moon_custafer | Reading

My Aunt (mother's younger sister) advised Mother that Mackinack Island was rather touristy and crowded with tourists, reiterating what I'd learned from my attempt to get recommendations via dreamwidth. So, she's decided that maybe I should just come down to visit her in Hilton Head after all.
The logistics of traveling together seems to be an issue - well that and we can't find a place that makes sense to travel to. Before you suggest she just visit me in NYC? Been there done that multiple times over the years, and it won't work now - I don't have a fold out couch.

Work. Sigh. It's slow and kind of boring again (my work depends on other people and they aren't as efficient as I am.) But, the nice thing about advances in technology - is I have toys to keep me occupied at work now unlike the dark ages - aka the 1980s and 1990s, where I had nada. People don't realize how good they have it right now. In early 1990s, I bought magazines and read them at work to keep myself occupied. Now? I can play with my smartphone. Also the internet. And write my book, and/or play with my book on the computer. Also brought a little sketch book and colored pens. I'm all set. Usually I just drift off to sleep while meditating or reading about horror films on MicroSoft Edge (workplace browser).

I did accomplish a few things this week. Surprisingly enough. I wish I'd done the jury duty - it's been a slow week. But I couldn't risk it interfering with the knee injections, which start next week. And I'd have been anxious and irritated the whole time - worrying over it. With any luck they'll call me in August. But, I have no control over these things. I don't know why they need to put me in their pool at all. I live in a city with over 8 million people in it. It's not like they have a shortage of people. In Kansas - they never called me - because I went to law school and was automatically disqualified. Here? They don't have that rule. Which seems odd - considering NYC has more people than the whole state of Kansas does. So why could Kansas afford to be picky but not New York? (Yeah, I know Kansas has less court cases, but honestly, NY can't possibly have enough to include over 5 million qualified people.)

**

Making my way through the X-Men Animated Series (currently streaming on Disney +) - which I haven't seen since it aired on Fox (before Rupert Murdoch bought Fox and made a travesty of it, until Disney bought it from Murdoch somewhere around 2020) in the mid-1990s. And I only watched it intermittently back then. It aired between 1994-1996, right after law school and right before I moved to NYC. Hence the reason the sequel is entitled X-men '97 (it takes place one year after the original concluded).
Is it any good? Eh. It depends on what you like or what floats your boat? X-men is a superhero soap opera with insanely convoluted plots that appear to be written by folks on an acid trip. No one reads or watches the X-men comics for the plotting. They do it for the characters - it's a superhero relationship drama with a heavy thematic emphasis on human rights, and being an outsider or ostracized for being different. Mainstream comics, it's not - that's Batman and Superman and the Justice League, X-men is kind of counter-culture comics. They'd been around about thirty years before they took off briefly in the 1990s. Then disappeared again from the public eye, to resurface in a slew of movies and animated series, then went underground again.

So, is it any good? It's uneven. ( spoilers )
So a mixed bag, but that's true of the comics too. I kind of look at the X-men comics like published fanfic? With art? It varies by writer and artist, some are really good, some...make me wonder how they ever got hired and if the person who hired them was stoned at the time? But I feel like that in my own work place.

It is a good comfort watch though. Also, it dates well. Most things that aired in the mid-to-late 1990s do, though? The cultural vibe started to change around that time, and became a little kinder and more diverse. (Thank you NAACP and the LGBTA and Women's Rights movements - it didn't do it in a vacuum, it had help.) Also to be fair? The X-men and Marvel were always a bit on the liberal progressive side of the house. (DC not quite as much?) Stan Lee was very liberal. And the X-men had a pro-outsider or ostracized minority vibe. It's why I loved them, it's also why they were very counter-culture and kind of underground or cult.

Time to check in with Thursday Recs!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

On June 11, 1970 Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth Hoisington were the first women in the U.S. military to be promoted to Brigadier General.

Yesterday, Pete Hegseth removed all women from the promotions lists. He also decided that some men had too much melanin and took them off the list, too, but it wasn't every man of color who was removed.

If you grew up in the military, if you know a veteran -- especially if it's a female veteran -- call, write, or email their congressperson and your own. Bonus points if the congress critter is on one of the armed services committees. [ https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/ lists the senate committee, https://armedservices.house.gov/about/members.htm lists the house committee members]

After 28.5 years in the Army, my father retired and became a professor. Many of the kids he taught were ROTC -- as he had been -- and a large percentage went into the regular military rather than the reserves. About eight months before he died, we got a letter from one of his students who had just retired as a Rear Admiral thanking him for his guidance and example. Dad was so proud of this woman. When he entered the service, most WACS and WAVES were nurses or secretaries. Now, he was being honored by a student who had been promoted to a higher rank than he'd held for her work in Computer Systems.

Several years before her promotion, when I was five, I was privileged to meet Colonel Hoisington. I swear I heard Dad's spine snap as she was introduced to us by a mutual friend. On our way home that evening, he told me to remember her because it was predicted that she'd be the first woman general.

As a sample, I would like to suggest:

It is appalling that a Secretary of Defense has removed all women and many men of color from the Naval promotions list. At a time when we have hotspots around the world, it is crippling to morale to see that hard work and honorable service has been deemed unworthy of further advancement. Nurses, doctors, logistical and other support personnel are as essential to our ability to operate as helicopter pilots or gunners. Good officers should be promoted.

If you or the veterans you know have any personal story to share, please do so.

I grew up in the military. I hate what's being done by our current president in the Middle East, Venezuela, and, potentially, Cuba. But that doesn't mean that I don't value military service. It's time that Congress demonstrated that it, too, values the voluntary service of our military.

Whodunnit: The lone trumper adjacent to my vicinity recently explained that she's not entirely 100% with his current direction, but apparently that's not his fault as she believes he's being effected by satanists, although she didn't manage to explain why this acceptance of satanism isn't his fault. Anyway, more importantly, I've now recreated this bullshit as a running in-joke to mock people who believe conspiracy nonsense. Shortly after The Satanism Explanation was aired, I was in an overlapping group of history fans. We were discussing ancient Macedonia and how Alexander destroyed all Philip II's work and left the Macedonians in a mess, so I said it wasn't Alexander's fault... it was satanists! And now every time somebody in our in-joke circles mentions one of our historical hate-figures someone will respond that his failings weren't his fault because he was being controlled by satanists. Possibly you have to be there to understand how funny the delivery of this running gag is, but I'm so lucky to know so many smart and witty women who make my world a better place.

Earworm danger: I accidentally ended up sharing transport with a group having a 1980s weekend complete with a best [worst] of the 80s soundtrack that I can only hope was intended ironically. Within a few minutes I was in danger of being earwormed by China in Your Hah-yah-yand, and Klingons on the Starboard Bow, warded off by the only marginally better Footloose.

Ferroequinology: I had a chat with the usual bunch of white, male, middle-aged "railway enthusiasts" who told me I shouldn't call myself a trainspotter. I replied that I am definitively a trainspotter because I like seeing specific types of locomotives (and signalling) and nobody should be shamed for innocent interests and enthusiasms. And the delightful upshot of this conversation was that I was invited to a 1980s themed disco that evening (yes, I do have a black belt in the art of talking with strangers on public transport). I was expecting a nostalgic school-disco sort of affair but the "railway enthusiasts" had actually organised a very good live band and a very drinkable bar run by a local micro brewery. My new besties for the evening all proved to be good dancers due to having grown up in the era of Northern Soul and Ska revival music. Although I did garner further evidence for my hypothesis that nobody, however skilled, can dance to Footloose without looking like a white boy from the mid-west at best and a spider on ketamine at worst. And the moral of this story is always to take a polite interest in other people's innocent enthusiasms because dancing the night away with a bunch of ageing gricers in a nice airy marquee is better than sitting alone in an overheated hotel room with the only ventilation being windows that open onto a very climbable roof.

Birbs
02-06 Double the winter maximum number of Jackdaws feeding on my lawn, from 12 to 24.
03-06 Two adorable, learner flyer, juvenile yellow-tinted Blue Tits following their busily generous parent around begging for food.

I realise this is my own doing but writing a crossover fic for a rarepair that only a handful people read is so disheartening. Not because I am not enjoying it, I absolutely am. But you will have even less comments than usual, and delightfully, every new one turns out to be a bot or a scam. I used to have all my works archive locked, but I figured I'd give this one more range. Instead I get these:

( Miserable Wankers )

It's even worse that with ones like the second, you're just thinking "Is this spam?" immediately, and then be proven right when you try to give them grace. I guess I'm back to archive locking my work, then. At least I have one comment from an actual user, though I hear they too may be suspect. It's just shitty how it ruins your entire day.

Current Mood: crushed
Current Location: the black chair
Current Music: mick jagger & dave stewart - old habits die hard

Got out of hospital on Monday as promised. Time flies too quickly, and I'm barely catching up. So, two things, before I talk about something beautiful I meant to speak of a while ago:

Gallstones typically rank between 8 and 10 on 0-10 pain scale.
Exams tomorrow.

A few weeks ago I visited Kirna Manor while they had their yearly Tulip Festival on. It was raining that day, so I got the exact sort of romantic melancholy I was craving for, but it did not compare to last year, which I unfortunately missed. I did get to see the pictures, and they were devastating. Their garden also has spots that are meant to heal you, if you believe in that sort of thing. And if you don't, nature is nature. But here are mine:

( Kirna Manor )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: the black chair
Current Music: tartu uus teater - minagi olin arkaadia teel

We might not have spent the sunset at Marblehead Light if we had known that all five yacht clubs within earshot would fire off a salute of cannons in accordance with the naval tradition of evening colors in season, but on either side of the sudden harbor-rolling cracks of smoke it was a postcard of a sunset in the smelted oranges and wave-mirrored blues of a painted present from, partitioned by the nineteenth-century cast-iron skeleton of the light itself.

spatch had wanted to take me to water after I had spent the previous day in the kind of pain where as soon as it eased off a little I passed out. We ate roast beef sandwiches parked at the Mystic Lakes and drove north once rush hour had died down.

( I've brought silver to set you free. )

Home again with a bowl of noodles, I heard

rushthatspeaks' irresistible report on Tokuzō Tanaka's The Whale God (鯨神, 1962), a radiation of Melville I had known nothing about. Rob and I have not yet caught up on the latest episode of Widow's Bay (2026), but last week when we marathoned the previous three we were delighted to confirm that in its remix of New England horrors, Shirley Jackson had unambiguously entered the chat. Hestia, our own lighthouse, was golden-eyed in the cat tree.

Current Music: Goblin Band, "The Prickle Holly Bush"

Beginning of the June - Question a Day Meme

1. Is anything (minor or major) irritating you at the moment?

My back is bothering me, and so is my right knee, and my shoulders are tight.

2. Have you ever used a photobooth? Are they still around where you live (where’s the nearest one?)

I don't remember? I assume so. No, they aren't in my area - they may be in New York City? But I've not seen any? I have no clue where the nearest one is? (I hate getting my picture taken - so it's not something I'd seek out?)

3. Do you still pay for things with cash? Have you been somewhere recently where they don’t take cash anymore?

Yes, depends on the place. There are some spots that tend to prefer cash. I bought a milk shake from Carnval with cash - they tend to want you to spend more for the card. Although that may have changed, I didn't ask.

Also, my hairdresser wants either cash tips or tips by Venmo, I'd prefer to give cash. I don't like Venmo.

Yes, I've been to places that don't take cash - here and there. Not many though. The MTA OMNY CARD Machines don't take cash, nor does my laundry room - we have to use a credit or debit card to renew and add funds to the laundry card. It used to be cash only, but now it's card only.

***

Wednesday Reading Meme

* Currently reading "Wydling Hall by Elizabeth Hand", Hand is an established horror and dark fantasy writer from the late 20th to early 21st Century. Notably best friends with some writer bloke who blew me off on a dating app for not having a photo that gave him that spark. I got annoyed enough - to write the interaction into the book I self-published. (I'm not positive? But I think the guy may have been horror writer Paul Trembalay, although at the time we flirted with each other on social media - he was unknown and struggling. ) I'm not a fan of professional writers - particularly horror writers, they tend to be assholes? I don't know what it is about that profession - but the ones who become successful at it (ie, can make a living at it), tend to be folks you do not want to meet in person or know? Sci-Fi writers aren't too bad - they tend to keep to themselves and don't go overboard on the marketing. Literary also not that bad, nor is urban fantasy. But Horror - damn.

But I can still enjoy their writing. I'm very good at compartmentalizing.
It's rare that I can't compartmentalize. Also, I know very little about Elizabeth Hand (by design - I don't want to know anything - the small bits shared on book jackets and in the acknowledgements - are more than I want to know). Honestly, I wish the writers would just go by pseudonyms and we learned zip about them.

I know too much about Neil Gaiman - so can't read his books any longer or watch anything adapted from them. (That's an author that I can't compartmentalize - I've tried and failed. Not helped by the fact that he is a dark fantasy horror novelist. So I got rid of the Neil Gaiman books I owned.)

Anyhow - Wylding Hall is a creepy folk horror gothic novel about a 1970s British acid-folk band, whose somewhat misguided manager sends them off to/ strands them at - an ancient, creepy isolated country house in Britain, to record their album. Much chaos ensues, a legendary album is recorded, and alas their new lead singer mysteriously disappears. Years later, a documentary is made with the surviving band members - the story is told through their fragmented interviews. (Think Daisy Jones and the Six - except as a creepy horror novel by Elizabeth Hand featuring some quirky British folk band in lieu of Fleetwood Mac.) The story unravels the dark secrets of the house and the band's tragic summer, blending folk horror, psychological suspense, and a haunting mystery.

It's compelling. Very similar to Hand's other novels - which kind of refer to the demon in the corner, without ever actually looking at the demon in the corner? You are aware it is there, what it has done, what it is about to do...but for the most part? It's left to your imagination. It's a specific style of psychological horror writing that I adore. I like the less is more approach to writing. Where the horror is more implied than actually shown. Donna Tart did it well with The Secret History. Hand shows a touch more than Tart, but not by much. And both excelled at psychological folk horror, with a gothic twist.

Oh, it's June finally. I graduated from PT for the most part. No more for the time being. Vestibular issue has been corrected. Hooray? Now, if I can just get my right knee fixed.

Instead of starting one of several recently-acquired new books, or picking back up on any of my increasingly ridiculous number of books in various stages of progress, over the past couple of days I started and finished This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman, a novel that feels like a short story collection since each chapter focuses on a different member of an extended Jewish family scattered mostly along the East Coast and split by a feud between two elderly sisters - the family matriarchs - who had a falling out at the deathbed of their other, younger sister. Domestic but compelling; I liked that most of the individual plot points were never really - or at least not tidily - resolved, per se, leaning into the snapshot/short story feel.

Probably won't get around to those unread books any time soon, because I got a "skip the line" Libby loan for Lena Dunham's new memoir, Famesick, and as I was otherwise 383rd in line for 55 copies, who am I to look a gift library book in the mouth. I've been vaguely aware of Dunham as a controversial and/or maligned pop culture figure for what seems like my entire teenage/adult life, although I don't think I've ever actually watched any of her work; I'm like 2-3 chapters in and terribly endeared by her portrait of the artist as a young dumpster fire, and also preemptively sad for that starry-eyed 20-something, who is going to go through some stuff.

Current Music: we should talk - Bleachers

Yay!

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( Read more... )

I assumed Dreamwidth was down the last few days but nope, my VPN no longer likes it, anyway. Hi. Whoops.

Just finished: Night Night Fawn by Jordy Rosenberg. I loved this, I need you all to read it 1) to understand certain aspects of my identity and 2) so that I can scream about it with someone else.

I want to particularly note the prominence of Exodus, which is a book/film that had a huge influence on me as a kid, turned me into an insufferable Zionist for a couple years, actually had a massive role in ending the Hollywood Blacklist, and no one ever talks about as a work of Riefenstahl-esque propaganda. Night Night Fawn devotes a large segment of its middle act to the film and its role in shaping Barbara's relationship with Israel, as well as with her husband and ultimately her son (who she names after a secondary character).

Anyway, it is really good. Incredibly good.

Currently reading: The First Thousand Trees by Premee Mohamed. This is the third novella in The Annual Migration of Clouds, which I haven't read, but it follows a side character on a completely different story. So. Post-apocalypse, climate catastrophe, weird parasitic infection, society trying to rebuild. It's set in Alberta, which is cool. Henryk, who has made some kind of mistake that has led to a death back home, leaves his relatively safe community to travel to his uncle's much less safe village, where there are still raiders and bears. But, critically, there is a tree farm, which is vital in regrowing the forest. Everyone is deeply unfriendly to him. It's kind of cool reading the third in a series when you haven't read the other two because so much of the worldbuilding is backgrounded. Also, she's just a hell of a writer.

Took the day off for an annual skin cancer checkup - only to realize that my organization provides up to four hours for cancer screening on the way home from the check up. It's too late to change it now, might as well just continue taking the day off. Scheduled a follow up for next June, but around 4:45 pm, so I don't have to take the vacation day. They took a biopsy of one of the moles on my back - which looked funky under the magnifying glass.
( Read more... )

Afterwards, walked to Bryan Park and took the F from the front of Public Library, because Grand Central has become an insane maze with the pretty but horribly confusing signage. Breaking Bad and various co-workers weren't wrong - it has corridors that go nowhere. The signage is incredibly confusing. And I almost got lost hunting the exit. So on the way back, I chose to forgo it. (I tend to avoid Midtown Manhattan like the plaques nowadays.) On the way to Bryant Park - I took 41st Street - there was a series of gold plaques with quotes from poets and authors embedded in the sidewalk (NYC and LA are into embedding plaques with names or quotes on them in their sidewalks. NYC does historical references and quotes from authors, while LA does the Hollywood Walk of Fame - with various television and movie stars names embedded in stars on the sidewalk. Personally, I prefer NYC's take on this - but then I'm allergic to LA, I'm a New Yorker. New Yorkers are allergic to Los Angeles). It was hard to stop and take photos of them, because of all the young adults with their cell phones walking past.

But I managed to do it anyhow - so here's three of the plaques beneath the cut.

( plaques embedded on 41st Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue )

Bryant Park had free Yoga - and a Yoga Check in Point. I thought they were doing it on the lawn or in the park, but nooo - it was on the concrete stone platform in back of the NYPL, and in front of the restaurants, at the top of the steps leading to the park and green cordoned off lawn.

All these people were sitting or lying on thin yoga mats and blankets on the concrete platform. See? This is why I don't do yoga classes and do it at home, if at all, instead. I need more padding than that. Although lately best I can do is chair yoga. Maybe its just me? But doing yoga on concrete looks kind of painful? My knees hurt just thinking about it.

I was going to do a museum or the NYPL, but it was 9:47 am, I was hungry (ate at 6:30 am, doctor's appointment was at 8:30 am) and my knee had begun to bug me. So I went home.

Even if I didn't make it to a museum or the gluten free bakeries on the upper East Side as originally planned? I got stuff accomplished. Came home and did laundry. Listened to an audio book while doing it. And took a long walk around 4pm, after which I treated myself to a Coffee Ice Cream (Cold Brew) Milk Shake from Carnval Ice Cream Shop, which is a neighborhood and South Brooklyn staple.

Passed a lot of rose bushes on my walk. Been seeing a lot of roses this year. Roses do very well in New York, they love the climate. Flowers love the climate. If you like flowers or trees or greenery - New York is a great state to live in.

( roses )

**

Television

* I finished my comfort re-watch of Buffy - thinking I'd get a reboot (but no such luck, we shall speak of it no more) - and have moved on to a comfort re-watch of the early 1990s X-Men Animated Series (which is streaming on Disney +/Hulu. ( Read more... )

*Rivals - this is really funny in places. It does farce well. And sex comedy well. I prefer British satire and comedies to American satire and comedies. I don't really know why exactly? Maybe things are just funnier when delivered with a British accent? Or the Brits just do farce and satire really well? I'm on S2. Also the Taggie/Rupert romance is oddly enough working for me? It shouldn't - but the actors make it work? Also the actress playing Taggie comes across as mid-late 20s, not 21, and the actor player Rupert comes across as early 30s. He doesn't quite come across as old enough to be her father or as old as Aidan Turner and David Tennant. It also helps that he hasn't slept with Taggie yet, and is sleeping with Cameron - pretty much everywhere including the steps. (As an aside? I can't imagine having sex on steps as being all that comfortable? Painful, yes. Comfortable, no. ( Read more... )

* Midnight Mass - I keep trying to watch it, but I can't get into it. I keep getting bored. My difficulty with it - is I don't like or care about any of the characters, nor find any of them remotely interesting - which is kind of a requirement for anything I watch, read, or listen to?
It's definitely a requirement of the horror genre. If you don't care about any of the characters - then there's no emotional investment - and you won't care if they are in danger or killed off - which means the show isn't horrifying or scary.

At the time of writing, 41 46 51 66 75 87 MPs have signed the early day motion to reject the EHRC's new guidance:

https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/65938

Write to your MP to tell them to sign it! Praise them if they already have!

If you have Bsky, Trans+ Solidarity Alliance have a skeet about it you can boost:

https://bsky.app/profile/transsolidarity.bsky.social/post/3mnb3wyefxc2g

Scottish Trans (in collaboration with Trans+ Solidarity Alliance and TransActual, because the collaborative work going on here is so phenomenal) have an "email your MP to reject the EHRC code of practice" template form:

https://equalrecognition.eaction.org.uk/rejectthecode

The Hansard transcript of the response to Seema Malhotra's statement on the EHRC guidance yesterday is blistering:

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-06-01/debates/CE610C68-7093-454F-B897-AF008EE7E7A0/EqualityAct2010CodeOfPractice

So I started the new search properly yesterday. I think I got a lot done, even though the progress is never immediately obvious.

I did get one bite right off, but the web software used to test for French language skills was having trouble working with my browser. As the company involved is one that I like working with and hope to work with again - and they're actively working to resolve the issue to our mutual satisfaction - I don't think I'm going to name them here.

Also, before my contract ended, I decided to finally get a license for Fontlab. I'd been wanting that for decades.

Decades.

Because I already have a Typetool 3 license, I was able to get upgrade pricing. Not much of a discount, true, and I am okay with that. I've resumed work on a pet font design project going back a couple of decades inspired by background stuff in DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes series.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Home-for-now

Let us begin with a pair of bad decisions. The first is that someone enterprising stored a case of cans' worth of beer in one of the microfilm storage areas in an archives. The second bad decision is that they chose Natural Light as the beer to store. Natty Light and PBR are the things that someone drinks at university because they're cheap and terrible, and if you're at Duke, presumably, you have both the means and the willingness to drink better beer than that. I still wouldn't store beer in the microfilm area, because, well, warm beer is nobody's friend, either.

Snaaaaake, snaaaaake, ooooooh, it's a snaaaaake! (has been inducted into the British Film Institue's Archives.)

Pictures from a Black Fae Fest in Georgia, which I love primarily because of all the fae there having a good time. (Admittedly, the idea of Black fae was not much of an issue for me - a collegiate production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the Queen of the fairies (Drag Queen of the Fairies, at the bare minimum) and the King of the Fairies throwing up the hood of his hoodie to turn invisible.)

An accurate obituary for Ted Turner, who, as billionaires went, was eccentric, but also had some good ideas, and certainly turned aside from the path of being a completely evil man. Even though he cursed us with CNN.

( The grift, the corruption, the iocaine dilemma pushed on trans people, and, of course, the techbros )

Last out, someone has compiled together operating systems across the decades and tweaked them so they run properly in emulation, as a museum and a way of allowing people to access older OSes and play in them. The full edition is about 174 GB uncompressed, the lite one a mere 21 GB uncompressed and will need to download anything not initially included. This is a good reason to fire up your BitTorrent client for both downloading and seeding, because holy shorts, that's a lot of OSes to look through.

A plea not to remove the thing that makes science work by trying to produce automation and non-human scientific pipelines to get faster results. Just so - new knowledge does not always come from rearranging old knowledge, but from the breakthroughs and evolutionary paths and inefficiencies that come from exploration.

Server Charms, a self-contained small network with a few HTML pages that runs on an ESP32 powered by recycled vape batteries. Which is about small and local networks, and hiding a server in plain sight, or in an art project. Reminds me of PirateBox and its insistence on creating a local network for file-sharing and chatting and other such things, albeit on slightly more power-hungry hardware for slightly more power-hungry applications. The idea of small things, very local, very low-powered, and not connected to the greater Internet, still appeals, although there's always the difficulty that connecting to unknown WiFi networks is not encouraged. If there were some way to help satiate the curiosity, and also potentially be a viable local network, that would be something interesting. I feel like this is the sort of thing that a student might use to generate a network away from prying eyes. Or anyone else who would like a small and local enclave they can use away from surveillance and with community at its heart. (Which would work very well with things like PirateBox.)

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: gorillaz - Clint Eastwood

Quick note that post-by-email and comment-by-email is (sometimes?) failing silently without actually posting right now! I'm pretty sure this is related to last night's shenanigans and will be fixed once Mark can finish the full fix for it, which he's working on, but if you've posted or replied by email in the last 24 hours, fish it out of your sent folder to check if it posted!

EDIT: This should be fixed as of around 7AM EDT! We *believe* everything that was stuck in the plumbing has been sent along to your journal or the comment thread it was meant for; it's definitely not where it was stuck anymore, at least.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

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

Link

Rabbit, rabbit! I am thrilled at the notion that we may have been splatted into on Saturday by an Eta Aquariid. I will otherwise have missed all of the year's meteor showers to date.

On a forecast of long-range optimism, I am planning this summer on Readercon and NecronomiCon Providence. Noir City Boston is nearer enough future to be uncertain, but this year's selection is generously defined as jazz-themed and I am really eyeing that 35 mm screening of Blues in the Night (1941) backed with Black Angel (1946).

Last week

selkie shipped me a paperback of Lee Welch's Mr Collins in Love (2025) and this afternoon

a_reasonable_man was responsible for the arrival on my doorstep of Molly Crabapple's Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund (2026), which swathe of interests makes me feel very catered for.

I had not heard of Goblin Band before discovering their exuberant version of "Clyde Water" (2026), a ballad I have loved since Kate Rusby via

selkie and Nic Jones via

nineweaving. I have since gathered with pleasure that they are trans/queer trad folk and Martin Carthy likes them.

For the first time in several days the weather heaved itself out of its autumnally raw overcast and I walked around and took a slightly disheveled seasonal picture.

Current Music: Goblin Band, "Clyde Water"

June is going to be a busy month for me and publications -- as in, I think I'm going to have SIX THINGS COMING OUT. (Followed by two more in July.) Two are out today, though one, the flash story "I Cut Off a Monster's Arm. AITA?" in Lightspeed, is currently only available to subscribers; it will become free to read online on the 18th.

So the big news for today is "Non Plus Ultra," a prequel novelette I wrote for the upcoming M.A. Carrick Sea Beyond duology! It's free to read in Adventitious, and it tells the tale of how a sailor discovered the secret of passage to the Sea Beyond. I had a blast throwing all kinds of maritime weirdness into this one, along with the historical details that are the particular delight of writing this subgenre. Check it out!

https://www.transsolidarityalliance.com/post/mass-lobby-date-change-25th-june-2026

It's now the 25th.

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June 2026

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shadowkat - This that and the 1990s X-men animated series...
soc_puppet in queerly_beloved - Thursday Recs
fabrisse in thisfinecrew - Navy Promotion List
spiralsheep - In which there are satanism, in-jokes, and ferroequinology
oldestcharm - Bots & Scams! <3
oldestcharm - Tulips & Romance
sovay - Did you bring gold? Did you bring silver to set me free?
shadowkat - Wed Reading Meme/Question a Day Meme for June
troisoiseaux - Reading Wednesday
conuly - June is here!
sabotabby - Reading Wednesday
shadowkat - This that and taking Tuesday off...
rydra_wong - UK people: trans rights
dewline - Job Search: Beginning Anew Every Day
silveradept - Time continues to move at one second per second... Late May 02026
denise in dw_maintenance - (no subject)
conuly - Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay
sovay - Make me a wreck as I come back and spare me as I'm going
swan_tower - A Sea Beyond prequel novelette!
rydra_wong - Mass lobby date change

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Page generated Jun. 5th, 2026 02:23 am

Stuff and Moonshine

Reading

This that and the 1990s X-men animated series...

Thursday Recs

Navy Promotion List

In which there are satanism, in-jokes, and ferroequinology

Bots & Scams! <3

Tulips & Romance

Did you bring gold? Did you bring silver to set me free?

Wed Reading Meme/Question a Day Meme for June

Reading Wednesday

June is here!

Reading Wednesday

This that and taking Tuesday off...

UK people: trans rights

Job Search: Beginning Anew Every Day

Time continues to move at one second per second... Late May 02026

(no subject)

Recuerdo by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Make me a wreck as I come back and spare me as I'm going

A Sea Beyond prequel novelette!

Mass lobby date change

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June 2026

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