Chosen families are evolving but remain a cherished—and vital—lifeline for many. Mention "communal living" and the image that may spring to mind is the free-love, back-to-the-earth hippy communes of the 1960s, complete with bandannas and fringed suede vests. But communal living is once again very much part of the zeitgeist—albeit with a very different look.
Name: Nyecchea Story:The Fulcrum Colors: Warm Heart #21: Caution Styles and Supplies: Panorama Word Count: 896 Rating: G Warnings: None Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali, Cusäfä In-Universe Date: -10,000 (Not on-screen, per se, but they left from 1912.5.3.6) Summary: Qhoroali investigates the Nyecchea.
1) My response to the meta prompt at marchmetamatterschallenge, "Do you think it's more likely that meta would be preserved and read if it were regularly included in other fanwork challenges? Would you take part if you had the chance?"
I do, and that's because I feel that challenges, fests, and other group activities help extend the life of the given fandom. ( Read more... )
2) I watched the Sally Ride documentary and had mixed feelings about it. ( Read more... )
3) I tried out Happiness, a New Zealand comedy about a director returning to his hometown community theater group. I'm liking it more as it goes on, though the way so many characters are turned up to 10 is a little much for me. What I am liking quite a lot are the musical numbers themselves. If more kids learned history like this, they might remember it.
4) I took a survey which explored how much people trust the wisdom of crowds vs AI. I clearly didn't do it the way they had planned. ( Read more... )
5) Delighted by the arrival of spring, wish it didn't feel like the arrival of summer.
For more than a century, condensed matter physics has grappled with one of its greatest unsolved challenges: how to build superconductors that operate at room temperature and transmit electricity with no loss. Now, in a paper published in Nature, a team of Harvard physicists has reported new insights into why one promising superconductor has yielded mysteriously uneven results.
The high-performance semiconductor devices powering smartphone displays, AI computing, EV batteries and more are increasingly incorporating 2D materials to overcome silicon's scaling limits. To optimize these technologies, a University of Michigan Engineering team developed a precise mathematical framework that accounts for anisotropic—or unevenly spreading—conductivity and device geometry.
Welcome to our fifth special round! First of all, this round will run independently from the regular pass-it-on, which means you can still enter single icons and keep the rainbow going.
THEME: SONGS
For this round your rainbow has to be inspired by songs - whether it's by the lyrics, the general feel of the song or the music video, it doesn't matter. Whatever gets your creative juices flowing. As a bonus you can include which songs inspired which icon :)
♦ for this round you have to make a full set of 7 icons, 1 for each color of the rainbow (example above) ♦ post your set to the community with subject RAINBOW: username ♦ if you have any questions, ask in the comments ♦ the round will be open for one month, deadline is April 19th
On the way back from the MRI, in accordance with the local observance of the hundred and twelfth birthday of Wendell Corey, I found and talked to a dry stone wall.
Current Music:The Electric St. Lucy, "Harlem Roulette"
I ran across the information that Mafia was derived from a Sicilian adjective mafiusu, which surprised me and made me curious about further etymology. The OED (entry revised 2000) wasn’t much help — it just says “< Italian mafia (1865; also †maffia), probably back-formation < mafiuso, Italian regional (Sicily) mafiusu” — but the Wikipedia article has this fairly astonishing etymology section:
Mafia (English: /ˈmɑːfiə/; Italian: [ˈmaːfja]) derives from the Sicilian adjective mafiusu, which roughly translated means “swagger” but can also be translated as “boldness” or “bravado”. According to scholar Diego Gambetta, mafiusu (mafioso in Italian) in 19th-century Sicily, in reference to a man, signified “fearless”, “enterprising”, and “proud”. In reference to a woman, the feminine-form adjective mafiusa means “beautiful” or “attractive”. Because Sicily was under Islamic rule from 827 to 1091, Mafia may have come to Sicilian through Arabic, although the word’s origins are uncertain. Mafia in the Florentine dialect means “poverty” or “misery”, while a cognate word in Piedmontese is mafium, meaning “a little or petty person”. Possible Arabic roots of the word include:
■ maʿfī (معفي), meaning “exempted”. In Islamic law, jizya is the yearly tax imposed on non-Muslims residing in Muslim lands, and people who pay it are “exempted” from prosecution.
■ màha, meaning “quarry” or “cave”; the mafie were the caves in the region of Marsala that acted as hiding places for persecuted Muslims and later served other types of refugees, in particular Giuseppe Garibaldi’s “Redshirts” after their embarkment on Sicily in 1860 in the struggle for Italian unification. According to Giuseppe Guido Lo Schiavo [it], cave in Arabic literary writing is Maqtaa hagiar, while in popular Arabic it is pronounced as Mahias hagiar, and then “from Maqtaa (Mahias) = Mafia, that is cave, hence the name (ma)qotai, quarrymen, stone-cutters, that is, Mafia”.
■ mahyāṣ (مهياص), meaning “aggressive boasting” or “bragging”.
■ marfūḍ (مرفوض), meaning “rejected”, considered to be the most plausible derivation; marfūḍ developed into marpiuni (“swindler”) to marpiusu and finally mafiusu.
■ muʿāfā (معافى), meaning “safety” or “protection”.
■ maʿāfir (معافر), the name of an Arab tribe that ruled Palermo. The local peasants imitated these Arabs and as a result the tribe’s name entered the popular lexicon. The word Mafia was then used to refer to the defenders of Palermo during the Sicilian Vespers against rule of the Capetian House of Anjou on 30 March 1282.
■ mafyaʾ (مفيء), meaning “place of shade”. Shade meaning refuge or derived from refuge. After the Normans destroyed the Saracen rule in Sicily in the 11th century, Sicily became feudalistic. Most Arab smallholders became serfs on new estates, with some escaping to “the Mafia”. It became a secret refuge.
When most people think about corals, they imagine a tropical reef with crystal blue water, teeming with colorful fish. But, in the depths of the cold, murky Gulf of Maine, deep-sea corals thrive, feasting on a steady supply of organic matter raining down from the surface ocean.
For half the world's population, the water in their drinking glasses comes from below them. Groundwater also supplies 40% of global irrigation projects. Alarmingly, more than a third of the planet's aquifers, or groundwater basins, are dropping. Declining water tables leave entire regions vulnerable to drought, land subsidence or seawater intrusion while damaging ecosystems and reducing water access. Properly securing this resource is a matter of social, humanitarian and environmental security.
Friend: "There's one thing I'd like to ask about the mocktail menu. There's this ingredient, and I'm not sure if this is a typo or just something I'm not familiar with."
Title: Foraging Author:jordannamorgan Fandom: Sentenced to Be a Hero Characters: Xylo and Teoritta. Setting: General. Rating: G. Length: 862 words. Summary: Sometimes a compromise is a perfectly acceptable apology. Notes: Long time no post! I had an inspiration while cooking that just happened to fit the prompt, so here's an opportunistic last-minute submission.
Climate warming can increase plant growth in permafrost regions by lengthening the growing season, speeding up plant metabolic processes, and allowing deeper root penetration as permafrost thaws. However, the capacity for additional vegetation to offset the carbon released during permafrost thawing depends on nitrogen supply.
Mattholomule has been doing a great job keeping himself together under Boscha's reign of terror over Hew Hexside. He's just fine. He has people depending on him. he cant let them down and they cannot afford to lose anyone else. So what happens when Gus shows up and sees through his bravado?
This grounded "Hexside University" setting focuses on the quiet, simmering pressures of collegiate life, centering on the "opposites attract" connection between Hunter Wittebane and Willow Park. Hunter is a high-strung, overworked Aerospace Engineering major living under the suffocating academic expectations of his uncle, Dean Philip Wittebane, while Willow is a sturdy, self-assured Botany student and rugby captain who balances his "gentle powerhouse" persona with the nurturing support of his two moms. After a chance encounter in a campus greenhouse during Hunter's lowest moment, the two form an unlikely bond rooted in shared silences and "found family" dynamics. As Willow and his close-knit group of friends—Luz, Amity, and Gus—slowly pull Hunter out of his misery-shaped shell, the AU explores themes of vulnerability, self-worth, and the healing power of belonging, set against a nostalgic, Y2K-inspired backdrop of mixtapes, oversized flannels, and rain-soaked campus quads.
Researchers at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed CarGAP, a chemo-optogenetic tool that uses vitamin B₁₂ and green light to precisely control gap junctions, the microscopic channels enabling direct cell-to-cell communication. This innovation allows on-demand closing and opening of these intercellular bridges, providing unprecedented spatiotemporal control over vital molecules and electrical signals. Demonstrated in both mammalian cells and living fruit flies, CarGAP provides a powerful new way to study development, immunity, and neural activity, with far-reaching potential for understanding disease mechanisms and advancing regenerative medicine.
Two deep-sea amphipod species have been found to live in both hemispheres and share features, according to a new study that boosts our understanding of the biodiversity and evolutionary processes shaping deep-sea ecosystems. Dr. Paige Maroni and Professor Alan Jamieson, from The University of Western Australia's School of Biological Sciences, were co-authors of the study published in Marine Biology.
I got started early, enough so that I heard a Great Horned Owl, and was home before it got hot.\o/ Lower Packrat is lovely and green, and everyone was singing. No one new showed up, but the number of Wilson's Warblers was amazing, singing, chipping, chasing. They clearly have not settled their territories yet. The Mallards at the Lake confuse me. The last two visits there have been two drakes, and I imagine there are two nests around somewhere, since they each had a mate before that. But sometimes they sit together companionably on the log and sometimes they chase each other incessantly. Why? Did one drake venture too close to the other's nest? This is the merest speculation. ( The list: )
The Anna's Hummingbird continues on her nest. U will bring her camera on Monday so we can compare the old and new nests, see how much she's added.
Mostly in honor of the 4th Penric collection in hardcover from Baen Books, Penric's Intrigues, which will be released the first week of May. My box of author's copies arrived from the printer yesterday, and they look great!
Meanwhile, the Subterranean Press signed limited edition of the Pen & Des novella "The Adventure of the Demonic Ox" is delayed at their printer, which is not an uncommon glitch for them. It is available for pre-order at SubPress -- https://subterraneanpress.com/bujold-... -- and also at Uncle Hugo's and Dreamhaven bookstores, here in MPLS.
(In a complete side note of idle curiosity, does anyone have any idea why I've been getting such a spate of likes for my first review of The Rivers of London this past week or so? It's normal to get a trickle of likes for my assorted old reviews, but not so many at once.)
Nudibranchs are often referred to as the butterflies of the sea. Nudibranchs live worldwide, primarily in warm, shallow marine regions, and stand out for their flamboyant colors and diverse shapes. A team from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and the University of Cambridge has now discovered how they create their colorful patterns. According to their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the color is produced by nanostructures, each of which creates a specific color impression.
I wrote this nearly nine years ago (?!?) for a polyshipping challenge. It was pretty fun :D
Title:attempt 218. Fandom: The Good Place. Character/Pairing: Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop/Tahani Al-Jamil. Rating/Warnings: T. Summary: Eleanor and Tahani: most mismatched soulmates EVER. Word count: 1.8k.
read more -
DAY #1
“This is your soulmate, Tahani.”
The entire situation she'd found herself in was making Eleanor's whole body itch, and if she wasn't already dead, she'd be convinced she was in the midst of a mild aneurysm, at the least. And yet, her brain had the time to stop for a second to think Hot. Damn.
That last up until the moment her so-called soulmate opened her mouth.
“It’s such a… quaint little place! Very charming.” And she kept talking, and talking, and talking.
“And Michael told me you were the person with the highest score in the neighborhood!” Was her smile forced? It looked forced. “It’s such an honour. But, well. I don’t deserve any less, of course!”
Wow, way to make Eleanor’s success about her. Well, not Eleanor’s, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that, when she heard the word “soulmate,” Eleanor had let herself belief she could have an ally, someone who could help her make sense of all the crazy.
And instead, she was stuck with some snob, super-hot woman that talked non-stop about herself. She had trouble believing she ever had her head out of her ass for long enough to help anybody.
DAY #6
Tahani was the worst. She kept talking about all the charities she had organized, making Eleanor feel like shit, she name-dropped celebrities left and right like an asshole, and she remained incredible passive-aggressive about Eleanor’s fake score.
She wasn’t even getting laid, because Tahani said she’d never been with a woman before and she wanted to “take it slow.” Wasn’t this supposed to be paradise, for heaven’s sake? The only good thing about her was that she immediately hijacked Eleanor's Best Person Speech with her enormous ego.
But the stress was killing her, metaphorically speaking. The damn giraffes, the garbage, everything. She needed to do something, and she couldn’t do it alone. She needed help if she wanted to keep up the charade, and her “soulmate” was too unreliable, so she’d have to get it elsewhere.
What was the weird iLady's name again?
DAY #17
“Are you even paying attention to me right now? Because may I remind you, your very soul depends on it.”
She had spaced out again. And the worst was, she felt guilty about it. Guilty about not paying attention to a super boring speech about some Hums guy by the biggest nerd she’d ever met.
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay. That’s a first.”
“Go fork yourself, dude.”
“Now that’s more like you.”
For the first time in what felt like an eternity (ha), she felt her face form an honest smile. Chidi sat next to her, looking worried. The guy stressed too much. He seemed to take her situation way too personally, and he'd gone above and beyond to help her. It was such a stupid thing to do.
She was infinitely grateful.
“It’s just… the whole situation with Tahani is too much. She keeps taking me everywhere, wanting to go on little dates and preying about my life. And I can’t tell her anything, because of course I can’t. I think she believes that when I go out alone I’m cheating on her.”
“Wait. She thinks your cheating on her with me? That’s— well that’s— you know—”
“Yeah, no, totally, dude. But what do I tell her? That you’re teaching me ethics?”
“Well, I mean, I have a soulmate. A real one. No offense.”
Yeah, he didn't need to remind her. She was pretty sure his soulmate was suspicious of her too.
And if she was honest with herself (ugh), not totally without reason.
DAY #29
Tahani insisted on going on a date near the lake, and when Tahani insisted, she insisted. It was all perfectly put together, movie-worthy, with the picnic, and the sunset, and her short summer dress that left her long, long, long legs uncovered.
Eleanor pondered whether throwing herself at the lake was a good idea or not.
For once, though, Tahani wasn’t filling the air around them with her posh accent. She seemed on edge, awkward. It had Eleanor freaked out. What if she had somehow figured it out? Had Chidi being through one of his moral crisis again and decided to come clean to her?
No. Chidi wouldn’t do that to her.
Tahani raised her hand, pulling a strand of hair behind Eleanor’s ear. She smiled shyly at her, and suddenly, her face was right there and they were kissing, painfully tender.
Eleanor kissed back almost automatically. Because that’s what you do when someone kisses you. You kiss back. It’s an instinct, a reflex. That’s it.
“Well,” Tahani said softly, when she drew back, “that was not too bad, wasn’t it?”
Eleanor head was pounding, her mouth open like a fish’s, and she just ran.
NIGHT #29
Chidi was as unhelpful as he was in every situation that didn’t include a book so heavy it gave you cramps by looking at it. “Maybe you could tell her the truth. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Uh, eternal damnation, for one? What a shitty piece of advice.
So she was back there, to their quaint ugly little home, with no idea of what to do next.
The door opened violently, and Tahani was looking at her with an offended expression that would’ve made royals jealous.
“You were with him last night, were you?”
Yikes. She’d heard those words before. And though it wasn’t what she thought, she refused to say something so cliché on principle.
“What is it? You like them short? Am I not good enough for Miss Best Score?”
“Tahani…”
“What, Eleanor? You’re supposed to love me, not to keep choosing someone else over and over and over again! That’s the whole point, we’re soulmates!”
She exploded, right there and then. “No, we’re not! We’re not soulmates.”
“What are you talking about?!”
She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. She was going to hell, literally going to hell after this.
“We’re not soulmates, because I’m not supposed to be here, Tahani.”
DAY #30
Eleanor paced around the room. Tahani was out all day, claiming she needed time to think about everything she’d told her.
She was going to tell Michael, Eleanor was sure of it. She was going to tell Michael and she’d be sent to the bad place to be tortured soon enough, just because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut.
When she heard the door open, her heart stopped. But it was just Tahani.
“Hey.”
“Hey?”
Well, that was it? No clues at all of her mood? Come on.
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
Eleanor released a breath and fell down on the sofa, Tahani sitting next to her. She didn’t know what to say. “Thank you.” At least that was mandatory.
Tahani nodded. She was looking ahead, with a sad smile. “I’m sorry,” she said next, “I know you liked the idea of soulmates.”
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, turning suddenly, with an urgent look on her eyes, “maybe we are soulmates. Maybe that’s why you are here. We— we were meant to be together, and you went through the system somehow, because it’s not designed to keep soulmates apart.”
“That’s absurd Tahani. We are in no way compatible; you got in the good place by yourself, I was mediocre at best.”
“I wasn’t that good. It’s true! I saw the list.”
“What list?”
“In Michael’s office. There was a list of everyone here, and I was second to last. I barely got in, I’m almost— mediocre, too.”
A list… just there, out in the open. Their soulmate situation. The giraffes. Wait a second…
“That motherforker!”
“What?”
“We are in the bad place! We keep getting on each other’s nerves, and I get on Chidi’s nerves, and you just happen to see something in Michael’s office that makes you feel miserable?”
Tahani was looking at her, horrified, speechless.
“This is the bad place.”
NIGHT #30
“Are you absolutely positive about this?”
“Yes, Chidi, we are.”
“But that doesn’t— oh god. The almond milk.”
“We need to leave this place, Chidi. ASAP. Jan—!”
“Wait. Do we warn my soulmate?”
“Are you one hundred percent sure you can trust him?”
“…”
“That’s a no. Janet!”
Janet, at least, seemed happy to be on the train. Chidi was going through probably the biggest meltdown of his life (about almonds), and Tahani looked wistfully through the window.
Eleanor sat next to her, wishing she had any idea for how to comfort her. She didn’t know where to start, she had literally zero experience at that shit.
Out of nowhere, Tahani said: “I understand what you see in him. He’s very cute. In his own midget way.”
“Tahani…”
“Oh, don’t look at me that way. I know you like me too. I mean, obviously.”
She seemed to recover from her self-esteem crisis rather well, didn’t she?
“That’s a weird turn you’ve made there.”
She shrugged. “We aren’t getting any deader.”
The train arrived, and when they reached the house, a strange woman opened the door.
“Let me guess. You didn't bring my cocaine again.”
They didn’t know what to do. Staying there with that woman didn’t seem like an option. According to Janet, the train couldn't reach the real good place, only the bad one. The only way was backwards, where their memories would likely be erased and they’d be condemned to repeat a just slightly different history for thousands of years.
Chidi was the one taking it worse. Eleanor wasn’t much better than him, but Tahani seemed at ease, full of a new resolution.
She walked at Chidi, and appraised him slowly. Chidi stopped mid-pacing, like a deer caught in headlights.
“Chidi, right? We haven’t talked much. I’ve noticed the way you look at Eleanor.”
“What— I— no, I don’t look at her in any way! Ever!”
No, he doesn’t. Wait, does he?
“Please. I’ve also noticed the way you look at me. And we’ve all noticed the way Eleanor looks at me.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of true.”
“I’m NOT having a threesome in a stranger’s house,” she empathized, “and you and I would need to get to know each other better, but I think this is a good start.”
“This?”
“Oh, come on. We are totally fucking. Hey,” Eleanor exclaimed, “I can say fucking!”
DAY #35
Calling it a plan was too generous. Calling it an idea was generous. So it went as well as she would’ve predicted.
Tahani was furious. She kept screaming and insulting Michael. Chidi demanded explanations. Janet had brought that weird monk and they both sat on the sidelines, looking confused.
Michael, though with a bitter look on his face, seemed to be enjoying the situation. Eleanor, as she saw Tahani’s futile attacks on him, felt true defeat for the first time in her life.
“Michael, please… stop doing this to us.”
Everything seemed to stop in that second. Michael turned to her, calculating.
“Well, well, well… you’ve never pleaded. Please, don’t let me stop you.”
Anger raised through her throat, choking her. She ran to him and spat on his face.
“I don’t care what I have to do, but somehow I swear I’m going to forking ki—"
Snap.
-
A/N (c&p):Look at that time jump. They totally forked.
NASA has taken a step forward to moving an undetermined spacecraft of a various size on an indefinite date to a yet-to-be-decided location.
Or to put it another way: NASA is seeking to learn more about what it would take to remove the space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian in Virginia and relocate it to Houston, as compared to transporting a smaller space capsule from anywhere in the country.
The space agency on Thursday (March 19) released a draft request for proposal (DRFP) for the "NASA Flown Space Vehicle Multimodal Transportation Multiple Award Contract," seeking to learn how contractors would approach transporting both "large aerospace vehicles and smaller spacecraft capsules."
The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved Nexstar Media Group's $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna, granting a waiver that lets the broadcast giant go way past the national limit on station ownership.
Nexstar said it closed the acquisition late in the day yesterday, immediately after receiving the FCC approval. The deal was also approved by the US Department of Justice, but a group of state attorneys general are challenging the merger in court in an attempt to unwind it.
Opponents say the FCC lacks authority to grant the waiver and that only Congress can change the 39 percent ownership limit. While the FCC says Nexstar will own fewer than 15 percent of TV stations, the cap in the FCC's National Television Ownership Rule is calculated by the percentage of US households reached by a single entity's stations. The Nexstar/Tegna combination will reach 80 percent of TV households in the US, or 54.5 percent when applying what's known as the "UHF discount."
On an unassuming stretch of Main Street in the small town of Elizabeth sits a doorway into cycling’s wonderfully peculiar past. Behind it waits a collection of vintage bicycles so varied and charming that it’s hard not to grin as you walk in the door.
Paul’s Vintage Bicycle Museum isn’t slick or high-tech and that’s precisely the point. Instead, it feels like stepping into a lovingly curated garage where every bike has a personality. Sturdy cruisers from the mid-20th century look ready to coast straight into a black-and-white photograph. Odd frame designs and forgotten brands reveal just how experimental bicycle makers once were.
The real magic, however, isn’t just in the metal and rubber it’s in the stories. Owner Paul offers informal tours and enthusiastically shares the history and quirks of any bicycle that catches a visitor’s eye. Ask about a strange looking frame or an antique brake system and prepare for an impromptu lesson in ingenuity. The experience feels less like wandering through a museum and more like discovering a treasure trove guided by its devoted caretaker.
Admission is free, though donations are requested to help keep the collection rolling. The setting is humble, the atmosphere welcoming, and the surprises plentiful. For anyone who appreciates mechanical oddities, nostalgic craftsmanship, or simply the joy of discovering something unexpected in a small Midwestern town, this museum delivers in spades and spokes.
I've known for years, that even artists don't agree with me on the blue to green color line. What is turquoise or teal to me, seems different than what others say.
So here's a couple of tests:
ismy.blue
xrite.com/hue-test
After a few more people post their own results, I'll add mine.
Somehow, in the middle of this madness, roga and I have managed to take a trip. We were originally supposed to go on an organized trip that got canceled because missiles, but we already had a day off from work and we ended up booking a hotel by the sea for 1 night.
The hotel is in a region that gets far fewer missiles (less of a strategic target), and though I can't say I got much sleep on this trip it was still amazing to just... not be in my house? Not have to do endless dishes and laundry? Just wake up by the sea and have breakfast by the sea.
We drove 10 mins to a nearby picturesque town and went around the few shops that were open (making sure we know where the nearest bomb shelter is at all times of course). We went to a little museum by the hotel that randomly had a bunch of military equipment Napoleon dumped into the sea after the failed siege of Acre.
It was just 1 day off work, and just 1 night away, and almost the entire time it was raining and cold. We were woken up by a missile alert (the kind that SCREAMS at you from your phone using those natural disaster overrides, but only means there COULD be a missile headed your way, not to be confused with a siren) at 2am, and when roga didn't answer a text or a call I put on my warmest coat and boots and ran over to knock on her door, just to make sure she was awake if there WAS a srein and we suddenly needed to run to the hotel bomb shelter in less than 90 seconds.
I was on my period and taking painkillers basically the whole time.
And still it was so nice to do that. It helped so much. Just one small breath of fresh air.
A research team from the Center for Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM), the Department of Environmental Process Engineering (UVT) at the University of Bremen and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has made significant progress toward a self-sufficient Mars mission: a fertilizer, which can be produced solely with Martian resources, has been successfully used to grow edible biomass.
A new study has for the first time elucidated the gut-liver immune regulatory axis jointly maintained by intestinal commensal bacteria and the intestinal endocrine system, and uncovered the fundamental mechanism underlying the body's nonspecific clearance of drug delivery carriers. It provides a universal solution to the core problem plaguing the delivery field for decades, significantly improves the delivery efficiency and therapeutic effect of tumor-targeted therapy, mRNA therapy, gene editing and other treatments, and blazes a new trail for the clinical translation of biomedical delivery technologies.
Fandoms: 9-1-1, Bridgerton, Elite, Fallout, Heated Rivalry, Kuhnya, Made in Heaven, Mako Mermaids, Mr. Robot, Roswell New Mexico, The Last Kingdom, The Tudors, Vikings, Yellowstone, Young Royals
Okay folks! I'm still catching up on sleep and am otherwise not up to doing anything strenuous, but I *would* like to stream this weekend to get back into it as it's been a few weeks!
Final Fantasy XI stream! (tonight)
Therefore, tonight's Final Fantasy XI will be a "Chill & Chat" stream! I plan to just grind levels on one of my non-main jobs tonight. What job? WELL, THAT'S UP TO YOU!
Feel free to vote on the poll even if you don't intend to watch the stream. Wanna watch? I'm at https://twitch.tv/altheavalara
Tomorrow, I also plan to take it easy. We'll be doing the latest Hildibrand, then clearing out more open quests from my journal. I also might just keep an eye on the discords and hop around to FATEs or hunt trains. Whatever looks interesting and chill.
Start time is 7:30pm for both streams -- or later. Lately, we haven't even started dinner until 6:50pm (much to my displeasure, but can't be helped). I'm also not sure how long I'll stream, but I figure it will be at least 60-90 minutes?
So after months of waiting and high expectations, BTS released Arirang, a.k.a. THE BEST ALBUM OF 2026 (just in case y'all were curious as to how I feel abt this AWESOMECAKES musical journey that's sent me into astral projecting since I sat down to listen to it last night at midnight. Current faves are NORMAL, Body 2 Body, FYA, and Like Animals. But, seriously, the ENTIRE album is magnificent.)
The guys did a full hour and 25 livestream on YT where they talked a little abt the process that resulted in this album (including things like WHICH SONGS DID JIMIN WAS AGAINST? HOW MUCH INPUT DID EVERYONE ACTUALLY HAD? WHAT HAPPENED IN LOS ANGELES?) + some mild spoilers for their docu next Friday.
Unfortunately, RM got injured during practice so, although he will be onstage tomorrow, he's wearing a cast AND won't be doing any choreo (obvs).
In any case, it's deffo a good look at where BTS is at in terms of their bond AND their goals AND career AND how they feel abt where everything is nowadays. It's an excellent window into BTS' world (including a lot of razzing of RM, praise of Jin, cuteness from Yoongi, sassiness from Jungkook, insight from Hobi and V.)
Scientists at the University of Warwick and University of Exeter have developed a fully fiber-coupled terahertz (THz) imaging system that significantly improves the speed, resolution, and clinical practicality of terahertz imaging. The study, published in Nature Communications, demonstrates a high-throughput, compact platform that overcomes key barriers limiting current THz systems—bringing real-time, non-invasive tissue imaging closer to routine clinical use.
Work yesterday left me incredibly frustrated. The ducks that are nibbling me to death have mutated to giant size and with razor-sharp beaks. Because I was so frustrated, I decided I needed to reread one of the most disturbing sets of Hannibal AU fics I've ever encountered: A Gifted Student and A Letter to My Abuser. They're gorgeously, awfully written. (If you decide to read them, pay close attention to the tags oh god pay close attention to them.)
A Letter to My Abuser is, in some ways, the harder read for me, because when I first read it I tried to figure out why I identified so hard with a side character; Ollie, so giddy to meet his literary idol, but forcibly warned/ran off by this AU version of Will Graham. When I read it last night, my brain went "ohhhhh, yeah, Neil Gaiman", and then I had to read some fluffy fic to scrub my brain.
I hope his victims get closure. And that they win the legal actions against him, because they deserve the money they're suing for.
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EDITED TO ADD: I used to subscribe to FKAHerSweetness' Ko-Fi, as she left Ao3 and only posted her fic behind a paywall. I eventually ended my subscription because as time went on, I didn't enjoy how she wrote Will. She writes AUs only, and more power to her, but they became something I didn't want to read.
Customer: "I'm going on a cruise, and I don't want to pay for the wifi as it's too expensive. Would I be able to download the internet onto a hard drive so I could browse it offline?"
I'm thrilled to see the resurgence of specialty bookshops in the area. We lost House of SF and Prime Crime long ago, but romantasy is so hot these days that with any luck, Amanda Holmes and her crew will be able to make a go of things. And back in the era when House of SF and Prime Crime were around, websites and online sales were not really a thing the way they are now. Evermore Books will promote and sell books both in-person and online and presumably events may be conducted both ways too.
In a recent post, I mentioned the Spaniel's Tale, which will soon be moving to more spacious digs, probably some time in May. Sadly, though, not all the independents are doing so well. Further along that Wellington-to-Richmond stretch of road, Westboro Books closed permanently earlier this month:
The independents can't flourish if we buy all our books at Indigo and Amazon. So check out Evermore Books and the Spaniel's Tale for your beach reads, your travel reads, and all those quirky chance discoveries you didn't even know were out there!
Current Mood:literary
Current Location:the reading room
Current Music:Dear sir or madam, will you read my book ...
New observations by a team of US astronomers have cast fresh doubt on whether the lunar surface could host abundant water ice. Publishing their results in Science Advances, a team led by Shuai Li at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has shown that relatively pure ice (making up more than about 20–30% of the surface material) is likely absent from the moon's permanently shadowed regions.
Tiny pieces of plastic, called microplastics, are showing up everywhere, even in the water in clouds, rain, and snow—and they may be affecting our weather and temperatures. A study published in Environmental Science & Technology and led by Hosein Foroutan, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, found that microbes living on microplastics dramatically boost their ability to trigger ice formation in clouds.
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