and Lark Toys was great fun and well worth the trip. Highly recommended I came home with a wee giftie for M, which I look forward to seeing her enjoy.

Image description: Background: a corridor of Lark Toys, lined with display cases. Top: a sign with the words "Memory Lane." Upper left: the logo for Lark Toys, the silhouette of a bird with a wind-up toy key on its back. Below the silhouette: the words "Long Ago." Below the "Memory Lane" sign, another sign which reads: "As once the wing'd energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abyss, now beyond your own life buid the great arch of unimagined bridges. -Rainer Marie Rilke." Below this sign: a stylized tree, over a pillowed reading nook. Right: a lamp past with directional signs jutting out of the post. Left: a wooden stand filled with lollipops. Lower half: a rabbit and a swan each wearing a saddle (figures from a carousel). Bottom: a family of toy bunnies and a group of Matryoshka Russian nesting dolls.

Lark Toys

38 Lark Toys

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

(no subject)

Sep. 26th, 2025 02:46 pm
watersword: A path through the woods and the words "le chemin battu" (Stock: le chemin battu)
[personal profile] watersword

An excellent teaching experience today; the kids were more engaged and we had fewer tech snafus (and were better prepped to pivot for almost all of them), the one downside being that I did not act fast enough before the kids descended like locusts on the leftover lunchboxes and therefore I gotta get my own lunch.

But at least I had already prepared to buy myself dinner as a "yay you did a teaching!", so I can just get a gyro wrap and fries instead of bánh mì and spring rolls without any kind of emotional agonies.

A friend's yard sale is tomorrow and I have successfully offloaded a surprising number of things for that — two curtain sets! branded mugs! IKEA plates! — and I need to set up folks to care for the gherkin while I am away, and someone to pick up the corms for a public beautification project that is also happening then, and after a followup call, the Parks Department has finally finally admitted to looking at my pollinator garden plans and has feedback, which I gotta respond to. Also laundry needs to happen.

mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 

Thirteen Swords That Made a Prince: Highlights From the Arms & Armory Collection, Sharang Biswas (Strange Horizons)

Biologists say it will take at least a generation for the river to recover (Klamath River Hymn), Leah Bobet (Reckoning)

Watching Migrations, Keyan Bowes (Strange Horizons)

With Only a Razor Between, Martin Cahill (Reactor)

And the Planet Loved Him, L. Chan (Clarkesworld)

Holly on the Mantel, Blood on the Hearth, Kate Francia (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

The Jacarandas Are Unimpressed By Your Show of Force, Gwynne Garfinkle (Strange Horizons)

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gorgon, Gwynne Garfinkle (Penumbric)

In Connorville, Kathleen Jennings (Reactor)

Orders, Grace Seybold (Augur)

Brooklyn Beijing, Hannah Yang (Uncanny)

Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu

Sep. 26th, 2025 09:17 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A grieving mother and her best friend break into a ghost museum to conduct illicit but surely harmless Ghost Day celebrations. Revelations await.

Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu

Follow Friday 9-26-25

Sep. 26th, 2025 12:22 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] followfriday
Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

grunge

Sep. 26th, 2025 04:38 am
[syndicated profile] wordsmithdaily_feed
noun: 1. A type of rock music blending punk and heavy metal, marked by distorted guitars, raw vocals, and a deliberately unpolished sound. 2. A fashion trend featuring loose-fitting clothes, ripped jeans, etc. with an untidy appearance. 3. Dirt; filth.

Rogue Corn by Nikki Wallschlaeger

Sep. 25th, 2025 06:23 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
My fav event as harvest season approaches
is the rough seed that escaped the plots.

If  there’s a cornfield adjacent to another bed
of   vegetables, you can count on imperfection,

you can see stalks standing where they’re
not supposed to be, the winds have ideas,

seeds who choose wildness, here they are,
with red potatoes, alfalfa, peas, sunflowers,

they look pleased w/  themselves, outfoxing
clever farmers, making it to the unplanned

ground where nobody is around, recovering
where the amiable dirt will welcome them.

Seeds are so fun and determined,
there’s no concept of  liberty, no need for it,

guaranteed if   I were a seedling I’d abstain,
you know I would, I’d find a way to renounce

what’s expected of  my common name,
gliding over the roads until a dream takes root


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


Link

Thankful Thursday

Sep. 25th, 2025 10:49 pm
mdlbear: Wild turkey hen close-up (turkey)
[personal profile] mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

  • Draft2Digital, which N is using to self-publish her new book.
  • Getting the HyperSpace Express website up to date, a few days before it's going to be needed. Amazing how quickly stuff can go stale.
  • Our house in The Hague, which we have now owned for a year and a day.
  • Old friends emailing to catch up.

celebrity20in20 Round 17

Sep. 25th, 2025 04:45 pm
reeby10: Zachary Quinto and Christ Pine standing next to each other with "xoxox" at the bottom (pinto)
[personal profile] reeby10 posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo


Link: Round 17 Sign Ups | Round 17 Themes

Description: [community profile] celebrity20in20 is a 20in20 community dedicated to making icons of actors and actresses. You have 20 days to make 20 icons about a celebrity of your choice, based on a set of themes for the round.

Schedule: Round 17 sign ups are open NOW. Icons are due October 13, 2025.

Holiday Activities

Sep. 25th, 2025 03:23 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
13 Ways to Celebrate National Public Lands Day

National Public Lands Day is the nation's largest single-day volunteer effort for public lands. And this year, it falls on September 27, 2025.

National public lands include a lot of different protected natural environments in America. From national parks, memorials, and monuments, to wildlife refuges, conservation areas, trails, wilderness areas, seashores, lakeshores, and more, public lands are actually all around us!

Birdfeeding

Sep. 25th, 2025 02:50 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
Today is mostly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

9/25/25 -- I did a bit of work around the yard.

9/25/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

9/25/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 9/25/25 -- I did more work around the yard.

I picked several goldenberries.

EDIT 9/25/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and savanna plants.

I gathered northern sea oats and wild senna seeds in the wildflower garden.

I heard a blue jay screaming but didn't see it.

EDIT 9/25/25 -- I watered the irises, patio plants, and old picnic table.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Now free to read!

Sep. 25th, 2025 10:20 am
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 In May the subscribers of If There's Anyone Left got to read my short story, The Things You Know, The Things You Trust. Now it's free to read online! Go, read, enjoy!
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


More stories should dig into the chemistry, biology, and physics of falling in love.

On Writing Romance as Hard Science Fiction
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Amid economic downturn and political strife, young American teen discovers her hidden potential.

Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
Nothing enlivens an afternoon like hearing from your primary care physician that actually last week you almost died, especially since it didn't feel like it at the time. Continued proof of life offered from the stoplights of rush hour. Have some links.



1. Transfixed by a dapper portrait of Yuan Meiyun, I discovered it is likely a still from her star-making, genderbending soft film 化身姑娘 (1936), apparently translated as Girl in Disguise or Tomboy. In the same decade, it would fit right into a repertory series with Viktor und Viktoria (1933) or Sylvia Scarlett (1936). To my absolute shock, it is jankily on YouTube. Subtitled it is not, but I really expected to have to wait for the 16 mm archival rediscovery.

2. Because I had occasion to recommend it this afternoon, Forrest Reid's Uncle Stephen (1931) does not seem to rate in the lineage of time-slip fantasies, but for its era it is the queerest I have encountered, the awakening sense of difference of its fifteen-year-old protagonist erotically and magically mediated by Hermes in his aspect as conductor of souls and charmer of sleep, dreams figuring in this novel with the same slipperiness of time and identity that can accidentally bring a secret self like a stranger out of an unknowing stratum of the past. It's all on the slant of ancient Greek mysticism and the pollen-stain of a branch of lilac brushed across a sleeper's mouth and a lot of thinking about the different ways of liking and then there's a kiss. It was written out of a dream of the author's and it reads like one, elliptical, liminal, a spell that can be broken at a touch. I have no idea of its ideal audience—fans of Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (1958) and E. M. Forster's Maurice (1971)? I read it in the second year of the pandemic and kept forgetting to mention it. Whatever else, it is a novel about the queerness of time.

3. I am enjoying Phil Stong's State Fair (1932), but I really appreciated the letter from the author quoted mid-composition in the foreword: "I've finally got a novel coming in fine shape. I've done 10,000 words on it in three days and I get more enthusiastic every day . . . I hope I can hold up this time. I always write 10,000 swell words and then go to pieces."

(no subject)

Sep. 25th, 2025 05:20 am
[syndicated profile] apod_feed

It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not. It may look like these comets are racing, but they are not.


(no subject)

Sep. 25th, 2025 05:20 am
[syndicated profile] apod_feed

It was the strongest gravitational wave signal yet measured -- what did it show? It was the strongest gravitational wave signal yet measured -- what did it show?


Dang! Academic smackdown!

Sep. 24th, 2025 09:25 pm
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

I was reading the June 2025 American Historical Review tonight and came across Peter Lorge's review of A History of Traditional Chinese Military Science by Huang Pumin, Wei Hong, and Xiong Jianping, translatied by Fan Hao. It's one of the most brutal academic takedowns of a book that I've ever read. I'd like to share with you the first sentence from each paragraph, which manage to convey the sense of the whole thing, with my comments afterward in brackets.

  1. "The field of Chinese military history in the West has grown considerably in the last couple of decades but remains extremely small." [So this book should be useful.]
  2. "A History of Traditional Chinese Military Science is therefore valuable if only because there isn't much else." [My comment #1 was right, but just barely.]
  3. "The term 'military science' is particularly problematic. [Dang! We're not even out of the title and things are already "particularly problematic!"]
  4. "More problematically, the authors believe that Chinese military thought — or military science, in their terms — did not change after it was established in the pre-imperial period (before 221 BCE)." [It's never a good sign when any paragraph in a review begins with "more problematically."]
  5. "This brings us to a deep-rooted problem in this book's scholarship." [After two paragraphs of problems, we now come to "a deep-rooted problem"? Damn!]
  6. "Readers unfamiliar with Chinese history, let along Chinese military history, will find the discussions of history and warfare confusing." [In other words, if you know enough to understand this book, you know too much to learn anything from it.]
  7. "The translation itself appears to be generally competent, although the translator is not well-versed in the deeper meanings of either the technical military terms in Chinese or in English." [It looks like he's about to let the translator off the hook, but no.]
yhlee: a stylized fox's head and the Roman numeral IX (nine / 9) (hxx ninefox)
[personal profile] yhlee


Candle Arc #1, color version, at [community profile] candlearc just to keep it corralled. Note that it's viewer discretion advised on account of cuss words, violence, and hexarchate-typical awfulness.

UPDATED: Alternately: Candle Arc #1 on its own website at Candle Arc (candlearc.com).

I have the Ka-Blam setup in progress so fingers crossed I can make it available via print-on-demand at Indyplanet in the nebulous future, depending on how orchestration homework is going. /o\

Preview & update notifications at Buttondown. (This is an email newsletter, but it's archived online. You do not need to sign up.)

Birdfeeding

Sep. 24th, 2025 02:03 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
Today is cloudy, mild, and damp. We got a decent amount of rain last night. :D

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/24/25 -- I planted 8 'Aviv Mixed' ranunculus under the fly-through birdfeeder.

I planted 3 'Persian Blue' alliums in the purple-and-white garden.

I picked 2 chocolate cherry tomatoes and 3 groundcherries.

EDIT 9/24/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/24/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Jimmy Kimmel's return!

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:55 am
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

A. and I just watched Jimmy Kimmel's comeback monologue from last night. It was great — I'm glad to see him back. I've got to say, though: After seeing his supercut of all the time's Trump said not to take Tylenol in his press conference with RFK Jr., I feel an uncontrollable urge to take Tylenol!

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