arduinna | Network

Posted by Stephen Johnson

https://lifehacker.com/tech/what-i-learned-after-ray-ban-glasses?utm_medium=RSS

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Meta recently release a line of AI-powered Oakley sunglasses to be sold alongside Ray-Ban Metas. According to the company, the new smart glasses have the same basic functions as the old, but the Oakleys have a higher resolution camera (3K vs. 1080p) and a battery that lasts twice as long as the Ray-Bans.

That sounds great—provided smart glasses sound good to you in the first place. I admit, I'm something of a convert. Nearly a year ago now, I reviewed the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. These specs pack a camera, open-ear speakers, microphones, and voice-activated Meta AI inside a pair of Wayfarer-style frames, so they're basically science-fiction glasses that look normal. I liked them so much, I had prescription lenses put in and made them part of my daily load out.

But it's easy to love a tech product when it’s new and shiny; the real test is how the Ray-Ban Metas fair after they've gone from novelty to another damn thing I have to remember to charge. Bottom line: I still really like them after 10 months of wearing them while working, sitting around, biking, running errands, and generally living my boring life. But I like them in a more nuanced way.

Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses

$516.39

$516.39

Not quite everyday glasses

After the initial sugar rush wore off, I started noticing the weight of the Ray-Ban Metas. They're around 49 grams out of the box, fairly heavy for sunglasses, but prescription lenses bumped the weight up to 54 grams. My regular specs are pretty chunky and weigh 39 grams, and the difference is noticeable. They're slightly uncomfortable for extended use. I found myself wearing regular glasses when I didn’t expect to use smart features, and going back to the Ray-Bans if I wanted to take photos, record video, or go hands-free. The main downside was forgetting which pair I was wearing and saying “Hey Meta” to my dumb glasses. (But that’s a me problem.)

Build quality, durability, and style: no complaints

I have to commend Ray-Ban, Meta, and whatever factory physically built these glasses, because they held up flawlessly. The tech works just as well now as it did when I got them, and the frames themselves held up, too: no warping, bent arms, or other malfunctions. (I didn't necessarily baby them or take special care of them.) They didn't go out of style in the last 10 months either, seeing as the Wayfarer design is timeless. If they’re good enough for James Dean, they’re good enough for me.

Battery life could be better

Meta says their smart glasses have a battery life of "up to four hours," which is mildly optimistic—these things need to be charged often. The solution of having a charger built into the glasses' case is acceptable most of the time because the main function of eyeglasses (ensuring I can see things) works even when the batteries run out. But longer outings where I wanted to take lots of photos or videos were a pain. Your choices are to only have pictures of the first half of the graduation ceremony, or pack a back-up pair of glasses so you can charge on the fly.

Another battery related annoyance: You can’t disable the low battery notification without disabling all notifications. While that's the case for many tech products, it would be great to have the option to disable it for these glasses.

The social factor: Being seen isn't always the best

When I first started wearing the Ray-Ban Metas daily, they pretty much flew under people's radars, but as popular awareness of the product grew, so did the people who noticed I was wearing them. More than one person asked “are you taking pictures of me?" and I didn’t love having my glasses spark conversations about surveillance or Meta’s motives, but I get why some people are wary. They blur the line between fashion and tech in a way that’s still new, and many people find them off-putting.

Ray-Ban's many features, ranked and rated

Credit: Robyn Johnson

The Ray-Ban Meta glasses have a ton of features, and they're not equally useful, so here's a quick feature list, organized from the ones I used most to ones I used least:

The camera: Ray-Ban Metas' essential feature for me is the camera. It's weird to think of a smart phone camera as being inconvenient, but reaching in your pocket, unlocking the screen, clicking an app, and putting it up to your face is a lot of steps compared to pinching the arm of your glasses. The other way to turn on the camera, saying “Hey Meta, take a picture” or “Hey Meta, take video," can be incredibly useful too, as it lets you take videos while riding a bike and listening to Hawkwind, like so:

While I found the quality of the photos to be surprisingly good, these glasses are best for casual snaps. There's no viewfinder, and if you're going for super high quality, or want to shoot in low-light situations, they won't replace a "real" camera.

Text and calls: Getting a text and replying by voice is great when your hands are full. Initiating or responding to texts while driving is amazing and will probably save some people's lives. Call quality is solid, and the voice recognition is excellent, even in traffic or crowds. It's easy to use too, since you can just say "Hey Meta, how do I send a text?" if you forget.

Music: Halfway down the list is the perfect time to talk about the Ray-Ban Meta's music and audio. It is mid. The sound quality isn’t terrible, but it's podcast-while-cooking level. If you’re into music at all, you’ll quickly grow tired of the tinny sounds from the Ray-Ban meta glasses and throw in some ear buds. On the plus side, the ability to control Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music with just your voice is great. Saying “Hey Meta, play some funk” and having The Meters start playing is cool.

Language translation: Meta recently rolled out the ability to translate from Spanish, French, and Italian to English, and vice-versa. My initial reaction to testing it out with a Spanish speaking pal was "santa mierda!" It's really good, and was able to translate spoken words at a conversational rate in real time, with a surprisingly amount of accuracy. I listened to a graduations speech delivered in Spanish, and it translated it perfectly, and I tried it with some Telenovelas on YouTube too. Flawless. Language translation might prove to be smart glasses' killer app.

Meta AI: Depending on your point of view, Meta’s AI is the either the killer app or the Trojan horse of these glasses, but I almost never use it. When I first got the glasses, I was blown away by saying “Hey Meta, look” and having it describe what I was seeing accurately. But that wears off after eight minutes. Then, I started using it to clown on my friends by looking at their car or something and saying, “Hey, Meta, is this a nice car?” and relaying the answer. (Sadly, it won't roast people.) That was fun for three minutes. Then, I changed Meta's voice to Awkwafina. That was fun for 38 seconds. Then, I stopped using it altogether. Maybe your life is different, but mine is fine without an AI assistant.

What I'd like to see from Ray-Ban Meta glasses

Credit: Stephen Johnson

These glasses are creeping toward being a true digital assistant, but they're not there. I want to say “Hey, Meta, book me a cheap hotel in Yonkers next weekend” and have it just happen. Right now, though, the glasses are limited to controlling music, sending messages, translating language in real time, and providing basic information—which is a lot for a pair of glasses.

Privacy concerns (as if privacy still exists)

Meta recently sent an email to Ray-Ban Meta users that said, in part, "Meta AI with camera use is always enabled on your glasses unless you turn off ‘Hey Meta,'” and “the option to disable voice recordings storage is no longer available.” Basically, Meta is vowing to look at what I'm looking at and store whatever I say, so you could argue there are some pretty big privacy concerns. It’s not great, but honestly, I’m too boring to care. If Meta wants hours of footage of me folding laundry or playing Oblivion Remastered, that’s their problem.

If you're someone that does prioritize your privacy though, these glasses are probably not the product for you.

Are they worth the price?

Whether something is "worth it" really depends on the customer. But $299 seems like a good deal for a camera, AI agent, Bluetooth headset, and sunglasses, and if you're going for prescription Ray-Ban Metas, it's amazing. All told, these were actually cheaper than my regular glasses, and I can't ask my regular glasses to tell me a joke.

Does vision insurance cover Meta-Ray Ban smart glasses?

Whether your vision insurance covers Meta Ray-Bans depends on the plan, but generally, if you're having prescription lenses put in them, your insurance should cover Meta Ray-Bans the way they would any other glasses—I had mine made at LensCrafters and my insurance company covered its percentage of the cost with no issues. Some retailers may be considered "in-network" to your insurance company, so it makes sense to check with your provider before you make a purchase.

Is it a good time to buy Ray Ban Meta glasses?

Last week, I would have said, "Yes, it's a great time to buy Ray Bans!" but the announcement of the Meta Oakleys changes my calculations. The newer specs will retail for $399 or $499, where Meta Ray Bans list for $299 or $379—but the Oakleys will have a significantly better camera than the Ray Bans and double the battery life. If you already own a pair of Ray Ban Metas, I don't think it's worth it to buy Oakleys—it'd be nice to have more battery life and a better camera, but it's not vital. If you're buying a new pair of smart glasses, I'd pre-order the Oakleys for sure.

Meta hasn't said whether or when it plans to release a pair of Ray Ban Meta glasses with the same specs as the Oakleys, so it's probably not the best time to buy a new pair: There's little worse than buying a tech product the day before a newer, better version is announced.

The bottom line

I’m not a Meta fanboy by any stretch, but credit where it’s due: These glasses are really good. The novelty wears off, but the usefulness doesn’t. Unlike most gadgets, they've earned their spot in my semi-daily rotation. If they could shave a little more weight off, they'd be my everyday specs.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/what-i-learned-after-ray-ban-glasses?utm_medium=RSS

osprey_archer

I was all set to write a post about how there aren’t that many SFF books that won Newbery honors or awards, but then I actually totted them up and realized that this is a classic case of a sampling error. The problem is not that few SFF children’s books won awards, but that I didn’t read most of those books specially for this project. I read a bunch of them just as part of my general reading as a child, because the Newbery SFF books, it turns out, include an extremely high percentage of absolute bangers.

(For the purposes of this post, I’ve excluded nonsense books (which after all had their own post) and also most books about talking animals, just because I tend to see those as their own genre with its own concerns. There are a couple that in my opinion stray over into more general SFF territory, and I have included them here.)

It’s also true that the SFF Newberies tend to cluster in the more recent years, so as I’ve been working backward there have been fewer and fewer, in part perhaps because nonsense books and folktales were more heavily represented in the earlier years. The first indisputably fantasy book to win a Newbery Honor is Dorothy Lathrop’s delightful The Fairy Circus in 1932. There are just a few in the 1940s, but these include Julia Sauer’s Fog Magic (which I read and adored as a reprint in fourth grade), as well as Ruth S. Gannett’s still popular and beloved My Father’s Dragon.

But in the 1960s and 70s, the Newbery Award got on a fantasy roll, and honored classic after classic. Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron and The High King, Sylvia Louise Engdahl’s Enchantress from the Stars (another reprint I loved in my early teens), Robert O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (my mom read this to my brother and me), Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan (I read this within the last couple of years and it 110% holds up if you come to it for the first time as an adult), Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising and The Grey King, and Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard (another beloved favorite of my youth! I just couldn’t get enough of the 1970s books apparently).

This amazing streak continues in the 1980s and 90s with Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, Nancy Farmer’s The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm and The House of the Scorpion, Eloise Jarvis McGraw’s The Moorchild and Lois Lowry’s The Giver and Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief and Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted...

If someone asked for a reading list to introduce them to American children’s SFF from the latter half of the twentieth century, I think you could quite legitimately just hand them this list as a starting point. It hits many of the best authors and most famous and beloved books.

This winning streak continued into the 2000s with Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux (which I personally didn’t care for, but clearly many others do), Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy (also not a personal favorite) and Grace Lin Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (which I loved).

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon won an honor in 2010. In the fifteen years since then, the Newbery has gone a bit SFF mad (including three SFF honorees in 2024), but perhaps at the expense of its earlier all but unerring judgment. I’ve liked some of the work that has won in recent years (particularly Christina Soontornvat’s books), but I don’t think it’s as strong as the books from 1960 to 2010.

Now a skeptical reader might point out that I read many of the earlier books at an impressionable age, so perhaps the root of the problem is simply that I’ve aged out of the target audience. This is of course possible but also incorrect, as my taste is impeccable and my judgment 100% objective, but I think it also reflects changes in publishing.

First, the years around 2010 were the years of the explosion in YA publishing, which siphoned off a lot of books that would earlier have been published as children’s books. And the great YA explosion also changed the kind of YA books that were published: publishers were looking for the next Twilight, which (with all due respect to Twilight) is not likely to result in books as complex and meaty and uninterested in romance as, let’s say, The Tombs of Atuan.

At the same time, there was a wider swing back toward moralism in literature, the belief that the point of a story is to be a vehicle for good values. The values that modern-day moralists are different from the values of their Victorian forebears (very few people today are het up about the importance of keeping the Sabbath), but the basic instinct is the same, and it has the same deforming effect on literature. Not every book needs to be an expose of social injustice. Some people just want to write about fairies putting on a circus.

zwei_hexen

Final Tally:
Welcome post
Rec your work post

( Days 1-20 )

Day 21:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddes47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 22:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddes47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 23:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddes47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 24:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadess,

goddes47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 25:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddes47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 26:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddes47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 27:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

falkner,

glinda,

goddes47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 28:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddes47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 29:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddes47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 30:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddes47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Day 31:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddes47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Let us know if we missed you or if you didn't check in for a while, so we can add you.

tielan

I've found somewhere to stay for the next three days and moved there.

( there was a bit of drama )

Hopefully this marks the end of the change-in-programming part of my trip.

I mean, I've done this before. I've worn it and managed it. But it puts me off. And with my health in the mix, I'm anxious. And tired.

I need to have something to eat. Take my medication, and go to bed. Friday and Saturday await, and at least I'm somewhere I don't feel guilty about being in someone else's space (where I was before, although she was very nice about me being sick).

spikedluv

I didn't have time to write up my comments on the latest finished book, which led to me completely forgetting that yesterday was Wednesday. o_O

What I Just Finished Reading: Since last Wednesday I have read/finished reading: The Golden One (An Amelia Peabody Mystery) by Elizabeth Peters and To Dwell in Darkness (A Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James Mystery) by Deborah Crombie.

What I am Currently Reading: Copper Script by KJ Charles. I keep forgetting about An Archer's Awakening (Of Crowns & Quills) by Casey Morales because I’d rather read a physical book while visiting mom; if I read on Kindle it eats up my battery.

What I Plan to Read Next: I did start something off my own shelf! But I still have a library book out, so probably that so I can return it instead of having to renew it.

Book 95 of 2025: The Golden One (An Amelia Peabody Mystery) (Elizabeth Peters)

I enjoyed this book so much!! ( spoilers )

This book was really good; I'm giving it five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥

Book 95 of 2025: To Dwell in Darkness (A Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James Mystery) (Deborah Crombie)

This book was really good. ( spoilers )

I enjoyed this book and am giving it five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥

conuly

(And who knew there was a whole event for skating in inflatables!?)

Watch on YouTube

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

( Read more... )

lifehacker_feed

Posted by Sachin Bahal

https://lifehacker.com/tech/samsung-announces-galaxy-s25-fe?utm_medium=RSS

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding Lifehacker as a preferred source for tech news.

Samsung is having a busy 2025. In July, the company revealed its latest foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7. Now, two months later, Samsung is back with more news. At their latest Galaxy Event, the company unveiled four devices: the Galaxy S25 FE (the latest "budget" model in the Galaxy S25 series), along with the Galaxy Tab S11 series, Galaxy Tab S10 Lite, and the Galaxy Buds 3 FE.

Galaxy S25 FE

Credit: Sachin Bahal

The Galaxy S25 FE is Samsung's latest entry in its "Fan Edition" of devices. This Galaxy comes with a 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, with a FHD+ resolution of 2340 x 1080 and a 120Hz refresh rate. The S25 FE's footprint is very similar to the S25+ from earlier this year.

Powering the phone is the Samsung Exynos 2400 chip, which features 8GB of RAM, instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor found on the flagship S25 models. With the S25 FE, you'll still get access to all the S25's Galaxy AI features, such as the Now Bar and Now Brief, Circle to Search, and Auto Trim videos.

The S25 FE comes with a 4,900 mAh battery, which is up from 4,700 mAh on last year's S24 FE, with 45W wired fast charging and 15W wireless charging. Storage options for the S25 FE include 128GB, 256GB and 512GB.

Turning to the cameras, the S25 FE has a 50MP primary wide lens, 12MP ultra-wide, and 8MP telephoto, along with a 12MP selfie camera. Other specs of the S25 FE include an in-display optical fingerprint sensor, facial recognition, and wireless support for Samsung DeX. The S25 FE comes in Jetblack, Navy, Icyblue, and White.

You can order the Galaxy S25 FE starting today.

Galaxy Tab S11 series

The new Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S11.

Credit: Sachin Bahal

Samsung also unveiled the Galaxy Tab S11 series, and for this year, there are only two models: a base version and an Ultra model. There's no Plus model this time around.

The base Tab S11 has an 11-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, while the Ultra has a larger 14.6-inch screen. Both models' displays have a 120Hz refresh rate. Powering the tablets is the MediaTek Dimensity 2400+ chip with up to 16GB of RAM (depending on storage capacity).

Storage options include 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB for the base Tab S11, and 256GB, 512GB and 1TB for the Ultra. All models come with a microSD card slot with support for up to 2TB cards.

The Tab S11 has an 8,400 mAh battery, while the Tab S11 Ultra has an 11,600 mAh battery. Other specs include an on-screen fingerprint sensor, IP68 water and dust resistance, Wi-Fi 7 support, and an S Pen that connects via Bluetooth.

For cameras, the base Tab S11 has a 13MP main lens on the back and a 12MP selfie. The Tab S11 Ultra has a dual rear camera setup with a 13MP wide lens and 8MP ultra-wide, as well as a 12MP selfie lens. The tablets come in two colors: Grey and Silver.

The Galaxy Tab S11 series is available to order today.

Galaxy Tab S10 Lite

Credit: Sachin Bahal

Samsung also showed off the Galaxy Tab S10 Lite, which is a direct replacement for the Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. The Tab S10 Lite has a 10.9-inch LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate. Powering the tablet is the Exynos 1380 chip with up to 8GB of RAM.

Storage options for the tablet include 128GB or 256GB, along with a microSD card slot for expandable storage. The Lite has an 8,000 mAh battery, with an 8MP main camera lens on the back, and a 5MP selfie camera.

Other specs of the tablet include Wi-Fi 6, a Bluetooth S Pen, and IP42 water and dust resistance. The tablet will be available in Grey, Silver and Coralred.

The Galaxy Tab S10 Lite is available to order today.

Galaxy Buds 3 FE

Credit: Sachin Bahal

Finally, there's the Galaxy Buds 3 FE, which is the Fan Edition of last year's Galaxy Buds 3.

The earbuds come with an 11mm dynamic audio driver, Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), Ambient Custom EQ, and IP54 water and dust resistance. While the design is similar to the Galaxy Buds 3, the FE model has no blade lights.

The Galaxy Buds 3 FE offer up to six hours of listening time with ANC on and 8.5 hours with ANC off. You'll get an additional 30 hours from the charging case. The earbuds come in two colors: Black and White.

The Galaxy Buds 3 FE are available to order today.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/samsung-announces-galaxy-s25-fe?utm_medium=RSS

vass

Books
Finished the Danny Lavery book, except for the missing pages. (I told the librarian, and she ordered a new copy and put a reserve on it for me.)

Started Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy's The Bottoming Book. (I bought The Topping Book too, and decided to, well, start from the bottom.)

Fandom
The Lays server (Nine Worlds fandom) held a bingo-themed prompt fest for the month of August: there was a grid of prompts (anonymously submitted to a google form, then posted on AO3 by the exchange mods), a 500 word minimum, and a collective goal (which we met) of blacking out the whole board. I wrote part 1 of Peer Review, and hope to write and post the concluding part soon. I hope the anonymous person who posted that prompt isn't too upset with me. (~~It was me.~~)

Music
Went through a few days of listening to Vienna Teng's 'We've Got You' a perhaps concerning number of times.

Games
Spire-slaying continues: have now unlocked (but not beaten yet) Ascension level 9 for all four characters.

Crafts
Secret!cross-stitch still in the design phase, but I've made progress.

Did a weekend DIY project of painting my clothesline and restringing it.

Garden
It's September, which means that the grass/weeds have exploded almost overnight, and it's raining often enough that mowing is tricky to manage.

I planted some lavender and rosemary near the clothesline, and they are still alive so far and even (the lavender) flowering.

Hope you're all doing okay.

spikedluv

I had a chiropractic appointment this morning. I hit Price Chopper while I was downtown and got in a walk around the park.

I did a load of laundry (washed and dried), hand-washed dishes, went to mom’s (paid her school tax and called the generator guy), hit the bank drive-thru, filled my gas tank, went for a couple walks with Pip and the dogs when they got home, baked chicken for the dogs’ meals and cut up said chicken for said meals, scooped kitty litter, and showered.

I started a KJ Charles book and watched an HGTV program.

Temps started out at 54.5(F) and reached 77.2. The afternoon got a bit humid and overcast.

Mom Update:

Mom was feeling more blah today. ( more back here )

mbarker posting in

wetranscripts

Writing Excuses 20.35: Deep Dive into "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Where

From https://writingexcuses.com/20-35-deep-dive-into-all-the-birds-in-the-Sky-using-the-lens-of-where

Key Points: Place! Grounding? Context. Lived in. Details. Unnecessary details. Interactions. Senses. Familiar place and character interacts with place, draws reader in. Setting as immersion, but also as a lens on what the character thinks and feels. What is the emotional function of the place? Sense of wonder?

[Season 20, Episode 35]

[Mary Robinette] This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends. If you would like to learn how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com/writingexcuses.

[Season 20, Episode 35]

[Mary Robinette] This is Writing Excuses.

[DongWon] A Deep Dive on "All the Birds in the Sky" -- Using the Lens of Where.

[Mary Robinette] I'm Mary Robinette.

[DongWon] I'm DongWon.

[Dan] I'm Dan.

[Erin] I'm Erin.

[Howard] And I'm Howard.

[Howard] And I'm here to talk about places. All the Birds in the Sky had, for me, some of the most memorable and grounding place moments in anything I've read recently. One of them was when Lawrence is taking his trip to, I guess it was MIT, to go see a launch, and someone tells him, oh, I'll give directions to your parents so they can find their way there. And someone comments that they'll never find their way there without specific directions. Because I remember a couple of occasions driving in Boston and complaining about it to someone and having them tell me, oh, yeah, the budget for the Boston MTA is handled like here's the amount of money you have. See how wrong you can make all the maps.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] And I bring that up because it feels like something that everybody who lives in Boston knows. And it's something that, by the characters brushing up against it in this flirtation with the location, we become very grounded in it. Oh, yes, that's Boston.

[Mary Robinette] What I like about that, actually, is that the way Charlie Jane is handling one of the tools that we have, which is context. Anyone who knows Boston knows that this is true, but she also provides context for people who don't know Boston. Which is a great trick that you can use with, like, secondary world fantasy. It's not just for real-world places.

[DongWon] Well, I mean, what I really love in the later portions of the novel is how lived in this vision of San Francisco feels. It feels like the author has such a deep connection to this place. And, I don't know if Ernesto's bookstore is real, and if it's inside the mall that is described in the book, but I believe that that's a real place that has been transformed in this way. I believe that these streets are laid out like this. And there's so many details from the bus stop to the parks to all these that feel very authentic to me in a way that is so detailed, that gives this backdrop, and this context, to the characters. Right? And so this fight between magic and technology feels really rooted in this fight over San Francisco that we've seen unfold over the last couple decades. I can't remember exactly when this book comes out, but, like, it is definitely in the heart of that conversation. Right? And so place is really informing the characters responses and goals in a very deep way.

[Erin] Yeah. I think something really interesting about, like, why it feels lived in is that there's always the unnecessary detail which is often the way we think about place. You know what I mean? It's like if you… I think sometimes the mistake you can make as a writer is to be like I'm describing the beach, so I'm going to talk about how, like, there's sand and waves and all the things that a beach contains. But a lot of times, it'll be, like, that's the beach where, like, every spring, the penguins, like, flood it for some reason. How they got there, I don't know. And leave behind penguin eggs, and, like, then you have to step over them. That's the thing that, like, if I went, I would remember about the beach.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] It is either something emotional context to me or an interesting detail that distinguishes it. Like, the mall where all the signs are in… Or half, or all the signs are in Spanish, is something that, like, you're going to remember that's going to distinguish it, and I love that she manages to put that in.

[Dan] Well, and so much of the description of place is couched in interactions. Yes, she's not just describing the bookstore, she's not just describing the restaurants, but giving real specific details about how the characters interact with those places. Two of the ones that really stood out for me were, at one point, they flagged down a food truck, which is so completely outside of my experience with food trucks that it immediately took me somewhere else, and I'm like, oh, this must be a thing that the author has experienced. This must be unique to that place. The other was they… I think it was Lawrence was eating fried chicken at some point, and just going on and on about how it didn't leave his fingers messy. And that's such a small little detail about this one specific chicken place that fries in such a way that it doesn't get all greasy. And those are such a brilliant way of letting you into that space.

[Mary Robinette] I also am just going to… That the interaction thing made me remember a line… When the kids are in middle school, and they run away to try to go to the river, because it makes a pew pew sound.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] And there's this line, well, this sucks. Lawrence squatted down to examine the river, nearly soaking his butt in the slushy ground. What's the point of ditching school if we can't go make laser noises from the ice? But the… That squatting down to examine the river, nearly soaking his butt on the slushy ground. Even if you haven't experienced that kind of wetness, that kind of… If you are someplace that doesn't get snow, that doesn't get sluggish, you know what it's like to have your butt wet from sitting on something that was unexpectedly damp. And I love that she gives us this very tangible thing that implies the rest of the world, and also through a way… Like with your fried chicken example, you know what it's like to eat fried chicken and thinking about the wonder of, oh, wow, fried chicken that doesn't make my hands messy. It's like… It just… It invite you in and implies everything else through one of the other things that we use for where, which is that… The senses.

[Howard] Yeah. There's a chain here that I want to make sure we've established the connections. Having a place that I'm familiar with in the book grounds me in the book. Having a character interact with a place makes the setting and the character work together. If you've got all three of those, to where I know the place and the character interacts with the place, then you've completed this link that has drawn me all the way into the story. And yes, Mary Robinette, as you were saying, the senses. I think of the spice house. The description of that house where the wood smells like things used in curry. The woods in the first chapter… If any of you have gone wandering in the woods as a kid, and been lost, there is an emotional element to a forest where you don't know which way the road is. And Charlie Jane connects us to that, and connects the characters to that, and uses where as a lens to pull us… Me, anyway, all the way into the story.

[Mary Robinette] I think the other thing that she does that's related to this is that she's also using the where, the place in the characters perceptions of it, to underline some of the major themes of the book. There's this line… I'm going to read you a fair bit here, but…

The parrots were eating cherry blossoms on the top of a big tree on the crest of a steep hill not far from Grace Cathedral. A half a dozen green birds with red splotches on their heads just tearing the ship out of those white flowers. Petals scattered across the sidewalk and the grass as the birds squawked and worked their crooked beaks while Lawrence and Patricia watched from the steep bank of the parklet across the street. San Francisco never stopped astonishing Lawrence. Wild raccoons and possums wandered the streets, especially at night, and their shiny fur and long tails looked like stray cats unless you looked twice. And he talks a little bit more, and then says, the only reason Lawrence ever saw these urban twists of nature was because he hung out with Patricia. She saw whole different city than he did.

And that, for me, is like cap… Like encapsulating the strength of their friendship and the crux of the book, that they see different worlds. And so, by presenting these different worlds, by having this moment where Lawrence is looking at the birds, but we know that he is not seeing the birds the same way Patricia experiences birds, is, I think, one of the fun ways that Charlie Jane is using where to support this theme that we've been talking about with the book.

[DongWon] Yeah. I mean, sort of encapsulating a lot of what we've been talking about. So, I think the mistake that people make when talking about setting or worldbuilding is that it's about immersion. Right? People think it's about immersion, and it is, to some extent.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] You want to, like, have your reader smelling, seeing, what do this feel like when they touch it. I think all that is incredibly important, but even more important than that is the lens into how the character thinks and feels about the world. Right? And that is everything from both examples, in terms of, like, the fried chicken and the slush are telling us something about Lawrence, in that he's kind of fussy.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[DongWon] He doesn't like to be dirty. It would be so bad for him if his butt touched that slush, in a way that Patricia would be not notice it at the same level. He's thinking about, is there grease on my hands? Right? And the thing about getting, and what I love about what she has done here with San Francisco in the latter half of the book is… The way I talk about New York City is that it's haunted. Right? Because anywhere I go in New York City, after having lived there for the majority of my adult life… I no longer live there, sadly. But is I have so many memories of every neighborhood, and versions of that neighborhood, and versions of the person I was in the people I knew and who I went there with, who I was hanging out with then. All of these things are layered on any space I go to in New York, pretty much. Any neighborhood, any region. They're… I just have lived so much of my life there. Right? And so setting, I think, when I think about it is this leads into character and emotion, because it's about what they were connected to in that time, how the people that they are with… In the way that that scene you just described is changing literally how Lawrence sees the world. He is noticing the parrots of telegraph Hill. He is noticing the raccoons. He's noticing all of these different elements that he just would have been invisible to him without this person that he's with.

[Howard] Okay. I have a question that I want to ask all of you. And it's a tricky one, so we're going to wait until we've taken a break.

[Howard] I promised you a tricky question. It's so tricky that I have to explain it first.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] In many stories, the place that a thing happens, the where, is chosen because something… It had to happen somewhere. It's… They have to be standing on something. They have to be breathing something. San Francisco, in this book, is not that place. It is a character unto itself. But are there places in this book, and I can only think of one, are there places in this book that are used because the plot had to do a thing, but it doesn't really matter where it happened. And the only one I can think of is the flashback to Siberia. We had to have a thing happen that was bad, and it had to happen where there was methane [clathrate?] And so on and so forth, and so we picked Siberia. But it could just as easily have been Canada or Alaska or something.

[DongWon] I'm going to disagree with the premise of your question a little bit. And then I'll sort of circle back to answering the thing that you're asking. But, to me, I don't think that San Francisco is just a character of the book. I think the book is about San Francisco in a very, very deep way. Right? And it's about this sort of fight for the soul of the city in terms of this community and connection on one side, this pursuit of technological solutions on the other side. Right? This technocracy that has sort of taken over how they think about the city versus this person, Patricia, who is out there helping people who are living with AIDS, helping people who are homeless or being taken advantage of. Right? It's this real fight over what it means… And also just sort of the myopicness of what is happening outside of San Francisco that influences so much of the book, of, like, oh, yeah, that happened in Korea. That happened in Florida. That happened over there.

[Howard] I will concede that in my haste, I understated the importance of San Francisco.

[DongWon] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Howard] To the story. The question stands, though.

[DongWon] The question does stand, and I do think that it's one thing that's really interesting is when she does jump to other locations, aside from Boston, Boston and MIT feel really important, because that's like where a lot of his tech starts from and then ends up in San Francisco in the Bay Area. Right? But then the stuff that is happening outside that, whether that's Denver, Colorado, maybe it wasn't about Denver… Colorado or [Saguaro?] they all feel a little bit like, oh, this could be kind of anywhere. Because the book isn't about those places, the book is about this place over here. Right?

[Erin] Oh. I was just going to say that… You're talking about place as a character, it occurs to me that place being a character doesn't mean it has to be a particular type of character. So, like, in this way, perhaps, like, it is a… It is the thing that the two… It's like they're trying to, like, fight over in this divorce type of thing. The two sides are fighting over. Where Siberia, to me, feels like an antagonist. There are a few times in which the place is the antagonist. The Eastern European city that Patricia gets dropped into and can't understand anything that they are saying. The maze part of the school where it's like… It just… The way that that places described, it's just a litany of bad things that happen to you there. The maze isn't really described, it's like, and then maybe you get stuck in a whole or, like, then, maybe you fall off a wall, and, like, your flat, or whatever happens in the maze. And then it's like… But we don't ever see it, other than that.

[DongWon] Yeah.

[Erin] And so, maybe, the thing to think about a little bit is what kind of character is the place playing? Is it just a one off, is it a deep part of it, is it something that the characters are going to have to fight with or against?

[DongWon] Well, thematically, bad stuff happens when you don't have deep connections to the place. Right? All the places you're describing, the characters aren't connected to and that's where all the bad stuff in this book happens.

[Mary Robinette] So, I actually want to talk about one of the places that is a literal character, which is the tree.

[DongWon] Yup.

[Mary Robinette] And one of the things about the tree is that when she first sees it, it is just a place. The birds occupy it. And then the second time she comes across the parliament of… Where the parliament of birds, she… It is just the tree and her talking, and it's just a character at that point. But then when she returns to it as an adult and looks at it, she is aware of it as a place, but also as an entity. Which is, I think, one of the interesting things about this, because one of the… It's something that happens with the other characters. We see it happen with her and Roberta, that her relationship to them changes, so her understanding of them changes. And I think that also happens with place, but I think the tree is the only thing really that she experiences as a child and as a… Like that we… Has a continuity all through the thing, that her relationship to it changes.

[Howard] The tree functions as opening and closing parentheses. And if you include Lawrence's closet, and treat Lawrence's closet as Peregrine and then as Caddie, we have opening parentheses twice with the tree and the closet, and then at the end of the story, we have closing parentheses for the tree and the closet, Caddie, become one. That's a neat structure. And it's not there… I say it's not there for the reader. It's there for the reader, yes, because structures like this, even if you don't see them, they help resonate with you, they help you know that the story has ended.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah.

[Howard] But, as a writer, knowing that you are going to come back to a place helps you build the story.

[Mary Robinette] Yeah. Like, when she describes the tree the second time, or when she comes back to it as an adult with Lawrence, it says Patricia had forgotten how massive and terrible the tree was. But when we… It's described earlier, it is not described as massive and terrible. How overwhelming the embrace of its two great limbs, how, like an echo chamber the space in the shadow of its canopy was. She'd expected it to seem smaller, now that she was a grown-up, just as… Just a tree after all. But instead, she looked up at its great hanging fronds and its gnarled surface and felt presumptuous for even coming into its presence again. And that is such a different perception of the tree and her relationship to the tree than she has at the other time she experiences it. So this is, for me, one of those things, one of the lenses we talked about was the lens of time, and this is one of the things for me that… It's, I think, a great example of how you can use place and a character's place trip to show their growth and evolution.

[Howard] The roles of these places… There's a tool that I use a lot, which is what's the emotional reaction I want the reader to have to this chapter, this scene, this whatever? What is the emotional function of a thing? When I first began reading the story, the woods were grounding me. There was this sense of joy and comfort, of a child in the woods. Because I had that experience as a kid. Which, we then get to the tree, and it becomes sense of wonder coupled with a little bit of dread. Because I don't know what's going to happen. And in reading back over some of these places, I looked at the emotional functions of Siberia… I like the antagonist. The emotional function of the bookstore, the emotional function of San Francisco, which is manifold and hugely layered, and even so, I am understating it.

[Chuckles]

[Howard] But that tool, as I look at the lens of where from the perspective of a reader, I step back through the meta- and ask myself, okay, as a writer, how did she do this? How much of this is deliberate in the selection of place and the writing about place, and how much of it did Howard just happened to bring to the story because… Because Howard?

[Mary Robinette] I guess we'll find some of that out when we get to interview Charlie Jane later.

[Chuckles]

[Mary Robinette] Meanwhile, we should probably go on to homework.

[Howard] You know what? I have homework, and it's related to that thing what I just said. List the locations in your current work in progress. Next to each one, describe it story function. Is it there to ground? Is it there to evoke sense of wonder? Is it purely plot logical, a thing had to happen in a place, and so I picked this one? Is it worldbuilding? So make this list, the places in your work in progress. And then take a step back from it, and ask yourself if any of these places can be changed or should be changed, based on what you now know about them.

[Mary Robinette] This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.

conuly posting in

agonyaunt

Dear Carolyn: I’ve noticed an odd pattern in communication with my mother-in-law, “Ellen,” that I barely know how to describe, much less address. Basically, she won’t ever state her needs or wants, even when it’s very clear what she needs or wants.

One example: On a visit last week, my 3-year-old was listening to an audiobook that mimicked animal sounds. On multiple occasions, Ellen mentioned that she was concerned the book was too stimulating for my daughter. Each time, I told her it wasn’t and said my daughter had my permission to listen until dinner. By the second or third time she brought this up, it became clear to me Ellen was the one overwhelmed by the sounds.

If she'd just stated that — “Hey, I'm getting tired of elephant noises!” — then I would have happily told my daughter to pack it up. But when I said, “Ellen, it sounds like you might be getting annoyed by the toy and prefer it be put away?” she immediately insisted, “Oh no! I just think Granddaughter doesn't like it! She thinks it's too overwhelming!” I responded, “For the last time: She plays with this all the time, and she’s not overstimulated,” but then five minutes later we were back to, “She must find that toy so noisy and confusing!”

Many, many interactions are this way, and I don’t know how to react. I want Ellen to just say what she wants, rather than hiding behind the projected emotions of her grandkids, kids or her husband. It feels ridiculous to go along with an obviously untrue story, but it also feels ridiculous to tell my mother-in-law, “Sorry, Ellen! I'm not going to make Janie put away the toy that obviously bothers you unless you admit it bothers you!” Do you have any advice for navigating these conversations?

( Read more... )

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writer: Dan Vado

Pencils: Marc Campos

Inks: Ken Branch

Oh no, Captain Atom is dead. I am sure that will last.

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laughing_tree posting in

scans_daily

This is another issue of All-New Venom that got leaked ahead of time, because there's a big character beat in here for MJ which has been, ahem, long-awaited in some circles. Looking at the reaction, I'm halfway between utterly fascinated and totally bemused. I'm sure I'll talk more about this once the dust settles. Are the straights okay? I think we leave them in a healthy place? Well, maybe not Doctor Octopus. Are the readers okay? I honestly have NO IDEA. -- Al Ewing

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vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Commented on dw_news.

Posted on bbtp_challenge.

Signal boosts:

Via cranky_old_fangirls, Typepad is shutting down on September 30th. Backup/Port anything you may want to save.
Not sure if there was some kind of event on another platform beyond Typepad, but there seems to be a fair amount of people looking to expand their dreamwidth circles at the moment on addme and other add-me comms, if you're looking to do the same!

dine

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writer: Paul Kupperberg

Pencils: Erik Larsen

Inks: Gary Martin

The Doom Patrol find a mining town under siege by super-villains.

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thistleingrey

I've decided not to read The Future of the Responsible Company: What We've Learned from Patagonia's 50 Years (2023), which is available plentifully at the big-city library system but would cost me nontrivial transit fees and time to consult. Were a copy available at one of the systems closer by, I'd skim it. Sort of hilariously, I have a mini-paper to write on Patagonia's company culture, which must be related to why the big-city system owns about a dozen copies of what really sounds like a self-pub puff piece, but I can write it without a pilgrimage.

Spolsky is on hold again (though not for three years, I hope) while I evict my small bias about the monograph's approach.

Meanwhile, I've begun Laura Spinney's Proto, as in Proto-Indo-European. Spinney is a journalist, not a specialist in a relevant domain, which is consistent with how the book reads. (If I could identify more than one minor error at a 20-year-plus remove from my small learning of relevance, I bet an active practitioner would find more.) I'm not worried about reading with a sure sense of bias here---it's this: Spinney has inherited the shameful blindness to Afro-Asiatic concerns that her chief sources had---because her take isn't potentially controversial.

Nearly traversed: Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which someone once recced to a roomful of people that included me. Still WIP, besides Spolsky: Everett's James, which I'm enjoying but needed to let rest a bit; Allingham's Case of the Late Pig.

mistressofmuses

Kind of a bunch of stuff that happened in the last week or so...

Last week, we had a minor scare with Bella, where she ate a fairly large piece of a toy. She has swallowed similar bits before without us knowing, until usually after a day or so, she'll throw it up, which is very, very lucky. I wish I could count on that happening, rather than it making its way farther through the tubes and getting to blockage/obstruction or laceration territory, but it's also not a gamble we wanted to take. So we got to induce vomiting (using hydrogen peroxide) which she was emphatically not a fan of, but at least it did bring the chunk up right away. Better than an emergency vet bill.

Then on Sunday, while I was at work, my stepmom texted me that she was taking my dad to the ER for difficulty breathing and heart palpitations. The ER thought it was most likely a-fib, which is at least easily treatable, but they wanted to rule out anything else it could be, so transferred him to a cardiac hospital. I don't believe he actually had a heart attack (though getting complete information from him isn't always going to happen.) They did a bunch of tests on Monday, including sending in some scopes to look for blockages, plus delivering a shock to hopefully "reset" the heart rhythm. Apparently everything went well, and there weren't any complications or scary findings, and he got to go home yesterday. He's on medication now, which he said makes him feel "woobly."

The good thing for the week:
I spent the weekend (Sunday night through Tuesday morning) over at Taylor and my mom's house, since they had Monday off for the holiday. (It's always my day off.) We hung out and played a good chunk of Final Fantasy XIV. We did a couple of the job quests (Sage and Reaper) which were fun. Then we started part two of Endwalker. We got through the first bit, where we start to see the Final Days corruption start, and then we got to do some fun time travel back to Elpis, which really was pretty absurdly fun in terms of what they decided to do.

Spoilers for part two of Endwalker:

Yeah, go ahead and team up with Emet Selch (before he became Empires Georg), his coworker-bestie-husband (who you met as a ghost at the ghost DMV once), the guy who will become the most recent big bad you fought and killed (but like before he went very extremely destroy-all-life crazy), and their really cool previous coworker (before she becomes like... The Main Goddess Of Everything) and follow them around while Emet Selch really just wants to conduct a job interview.
Emet Selch, civil servant, and his worst day at work (so far.)

- I love finding out that, ah, Emet Selch was always just a bit of a bitch. Delightful as always.
- They made Hythlodeus just... absurdly pretty. Like. Why is he that pretty? He's also the best, and while I can't say I approve of Emet Selch wanting to burn down the universe to regain all the people he lost in the apocalypse and revive the glory days of his people... Look, one of those people was Hythlodaeus, so even if I don't approve, I kinda get it. He's just that pretty.
- Venat is very cool, and I'm so glad that we got to see who she was pre-Hydaelyn.
- Yes, the cutscene with her and the whole "No more shall man have wings to bear him to paradise. Henceforth he shall walk." bit was really badass.

We also finished reading Witch King, and had a really good Labor Day dinner.

On Monday, Alex texted me to tell me that our AC had died. He tried hard resetting the unit, but no luck. It wasn't quite hot enough to qualify as an emergency issue to be called in on a holiday, so he submitted a regular non-emergency request to management. It's relevant that in the request he included the information that a) the compressor does come on, and the unit blows air, but the air itself is not cooling at all, and the unit itself will not shut off; and b) that he turned off the unit and the thermostat, because it was blowing in warm air; however the only way to get the unit to shut off at all is to flip the breaker it's connected to, as turning off the thermostat does not do anything.
We are told that now our maintenance requests go through some third party company that "helps to diagnose and expedite service requests," even though the maintenance itself is still done by our on-site crew.
They say they'll send someone out on Tuesday. We went on a hike after Alex picked me up, so we weren't home when they came by, but they did leave us a note on the door saying they came and that everything is fixed!
... The note helpfully says that they found the problem: we had turned off the thermostat! Now that they turned it back on, the unit was again blowing air.
So yeah, it was about 82° in our apartment, despite the fact that they (not we) had set the thermostat on 68°, the lowest it goes.
So Alex submitted another request for service, saying that yeah, the problem isn't fixed. The problem is not that the unit does not blow any air, the issue is that it is not cooling the air which is the primary function that we want from an AC unit. It also will not stop blowing air, unless the unit is shut off via the electrical breaker, because none of the functions of the thermostat are being communicated to the unit.
The third party company responded by asking for a picture of the thermostat "to ensure that the settings are correct" and they ask again if the unit is blowing air.
Alex sends them a picture of the thermostat, as well as reiterating that yes, the unit moves air, but it is not cooling the air that the fan is blowing into the apartment.
Then, a couple hours later, responding to the text that included the picture of the thermostat, they asked him to please send a picture of the thermostat.
That was the last we heard today. Tomorrow is supposed to be back into the 90s, which IS supposed to be "emergency" territory for an AC unit. We'll fucking see.

My annoyance is compounded, because we had this issue before. Maintenance came out (pre "third-party"), and they were the ones who told us to try switching it off via the breaker as a hard reset. That did fix it that time! But both of the members of the maintenance team who came out told us they'd seen this issue before with the specific unit we have in our apartment; that almost all of that type have had to be replaced, because once the internal electronics go bad and don't communicate with the thermostat, it's not really repairable. So if this is a familiar, known issue (or so we were led to believe), I don't understand why "aw, you stupid little shits, you just switched the thermostat off the way you said you had, I'm sure in the SEVEN FUCKING YEARS you've lived in this apartment you just never figured out how that worked so la-di-da, we fucking fixed it by turning on the thermostat and not checking to see if it was actually performing its function at all" was the response this time.

A couple months ago, they also introduced a "new employee" who manages rent reminders via text. I suspect that "Ryan" is actually an AI bot, despite all the claims being that "he" works for our rental company, hence the dismissive scare quotes. This is the helpful third party that last month sent us reminders a week after we paid rent that we still owed rent. A few days later, "he" acknowledged that our rent had been paid.
This month we got our paper bill, and our reminder from "Ryan", but "Ryan's" listed amount owed was $100 less than the paper bill we received. Alex asked for clarification, and "Ryan" confirmed the lower amount. We plan to pay the lower amount, and see what they say if we show documentation that we were told that was the amount owed.

The hike on Tuesday was nice though.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: my apartment

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

torachan

1. I took another early morning walk today. Unfortunately the weather was not quite as pleasant as yesterday and I was pretty sweaty and muggy when I got home, but I did have plenty of time to cool off before having to get dressed for work, so that was good.

2. I am still cced into all the store-side emails at work, despite my new position, so even though they are not priority, it makes for a lot of emails to go through when I've got a long weekend to catch up from. (I am cced by choice, as I want to still be in the loop.) But since they are not my responsibility anymore, it was faster to go through them and catch up, and I was able to do that at home while cooling off from my walk, so I was ready to actually focus on my main tasks once I got settled at work.

3. First day in the new office (well, it's the same office, but the second floor is a U shape and I'm in the opposite end of the U from where I was, and it's an enclosed (shared) room rather than the open space I was in before, so it feels very different). My desk is larger and I like it better than the kind of crappy one I had before, so that's nice. One thing I was bummed about is that it's further from the restroom that I was using, but actually it's very close to one of the first floor restrooms and close to the stairs, so it's faster or about the same amount of time to go to the bathroom, but I also get stairs in every time I go, which is nice.

4. Jasper likes to just chill on my desk sometimes. Thankfully as long as he's lying down, he's not actually in the way of anything.

hannah

It's now been suggested to me that, like job applications, I cast a much wider net in terms of sending out novel queries and pitches. The logic's fairly sound, and I can't recall if there's any specific advice or industry information I've gotten to have me disregard it out of hand. I've heard that it's good to tailor queries to specific agents, but in terms of not sending out plenty of queries, I'm drawing a blank. So maybe there's something to it. To doing something, at least.

In the absence of going anywhere, whether to gigs or the movies or out with friends, it's as good a use of my time as any I can think of.

Current Mood: moody
Current Music: nothing now

estirose

Baldur's Gate 3 was on sale on Steam, so I thought I'd pick it up. (Still expensive, and I picked up a DLC as well.) I created a half-elf bard, figuring she'd be the face of the party. Took me a bit to remember that my character was a bard and therefore maybe shouldn't be on the front lines. Oops.

(I'm not as familiar with the D&D5e ruleset, but I am with 3rd edition D&D, and I am definitely familiar with Pathfinder 1e and 2e, which descend from 3rd edition D&D just as D&D5e has. Therefore the whole thing is familiar and yet not.)

Apart from nearly killing my character by charging into battles, I've only borked one roll (it's like... Tav, honey, how do you manage to fail a DC 10 roll with +3 on the dice?). Also set my character on fire a few times. I figure I'll get the hang of things. I've set the game on the easiest difficulty possible because I want to get the whole storyline (I'm going into it pretty blind, TBH, apart from some absorbed knowledge about the NPC companions).

brithistorian

When I read about the Ndlovu Youth Choir translating "Bohemian Rhapsody" into Zulu, of course I had to go check it out right away. I was absolutely blown away. Listening to the song is amazing, but then watching the video is just a whole other level. It's like a song that doesn't even belong in our universe somehow crossed over from its home to show us an alternate world we could have.

Watch on YouTube

Direct link to Youtube (in case the embedding goes bad) is here

mific posting in

drawesome

Congrats to those who took part in this challenge!

Pastel pink and yellow backing with drawings of flowers, birds, a robot and alien hugging. Text says: What Makes You Happy - Drawesome Challenge 72.

Entries submitted for Drawing Challenge #72 - What Makes You Happy:

Joy of Podfic by mific - multifandom, G
Dartmare by troyswann - original work, G
Cute Owls by zenigotchas - original work, G
Drawception works by gingicat - original work, G
My Favourite Breakfast by mific - original work, G

As usual, this challenge as well as all of our previous challenges will remain open, so you can continue to submit entries to the community any time after the Round Up date. Be sure to tag your art post with the challenge name, so that it can be added to the list.

Thanks to all who participated in this challenge! :)

mrkinch

U and I birded two parks in Albany/Richmond this morning. First Booker T Anderson, which is a nice riparian spot that's being taken care of better than formerly. The best thing for me was to be reminded of the Yellow Warbler chip note, because they have arrived. The only other Fall migrant was a Western Tanager. ( The list: )

Then we went to Creekside Park (Alameda County side), also a good place for Fall migrants as the season progresses and where there have recently been two interesting hummingbird species reported. Again, there were Yellow Warblers but I'm still waiting to see my first Townsend's Warbler of the season. Most exciting bird here was a White-breasted Nuthatch. I was only moderately excited when I heard it, but we were birding with Sam, who was very excited. Creekside is very near the Bay, not a place for White-breasted Nuthatch despite the oaks, and he said he'd been birding there for fifteen years without finding one. I was happy to help.:) ( The list: )

U's plan had been to bird Creekside and then BT Anderson, but I remembered that on the first Wednesday of the month an astonishingly loud siren goes off at 11 am. We were there once, and it was an experience. So we birded Anderson first, lowering to almost zero the chance we'd still be there at 11 am.

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