Disaster Squadron
Jul. 18th, 2025 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
settiaiLook at these amazing emotes that the DM commissioned for the group to use on Discord!
The artist is WillowPotato on Bluesky.
The artist is WillowPotato on Bluesky.
Z1L movie-release news | An etrike update I may not have mentioned | Weather
Jul. 18th, 2025 01:26 pmumadoshiOn Bluesky, Wenella reports that "Dongjj Rescue, starring Zhu Yilong, Ni Ni, and Leo Wu, will be released in the US on Aug 22, 2025. The film will be released in mainland China on Aug 8." Time to start haunting the Cineplex site in hopes of Canadian showtimes!
I took today off in hopes of getting a bit more sleep (done, although not an impressive amount) and actually starting in on my next manga rewrite. I have just over a couple of hours before I need to venture out, so...we'll see how the latter goes in practice.
I can't remember if I've mentioned here that almost two months ago, I concluded that I'm going to sell my poor basically-unused etrike. ( In case I haven't, here's the gist )
Anyway, this comes to mind because for once I have a little venture that would, in fact, be perfect for taking the trike if I were at all in the habit of/comfortable with using it. Ah, well.
In related news, at least we're not under a heat warning anymore, unlike the last few days. (It's still currently 22°C and humid as hell, resulting in a 30°C humidex, and it's supposed to be a couple degrees warmer later this afternoon. But it's still an improvement.)
I took today off in hopes of getting a bit more sleep (done, although not an impressive amount) and actually starting in on my next manga rewrite. I have just over a couple of hours before I need to venture out, so...we'll see how the latter goes in practice.
I can't remember if I've mentioned here that almost two months ago, I concluded that I'm going to sell my poor basically-unused etrike. ( In case I haven't, here's the gist )
Anyway, this comes to mind because for once I have a little venture that would, in fact, be perfect for taking the trike if I were at all in the habit of/comfortable with using it. Ah, well.
In related news, at least we're not under a heat warning anymore, unlike the last few days. (It's still currently 22°C and humid as hell, resulting in a 30°C humidex, and it's supposed to be a couple degrees warmer later this afternoon. But it's still an improvement.)
We grieve the weirdest things
Jul. 18th, 2025 12:36 pmmergatrudeYesterday, the blokes finally installed our new reverse cycle air-conditioning system. They decommissioned the ducted gas heating (the increase in gas prices and carbon emissions being the reason for the change-over), but also the evaporative cooling system. I loved that damn thing. It was the first major improvement we did on our house back in 2001, and it made the house bearable during the summers. I'm sure I'll get used to the new system and it won't wake me every time the fan starts up, but I'm ridiculously grief-stricken right now. Definition of first world problems, I guess.
Froday Flash Fiction Challenge (FFFC) - Multifandom Challenges for all Work Types
Jul. 17th, 2025 08:05 pmkeeping in mind the nearest exit may be behind you
Jul. 17th, 2025 12:34 pmfoxSo in the fun time that is my life, remember how this new job fell in my lap around Christmas time and I moved over to it on February 11? And then also remember how a lot of unelected teenagers and crypto bros and so forth did a hatchet job on the entire federal government in the spring? Yeah so my new workplace lost millions of dollars in grants, and three people in areas other than mine have been laid off, and yesterday the big boss sat down with me and said he's just not sure they're going to keep having enough work for me to do, and another month from now when my probationary period is over he might not be able to keep me. This is a heads up, not a genuine notice, because it's conceivable they might find a way for it to work out - for one thing, I'm the only one who does what I do and they don't want to go back to having nobody do it. I proposed a couple of solutions, one being to bill most or all of my work to overhead rather than making people put me in as a line item in their project budgets as they're doing now, because the latter has them (a) putting me down for as little work as they can as they're suuuper carefully husbanding their resources and (b) not giving me work until the very end of their process, so I'm sitting around waiting a lot of the time, whereas if I were overhead I could work with people collaboratively and iteratively and not burn up their budgets, so I'd be busier and the products I work on would be better. (Seems like a slam dunk to me, but the overhead money has to come from somewhere, I guess, so maybe that's not as much of a solution as I think.) Another is to bust me back to 60%, which would free up two days a week and still pay more than I was making at my old job.
My old job, by the way, was not allowed to backfill my position - they made someone an offer, which she accepted, and then they had to pull it, and also cut a part-timer and one of two people in the other role they had two of, so they're down to bare bones and no matter what happens to or with this job I can't go back.
So that bites! I had a little cry about it and then activated the bat-signal (emailed my former grandboss and other references), updated my resume, googled some shit, and today I have applied for one (1) job. It's easier to get into a lifeboat from the deck of the ship than from the sea. Maybe I'll aim to apply for one job a week as long as I still have this one and bump it up if it gets where I need to. Also updated my LinkedIn, which I haven't actually even looked at in many many years, but I guess people are still using it?
UGH.
Rec: RADIOACTIVE by Murderbot [vid], by pollyrepeat
Jul. 17th, 2025 09:31 amrunpunkrunI was like, can I make this work for ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fancake's "Working Together" theme? And I decided I could not.
So I'm going to slap it in here for now because it's too good not to share immediately:
RADIOACTIVE by Murderbot [vid] (30 words) by pollyrepeat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murderbot (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (Murderbot Diaries), Fanvids, Video Format: Streaming, Embedded Video
Summary:
No spoilers for Murderbot, and all the spoilers, I guess, for The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
fancake's "Working Together" theme? And I decided I could not.So I'm going to slap it in here for now because it's too good not to share immediately:
RADIOACTIVE by Murderbot [vid] (30 words) by pollyrepeat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murderbot (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Characters: Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (Murderbot Diaries), Fanvids, Video Format: Streaming, Embedded Video
Summary:
A vid or fanvid is a video edit, often set to music, produced by fans, known as "vidders."
No spoilers for Murderbot, and all the spoilers, I guess, for The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, by Martha Wells
Jul. 17th, 2025 07:34 amrunpunkrunPerihelion's people notice it's been acting strangely since it returned from its last solo mission. A short story set after Artificial Condition.
My favorite thing about this series is Murderbot and ART and their favorite humans. My least favorite thing is all the descriptions of walking around. This has both. I would have liked it a lot better if it had spent half as much time describing the path they took through the spaceport facility and twice as much time exploring Iris and Peri's relationship because that's the important stuff, right? I wanted to learn more about their relationship and the ways Peri changed after meeting Murderbot and what Iris thinks about those changes. Here I was thinking ART was always like this, but it seems Murderbot might have had more of an effect on ART then it could have known.
Instead: Transit schedules. :(
Read it for free at Reactor.
My favorite thing about this series is Murderbot and ART and their favorite humans. My least favorite thing is all the descriptions of walking around. This has both. I would have liked it a lot better if it had spent half as much time describing the path they took through the spaceport facility and twice as much time exploring Iris and Peri's relationship because that's the important stuff, right? I wanted to learn more about their relationship and the ways Peri changed after meeting Murderbot and what Iris thinks about those changes. Here I was thinking ART was always like this, but it seems Murderbot might have had more of an effect on ART then it could have known.
Instead: Transit schedules. :(
Read it for free at Reactor.
. . .
Jul. 17th, 2025 12:02 amsettiaiToday was certainly a day. Well, technically yesterday at this point since it's a few minutes after midnight, but still. I haven't gone to bed yet, so we'll just call it "today" and be done with it.
( More under the cut. )
And once I get out of the shower, I have something like five or six more things that I have to get done online before I go to bed despite it already being after midnight. I'm going to have so much fun in a few hours when I need to get up early to take care of some things before work. 🙃
( More under the cut. )
And once I get out of the shower, I have something like five or six more things that I have to get done online before I go to bed despite it already being after midnight. I'm going to have so much fun in a few hours when I need to get up early to take care of some things before work. 🙃
What I'm Doing Wednesday
Jul. 16th, 2025 03:52 pmsage( books (Aaronovitch, Greene & Sasportas, Erlewine, Billock, Wells, McCord, Kaufman, Odyssey, Oken, Hamaker-Zondag) )
healthcrap
Yay, I'm not anemic anymore, though I've still got another 3 months of iron supps ahead of me. I had a psych appt today to confirm my meds are still doing their thing. Boo, I'm temporarily off the rhodiola rosea and back on Adderall for the next month (because rhodiola hasn't been safety tested for long-term use). ( cut for mention of weight loss )
yay!
As has been posted everywhere, Murderbot is getting a Season 2! That means ART! \o/ I haven't yet caught up with the last few eps of S1, but I'll get there in due time. (Viewing, such a challenge when I'm on a reading kick. And when I'm NOT on a reading kick. Sigh.)
( rl )
yarning
I went to yarn group Sunday and had a really nice time. Great turnout, and it's good for me to see human beings in person. Pain in the shoulder, though. I want my crochet arm back! But I met a few new people, including one young woman who also has Ehlers-Danlos. So cool to commiserate in person.
natural disaster: Texas floods
My parents were finally able to leave their ridgetop and run errands, though all the intact bridges are missing guardrails (at minimum). One of them was completely surrounded with gear and detritus from the kids camp upriver. So heartbreaking. Thankfully, their POA jumped right on finding engineers and requesting bids for repairing their main bridge & its banks, and the low water crossing is sound, now that it's clear of downed trees. I am still so sad about the catastrophe, even though I'm not directly affected. Camps were a safe space for me when I was a kid, and though they were in a different part of the state, it's all too easy to imagine the worst happening.
kitty
![[youtube.com profile]](https://youtube.com/favicon.ico)
KittenAcademy has moved to Pennsylvania and is searching for a new rescue/shelter to work with in the Bethlehem/Allentown general vicinity. If you know of one that is willing to provide pregnant momcats and manage adoption apps, please let me know so I can pass it along to them. ION, the family of black cats and kittens who had been living part time in my backyard are no longer around. I hope they got scooped up by a shelter and/or TNR'd somewhere safe.
#resist
July 17: Good Trouble Lives On protests/marches tomorrow. If you participate, please think of me & everyone else who would like to march but can't.
Note: Mercury stations retrograde tomorrow, July 17, at 15*34' Leo (and stays retrograde until August 11 at 4*14' Leo). I'm curious what that will mean for the protests. At least they're on a Thursday, so maybe that will help keep people safe amid the likely miscommunications.
I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
healthcrap
Yay, I'm not anemic anymore, though I've still got another 3 months of iron supps ahead of me. I had a psych appt today to confirm my meds are still doing their thing. Boo, I'm temporarily off the rhodiola rosea and back on Adderall for the next month (because rhodiola hasn't been safety tested for long-term use). ( cut for mention of weight loss )
yay!
As has been posted everywhere, Murderbot is getting a Season 2! That means ART! \o/ I haven't yet caught up with the last few eps of S1, but I'll get there in due time. (Viewing, such a challenge when I'm on a reading kick. And when I'm NOT on a reading kick. Sigh.)
( rl )
yarning
I went to yarn group Sunday and had a really nice time. Great turnout, and it's good for me to see human beings in person. Pain in the shoulder, though. I want my crochet arm back! But I met a few new people, including one young woman who also has Ehlers-Danlos. So cool to commiserate in person.
natural disaster: Texas floods
My parents were finally able to leave their ridgetop and run errands, though all the intact bridges are missing guardrails (at minimum). One of them was completely surrounded with gear and detritus from the kids camp upriver. So heartbreaking. Thankfully, their POA jumped right on finding engineers and requesting bids for repairing their main bridge & its banks, and the low water crossing is sound, now that it's clear of downed trees. I am still so sad about the catastrophe, even though I'm not directly affected. Camps were a safe space for me when I was a kid, and though they were in a different part of the state, it's all too easy to imagine the worst happening.
kitty
#resist
July 17: Good Trouble Lives On protests/marches tomorrow. If you participate, please think of me & everyone else who would like to march but can't.
Note: Mercury stations retrograde tomorrow, July 17, at 15*34' Leo (and stays retrograde until August 11 at 4*14' Leo). I'm curious what that will mean for the protests. At least they're on a Thursday, so maybe that will help keep people safe amid the likely miscommunications.
I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
Reading Wednesday
Jul. 16th, 2025 12:22 pmtroisoiseauxContinuing my nostalgic 2000s YA re-reads with Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment by James Patterson, a 2005 YA sci-fi/fantasy thriller about a group of young avian-human hybrids - so, human children/teenagers with wings, and other powers - on the run from the mad scientists who created them. I was briefly obsessed with this series in middle school but could not tell you a single thing that happened in it, so I did go into this expecting it to be at best entertainingly batshit and more likely just plain bad. And it's definitely not, you know, good— main character Max's narrative voice is so, so annoying, almost a parody of a Snarky 2000s YA Protagonist Voice, with a heavy dash of "hello, fellow kids!" cringe (examples: "I guess if I was more of a fembot it would bother me that a blind guy six months younger than I am could cook better than I could. But I'm not. So it didn't." and "So long, cretins, I thought. School is out— forever"); the rest of the dialogue is not much better, and no book has ever suffered so much from its characters not being allowed to swear— but I'm enjoying the actual plot (indeed entertainingly batshit) more than I had expected.
Finally picked back up where I'd left off *mumble* months ago in Bleak House, because— on the theory that since I clearly was not going to continue Bleak House at any point in the foreseeable future, I might as well try a different Dickens novel— I read a few chapters of Oliver Twist and realized that yeah, no, I'd much rather read Bleak House (or, to be honest, literally anything else).
Finally picked back up where I'd left off *mumble* months ago in Bleak House, because— on the theory that since I clearly was not going to continue Bleak House at any point in the foreseeable future, I might as well try a different Dickens novel— I read a few chapters of Oliver Twist and realized that yeah, no, I'd much rather read Bleak House (or, to be honest, literally anything else).
An Impossible Imposter (2022) by Deanna Raybourn
Jul. 15th, 2025 11:40 pmbobbiewickhamAfter reading Killers of a Certain Age, I went hunting for more Deanna Raybourn, and found…
( An Impossible Imposter (2022) (Veronica Speedwell Mystery # 7) )
( An Impossible Imposter (2022) (Veronica Speedwell Mystery # 7) )
Hurry home to you.
Jul. 15th, 2025 09:15 pmhannahI went across town to gather the last of my pay this morning; I'd gotten a text a couple hours earlier telling me that the main receptionist was doing fine and didn't need additional support, so all I had left to do was get paid. I ended up deciding to take that vacation opportunity, with plans to come back fairly early Friday to make the evening showtime.
Worth noting is packing's not nearly the stressor it used to be. Especially not for just a couple of days. Not even music for the trip or what to bring in my backpack. There's no getting around the nervousness that comes from waiting for a train - especially with the downpour earlier this week, which tends to mess with schedules - or trying to fall asleep the night before. But there's a predictability to that, which makes accepting it easier.
Worth noting is packing's not nearly the stressor it used to be. Especially not for just a couple of days. Not even music for the trip or what to bring in my backpack. There's no getting around the nervousness that comes from waiting for a train - especially with the downpour earlier this week, which tends to mess with schedules - or trying to fall asleep the night before. But there's a predictability to that, which makes accepting it easier.
Foodstuffs from last week
Jul. 14th, 2025 04:13 pmumadoshiI was sort of kitchen-assistanting for both of last week's cooking ventures, with scruloose doing most of the heavy lifting, but hey.
Last weekend we made this carnitas recipe that E.K. Johnston linked to (and she mentioned mango-lime salsa, which I hadn't had before but sounded good, so I bought some of that too, and liked it a lot), and it was really, really tasty. We got three meals out of it (and between that and a two-meal HelloFresh box, that pretty much covered last week's suppers).
Later in the week we roasted strawberries basically using this method (that recipe is also how I learned you can toast sugar, which I'd like to try sometime), but the only thing we added to the berries was sugar--specifically the summer fruit sugar blend from Silk Road Spices ("a delicious blend of maple and turbinado sugars with mint, ginger and freshly ground green cardamom"). This approach involves roasting the berries in a baking dish, while others do it by spreading them out in a single layer on baking sheets. I'd like to try it that way at some point too.
I also want to try slow roasting them at some point to compare the result.
scruloose doing most of the heavy lifting, but hey.Last weekend we made this carnitas recipe that E.K. Johnston linked to (and she mentioned mango-lime salsa, which I hadn't had before but sounded good, so I bought some of that too, and liked it a lot), and it was really, really tasty. We got three meals out of it (and between that and a two-meal HelloFresh box, that pretty much covered last week's suppers).
Later in the week we roasted strawberries basically using this method (that recipe is also how I learned you can toast sugar, which I'd like to try sometime), but the only thing we added to the berries was sugar--specifically the summer fruit sugar blend from Silk Road Spices ("a delicious blend of maple and turbinado sugars with mint, ginger and freshly ground green cardamom"). This approach involves roasting the berries in a baking dish, while others do it by spreading them out in a single layer on baking sheets. I'd like to try it that way at some point too.
I also want to try slow roasting them at some point to compare the result.
Gratitudes dammit
Jul. 14th, 2025 09:31 amkass1. Murderbot! I deeply enjoyed the whole first season. I think they did a lovely job of translating from book into tv show, and Skarsgard has totally sold me on the role. (It helps that we know he loves the books too -- he wants to do right by them.)
2. Andor! I'm now seven episodes in and absolutely loving it. It feels awfully relevant to our moment. Also I am amused by the fact that this show also relies in part on the acting talent of a Skarsgard, just, y'know, a different one.
3. Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells, published to celebrate the Murderbot S1 finale.
4. Cold coffee with milk and splenda, and a distant patch of blue in the cloudy skies.
5. All of my laundry is folded and put away. This is, as ever, a temporary state of affairs but it's a nice one while it lasts.
2. Andor! I'm now seven episodes in and absolutely loving it. It feels awfully relevant to our moment. Also I am amused by the fact that this show also relies in part on the acting talent of a Skarsgard, just, y'know, a different one.
3. Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy by Martha Wells, published to celebrate the Murderbot S1 finale.
4. Cold coffee with milk and splenda, and a distant patch of blue in the cloudy skies.
5. All of my laundry is folded and put away. This is, as ever, a temporary state of affairs but it's a nice one while it lasts.
