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Current Mood: satisfied

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books

Book Review

Exit Strategy
by Martha Wells

This is the fourth Murderbot book, in which Murderbot helps a former client and perhaps current friend escape from a hostage situation and in the process help expose an unscrupulous corporation. This was a fun one, where we get to see Murderbot being heroic and badass. The action sequences were great, but the best parts were when Murderbot's relationships with humans grew. I love Murderbot - who knew a security android could be so relatable. This is my favorite kind of space opera, where the narrative focuses on relationships and smaller stories within an expansive far future setting.

Rec: Hungry Like the Wolf - by Wagnetic

Reccd Wagnetic's wonderful craft project yet again over at

fancake!

It's here.

Final Deadline Reminder

The deadline is almost upon us, which means that there's now one day left to finish your fic(s)! Technically, that is, because I'll throw in the same "surprise" mini-extension as I always do, and keep the collection open for submissions until an hour before reveals (which will happen at 00.01 GMT on the 19th).

Good job to everyone who has already posted, and best of luck to those who are still writing!

Regional commercials?

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Entry tags:

daily

Daily Check-in

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, September 16, to midnight on Wednesday, September 17. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33628 Daily Check-in

This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 22

How are you doing?

I am OK.
13 (59.1%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
9 (40.9%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
10 (45.5%)

One other person.
9 (40.9%)

More than one other person.
3 (13.6%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

creator:linky

Week One

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Mets vs Padres on tv

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a 2-run bomb from brett baty

Last night at this time, I was on what ended up to be a 90 minute (or more - I left after 90 minutes) call with other shareholders in my building to discuss options for complying with local law 97, which is all about reducing carbon emissions. It was informative, though as usual, the people running these meetings are bad at it it, and 2 people basically monopolized all the Q&A time with very specific-to-them concerns instead of applicable-to-all-tenants stuff, but at least nobody accused the board of being racist for muting them, which is what happened the last time I joined a building-related zoom call. Still only about a quarter of the people who live here showed up, which I find inexplicable considering the financial considerations involved. While no final decision was made, it seems like there will be a recommendation to take one of the incremental measures while continuing to explore the more expensive (but not the ludicrously expensive most expensive) options. So we'll see how that goes. If it helps my apartment not to turn into a sauna going forward, I am interested!

*

Baby Miss L is still trying to finalize her Halloween costume, but as with last year, there may be multiple outfits as she has a very full social calendar. She has gotten better about school, too - apparently she waves hello to everyone as she enters, and I imagine they all appreciate her attention. *g* I have also started compiling a list of books to buy her for her birthday and Christmas, which I guess I'll start shopping for soon.

*

I complain about work fairly often, but today I learned that 1. they've confirmed that our insurance will cover covid jabs for everyone who uses it, and 2. they're giving us 2 extra paid holidays this year since both 12/26 and 1/2 fall on Fridays. So I know I have it pretty good despite...everything happening in the world to try to ruin public health and nonprofits.

*

I can't remember if I posted about the very addictive phone game I recently downloaded, but after several lelvels where the only way to advance was to spend money to get helpful items, I deleted it. I can't be spending that kind of money and I am definitely the kind of person who needs to defeat the puzzles, even though I can see they are specifically designed to not be beatable without those helpful items. It's one reason I don't gamble or play "real" video games - I tend to get feverishly obsessive about winning and neither sleep nor money matter to me in that state. *hands* At least I know this about myself? Idk, but it felt good to delete the game even though I am still craving it.

*

The Mets snapped their losing streak on Sunday and still control their destiny in terms of a wild card spot, but given how poorly they've played for so long, this series with San Diego feels like a playoff game already. We'll see if they can hold the early lead. ....and now Lindor goes deep! <333

*

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Guardian Wishlist sign-ups are closed! All wishlists are live!

A gifting fest for Guardian and related fandoms: guardian-wishlist.dreamwidth.org

guardian_wishlist sign-ups are now closed! We have 21 wishlists covering a variety of Guardian canons and related fandoms and a wide range of media. Go forth and make gifts!!! :D :D :D

Wishlists are tagged for fandoms and media (previous years' tags are labelled with their respective years, so check the plain fandom and media tags at the bottom for this year's), and there's also a spreadsheet for your convenience.

Anyone can write or make gifts for any sign-up, right up to reveals on 6 October (Reunion Festival). All gifts must be hidden from public view until reveals. Post or link gifts in comments on the recipient's wishlist. (Comments are screened.) Gift comments can be anonymous or signed in. You don't need a Dreamwidth or AO3 account to gift.

Rules/FAQ/schedule | AO3 collection | Fandom and media tags | Spreadsheet | Promo text and graphics

[ SECRET POST #6829 ]

⌈ Secret Post #6829 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #975.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Overlooked Again

1) Some interesting posts at Henry Jenkins blog about the Peabody Awards process and disruption in the entertainment industry. "So, Peabody meets 3 times face-to-face. And it is an award that is decided across genres and platforms: television, radio, podcasting, and interactive, which is games and VR, etc. And across genre: entertainment, news, documentary, etc. But in particular, it's decided by a unanimous vote of a board of 18...who represent lots of different facets. There's critics, which include academics and TV critics, media executives, writers, and showrunners. ..which is different from a campaign for 26,000 voting members, in which you have no control of what they've watched and what they've not watched...Aziz Ansari was famous for coming to our show and saying, “You know, this is pretty cool. It's like you watch all of our shit, and you just decided it was good, and we didn't have to go to a bunch of weird-ass parties and stuff"

Two other factors: "It's not just celebrating entertainment. It's trying to talk about the ways that popular culture and entertainment can deeply shape who we are and want to be as a people, as empathetic citizens in the world" and "also...is it a story that matters? So, sometimes the craft can be brilliant, but it may not be a story that matters." ( Read more... )

2) A few more notes about Silent Witness as I move into S26. S23 seemed a really unusual season, enough so that I wondered about its production dates. ( Read more... )

3) Watched a documentary on the BeeGees which, like a lot of documentaries, goes very light on the time after their popularity peaked. (That was one thing the Billy Joel and Bon Jovi ones avoided). ( Read more... )

4) A Spy Among Friends was well written and interesting to watch but I kept constantly thinking about the 2003 Cambridge Spies which I saw last year and suspect it's much closer to the truth. ( Read more... )

5) Just a few comments about the Emmys, mostly in how unsurprising it was that Stephen Colbert finally won an Emmy for Best Show more because voters were jolted into a show of support. Yet John Oliver won yet again, twice. (Particular irony given the broadcast was on CBS).

Otherwise can't say it was entertaining and I wish a lot of stuff not involved in handing out awards had been cut. The tribute to Gilmore Girls seemed to really exemplify "too little, too late" since it and so many shows from the WB had been overlooked through sheer snobbery decades ago, when the attention would have done more good.

Poll #33627 Kudos Footer-540

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 5

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
5 (100.0%)

Robert Redford

I admit, when I'm watching a movie I really enjoy, I'm usually absorbing without thinking ahead. So I was totally flabbergasted when the Winter Soldier showed up at Pierce's house and was taking orders from him. In retrospect, it seems obvious that they wouldn't have hired someone of Robert Redford's caliber to just be an upright lead bureaucrat type, he must be there for a significant twist. But that was a great 'omg!' moment for me.

Redford was one of the greats, and one of the most significant actors of my childhood. Looking at dates, I think Jeremiah Johnson was probably the first movie of his I saw, though all I remember is he looked fabulous as a mountain man. Then The Way We Were and The Sting... and somewhere in there I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on TV, being devastated by that ending. Three Days of the Condo and The Electric Horseman...I only saw All the President's Men within the last 10 years or so. That was weirdly fascinating just for how much the technology of journalism has changed.

I don't know much about his personal life, but he had an amazing career and did so many worthwhile things and lived to a pretty darned good age... we were lucky to have him and the body of work he created. RIP, Robert Redford, you will be missed.

Entry tags:

autoimmune

Drive-By Update

I contacted my rheumatologist because I've been having increased pain--hurting enough to wake me at night and keep me awake, hurting enough to make walking difficult--and have gotten a referral to PT to learn how to use a cane. Fiona's gonna help me bling her out once I get her. The doc also went ahead and started the process of getting me a biologic; it's so fucking involved, y'all.

You can't get a biologic at a regular pharmacy; only specialty pharmacies carry them. So right now I'm at the stage where the RX has been sent to the specialty pharmacy and they're in the process of doing the prior authorization and figuring out how much my insurance will pay. I'm just waiting for them to get back to me to let me know if it's been approved and what the copay will be.

Assuming it gets approved and is affordable, I'll be taking once weekly injections of Enbrel.

Anybody here take Enbrel and want to share?

Entry tags:

!event

Guardian Wishlist sign-ups are closed! All wishlists are live!

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!admin

Sign-ups are closed! All wishlists are live!

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Aikido class recommendations?

My younger kiddo, a high school senior, is interested in studying aikido. Any recommendations? I may have more specific questions later.

Thanks!

Entry tags:

vaccinated

I just got this year's covid booster, as a walk-in at CVS. I'm glad I called first, because the CVS closest to our house doesn't have the vaccine; the one where I get most of my prescriptions does.

The pharmacist asked me if I wanted to get the flu vaccine at the same time, so I told her I'm waiting, on my doctor's advice. The actual injection was faster than I expected and didn't hurt much, so that's good.

The pharmacist gave me a coupon for $10 off a $20 purchase (with the usual list of exclusions). Kitchen trash bags were on the shopping list, so I picked those up, then added a box of envelopes and a bottle of dish soap to get the total up to $20. I got home and saw we may have too much dish soap, given limited storage space, but we will use it.

Moonday to Sunday

As we all know, the ancient Greeks and Romans had a 7-day week, where they named the days Moonday, Marsday, Mercuryday, Jupiterday, Venusday, Saturnday, and Sunday. The Romance languages mostly preserve this (except they call Sunday Lordsday, dies Dominica), but turns out that the Germanic languages have the exact same paradigm (except for Saturday): Mániday, Týrsday, Óðinsday, Thorsday, Frīgsday, Washingday, Sonnaday. Máni is the personification of the Moon, Týr a god of combat (like Mars), Odin/Woden a psychopomp (like Mercury), Thor the god of thunder (like Jupiter), Frīg as Venus was known as Frīg's star, and the Sun is, well, the Sun. Though note that English has Saturday in a closer Romance loan, rather than a descendant of laugardagur (launderday?).

Anyway, that's neat, and you probably already knew that. However! I encountered the Japanese 月曜日, and saw the 月 and thought "Huh, Monday is Moonday in Japanese as well? What a coincidence."

Not a coincidence at all, actually! Turns out the Chinese discovered the planet-named 7-day week in the 4th century AD, whence it was transmitted to Japan before 1000 AD and used for astrological purposes before being promoted to the official week naming system as part of Westernization. Thus modern Japanese has 月曜日, 火曜日, 水曜日, 木曜日, 金曜日, 土曜日, 日曜日, where 月 and 日 are the Moon and the Sun, and the days between named for the planets, each of which is associated with a Chinese classical element: Mars with fire 火, Mercury with water 水, Jupiter with wood 木, Venus with gold 金, and Saturn with earth 土. Chinese has replaced them with numbered days, Week 1 Week 2 etc (though Sunday is still 周日), but in Japanese, they remain. So if you're ever going WTF at the Japanese (or Korean!) names of the week, just blame the Ancient Greeks!

obdurodon.

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/obdurodon/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18275

I was over at XIX век and happened to glance at the list of Russian literature sites in the right margin, and my eye fell on the obdurately lowercase obdurodon. When I clicked through, I found an amazing collection of “Digital humanities projects,” many of them Russian-related, from The annotated Afanas′ev library (“Selected Russian fairy tales from the Aleksandr Afanas′ev collection with glosses and linguistic and cultural annotation”) to Twitter register variation (“Corpus-based study of linguistic properties of English-language tweets”). It’s well worth checking out. And “obdurodon”? Per Wikipedia, it’s “a genus of extinct platypus-like Australian monotreme which lived from the Late Oligocene to the Late Miocene”:

The holotype tooth was placed into the newly erected genus Obdurodon upon description in 1975 by American palaeontologists Michael O. Woodburne and Richard H. Tedford. They named the genus from the Latin obduro “persist” and the Greek ὀδών (odṓn) “tooth”, in reference to the permanency of the molars, a feature which is lost in the modern platypus.

So it’s a bastard formation, but if I can take “television,” I guess I can take “obdurodon.” (It’s not in the OED yet even though it’s been known and named for half a century.) I have no idea why the site is called that, but there’s an image of a pair of them at the top of the main page, and it’s quite cute.

https://languagehat.com/obdurodon/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18275

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9 + 3 icons for retro_icontest

The current round at

retro_icontest provided three themes and I made three icons for each theme.

Enjoy!

( Dongji, Nothing But You, and Shine )

Every single comment is treasured. All icons shareable! Concrit welcome. Check out my resource post for makers of textures and brushes I use.

Previous icon posts:

Entry tags:

My latest Guardian fanworks

2 drama fics, 1 novel fic, 1 RPF drawing. (The last one has already been linked elsewhere in the comm, but I'm still putting it here for completion's sake. :))

Held (463 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Hands, Memories, Wedding, Domestic Fluff, Tenderness, Canon Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Mild Sexual Content, POV Zhao Yunlan, Guardian Bingo
Series: Part 11 of Guardian Bingo 2025
Summary: He takes Shen Wei's hand in his, slow and solemn, and thinks of the handshake from what feels like a lifetime ago — all the longing and confusion and desperate hope in the firm grip, back when Zhao Yunlan didn't understand anything.

Taking What's (Not) Mine (1568 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Shen Wei/Ye Zun/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Ye Zun (Guardian), Shen Wei (Guardian), Zhao Yunlan
Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Threesome - M/M/M, Twincest, Dubiously consensual voyeurism, Mildly Dubious Consent, (as in: everyone consents but Ye Zun wouldn't exactly care if Zhao Yunlan didn't), POV Ye Zun (Guardian), Clothed Sex, Grinding, Coming In Pants, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Finger Sucking, Biting, Come Eating, Possessive Sex, Possessive Ye Zun, hand-wavy post-canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies
Summary: Ye Zun is welcome here, in Gege's bed, in Gege's home, no matter how Zhao Yunlan feels about it.

Show Me (1879 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian - priest
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Shen San/Shen Wei (Guardian)
Characters: Shen San (Guardian), Shen Wei (Guardian)
Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Oral Sex, Laughter During Sex, a bit of praise kink, Soft
Summary: "I want to show you," Wei says, breath warm against his skin, and Shen San makes a soft, strangled sound and nods wordlessly, the fire he has tried to keep in check all day rising and blooming in his belly.

Good Fortune by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, Chinese Actor RPF
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Characters: Bai Yu (Actor), Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: cheek kiss, Holding Hands, Fluff, Guardian Bingo, Fanart, Drawing
Series: Part 10 of Zhubai ~canon~ but with more kissing, Part 10 of Guardian Bingo 2025
Summary: The new crush is mutual.