ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-07-24 02:07 pm

Birdfeeding

Today is sweltering again, 86°F with a heat index of 98°F. :P So I have to break up yard tasks into smaller sections.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I refilled birdfeeders.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I picked 4 red cherry tomatoes. :D

I watered the new picnic table garden.

EDIT 7/24/25 -- I potted up 12 sweet cherry seeds.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.
ranunculus: (Default)
ranunculus ([personal profile] ranunculus) wrote2025-07-24 10:11 am

Cows, Water, Bolts, Fencing, Fish

All in all it was one of those days. 

It all started innocently with me in the garden tucking a couple more plants into the ground.  A little after noon I hurried into town to get one more bolt for the table saw.  Somehow during one of its moves the table saw lost a bolt that helps connect two very heavy cast iron pieces. Fortunately the industrial metal shop had the right bolt.  Donald's bus was supposedly due in at 1:35, a time that was apparently correct for the south bound bus but not the north bound bus.  I amused myself by cleaning the steering wheel and dashboard of the car.  
The afternoon continued pleasantly enough until Marika called to say that the cows had broken the water again. I called Cody who grumbled at the cows and came to fix the problem.  M called to say he was going out with 4 other folks to go fishing.  Fishing on the Keni Peninsula in Alaska with a big salmon run in progress, one of the biggest in recent memory. 
The early evening was placid, we even watched an episode of Darby and Joan, an Australian series that I quite like. 
M texted and called saying that the 5 of them had all caught their limit, they were knee deep in 155 salmon all caught in a two hours and fifteen minutes.  The group ultimately stayed up until after midnight filleting the fish and disposing of the guts and bones before the bears came to visit. Apparently the dump has a special bear proof site where fish guts can be dumped. The group were all Alaska residents and had dip net permits. Dip netting is allowed for very short seasons for Alaska residents only.   Apparently the fish were so abundant that at one point they had 5 fish in one net. I have to say that this is a testament to Alaska's Fish and Game strategies which have clamped down and even canceled whole seasons of fishing in order to let the fish stocks recover.  This is one of the first really big runs since fish stocks crashed some years ago. 
Then I got a text from Michael next door. He had a cow in his yard. It was 10pm. I established that the cow had no fence between her and the main road and called Cody.  We all converged on the cow.  She walked down the steep slope to the stream, turned up it and then walked through the fence to get back with the herd.  I suspect that she will be culled from the herd ASAP.   We walked up the fence.  Cody had fenced off part of the creek but had depended on blackberry thickets to "fence"  the rest of the bank.  For unknown reasons, instead of eating the plentiful grass in the pastures, the cows chowed down on all of the blackberry bushes and all of the quite plentiful poison oak.   Both horses and cows like poison oak, but usually leave blackberries alone. Not this time, the ground looked like a large swarm of locusts had gone through and left only a few barren twigs standing.  The bank, that had looked cliff like under the berries, was steep but very navigable by a cow. Once in the stream walking downstream was easy.  There is no water at this time of year.  Cody asked me if I wanted to buy a herd of cows.  I said I definitely did not want his herd of cows!  He won't actually sell them all, but he is getting rid of two or three trouble makers.  He made the decision to pen them up in the small field near the Iris Barn for the night.  Once again we were pushing cows uphill at night.  Chena was very excited. I kept her on a leash, the cows were moving and there was just a little too much stimulation to feel as if I were in control.  This morning we closed the gates around the house as the cows will be here till Saturday.  Then they will go over the hill to the Cow Corrals, be worked in the corrals to identify cow/calf pairs, mark and brand the calves and then haul out to one of Cody's other pastures. 


ranunculus: (Default)
ranunculus ([personal profile] ranunculus) wrote2025-07-24 08:50 am

Shelving

[personal profile] rebeccmeister  asked a very simple question about shelving.  I wrote way, way to much about it, thus a cut.

 

 


elf: John Egbert with a rocketpack, captioned "THIS IS STUPID" in all caps. (This is stupid)
elf ([personal profile] elf) wrote2025-07-24 08:03 am
Entry tags:

Itch.io Is Having Its Strikethrough Moment

Last night, bluesky exploded with the discovery that itch.io has delisted/shadowbanned pretty much all its "adult" games - they don't show up in a search anymore, even if you have the 'show me adult content' turned on, even if you are the game's creator.

They are still listed on the creator's pages; they are still in the bundles they've been in, and the "search title/author/tag" on the bundle pages still works.

Some games have been removed entirely - with a claim that they violate the TOS and therefore the creators can't receive payment, so itch will be just keeping their money thankyouverymuch.

After a mad scramble to figure out "what's going on and why," Itch mentioned payment processor issues on its Discord (which is going wild with drama; it does NOT have enough moderators for this), and eventually released a statement:
We have “deindexed” all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages. We understand this action is sudden and disruptive, and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by this change.

Recently, we came under scrutiny from our payment processors regarding the nature of some content hosted on itch.io. Due to a game titled No Mercy, which was temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April, the organization Collective Shout launched a campaign against Steam and itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms.
Itch instantly caved to their "Warriors for Innocence."

Specific game info )
Whatever ([syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-07-24 12:36 pm

The Big Idea: Payton McCarty-Simas

Posted by Athena Scalzi

It may not be Halloween, but that shouldn’t stop you from learning about the history of depictions of witches throughout the decades in film and media. Author and witch-film-connoisseur Payton McCarty-Simas is here today to take you through a wild ride (on a broomstick) over feminism, horror, and women, in her new book, That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film.

PAYTON MCCARTY-SIMAS:

More than anything else, my book, That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism, and the American Witch Film, is the product of hundreds of hours spent watching movies. I started the project that eventually became this book in college–– or, more specifically, during COVID, revisiting some of my comfort movies during lockdown. As I worked my way through more recent favorites like The Witch and Color Out of Space and old standbys like Rosemary’s Baby and George Romero’s Season of the Witch, I started noticing visual and thematic patterns. Soon, I was hooked on witch films (though as my list of favorites might suggest I always have been), and I started watching in earnest. 

The big idea of That Very Witch is that, by tracing how depictions of witches evolve and change in American horror cinema over time, we can learn about the state of feminism in a given moment, essentially taking the cultural temperature in the process. I trace specific threads through the decades––namely psychedelic imagery, counterculturalism, and feminine rage among others––but each and every smaller idea relied on a huge amount of cinematic data to really put my finger on. I watched over three hundred hours of film for this project, noting different patterns and shifts from decade to decade over hundreds of pages of notes, several Letterboxd lists, and a slightly unhinged-looking conspiracy board. 

While all genres move in cycles that capitalize on trends––consider the YA dystopian romance boom that followed The Hunger Games––horror is particularly trenchant given the films’ consistent popularity, relatively low budgets, and quick turnarounds. Simply put, the industry makes a lot of horror movies looking for a quick buck, and, given that profit-motive, producers are always responding to popular demand for a given subject. The terrifying proto-viral success of The Blair Witch Project gives us an explosion of found footage horror, and eventually the runaway blockbuster that was Paranormal Activity, which in turn gives us a rash of suburban hauntings, and so on. As scholars like Robin Wood have long suggested, then, horror can be viewed as an extension of our collective unconscious (in his words our “collective nightmares”), our national fears made manifest at the intersection of broad commercial incentives, personal artistic impulses, and the zeitgeist. 

When it comes to witches, I noticed that in moments of high-profile feminist activism, say, the 1960s or the 2010s, witches become more popular––and more frightening––on screen. That’s not to say that witches disappear in other eras, far from it. But the characters of those depictions take on different tones and valences depending on the politics and trends of the moment, and that’s just as indicative of the politics of the age. Witches can be mall goths or hippie chicks, old women in pointy hats or teenage girls in low-rise jeans and lip gloss (or all of the above!) depending on the decade. They can be frightening or funny or fierce. But it takes a lot of hours of films, not to mention countless hours of historical research, to understand what depictions are most common when, and why. 


That Very Witch: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop |Kobo|Waterstones

Author’s socials: Website|Instagram|Tumblr|Letterboxd

Read an excerpt.

used_songs: (Default)
opal trelore ([personal profile] used_songs) wrote2025-07-24 07:42 am
Entry tags:

Meme

Meme stolen from [personal profile] dine 

Last song I listened to: B-Boys Makin with the Freak - Beastie Boys (When I started this. Now, as I finish it, it's Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys' I Saw the Light)

Favorite color: Purple. Then dark green and black.

Currently watching: The last thing I watched was about 5 minutes of Astrid on the PBS app this morning.

Last movie: One of the Hunger Games movies was on while I was reading. E was watching it.

Currently reading:
The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want by Emily Bender

Coffee or tea: COFFEE! I like tea a lot, but I NEED coffee.

Sweet/savory/spicy: Spicy

Relationship status: Married (until they outlaw gay marriage again)

Looking forward to: If I'm honest, it's hard to look forward to anything right now. I guess I'm looking forward to little stuff like DC coming over again Friday, sending some Postcrossing cards, making stuff ... someday I would like to travel again. 

Current obsessions: AI, the new job, Ted Lasso (I finished seasons 1-3 and am now hips deep in the subreddit, Stephen Graham Jones (Buffalo Hunter Hunter), and going to bookstores.

Last Googled: 3I/ATLAS - Someone here posted a link to this story and I thought there might be the potential for a fic in it, so I did some googling. It's going in the idea file.

Last thing you ate and really enjoyed: E's vegan stew from last night

Currently working on:
Replacing several light fixtures downstairs and looking for an idea that will inspire sriting.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-07-24 12:49 am
Entry tags:

Hobbies: Hairstyling

Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. This batch features hobbies.

Hairstyling is a hobby that includes cutting, braiding, and related accessories such as wigs or hair jewelry. It all depends on what you what looks you wish to create. Like makeup, it varies a great deal depending on your human canvas -- African or other curly hair textures require different techniques than straight or wavy hair.

On Dreamwidth, consider communities like [community profile] daily_gyaru, [community profile] edgoreyanfashion, [community profile] first_nations_freaks, [community profile] justcreate, [community profile] sw_costumes, and[community profile] thefreaksclub.

Read more... )
mific: John sheppard head and shoulders against gold orange sunset (Sheppard orange)
mific ([personal profile] mific) wrote in [community profile] fancake2025-07-24 05:03 pm

SGA: Long Ago (and Far Away) by Kristen999

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Genfic. John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Evan Lorne, Ronon Dex, Carson Beckett, Teyla Emmagan, Original characters
Rating: Teen
Length: 79,623
Content Notes: no AO3 warnings apply. Grim at times, as it depicts an aspect of WWII.
Creator Links: kristen999 on AO3, everybetty on LJ
Themes: Working together, Action/adventure, Teamwork, Friendship, Genfic, AU: historical, Novel-length

Summary: WWII-based AU. The Team as we know it has been transplanted to the South Pacific.

Reccer's Notes:
This tour de force is a novel-length story by [personal profile] kristen999, assisted by everybetty, an historical AU set in Papua-New Guinea, in WWII. It's pretty male-centric because of that, but does include Teyla as a local liaison with intel about the enemy. It's got lots of plot, great action and adventure, and an excellent sense of place - you can almost feel the tropical heat making you sweat and hear the mosquitoes whine. The story is illustrated throughout with lots of period photos from the time. It's told from all of the team's POVs, particularly John's (he's a pilot, of course, with Rodney and Ronon on his flight crew). Naturally, John gets thoroughly whumped, in the best genfic tradition. There's tons of atmosphere, friendship and teamwork, and it's a really great read.

Fanwork Links: Long Ago (and Far Away)

Wordsmith.org: Today's Word ([syndicated profile] wordsmithdaily_feed) wrote2025-07-24 04:43 am

incent

verb tr.: To provide a reward or benefit to induce action.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day ([syndicated profile] merriamwebster_feed) wrote2025-07-24 01:00 am

panacea

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 24, 2025 is:

panacea • \pan-uh-SEE-uh\  • noun

A panacea is something that is regarded as a cure-all—that is, something that will make everything about a situation better.

// The new program should help with the city’s housing crisis, but it’s no panacea.

See the entry >

Examples:

“It was a mistake to regard and romanticize information as a panacea for the world’s problems. For they are completely different things: information, knowledge and wisdom. Every day we are bombarded with thousands of snippets of information, but there is very little knowledge, and no time to slow down to gain knowledge, much less wisdom.” — Elif Shafak, 1984: 75th Anniversary Edition by George Orwell, 2024

Did you know?

The maxim “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” isn’t true, but belief in a miraculous botanical “cure for whatever ails ya” has existed for millennia and is at the root of the word panacea. In current use, panacea most often refers to a remedy—medical or otherwise—that inevitably falls far short of what some claim or hope it can do, but the word’s Latin and Greek forebears referred to plants with legit healing properties, including mints and yarrows. Both the Latin word panacēa and its Greek antecedent panákeia (from the word panakēs, meaning “all-healing”) were applied especially to flowering herbs (genus Opopanax) of the carrot family used to treat various ailments.



starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
StarWatcher ([personal profile] starwatcher) wrote2025-07-23 09:40 pm
Entry tags:

Does anyone have ideas how to navigate the US's **ing medical system?

 

I internet-know a guy who's really struggling; he's fighting cancer, his wife is on dialysis for kidney failure, and his mother-in-law is dying, but the hospital she's in wants to send her away. Todd writes:
I don't know what to do. It seems that Valerie's Mom is beginning the dying process but the hospital is trying to force her out and into a nursing home which isn't covered. She doesn't have the funds, but nor can she qualify for Medicaid.

We have funeral costs that we have set aside-we tried to be frugal and she even chose to do cremation to save costs but there are still a couple of thousand left.

We planned for that. But the hospice process I don't understand. That is hundreds a day I guess upfront, we are trying to figure that out now. If we do in-home Valerie and I will have to be responsible for something she we aren't trained for and with her on dialysis, that is scary. The hospital doesn't seem to care. I don't know what to do. I am sad, and scared, and need advice. Any help is much, much appreciated but I really need to know who to talk to. And please share this, if you can. I will be doing an update later on detailing everything we have been through, and it is just so much..so much.

I didn't think a hospital would do this when she is in this much distress.


Todd has a GoFundMe; I don't know if it's possible to contact someone through that.

If you have any suggestions, and can't contact Todd through the GoFundMe, leave your suggestions in a comment, and I'll send it to him via email.

 
ysabetwordsmith: Victor Frankenstein in his fancy clothes (Frankenstein)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-07-23 10:09 pm

Poem: "Fed from So Many Sources"

This poem is spillover from the July 15, 2025 Bonus Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from [personal profile] janetmiles, [personal profile] chanter1944, and discussions with [personal profile] dialecticdreamer. It has been sponsored by [personal profile] janetmiles. This poem also fills the "Immigrant" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. It belongs to the series Frankenstein's Family and follows (several months later) the poems "Signs of Their Trespass" and "Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness" so read those first or this won't make much sense. It is the third in the triptych after "Strong, Competent, Capable" and "The Future by Consequence, the Past by Redemption."

Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes unplanned and unmarried pregnancy, domestic abuse, partner loss, awkwardness, poor support back home, reference to other illegitimate children, severe personality changes, past family tragedies, complicated grief, scrapes and bruises, messy medical details, confusion, uncertainty, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

Read more... )
ysabetwordsmith: Victor Frankenstein in his fancy clothes (Frankenstein)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-07-23 08:45 pm

Poem: "The Future by Consequence, the Past by Redemption"

This poem is spillover from the July 15, 2025 Bonus Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from [personal profile] janetmiles, [personal profile] chanter1944, and discussions with [personal profile] dialecticdreamer. It has been sponsored by [personal profile] janetmiles. This poem also fills the "Redemption Story" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. It belongs to the series Frankenstein's Family and follows (several months later) the poems "Signs of Their Trespass" and "Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness" so read those first or this won't make much sense. It is the second in the triptych between "Strong, Competent, Capable" and "Fed from So Many Sources."

Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes disappointment, worry, reference to minor character death, unpleasant social duties, loss of a friend, alarming personality changes, trouble caused by loss of horses, signs of hunger, reference to domestic abuse, legal issues, confusion, desperate hope, and other mayhem. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

Read more... )
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brithistorian ([personal profile] brithistorian) wrote2025-07-23 08:41 pm
Entry tags:

On writing and humor

When I first started writing, I would get comments about how things I'd written were "so funny." This perplexed, confused, and annoyed me, because most of these times I wasn't trying to be funny. But after a while I realized that this was just sort of how my writing came out — even when I'm trying to be totally serious, I often still end up slipping little funny bits in, and when I'm not trying to be totally serious. . . well, you end up with things like this conversation that I wrote last night, and that I'm particularly amused by:

Lily lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. After a while, she rolled over to look at Jiwoo, who was lying on her bed, watching a drama on her laptop. “So how long do we have to pretend to be dating?”

Jiwoo laughed, then paused her drama and turned to look at Lily. “‘Have to’? You really know how to make a girl feel wanted!”

Lily tossed a throw pillow at Jiwoo. “You know what I mean!” she said teasingly.

“Who knows?” Jiwoo teased back, her eyes sparkling. “Maybe we decide to end it next week. . . or maybe we end up pretending to date for so long that we end up pretending to get married and then we pretend to have kids and end up pretending to live happily ever after.”

“Pretend to have kids?” Lily asked. “How would that even work?”

Jiwoo shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But we’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. Before we do that, we’ll have to pretend to get married, and before we can do that, you’ve got to pretend to propose to me.”

“I’ve got to?” Lily asked. “Why wouldn’t you pretend to propose to me?”

Jiwoo raised an eyebrow skeptically and scoffed as she looked at Lily and said “Because you’re older than me, so obviously people would expect you to pretend to propose to me. If I pretend to propose to you, it’ll look like I’m pretending to tie you down because I’m not really sure that you pretend to love me.”

Lily laughed. “Should I be worried that this is starting to make sense?”

ysabetwordsmith: Victor Frankenstein in his fancy clothes (Frankenstein)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-07-23 08:12 pm
conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2025-07-23 04:32 pm

Quick question....

How bad of a faux pas is it if you're filling out a job application in person and then realize after you hand it in that you've gone ahead and proofread it?

(Asking for a friend!)

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


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