APOD (![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
apod_feed) wrote2025-09-04 05:14 am
apod_feed) wrote2025-09-04 05:14 am
(no subject)
How soon do jets form when a supernova gives birth to a neutron star?
QC RSS (questionable_content_feed) wrote2025-09-03 09:55 pm
questionable_content_feed) wrote2025-09-03 09:55 pmThe Somnium Files
Pintsize and Date would get along pretty well
rolanni (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rolanni) wrote2025-09-03 07:25 pm
rolanni) wrote2025-09-03 07:25 pmEntry tags:
The evening report
Well.
I've finished putting together Civilized Behavior, including the front matter and the blurb. I haven't compiled it yet. Weighing whether to make a call for tyop hunters before compiling. Probably the sensible way to go about it. So! Watch the Skies. In, yanno, an easygoing and relaxed sort of way.
A reprint opportunity came in this afternoon, so I did get that story out.
Checked my story cards, the previous Constellations, and pertinent contracts, then wrote to Madame the Agent, asking her to find if Baen might be interested in a sixth Constellation. There is one story still under Exclusivity, but that ends in November, and even if Baen wants another collection, there's no way it will be out before November.
Trooper did not eat at Happy Hour.
Our appointment with the vet is at 8:15 tomorrow morning. They wanted us early, so it would be as quiet and peaceful as possible.
Referencing the above, I may or may not be around the internets much tomorrow. Thank you for your understanding.
Everybody stay safe.
Cat census from earlier in the day:
Cake Wrecks (cakewrecks_feed) wrote2025-09-03 07:24 pm
cakewrecks_feed) wrote2025-09-03 07:24 pmAvailable Exclusively at the Geiger Counter!
When it comes to powerfully good cake, the choice is (nu)clear:
And here's some fuel for thought: this wasn't a special order. It was just out in the display case, on the off chance someone was having a nuclear power plant themed occasion worth celebrating.
HOW WELL THEY KNOW ME.
Thanks to Clare M. for the rad wreckporting.
*****
P.S. And if you like that, then I have just the punny shirt for you:
"Overreacting" Chemistry Shirt
:D
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-03 05:58 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-03 05:58 pmThe Big Idea: Rich Larson
Stories are there for us through good times and bad times. They can comfort us, perplex us, or connect us. Follow along in author Rich Larson’s Big Idea for his newest book, Changelog, where he seeks to connect us all to his grandmother.
RICH LARSON:
What’s the point?
That’s the only Big Idea that comes to mind as I watch my grandma gasping in her sleep. What’s the point of writing an essay to promote a book full of stories barely anyone will read? What was the point of me writing all those stories in the first place? What’s the point of writing anything?
Changelog doesn’t matter much today, so I’ll tell you about my grandma: not the shrunken, angular version of her on the hospital bed, but the earlier iterations.
She was born in a Mennonite village in Ukraine in 1927. She survived the Holodomor, the artificial famine imposed by the USSR – this bit of history is repeating itself today, both in the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israeli government’s starvation of Gaza.
Her sister Mary died of fever, her brother Fritz from tuberculosis of the bone. Her father was arrested for writing religious poetry, and put in a cell so crowded that if one man rolled over, everyone had to roll over. He was released when the Soviets needed more mechanics, but came back white-haired and gaunt.
Her village was liberated by German soldiers, because things are always more complicated than we would like them to be – this is a fact she pared away when she immigrated to Canada. Her journey west was long and dangerous, full of loss and reunion and wild coincidence that would never pass in fiction. The day she mentions most often is the day she swam for her life:
She was seventeen, and a Russian officer, drunken, victorious, was picking girls from the crowd of refugees trying to cross the Elbe River. Her brother John saw a boat close to shore, and whispered for her to swim. She threw herself into the icy water; the officer staggered after her but dropped his pistol in the river. She reached the edge of the boat. Some hands pushed her away, fearing the Russians would fire on them. Stronger hands pulled her in.
A year later she came to Halifax on a cruise ship full of Displaced Persons. The train ride that followed was so long she feared it would carry her all the way around the back of the world and leave her in Siberia. She arrived in Chilliwack instead, on Christmas morning. She remembers twinkling lights and supermarket stalls overflowing with oranges.
She lived with distant relatives and set herself to learning English, falling asleep with th and wh on her tongue. She cleaned houses in Vancouver, where two old British women gave her cold mutton for lunch. Her stomach was unaccustomed, so she wrapped it in a napkin and hid it in the garbage – but then their great big dog came sniffing around, so she had to stealthily transfer it to her bag.
She became a nurse, and years later forgot her nurse’s watch at a relative’s wedding. The young crooked-faced farmer who returned it became her husband. She wrote poetry; he quoted her Shakespeare. They homesteaded twice in rural Manitoba, and paid off the farm just one year before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They had three children, one of whom was my mother.
Knowing facts and anecdotes about my grandma is not the same as knowing her. Knowing her is more like this:
You stumble in from playing in the snow, and she yanks off your mittens and claps your ruddy hands to her warm cheeks and yelps in mock-pain and says oh! icicles!
You sleep over at her house and wear your dead grandpa’s pajamas, white with pale blue stripes, and she makes thin pancakes and watches Spider-Man cartoons with you.
You trek to her house in summertime and she meets you halfway, and when you arrive there’s ginger ale – she mixes hers with cranberry juice – and fresh buns, or cinnamon rolls, or the chocolate-chip brownies you now bake whenever you need to befriend new neighbors.
You have your first heartbreak, already in a different city, and she listens, then quietly asks what did she look like, because she knows that’s important, that a person is more than a name and a decision.
You stay with her for what you don’t realize is the last time, and every day you walk around the pond, using momentum – der Schwung – to get down the grassy ditch and up the other side. She teaches you Scrabble and regrets it because it’s then the only game you want to play. In the evenings you watch Jeopardy or Murder She Wrote.
You call her from dozens of different cities, and every time she says Richie! Where in the world are you now? When your mom says her memory is starting to go, you don’t believe it. Your grandma is warm and sharp and funny as ever.
You surprise her with a visit, make plans to see her the next day. When you buzz her door from outside the apartment, she says Richie! Where in the world are you now? and she is not joking. You begin to pre-mourn her.
You pre-mourn her for years, and it still rips your heart out to see her lying here. Her bed is tilted nineteen degrees. Two wild roses sit in a jar of water beside her.
That’s not knowing her either.
Her voice is faint now, and she doesn’t have her teeth in, and she slips between English, German, Plautdietsch, sometimes Ukrainian or Russian. More and more often, her eyes look confused. I try to cherish every last spark – like yesterday, when I said I wish I could see what’s going on inside your head, and she puffed a laugh and said so do I.
And I guess that’s the point.
I’ve been writing stories all my life, and they’ve served me in a variety of ways. When I was a kid, they let me escape sad rooms like this one. As I got older, they became anchors in time, each story reminding me of where I was, who I was, who I was with when I wrote it. They let me try, over and over, to understand things that will never make sense and put endings on things that don’t end.
But the biggest reason I write is this: you’ll never know my grandma, and you’ll likely never know me, but writing stories – whether hewn whole from life or filtered through imagination – feels like closing the gap just a little. I’ve always wanted so badly for someone to see what’s going on in here.
Changelog: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-03 02:43 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-03 02:43 pm20 Years of “Being Poor”
I was reminded via a recent Metafilter post that this year marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and consequently, the 20th anniversary of me writing my “Being Poor” post about it, which was my way of answering the question, sometimes asked sincerely and sometimes less so, why some of New Orleans’ poorest citizens did not leave the city when a massive storm was bearing down on it. The piece was written in anger and sorrow and frustration, and was in many ways was a life-changing piece of writing for me. It remains one of the best things I’ve ever written.
Ten years ago I wrote a long retrospective on the piece, why I wrote it and what it’s meant to me and others. Nearly all of what I wrote there still stands, so I’m not going to repeat the content of that post here.
What I am going to add today is just the observation that the horrors that caused me to write “Being Poor” twenty years ago have not been avoided in the current day; if anything, things are now worse. Most prominently at the moment, we have a government that neither cares about the poor among us, nor is much interested in helping those of us who need help, whatever help that might be. It is an intentionally cruel and contemptuous government, which is echoed down on state and local levels in many places. It’s harder now to climb out of poverty than it was twenty years ago, and easier to slide into it.
The cruel and contemptuous, in government and out of it, will tell you that poverty is about the choices you make, and I am here to tell you, from experience, that far more than that, it is about the choices we make. We have chosen, in the aggregate, to make things difficult, well beyond that ability of most individuals in poverty to make useful choices much of the time, or to make those choices stick without luck or other outside intervention. You can’t tell people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps when we’ve designed a world where boots cost more than what they have, are hard to find, and will fall apart when they use them. You can’t harangue them for not climbing the social ladder when the ladder we’ve provided is greased and the rungs are broken or missing. You can’t blame them for not improving their lot when we’ve given them so few tools to do so, and are working to take away what tools they manage to have. You can’t sell them the American Dream when we’ve put that dream behind a wall, for the pleasure of the few.
The cruel and contemptuous know this, and it doesn’t matter to them. At all. And they are in power.
And so, we will have more poverty and more disasters and more people wondering, some sincerely and some rather less so, why people just didn’t leave whatever it is that will need leaving. We know the answer to that. We’ve known now for decades. But we refuse to change. And so here we are, again, and still.
— JS
rolanni (rolanni) wrote2025-09-03 09:40 am
rolanni) wrote2025-09-03 09:40 amQuiet, normal day
What went before ONE: Waiting for the vet to call back.
Yanno what? I think I won't be going to needlework tonight. I think I'll just sit here and work on entering corrections into my chapbook, which is both comforting and cerebral.
Trooper is in the box on the corner of my desk, where he can get the sun and the breeze from the open window. Tali is on the cedar chest, where ditto. Firefly is on her towel on top of the dresser in the bedroom, where she can look out the front window, and also take the breeze, and Rookie is napping in the box on the corner of Steve's desk.
What went before TWO: Only need to amend the back matter in the chapbook, then I can do a test layout, scream in horror, fall on my sword, and go back to the drawing board.
Trooper will be going to the vet on Thursday morning. He did yell for Happy Hour this evening, but gooshy food is too tough to chew, and the gravy is boring.
It's time.
I think I ate ... something for lunch, though I can't tell you what. Oh, wait. Rice. I'd made a fresh pot of rice. I'll have to do better about the evening meal, but I think I'll get the About the Authors fixed up, first, so I can move right on with being horrified by the compilation, tomorrow morning.
Everybody stay safe; I'll see you tomorrow.
Wednesday. Was foggy when I got up. Now cloudy and sullen. Windows are open, though it's still a bit chilly. Lawn guys are next door, doing their thing.
Didn't sleep well last night, but that wasn't exactly unexpected.
Trooper had breakfast in three parts and did manage to work his way through almost an entire 3-ounce can of Fancy Feast pate, with a little end-of-plate help from Firefly.
My breakfast was cottage cheese mixed in with the tiny bit of leftover macaroni salad, which was surprisingly tasty, and black grapes. Second cup of tea brewing. I'll probably succumb to the siren call of the last cookie pretty soon.
On today's to-do: one's daily duty to the cats, and smol walk. Call the hospital, which sent me an "electronic bill" on 8/27, which I forthwith paid electronically. Yesterday in the mail, comes a paper bill for the same amount, and the same services. Ahem. O! MaineGeneral, I, too, would like to be paid twice, thrice, yea! four times, for the same work, but that so rarely happens*. I feel your ambition, MaineGeneral, and I understand it. But try it on somebody else, hey?
Otherwise, I intend to work on the chapbook -- front matter! almost forgot! Blurb! eek! -- and Trooper is signalling his readiness to get down to cases, by climbing into his box and going to sleep. So, business as usual. That's good.
I bought a tween-weather coat, courtesy of Land's End's sale. It arrived yesterday, and it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I mean -- it fits. It has outside pockets of sufficient depth for such things as car keys, and cold hands, but it also has . . . what seem to be meant to be inside pockets -- quite large pockets; my tablet would fit comfortably -- but. While there's stitching along the bottom of the panel, it's not attached to the coat -- by which I mean, if you put something into these pockets, it will fall out the bottom. So, yeah, I'm thinking I'll be getting out some thread, and maybe some fabric tape, for belt-and-suspenders, and just make those things usable. Probably not today, but who doesn't need projects for the future?
Ah. You can see the inside pockets, here
I think that's all I've got this morning.
How's your day shaping up?
_______
*Actually, that's a bit of a cheat. As a writer, I do occasionally get paid for the same work multiple times. I can't, however, think of one occasion when that happened at a day-job.
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 11:52 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 11:52 pmFurther Thoughts on the M4 Mac Air and Pixel 10 Pro
First the M4 Mac Air and then the Pixel 10 Pro, because, I don’t know, we’re going from largest to smallest.
M4 Mac Air: The first thing I note is that I think I forgot how much I enjoy this particular form factor for a laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I really am happy with my MacBook Pro, but it is an actual beast of a machine, big and heavy and kind of a pain in the ass to take places. Again, I bought it more or less as a desktop replacement, so I’m not faulting it for these facts; it’s doing what I intended it to do. But it is a lug to carry, and not a computer you can comfortably one hand as you move about the house.
The Mac Air, on the other hand, I’m happily carrying around all over the place, and I’m genuinely looking forward to traveling with it when I head out to Portland this weekend and on tour later in the month. It is literally no problem just to pick up and move around. It’s a pleasure to type on (which is what it has over my iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard), and everything else about it just works: The screen is pretty nice, it’s loud enough when I play something through its speakers, and the battery efficiency is such that I’ve been running it unplugged for a couple of days, writing, scrolling social media and watching YouTube, and haven’t gotten close to draining the thing. It’s basically a perfect portable computer, or at least a close to perfect one for me.
This is not entirely surprising as the various reviews I’ve read and watched have pretty much said the same thing; the general consensus is that for the non-power user (which is nearly everyone who is not a coder, a serious PC gamer and/or someone working with tons of video), the M4 Mac Air is probably as much computer as you need. I’m inclined to agree with this. My use case of writing, browsing and some light photoediting does not come close to maxing out the capabilities of this chip, and while I chipped out a little bit extra for more RAM and SSD space (which also got me a slightly better-specced processor), the base model with 16 gigs of RAM would not exactly be hurting doing what I’m doing, either. Spec snobs will note that the screen on the Air is not OLED and only refreshes 60 times a second (unlike iPad Pro, which has the OLED, or the screen on the MacBook Pro, which has variable refresh rates up to 120 times a second). However, having a recent Mac Pro to compare, allow me to say: I literally don’t care. The screen is perfectly good. I don’t notice the lack of OLED or high refresh rates when I’m using it, and I’m not running it next to the MacBook Pro to notice the supposed deficiency. It’s fine.
In the real world, the drawbacks I’ve noticed on this Mac Air are thus: Having both USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on the same side of the computer is a very minor annoyance, and the small size of the computer means that when I am sitting in my office Eames Chair, the cats choose to pretend they don’t see me working on the Air and want to sit in my lap. Which is cute! But makes it hard to work. I would also say, with respect to the Sky Blue color of my particular laptop, that what Marques Brownlee said about it is correct: This is homeopathic blue, like Apple made a silver laptop and then whispered “blue” to it as it was being put into its packaging. Dear Apple: Don’t be afraid of actual color.
(Oh, and: apparently this M4 is optimized for “AI” but nothing I use it for needs it to run AI, and if the computer or the programs I use offer to run AI, I usually just shut off that capability because I already have a work flow established, so, meh?)
But, yeah. Great little computer, it’s doing everything I wanted it to, and can do considerably more than that if I ever need it to. Good purchase, A+++, would buy again.
Pixel 10 Pro: So far, I’m using this almost exactly like I used the Pixel 9 Pro before it and the Pixel 8 Pro before that; honestly, on a day-to-day basis the way I know that I actually switched phones is that this new one has a slightly different color. Now, Google just downloaded Material Design 3 into my phone so all my on-screen buttons and some of my apps look different, so I guess there is that. But that doesn’t really change how I use the phone all that much.
But what about all the new “AI “stuff they packed in the latest Pixels, that are supposed to be the big market differentiators to everything else out there? I hear you ask. Well, I already talked about the most prominent example of that, being the “Pro-Res Zoom” AI which kicks in when you zoom the camera above 30x, and you may recall I was not hugely impressed with that. I am more impressed with the “AI Enhance” photo function, which does not redraw your entire photo but rather adjusts color/brightness/etc automatically. I’m not sure it really qualifies as “AI,” it’s just applying tweaks, but it’s generally pretty good at it. There’s now also a function where you can edit a picture by talking to your phone rather than moving sliders around and such; you can ask the Pixel 10 to remove someone from a photo, or brighten the sky, or, say, remove the background entirely and replace it with an “AI” generated image. The former is cool, I suppose; the latter once again gets us to the point where your photo is no longer a photo and is instead just an image based on a photo you once took. Whether this is something you want, I leave you to consider. I don’t have much use for it personally.
The other “AI” stuff I haven’t really encountered yet, mostly because none of it is really useful for someone staying at home and doing not a whole lot of nothing. I’m not speaking to people who don’t share my language, so an auto-translate that speaks a different language in a voice similar to my own is not a priority, and when I’m spending time in my home office I’m not needing my phone to surface my flight information while I’m texting. I’m traveling this week so maybe it’ll come in handy then. But right now? Yeah, it’s not doing much for me. For the moment, at least, none of the new “AI” features of the Pixel 10 Pro are ones that I have much use for.
Which is not to say I don’t like this phone. I do; as a smartphone, doing all the things I want it to do, it’s great. The cameras are very good just as cameras, the phone is snappy enough opening apps and doing the stuff I need it to do, and I still very much appreciate having the stock Android experience on the Pixel, without all the crap other manufacturers or carriers add on to their phones. Pixel still has the best iteration of Android, if you ask me.
I don’t regret getting the Pixel 10 Pro (especially as my old phone was showing real wifi connectivity issues). It’s an excellent phone I would highly recommend to any Android phone user, if they are in the market for a new phone. But if you already have a phone you’re happy with, and you’re not someone who cares about “AI” to any great extent, there’s nothing here that would make you want to exchange the phone you already have. It’s a good phone! Just not necessarily in the ways Google is selling it as.
— JS
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 09:52 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 09:52 pmCalifornia Sober Now on YouTube
And what, you ask, is “California Sober”? Two things: One, it’s slang for the sort of person who doesn’t drink alcohol or use other drugs but might partake of weed. Two, it’s a comedy short written by Yamini Nambimadom and Isabella Zanobini, and directed by Juliette Strangio, that I was an executive producer for, which is now available on YouTube for general viewing. The plot: “After an unexpected drug test puts their blowoff mall jobs at risk, best friends Lola and Tyler spend an afternoon on the hunt for clean pee with the help of an eccentric crew of mall employees.” Zany!
How did I become an executive producer on this short? Basically, I gave the filmmakers money. I knew Isabella Zanobini via a production company that had optioned one of my properties; that option didn’t get off the ground but when I saw that she and her friends were crowdfunding a short, I thought it would be nice to pitch in. I had no other responsibilities on the project other than tossing some cash their way, but they were nice enough to give me an EP credit anyway. Hollywood, baby!
Whether this short leads to anything more for any of the people involved remains to be seen, but if it does, I suppose I will get the satisfaction of knowing I helped them a tiny bit along the way. In the meantime: Look! A comedy short! Enjoy.
— JS
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 05:17 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 05:17 pmThe Big Idea: Charlie N. Holmberg
Sometimes, books require a lot of planning and outlining, and sometimes you just need to start and it ends up revealing itself along the way. Such was the case for author Charlie N. Holmberg, much to her type-A dismay. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how she skipped the outline entirely for her newest novel, The Shattered King.
CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG:
I literally wrote the book on magic systems.
Okay, I wrote a book on magic systems. Charlie N. Holmberg’s Book of Magic, to be precise.
But this isn’t about that book. It’s about the book that came from that book.
Almost all my novels start with a magic system. Some element, some power, some spark from which plot, character, and setting bloom. I wanted to guide others in finding this spark, so in this Book of Magic, I included a handful of appendices to help people jumpstart their magic systems. One of these appendices is a list of commonly used magic systems in fantasy novels. This list allows the writer to do one of three things: 1) use one of these systems to keep their learning curve shallow, 2) avoid these systems to find something more original, or 3) take one of these systems and put their own spin on it (you know, like Stephanie Meyer did with Twilight).
I was mulling over this while playing Final Fantasy XVI with my husband and thought, okay, Charlie, take your own advice. How would you make something incredibly common new and exciting?
I picked healing from the list. Started playing around with it.
And then I sparked.
What if healing wasn’t done directly to the body, but via a representation of the body? In some sort of dreamlike, liminal space created by magic and accessed only by those who could wield it. Like a dream, this liminal space could take on all sorts of visuals: a painting, a garden, a castle wall. Any sickness or injury would appear as something off or broken—tears in canvas, wilting flowers, cracks in stones. I call this space a “lumis” (because it sounds pretty), and no two are exactly alike.
Cue the video game I’m playing, Final Fantasy XVI. I really liked one of the main characters: Joshua. Joshua, a prince, was born powerful, but also sickly, and nothing seemed to be able to heal him. So what does a monarchy do when none of their doctors can’t heal one of their own? They force the task upon the magical peasants, of course.
And that is where The Shattered King starts. Against the backdrop of war, a healer is forced to leave her family and journey across the country to the capital to try her hand at healing the unhealable prince. She has every intention of failing. The sooner she disappoints the nobility, the sooner she can go home.
But what Nym Tallowax considers to be low-effort magic ends up doing more for Prince Renn than any healer before her. Now if she wants to go home, she’ll have to cure the ailing prince first.
But for whatever reason, Prince Renn’s lumis refuses to be healed.
This idea really took me by the horns—so much so that I started writing it before I had an outline. I’m a type-A personality. All my novels have notebooks, storyboards, and thorough outlines. But the need to make this one happen usurped everything else.
It made me [insert choking noise] discovery write.
I started it in the middle of a family vacation and finished it in fifteen days, an all-time record for me. For kicks and giggles, I asked my editor if she wanted to see it (and let’s be honest, this was mostly because I wanted a reason for her to pay attention to me). Shortly after, my publisher informed me that they wanted to completely rearrange my release schedule to put this book first. Whatever spell this story put me under apparently worked some sort of magic on them, too. And while I know there’s a few readers out there who are getting tired of the romantasy trend, romantic fantasy is my JAM, and I’m happy to butter readers’ biscuits with a little bit of my own.
The Shattered King: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
rolanni (rolanni) wrote2025-09-02 11:09 am
rolanni) wrote2025-09-02 11:09 amEntry tags:
And suddenly! It's Tuesday
What went before: Finished correcting the first 40 pages of Civilized Behavior; only 100 more pages left to go.
Everybody stay safe; I'll see you tomorrow.
Tuesday. Sporadically sunny. Warm. Said to be heading for warmer, still, though not hot. Trash and recycling at the curb.
Trooper has had two -- three! -- tries at breakfast. The third try -- after he had rejected the contents of the bowl I was carrying back to the kitchen and he stopped in front of me, made eye contact, and screamed -- I put the bowl down in front of him. He stared at it. Rook and Tali came to see what Grandpa was getting that was Special, and he had a couple...eight? licks to kinda spite them, then turned away. Also, that pound I was so pleased he'd gained, all the way back on August 27? He's lost it with interest, according to today's weigh-in.
Yeah, contacting the vet is on my list, right after I have a cup of tea on the deck and sort out my thoughts and feelings. I'm remembering talking with Steve, after we let Belle go, and he said, "Y'know? I think Belle was sicker than we knew."
My breakfast consisted of an oatmeal-raisin-walnut cookie. Probably I should do something a bit more, in a while.
I intend to work on the chapbook today. Needlework group is this evening. And I think that's all I've got.
How's everybody doing today?
Later that same morning: Sigh. The New England Donor Services, with which organization I have not found myself in charity with since it first brought itself to my attention by calling me at midnight of the day Steve died, to ask me a bunch of intrusive questions and persuade me to donate usable parts to the Greater Good. . .
The New England Donor Services, I say, not only saw fit to send me a medal in Steve's name (for, yes, after getting up, very calmly in what I now know to have been an Altered State, I looked them up, saw they were legit, thought of what Steve, the author of "Charioteer," might actually want, and called them back to give permission), for being a "hero" for giving the Gift of Life -- and also saw fit to send me a thin volume of tips for survivors, in which such burning questions as "Am I still allowed to wear my wedding ring?" were addressed, and which still from time to time, despite my stated preferences, takes it upon itself to contact me --
Has contacted me again.
They're having a walk -- to repeal death, I guess? No, wait. They need death. Well. -- and they're making a Day of the Dead quilt, and I'm offered the opportunity to "share my loved one's 'donation story'".
I'm pretty sure I've previously asked New England Donor Services to never speak to me again, and, yes, I've asked them again, just now.
But I really did not need them in my mailbox today.
Here, have a picture of Tali inna bookcase. That'll make us all feel better:
rolanni (rolanni) wrote2025-09-02 11:07 am
rolanni) wrote2025-09-02 11:07 amEntry tags:
Second Sunday; First of September
Second Sunday. Sunny and warm.
Trooper making the day more difficult than it strictly needs to be by screaming for food and then not eating. I suspect his tooth is hurting him again, but there's nothing I can do about that today, and I'm not sure how many shots of antibiotic he's good for.
Last night, I was restless, so I sorted through some of the sdcards from Steve's stash, and found an entire card that's the car camera videos of us taking a drive on April 22 2023. The camera is set up to look out the back window and into the cockpit, so I have about 30 minutes of little 2 minute clips of Steve and me talking to each other as he drives us through Winslow and out to Fairfield. Talk about your mixed blessings...
Today, I got to working on the 2025 chapbook, because I actually came up with a title, that being CIVILIZED BEHAVIOR: Adventures in the Liaden Universe(R) No. 36. I may have found a cover -- I have two mocked up and trying to decide if I like the blue-on-blue abstract, or the two little kids sitting together on a swing, staring at the moon in the clouds while birds fly all around.
For those who may be curious, this chapbook largely deals with the Matter of Colemeno, two stories and an outtake from Ribbon Dance. Also, the text of my speech at Balticon, accepting the Heinlein Award. I'll have to check, but I may now have enough stories to make a sixth Constellation.
I have a bunch of corrections to make in the chapbook manuscript, but first! Second Sunday dinner, which will be a chicken burger onna roll with cheese, some baked beans and macaroni salad. A picnic, hey?
How's everybody doing today?
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Well. In regard to Constellation Six, it looks like I have 98,617 words of short story. If I throw in the Heinlein speech, I've got 99,413.
Guess I'll talk to Madame the Agent...
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Yeah, it's the kids on the swing.
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So I finally just got a pack of chains, because the monofilament wasn't making me happy, and that was before it degraded in the sun.
Ornament, blown glass, made in the Corning Glass Studio, by Sharon Lee.
Cake Wrecks (cakewrecks_feed) wrote2025-09-02 01:00 pm
cakewrecks_feed) wrote2025-09-02 01:00 pmIt's Baaaa-aaaack
Yesterday I sensed a great celebration in the Force. As if a billion stay-at-home parents suddenly cried out, and then poured themselves a margarita.
Oh, is school back in session?
Thaaaat explains it.
Plus, now I know why I've been seeing cakes with random office supplies thrown on them:
Oh! And what "TOSCHOL" is!
That black square with the red squiggle, however, remains a mystery.
Now, kids, I know it may not seem like it now, but going to school really is a good thing.
For your parents, I mean. Sucks to be you!! Haha!
Ahem.
I'm sorry.
What I meant was, education is an important, vital aspect of your development, and the places we go to receive our education should be treated with the proper respect.
Now, is it easy? Of course not! After all, these places will make you [shudder] "Back ---- To The Books (Study)":
You have no idea how much I'd like to scratch out "books" and write in "Future." Then I'd replace "study" with "McFly."
Oooh, cake graffiti! Why hasn't this been done before??
[NOTE: I here at Cake Wrecks do not endorse, condone, or solicit illegal cake defacing.]
[Unless you're paid to do it.]
[Glad we cleared that up.]
['Nother Note: I'd give you $5. Just sayin'.]
Look, bottom line:
Totally.
So run along and have fun, dears! I think today I'll sit around and play Overwatch while eating Marshmallow fluff straight out of the jar. Degree-holding adult, right here! Stay in shool!
Thanks to Wendy F., Doug, Marissa S., Megan C., Kristin J., and Allison V. for the education.
*****
P.S. Tell me mine isn't the only brain that went straight to this after that last cake:
School House Rock! 30th Anniversary DVD
Aw yeah, catchy songs AND educational. Good stuff.
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
Whatever (scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 01:28 pm
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2025-09-02 01:28 pmSupplemental Kitten Update: The Kitten Has a Name
Meet (again) Saja. The name is Korean for “lion,” and also, of course, fans of K-Pop Demon Hunters will catch the reference to Saja Boys, the demonic-but-terribly-cute boy band from the film who sing fizzy ditties about wanting to consume your soul:
In this regard the name is doubly fitting because a few days ago, when we decided to keep the kitten, I spontaneously started singing to him, to the tune of “Soda Pop”: You’re my little kitty/So furry and so pretty/You’re my fuzzy butt/My little fuzzy butt! So perhaps it was just fate.
The name was suggested in yesterday’s comment thread by “godotislate,” so thank you for that, G, you did us a solid. Now our cat has a name!
— JS
APOD (apod_feed) wrote2025-09-02 04:57 am
apod_feed) wrote2025-09-02 04:57 am(no subject)
Its surface is the most densely cratered in the Solar System -- but what's inside?
QC RSS (questionable_content_feed) wrote2025-09-01 10:09 pm
questionable_content_feed) wrote2025-09-01 10:09 pmPromises, Promises
Yay stop trying to be coquettish it's weird