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Sep. 25th, 2025 09:41 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] anna_wing!

October, here we come!

Sep. 24th, 2025 11:12 pm
rogueslayer452: (Summer Glau. Squee!)
[personal profile] rogueslayer452
++ The trailer for Critical Role's 4th campaign was revealed, with the premiere date of October 2nd. That's very soon, much sooner than I had thought. Not that I'm complaining, of course. After my complicated feelings regarding the third campaign, I'm ready for this refreshing switch-up. I've already seen the character art, and listening to Brennan's monologue in the trailer it certainly has piqued my curiosity on what the campaign is going to be about.

++ The newest addition to the V/H/S franchise, V/H/S/Halloween, has also released a trailer and will be premiering October 3rd. I had no idea that there was another one already, but I'm not entirely shocked either. This features two of my favorite things: the V/H/S franchise and Halloween. I'm all in.
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."
starandrea: (Default)
[personal profile] starandrea
In times like these it feels important to be visible when spoons and safety allow, so I just wanted to say: you are loved, and we're here for you. You're in this world to be exactly who you are.

In the immortal words of a fellow teacher explaining the plan for getting three different field trip groups along multiple walking routes to the same destination at the same time (cartoon maps and faux football play diagrams were involved), when responding to the following question:

"What do we do if it rains?"
"...If it rains, we go out and we fight. We fight and we fight and we win."

Relatedly, in the way that all things are, I'm enjoying [community profile] communal_creators right now. I joined, as with [community profile] battleshipex, because Marci did. And as with [community profile] battleshipex, it has done great things for my creative output and self-expression. (Along with drabble community [community profile] chenqing_100, a serene place that inspires me to contemplate the drabble-esque qualities of classical Chinese.)

Autumn arrives as well, and with it, the soft opening of my indoor light garden. Every single one of my high intensity lights from Gardeners' Supply is going strong, but none of my low-intensity lights from Amazon has lasted more than two seasons. On a quest, then, to find new gentle lights for my less sun-hungry plants, I tried the Gardeners' Supply light guide (illustrated) and laughed at the following multiple choice question:

"What kind of gardener are you?"
1) Tabletop: "I just want to keep my African violets happy."
2) Floor Plant Fanatic: "I've got a few monster-sized Monsteras and fiddle-leaf figs to tend to."
3) Plant Parenting Pro: "I'm growing light-loving houseplants of all sizes, including an orchid, several succulents, and a sago palm."

Option 3 may not quite cover it, but that's as high as the scale goes and I embrace it.
fic_in_a_box_mod: (Default)
[personal profile] fic_in_a_box_mod posting in [community profile] ficinabox

Navigation: Rules/General Info | AO3 Collection | Posting Guidelines | Medium Rulesets | Google Forms (Defaulting, Extensions, Assignment Summary Requests) | Mod Contact: ficinaboxmod@gmail.com OR Screened Mod Contact Post

Pinch hits are participants who are without creators; pinch hitting is the practice of volunteering to make a gift for a pinch hit. These pinch hits are all due on October 19 at 10:00 PM EDT.

Fic In A Box has a very unusual set of assignment requirements: everyone is owed (and is asking for) 10k of fanfiction, which by default can be given as one 10k+ fic or several 1k+ fics. Participants have also had the option to opt-in to other minimum lengths or to other formats of fanwork. The other fanwork mediums are given word count equivalents, which you can view on the medium ruleset post.

Additionally:

  • Fic In A Box creators may default after partially filling their assignment—say, if they discover that they can only write 9k of fic—and PHs can be picked up in 1k increments!
  • You may always swap all or part of your assignment for a PH, just let us know that's what you're doing when you post to claim the PH.
  • In the future we'll include details in the post, but for this post we're linking to the app for that to keep the post size down!

In order to pick up a pinch hit you need to either email us or comment on this post (comments are screened) with:

  • The amount of wordcount you would like to claim (even if you're going to do fanart or some other non-fic opt-in medium! If you aren't sure what the equivalent would be, we'd be happy to help you convert it!)
  • The exact username of the AO3 account you will be posting your fill(s) from (if you post from a different account from the one you give us, we won't be able to count the PH as filled unless you update us!)
  • An email where we can reach you (you might not be getting the AO3 assignment when you pick up a PH, so we need to know where to send the assignment!)

PH 4 - 2k - Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon), Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (TV), Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Resistance (Cartoon) )

PH 5 - 1k - Christian Astrology - William Lilly, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), 龍の国 ルーンファクトリー | Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma (Video Game), Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses )

PH 7 - 10k - Only Murders in the Building (TV), Roseanne (TV 1988), Red Band Society (US TV), Degrassi the Next Generation, Win or Lose (Cartoon), Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist (TV), Divergent Series - Veronica Roth, The OC (TV), Short Term 12 (2013), Turtles All the Way Down (Movie 2024) )

PH 12 - 10k - 鹿鼎記 - 金庸 | The Deer and the Cauldron - Louis Cha, 鹿鼎記 | The Duke of Mount Deer (Hong Kong 1984), 老洞 | The Old Miao Myth (TV) )

PH 16 - 3k - 阴阳师 | Yīn Yáng Shī | The Yin-yang Master (Movies - Guo Jingming), 陰陽師 | Onmyouji (Anime 2023), 밤에 피는 꽃 | Knight Flower (TV) )

PH 18 - 7k - The Fixer Series - Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Earth Girl Series - Janet Edwards, Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, The Librarians (TV 2014), Crossover Fandom )

PH 19 - 2k - Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Enterprise, Star Trek: Voyager, Crossover Fandom )

PH 20 - 10k - Wahkonda (Band), Wahkonda (Band), Wahkonda (Band), Springtime (Band), Mind Your Language (TV), Münchener Freiheit (Band), Wahkonda (Band), Springtime (Band), Men's Football RPF, Wahkonda (Band) )

PH 22 - 7k - The Good Wife (TV), Fresh Meat (TV), Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, Guardians of Time - Marianne Curley, Crossover Fandom, Crossover Fandom )

PH 25 - 10k - Stargate - Live Action, Kolja | Kolya (1996), Cesta do pravěku | Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955), Crossover Fandom )

PH 29 - 10k - 단금지교 | Dangeum and Jigyo (Webcomic), Star Control (Video Games), Chang Feng Juan | I Promise to Return (Webcomic), 고진감래 | Go Jin and Gam-rae (Webcomic) )

PH 30 - 6k - Green Hornet (TV), Crossover Fandom, Ghost Whisperer )

PH 39 - CLAIMED - Bleach (Anime & Manga), KPop Demon Hunters (2025), Naruto (Anime & Manga), 데뷔 못 하면 죽는 병 걸림 - 백덕수 | Debut or Die - Baek Deoksoo, 原神 | Genshin Impact (Video Game), 崩坏:星穹铁道 | Honkai: Star Rail (Video Game), 残疾暴君的掌心鱼宠[穿书] - 雪山肥狐 | The Disabled Tyrant's Pet Palm Fish [Transmigration] - Xuě Shān Féi Hú, DCU (Comics), Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, SK8 the Infinity (Anime) )

PH 40 - 2k - Original Work, Teen Titans (Animated Series), Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You (Video Games), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime 1997-2023), LOVE ME HARD - Jerry Heil (Music Video), ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Toonami Total Immersion Event Series, Initial D (Anime & Manga), Black Dynasty - Marilena Barbagallo )

PH 41 - 2k - Original Work, Horrible Histories, The Gilded Age (TV 2022) )

PH 42 - 6k - Alien (Original Movies 1979-1997), DCU (Comics), The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Marvel 616, Crossover Fandom )

PH 43 - 2k - Yellowjackets (TV), Dawson's Creek, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, Once Upon a Time (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV), Gossip Girl (TV 2007) )

PH 44 - 1k - DCU (Comics), Original Work, Fevre Dream - George R. R. Martin, A Short Stay in Hell - Steven L. Peck, House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski )

PH 45 - 3k - 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga), 전지적 독자 시점 - 싱숑 | Omniscient Reader - Sing-Shong (Novel), Crossover Fandom )

PH 46 - 1k - Why Didn't They Ask Evans? (TV 2022), Slow Horses (TV), Sanditon (TV 2019), Nancy Drew (TV 2019), The Gilded Age (TV 2022), Crossover Fandom )

Daily Happiness

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:12 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Today I had a meeting about one aspect of the upcoming system change that led us to discover something major that IT had totally misunderstood. Me and the other non-IT guy were pretty freaked out about it, especially when the guy leading the meeting kept insisting that this was the way the new system works and there is 100% no way that it could be changed, and also kept insisting that all of us were in the wrong for not having realized this before because of course it works that way, not the way we expected it to work. But in the end it turns out that the system can work the way we need it to work, and also that previous mockups show the fields we need, so I don't know where it went wrong between then, but I'm glad that we discovered this misunderstanding now and can fix it. Very glad that I am working on this project now, too, because there is just too much of a disconnect from the IT side, since none of them understand anything about how a retail operation actually works or what we need the system to do. They just know how the systems work, but not the reason we need them to work a certain way. (And they were supposed to learn more about the workings, but still have not.)

2. We had a nice evening at Disneyland. Especially nice after a stressful afternoon at work!

3. Chloe knows the cutest poses.

ugh

Sep. 25th, 2025 06:02 am
tielan: Valkyrie blowing out on-fire drink (MCU - Valkyrie)
[personal profile] tielan
That feeling when there was something on, you know you could have/should have gone, but you didn't, and now you have regret.

It was a social night for the tour I'm on, but I was super-tired from the walk today (well, everyone was) so I stayed in. But I think nearly everyone else went, so I missed out on 2 hours of socialising. Then again, I'm (once again) oddball out on this tour.

Which, I know the "once again" should mean I'm used to this, but also, it's slightly harder on this one.

Walked about 7 miles yesterday, up hill and down dale, through cowpasture and sheep pasture. Definitely walking off the meals I've been eating the last couple of days.

2025 Disneyland Trip #63 (9/24/25)

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:02 pm
torachan: aradia from homestuck (aradia)
[personal profile] torachan
We haven't been to the parks for about a week and a half since Carla wasn't feeling well, but since we usually go so frequently it felt like we hadn't been in ages lol.

Read more... )

I need to remember

Sep. 24th, 2025 11:22 pm
cornerofmadness: (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
that I have BIG classes this semester and if I put all the tests on one day, I'll be working for hours to grade it all in one night. That was my entire day.

That and finding out one of my EOBs was a denial for my DexCom monitors and I wrote and asked them WHY they denied a claim from the company they INSISTED I use. I hope that gets straightened out because that's 1000$ to me if they don't.

We needed rain bad. We're now on day 4 and flooding. fantastic. Lost my power third day in a row too. It was raining inside my building again. Also someone turned on the heat. Again. It was 77 when I showed up to work outside so WHY the heat is on....


I did manage to finish a [community profile] fandomgiftbasket story but I'm worried that it's toeing the DNW list (Jealousy is one request but so is no other pairings other than listed...)



What I Just Finished Reading:

Nothing Special vol 2 - a fantasy webtoon, it's cute

Jaws - I needed as J and one of my dentists handed me this to read. Someone's thesis on why there is so much malocclusion. Riveting (no, it's not)



What I am Currently Reading:

Cards on the Table - Agatha Christie - a good reminder she was a woman of her time and that Italians were NOT liked well in the 20s and 30s The victim seems to have deserved to die because Dagos are shifty and untrustworthy....it's not in there much but it was there in the beginning and I set this aside for years and now it's back about mid way in...

Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World - imagine Gavin or Lindsey trying to get promoted at Wolfram and Hart and you more or less have it. It's interesting but it's hard to root for Colin since he's actively evil and petty


What I Plan to Read Next: I'm so behind on my challenges. something for that.

Artificial Intelligence

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:13 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
YouTube secretly used AI to edit people’s videos.

In recent months, YouTube has secretly used artificial intelligence (AI) to tweak people’s videos without letting them know or asking permission. Wrinkles in shirts seem more defined. Skin is sharper in some places and smoother in others. Pay close attention to ears, and you may notice them warp. These changes are small, barely visible without a side-by-side comparison. Yet some disturbed YouTubers say it gives their content a subtle and unwelcome AI-generated feeling.


This causes a variety of damage including but not limited to:

* Tampering with people's intellectual property without their permission.

* Damaging trust between producer and consumer (especially if the producer says that they don't use AI).

* Undermining people's ability to choose whether or not they wish to use or consumer AI.

* Undermining people's ability to find and identify truth.

Yet another in the suddenly growing pile of reasons to hate YouTube, which sucks, because it's the most widespread place to share video content. >_<

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.]
landofnowhere: (Default)
[personal profile] landofnowhere
My Life and Functions, Walter Hayman. Walter Hayman was a mathematician who worked in complex analysis, but I heard about him first because of his daughter Sheila Hayman, descendant of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, who made documentaries about her family history (I watched the one about her family and the Nazis, which was powerful, and have still not watched the one about Fanny, because I don't think I'm its target audience.) Walter Hayman had a life that was in some ways not that unusual for a mathematician of his time and place, but still had some interesting features: he was born in Germany, grandson of the distinguished mathematician Kurt Hensel. Kurt Hensel retired and then died early enough to be protected from the worst effects of the Nazis, but Walter was Kindertransported to an English boarding school as a child, and lived the rest of his life in England (excepting some brief stays in the US and other travel). He married three times, outliving his first two wives; his first wife became a math educator who founded the British Math Olympiad team (with his help); his second wife was his former grad student who had come to the UK from Iraq, and he converted to Islam for her (but still continued to be a practicing Quaker), and his third wife was a successful writer and businesswoman.

This all sounded interesting enough for me to track down his memoirs, though I found it a bit disappointing, in particular because it didn't go into detail about the things I was most curious about. The sections about his early years were the best, but after that it became rushed. The title is appropriate; he does sometimes switch abruptly from reminiscences to a mathematical discussion (which I could follow but is not my field). However, I did learn details I'm not sure I actually wanted to know about his relationship with his former grad student who he eventually married, which was even more problematic than that description makes it sound like. It's interesting that he spent his life around smart, influential women; in addition to his wives, his Ph.D. advisor was the groundbreaking Mary Cartwright, and he had four daughters who all went on to have successful careers. But he doesn't come off as particularly feminist or thoughtful about gender.

The Summer War, Naomi Novik. This is a fairy tale novella, using many of the classic tropes, and a well-constructed one, as one would expect from Novik. I enjoyed it.

Teresa, Edith Ayrton Zangwill. Like the last Ayrton Zangwill I read, this is a un-proofread OCR'd copy: the book has just entered Distributed Proofreaders and will be on Project Gutenberg when fully proofread (at which point I expect I'll post about it again!). As I've come to expect from Edith Ayrton Zangwill, the writing is great, the social commentary is excellent, and I gulped the whole thing down in a day. The book feels like a response to Middlemarch, specifically the prologue that talks about all the latter-day analogues of St. Teresa of Avila who didn't reach their full potential, and this book's Teresa could be one of them (some characters compare her in-book to her saintly analogue).

Teresa starts the book as an idealistic girl fresh out of boarding school with a strong and inflexible sense of morality learned from her mother, who is a relic of the Victorian era but also a committed socialist -- and the theme of socialism throughout the book really helps Teresa's morality not come across as mere priggishness. (Vicki, who I am very grateful to for scanning the book from the British Library, commented that Teresa reads as possibly on the spectrum, and I think she has a good point there.)

Like The First Mrs. Mollivar, this is a story about two people who never should have gotten married to each other, and how they navigate being married anyway. Also like it, there is lots of good parts in there that is not just about the miserable marriage; I particularly liked Teresa's badass lady doctor cousin, though I'm sad that her roommate got shuffled out of the way to make room for a heterosexual love interest (the book does not use its femslash potential).

Read-in-Progress Wednesday

Sep. 25th, 2025 10:13 am
geraineon: (Default)
[personal profile] geraineon posting in [community profile] cnovels
This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

2541 / The Carter File

Sep. 24th, 2025 09:47 pm
siria: (the pitt - dr robby swag)
[personal profile] siria
As may have been obvious from some of my recent posts, thanks to a chain of events involving Noah Wyle's winsome brown eyes, I ended up watching a lot of ER this summer and writing fic for it. However, I've also spent a lot of time grappling with the fact that a lot of plot happens to my favourite problematic dink, John Carter, in the course of 15 seasons. Some of it is contradictory, some of it is unclear, and the existing ER wiki resources just aren't done with my needs in mind, i.e. "I want to write fic about Carter and his feeeeeelings."

So below the cut are the notes I took when I rewatched the show. I'm posting them here so that I don't lose them and also who knows, maybe someone else will find this useful?

The Carter File )
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Sanders' Rhetorical, or Union Sixth Reader by Charles Walton Sanders

An advanced work of elocution.

Perhaps chiefly useful now for its selections and the light they cast on the era. It has several on the importance of the Union. It boasts of a wide variety, to fit young readers, and it does feature both prose and poetry on many different topics, fiction and non-fiction. I think it has more biographical essays than the earlier books in the series.

(Though it was amusing to read the side note that people used to eat a dish of fried dough known as a doughnut.)

Success!

Sep. 24th, 2025 08:49 pm
the_shoshanna: girls kicking ass (girls kick ass)
[personal profile] the_shoshanna
So remember how Booking.com told me our hotel reservation in Aberystwyth was confirmed, but when we got there the hotel had never heard of us? The agent I talked to on the phone on the spot said that if I booked one of the alternative hotels they'd email me, Booking.com would cover any extra cost. I booked one of them, it was quite nice, and it cost an extra £105; but a follow-up "sorry about the screw-up" form email from B.c said that they would refund up to £51.90. (Which is a weird number; I have no idea how they came up with it.) So obviously I was not happy about eating the other £53.10!

Well, it took an hour on the phone with them again today, but I emphasized that the first agent had specifically said that if I chose one of their options I would not face any extra expense, and also used the phrase "Booking.com's error" a couple of times, and in the end I did get the full amount refunded! (Well, they issued it as an in-house "cash credit," but I can withdraw it all to a credit card.) Victory is mine!
killabeez: (Default)
[personal profile] killabeez
Get your requests and offers ready, spread the word, and let's do this!



2025 Guidelines and helpful links here.

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