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

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

Read more... )

Community Thursday

Sep. 25th, 2025 05:33 am
vriddy: Studious, smiling Eri (studious)
[personal profile] 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...

Posted & commented on [community profile] getyourwordsout.

Check In: Day 24

Sep. 24th, 2025 09:06 pm
fleetsparrow: Drawing of Bear in a Batman costume, in her identity Bat-Bear. (Default)
[personal profile] fleetsparrow posting in [community profile] writethisfanfic
Hello, fellow writers!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6


Was today a writing day?

View Answers

Yes
3 (50.0%)

No
2 (33.3%)

Kind of?
0 (0.0%)

It will be
1 (16.7%)

Today was a break; but tomorrow!
0 (0.0%)

One of my favorite ways of kickstarting the writing brain is to interact with a beloved piece of media.  Especially one that makes you feel something!  Whether it's a favorite story, novel, fanfic, visual art, movie, show, game, or anything else, just taking in storytelling you enjoy can do double duty as rest and inspiration.

So, visit one of those today!  And please share with the class~  👀👀

I need to remember

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

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

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


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



What I Just Finished Reading:

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

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



What I am Currently Reading:

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

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


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

Dang! Academic smackdown!

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

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

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


Moth and moons. Wanted something celestial, because we went out to see stars one night.

This was a pretty good week. We went to a lantern festival (have not gotten around to pictures yet) that was a definite high point. While the week should have been pretty good, it felt a little meh. That may have largely been just state of the world stuff getting to me. I did have some frustration around how difficult I found it to get things done - I had an extra day off, yet just seemed to fall farther behind on things. I did force through and get some things done, but my reading and writing took a hit.

Goals for the week:

  • Friday was Taylor's birthday! <3
  • I did catch up on DW posts
  • I did catch up on DW comments
  • I started to catch up on DW posting
  • I cleaned up the katydid cages
  • I read more of Tidal Creatures
  • I did not work on my reading page
  • I did not work on my WIP
  • We did get a bit of outdoor time
  • I got a very little bit of cleaning in the living room done
  • I did reply to emails
  • I made necessary (annoying, didn't-resolve-it) phone calls
  • I bought us tickets to the lantern festival
  • We went to the lantern festival!
  • I cleaned up the small frog habitat
  • I put my laundry away

Tracked habits:

  • Work - 4/7 - I took Sunday off
  • Household Maintenance - 4/7
  • Physical Activity - 2/7
  • Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
  • Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
  • Meta Work - 3/7
  • Personal Writing - 4/7
  • Other Creative Things - 3/7
  • Reading - 7/7 - Mostly I was reading Tidal Creatures, though I also read a short story called "Swelter", kept up with Dracula Daily, and Alex and I read more Duma Key
  • Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday I caught up on some Re: Dracula; Monday we watched a paranormal video; Tuesday we went to see The Long Walk, which I thought was quite good, and had some storm chase in the background; Wednesday we watched a very lousy horror movie called American Horror House, and I listened to a long ep of Re: Dracula; Friday we watched Great British Bake Off and the first three eps of Adolescence; Saturday watched a paranormal video and then news in the background, and I listened to more Re: Dracula.
  • Video Games - 0/7
  • Social Interaction - 4/7

Total words written: 0

[#275 | One More Try] Challenge Post

Sep. 24th, 2025 10:34 pm
fanweeklymod: (Default)
[personal profile] fanweeklymod posting in [community profile] fandomweekly
Challenge 275
ONE MORE TRY
You’ve tried before, and it didn’t go well. Maybe something catastrophic went wrong, or maybe you just couldn’t quite pull it off. But whatever it is, it still needs to be done, and it’s your job to do it – so you need to give it one more try.

What are your characters trying to do? Why did they fail last time? Will they succeed this time, and what will it take?

Write a story about one more try.

BONUS GOAL: “Third time’s the charm.”

If your submission features this line, it will earn an extra point to be tallied in voting!


Challenge ends Monday, September 29 at 9:00PM EST.
• Post submissions as new entries using the template in the profile
• Tag this week's entries as: [#] submission, 275 – one more try
• If you have questions about this challenge, please ask them here

fanweeklymod: (Default)
[personal profile] fanweeklymod posting in [community profile] fandomweekly
Here are this week's votes tallied, and below the cut are our winners for Challenge #274 – Near-Death Experience!

This week's finalists are... )

Total Challenge Words Written: 4181

Congratulations to all this week's participants, and thank you to everyone who took the time to cast their votes! [personal profile] autobotscoutriella will be making this week’s banners, so keep an eye out for those.

You may now post your Challenge 274 entries to any additional communities, blogs, archives or sites as you'd like! We also have a FandomWeekly AO3 Collection if you'd like to add your stories there!

Gravity Is Ruff

Sep. 25th, 2025 01:00 am
[syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed

Posted by Not Always Right

Read Gravity Is Ruff

Customer: "Can someone help me with the sacks of dog food?"
Me: "I can't help you with the 40lb bags, because—"
I was about to say "because of an injury." Before I could say that, or call for a coworker to help, the customer says:
Customer: "—Oh, is it because the gravity is stronger over there?

Read Gravity Is Ruff

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

An advanced work of elocution.

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

(Though it was amusing to read the side note that people used to eat a dish of fried dough known as a doughnut.)
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] book_love
Sanders' Rhetorical, or Union Sixth Reader by Charles Walton Sanders

An advanced work of elocution.

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

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

(no subject)

Sep. 24th, 2025 08:42 pm
skygiants: Audrey Hepburn peering around a corner disguised in giant sunglasses, from Charade (sneaky like hepburnninja)
[personal profile] skygiants
I have now finished reading the duology that began with Max in the House of Spies, in which a Kindertransport refugee with a dybbuk and a kobold on each shoulder wrangles his way into being sent back to Germany as a British spy.

The first book featured a lot of Ewen Montagu RPF, which was extremely fun and funny for me. The second book, Max in the Land of Lies, features a lot of Nazi and Nazi-adjacent RPF, which is obviously less fun and funny, though I still did have several moments where a character would appear on-page and I would exchange a sage nod with Adam Gidwitz: yes, I too have read all of Ben Macintyre's books about WWII espionage, and I do recognize Those Abwehr Guys Who Are Obsessed With British Culture, we both enjoy our little inside joke.

Our little inside jokes aside, I ended up feeling a sort of conflicted and contradictory way about both the book and the duology as a whole. It's very didactic -- it is shouting at you about its project at every turn -- but the project it's shouting about is 'the narrative is more nuanced and complex than you think!' On the one hand, people in Germany (many of them Based on Real People) who are involved in The Nazi Situation in various messy ways are constantly explaining the various messy ways that they are involved in The Nazi Situation to Max, a totally non-suspicious definitely not Jewish surprise twelve-year-old who's just appeared on the scene, at the absolute drop of a hat. It is somewhat hard to believe that Max is achieving these really spectacular espionage results when the only stat he ever rolls is 'knowledge: radio!' although his 'knowledge: radio!' number is really high.

ON the other hand, it is so easy and in vogue to come down in a place of 'Nazis: bad!' and so much more difficult and important to sit with the fact that believing in a monstrous ideology, participating in monstrous acts, does not prevent a person from being likeable, interesting or intelligent, and vice versa; that the line between Nazi Germany and, for example, colonial Great Britain is not so thick as one would like to believe; that people are never comfortably reducible to Monsters and Not Monsters. At root this is clearly Gidwitz's project and I have a lot of respect for it: this didactic book for children is more nuanced, complex and interesting than many books for adults I've read.

And then there's the dybbuk and the kobold. Throughout the second book they continue to function primarily as a stressed-out Statler and Waldorf, which I think is a bit of a waste of a dybbuk and a kobold. Also, at one point one of them says nostalgically "there were no Nazis in the fifteenth century" and while this IS technically true I DO think that there were other things going on in fifteenth century Germany that they probably also did not enjoy and at this point I WAS about to come down on "Adam Gidwitz probably should just not have included these guys in his children's spy story." But Then he did something very spoilery that I actually found profoundly interesting )

Fun things in a busy week

Sep. 24th, 2025 09:10 pm
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
  • Picking raspberries with a rainstorm coming, after finishing up work at 7pm, getting head lamps and picking in the dark
  • listening to podfic Embers by alfgifu, read by Rhea314 while I work
  • eating delicious cake out of the freezer
[syndicated profile] guardianbingo_feed

face–the–strange:

Zhubai fic for @guardianbingo. :) Prompt: midnight.

Love, Spilling Over (1672 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: Tenderness, Established Relationship, set during the promo tour, Crying, Light Angst, Hopeful Ending, Soft
Summary:
“Tell me about that life,” he murmurs against Bai Yu’s skin. “Not what we can or can’t have. The life you want.”

[syndicated profile] guardianbingo_feed

face–the–strange:

Zhubai fic for @guardianbingo. :) Prompt: midnight.

Love, Spilling Over (1672 words) by facethestrange
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018) RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bai Yu/Zhu Yilong
Additional Tags: Tenderness, Established Relationship, set during the promo tour, Crying, Light Angst, Hopeful Ending, Soft
Summary:
“Tell me about that life,” he murmurs against Bai Yu’s skin. “Not what we can or can’t have. The life you want.”

Daily Check-in

Sep. 24th, 2025 06:05 pm
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday, September 24, to midnight on Thursday, September 25. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33656 Daily Check-in
This poll is closed.
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 28

How are you doing?

I am OK.
14 (50.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
14 (50.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
12 (42.9%)

One other person.
11 (39.3%)

More than one other person.
5 (17.9%)




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.
 
[syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed

Posted by Not Always Right

Read The Mandalorians Have Opened A Retail Outlet

Me: "I'm a little confused, I didn't think we kept anything in the back?"
Manager: "Of course we don't. Budget retailers don't keep stuff "in the back". It's not going to make a profit sitting in the back. But they're never going to believe that, so we do this to let them feel like they're getting somewhere."

Read The Mandalorians Have Opened A Retail Outlet

World War Who? II

Sep. 24th, 2025 11:00 pm
[syndicated profile] notalwaysright_feed

Posted by Not Always Right

Read World War Who? II

Customer #1: "What is that Fury about?"
Me: "That's a World War Two movie about tanks. I've seen it, it's very good."
Customer #2: "World War Two… was that the Cold one or the Asian one?"

Read World War Who? II

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