So, I fell really behind on Dreamwidth things. I don't know hat all happened exactly. I think part of it was being in and out of two different houses for a while. I'm settled back in my normal living situation though, so hopefully I'll be better again.
I did get the start of my tattoo done and it went really well. I love it so much, and even though my family doesn't like it much, it still makes me happy to see that I actually did this thing I've wanted to do for so many years.
~*~
As per usual, there's been family drama going on. The problem is that this time it was involving my own living situation, which didn't feel great. I thiiiink it's all settled now (we were going to maybe have someone move in with us, but we literally have nowhere to put him and he's kind of a terrible person to live with anyway). I'm not entirely sure on that because there's a factor that could change things very quickly, but I'm hoping things are done for now.
~*~
I've been getting dental work done this month, and while I'm not having a great time with it, I'm glad it's moving along.Tomorrow I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out, which does not excite me even a little, and then at the beginning of April, I'm getting a filling put in.But thatshould be all I need done until my next cleaning, so that's exciting at least.
I also have an eye appointment on the 27th, but hopefully nothing will be exciting there. I always get nervous for eye stuff though because of my history (aka, my eyes are a disaster.).
~*~
To help myself stay sane and do some bonding with friends, I've started a playthrough of Dragon Age: Veilguard with one of my partner's other partners. We've hung out before, but never did something just the two of us, and they're a big Dragon Age fan and was really excited to get to share the game with me. reat time and they're really good at reading everything for me, letting me make choices unless I tell them to, and giving me enough description that I can usually see what's going on in the game. I didn't know how this was going to go, but I'm having a great time, and I think they are too.
It's going really well! I'm having a g I'm also watching The Exorcist TV show with a friend I'm going to visit in June. We're both writers and big horror fans, and have watched stuff together before. I have a running list of things we keep bringing up to stream together, and I think we're going to bounce between writing stuff and streaming stuff. It's exciting!
I have also got my best friend playing Bongo Cat with me and this is such a silly little game but I find it so fucking delightful. I also think it's helped me swing into something like a routine again, which is great!
Title: stuck within my head Fandom: Water the Roses by Flavor Foley Rating: G Content notes: Embedded images. Bright colors were utilized, which may cause eyestrain. Artist notes: Drawn with Krita, page/canvas templates via Electric Zine Maker. Drawn in around an hour, mainly to practice using the convert (linework) to alpha color filter. Title is derived from the song lyrics. Summary: Fanart of the GUMI design from Flavor Foley's song, Water the Roses. Challenge: 509 - Plant
I would like to have more high-protein snacks on hand, and the usual suggestions don't work for my digestive system (nuts, soy, dairy, beans). Does anyone have recipes to recommend? I'm thinking something like mini-frittatas made in muffin cups. Some kind of meatballs would be an option, but I'd prefer something that was less fuss to make. Thanks!
After the Storm by perennial - This beautiful fic is Don John and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing, in an alternate universe where John revenges himself on Claudio by marrying Hero. Long and slow, this fic look at who John might be if given enough rope, and who Hero might be if she didn't have to marry that credulous shithead. https://archiveofourown.org/works/31038242
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher A sweet romance, a little too long. Doing some lifting to set up the following books in the series.
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison - A reread for me for xing bookclub!
What I'm Reading Now The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - This is fine? Not sure if I am reaching for the orientalism or if the book is just doing that, but the key problems are repetition and repetition. 700 pages of, Dracula is around still and he's a dick.
1) Curious events yesterday. A takeout place we order from every other month or so couldn't be reached. Its website was not working over a half hour period. I looked up their number and at least 3 other sites listed the same one. Called it and was told it was not a valid number. Since I wanted more oranges, I figured I'd stop by to see if the restaurant had closed down.
Nope. They seemed completely unconcerned the website was down, and told me I'd used the wrong number (also seeming completely unconcerned a wrong one is widely available!) But at least we are not down yet another restaurant.
2) Got many yummy oranges but this store sells them by count not by weight. So I picked all the largest oranges I could and I swear some of these are bigger than both fists.
3) Nesting time for ducks is great for all the adorable little fluffs we will be seeing soon. It is definitely not so when we have to keep watching drakes attacking the female ducks. This week there was one poor female attacked simultaneously and sequentially by 5 drakes. She was finally able to get out of the lake (I felt half sure she had drowned) and one followed her and kept attacking her on land, which was the first time I'd seen that happen.
4) Was watching Life of Chuck and can I say I am incredibly tired of the romantic convention of looking at stars together and (usually the man) pointing out the constellations to the person they are wooing. Come up with something else!
That said, it was a nice little film. ( Read more... )
5) Belatedly I was not impressed with the Oscars. I was glad there were only 2 of the nominated songs sung and that there was no opening number, but I also would have preferred to skip that whole pre-filmed Conan bit and just have a very strong monologue (which I didn't think it was). ( Read more... )
It was quite pleasant on Inspiration Trail this morning thanks to a nice breeze. I had a rocky start but was on the rise before the sun came up. Also after the sun came up. As I said.:) Anyway, once I actually got started I had a reasonably productive morning. Finally Wilson's Warblers! and a Western Flycatcher. There were Blue-gray Gnatcatchers where they were four days ago, and still a White-crowned Sparrow singing near the parking lot, but either he changed songs or it's a different individual. Biggest surprise was a Varied Thrush in the dense trees towards the top of the trail. ( The list: )
There are usually a few American White Pelicans on San Pablo Reservoir, but this morning a large flock, thirty-five or so, was gathered near the far shore. I don't know where they went, but when I next looked they were gone.
If anyone's trying to reach me via Facebook these days, I'm having issues navigating the site these days. At least until 10 PM most nights. The pages load up slower than I'm used to these days...
New analyses of ancient ice from Antarctica and the air contained inside it are extending the history of Earth's climate records and expanding researchers' understanding of how the planet has changed over the last 3 million years.
i learned that actor Danny Trejo has the most on-screen deaths of anyone in Hollywood history, with 65. Followed by Christopher Lee (60), Lance Henriksen (51), Vincent Price (41), Dennis Hopper (41), Boris Karloff (41), and John Hurt (39). (x)
Yet poor Sean Bean is stuck with the reputation for dying in every movie. Unfair.
Give him time, he still has many years of dying yet to come.
Also there’s the question of density vs quantity. If you make a hundred movies and die in 50, and someone else makes 30 movies and dies in 30, the first one has died more, but the second one has died more often per movie.
It’s the DPM ratio that really counts, IMO.
65/402 16% Danny Trejo 60/282 21% Christopher Lee 51/259 20% Lance Henriksen 41/211 19% Vincent Price 41/205 20% Dennis Hopper 41/204 20% Boris Karloff 39/209 19% John Hurt 33/117 28% Sean Bean
I’m so proud of the statistical side of tumblr for coming through on this.
“If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride,” she sang to herself, a funny little lullaby to keep her creations soothed while she worked on the last fine details. Her deft fingers curled up wood shavings fine as paper and light as feathers, the skill needed to make lumps of wood into something capable of flight. Wishes weren’t horses, of course; they were birds, carved from the heaviest of hopes into the faintest of whispers, sent out into the world to alight where they may.
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday, March 18, to midnight on Thursday, March 19. (8pm Eastern Time).
Blood over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang. I'm a sucker for technology-infused magic, and I really liked the sort of computer-programming-magic here; in general the worldbuilding reminded me a bit of the TV show Arcane, which of course has its "magitech", but the main similarity is the elite vs the underclass (who they exploit), and the dark truths behind the marvels of the city. However, the characters are one-dimensional, with stereotypical views that either clearly cast them as the villains or that make it obvious the narrative will be about their realizations that change their views. I will say, though, that I was (pleasantly) surprised by the ending, as I applaud the writer for choosing the more realistic and interesting path over what you might expect from YA.
Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes by Leah Litman, who is a law professor and co-host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny, which I've never listened to, but I have heard her on NPR and other people's podcasts. I agree with her main thesis, that the Court has gone off the rails by picking and choosing their "legal principles" by whether or not they agree (ideologically) with the outcome that will result, which frankly stinks. It's well-researched, with lots of cites and notes. However, each of the five chapters is presented using the conceit of a particular show or movie, and as I was only familiar with most of them through osmosis, this didn't really work for me and sometimes seemed overly pop-culture-cutesy. (Like, Barbie - the movie, not the toy - is used as the lens to examine overturning Roe vs. Wade; Game of Thrones tells us that Winter Is Coming For Voting Rights; Mean Girls don't want to sit with LGBTQ people.) For an old Gen-X-er like me it seems like unnecessary metaphor, but maybe it will land better with people who want more glitz and meme in their nonfiction...but in that case, maybe a relatively dense book about law is not what they will be reading? I also will gripe about the editing, which seems particularly poor in the last chapter where Litman misspelled Ronald Reagan's surname and gave the same Neil Gorsuch quote twice within a few paragraphs.
I got home Tuesday night, finally, just before midnight. Denise picked me up at the airport, I drove home. (She really doesn't like driving in the dark.)
One last story from the trip.
Our 5:50 pm flight out of Milwaukee loaded a little late, but not too badly. Completely full flight, of course, making up for the previous day's cancellations. I was in seat 16B, next to the left wing; my neighbor in the window seat was a teenage girl who was a very fearful flyer. Are we supposed to feel vibrations? Yes, that's normal. Are the wings broken? No, those are flaps; they control the plane. What's happening now? We're taxiing to our runway--just driving along the ground. As we approached take-off, she asked, Do you mind if I hold your hand?
Not at all, I said. Would you like to borrow my bear?
We flew all the way to Denver with her right hand clutching my forearm, my hand over hers, and her left hand cradling Umberto.
A new study warns that if global warming surpasses 1.5°C, vast regions could lose critical crop diversity, heightening the risk to worldwide food security.
Researchers predict that about one-third of global food production may be in jeopardy due to higher temperatures, underscoring how climate change is expected to reshape agriculture, especially in vulnerable low-latitude countries.
You know what? I think they're barking up the wrong tree here. Humans have done FAR more damage to the foodstream than climate change has so far. I'm sure climate change will get around to that, but it's late to the party. Humans have already discarded many traditional crops because they don't lend themselves to commercial growing, drastically limiting the typical diet.
For modern residents of the Levant, the "Red Sea Trough" usually brings a brief, dusty transition between seasons. But 127,000 years ago, this same weather pattern may have been the literal key to human history. A new study, led by Ph.D. student Efraim Bril, Prof. Adi Torfstein and Dr. Assaf Hochman from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and published in Climate of the Past, reveals that during the Last Interglacial (LIG) peak, the Levant wasn't just a dry bridge between continents, it was dynamic with more relatively wet conditions fueled by intense, localized rain. This shift in ancient weather likely provided the water sources necessary for early humans to successfully migrate "out of Africa."
Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, the University of Hamburg, Freie Universität Berlin and the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT show in a recent publication in the journal Nature Climate Change that television in Germany remains one of the most important media for engaging with the issue of climate change. Moreover, television can contribute to societal consensus-building. The study finds that climate-related television content primarily reaches news-oriented audiences, while disengaged and skeptical groups rarely encounter the topic due to their preferred TV formats.
Thing I want to write about but lack sufficient depth of knowledge:
I have been reading some books that treat Wales and Native Americans as some sort of mystical Other, a fairyland you can visit and notice has a homelessness problem. And it made me think about Torchwood. Because Torchwood isn't doing that.
I have read a Bunch of stories that decide Wales is some kind of mystical theme park, just Other enough to go visit and bring back a bit of magic from. Wales exists to be Mountains with occasional Castle. Also mud. Possibly sheep. There may be a pub. But it is being Iconic and Scenic and not terribly functional.
Torchwood just has the story set in Cardiff, a real functioning city with police and local government and sports events and wheelie bins and people on a night out and just, you know, everything you get in every other city.
Plus aliens, but this is the Whoniverse, so we are real clear by now that all this all is happening in several places, we're just watching the Cardiff team.
A team including Welsh people.
And, yes, an immigrant from outer space with an American accent, but.
Welsh people aren't just the backdrop or the victims or the comedy sidekick, they are the actual protagonists and there to save the world.
(arguments about efficacy and technique are for another time)
The more I read this book that assumes that not only the characters but the reader will identify with white Americans who own their own house and might have met a black person but find Native Americans to be exotic emissaries from a mystic power and or possibly ghosts the more annoyed I get.
And I am aware that there are significant differences between that and visiting Wales but these books aren't.
But to figure out if it's more than just these two texts to compare contrast and write this up properly I'd need some kind of survey of how Wales was depicted in pre Torchwood media and to read around the topic and actually know what I'm talking about, which, I feel I do not.
It's just winding me up.
And that's without getting on to how some stories treat being descended from. All those ancestors and all that math to figure out how many people you descend from across a thousand years? Oh we'll just be talking about the one of them and being vague and hand wavy.
I have a headache and a grumpy. New hair is excellent but the going and getting it done is exhausting.
部首 水 part 2 求, to request; 氽, to float/to deep-fry; 汆, to parboil [neither of these may be all that common but a) they're very instinctive and b) they're very hard to distinguish] ( pinyin ) https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=85
Guardian: 我求求你了, please 他是被谁杀的我现在一点线索都没有, I don't have a single clue right now about whom he was killed by 长生晷有独立意识, does the Longevity Dial have independent awareness?
Just after 8 my phone dinged and reported that Mark O would be at the house in 10 min. Oops. I sprang out of bed where I was finishing my morning coffee, Yanked on work clothes and went out to say hi. Breakfast was eaten at the speed of lightning while filling nalgene bottles with a dilute gator aid. Thus provisioned we got in the Gator and went down to the pond (Norgard's Pond) to continue my clearing out of vegetation. On the way we stopped to pick up the last of the pile of brush that I had abandoned due to it having a rattlesnake in it. I looked carefully where the rattlesnake had been, didn't see any snake so we started pulling out the last 4 or five small pieces of brush. One was kind of stuck in the ground where a gopher had pushed up dirt. I yanked on it, then decided to get a different grip. On my way to a new grip I looked down to see the snake about 18 inches away. This produced a scream and a leap away. We stood on the road and looked down where the very, very cold sleepy snake was. Mark said: where is he, I cant see a snake. Right there, 6 feet away, under that little poison oak branch! Super hard to see. Should have taken a picture. Mark was brave enough to go get the last two pieces of brush, staying at least 4 feet away. The poor snake never rattled, and almost didn't move as we pulled a branch out from underneath it. We fastened the 4" x 25' strap around the brush and drug it down to the turnout by the pond. The one I just cleared by burning for two days. The rest of our project was to clear the next 100 feet of roadside. Mostly we were cutting down young live oak trees that had sprung up on the extremely steep bank between the road and the pond. They all got dragged back to the turnout and cut up so I can burn them. Tomorrow if possible. We were working very close to the place where our road Y's with one side going up a steep hill and the other out around the pond. About 25 feet beyond the Y there is a huge tree, a valley oak I think. It has road signs nailed to it. Several years ago a live oak seedling began growing up in front of that tree. It had gotten big enough that it obscured the signs and thus frequently confused UPS drivers who then often delivered packages to our gate. Said young tree is gone now and the signs are once again in full view. Better for UPS drivers and for emergency vehicles.
It's been ages since I've kept up with this Wednesday posting. I've put it on my to do list so hopefully I'll get to it now.
So far this year I've read the first 7 books in the DI Hilary Greene series by Faith Martin. They are perfect for bedtime books -- if I have insomnia I am entertained, and if I am sleepy I have a calm methodical British accent narrating detection procedures. Does that count as ASMR? I will say that they are advertised as rewrites of earlier novels and it shows in the lack of technology - mobile phones are quite the novelty and people actually use them to talk on the phone. No texting, no social media. But that's also soothing and easy to follow. The lead character is a single (well, divorced) and child-free middle-aged Detective Inspector who is neither annoying nor neurotic. She's opinionated and self-confident and smart, as one would expect. Very enjoyable. There is a little of the typical gung-ho cop talk, but it's not too bad. (Honestly, I have never felt that crusading desire to rid society of criminals and/or evil but I must at this point assume that some people are genuine when they say they feel that way. Or they're all hypocrites and I'm very cynical. Hmm. Is this also why I don't like superheroes? At any rate, it is a genre problem and not a problem with this book series specifically.)
For work (because I'm teaching them) I read a bunch of Langston Hughes's poetry from his first book, The Weary Blues.(1925) It's all there already in his first book, even though he expands throughout his career. Now in the public domain!
Also for work, Nella Larsen's novel Passing (1929), about a Black woman passing as a white woman in 1920s Harlem. It's mostly about how her Black childhood friend reacts to re-encountering her as an adult, and the relationships between people - very much a psychological novel. Recommended.
Also for work, George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession (written 1893, performed 1906? 1907?) - the classic and still relevant drama about women and economics and the hypocrisy around prostitution. This has been extremely teachable in the wake of the Epstein files and the pervasiveness of sexual exploitation in society. We also had good discussions about whether we judge women who make money on OnlyFans.
Not for work, Essential Succulents: The Beginner's Guide by Ken Shelf, because I am slowly building my cacti collection. This had beautiful photos but was somewhat short on actual guidance.
A severe drought, powerful Santa Ana winds and a not-fully-extinguished brushfire combined to create the most destructive wildfire in the history of Los Angeles in early 2025. The Palisades Fire, which fully ignited on Jan. 7, destroyed Los Angeles' Pacific Palisades neighborhood, killing 12 people and burning 6,800 homes and buildings.
Hydrological models represent water movement in natural systems, and they are important for water resource planning and management. But the models depend on reliable input data for weather factors, and precipitation can be very difficult to measure and represent accurately. A recent study in Environmental Modelling & Software by an international research team describes a novel method to better represent precipitation uncertainty in hydrological models, thereby improving their performance.
I knew almost immediately what song I wanted to share to fulfill this requirement. Cassandra Wilson's "Blue Lights 'til Dawn." Her lovely, throaty contralto makes this song particularly sensual. The loping rhythm is just right and the band backing her does her proud.
As is usually the case with me, I remembered another song with a different type of fascination: REM's "Green Grow the Rushes," from their amazing album "Maps and Legends." I've heard that the band had a complicated, somewhat ambivalent relationship with the album, although I can't find what I recall was the story where I read that. Perhaps it's just a fable ... anyhow, I used to play the entire album almost every day on my way to work. I was hypnotized by the single "Maps and Legends" and sometimes played it on repeat. "Green Grow the Rushes" was another song that felt like the world Stipe wrote and sang about was taking a breath, getting ready for the rest of this Southern Gothic masterpiece of an album.
So here in its hypnotically resplendent Southern Gothic glory is "Green Grow the Rushes."
You can still get a signed personalized copy of my novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster from Green Apple.
One of my favorite books of the year so far is Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall. It's a queer, sapphic retelling of Moby Dick — except that instead of hunting whales in the North Atlantic, this crew is after giant creatures that live in the soupy atmosphere of Jupiter.
I was in the process of writing a review of Hell's Heart when the Washington Post killed my book-review column. I was going to say that retellings of classic stories like Moby Dick can so easily turn into karaoke — or pastiche — but that Hall manages to delve into the meaning of Melville's novel, which is the most quintessentially American of all stories, being about industry, man against nature, religion, fanaticism and homoeroticism.
Detail of the cover of Hell’s Heart
Hall has written a book about religious passion and pure profit — the twin pillars on which America was built — and how they fuck people up. The descriptions of whaling on Jupiter are utterly transfixing, full of weird details about the leviathans and other beasties that live inside the atmosphere of Jupiter, and the tech used to hunt them. Hell's Heart put me in mind of Malka Older's Mossa and Pleity novella,s which also use Jupiter to good effect — I'm so sick of Mars being everywhere, please give me more Jupiter books!
The ship, the Pequod, feels like a character in the book, and the long digressions about the spermaceti-harvesting and the mechanics of hunting — while gruesome and sometimes a bit upsetting — were legit engrossing.
I had two issues with Hell's Heart, neither of which got in the way of me enjoying the book a whole lot.
The first had to do with the snarky, chatterbox first-person narrator, who seems to feel the need to remind the reader constantly that we're reading a story, and that she's an unreliable narrator. I gather this is a popular narration style thanks to recent books like Dungeon Crawler Carl. I usually love a voicey narrator, but this felt like it was trying too hard, and the more the narrator talks about herself, the less well I feel I know her — because all that self-analysis feels like a smokescreen, or a rationalization.
Hell's Heart added more evidence for my belief that first-person past-tense is the least immediate form of narration, in which we're the farthest from identifying with a character. (In a nutshell, first-person, past-tense is a character telling you about something that happened to them, which means they're talking about past events with a certain amount of distance thanks to the passage of time. And often, we're aware that this narrator is telling their version of the story. First-person/present tense, meanwhile, feels like we're right there in the moment with a character.
But I mostly wanted to talk about the second issue I had with Hell's Heart.
The protagonist, known only as I, is a former schoolteacher, masochist, and self-destructive slut. She sleeps with a lot of her crewmates, including Q, with whom she has a messed-up romance. We are constantly told how self-destructive I is, though her self-destructiveness remains mostly a matter of being on this voyage in this first place, plus her mostly offscreen hookups with various people. She's never more alive than when she's letting down the people in her life, particularly Q.
We're constantly told that I is a huge slut because she's such a messed-up person, because it's the only alternative to serious self-harm. That having sex with people is the only way she can feel anything. That "hate sex is the best sex." When she does have sex, it leaves her with an empty feeling, as though she was hoping for something more than what she got. She has sex with lots of strangers, because of her deep self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies.
And... I'm kinda tired of characters who only have sex with lots of people as a way of avoiding their issues, or because they're so messed up. I feel like I've come across this trope a fair bit lately, though I can't for the life of me remember what other books I've seen it in — that's what happens when you read up to a dozen books a month and the world is a trash fire. Hell's Heart is just the most recent one I've seen and one of the most explicit.
Anyway, I really don't have a problem with promiscuity being portrayed sometimes as a manifestation of a character's damage. Or with characters who use sex to distract themselves from their problems, or as an alternative to self-harm. It's seriously all good. I know that some people in real life do use consensual sex in less-than-helpful ways, and sex can be an unhealthy addiction, the same way that Pokémon GO! can be.
Where I have a problem is if the damaged slut becomes the only kind of slut we ever see on the page. Which feels like it's becoming the case.
It's like any other issue to do with representation, really. If the only sluts we see are damaged and/or miserable, then the natural conclusion becomes that all sluts are messed-up individuals. Whereas, if we are sometimes seeing portrayals of happy, reasonably well-adjusted sluts who just really enjoy having lots of sex, then it's totally fine if we do sometimes see people who are fucking to keep from crying.
Returning to the Pokémon GO! example above... I feel like any activity can become an unhealthy obsession, or purely a means of escape from a bad situation. Back when I had a string of terrible jobs in my twenties, I played Solitaire on the office computer so much that all I could think about was Solitaire. I started playing Solitaire in my spare time. I dreamed about Solitaire. It's just that when someone uses sex as an escape, an outlet, or a way of living on the edge, we see it as a problem on the same level as a hardcore drug addiction, because we've internalized so much Puritanical bullshit about the proper place for sex being a committed relationship in which you are hopefully making obedient, god-fearing babies.
As I wrote about before, I spent years writing erotica for various zines, magazines and anthologies, and I also was heavily involved in sex positive community and organizations. I was even trained as a sex educator by a venerable San Francisco nonprofit, San Francisco Sex Information. I really believe, in the words of Dossie Easton, that "sex is nice and pleasure is good for you." With the acknowledgment that you should of course try not to get a nasty infection, and that enthusiastic consent is a must. And consent begins with communication.
My queer praxis includes community building, mutual aid, fighting against exploitation, and a whole bunch of other things. It also includes smiling happily upon anyone who is having a good time in the bedroom (or the nightclub bathroom, or the Tesla dealership, or wherever). As I wrote in one short story a while back, some of the most important and enduring communities have grown out of people just trying to get laid.
I see sexuality as one of the most glorious aspects of human nature. It's sensual, it's creative, it touches every aspect of our identities and sense of self. (And yes, of course, some of my favorite people in the world are asexual, and I have nothing but love and respect for those folks.)
And yeah, it's important to talk about the negatives — even beyond the stuff about consent and safety I mentioned earlier. When I was brand new to San Francisco, I was an intern at magazine about sex called Black Sheets, which published a "Bad Sex" issue full of essays and fiction about sexual encounters that just were... not good. Celebrating the splendor of consensual sex between adults can, and often should, include honesty about all of our messy human business — including feelings but also boundaries and a whole mess of other stuff.
And it should go without saying that I'm not arguing that sluts need to be completely well adjusted in every way — that's a mistake I made when I first started writing erotica, in fact — just that I don't want emotional and psychological problems to be the main reason they're getting busy every single time.
My favorite recent narrative about an unapologetic joyful slut is the Red Sonja comic by Gail Simone and Walter Geovani. Their version of Red Sonia has a lust for battle as well as the regular kind of lust. After defeating a monster or a tyrant, she loves nothing better than to go to a tavern, find some good looking men and women, and get have some well deserved rest and relaxation.
Here she is using her reward from saving the kingdom to visit a brothel:
There's no right or wrong way to deal with the ongoing assault on queer identities — people are doing amazing things with horror and dark twisted tales about disaster gays. For me personally, though, a big part of my defiance against the sweaty clammy hoard of religious authoritarians — and the bleating centrist pundits that these holy overlords keep on a tight leash — is to be defiantly, raucously, joyously horny. In fact, before I settled on the idea of a trans rebellion against sumptuary laws for my story in the recent anthology We Will Rise Again, my first idea was to write about people using raw sexuality to fight back against oppression. It was going to be called, "Horny for Justice." I still wanna write that story at some point.
When I feel like things are getting more hopeless and the Dirks of the world are getting too powerful, I immediately want to write some truly obnoxious and beautiful smut. Writing about people seizing control of their own sexuality helps me to feel less helpless in the middle of a tide of repression and sexual control-freakery. That's my cry of defiance. On a related note, I've decided to start writing erotica again in 2026 — stay tuned.
If it wasn't for sluts, I wouldn't have any community at all. If it wasn't for sluts, much of your favorite art, music, poetry, and other culture would not exist. Anybody with a disobedient body should feel some kinship with sluts — and I'll never forget the talk I heard Carol Leigh, AKA Scarlet Harlot, give back in the day about solidarity between sluts and sex workers, which expanded my view of our shared oppression so much.
So here's my plea: I don't even need to see fewer characters who are having lots of sex for mostly negative reasons or to deal with negative stuff in their lives. But I am begging authors to throw in a few happy sluts, who are just getting some because getting some feels good and brings them closer to other people.
Fuck it, I'll do it myself.
Music I Love Right Now
Instead of shouting out a particular artist, I wanted to alert y’all to a website that has done serious damage to my bank balance: munckmusic recordings. This is a repository of live recordings of New Orleans music, and it contains pretty much every show from the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival going back at least twenty years. There are tons of live shows by artists like Allen Toussaint, Trombone Shorty, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Dumpstaphunk, and many others. It’s thanks to this site that I’ve gotten to hear Dumpstaphunk cover “Unfunky UFO” by Parliament, not to mention Washington covering “The Chicken,” the classic James Brown/Pee-Wee Ellis instrumental previously immortalized by Jaco Pastorius.
But if there’s one concert I’d like to draw your attention to on this site, it’d be the 2016 tribute show to the late, great, Allen Toussaint, featuring folks like Davell Crawford, Art Neville and Bonnie Raitt performing many of Toussaint’s best songs. It’s truly extraordinary.
A new study, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Columbia University, identifies a diverse set of molecules released by marine phytoplankton that fuel microbial life and help drive Earth's carbon cycle. While scientists know that carbon is moved through an invisible network of phytoplankton and other microbes in the surface ocean, the specific compounds have long been a mystery. These compounds are small, chemically difficult to detect in salty seawater, and are rapidly consumed by other organisms almost as soon as they are produced.
On the plus side, I slept well, food is made and caffeine at hand, and it turns out that yes, the new(ish) vacuum is good enough to pick up instant coffee. On the minus side, this is probably a migraine because I'm trying to get all the things done, at the same time, and yes, while trying to get caffeine, I dropped the bottle of instant espresso.
It's cleaned up, I'm eating and have taped the top of that bottle back together, and no glass on the floor: good enough.
Man, I do not miss menses, but I don't know that migraines was a great trade, here.
(Thank you FOB/Pete Wentz for always providing entertaining song lyrics.)
Everything is ugh. My back is having one of its stretches of hurting and feeling fragile, so my life involves lidocaine patches and dipping into the stash of muscle relaxers and heavy-duty pain meds. I've been having an upswing in different types of migraines, and I suspect the main culprits are weather and stress. All I want to do is sleep, and my mood can generally be described by that Charles Darwin quote of "I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything". With a large side of "meh". I really want a doctor to prescribe the historical treatment of going to the seaside for a week (with the appropriate servants to take care of me and bring me dainty treats while I sit with my feet in the ocean).
Today is particularly ugh, as we lost three writers yesterday and I need to cover their work while we hire new writers for those positions. (Yeah, read between the lines there and you can probably guess what happened.) Thankfully, I talked to my boss and asked how this would work with my current projects, and she told me that my number one priority right now is to focus on the writing/being a writer, and once those positions are backfilled, I'll go back to my Program Manager work. So at least I don't have to worry that I'm being held to two sets of different standards. But still, stressful.
Meh.
---
One thing that's been entertaining me is going through my Tumblr archives - prompted by a post going around asking people how long they've been on Tumblr oh my god 2010 really?! - and finding a lot of fun content and a lot of pink & black eye candy. But I realized (a bit too late) that I shouldn't read my text posts from 2011, because that was the worst year of my life. Dear Powers That Be, that isn't an invitation to go "hold my beer!" and try to overshoot that. I don't need that.
EDITED TO ADD: The GoFundMe to support MinoanMiss/RubyNye's burial/memorial costs is here.
books A Murderous Relation (Veronica Speedwell #5) by Deanna Raybourn. 2020. Kinky London again. An Unexpected Peril (Veronica Speedwell #6). 2021. Mountaineering. An Impossible Impostor (Veronica Speedwell #7). 2022. Return of Martin Guerre. Too much romance by far. A Sinister Revenge (Veronica Speedwell #8). 2023. Dinosaur house party. Too much romance, still. A Grave Robbery (Veronica Speedwell #9). 2024. Evil lesbian Dr Frankenstein. *sigh* currently reading: A Ghastly Catastrophe (Veronica Speedwell #10). 2026. Dracula.
yarning Sold a snek, a turkey leg, and 2 mushrooms. Got the carrots and kickbunny to KA in the mail (and worked out Click-n-Ship after USPS disabled my old login info). Didn't go to yarn group, even though I was dressed and ready. A strong cold front was on the verge of coming in and I just felt bad. So that's five in a row that I've missed, doh. I did post some pics to the group chat, so they know I'm still involved.
healthcrap I finally called to renew my healthcare coverage, and there are delays on their end, thanks to their new system. Had to reschedule botox for migraines until next month.
#resist + Check locally for anti-war protests. I'm finding Reddit and Instagram to be fairly good sources if you check often. + March 28: #50501 No Kings Protest #3
astrology Mercury Retrograde ends on the 20th, the same day as the Equinox (yay SPRING)! OTOH, the last time that all the outer planets were in their current positions, we were in the US Civil War. That doesn't mean we're headed into a new civil war by any means, obvsly, but it's a pretty dreadful interesting time in the skies.
“there should be some kind of test you have to take before having kids” -> wrong, extremely dangerous and highkey eugenicist and racist
“the youth should have safe and effective legal pathways at their disposal to make sure their human rights are constantly protected and upheld” -> based, centers the youth, gives minors more power to fight inequality and does not reinforce the idea that parents are immune to scrutiny from their kids
being a tumblr user is fun : the staff look like they’re trying their hardest to kill the platform, half of the internet thinks we’re dead, the other half reblogs our posts on pinterest, and we celebrate the murder of julius caesar every year.
Next time you’re watching any news show or political coverage see how many of these you can spot:
Quick rundown of each propaganda technique:
• Glittering Generalities: Using vague, emotionally appealing words (like “freedom” or “justice”) that sound good but lack specific meaning.
• Transfer: Associating a person, idea, or product with something already respected or disliked (like using a flag, religion, or celebrity image) to carry over those feelings.
• Name-Calling: Attaching negative labels to an opponent or idea to create fear or distrust without real evidence.
• Card-Stacking: Presenting only positive information for one side and leaving out or distorting the negatives.
• Testimonial: Having a famous or respected person endorse an idea, product, or cause.
• Plain Folks: Presenting the speaker as an “ordinary” person to seem relatable and trustworthy.
• Band Wagon: Urging people to follow the crowd with the idea that “everyone else is doing it.”
I DO think tumblr’s dev team has been instructed to constantly implement new features and that’s why they keep tweaking the UI in goofy ways. I imagine this is an upper management thing, so even if we say “well don’t change anything and just maintain the status quo” they’ll continue to make other changes anyway.
I will admit I REALLY like the recent improvements they’ve added to tumblr’s search (you can exclude terms now!! you can search multiple tags!! and time frames!!) so it’s not like they’re incapable of adding useful features. it might be mutually beneficial for us as users if we were more vocal about things we want and don’t want. Some features I’d like to see added:
spoilerable text
spoilerable images
the return of hover text!! remember when we had that?
ability to embed videos in reblogs
ANIMATED GIF ICONS!!!!!!!!!!!!
the ability to turn off other people’s animated gif icons
the ability to filter original posts on a user’s ENTIRE blog, not just a tag/search
more html support, like what if we could build tables
adding reactions to replies! I’m glad we can like them more but it’d be nice if we could take this further
embeddable tiktoks?? I don’t even use tiktok but I remember trying to embed one in like 2020 and I’m surprised we still can’t! even vines were able to be embedded
being able to search in your DMs. not being able to do this is why I tend to redirect mutuals to discord
MUTING USERS POSTS/COMMENTS WITHOUT BLOCKING THEM! just cause I don’t want to see someone’s posts doesn’t mean I don’t want us to never interact ever
a mutual-only dashboard feed
a feed for the blogs you’re subscribed to
get rid of tumblr tv lmao I’ve literally never used it
“mark as read” button for communities without opening them
please dear god no AI shit unless it’s a way for me to filter/block it easier
several of these I’ve submitted support tickets for under “feedback”, and if there’s anything you feel strongly about I suggest you do too!
Title: Aberglasney Gardens - Magnolias & Camellias Fandom: Original Rating: G Length: Collage of 9 photos Summary: We visited Aberglasney Gardens in Wales on Monday, and the magnolias and camellias were blooming
Hi, guys! I know I know. BBC Merlin in 2026? I was missing this show and felt like a little themed battle may be nice. Head over to iconbattles to check out the details here.
I developed a rash on my legs when I was around 20. Red, scaly, itchy. The dermatologist said it was para-psoriasis and it would go away in time.
It did not. For decades I suffered with dry, itchy skin. And it spread over 80 percent of my body.
When I was 40 I went to another dermatologist and he said I had psoriasis. After some coal tar treatments which did nothing he stuffed me in a Light Box. UVB treatment. After a few weekly treatments I started to clear. I was almost completely clear after a few months. Then he retired and no one had light treatment. The rash returned and I suffered.
A year and a half ago I decided to stop suffering and go find another dermatologist. They took biopsies and diagnosed me with psoriasis. They offered self-injectables. That kind of treatment is often hit and miss so they tried me on a pill - which did nothing. Finally I found a place that had a Light Box and again, within a month of weekly visits the rash was in retreat.
Then my scalp started flaking. Then itching. Then bleeding. Then came the scabs and the pus. A year ago my hair started falling out. I'm now 80 percent bald. During this time I saw my two dermatologists They tried a few creams and antibiotics with no effect.
Then they brought in a more experienced nurse. She took one look at my scalp and her eyes widened with horror. Steroids and a new antibiotic were prescribed along with more biopsies. After two weeks with new medications my scalp is 70 percent clear.
I now have a new diagnosis: Eczema.
The scalp may be something different but the treatment is working. The doctor is unsure if the condition scarred my scalp so hair regrowth is considered a stretch goal. I'm keeping a good attitude towards this but decades of suffering could have been avoided if I had been properly diagnosed at 20.
Today is sunny, less cold, with a light breeze. This is a huge improvement. :D
I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work outdoors.
The mower has been picked up for its spring tuneup.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I picked up more junk from the parking lot.
I've seen a lot more sparrows and house finches, plus a fox squirrel.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I started trying to unearth the edge of the sidewalk bordering the parking lot on the south side. It is exhausting, and must be done before the stump-grinder guy arrives early tomorrow. D:
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I hacked away at the east end of the sidewalk. There are still several feet of the middle buried.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I continued hacking at the sidewalk edge.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did more hacking at the sidewalk edge. I think it's about as good as I can get it. There's a big patch in the middle that I couldn't clear due to roots and brush, but at least the edge is more-or-less visible at both ends.
I manage two departments, each led by a supervisor — one a married man and the other a single woman. While I work in a separate building, I’ve received numerous reports from my boss, peers, and direct reports regarding their behavior.
They are inseparable: taking all breaks together, sharing a single desk, whispering closely, and staying late whenever the other does. The optics have become a significant distraction. Seven different people — including those outside our organization — have commented on the inappropriateness of their closeness, with some making “get a room” jokes.
While their deliverables aren’t egregiously late, I often experience delays in email responses or project updates. During these gaps, team members frequently message me to report the duo is “goofing off” or whispering in the break room instead of working.
Since I haven’t personally witnessed the behavior and their performance hasn’t hit a “failing” grade yet, I am unsure how to proceed. Should I address the optics and the professional reputation of the departments? Should I wait for a specific performance failure? Or should I ignore it since the evidence is technically hearsay?
You’re not a court of law; you get to be concerned by hearsay!
There are lots of situations that can come up as a manager where you’ll hear something alarming that you haven’t observed firsthand, and in most of those cases the answer can’t be to do nothing since you didn’t witness it yourself.
Depending on the circumstances, sometimes you can arrange things so you’ll have more opportunity to observe the problem yourself. But other times you won’t be able to (or it will be concerning enough that you need to act more quickly than that would allow). In those cases, the right next step is to talk to the people involved and ask about what’s getting reported to you.
In this case, I’d recommend a combination of those two approaches. First, can you find a way to observe some of this yourself? You normally work in another building, but can you find reasons to be at the other location more often? When you get messages that these two are goofing off while you’re waiting on overdue work from them, can you just go over there and see it firsthand? That will arm you with some ability to cite what you’ve seen yourself.
But if you couldn’t do that — if you worked across the country from them, for example — you could still address this. The way to do that is to talk to them individually and say something like, “If I’d only heard this from one or two people, I wouldn’t bring it up, but I’ve heard it from numerous people at various levels now, so it’s something we need to address. I’m hearing from multiple people that you and Sidney are spending so much time together than it’s become a distraction in the office — including things like sharing a single desk, whispering, and hanging out in the break room together while work is getting delayed. I know I personally have been waiting on responses from you, only to hear that the two of you are socializing in a different part of the building. It’s of course fine to be close to a colleague, but I’m hearing that the optics have become enough of a distraction that unless you’re mystified about what this could be referring to, I need you both to have more professional distance while you’re at work.”
Whether or not they’re having an affair is their business, but their behavior at work is yours and that’s the part you can speak to.
Today is sunny, less cold, with a light breeze. This is a huge improvement. :D
I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work outdoors.
The mower has been picked up for its spring tuneup.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I picked up more junk from the parking lot.
I've seen a lot more sparrows and house finches, plus a fox squirrel.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I started trying to unearth the edge of the sidewalk bordering the parking lot on the south side. It is exhausting, and must be done before the stump-grinder guy arrives early tomorrow. D:
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I hacked away at the east end of the sidewalk. There are still several feet of the middle buried.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I continued hacking at the sidewalk edge.
EDIT 3/18/26 -- I did more hacking at the sidewalk edge. I think it's about as good as I can get it. There's a big patch in the middle that I couldn't clear due to roots and brush, but at least the edge is more-or-less visible at both ends.
Ed Pottinger's death is very sad news. Until mobility issues intervened, spouse and I were regular customers at The Real Jerk ever since its very first incarnation (a storefront on the north side of Queen near Greenwood) back in the 1980s. We were so happy when the restaurant relocated to Queen and Broadview because it was closer to work and thus an easier destination for takeout for both staff and clients. I really hope the restaurant (now even closer to the old studio, at Carlaw and Gerrard) continues to flourish.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashelterofpages
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
I got home Tuesday night, finally, just before midnight. Denise picked me up at the airport, I drove home. (She really doesn't like driving in the dark.)
