Monday, July 7th, 2025 11:19 pm
"The Gate of the Feral Gods" and "The Butcher's Masquerade." I'd say this series is pretty solidly scifi now, so I'm tagging it that way.

Random spoilers )

Moving on soon to book 6, "The Eye of the Bedlam Bride"! No future spoilers, please!
Tuesday, July 8th, 2025 04:24 pm
Finished The Iron Will of Genie Lo and I really enjoyed it. Genie is such an unreliable narrator in a very fun way. The other characters are all charming and I liked the direction the book went in. I also liked how it felt satisfactorily concluded.

Watched KPop Demon Hunters with the dude, who's a bit of a KPop fan. It was a lot of fun and hit all the typical 'slayer' beats. The animation style was cool.

Continuing with the girl power theme, I have Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson (author of Vespertine, which I believe some of you have read) and Skipshock by Caroline O'Donoghue to read next.

We have acquired a copy of Flow to watch because it was only in cinemas for a week and we missed it.

And of course I'm still listening to Murderbot on the bus to and from work. If they make a second season of the TV series based on Artificial Condition I really hope they get Kevin R. Free to voice ART. He's so good!
Monday, July 7th, 2025 08:24 pm
1. I did indeed have a WFH day today and it was pretty chill. Got everything on my to-do list done and had two good web interviews.

2. I'm really enjoying Mario Kart World. And just ten more days until the new Donkey Kong game, which looks like it will be amazing!

3. Molly is demonstrating the proper way to help at the computer.

Monday, July 7th, 2025 09:54 pm
I'll be working this week, and possibly in the foreseeable future as well. It's hard to say - the woman I'm sitting in for needed emergency surgery to have her gallbladder removed, and organ removal always constitutes a careful recovery period.

I don't know how long I want to do this. Full-time, at least. It's the gnawing nighttime feeling and the looming mornings that are getting to me more than lost afternoons at the gym and visits to farmers' markets. Having less time to get my daily living activities finished so I can get writing done in the evening. I'm sure there's a knack to it I can pick up with practice. Breaking the weights out for some evening workouts is something I'm out of practice doing, but I'm getting back into easily enough. I can't drop and do twenty pushups straight, and I'm still capable of a few with good form, so I'll hitch myself back to that goal, among others. Something achievable.
Tuesday, July 8th, 2025 12:46 pm
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: Genfic. John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay, Aiden Ford, Steven Caldwell, Jack O'Neill, Cowen
Rating: G
Length: 27,574
Content Notes: Major character death. John has no special relationship with Atlantis and dislikes the city's voice in his head. Dossier's original Notes are here.
Creator Links: dossier on AO3
Themes: Working together, Character development, Teamwork, Action/adventure, Genfic

Summary: I had set the galaxy afire because she had given me her loyalty and trust.

Reccer's Notes: Yes, it's MCD, but hear me out. Dossier creates an AU story of Sheppard as Laurence of Arabia, eventually saving Pegasus from the Wraith. Like Laurence, he dies in a motor vehicle accident, which happens right at the start so you know what you're in for. The structure works well - a 3rd person account of his death, then the story itself from the expedition's arrival in Atlantis, told in John's first person POV like T. E. Laurence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", then a last 3rd person section about his death and the birth of his legend. Sheppard doesn't mercy-kill Sumner in this - he remains ostracised and mistrusted by the mainstream military and carves out a role for himself by "going native" and working together with Teyla and the Athosians, and eventually other Pegasus peoples, finally masterminding an alliance that destroys the Wraith, but being wounded himself and losing 20 or so years from a Wraith feeding. As with Laurence, he's ultimately tormented by the deaths he feels responsible for along the way, especially the massive genocide of the Wraith, and he dies on Earth, alone and largely unrecognised. But in Pegasus, it's a very different story. Not a comfort read, but a powerful and well-told story that fits Sheppard's character.

Fanwork Links: Nils Nisi Bonum

Monday, July 7th, 2025 06:51 pm
[community profile] sylph_and_asp is members-locked access now. Just. I've got a lot of political posts over there from previous years, plus, as good as dreamwidth does try to protect us from crawlers, I feel better locking my writing down.
Monday, July 7th, 2025 06:24 pm
I was thinking that our monthly check-ins might take place near the start of each month but with a few other things going on the past week, I've left it until now to kick this off.

The idea is to prompt everyone to share what they have been working on, are working on, or want to be working on 😉 And I thought for this first round I might offer a challenge. What does your workspace (or spaces) look like? Read more... )
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Monday, July 7th, 2025 06:42 pm
Welp. The last few days were certainly exhausting.

Don't get me wrong, the long weekend of D&D was a ton of fun, and I'm very glad that we managed to pull it off. That said, it was extremely draining on me even after I spent as much time as possible prior to it trying to charge my internal batteries. By the time we ended yesterday afternoon, my spoons were long gone.

Since I had to get up early to catch the bus to E&Z's place (which was on the weekend schedule the entire time since Friday was a holiday) and then it was usually 1am or so before I made home at night, I didn't get nearly enough sleep pretty much the entire time. Especially since I record summary videos for this game, so I had to get that done at night before I could go to bed.

I ended up taking a nap after I made it home yesterday, and the only thing preventing me from doing so tonight is that I know it will be better to push through and go to bed early instead. If I nap now, I'll be up half the night.

And then work today made things even more fun, but that's a story for another post. 🙃

ETA: Or, you know, I could decide take a nap after all because it hit 7:30pm, and my brain had completely stopped functioning. I'm still tired, so hopefully I'll be able to fall asleep at a decent hour despite the nap.
Monday, July 7th, 2025 04:40 pm

⌈ Secret Post #6758 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


More! )


Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #965.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Monday, July 7th, 2025 03:17 pm
Scientists’ top 10 bee-magnet blooms—turn any lawn into a pollinator paradise

Botanists from the University of Copenhagen and the UK set out to find the best flower combinations for bees and hoverflies.
Danish and Welsh botanists sifted through 400 studies, field-tested seed mixes, and uncovered a lineup of native and exotic blooms that both thrill human eyes and lure bees and hoverflies in droves, offering ready-made recipes for transforming lawns, parks, and patios into vibrant pollinator hotspots
.


Below are the plants recommended for European and United Kingdom uses...

Read more... )
Monday, July 7th, 2025 03:42 pm
For a long time the only Orwell I'd read was Down and Out in Paris and London, and the power of that book is the inside/outside view it gives on how the machinery of exploitation functions on the ground. The constant exhausting useless work of being poor was already familiar to me as a teen. All these time-wasting rigged games of survival serve to manufacture and control a desperate labor pool that demeans, crushes, and ultimately indifferently slaughters human beings. A system is what it does, after all.

The slog to find a job continues to grind my very goddamned soul. I feel like a filter trap for cognitive dissonance, crushingly frustrated by such conundrums as how to be charming and reassuringly competent while curbing vast amounts of anxiety and rage at the state of, well, everything being mismanaged to hell and back in a glory of destruction.

"Our interview in 20min is cancelled, as we're suddenly not funding this position after all."

"Can you show me your home office? No, I don't have any technical questions about your set-up, I just want to see it for reasons."

"My camera is 'glitchy' (so weird that this always happens!) so you'll be performing engaging humanity to a default blank pfp and your own strained countenance."

"Oh we're owned by a private equity firm, so we believe we're shielded from the 'current instability' in related fields. I will not take it well when you ask for the PE firm's name."

"I'm actually remote/contract HR, so I can't tell you anything about that location, team, work environment, or current challenges this position is meant to address. Please be specific about how you would contribute to our business."

"Sell yourself to us, why should we hire you?"
That one pissed me off, it totally came off as 'dance for us, monkey'. Real talk here, I give sommelier energy. I care way more for the craftsmanship and artistry of the product than the sale of it. I did well with luxury treats to middle class punters, and both are in short supply these days. So yeah, if you need a successful impromptu sales pitch about the thing we've already been discussing for forty minutes -- namely my interest and qualifications for a non-sales or even development-adjacent role at a nonprofit -- then we should both not waste our time.

But wasting time is partly what this is all about, isn't it? 
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Monday, July 7th, 2025 06:00 pm

Posted by Heather

Rachel went with hometown label Alexander McQueen for her press junket in London. It totally comes across like they layered a desperation vest over a dress that didn't work, but in fact, it's basically as shown on the runway. Of all the choices from that collection, it's probably among the safest and most realistic for…

The post Rachel Brosnahan Leans on Black in London first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.