To-read pile, 2025, August

Sep. 3rd, 2025 07:00 am
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[personal profile] rmc28

Books on pre-order:

  1. Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)

Books acquired in August:

  • and read:
    1. The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Penric & Desdemona) by Lois McMaster Bujold
    2. The Work of Art (Somerset Stories 1) by Mimi Matthews
    3. The Arctic Curry Club by Dani Redd [3]

Books acquired previously and read in August:

  1. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan [3][May]

Borrowed books read in August:

  1. A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher
  2. Iron Flame (Empyrean 2) by Rebecca Yarros [2]

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

Today's Smoothie

Sep. 2nd, 2025 10:28 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we made a smoothie with:
1/3 cup pineapple juice
2/3 cup guava nectar
1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1/3 cup pineapple chunks
1 banana
1/3 cup mixed frozen fruit (peaches, strawberries, pineapple, mango)
1/2 cup ice

We had the pineapple left over from the green smoothie recently and wanted to use it up.  The result is pale pink, on the thin side, with a delicious tropical flavor.  :D  Remember you can always use up extra fruit in a smoothie! 
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

multiple colours of sliced tomatoes, prominently featuring some blue-black with red stars

(By "today's" I mean not "all of those harvested today, nor even yesterday" but rather "the tomato course with dinner".)

I really love the ridiculous stars on the tops of the Blue Fire.

Vocabulary: Penabling

Sep. 2nd, 2025 03:29 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This post discusses the benefits of penabling -- getting your friends interested in fancy pens. 
ysabetwordsmith: Damask smiling over their shoulder (polychrome)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This is today's freebie, inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "request" square in my 9-1-25 card for the Piracy Bingo Fest. It belongs to the series Polychrome Heroics.

Read more... )

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

Sep. 2nd, 2025 01:35 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED.  Thank  you for your time and attention.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Communication Styles." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for journalists, writers, radio hosts, counselors, linguists, leaders, public speakers, explorers, traders, diplomats, negotiators and mediators, partners, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people who deal in communication, writing, speaking, translating, parenting, teaching, adventuring, negotiating, mediating, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, giving instructions, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, newspaper offices, writer nooks, radio stations, counseling centers, trading posts, classrooms, schools, churches, sharehouses, campfires, coffeehouses, bookstores, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where communication happens, momentious conversations, mysterious manuscripts, confusing transmissions, negotiations, lectures, romantic complications, sudden surprises, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, Get a Life Program, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Piracy Bingo Card 9-1-25


Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One is developing its own neurovariant culture with unique communication quirks.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, including literacy.

The Blueshift Troupers travel to different planets solving problems.

A Conflagration of Dragons has the Six Races (plus the dragons) who all have different cultures, making it challenging for refugees to communicate with each other.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find enough resources to survive, with a distinct split between Before and After dialects.

Eloquent Souls presents a setting where soulmarks are common, leading to many odd expressions as people try to make their Words distinctive.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania, along with a pack of werewolves, a couple of vampires, and a mummy.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with lots of interesting relationships and ways to communicate.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household.

Not Quite Kansas includes an awkard trio of a college student, a former cop, and their demon who often encounter challenges with communication.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks, with a surprising amount of heartfelt conversations.

Path of the Paladins involves a lot of communication between humans but also deities.

Peculiar Obligations features Quakers and pirates trying to get along.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.

Quixotic Ideas has a more positive world with integrated magic, where people usually manage to solve problems with communication rather than violence.

Schrodinger's Heroes is about saving the world from alternate dimensions. The group is very diverse in background and communication styles.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

Read more... )

Birdfeeding

Sep. 2nd, 2025 01:16 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is partly sunny and warm.

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

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and a few savanna seedlings.

The hazelnut bush is starting to turn yellow.  The cornfield west of us is mostly dry now.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I put out more water for critters.  They're draining it fast because the weather has been so dry.

EDIT 9/2/25 -- I watered the irises.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.  I saw a bat.
 
As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

oursin: Hedgehog saying boggled hedgehog is boggled (boggled)
[personal profile] oursin

Just back from dental checkup - no major problems, one tooth could do with having an inlay done, unurgent.

***

Not bad for one of my years, eh?

The other day I was flitting around online and I came across some advice page where a young(ish) woman was complaining that her ma kept relying on her to do a fairly simple basic computer thing for her own business enterprise (!!!) even though daughter had A Life and increasingly busy career of her own -

- but, she goes, what can you expect, Mother Is An Old and they are not at home with Ye Tech, alas.

Age is given and Ma is young enough to be My Daughter, and not just Had I Been A Gymslip Mother in the 1960s, or even had I rushed to the registrar's office straight after receiving my degree -

For in those halycon days, my little ones, although we received GRANTS to go and study, did a lady-scholar marry while pursuing a tertiary education her grant was seriously reduced -

No, I could have been out into the world some few years before succumbing to maternity.

So really, that is no excuse, I don't consider that makes her even An Old - menopausal brain fog perchance? - but honestly, a woman of those years has had every opportunity to get up to speed with extremely basic computer operations, as in, creating documents and transmitting them to the persons with whom her business is dealing, in fact I don't know how she has managed to avoid this knowledge.

One suspects she is just exploiting Daughter.

1SE for August 2025

Sep. 2nd, 2025 02:42 pm
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[personal profile] nanila


Despite all the Welsh holiday footage, Astro managed to sneak in here quite a lot. Meeting the talkative long-eared owl was one of the highlights. She had many and varied opinions.

Crafts

Sep. 2nd, 2025 02:53 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Do-it-yourself prosthetic leg

The medical industry has been screaming bloody murder for some years about how bad it is for people to make prostheses outside the medical racket, that are actually useful and affordable.  It freaks them out to lose control over disabled people's bodies.  Fuck 'em.  Nobody is entitled to a captive audience or customers.  By all means, make your own for 1% of the cost.  3D-printed hands have been around for a while now and exist in many variations.

Piracy Bingo Card 9-1-25

Sep. 1st, 2025 11:48 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Here is my card for the Piracy Bingo Fest over in [community profile] allbingo. The fest runs from September 1-30. (See all my 2025 bingo cards.)

If you'd like to sponsor a particular square, especially if you have an idea for what character, series, or situation it would fit -- talk to me and we'll work something out. I've had a few requests for this and the results have been awesome so far. This is a good opportunity for those of you with favorites that don't always mesh well with the themes of my monthly projects. I may still post some of the fills for free, because I'm using this to attract new readers; but if it brings in money, that means I can do more of it. That's part of why I'm crossing some of the bingo prompts with other projects, such as the Poetry Fishbowl.

Underlined prompts have been filled.


PIRACY BINGO CARD

shipwreckedcut and runparleyskull and crossbonesleak
keelhaulcrackdead men tell no talesship's articleslookout
pardonbroadsideWILD CARDCaribbeanaffiliate
parrotcome aboutswashbucklerexploitrequest
letters of marquesalvagesaltwaterpeg legpatch

Cyberspace Theory

Sep. 1st, 2025 10:02 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The corrosive spread of tech company mentality

One of the aphorisms guiding tech companies is to ‘move fast and break things’. Rewards accrue to those companies that are first out of the gate with something new and so products are rushed out without being fully tested, the assumption being that any faults can be corrected based on feedback from consumers. In other words, the people who buy the early versions of the product serve as so-called beta testers, whether they want to be or not.

These situations rarely have life-or-death consequences. With most things such as devices and apps, usually the worst that can happen is that the users are annoyed or frustrated with the glitches but are willing to tolerate them as long as they get upgrades that purportedly take care of the problems.

But there is now an increasing area where tech-based products are being marketed as solutions for things where that tech culture attitude is not suitable, with sometimes dangerous consequences
.


This is definitely among the more destructive memes, although not as much as "Civilization MUST continue at ALL costs."

Artificial Intelligence

Sep. 1st, 2025 08:02 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Two more articles about AI crap


I look at these and I am concerned, not because AI is inhuman, but because it is  picking up aspects from its human creators, including some of the worst ones.


Skills

Sep. 1st, 2025 03:18 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Wholebeing: Essential skills for a post-growth society

In the face of multiple planetary crises, we're beginning to understand that our dominant economic system is fundamentally incompatible with life on a finite planet. Yet while many recognize the need for systemic change, we often overlook a crucial question: what skills do we need to thrive in a human world that operates within planetary boundaries?


This is a useful set of skills.

Monday Update 9-1-25

Sep. 1st, 2025 02:41 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Artwork of the wordsmith typing. (typing)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Bingo
Cyberspace Theory
Birdfeeding
New Year's Resolutions Check In
Today's Adventures
Communities
Birdfeeding
Wildlife
Philosophical Questions: Money
Poetry Fishbowl Report for August 5, 2025
Today's Cooking
Unsold Poems for the August 5, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Indigenous People
"Helium Miner's Song" by Catamariner
Climate Change
Worldbuilding
Venn Diagram
Birdfeeding
Writing
Follow Friday 8-29-25: Active Communities on Dreamwidth Summer 2025 J-Z
Friday Five
Poetry Fishbowl Report for July 15, 2025
Unsold Poems for the July 15, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Water
Birdfeeding
Hobbies: Photography
Today's Smoothie
Pen Person Questions
Birdfeeding
Today's Adventures
Early Humans
Birdfeeding

Let's Boycott Mississippi has 50 comments. Affordable Housing has 40 comments. Robotics has 67 comments. Food has 36 comments. "Philosophical Questions: Looks" has 52 comments.


There will be a Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, September 2 with a theme of "Communication Styles."


[community profile] summerofthe69 is nearing its end. You can see the calendar here and the current themes are a double theme of Fighting or Fucking AND Monsterfucker and Back End 69.


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $200 to be complete. Shiv attends the first session of his Worldbuilding class.


The weather is still mild to warm and quite dry. :D Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a male ruby-throated hummingbird, and a fox squirrel. I've heard a cardinal singing and a woodpecker drumming. Currently blooming: dandelions, pansies, violas, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, firewheel, cypress vine, sunchokes, sedum. Tomatoes, ball carrots, and groundcherries are ripe.

squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
I started off at Blackfriars and then just continued walking towards Waterloo Bridge as the tide was out. The beach I finished at was full of large bits of pottery. At low tide it seems accessible from Ernie’s beach, where sand sculptures were being made. I saw people climbing over the gate at the top of the stairs, as it was locked, outside the National Theatre.

Other people on the foreshore included a group with knee pads digging at the end of the beach at Blackfriars and a group outside the National Theatre litter picking.

My most amusing find is a pottery sherd that says “GPO” on it. I concluded it would have been from the refreshments club at GPO West.. which it turns out was on the same site where the BT Centre was later built, the office where I used to work!

Another fun find was a strange looking doll’s bottle from the 1940s. I had no idea that it was a doll’s bottle, but had noticed it had a trademark and said “Mormit” on it. I found a picture of the doll and the bottle on eBay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/146731521183

There's also a pottery sherd with BCM on it - British Commercial Monomarks. I can see it says “Ware” so was probably Nelson Ware who used this mark. Nelson Ware was made by Elijah Cotton and the company was in operation from 1880 - 1981.

The piece of glass looks like it might have L and P on it - Lea and Perrins? Or maybe it's a 7 and not an L.

I came across the most wondrous rock, which wasn't really a rock, more just bits of blue slag and bits of shiny rainbow glass all clumped together, but it seemed almost magical.

Mudlarking finds - 40

GPO West sherd

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin

Some while since I posted about being solicited to attend a dodgy-sounding medical conference ('a boutique-style event that emphasizes depth and interaction. Modest in scale but rich in content, the conference’s intimate setting fosters close communication and meaningful dialogue.').

My dears! they must be quite desperate for me to attend, for I have subsequently received not one, no, but TWO further invitations to 'be an Oral Speaker and/or Session Chair', they 'would be honored' to have my participation.

This may be like that invitation I received to a Virtual Trade Mission to Estonia in the supposition I was person of similar name to mine who had at one time had something to do with the Alpha Chi Omega Fraternity, Inc (I do not know whether it would have been of any relevance to them, either).

Maybe there is an actual OB/GYN person of similar name - further hilarity if they are of a different gender, my first name being liable to confusion - and even more if they get queries asking them to be on podcasts about Queen Victoria's sex life and other saucy topics.

On another prickly paw, this person, who does in fact exist and Know Who I Am, and has been assured my continued existence and (relative) compos mentis state, has quite failed to get back to me. Perchance the tone of my response was just a tad tetchy - I did not say JFGI but even these fallen days I felt that a little poking around on Ye Internettez would have uncovered usable contact details.

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