Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner

Oct. 23rd, 2025 08:51 am
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Faraday, Oregon, seems to have a missing persons problem. Its problem is much worse.

Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner

litany

Oct. 23rd, 2025 01:00 am
[syndicated profile] merriamwebster_feed

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 23, 2025 is:

litany • \LIT-uh-nee\  • noun

Litany usually refers to a long list of complaints, problems, etc. It can also refer to a sizable series or set, a lengthy recitation, a repetitive chant, or a particular kind of call-and-response prayer.

// Among the television critic’s litany of complaints about the new series is the anachronistic costume design.

See the entry >

Examples:

“Out spilled the litany of all the names of all the things you thought I still feared: A big, bad wolf, a two-headed snake, a balding hyena, a beast dropped from the sky, an earthquake, a devil with red bells around its neck. Your words were steady, steeped in the old stories, but my eyes flicked to the window, unafraid. I was too old for easy monsters.” — Raaza Jamshed, What Kept You?: Fiction, 2025

Did you know?

How do we love the word litany? Let us count the ways. We love its original 13th century meaning, still in use today, referring to a call-and-response prayer in which a series of lines are spoken alternately by a leader and a congregation. We love how litany has developed in the intervening centuries three figurative senses, and we love each of these as well: first, a sense meaning “repetitive chant”; next, the “lengthy recitation” sense owing to the repetitious—and sometimes interminable—nature of the original litany; and finally, an even broader sense referring to any sizeable series or set. Though litanies of this third sort tend to be unpleasant, we choose today to think of the loveliness found in the idea of “a litany of sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”



Hark, a Signature

Oct. 22nd, 2025 09:12 pm
radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)
[personal profile] radiantfracture
Comics artist Kate Beaton's signature

Kate Beaton had a sore throat after hitting two major festivals before dropping into Munro's Books, but she was every bit as fierce and funny as you would expect, and more.

So glad I dragged my sorry carcass out of the house for this.

Surreally, I missed about 15 minutes of the Q&A because I felt a coughing fit coming on and went to have it out in the street. But it was still great. (Leftover hyper-reactive cough reflex, not continuing illness.)

§rf§
silveradept: A dragon librarian, wearing a floral print shirt and pince-nez glasses, carrying a book in the left paw. Red and white. (Dragon Librarian)
[personal profile] silveradept
This week at my place of work has been instructive in the kinds of patience that you need to have with adolescents, and also an excellent example of how adolescent brains work, and how much they still seek connection with their peers even when, by themselves, they might recognize that a particular course of action is a bad idea.

First, however: For those of you who did not have the penis game as a part of your own adolescence, the penis game is essentially a form of chicken, where when it is your turn, the options available to you are to escalate the situation or to forfeit. Someone starts the game by saying the word "penis" as quietly as they would like. All the other participants (which can be pretty ad hoc) then have an opportunity to say the word "penis" louder than the first person. The game ends when nobody says the word "penis" louder than the last, or when the game is stopped by responsible adults who do not want young people saying "penis" loud enough to be heard. The collective goal of all the players is to say the word "penis" as loud as they can without getting into trouble with anyone else, even if the individual goal is to be the person who last said the word and didn't get in trouble for it.

Unsurprisingly, this is a favored game of young people who have penises and have been raised in a manspreading sort of culture. If you find people who are drawing penises on every available surface, they're probably also playing the penis game. The game is not segregated, however - those without penises can join in the game at any time and may end up being the person winning the game, simply because they'll be the last person to say it loudly without getting themselves or the group in trouble.

So, while I am at the help desk in my primary workplace, which was built as someone's homage to cathedrals and churches, with the attendant acoustic properties, loud and clearly from the teen area, I hear the word "penis!" As I am moving to handle the situation, I am thinking to myself, "Someone's playing the penis game. That's not a very smart decision in the library." By the time I get the space where I heard the word, I've got a bit ready to go about how playing the penis game sounds like fun for everyone involved, but it's a game that someone always loses. However, another co-worker has already been talking to them, and lets me know that this is the second strike assessed to this group for inappropriate language. So I have a message to deliver to our working staff when I get back to my spot, but before I can type up the report, once again, loud and clear, and possibly louder and clearer than the last one, the word "penis!" rings out again, and the teen librarian is immediately on the way, and I'm on my way to inform her that this is three, but by the time the staff converge, the group of teens has packed up and left.

What would possess young people to do something like this, in a space where they're definitely going to get caught and punished for it? To quote Agent Kay:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

Also, we have a significant amount of brain research into adolescents and have been able to get the idea that the adolescent brain, through the teenage years, is very focused on building social connections and alliances so that when they get out into the world as adults, they have backup and peer connections and other people who they can use to get work, crash space, income, romance, and all the rest of the things that adults have and they want. That brain research has provided us adults with a couple of useful things to keep in mind when working with teenagers:
  1. If you can, separate a teen from their peer group if you want to get them to change behavior. If you discipline a teen in front of the peer group, they may front and become deliberately difficult because they're more interested in saving face with their friends than in doing the thing that they would otherwise do if alone.

  2. A group of teenagers together is more prone to make worse decisions than those individual teens would by themselves. Because games of chicken like this are also ways of demonstrating both loyalty to the group and a willingness to keep the fun going or not be the person who wusses out. Sometimes being the kid who can articulate "hey, this isn't going well, we should stop" can get the stop that everyone wants, but sometimes it only gets you made fun of. So, y'know, the whole peer pressure thing is real, and it often can drive teens to do things that in the aftermath they know are foolish and wouldn't have done individually.

Knowing all this allows us to tailor our messaging to target the behaviors that are not acceptable in the space, but also to know that if the teens are playing the penis game, or throwing food at each other, or getting up to one of the myriad ways they make mischief, sometimes even unintentionally, odds are good that it only got this far because peer pressure, and if they take a cool-down day or a cool-down set of laps, they'll come back to the library with a better attempt at behaving like people who know how to exist in public places. Which they mostly do.

Working with people and child development was not a required course in my library concentration. I picked up a lot of it from taking a course from the School of Social Work, instead, figuring that having a solid grounding in child development and their environments would help me understand what I was doing in the library. It didn't give me "classroom management skills," which I was apparently supposed to have picked up along the way as well, despite my classroom everything supposedly being limited to times where teachers or librarians would be there. It didn't give me much about how to deal with the people that I was going to encounter, outside of reference interviews, and I didn't get anything about managing subordinates or other volunteers, either. Admittedly, I don't want to ever have to manage anyone, but I appreciated being able to level up my game for how to handle difficult situations and difficult people once I was out in the working world as a professional. Most of that training, though, came after my first manager had already come within an inch of getting me fired for not having all these skills I was assumed to have and for not being able to people well in ways that she expected me to. I won't be surprised if at some point, I officially end up getting upgraded to AuDHD if and when that becomes relevant and necessary, but even the more neurotypical people in my profession don't get a lot of training about managing people, both from the position of the supervisor and from the position of the supervised, when they're in library school. And so many of them definitely don't get anything at all that has to do with how children and teens develop, unless their specific remit is children or teens, and that can cause serious friction unless the people who do have the training share it with everyone else to make sure that they're all on the same page and consistent with what they're doing to do when teenagers in their library start playing the penis game.

(Yet more reasons for us to think hard about the state of education for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) positions and what's actually needed and what has been held on to because it makes the people who work in GLAM feel learned and professional.)

Today's Smoothie

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:45 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Note to self: do not put red grapes in a green smoothie. Red + green = brown. :/ It still tastes good, but it is not the beautiful jade-green that we usually get.

We use the Alan's Going Green Smoothie. We don't use the jalapeño or cashews. Sometimes we use a kiwi instead of a lime. Today we used a handful of pea shoots instead of spinach, so there's a pea flavor alongside the lime.

Weird things in grocery stores

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:33 pm
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[personal profile] dewline
I am seeing boxes of Kellogg's product in my suburban Ottawa grocery store. Branded Wednesday and Stranger Things Demogorgon Crunch.

My brain, of course, takes in the packaging on the latter, and flashes back to a first-season episode of Space: 1999 called "Dragon's Domain". Scared the hell out of grade-school-me when I first saw it on CBC Regina TV. I cannot help suspecting that if the the modern marketing mavens at Kellogg's saw that episode of that series, the title critter would be cartoonified on the front of boxes of something called Space: 1999 - Dragon's Delight.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
and since we have a ton of computer mice (mouses?) already I just swapped it out. But I still was bugged by the ton of crud that I know was embedded in my old mouse, so before I tossed it I took it apart to clean the scrollwheel.

So much cat hair, much of it felted, and I'm honestly surprised the scrollwheel was functioning at all. But it was so cheaply made that putting it back together would've been a hassle and a half, so I'm glad I had the sense to just replace it rather than depending on my own repair skills!

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


Read more... )
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[personal profile] conuly
Smart beds flipped out during the AWS outage, and so did their sleepy owners

1. Why does a bed need to be smart?
2. Why does everything have to be a subscription nowadays?
3. Why didn't they design the damn things to just be normal beds if cut off from the internet?

Seriously, you couldn't have written this 30 years ago, nobody would ever have accepted the premise! I'd say something about fools and their money, but....

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


Read more... )

Photography

Oct. 22nd, 2025 05:53 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Córdoba -- Festival of the Patios

In addition to being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Córdoba also appears on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list for its Festival of the Patios. Held each spring, the festival celebrates the tradition of decorating the patios or courtyards of the homes in the historic center of the city with flowers and other plants. During the Festival, these patios are open to the public, to show off the beauty of these spaces.

The pictures come from later in the season, not the festival itself, but are still beautiful.

Are you looking for a theme to make your small town stand out? Or a theme for a spring event that isn't Easter? Consider a patio festival! Celebrate the beauty of small gardens on patios, balconies, front porches, etc. Get your local florists and garden shops to join the fun with special displays or sales.  Throw in a plant / seed swap for houseplants, garden plants that are customarily divided or planted in spring, local landraces of flowers or vegetables, and so on.
thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
A true feel-good story.

Cards Against Humanity (CAH) is a very fun, and potentially very rude, party card game. A few years ago they decided to tweak President 45's nose and bought an acre of land in Texas in the path of a proposed wall building. And sold 1" parcels of it to fans of their game, making the acre so subdivided that any attempt to purchase it or to seize it through exercising eminent domain over it that it would be insanely complicated.

Well, the site just so happens to be near Boca Chica, the location of a certain space company's launch platform. And said space company moved in a bunch of trucks and dumped gravel, debris, and all sorts of stuff on this acre that they didn't own. CAH had posted no trespassing signs on it, which said space company's trucks ignored and drove over. CAH complained to said space company and was ignored, so they sued.

And got a settlement! Shortly before the suit would have gone to trial before a jury, the space company blinked.

Sadly the terms of the settlement are sealed and CAH can't talk about it, but the space company cleaned up the acre, remediating it back to its original state. And the owners of said acre will be receiving a CAH card pack extolling the many manifold virtues, or lack thereof, of Leon Muskbrat.

I don't know if said card packs will be available to buyers outside of those acre property owners, but I'd love to have one. Had I known about this land purchase, I would have liked to have been a part of it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/cards-against-humanity-gets-settlement-from-spacex-plans-pack-of-elon-musk-cards/
[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

In my post last week where I mentioned I had been writing “full-time” for a year and shared my favorite ten pieces from this past year, one commenter asked me about my overall experience with my writing career so far. I was going to reply to all his questions in a comment, but then I thought that it was worth a piece on its own.

Talking about how I’ve felt about my job this past year, how I feel as a writer, what’s different now compared to last year, I honestly have more to say about the whole thing than I realized. So thanks, Mike, for the content inspiration! I hope your questions get answered in the next few paragraphs.

First, more than anything, I’m grateful to be able to do this. I’ve been writing on the blog on and off (and with varied levels of uhhh.. talent) since 2018, and since the beginning I have always felt thankful to have such a fun, cool opportunity as what I like to call “doing whatever I want and writing about it.” It can be a struggle sometimes to come up with content when I’m feeling particularly unmotivated, but overall having the freedom to choose what kind of content I want to create is a huge thing that I’m very happy about it.

I feel so lucky to have a fun, stable, not physically demanding job. It’s a rare breed of job. And I have had other jobs, for what it’s worth, but turns out I like sitting at my laptop a lot more than just about anything else. Wonder where I get that from.

Beyond feeling grateful for the position itself, I also feel grateful to have dedicated readers and commenters. I am consistently amazed and surprised at how many of you comment such nice things, always encouraging me and supporting me. It means a lot! Of course, I love my haters, too, and have a collection of screenshots of many jackass comments before they get malleted, just to laugh at later on down the road. So thanks for being here, y’all, I couldn’t do it without you!

This past year of writing has taught me a lot about myself. Mainly that I’m depressed and sticking to a schedule is very difficult for me. This past year I was supposed to have a pretty solid writing schedule, and be in my “office” (in the church) for a set time to do things like blog posts and other writing endeavors. Well, turns out I don’t feel like doing that a lot of the time, so I didn’t.

I actually heavily slacked and neglected my responsibilities over the past year. There were many times where my dad would specifically ask me to contribute more pieces to the blog whilst he was busy traveling or on tour, and I would say no problem, I can do that. And then I’d only put out one piece that week. I would mean to do more, really I would! But I didn’t. And I did that kind of thing a lot.

I’ll get to it later. I’ll find the time to do it later. I’ll just post tomorrow, instead. It was a lot of that sort of thinking this past year. Turns out that that doesn’t make me feel good about myself or my work. I regret how much I didn’t do. I hope that moving forward, I do more, and most importantly, am more consistent. It’s good for my brain to be more consistent, yet harder to achieve. Plus I want to give y’all consistent content to look forward to!

One thing I was supposed to do this past year on top of doing blog posts, was to write creatively, as well. Guess what I didn’t do even once! That’s right, write anything fictional or personal or anything that wasn’t a blog post. Damn. Better luck this upcoming year, I guess!

My life lacks structure and intentionality and it turns out you need both to be a writer. Damn (again). Turns out I’m a procrastinator. Wonder where I get that issue from.

Anyways, all of this is to say that I’m disappointed in myself this past year and I hope to do better moving forward. And I hope to write creatively. That is my dream, after all. Following in footsteps and whatnot. You get the idea.

Aside from all that, this past year is the first time in my life where when people ask me “what do you do for work?” I say “I’m a writer.” Of course, that always leads to “what do you write?” and then “so do you write for a magazine or a newspaper orr..?” and I have noticed that it always always leads to, “so how do you make money from that?” I understand the curiosity, but I also find it to be a strange question.

I can honestly say I have never asked anyone how they make money from their work. If someone tells me they’re an artist, I don’t ask if that’s salary or hourly, or ask the Tik Tok content creator if that comes with benefits and PTO. I think unless the information is offered willingly, it’s best to leave it alone.

It’s important to note that I’m not ashamed about how much I get paid or in the way that I get paid for this job (and it does in fact come with benefits!), but the issue for me is that it feels like a question that is only asked of those in creative fields, and makes them feel lesser than other jobs. It’s feels demeaning, because it’s not like I’m asking every market analyst I come in contact with how they’re putting bread on the table. Why do I have to disclose my salary for you to take my profession seriously?

I guess it’s just been an interesting experience overall telling others that I’m a writer. I can’t say I really like it. I feel awkward every time I say it. I hope I get past that feeling eventually.

All in all, I obviously love being a writer and being able to share all my experiences, both good and bad, with you all. I hope to branch out in topics and push outside of my comfort zone of mainly just restaurant reviews. It’s just what comes easiest to me, so it’s what I do the most. But I’d like to be more varied moving forward.

I’m looking forward to this next year of writing. I feel like I finally understand myself and my craft better than I ever have before, and I’m glad y’all are on this journey with me. Cheers to the year ahead.

-AMS

Birdfeeding

Oct. 22nd, 2025 02:37 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny, breezy, and cool.

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

I put out water for the birds.

10/22/25 -- I installed the larger of the two wormstones beside the barrel garden. First I picked a spot, then I cleared the weeds. I dug into the ground a little so that the stone would lie closer to the surface. I had to move a few tulip bulbs that turned up there. Then I put the stone in place and pushed the soil back around the edges. \o/

10/22/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

10/22/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

10/22/25 -- I installed the second wormstone by the barrel garden.

10/22/25 -- I planted 10 'Flaming Beauties' tulips around the barrel garden. I still have 10 left. These are streaked tulips so they are yellow/red, purple/white, etc.

10/22/25 -- I planted the rest of the 'Flaming Beauties' in the tulip bed.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.
thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
Now, I have to admit that I didn't know there was such a thing as smart beds. I'm not in the least bit surprised, but I didn't know it.

First, the problem. Amazon Web Services, AWS, had a DNS problem that clobbered a whole bunch of systems around the world that relied on processes running within their cloud services. We had problems at work in the library Monday and Tuesday, though those seem to be clearing up. The data center that had the problem is one of Amazon's oldest, and it's had serious problems before in 2020 and 2021.

(In short, DNS translates domain names, such as Amazon.com, into internet server addresses, such as 192.68.25.1, and sends data requests to the correct server. If it gets borked and you're a data packet, it becomes a lot more difficult to get where you need to go.)

This is why I'm an advocate of not having your IT system relying on cloud systems! But management likes to think they're saving money by putting stuff "in the cloud" where people have little direct control over things and security risks multiple. But whatever, as long as management is happy.

So, these "smart beds". They're made by a company called Eight Sleep. Not only do the beds cost $5,000, you pay $200-$500 annually for this bed to be connected to the internet so it can adjust its position, temperature, "provide soundscapes and vibrational alarms", etc.

GAH!

Whatever. I guess if you have the cash to throw $5K at a bed, go have fun. I'm not going to do it.

ANYWAY, when the DNS problem happened, and the bed could no longer talk to the spymothership, the beds freaked out (probably along with their owners), including some folding themselves double. Apparently Eight Sleep's programmers never considered a scenario where the beds lost connectivity and didn't design a fail safe mode for the bed to, you know, just be a bed. The CEO of the idioticsmart bed company said "...engineers were racing to build an outage-proof mode in the event of a future outage." Livestock, meet barn with open doors.

"Sorry, boss. I was late today because someone unplugged my bed."

I am going to laugh my butt off if this company goes bankrupt and all of those beds freak out or die when the servers get unplugged.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/cloud-computing/smart-beds-flipped-out-during-the-aws-outage-and-so-did-their-sleepy-owners/ar-AA1OYol8

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/22/1347211/smart-beds-malfunctioned-during-aws-outage
thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
Hint: it's not the Nobel.

He was awarded the Richard Nixon Foundation's Architects of Peace Award.

Yeah. Tricky Dick is back in the news!

Previous recipients: Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. I'm sure he'll be proclaiming that it's a much better award than the Nobel.

Good company there, Li'l Donny! Irony doth know no bounds.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-wins-peace-prize_n_68f88ee0e4b0dbac459201ca

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran

Oct. 22nd, 2025 08:53 am
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A robot muses contentedly on the events that led it to its rapidly approaching doom.

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran

Mad Science

Oct. 22nd, 2025 12:27 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Scientists say dimming the sun could spark global chaos

Researchers warn that real-world solar geoengineering would be far more unpredictable and risky than models suggest.

Scientists are taking the once-radical concept of dimming the sun through stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) seriously, but a Columbia University team warns that reality is far messier than models suggest. Their study reveals how physical, geopolitical, and economic constraints could derail even the best-intentioned attempts to cool the planet. From unpredictable monsoon disruptions to material shortages and optical inefficiencies, every step introduces new risks.


WARNING: Do not practice mad science on whole planet!

Cuddle Party

Oct. 22nd, 2025 12:08 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a
cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!


Enjoy a feast for Halloween, Samhain, All Saints Day, Dia de los Muertos, or whatever you prefer...

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