Or, anyway, I glanced at the headlines and oh fuck no. Can I just go back to bed, and somebody wake me when things improve?
My right knee is healing, and stretching worked significantly better than yesterday. I even did a few carefully selected PT exercises this afternoon.
I can do more things standing up, and walking around the apartment is easier. However, I seem to have been leaning too much on the other leg, because my left knee started to hurt earlier. Not badly, but enough that I am putting the cane aside for the moment.
I can do more things standing up, and walking around the apartment is easier. However, I seem to have been leaning too much on the other leg, because my left knee started to hurt earlier. Not badly, but enough that I am putting the cane aside for the moment.
I swung by Old Goat Books to pick up a book I ordered, which meant I was in the right place at the right time hear the confused customer next to me ask "What's speculative fiction?" Which, after I explained what it meant, was followed by the question. "Do you know anything about Andre Norton?"
It was only with great effort that I resisted shouting "BEHOLD! I AM Marshall McLuhan" before helping.
It was only with great effort that I resisted shouting "BEHOLD! I AM Marshall McLuhan" before helping.
In walking our dog L. we occasionally meet other friendly dogs. It has been interesting for me to observe that many dogs appear to know the rules of a game. Each round has them bring their faces near to each other and pause (tail probably wagging) then they both dart apart and run around or chase a bit before starting the next round. It appears to be very good fun.
A decrepit fleet sails from Germany to play its role in a futile war, crewed by sailors who seem more eager to kill each other than the perfidious Australians.
The Heirs of Babylon by Glen Cook
Fic bundle (ParaKiss, JJK, SB69, :REverSAL, Yatamomo)
2025-06-08 12:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thepasteldyke posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
anime_mangaI keep forgetting to crosspost, and I don't want to spam, but I also don't want to make the post overly long, so I'm using a table to minimize the length.
| Title: Amber, like the colour of her eyes Fandom: Paradise Kiss Pairing: Hayasaka Yukari/Sakurada Miwako Rating: G Word Count: 511 Summary: Yukari didn't realise her eyes would become an integral part of Miwako's latest creation. dreamwidth, AO3, website | Title: The final beep. Fandom: Jujutsu Kaisen Pairing: n/a, Satoru & Shoko friendship fic Rating: G Word Count: 492 Summary: Satoru's tamagotchi dies. It's more painful than he expected. dreamwidth, AO3, website |
| Title: And the cherry blossoms bloom Fandom: Show By Rock!! Pairing: Sumomone/Uiui Rating: G Word Count: 344 Summary: Sumomone catches Rararin talking to a cute girl she's never met before. dreamwidth, AO3, website | Title: Hikkoshi Soba Fandom: Show By Rock!! Pairing: Sumomone/Uiui Rating: T Word Count: 453 Summary: Sumomone and Uiui finally get an apartment of their very own. dreamwidth, AO3, website |
| Title: She took my heart and my number Fandom: :REverSAL Pairing: Koizumi Ayame/Matsuyuki Ayame Rating: T Word Count: 765 Summary: Ayame is talked into going to a Halloween party at a club for the first time, and she manages to get Ayame-han and Takayuki to come with her. She didn't expect the emotions it would cause her. dreamwidth, AO3, website | Title: Don't wait for the tide just to dip both your feet in Fandom: Yatamomo Pairing: Yata/Momo Rating: M Word Count: 1166 Warnings: *Referenced Underage Prostitution, Referenced Rape/Non-con, Trauma, Asphyxiation* Summary: Yata takes Momo to the beach so Momo can finally learn how to swim. Not everything goes quite as planned. dreamwidth, AO3, website |
Having been made redundant from my fully remote job, I am starting a new job that has me on-site in Edinburgh twice per week. In looking into how to make this a cost-effective habit, first I thought of railcards but there don't seem to be any that apply. Fortunately, there are
Among the flexible tickets, the two obvious kinds appear to be from ScotRail which would cost me around £22 per day and allow me to travel on all the relevant trains, and from CrossCountry which for around £15 per day allow me to travel on only their trains which are the minority, only a couple of plausible ones each day either way. We need to save money where we can but the latter option has me arriving back into Glasgow at 21.22 at the earliest.
I didn't discover the cheaper option until after I had bought the other, at least for the initial period. After I learn more about the peak-time trains and the culture in the office, I can look into limiting which trains I may take. Perhaps a couple of longer workdays each week will make sense.
Having transcribed the timetable into LibreOffice Calc and tried some sorts, it seems to me that Central Station has those couple of useful CrossCountry trains which take at least an hour, plus some ScotRail services that take rather longer still. Queen Street station is further from me on foot, easy by subway though, and offers only ScotRail services that run frequently and take less than an hour but are anecdotally rather busy.
flexiticket bundles that are useful for people taking a few trips within a longer period, which seem to be the best option.
Among the flexible tickets, the two obvious kinds appear to be from ScotRail which would cost me around £22 per day and allow me to travel on all the relevant trains, and from CrossCountry which for around £15 per day allow me to travel on only their trains which are the minority, only a couple of plausible ones each day either way. We need to save money where we can but the latter option has me arriving back into Glasgow at 21.22 at the earliest.
I didn't discover the cheaper option until after I had bought the other, at least for the initial period. After I learn more about the peak-time trains and the culture in the office, I can look into limiting which trains I may take. Perhaps a couple of longer workdays each week will make sense.
Having transcribed the timetable into LibreOffice Calc and tried some sorts, it seems to me that Central Station has those couple of useful CrossCountry trains which take at least an hour, plus some ScotRail services that take rather longer still. Queen Street station is further from me on foot, easy by subway though, and offers only ScotRail services that run frequently and take less than an hour but are anecdotally rather busy.
Best Novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia UK)
Best Novella: The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock)
Best Novelette: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being, A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24)
Short Story: Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24)
Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction: The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts, Vanessa Ricci-Thode (self-published)
Best Game Writing: A Death in Hyperspace, Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Infomancy.net)
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Dune: Part Two by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Warner Bros)
Kevin O'Donnell, Jr Special Service Award: C.J. Lavigne
Best Novella: The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock)
Best Novelette: Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being, A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24)
Short Story: Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24)
Andre Norton Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction: The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts, Vanessa Ricci-Thode (self-published)
Best Game Writing: A Death in Hyperspace, Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Infomancy.net)
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Dune: Part Two by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Warner Bros)
Kevin O'Donnell, Jr Special Service Award: C.J. Lavigne
A shocking number of people will blithely tell us all about the book they read, in English, on an English-language subreddit, and never tell us that they didn't read it in English. I can only catch so many of them - if they don't say "English isn't my first language" or make any obvious foreign language errors then I'll never know. (Some of them say "I read this in my own language" and then don't tell us what that language was.)
Most of these people, if prompted, will tell you what language they read it in. Three times now, I've had to ask twice because they refused to answer the question in a useful way, and every time that person has been Greek.
I thought it was a little funny the second time, but three times is the start of a worrying pattern, especially as it's not at all the most popular not-English language posted there. Maybe there's something going badly wrong with their school system?
(And, sidenote, even if you're certain it was translated from English you still ought to tell us the language it was written in. At least in theory this can help us weed out false positives, although I may be expecting too much of fellow commenters to that subreddit.)
***************
( Read more... )
Most of these people, if prompted, will tell you what language they read it in. Three times now, I've had to ask twice because they refused to answer the question in a useful way, and every time that person has been Greek.
I thought it was a little funny the second time, but three times is the start of a worrying pattern, especially as it's not at all the most popular not-English language posted there. Maybe there's something going badly wrong with their school system?
(And, sidenote, even if you're certain it was translated from English you still ought to tell us the language it was written in. At least in theory this can help us weed out false positives, although I may be expecting too much of fellow commenters to that subreddit.)
( Read more... )
Author: dr_zook
Fandom: Wild Adapter (manga)
Characters: Kubota Makoto, Tokito Minoru
Rating: Teen & Mature, m/m
Word count: 1,307 & 1,480
Notes: Two years ago I wrote a fic for Yuletide and promised my beta reader a raunchy sequel, so here we go.
Read them over at AO3! And/or chat me up at my DW. :D
hide the fuel that's gathered here is set right after their escape in vol. 6! Click the link for further notes and tags.
Soaked in Fire Two Paths Collide is the promised raunchy coda for above fic. Things are heating up here. ;)
dr_zookFandom: Wild Adapter (manga)
Characters: Kubota Makoto, Tokito Minoru
Rating: Teen & Mature, m/m
Word count: 1,307 & 1,480
Notes: Two years ago I wrote a fic for Yuletide and promised my beta reader a raunchy sequel, so here we go.
Read them over at AO3! And/or chat me up at my DW. :D
hide the fuel that's gathered here is set right after their escape in vol. 6! Click the link for further notes and tags.
Soaked in Fire Two Paths Collide is the promised raunchy coda for above fic. Things are heating up here. ;)
Swimming Upstream Into the Mouth of a Bear [Death Note]
2025-06-07 12:26pastelpom posting in anime_mangaFandom: Death Note
Author/Artist: pastelpom
Title: Swimming Upstream Into the Mouth of a Bear
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,346
Highlight for Warnings: *Suicide mention, death, canon typical misogyny, etc*
Disclaimer: This is a fanwork, I do not own the characters and no profit has been made from this work
Summary:
The world was not built for you. The world does nothing to accommodate you. Think of yourself like an insect evolved to resist pesticide - you grow in spite of, not because of, the narrative of the world. God's mighty hand inks you in the same way he would an extra in a crowd shot. Fuzzy, indistinct, vague.
You are tired of it.
Why not try something new?
A/N: a little meta thing about misa becoming aware of her place in the narrative :3 still tweaking things here and there but overall im happy with it!
AO3 Link
Author/Artist: pastelpom
Title: Swimming Upstream Into the Mouth of a Bear
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,346
Highlight for Warnings: *Suicide mention, death, canon typical misogyny, etc*
Disclaimer: This is a fanwork, I do not own the characters and no profit has been made from this work
Summary:
The world was not built for you. The world does nothing to accommodate you. Think of yourself like an insect evolved to resist pesticide - you grow in spite of, not because of, the narrative of the world. God's mighty hand inks you in the same way he would an extra in a crowd shot. Fuzzy, indistinct, vague.
You are tired of it.
Why not try something new?
A/N: a little meta thing about misa becoming aware of her place in the narrative :3 still tweaking things here and there but overall im happy with it!
AO3 Link
I've been thinking about AI a lot this week, in particular this hilarious take on OpenAI's approach to AI development, "If OpenAI Made Black Holes" and the AI 2027 scenario (including this very good video summary).
Still trying to make more of AI coding tools in my job. Those can be a real boost to productivity. These models aren't the best software engineers, a bit stumble-y, but they're very, very versatile, and they can write fast. It's impressive, and unsettling. As Cory Doctorow notes, It's not about whether AI can do your job per se.
Work's been chaotic, I'm moving on to fifth manager since 2022 since ours is changing teams. This was my first time reporting to someone less senior than myself in terms of span on company, team, and career, but two of my previous three managers have been less senior in some of those metrics. I'm a little fish in a big pond, struggling, even thinking this means I'm not cut out for it.
I've started playing Patrick's Parabox a mind-bending block-pushing puzzle game. Great so far. Reminds me of Baba is You, in that it's a block-pushing puzzle game with a twist: In Baba is You the rules of the game are also blocks, in Patrick's Parabox the rooms of the puzzle are blocks.
Still trying to make more of AI coding tools in my job. Those can be a real boost to productivity. These models aren't the best software engineers, a bit stumble-y, but they're very, very versatile, and they can write fast. It's impressive, and unsettling. As Cory Doctorow notes, It's not about whether AI can do your job per se.
Work's been chaotic, I'm moving on to fifth manager since 2022 since ours is changing teams. This was my first time reporting to someone less senior than myself in terms of span on company, team, and career, but two of my previous three managers have been less senior in some of those metrics. I'm a little fish in a big pond, struggling, even thinking this means I'm not cut out for it.
I've started playing Patrick's Parabox a mind-bending block-pushing puzzle game. Great so far. Reminds me of Baba is You, in that it's a block-pushing puzzle game with a twist: In Baba is You the rules of the game are also blocks, in Patrick's Parabox the rooms of the puzzle are blocks.
OVFF has a new hotel: the Airport Marriott Hotel in Columbus. They say room rates and a reservation code will be available soon.
Somehow our house looks more chaotic and full of half-filled bags and boxes as we prepare for a week long vacation to the northwoods. ONE WEEK! You'd think we were packing to move out!
The thing about the place we're headed is that the closest town with a grocery store is twenty minutes down the Gunflint Trail. I mean, I will drive twenty minutes to a store around here. Maybe because we're surrounded by TREES, twenty minutes away feels so much further when we're up north. Half of what we're bringing is food. Almost none of which will be returning with us.
Despite all this, I'm really looking forwrard to the vacation. There is limited wireless, but I usually get up early and make the hike to the Lodge with my computer and spend an hour or so making sure I'm not missing out on any earth-shattering news. So, I'm still reachable, just... only once a day. I'm going to try to post pictures and such--you know, actually keep up with this blog for once!
The thing about the place we're headed is that the closest town with a grocery store is twenty minutes down the Gunflint Trail. I mean, I will drive twenty minutes to a store around here. Maybe because we're surrounded by TREES, twenty minutes away feels so much further when we're up north. Half of what we're bringing is food. Almost none of which will be returning with us.
Despite all this, I'm really looking forwrard to the vacation. There is limited wireless, but I usually get up early and make the hike to the Lodge with my computer and spend an hour or so making sure I'm not missing out on any earth-shattering news. So, I'm still reachable, just... only once a day. I'm going to try to post pictures and such--you know, actually keep up with this blog for once!
A foundling boy raised by a great snake becomes intrigued by a reclusive calligrapher living near the river snake and boy call home.
Numamushi by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh
We had a *weird* power outage today: most but not all of the apartment lost power. Mercifully, we did not lose power to the study, where I've been sitting quietly in the air conditioning all day (the high was 35C/95F). Our first thought was that something weird had happened to our apartment's power. Cattitude spent some time on the phone with the management company, which sent a technician. The technician looked things over and told us to call Eversource.
Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.
I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.
* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.
Some piece of their equipment broke, leaving 37 customers without power, according to the outage map, including us and our upstairs neighbors who also had power in part of each apartment. It took them several hours to fix, but fortunately we got our lights back before it was entirely dark out. The oddest-feeling bit of this was realizing that I could plug my phone in to charge, in the middle of a power outage.
I have been doing almost nothing today, to avoid straining my knee*. It's feel better now than last night, but still not great, and I'm having trouble using the quad cane correctly: even moving slowly, my foot and the cane are landing with one an inch or so ahead of the other (sometimes the foot is forward, sometimes it's behind). Tomorrow is supposed to be a lot cooler, but I'm still planning to stay home, and hopefully do some stretching.
* Yes, I buried the lede in yesterday's post, because the googly-eyed train was more interesting.
I had plans for my first free evening this week, but then got distracted and lost an hour and a half somewhere. It's weird how often that happens. Catching up with the washing up will just have to wait for tomorrow (...or some later date).
A parcel arrived today! I ordered some of the Diana Wynne Jones books I didn't already have; I have most of them already, but decided it was time to fill in the gaps, so I expect I'll be re-reading these this month. I need to catch up with my booklog; I've only read about a dozen books in the last two months, so it shouldn't take all that long, but I keep getting distracted.
I watched the funeral of one of my primary school classmates on Tuesday; it feels very strange for someone I remember as an eleven-year-old to be dead. Having said that, it wasn't any kind of surprise; he had a horrible genetic condition and had spent the last decade in a care home, and at that he outlived his two younger brothers by nearly a quarter of a century. Some people just get a really raw deal. We were never close, but it's impossible not to feel the unfairness of it - especially for his parents, who brought up four children knowing that three of them were unlikely to make it much past puberty. You know these things happen to people, but it's harder to accept when you see them in your own community.
And now I need to go and assemble tomorrow's sandwiches and go to bed at a reasonable hour. The swimming crew are going for coffee tomorrow, so I definitely can't be late!
A parcel arrived today! I ordered some of the Diana Wynne Jones books I didn't already have; I have most of them already, but decided it was time to fill in the gaps, so I expect I'll be re-reading these this month. I need to catch up with my booklog; I've only read about a dozen books in the last two months, so it shouldn't take all that long, but I keep getting distracted.
I watched the funeral of one of my primary school classmates on Tuesday; it feels very strange for someone I remember as an eleven-year-old to be dead. Having said that, it wasn't any kind of surprise; he had a horrible genetic condition and had spent the last decade in a care home, and at that he outlived his two younger brothers by nearly a quarter of a century. Some people just get a really raw deal. We were never close, but it's impossible not to feel the unfairness of it - especially for his parents, who brought up four children knowing that three of them were unlikely to make it much past puberty. You know these things happen to people, but it's harder to accept when you see them in your own community.
And now I need to go and assemble tomorrow's sandwiches and go to bed at a reasonable hour. The swimming crew are going for coffee tomorrow, so I definitely can't be late!