![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
bbcnewsworld_feed) wrote2025-12-19 04:50 am
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extrapenguin) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
sid_guardian2025-12-18 08:30 pmfandommixtapeex is an 18+ multi-fandom exchange using songs as work prompts. It has a bunch of post-deadline pinch hits, one of which is 100% Guardian! (镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF, 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest). The due date is December 28th, 2025 at 10pm EDT. To claim, go to the linked post, and comment with newpajiba_feed) wrote2025-12-18 02:00 pm
The Wire is the best television series of all time. There is only one The Wire, there will never be another The Wire, and any attempt to draw comparisons to The Wire is, frankly, a little insulting. Blue Lights is...
donutsweeper) wrote2025-12-18 12:48 pmyuletide_pinch_hits but so far there's been nothing I could take. I am hoping to manage a few treats, we'll see, the writing brain has not been braining.recthething recs while the exchanges they were from are still anon (because I am lazy and don't want to have to look them all up and recode things rather than C&Ping them) so here are two weeks of recs, from ficinabox (assorted things) and doodle4doodle (art): ficinabox, creators anon until Dec 20th:doodle4doodle (works anon until Dec 19th):tomlorenzo_feed) wrote2025-12-18 06:40 pm
Ella Purnell stopped by Late Night to talk about the second season of Fallout and she made the same mistake a whole lot of ladystars have been making of late. She overdressed for the occasion — not in the sense that she wore something too formal; just that she wore something that really isn’t conducive to sitting down.
We’re not scandalized by an open neckline, but if the dress you’re wearing is otherwise devoid of color, pattern or any sort of visual interest outside of some minor textural elements, then yeah, your chest is going to become the entire focal point of the look. She doesn’t seem particularly fussed by it, although she’s extremely posed and poised throughout the interview. It’s a point we keep repeating lately and for being boring, we apologize, but this is a dress for standing and posing. Once you sit, all the interest goes away. A pendant might have helped, but as we said, the eye is already going straight there anyway.
[Photo Credit: Lloyd Bishop/NBC – Video Credit: Late Night with Seth Meyers/YouTube]
The post Ella Purnell Promotes FALLOUT on LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS appeared first on Tom + Lorenzo.
tomlorenzo_feed) wrote2025-12-18 05:50 pm
It’s winter whites to the max as Queen Máxima attended the signing of a partnership between the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to focus on continuing education and skills-training for radiotherapy teams in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. One thing we like about her is that she really does step out for a high number impressively important, non-frivolous engagements. For this one, she opted to dress like the very picture of a modern queen.
We suppose if you’re coming to a center literally named after you, a little stepping up of game is required. She looks great. Do we have quibbles? Of course, we do. We can accept the beige pumps, because white ones would have made her look a little gimmicky. We can’t accept the gloves, which are awful. Leather gloves near to the skin color of the wearer are so terrible an idea that we would have thought it obvious to everyone. And finally, the cape is a little snug when it’s fastened, which is unfortunate but it looks better undone anyway. Can’t say we love the sleeves at all and as always, her ideas of where to place a brooch are somewhat puzzling to us, but we’d still call this a Max win anyway.
[Photo Credit: Dutch Press Photo/Cover Images]
The post Queen Máxima of the Netherlands at The Princess Máxima Center Event appeared first on Tom + Lorenzo.
newpajiba_feed) wrote2025-12-18 01:30 pm
Is there an actor who makes you smile whenever they show up? Like, you could be watching something that you aren't even enjoying that much, but then they pop up, and suddenly, you're like, "This is pretty good, actually." You...
newpajiba_feed) wrote2025-12-18 12:45 pm
Here's a fun Pajiba exercise: I will give you three very bad trailers. We will see if your morbid curiosity gets the best of you or if you can successfully escape the page without clicking. We'll begin with KJ Apa....
languagelog_feed) wrote2025-12-18 05:34 pmTrump's Wednesday evening speech got a lot of media coverage, as expected — but along with descriptions of (and responses to) the content, there were also many references to the tone, and specifically to the pace.
Thus Cameron Andrews ("Doctor Sounds Alarm After Trump, 79, Gives ‘Manic’ Address", Daily Beast 12/18/2025) quote a series of xeets from Dick Cheney's former cardiologist, now a CNN analyst:
PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins "clocked that Trump speech at 140-150 words per minute", and asserts that this is "2x Trump's reported State of Union speed":
There's a serious problem with those numbers, namely the fact that a SOTU speech is repeatedly interrupted by applause. Thus in the couple of minutes of Trump's 2020 SOTU
we get 220 words in 151 seconds, which is 87.4 words per minute.
But 72 of those 151 seconds were applause, and 220/((151-72)/60) = 167.1 words per minute.
In comparison, Trump's 12/17/2025 speech displayed 2588 words in 18.310 (uninterrupted) minutes, or 141.3 words per minute.
As another comparison, Mike Johnson's 12/16/2025 newser displayed 2393 words in 13.746 (uninterrupted) minutes, or 174.1 words per minute. And in "Presidential fluency", 10/31/2017, I compared Trump's speech rate in an interview with Lou Dobbs (214 wpm) with Barack Obama's rate in an interview with Steve Inskeep (121 wpm).
So to sum up the rate issue, Trump's presentation yesterday was not particularly fast, either for him or for other politicians.
NY Magazine had this to say ("Trump Used Big Speech to Angrily Insist the Economy Is Great"):
Trump’s tone suggested he’s intensely angry at Americans for failing to appreciate how well they have it and how far he’s brought the country from the abyss it wallowed in under Biden. It felt incongruous to listen to the furious man rant between two large Christmas trees celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace. NPR nicely summed up how it came across:
The address had the feel of a Trump rally speech, without the rally. Unlike the often sedate primetime addresses of past presidents, Trump spoke loudly throughout his speech, at times seeming to shout.
He also spoke very rapidly and in a monotone.
We don't have good ways to quantify vocal effort, so I'll ignore the "seeming to shout" part for now. Again, the "very rapidly" is clearly a widespread perception, but not one that corresponds to actual how fast he talked.
As for "in a monotone", that's also false in both absolute and comparative terms.
In the press event described in "Macronic and Trumpish prosody", 8/31/2019, here's the histogram of F0 values from Trump's opening remarks at that event:
And a two-dimensional density plot of F0 slope against amplitude slope:
The same two plots from Trump's 12/17/2025 speech show that yesterday's speech had a wider pitch range and also more syllable-scale pitch modulation:
Examination of other similar events will tell us the same thing, namely that Donald Trump did not speak "in a monotone", either in absolute or comparative terms.
These various observers are no doubt describing the way that they reacted to yesterday's speech — but the terms that they use to describe those perceptions are empirically problematic, not to say nonsensical.
It's possible that this is all just a reflection of political prejudices, like the long history of nonsense about Barack Obama's alleged over-use of first-person singular pronouns. Or it may reflect a problem with the measures available for characterizing the "tone" of a speech. Or, most likely, both.
lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-12-18 06:01 pmWe may earn a commission from links on this page.
As you build your DIY toolkit, you'll quickly discover there's rarely just one version of any given tool. Of course there are Phillips head and slotted screwdrivers, but even hammers—possibly the simplest tool of all—come in a surprising range of varieties designed for different tasks.
When it comes to power tools, the differences can be more complex to suss out. Take drills: When starting out on a job, how do you know if you need a standard power drill, a hammer drill, or whatever an "impact driver" is? While you can get pretty far in your home maintenance career without knowing the difference, but there will come a point when using the right tool for the job will make your life a lot easier. If you’ve managed to get through life without knowing the difference between a drill, a hammer drill, and an impact driver, here’s the rundown you need.
Drills, impact drivers, and hammer drills are all used to drill holes and drive fasteners, but they work in different ways and are well-suited to different tasks:
Drills are the easiest to understand, conceptually: Your trusty power drill spins the bit, delivering consistent, constant torque at a variety of speeds. When the motor encounters resistance, it disengages. That means that when your drill hits its limit, there’s not much more it can do to drive a fastener or bore a hole. A standard drill is good at both drilling and boring holes.
Impact drivers also spin the bit and provide consistent torque—until the driver hits resistance. Then it adds a rapid, perpendicular, concussive force that temporarily increases the torque beyond what a standard drill can do. If you’ve ever hit something on the side with a hammer to loosen it, or clamped a wrench in place and hit the handle with a hammer to get a stuck bolt moving, that’s what’s going on here, but it's happening dozens of times a second. The impact driver doesn’t have a clutch and will keep working even when it hits resistance. It’s usually pretty loud, and the vibration involved can tire out your hands and arms. As a result, an impact driver isn’t great for drilling—it’s best used to drive fasteners.
Hammer drills operate like a standard drill, but when they’re in hammer mode (which you have to select), they deliver a downward-driving force (like a hammer hitting a nail) as opposed to the impact driver’s horizontal force. Hammer drills can operate like a standard drill if you disengage the hammer function—and like a standard drill, the motor will disengage when it hits resistance. A hammer driver in hammer mode is best for boring holes in tough materials, but not driving fasteners.
Knowing how each of these tools works makes it a little easier to decide when to use one over the other. In general, here’s when to use a drill, impact driver, or hammer drill on your project:
Drills are precision tools that are ideal for driving small fasteners like standard screws or boring holes into softer materials, like wood or drywall. It’s an ideal general tool for most small-scale DIY projects, and when you need more control over the driving or drilling action.
Impact drivers are best used on denser materials, like very hard woods, or with larger or longer fasteners that require a lot of power to drive home. If you’ve ever tried to drive a long screw with a drill and discovered that it becomes frozen halfway through, that's when an impact driver might be the answer.
Hammer drills are best for drilling or fastening in very hard materials like stone, concrete, or brick—in fact, you should avoid using hammer mode on lighter materials, because it can cause damage. But because you can disengage the hammer function on most hammer drills and use them as standard drills, they can be a good multipurpose choice.
One final difference: Hammer drills and standard drills use a chuck that can accept a variety of bits, but an impact driver will only work with 1/4-inch hex-shaped bits.
Since a hammer drill can also be used as a standard drill, it’s the best option if you’re not sure which tool you should get or you want to avoid buying an additional tool for a future project—it gives you both standard drill capabilities and the added power of the hammer action. You can hold off on picking up an impact driver until you tackle a project that actually calls for one.
lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-12-18 05:30 pmI really like my Pixel 9a, but there’s one glaring issue with my Pixel that stares at me every time I unlock my phone. And it’s the At a Glance widget on top the screen that Google just won’t let me remove. I like a clean lock screen, and eventually, I got so frustrated looking at this totally uncustomizable widget that shows the time and the weather that I gave up and switched to Niagara Launcher. And if you think that this is just my own pickiness, I can confidently say it’s not just me; Reddit is filled with people complaining about this.
But seems like after 10 iterations of Pixels, Google is finally letting people get rid of this widget, clearing space for something, anything better than this. The new option will be part of Android 16’s QPR 3 update, which will be out sometime in March 2026. But if you install the beta, you can try it now.
Android’s QPR betas are refreshed every quarter, and anyone with a compatible Pixel device can enroll. Visit the Android Beta Program website and enroll your device. Reboot, and you’ll be on the beta channel. It’s really easy to hop on, and it won’t require a factory reset. But getting rid of an installed beta is not so easy. Once you install the latest QPR 3 beta, you’re in for the long haul, at least until Android 16 ships the stable version in March. If something goes wrong, or if you’re facing battery issues, the only way to downgrade would be to wipe your device. So before you start, make sure you have a full backup.
At a Glance is an interesting idea, but it's rarely helpful. It's supposed to show you relevant information like the weather, your next appointment, alerts, air quality, and even suggestions from fitness apps and delivery updates. But instead, what it shows is unpredictable and pretty barebones, and it takes up valuable screen real estate. Worse, you can't customize it to make it better. I'm excited to get rid of it once and for all.
Once you’re running the latest software, it’s quite straightforward. Long press the At a Glance widget and choose the Settings option.
Here, disable the new Show on home screen option below the Use At a Glance toggle. This will disable the home screen widget instantly, but you’ll still have access to it on the lock screen. Disable the Use At a Glance toggle as well to get rid of it from everywhere.
And there you have it. Your home screen is free at last. You can leave the space empty if you wish, or, like me, you can add a big old clock right up there instead.
If you want to bring the At a Glance widget back, tap and hold on an empty part of the home screen and choose Home settings, then tap the Gear icon next to the At a Glance option. From here, you can re-enable the widget using the Show on home screen toggle.
muccamukk) wrote2025-12-18 09:23 amelasticella: sapphic stocking stuffers.The fabric of this country is forever being torn apart by hate and exclusion; it is forever being stitched into, as the site says, new patterns, new connections, new relationships. Solidarity is always about connection across difference, about the way you stand with someone you have something crucial in common with but who may be different in other ways. It is a quilter's art of bringing the fragments together into a whole. It is e pluribus unum.
oursin) wrote2025-12-18 05:21 pmTrust's £330k appeal to buy Cerne Giant's 'lair' - if anyone is unaware of the existence of the Cerne Giant, I should issue a NSFW warning for the images - 'the ancient naked figure sculpted into the chalk in Dorset' with a gigantic todger.
The trust said purchasing the land would allow the charity to restore and care for sections of chalk grassland, plant new woodland, and create habitats to support species under threat.
The National Trust has looked after the Giant and the immediately surrounding sward since 1920. (I now want to poke about in the British Newspaper Archive to see what the reporting, if any, was like....)
And in related matters of burgeoning nature and the work of the National Trust, More than 300 seal pups have been born at a colony just a month into the breeding season:
Last year, 228 pups were born at Orford Ness in Suffolk, which is home to the county's first breeding colony of grey seals.
The breeding season began in November and already hundreds have been born with still about a month to go.
Matt Wilson, the trust's countryside manager, said the team believed the entire colony now consisted of more than 1,000 seals.
And another form of conservation: The Digital Future of Stained Glass: Data Standards and Interoperability – Why Recording Stained Glass is Important. (What this sounds like to me is a whole lot of people not talking to one another while doing very similar work and only now getting together....):
Existing data however is currently presented in wildly different formats across different databases, to varying degrees of detail and accuracy, and held on disparate websites managed by individuals. This means that the future of these resources collectively is highly insecure.
lifehacker_feed) wrote2025-12-18 05:00 pmWe may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Meta has made virtual reality accessible to many more people, offering good VR headsets for much cheaper than the competition. Right now, the 128GB Meta Quest 3S Gorilla Tag Bundle is on sale for $249.99 (originally $299.99) and comes with a $50 Amazon gift card by hitting the "redeem" button or using the code "QUEST3S50" at checkout. This is the lowest price it has been, according to price-tracking tools, and the gift card makes it an even better deal. You can also double the storage with the Meta Quest 3s Batman: Arkham Shadow bundle for $349 (originally $399.99), which comes with a $49.01 Amazon credit.
tomlorenzo_feed) wrote2025-12-18 05:00 pm
In a new conversation for VARIETY’s “Actors on Actors” issue, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence discuss watching DiCaprio’s films and if he’s ever seen TITANIC, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER, DIE MY LOVE, and more.
Lawrence and DiCaprio on “Titanic” and watching his films:
Lawrence: Have you rewatched “Titanic”?
DiCaprio: No. I haven’t seen it before.
Lawrence: Oh, you should. I bet you could watch it now, it’s so good.
DiCaprio: I don’t really watch my films, do you?
Lawrence: No. I’ve never made something like “Titanic,” if I did I would watch it. Once I was really drunk, I put on “American Hustle.” I was like, “I wonder if I’m good at acting?” I put it on, and I don’t remember what the answer is.
Lawrence and DiCaprio on “One Battle After Another”:
Lawrence: The “One Battle After Another” is my favorite movie I’ve ever seen in my life.
DiCaprio: Oh, stop.
Lawrence: You’re a really great actor and this was the greatest performance I’ve ever seen. What struck me, because I know you, is that this character Bob was the rawest I’ve ever seen you – but also really warm. It reminded me of your parents and their values. I know they were very counterculture. Was Bob built from you or did PTA just hand you a warm, amazing guy?
DiCaprio and Lawrence on “Die My Love”:
DiCaprio: Tell me about “Die My Love.” It reminded me of the French New Wave. I thought immediately of “A Woman Under the Influence,” which is one of my favorite performances and one of my favorite movies. You were fantastic in it. Why did you want this part?
Lawrence: Thanks. Martin Scorsese had read the book in his book club and he was like, “You should make this into a movie and star in it.” And then when I was reading it, I really couldn’t understand how it would be a movie. I felt like the author, Ariana Harwicz, was able to describe the indescribable grave depression of an identity crisis, but really poetically being lost in a forest and these visuals and metaphors. I couldn’t crack how to make it a movie, and I didn’t want to go back to Marty and be like, “I don’t get it, try someone else.” I think I realized that it’s poetry, it’s not a literal story. Then it clicked that Lynne Ramsey would be the only [director for this]. I think she’s a poet.
[Photo Credit: Alexi Lubomirski for Variety]
The post VARIETY ‘Actors on Actors’: Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence on TITANIC, DIE MY LOVE and More appeared first on Tom + Lorenzo.
bbcnewsworld_feed) wrote2025-12-18 08:17 pmnewpajiba_feed) wrote2025-12-18 12:00 pm
Mike threw down the gauntlet the other day. He wrote about the first of what will surely be a long list of rumors surrounding Scarlett Johansson's alleged casting in The Batman 2. The former Avenger has reportedly joined the film...
psocoptera) wrote2025-12-18 11:53 amdolorosa_12) wrote2025-12-18 04:50 pmnerakrose: quintessentially Australian books.
