New Worlds: Responses to Crisis

Aug. 22nd, 2025 05:02 pm
swan_tower: (Default)
[personal profile] swan_tower
This week, the New Worlds Patreon pivots slightly from human migration and cultural contact to the question of how societies respond to crisis -- a question whose list of possible answers unfortunately includes "turn on any perceived outsiders" among its historical and present-day options. Comment over there . . .

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/sLMd43)

Justice in the Dark

Aug. 22nd, 2025 05:36 pm
profiterole_reads: (Nobuta wo Produce - Shuji to Akira)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
The BL c-drama Justice in the Dark was fascinating! Luo Wei Zhao and Pei Su investigate violent crimes together.

I'm used to contemporary fantasy being adapted into sci-fi for censorship reasons, but contemporary crime being turned into sci-fi is new to me. This is based on one of Priest's novels, and very Guardian-coded (also by Priest, but I didn't get this feeling with her other works).

The plot is quite dark, but if you like competency porn, go for it. Despite censorship, the main pairing gave me a lot of feels from episode 13 onwards.

Note that the first 8 episodes, released in 2023, have proper subtitles, but the other ones, finally released this year in Japan, have terrible MTL subs.
minoanmiss: Minoan statuette detail (of a buxom Minoan lady) (Statuette Boobsy)
[personal profile] minoanmiss posting in [community profile] agonyaunt
this one is currently active but I HAD to bring it here. Content advisory: nudity Read more... )
oursin: My photograph of Praire Buoy sculpture, Meadowbrook Park, Urbana, overwritten with Urgent, Phallic Look (urgent phallic)
[personal profile] oursin

Or maybe not.

Only over the past day or two there have been various things on listservs and social media relating to research I have done and published (and not just my research, much lamented Canadian historian in the same area's work) and I realise that this was Back in the Day and maybe it has fallen off the radar.

But how is this thing that this thing is that - I suppose this comes with working in a particularly niche area - that people are not aware of the Horrible Hystorie of the Heinous Synne of Onan?

I am almost tempted to go forth and offer a conference paper WOT.

I'm not sure I have anything in the way of startling new research to offer but a lot of the same anxieties have been popping up again around Precious Bodily Fluids etc.

On another paw somebody was advance-mentioning a book they have coming out and that made me think, though it's not directly related, that there's a piece of research I keep meaning to get back to that's a similar sort of story.

Meanwhile there is something a bit weird going on, I fear, with conference I have been invited to speak at next month, having had rather cryptic message from person who was liaising with me. Shall get on with book reviewing before investing any more energy in paper-prep.

(no subject)

Aug. 22nd, 2025 09:48 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] elisem!
wychwood: Marcus and his pike (B5 - Marcus pikal envy)
[personal profile] wychwood
The weather has abruptly decided that it's autumn. It's still August! It's too early! But schools go back next week, and it's getting dark earlier, and I'm getting up for the office before sunrise now, and while I don't quite believe the person who mentioned that late October is only two months away, we're definitely at the end of the summer now. I very nearly wore a jacket for choir yesterday, and am looking forward to temperatures where I will want it and therefore have access to my many pockets on a regular basis.

For some reason I'm having a bit of a decluttering moment. I was discussing it with some friends this evening, and the other day found myself making a list of things that need decluttering in the longer run so that I stop thinking about them. My space isn't bad, there's not really anything urgent that needs doing, but periodically I remember e.g. the box of random electrical cables under the spare bed and decide yet again that I really ought to do something with them. Maybe it's the change of seasons; I know it's supposed to be a spring thing, but perhaps I'm getting ready to nest for the winter!

And next week I'm on leave again, so perhaps I will do all sorts of exciting domestic things! Or then again, perhaps not. Although I am going to visit [personal profile] toft for an afternoon, which is pretty exciting if not very domestic. Plus the new mattress arrives next Friday. St Augustine's Day on Thursday, Miss H's birthday brunch, a visit to the dental hygienist, choir and SF Readers' Group and singing at St N, it's all go around here.
umadoshi: (Newsflesh - he'll kill you (kasmir))
[personal profile] umadoshi
(I cannot) touch her, make her conscious [Or, the eternal WIP where things go very, very differently near the ending of Feed] (15393 words) by umadoshi
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Newsflesh Series - Mira Grant
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Georgia Mason/Shaun Mason
Characters: Georgia Mason, Shaun Mason, Mahir Gowda
Additional Tags: POV First Person, Adopted Sibling Incest, Canon Divergence, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, incomplete but not a WIP, as finished as it's getting
Summary:

In which Shaun learns something significant late in Feed that he canonically doesn't find out until Deadline, and everything goes very (very, very) differently.



I started writing this canon-divergence AU a looong time ago, and I've likewise known for a long time now that I was never going to finish it--partly because Newsflesh hasn't been my primary fandom for several years, and partly because of how much plotting it was going to take to do it to my satisfaction. This parts ways with the series canon toward the end of Feed, and thus everything that happens to the main characters in Deadline and Blackout would never have happened, but all the political machinations and truths about the virus were still things that would have to be played out and...yeah.

But the emotional arc of this story, most of which I did get written down, is some of my favorite writing I ever did in this fandom; I kinda think that if I'd ever managed to assemble an intact story, it would be among the things I'd be proudest of.

I've decided to post it anyway, because what else would there be to do with it? So this is the heart of it--a bit fractured and strung like beads along a thread of story, but all there. Please ignore any minor wobbliness in the timeline/internal continuity, 'kay? And towards the end, I've left in a few plottier bits to give some idea of where this would have gone as an intact story.

This should make sense if you've only read Feed, but it does include one of the series' largest spoilers and hint at another one (both revealed in Deadline in canon).

And the standard notes: this is unbetaed, and the title comes from Linda Gregg's poem "There She Is".
oursin: Illustration from the Kipling story: mongoose on desk with inkwell and papers (mongoose)
[personal profile] oursin

A few days ago Ask A Manager posted stories of co-workers overstepping their expertise.

And I guess this is not quite the same thing but I had a massive flashback to That Morning of Hours I Will Never Get Back when the whole library staff had a session with an outside consultant.

I am honestly not sure what the rationale was for having us give up an entire morning of our precious closed period - during which we did all - well, seldom actually all, but as many as we could manage - of those essential backroom housekeeping tasks which cannot be undertaken when the place has actual readers coming in and USING THE COLLECTIONS dammit.

Possibly we had either just undergone, or were just about to undergo, one of the restructurings of which I saw many during my years there, distinct from the physical relocation upheavals.

But anyway, consultant.

Had consultant been briefed? Had consultant done any due diligence about what sort of institution this was?

Okay, did know it was a LIBRARY.

Had not the slightest apprehension that this was a world-renowned RESEARCH collection and that, you know, we were not lending out books and stamping them with return dates (I am not sure that this practice, by the date in question, even pertained in public libraries).

We were sitting there cringeing and wincing, wondering when it would all be over.

Were we not very restrained by not going, in huge chorus, in the manner he would doubtless have anticipated we learnt as part of our professional training, SSSSSHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUSSSSHHHHHH!!!!?

Captivated, By You

Aug. 21st, 2025 05:29 pm
profiterole_reads: (Naruto Shippuuden - Sasuke and Naruto)
[personal profile] profiterole_reads
The first episode of Captivated, By You was fun! It's a slice-of-life anime taking place in an all-boys school. As you can guess from the title, there are BL vibes.

It's available on Crunchyroll. It's starting late in the season because there will be only 5 episodes.

(no subject)

Aug. 21st, 2025 09:04 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] kerrypolka!
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished Dragon Harvest.

Read the latest Literary Review.

Read Angela Thirkell, What Did It Mean? (The Barsetshire Novels Book 23) (1954), which, I depose, is the one where Ange, sighing and groaning, realised that she was going to have to write The One About The Coronation, like what everybody else was doing. (The title alludes to a cryptic prophecy by one of the local peasantry.) So there is a fair amount of phoning it in, but on the other hand, some Better Stuff than one might expect for that period of her output.

On the go

And it's back to Lanny: Upton Sinclair, A World to Win (Lanny Budd #7) (1946), in which WW2 is raging but so far, USA is not in it and Our Hero can still pootle about Europe under the guise of being an art expert while mingling in very elevated company indeed.

Up next

Once that is done, I should probably turn my attention to the very different WW2 experience of Nick Jenkins in the next one up for the Dance to the Music of Time book group, The Soldier's Art.

larryhammer: Yotsuba Koiwai running, label: "enjoy everything" (run run run)
[personal profile] larryhammer
Our second car has reached the vehicle life-stage of junker. It’s 28 years old, sun-weathered with a paint job best described as “former,” but even if sold for (increasingly costly) parts it’s worth way less than the cost of repainting it. The roof is rusting, the upholstery is starting to fray, and a couple door latches don’t work from one side or another. Eaglet hates riding in it, partly from embarrassment (see: is twelve) but in all fairness, the never very strong a/c is now so anemic it doesn’t reach the back seat.

So, yeah, old, and honestly not a great car: a Geo Tracker, from the last year Geos were sold before its assets were split between Chevrolet and Suzuki, the companies that collaborated on the models. A cheap ride, from a line with a deserved reputation of being cheaply made. I describe it as a put-put class SUV. Locks and windows are fully manual, as is the conversion between 2- and 4-wheel drive (you have to get out to lock/unlock the wheels). When asked to maintain highway speed on an uphill with the a/c on, it can manage two out of three at best—but it got us through many roads where high clearance 4WH is a hard requirement. We did a lot of back-of-beyond camping out of that car.

Though not these days: it’s nowhere near large enough for three people + gear, and we don’t fully trust it for long distances anyway. Heck, the back row isn’t really big enough for a baby seat, thus the Subaru Forester bought the week before Eaglet’s arrival.

But the thing is, that Tracker still runs. The body is wearing out, but the driving is fine, around the city. We keep expecting it to break down any week now, but it hasn’t, nor has it ever needed repairs more serious than an oil or refrigerant leak. Certainly, our finances would appreciate it holding on for another couple years—and frankly, it just might. For a cheap-in-many-senses thing, it has done remarkably well.

Some sort of metaphoric point could be made from this, but I’ll let others codify exactly what.

---L.

Subject quote from Kiss, Prince and the Revolution.

Reading Wednesday

Aug. 20th, 2025 08:09 am
troisoiseaux: (reading 5)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
Read The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, which is quite fun when approached with the knowledge that this is entirely the author's self-indulgent self-insert time travel AU The Terror fanfiction; I was willing to forgive various things which would annoy or disappoint me in a novel I took more seriously. Like, I cannot emphasize enough that this is a novel in which the protagonist bangs real historical figure Captain Graham Gore (1809-1848) of the HMS Terror (he's been brought to modern-day London through a top secret experiment in time travel! she's his government-assigned guide to the 21st century! they have to live together, for reasons! obviously!) and keeps quoting Tumblr memes and it was on Obama's summer 2024 recommended reading list. Live your dreams, Kaliane Bradley.

(no subject)

Aug. 20th, 2025 09:44 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] gmh and [personal profile] ravurian!

on the approach to this birthday

Aug. 20th, 2025 01:10 am
elisem: (Default)
[personal profile] elisem
 Life is certainly enhanced with the improvement of available captioning in real time through various browsers and software. I want to have virtual tea with so many different people! I can see what they are saying! And it doesn't leave me exhausted the way lip-reading so often does. Maybe making a whole bunch of virtual tea dates will be another set of birthday presents. Things to look forward to. Always good.

Also there needs to be some storytelling. Some virtual storytelling gatherings, I mean. Even more things to look forward to.  In the meantime, I plan to continue enjoying the next few days as we approach Friday, which is the birthday actual.

If anybody wants to do a kind thing, letting people know about my Birthday Month Sale is a very kind thing indeed, and maximizes the amount of good stuff like bill-paying and bead-acquiring that this Lioness is able to do. <3 <3 <3

LionessElise's Birthday Month Sale:
Sale goes all through the month of August. 
As usual, there will be special birthday markdowns on the 22nd.
There will be more markdowns as the month goes on.
Expect the last days to be lively. And the last hours to be very bouncy indeed.
When it's done, anything left goes back to full price.
www.etsy.com/shop/LionessElise

elisem: (Default)
[personal profile] elisem
[Content Notes: this is a discussion of food and eating, and diabetes and new experiences, and I am a recovering eating disorder person. If that's not what you want to read about right now, please skip with my good wishes.]

Since it's that time of the year, I have been ordering a few things, telling myself that I might as well try them for this birthday rather than wait, because the possibilities of various tariffs may put them out of reach in the future.  When I say that the indecision platter is often my favorite thing on the menu, I'm talking about those meals that have samplers of several sort of dish. They are very good for learning about the range of foods sometimes. Also they can be a dopamine hit jackpot, at least for me. (If it's the dopamine that's providing the fun in here, as people who know the recent hypotheses tell me.)

They also save time if I can't make up my mind, which can be handy.

When looking at an unfamiliar menu, do you usually first make note of what you've never had before? Is it even more intriguing if you'd never heard of it before? 

The ordering has been proceeding with perhaps too much vigor, but hey. I have so few wild indulgences left on my to-do list these days, or should I say the can-do list? Probably. But I am doing my best to be sensible. I took the canned haggis off the list because I already know I love haggis. I did not take the little durian cakes off the list because although I already know I love durian, they were just a few dollars and MUST HAVE. (Note to self: ask brother-in-law to scope out CostCo's supply again. A year or two ago they had multipacks of durian mooncakes for ridiculously good prices. Om nom nom.) Some of my favorite drinks are coming (Milkis and San Pellegrino pomegranate/orange drink) because I fully expect tariffs to play hob with their prices. Even now they are a bunch higher than they were, but a person sufficiently motivated can make a melograno/arancia drink be the long-lasting slowly savored high point of their day, which is how I'll be approaching those. 

There are some garlic sable cookies coming. Garlic sable cookies! I have never! I must!  Those are an excellent example of the treasured WTF category. If it makes me immediately ask "Can you DO that??" it's a WTF delight and I want to know what it's like. Or to put it another way, my ignorance has provided endless opportunities for learning, and learning is so often so much fun -- and very tasty.

Part of the reason I'll be savoring things slowly is that I'm adapting to living with type 2 diabetes, which I've been dealing with for a year now. I got really, really lucky and got two excellent things from becoming a Metformin taker. One is an effect, and the other is, I think, a side effect. The effect is that it apparently went and repaired whatever sensor in me has to do with satiation, and tweaked the setting some, so I turn out to be done having food now,, thank you very much, earlier than I historically have been. A lot of this is because -- OK, I don't know if anybody else has this, but I used to do comfort eating, where certain things are very soothing. And that's different now. There is no soothing from food. It was pretty startling when I realized it. It's so weird when suddenly it does not work. I mean, at ALL. So that's one thing, and I think it's an effect.  The other thing is a side effect, but I do not mind it. It is this:  everything tastes wonderful. No, I mean WONDERFUL.  Plastic packet ramen might as well be gourmet. But the effect mentioned earlier holds: I don't feel like overeating. No matter how wonderful. I can go "Oh, that was so good," mean it entirely, and then go do the next thing. 

It is all so very weird. But it's kind of fun. (I appear to have also lost the ability to fret about food or weight or whatever.) We shall see where it leads.

Right now where it's leading is to ordering some birthday treats and then wondering how long they will last under the new schedule of savoring things. (The only thing I have found that I nom more than I want of is Swedish Bubs in pomegranate/strawberry flavor. Well, and those jelly snails. But those are both texture craving things, and that's a different issue.) Neurodiversity and food stuff is complicated even before getting to the land of Metformin. So far, though, it's better rather than not, even the uncomfortable bits where a coping mechanism isn't any more and needs to change. In the meantime, though, I have durian cakes and garlic sables and fruit-juice-filled gumme koi coming, and life is good that way.

Is there a new-to-you thing you have tasted that was a learning experience? Was it a delight? Was it tasty? Do you have texture cravings? Other cravings? Did you ever do comfort eating and then have it stop working for you? What then? (I find myself going to the workbench more. Which is not a bad result, really. Art is also comfort. Still comfort, I guess I should say. Do you have anything like that?)


(no subject)

Aug. 19th, 2025 09:22 pm
skygiants: Lord Yon from Legend of the First King's Four Gods in full regalia; text, 'judging' (judging)
[personal profile] skygiants
The last of the four Hugo Best Novel nominees I read (I did not get around to Service Model or Someone You Can Build A Nest In) was A Sorceress Comes to Call, which ... I think perhaps I have hit the point, officially, at which I've read Too Much Kingfisher; which is not, in the grand scheme of things, that much. But it's enough to identify and be slightly annoyed by repeated patterns, by the type of people who, in a Kingfisher book, are Always Good and Virtuous, and by the type of people who are Not.

A Sorceress Comes to Call is a sort of Regency riff; it's also a bit of a Goose Girl riff, although I have truly no idea what it's trying to say about the original story of the Goose Girl, a fairy tale about which one might have really a lot of things to say. Anyway, the plot involves an evil sorceress with an evil horse (named Falada after the Goose Girl horse) who brings her abused teen daughter along with her in an attempt to seduce a kindly but clueless aristocrat into marriage. The particular method by which the evil sorceress abuses her daughter is striking and terrible, and drawn with skill. Fortunately, the abused teen daughter then bonds with the aristocrat's practical middle-aged spinster sister and her practical middle-aged friends, and learns from them how to be a Practical Heroine in her own right, and they all team up to defeat the evil sorceress mother and her evil horse. The good end happily, and the bad unhappily. At no point is anybody required to feel sympathy for the abusive sorceress mother or the evil horse. If this is the sort of book you like you will probably like this book, and you can stop reading here.

ungenerous readings below )

Letter A, and two questions

Aug. 19th, 2025 08:16 pm
asakiyume: (Iowa Girl)
[personal profile] asakiyume
Spent some time walking along the side of the highway today. I always feel strange and liminal when I do that because it's not something people generally do. The shoulders can be narrow, cars and trucks can be going fast--it's not set up to be walked along. It's a strange sensation to move through space in a way that no one is expecting you to. It can make me feel like I have superpowers: since I'm covering the space at a different speed, from a different vantage point, I'm able to notice things that otherwise don't get seen.

Like today. I discovered this Letter A lying on the shoulder:

Letter A in blue, with a blue border, carved on a piece of wood

It's 3.5 inches by 3.5 inches by 1.25 inches. From the front it looks like a child's alphabet block, but only one face is carved and painted, and it's not a cube. And it's pretty roughly made:

bottom of a block with the letter A on it

a block of wood at an angle so you can see three sides of it

Questions:

What do you think the original purpose or use of this Letter A was?

What, now, should or can the A stand for?

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