alee_grrl | Reading

flareonfury posting in

comicbook_icons

Various Marvel icon dump of various comics/shows/animated/film characters/pairings.

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kaberett

Expanding on one of the things I mentioned yesterday: for Pain Project reasons, I'm interested in knowing what you learned about atoms at school, and roughly what age you were. I'm especially interested in whether (and when) you were exposed to the Bohr model (there's a nucleus, with electrons orbiting around it at fixed distances) and the current consensus model (electron orbitals defined as regions where an electron is most likely to be found).

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sweeticedtea posting in

fandom_icons

Heated Rivalry supporting cast

(160) Scott Hunter
(160) Kip Grady
(85) Svetlana Vetrova
(85) Rose Landry

Scott & Kip & Svetlana & Rose @

sweeticedtea

flareonfury posting in

fandom_icons

Various Marvel icon dump of various comics/shows/animated/film characters/pairings.

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bookblather

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

kaberett

On the one hand, it is sort of obvious why I've decided I want to have another go at working out how Continental knitting works for a project that involves reversible cables and ribbing on DPNs.

On the OTHER, this feels like a bit of a trial-by-fire given that my problem has historically been tension...

flareonfury posting in

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Multiple ships for Round 4 of

ships20in20.

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sooo many ships, so little time....

Fandoms & Ships:
Charmed (Abigael/Mel #6 & AC#2), Heartstopper (Charlie/Nick #7, AC#3 & #4), High Potential (Adam/Morgan catgeory), Grimm (Nick/Adalind #4 & AC#1), MCU (Carol/Yon AC#5), Nancy Drew (Nancy/Ace #1 & #3, Nancy/Ace/Bes #9), Siren (Ben/Ryn #10), Singin' in the Rain (Don/Cosmo/Kathy #2 & #7), X-Men Evolution (Scott/Rogue #4)

kaberett

Celebrating. A's birthday!

Reading. ( Rogerson, Rundell, McGuire, Clarke, Duncan, Scalzi, Hermé )

I also: remain up to date with Dreamwidth; worked through a brief pain management course for Youth, as background reading.

Writing. The Document continues to be expanded a little every day. It is now over 4000 words.

Playing. A bit of The Bridge, "a 2D logic puzzle game that forces the player to reevaluate their preconceptions of physics and perspective", which sounded like it might be about the right speed for me given that we'd just enjoyed playing through the Monument Valley series, and which instead for the most part does not seem to fit into my brain terribly neatly and is also weirdly evocative/reminiscent of Braid (lonely dude in a suit) while also being kinda... gay? possibly? I can't tell yet? Anyway we've played through I think the first four levels and might or might not continue.

We have also engaged in some Spirits -- mostly A playing and me watching, because I am not feeling up to timing problems and having to keep pressing Esc also feels overwhelming, but I have been Providing Commentary and enjoying watching the process of TURNING MUSHROOMS INTO CLOUDS to HELP THE LEAVES GET HOME.

We have also been playing (independently) sudoku, & grousing about each other's incomprehensible approaches to solving things, and then I nerdsniped A with a specific puzzle & they went to look up Theory And Strategy Of Sudoku, and I may yet get around to uh actually looking up the approach named "jellyfish"...

Elsenet vass has introduced me to Squardle.

Cooking. One spice mix, and subsequently one recipe from East featuring a vegetable I think I have not previously consciously eaten (Jerusalem artichokes). Another batch of medlar sticky toffee pudding as A's birthday cake; I think that in fact one cannot tell the difference between medlar that has not been jellied and medlar residue from jellying, at least in this setting. Also, turns out you can successfully add beetroot to the red cabbage and cauliflower udon noodles thing. Oh, and pineapple fried rice, which A had somehow never previously encountered???

Eating. We were both, on Friday, quite tired and sad. The internet brought us Pizza Express. It was good.

Making & mending. I FINISHED A GLOVE. I WOVE IN THE ENDS. Now to cast on glove #2 of that pair...

Growing. Both orchids seem to be putting forth flower stems! And I have sown lemongrass, pineapple physalis, and (not expecting any of these to actually germinate) some lithops I was sent as a gift a while ago...

flareonfury posting in

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The below icons are for

characters20in20 Round 20 with Wanda Maximoff of MCU. Images are mostly from WandaVision, Multiverse of Madness, and Civil War.

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"You break the rules and you become a hero. I do it and I become the enemy. That doesn’t seem fair...."

flareonfury posting in

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The below icons are for

tvmovie20in20 Round 22 with SkyMed (all three seasons).

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At 20,000 feet, the stakes can't get any higher.....

taiga13 posting in

poetry

The cashier at the gas station asks me where I'm from
and when I say Ohio, he says Go buckeyes
which I understand as a stranger offering
language that can be shared. The way starlings
roost on a power line, scooching over
so the other can sit, flocked and fanning
feathers against rain and never in my life
have I seen a football game, but still I reply
Go buckeyes
which is a way of saying: I accept.
I would root with you in imaginary stands.
Cheer at the same time in a darkened bar.
We are more alike than not, us two.
Here, let me shift, shuffle. Shelter a moment
beneath this wing.

Current Mood: contemplative

taiga13 posting in

poetry

For Renee Nicole Good
Killed by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) on January 7, 2026

They say she is no more,
That there her absence roars,
Blood-blown like a rose
Iced wheels flinched & froze.
Now, bare riot of candles,
Dark fury of flowers,
Pure howling of hymns.

If for us she arose,
Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief,
Crouches our power.
The howl where we begin,
Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater
Of the worst of what we've been.

Change is only possible,
& all the greater,
When the labor
& bitter anger of our neighbors
Is moved by the love
& better angels of our nature.

What they call death & void,
We know is breath & voice;
In the end, gorgeously,
Endures our enormity.

You could believe departed to be the dawn
When the blank night has so long stood,
But our bright-fled angels will never fully be gone,
When they forever as so fiercely Good.

wickedgame posting in

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Fandoms: 9-1-1, Cobra Kai, Crazy Handsome Rich, Dead Boy Detectives, Heated Rivalry, Legend of the Seeker, Maxton Hall, Ransom Canyon, Stay By My Side

rest HERE @

mundodefieras

ailelie

I just completed day 4 of the Foundation Light series on Darebee. I did not set out to exercise. I saw a post on tumblr. I got curious and clicked over. I decided to give a day a try because it looked easy. Then I left the tab open.

The page has checkboxes for each day that you can click.

...so why not do day 2?

On day 3, I was like 'I could stop now. One of these days will be the day I stop doing darebee exercises, but not today.'

And today, I did the same.

Am I going to keep this up for the full 30 days of this series? Probably not! I'm terrible at maintaing things.

But...the exercises are easy. I can do them in normal clothes and flats. They don't take a long time. I do Level II. If I ever have a lot of energy, I'll try Level 3. If I'm ever low on energy, I'll do Level 1. I get to check off each day as I go. While I've not used them yet, the series page has embedded timers.

When I don't feel like I have to carve out special time and wear special clothes and watch videos to make sure I'm doing it all right, it is rather easier to do anything.

(In other news, dishes continue being done nightly. I've completed 2 badges (1 badge = 4 weeks of nightly dishes). Once I reach 10 badges, I get something special. Now figuring out 'something special' was tricky because I've learned rewards don't work if they require work. So, instead, I've created a line item in my budget. Every week, I drop in $10. When I reach 10 badges, I will get to empty that line item for whatever I want. It should be about $400, which is a good prize. And $10/week doesn't feel like work or a hard cost at all.)

kaberett

I HAVE FINISHED A GLOVE. Even I wove the ends in! So A now has one (1) glove, only... however long it's been since the 19^th of March 2025... since I cast it on, and hey, maybe I'll even get the second one done inside the year. Maybe.
I have contacted a potential therapist. (I am very annoyed about the therapist who looked extremely promising until I visited their actual website, rather than just their listing on the directory, and discovered the weight loss hypnotherapy offerings. The person I've contacted instead is explicit about HAES.)
In partial reward for same, I have asked Oxfam to send me more books. Most of them are about food; one of them is about pain. (Probably Philosophy Of Pain, rather than my area of interest, and definitely Old, but it was A Landmark In The Field and it was £3.99, so.)
SEEDS arrived, by which I mean oca. V glad I ordered a specific bag of the variety I was most interested in as well as the Mixed Bag, because the variety I was most interested in is not represented in said Mixed Bag. Which is fine, the difference is Largely Colouration Anyway, but oca generally do well for me and they're tasty and they're also very low effort.
I am having a bad brain week, but this evening we got the internet to bring us pizza and we spent a bit of time curled up on the sofa playing two different games, except my brain wasn't really cooperating so mostly A played them and I watched, and between the food and the shared activity and the knitting it's a bit quieter in here now, for which I am very grateful.

jadelennox posting in

poetry

Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
save for the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.

Grant me a no news day,
a spare-me-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all,
except a few hours together
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall.

(source)

primeideal

This year the USA will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. So in that spirit, I read a book published in the year of the 200th anniversary (1976), about the 500th anniversary (2276), by a British guy living in Sri Lanka.

Duncan Makenzie comes from a prominent family on Titan, the hospitable low-gravity moon of Saturn. He gets invited to Earth to give a speech at the quincentennial party. A lot of the book is kind of random worldbuilding speculation about how Titan's hydrogen would contribute to the economy of the solar system, and various touristy adventures on Earth without a lot of connective plot or characterization.

The title refers to the idea that Earth might play a role in a dispersed solar system similar to that of the capital in the ancient Roman empire; most of the other planets and moons can do their own thing, but if you really want patronage and cultural influence, you have to visit the capital. Why? Because interplanetary communication suffers from the light-speed barrier; you can't have a real-time video chat and observe the facial expressions and nonverbal communication of someone on another planet. On Earth, however, everyone can video chat with each other instantaneously, which made a one-world government inevitable (so while the USA's anniversary is an important symbolic occasion, it really doesn't function as an independent country). Man, I wish. D:

Makenzie is a clone. His grandfather, Malcolm, suffered DNA damage on a shuttle between Earth and Mars, which made it impossible for him to have a healthy child the old-fashioned way. So he cloned himself, and then his son cloned himself, yielding Duncan. Duncan plans to take advantage of the trip to Earth to have a fourth-generation kid and continue the family.

I would probably have bought "the Makenzies have DNA damage and it's not reparable, cloning is the only workaround" if it hadn't been for the "sustained between Earth and Mars" bit--like, would that have affected every cell? In an afterword to the paperback edition, Clarke admits that he's gotten pushback and criticism on this point, even though he tried to keep it vague, and winds up joining Ray Bradbury in the "sometimes you just have to run with it for artistic license" response.

There are a few nods to "hmm, creating unused embryos might have some ethical issues, is it okay to treat surrogate mothers this way...IDK let's just throw up our hands" that felt kind of underwhelming, but in the same way a lot of contemporary discourse is underwhelming. (1976 was two years before the first child was born through IVF, so this was still, just barely, SF.) More frustrating for me was the text trying to insist that the Makenzies all have other partners and stepkids who they love just as much as their biological relatives and are totally part of the family--but these characters barely get any interiority or screen time, there's a lot more emphasis on a love triangle from Duncan's teenage years that didn't carry over into long-lasting family ties. There is a twist ending to the clone plotline, but I couldn't suspend disbelief for the "oh yeah I totally love my non-biological family" part.

"[Saturn's] remaining satellites were barren aggregate of rock, overgrown snowballs, or mixtures of both. By the mid-2200s, more than forty had been discovered, the majority of them less than a hundred kilometers in diameter. The outer ones--twenty million kilometers from Saturn--all moved in retrograde orbits and were clearly temporary visitors from the asteroid belt; there was much argument as to whether they should be counted as genuine satellites at all."

Clarke underestimated that one, already we've discovered several hundred moons, some of which make people go "these are too puny they shouldn't even count'!

Presented without comment:

"And the Kennedy Center--that is the original, more or less. Every fifty years some architect tries to salvage it, but it's been given up as a bad job."

2276 people don't care about the details of 1700s-2000s technology:

"...quaint old photographs of stiffly-posed and long-forgotten eminences (perhaps the original George Washington--no, cameras hadn't been invented then)..."

More worldbuilding notes: 2200s political officials are chosen by random sortition, again one of those NationStates "crazy third option" policies. :) Earth only has four time zones now, global communication made it impossible to stick with 24. Real meat is not illegal, "yet," but manual driving has been illegal for a century.

"Though enthusiasm was not actually illegal, it was in somewhat bad taste; one should not take one's hobbies and recreations too seriously."

Why do whales make big jumps above the surface sometimes?

"Nobody really knows. It may be pure joie de vivre. It may be to impress a lady friend. Or it may be merely to get rid of parasites--whales are badly infested with barnacles and lampreys."
How utterly incongruous, thought Duncan. It seemed almost an outrage that a god should be afflicted with lice.

Great mental image! And the evocation of beings existing beside each other in massively different orders of magnitude comes up later, but mostly it's just vibes.

Duncan enjoys pentomino puzzles; in an afterword, Clarke notes that he got into them via Martin Gardner's recreational mathematics writing. (Same here.)

...when, on July 24, 1975, I appeared as a witness before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space Science (in the very building libeled and destroyed in Chapter 33!), I was able to quote extensively from Duncan's address to Congress in Chapter 41. Thus the House of Representatives' hearings now contain extracts from the Congressional Record for July 4, 2276, which should cause confusion among future historians.

Bingo: Book in Parts; Stranger in a Strange Land; LGBTQIA protagonist (Duncan comes from a culture where bisexuality is default, and "could never feel quite happy with someone whose affections were exclusively polarized toward one sex.")