smokingboot

and omg those cultists are so needy. They can't feed themselves, so you're constantly trying to keep them in berries and fish, and they complain about everything!

"There's no place to poop, build an outhouse!" (You're an animal, poop on the ground!)

"I want to eat a poop sandwich!" (Uh, okay, but why do I have to make it!?)

"Oh, that grass gruel made me sick!" (Get back to work!)

"I'm sick of your lies!" (Welp, time to perform another ~~human~~ sapient sacrifice of a, uh, willing victim!)

Seriously, who's running this cult, you or them?

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

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith

Yale study: Most Americans support climate justice — once they know what it is

Climate change is an omnipresent threat for us all, but its impact disproportionately affects non-white populations.

Inequalities stem from generations of racial injustice and colonization of Indigenous lands, contributing to ongoing marginalization and risk in BIPOC populations.

Climate justice is a movement that seeks to rectify those inequities, with the goals of reducing unequal harms of climate change, producing equitable benefits from climate solutions, and including affected communities in the decision-making process.

Among examples of climate justice are taking steps to stop exploitative actions that worsen climate and environment, and ensuring that people have humane ways to escape environmental foreclosure. The latter is crucial because right now, victims of climate-driven eviction have no rights; they are classified as migrants without even the flimsy protections that refugees of war or discrimination have. And if you look at the Dustbowl, you can see how very badly America has handled that issue in the past.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is mostly sunny, breezy, and mild. It drizzled yesterday.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/30/25 -- I planted 12 mixed crocuses around the barrel garden.

EDIT 10/30/25 -- I planted 12 Dutch irises around the yard.

EDIT 10/30/25 -- I planted 5 purple-and-white striped crocuses in the purple-and-white garden. This concludes the currently purchased bulbs.

EDIT 10/30/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/30/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 10/30/25 -- I hauled a large fallen branch to the ritual meadow.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

conuly

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

**********

Link

conuly

Boo.

(Wait, and also nearly Halloween! Boo!)

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

( Read more... )

ysabetwordsmith

Today we went around Charleston and Mattoon with a friend.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Gifts That Do Good: Ethical Subscriptions That Give Back

If you’re wondering how to make the most of your holiday giving, consider giving a subscription to one of the many options Good Good Good has sourced below.

We’ve rounded up some of the most ethical and sustainable subscriptions on the Internet. In addition to being a great gift, you’re also supporting companies that do good.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy, chilly, windy, and wet. It rained off and on yesterday, then drizzled earlier today.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/29/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/29/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

flemmings

October is my favourite month and it's drawing near the end. Rain and wind, tomorrow and Friday, will put an end to most of the gorgeous colours: the yellow whatever across the street that glows so beautifully under the street lamp has lost half its leaves already. The gorious red maple out back will soon follow. And then comes the darkness, early this year: November 2nd. So sad to see them go, even if November does have its moments.

Read through a bunch of Papuwa doujinshi yesterday prior to tomorrow's recycle pick up, which left me with the usual weird hangover. Is it the trip to a former mindset, the mental time travel, that causes the oogies? The counsel of the dead is not healthful to the living, even if it's one's own dead self. But I only had three or four djs to throw out after that and I don't want to waste a recycle day, so I went through the many bags I have stashed in a wicker chest, found the Saiyūki ones, and threw them out unread. There was a great falling off in talent between 1993 and 2001 as far as I'm concerned so I regret nothing. But the idea of doing that with the Papuwa ones is unthinkable. I must reread them all: they hold a portion of my soul.

Finished since last week are Cinder House, House of Many Ways, and Castle in the Sky. One Charles Lenox, An Extravagant Death, and two by John Rhode/ Miles Burton, Death at Breakfast and The Secret of High Eldersham. The last of which was just a tad silly. The Badnasty has been feeding the villagers drugs at regular intervals for several years and manipulating them with mental games. Badnasty is disposed of. Detective says villagers will be fine now. I say villagers will be anything but. Detective would be a fool to settle down in High Eldersham but does, of course. And acquires a wife who, in subsequent books, must go on many visits to friends so detective can continue to detect.

I have another Lenox in ebook and a couple more Burtons on Kobo if they will consent to show. Neither my Kobo Burtons or Rhodes wil display on my phone. I should forge on with that biography of Da Vinci except the author wants to talk about Freud's ideas of Da Vinci instead, even as he admits Freud was working from a mistranslation of the Italian and was therefore All Wrong.

mallorys_camera

The crane came back! And this time, I managed to snag a photo before I scared it off:

Other than that, yesterday was pretty sucky.

I couldn't shake the memory of that Middletown mall, those ugly, ugly storefronts, those ugly, ugly people, the certain knowledge that by swearing vassalhood to Big Soulless Tax Prep Company, I was now a part of this ecosystem, a cog in the machine, just as hopeless & desperate as any of those other inhabitants of that peculiar level of hell called End-Stage Capitalism. This revelation was deeply, deepy depressing.

To assauge this feeling of powerlessness, I decided to go on a tromp, and this was absolutely the wrong thing to do because gastrocnemius injury, which is still quite acute.

Yes, it throbbed while I tromped. Malingerer! I jeered at myself. Pick up the pace!

And when I got home, my left calf and my left ankle were swollen up like balloons.

I could barely walk.

This is an issue because I am leaving on a road trip tomorrow.

###

This morning, I am much, much better. Ankle swelling is gone. Calf swelling is almost gone. I still feel the knot of pain deep inside the calf when I move—although at this point, I have recontexturalized it as something other than pain, it is merely a neurological signal—but I can walk well if slowly.

I've got compression stockings on—they help—and I'm keeping the left leg elevated today. Limited movement is planned.

The weird things are (a) that I would ignore my body's signals so completely and (b) that I still don't know how I incurred the injury. I woke up four days ago, and there it was. I assume I slept on it funny. Bent the leg at a peculiar angle. For a little while, I wondered whether it was some kind of thrombosis—I do spend long hours sitting at my desk—but no red streaks, no hot spots, no shortness of breath. I'm confident the injury is mechanical, a gastrocnemius tendinopathy.

Rest it, and it will heal.

Pretend it isn't happening, and it will not heal.

Duh!

###

Other than that, I wrote a few hundred words on the Work in Progress. We are now at March 14, 2020, the day before the COVID lockdown began in New York State, and I am trying to capture the peculiar liminal quality of the day. I am not succeeding particularly well—hint: If you have to use the word "liminal," you are not capturing the quality of liminality—but that's okay. It's a fuckin' first draft.

Also I got a large Remueration assignment and in response to my modest prodding, the client wrote, I am never going to use AI for these white papers.

So, that was reassuring.

ysabetwordsmith

Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Our theme this time was "Witches and Wizards." I wrote from 1 PM to 4:30 AM, so about 13 hours 30 minutes, accounting for breaks. I wrote 8 poems on Tuesday plus 2 later in the week.

Participation was up, with 11 comments on LiveJournal and another 28 on Dreamwidth. A total of 12 people sent prompts.

Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the October 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"The Disappointing Daughter"
"The Unretired Witch"
"What Wizardry Is All About"

"New and Innovative Approaches"

Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from October 7. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include:

janetmiles and Anthony Barrette. All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There is 1 tally toward a bonus fishbowl.

The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

Current Mood: busy

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

There's a gorgeous windstorm going on. Beautiful for listening to, not so great for trying to hear the UPS truck.

Like a fool who thinks it's 2015, I ordered clothing online from the United States and have been fretting about it ever since. All shipping interfaces were as incoherent as you might expect.

But Blamo was having a deep-discount flash sale and I have been drooling over this non-species-specific sock-animal onesie for... a long time.

Sadly, that magnificent garment was not on sale and incidentally profoundly impractical. So I ordered this Completely Normal Cardigan(tm) instead:

... it happens to have this hood:

(Not sure why the resolution is so crap here.)

There did end up being tariff charges, but not that bad.

I... feel more whole as a person.

§rf§

PS I swear it did not have to be a rabbit.

ysabetwordsmith

We went up to Champaign-Urbana today.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Before plants or animals, fungi conquered Earth’s surface

Fungi were Earth’s first ecosystem engineers, thriving long before plants ever took root.

Fungi’s evolutionary roots stretch far deeper than once believed — up to 1.4 billion years ago, long before plants or animals appeared. Using advanced molecular dating and gene transfer analysis, researchers reconstructed fungi’s ancient lineage, revealing they were crucial in shaping Earth’s first soils and ecosystems.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and cool.

I haven't fed the birds yet, but we heard a great horned owl hoo-hooing out in our yard! :D That's awesome. I don't think we've had one since a few years back when an owl and several crows fought over the yard for the whole summer.

EDIT 10/28/25 -- I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, possibly goldfinches.

I put out water for the birds.

It's spitting rain.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Unraveling the Drama Between Hank Green and the Knitting Community

Hank Green has been a knotty boy. One of the latest episodes of his YouTube show, SciShow, is all about knitting and how science is elevating the lowly craft to a place of actual importance. You know who finds that take distasteful? Knitters.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

asakiyume

Wherein I manage to answer every question with a No, I don't have one of these, but how about this tangentially related answer? (Via

sovay and

osprey_archer)

1. Lust, books I want to read for their cover.

There aren't any of these right now, but back when I was a kid, I picked up Patricia McKillup's The Forgotten Beasts of Eld because of this cover. I loved the evening sunset glow of it, very Maxfield Parrish-esque.

2. Pride, challenging books I finished.

When we're talking about reading for pleasure, I'm pretty much of a quitter when the going gets tough, so I can't really say there are any of these. Maybe reading the Portuguese version of Ideas to Postpone the End of the World (Ideias para apiar o fim do mundo), but see, then it's not entirely pleasure reading; it's partly language practice. And it's a very short book, so...

There are books that have lingered in my currently-reading pile pretty much untouched, and it's not that they're super challenging, they just take more commitment than I can often muster, e.g., Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons, which I want to read for the information, and it's engagingly written, just .... for pleasure I'd rather read other stuff.

3. Gluttony, books I've read more than once.

I did this a LOT as a kid, but I haven't as an adult (except for, e.g., reading childhood faves to my own kids). Instead what I do is reread particular sections or passages that I love, but honestly, I don't even do that very often; mostly it happens when I want to share something with someone. This happened recently with Susanna Clarke's Piranesi, for example.

4. Sloth, books that have been longest on my to-read list.

I put things on my to-read list with thoughtless abandon; I don't even know what-all is on my list, and often they're things I'm only vaguely curious about. A bigger sign of sloth is the books I start and don't finish, like Governing the Commons, noted above. Or Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass, which I think is beautiful in its moment-by-moment observations (some of which jump vividly to mind when I type this), but which, overall, I have a terrible time sitting down to read.

5. Greed, books I own multiple editions of.

I only own multiple editions of stuff I used when I was teaching in the jail, and I've been thinning those out (but e.g., I had multiple editions of Esmeralda Santiago's When I was Puerto Rican).

6. Wrath, books I despised.

Books I take a deep hate to I generally don't finish, but there are books that ticked me off mightily in some aspect or other, even if I didn't overall despise them. The focus on the technology of writing as a sign of cultural advancement that was present in Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea annoyed me big time, though there were other elements in the book that I thought were very cool, very thoughtful. I have an outsized, probably unfair dislike of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers, very it's-not-you-it's-me thing (except that the dislike is large enough that I find myself whispering, But maybe it's a little bit you, actually)

7. Envy, books I want to live in.

I don't want to live in any books right now.

As a kid, I tried to get to lots of fantasy lands (the ol' walk-into-a-closet thing, because as an American kid I didn't even properly know what a wardrobe was: in our house, winter coats were in a closet), and I played that I was part of lots of others. But probably the ones I wanted to live in most were Zilpha Keatley Snyder's Greensky books. I wanted to glide from bough to bough of giant trees with the aid of a shuba and low gravity, have a life full of songs and dancing to defuse personal tensions, not to mention psychic powers and an overall jungle environment.

mallorys_camera

Met up with my beloved Barbara at the Gardiner Bakehouse yesterday.

The beautiful Aemilia, fashion maven & Barbara's daughter, is marrying a man who grew up in High Falls, so Barbara has reasons to visit this part of the country periodically.

We talked politics for three hours.

Or rather—not politics but the culture wars around those politics.

Resolved: Why did people vote for Trump when it was clearly not in their best economic interests to vote for Trump?

"It's the trans sports issue," I said. "Time and time again, that's what I heard when I was out canvassing people with Trump banners in their yards. I don't want my little Brittney to have to play volleyball against boys."

"Well, but I mean, there was just as much opposition against same-sex marriage initially, wasn't there?" Barbara said. "And people came around."

"People came around because of media representation," I said. "Specifically, network TV shows with mainstream audiences like Will & Grace and Modern Family. I can think of a handful of shows with trans characters. Orange is the New Black. Transparent. Euphoria. But they weren't shows aimed at the mainstream."

Afterward, I drove her back halfway up the Shawangunk ridge over the remotest back roads you can possibly imagine to her future co-in-laws' place on six acres of dense forest along the edge of an abandoned quarry overlooking the long-defunct D&H canal.

Why do every single one of these remote country houses seem to have a derelict bathtub on the premises?

Barbara has some issues with Dylan's mother, a very smart, fast-talking Dominican who never shuts up. I could see how this could be utterly exhausting on any kind of long-term basis—literally! Christi barely pauses for breath!—but I really liked Christi for the hour or so we spent talking and moreover, I felt immensely sorry for her; she must feel even more isolated and alienated than I feel here in Trumplandia. If you didn't have to organize an expedition every time you went to her house, I would consider making Christi my new BFF.

Barbara & Christi told me the structure below was once some sort of a silo.

But I could see right away that it was a kiln. You don't make silos out of heat-resistant tiles, and besides: There have never been corn fields around here. No doubt the kiln was used by the house's previous owners to bake bricks out of pulverized stone mined from the abandoned quarry. Cement-making and brick-making were the two big industries in this part of the world right up through the 1970s.

From remotest, most rugged Ulster County, I had to traipse out to deepest, darkest Middletown Mall-World to get the PTIN # that will allow me to prepare taxes for money—Soulless Tax Company paid the fee—which depressed me so much I could barely function for the rest of the evening.

Soulless Tax Company's rented premises were right next door to a check-cashing operation, which tells you everything you need to know about that.

What have I gotten myself into?

But if I don't like it, I can quit, right?

ysabetwordsmith

Hidden 5-mile wide asteroid crater beneath the Atlantic revealed in stunning 3D

A massive crater hidden beneath the Atlantic seafloor has been confirmed as the result of an asteroid strike from 66 million years ago. The new 3D seismic data reveals astonishing details about the violent minutes following impact—towering tsunamis, liquefied rock, and shifting seabeds. Researchers call it a once-in-a-lifetime look at how oceanic impacts unfold.

Current Mood: busy

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This Is The First Thing by Philip Larkin

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