catten yarn has entered the chat
1/9/25 16:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yhlee
Still fussing with the settings on the wheel (especially how aggressive I want takeup). Cloud seems to think the e-spinner is purring.
yhleeStill fussing with the settings on the wheel (especially how aggressive I want takeup). Cloud seems to think the e-spinner is purring.
oursinSome while since I posted about being solicited to attend a dodgy-sounding medical conference ('a boutique-style event that emphasizes depth and interaction. Modest in scale but rich in content, the conference’s intimate setting fosters close communication and meaningful dialogue.').
My dears! they must be quite desperate for me to attend, for I have subsequently received not one, no, but TWO further invitations to 'be an Oral Speaker and/or Session Chair', they 'would be honored' to have my participation.
This may be like that invitation I received to a Virtual Trade Mission to Estonia in the supposition I was person of similar name to mine who had at one time had something to do with the Alpha Chi Omega Fraternity, Inc (I do not know whether it would have been of any relevance to them, either).
Maybe there is an actual OB/GYN person of similar name - further hilarity if they are of a different gender, my first name being liable to confusion - and even more if they get queries asking them to be on podcasts about Queen Victoria's sex life and other saucy topics.
On another prickly paw, this person, who does in fact exist and Know Who I Am, and has been assured my continued existence and (relative) compos mentis state, has quite failed to get back to me. Perchance the tone of my response was just a tad tetchy - I did not say JFGI but even these fallen days I felt that a little poking around on Ye Internettez would have uncovered usable contact details.
larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
Prayer (I), George Herbert
Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
Sonnet the verbless vivid. Published in 1633 in The Temple, Herbert’s only collection, as just “Prayer,” the first of a couple poems with that title, thus the commonly added (I). That last semicolon (which in modern practice would probably be a colon) is pulling an amazing amount of weight.
---L.
Subject quote from Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel, which is just as much a hymn.
Prayer (I), George Herbert
Prayer the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth
Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tow’r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
Sonnet the verbless vivid. Published in 1633 in The Temple, Herbert’s only collection, as just “Prayer,” the first of a couple poems with that title, thus the commonly added (I). That last semicolon (which in modern practice would probably be a colon) is pulling an amazing amount of weight.
---L.
Subject quote from Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon & Garfunkel, which is just as much a hymn.
Code deploy happening shortly
31/8/25 19:37![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenancePer the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.
There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.
(no subject)
31/8/25 19:43flemmingsIt's being a perfect Labour Day weekend, first time in living memory: not too hot, not too cold, deep blue skies, occasional white clouds. So a pity I stayed in all yesterday, hiding from the air show, and only went out for a massage today. But did read a murder mystery in which, amusingly, the murderer was Emma Woodhouse near as dammit. I notice this time that Mrs. Elton is appalling, not merely because she's appalling, but because she abrogates to herself position and privileges that Emma thinks are hers by right. Umm yeah, 'a disposition to think too well of herself' indeed. But I'm not sure Austen means that in a social sense as well as a personal one. Maybe Austen thinks Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield really should be the queen bee of the village. Lord, but the 19th century English were as nice and finely graded in their social ranking as the Japanese, though at least in England you didn't have to decide which form of which verb to use with which people.
Granted that female hysteria is a running sub-motif in the book, I'm still of two minds about Miss Bates. I hate talkers because I hate to be talked at. Talkers take the position 'I want someone to talk at, you're going to be it, and what you want doesn't matter.' Drives me batty. But Miss Bates is always in company and is always talking at everybody, which maybe mitigates it somewhat? but still. If she knows it gets on people's nerves, why doesn't she just stop? At home I can imagine she'd drive Jane up the wall. Highbury is criminally forebearing when it comes to selfish horrors, like Mr. Woodhouse. And that, I assume, is also part of the class system?
The massage today did that odd thing where it makes my bad knee worse, so I will see if I get to laundry tomorrow, either at home or at the laundromat or both. As also the back yard with its vines and unwanted bushes. Thursday will rain, which may start the long rains of autumn, so must be done soonish.
Slept to noon for no good reason and dreamed of being in Florence, at a hostel, trying to wash my underwear while some ill-natured girl hogged the washers or wouldn't give me change or something. I was down to my last two pairs of underpants and asked the woman who ran the hostel, who was our business coordinator from the daycare, where I could buy new ones. But underwear was the monopoly of an Italian noblewoman, a Marchioness who wouldn't let just anyone buy underpants. That was really not worth sleeping in for.
Granted that female hysteria is a running sub-motif in the book, I'm still of two minds about Miss Bates. I hate talkers because I hate to be talked at. Talkers take the position 'I want someone to talk at, you're going to be it, and what you want doesn't matter.' Drives me batty. But Miss Bates is always in company and is always talking at everybody, which maybe mitigates it somewhat? but still. If she knows it gets on people's nerves, why doesn't she just stop? At home I can imagine she'd drive Jane up the wall. Highbury is criminally forebearing when it comes to selfish horrors, like Mr. Woodhouse. And that, I assume, is also part of the class system?
The massage today did that odd thing where it makes my bad knee worse, so I will see if I get to laundry tomorrow, either at home or at the laundromat or both. As also the back yard with its vines and unwanted bushes. Thursday will rain, which may start the long rains of autumn, so must be done soonish.
Slept to noon for no good reason and dreamed of being in Florence, at a hostel, trying to wash my underwear while some ill-natured girl hogged the washers or wouldn't give me change or something. I was down to my last two pairs of underpants and asked the woman who ran the hostel, who was our business coordinator from the daycare, where I could buy new ones. But underwear was the monopoly of an Italian noblewoman, a Marchioness who wouldn't let just anyone buy underpants. That was really not worth sleeping in for.
Tags:
denise posting in dw_newsA reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.
The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.
In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.
The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.
Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.
Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.
Culinary
31/8/25 19:54oursinThis week's bread: loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, v nice.
Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, strong brown flour, possibly rather too many in the way of pinenuts.
Today's lunch: halibut fillets, panfried (the packet possible exaggerated cooking time), served with samphire sauce; with La Ratte potatoes roasted in goose fat, baked San Marzano tomatoes, and Boston beans roasted in pumpkin seed oil with fennel seeds and splashed with gooseberry vinegar (a bit too al dente, not sure if this was innate or due to inadequate cooking time/temperature).
Haunted Toilet — Best Craigslist Post This Decade
31/8/25 11:29jesse_the_kFree Toilet – Haunted. Slightly Used. You’ve Been Warned.
Posted 7-Aug-2025 from the north side of Madison
In a dark room, a standard toilet seems to glow white
( click for pic )
Do you have guts of steel, a strong back, and a questionable sense of judgment? Then boy, do I have the throne for you.
As Paul Harvey intoned, the rest of the story…
I’m giving away a toilet. Not just any toilet. A porcelain enigma, a mystical butt-bucket, a vessel forged in the deepest depths of a cursed Home Depot clearance aisle.
It flushes with the fury of Poseidon’s trident and occasionally emits sounds that suggest it’s trying to communicate in Morse code. It once screamed. Not like the pipes—like a person.
The backstory? This toilet was installed in my guest bathroom, affectionately known as “The Chamber of Screams.” Three guests used it. Two of them have since moved to Canada without explanation, and the third refuses to make eye contact with me at barbecues.
What you need to know:
Flushes. Sometimes violently.
Bowl glows faintly during thunderstorms.
Came with a bidet. Now it just hisses and sprays randomly like a venomous snake.
Every full moon, the tank fills with glitter. Unclear why.
One Yelp review from a plumber simply said “no.”
I just want it out of my house. You must pick it up yourself and sign a waiver that I am not responsible if it follows you home.
NO SCAMMERS. NO WITCHES. NO EXORCISTS (already tried). Serious inquiries only.
If you’re brave enough to sit upon the throne and live to tell the tale, contact me ASAP.
Tags:
MCU100 - a weekly drabble challenge
30/8/25 23:17flareonfury posting in dw_community_promo
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mcu100 is a weekly drabble challenge for the Marvel Cinematic Universe!o1. Join the community & you can JOIN AT ANYTIME!!
o2. Read the rules/FAQ. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.
o3. Once you're a member and have read the rules, be prepared to join a team.
o4. Start writing once the prompt is posted! & Earn points for your team to win!
o5. If your team wins, you get a badge!
This first prompt will last two weeks, from August 16th to 30.
fiber redux
30/8/25 18:04yhleeCloud is SO HAPPY with her new nesting material:
Y'all. I'd missed an earlier message (thanks, FaceBook!) but I managed not to pick out sheep fleece (breed unknown). Due to the holiday weekend, this wasn't an in-person transaction, although I hope to return in a bitand be able to talk to the farmer in person!
...I am sitting on a few pounds each of alpaca (definitely huacaya, not sure if one is suri) and angora goat fiber a.k.a. MOHAIR. Mind you, I would have been very happy to work with raw WOOL.
Well, I'll be picking through vegetable matter and sorting this VERY SLOWLY for the rest of 2025 lol. :) I do own hand carders but I think I save my pennies for a drum carder for the holidays...
Y'all. I'd missed an earlier message (thanks, FaceBook!) but I managed not to pick out sheep fleece (breed unknown). Due to the holiday weekend, this wasn't an in-person transaction, although I hope to return in a bitand be able to talk to the farmer in person!
...I am sitting on a few pounds each of alpaca (definitely huacaya, not sure if one is suri) and angora goat fiber a.k.a. MOHAIR. Mind you, I would have been very happy to work with raw WOOL.
Well, I'll be picking through vegetable matter and sorting this VERY SLOWLY for the rest of 2025 lol. :) I do own hand carders but I think I save my pennies for a drum carder for the holidays...
(no subject)
30/8/25 18:25jadelennoxThought process: "Why isn't there a biopic about John Brown? His life was weird and full of adventures and it would be a banger. Wait, maybe there is, let me check wikipedia... oh my goodness these are very different movies."
If anyone's seen any of these and they're worth watching (because good), or hatewatching, or avoiding like the plague, then let me know!
Santa Fe Trail (1940), with Raymond Massey as John Brown, also Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Ronald Reagan as General Custer. That's certainly some casting?
Wikipedia says:
[The film] depicted Brown completely unsympathetically as a villainous madman and Massey plays him with a constant, wild-eyed stare. The film gave the impression that he did not oppose slavery
and quotes from the film:
Mammy: "Well, Old John Brown said he's gonna give us freedom, but shuckins, if this here Kansas is 'freedom', then I got no use for it. No, sir." Then, a black man adds, "Me, neither. I just wants to get back home to Texas and sit till Kingdom Come."
So this certainly sounds like a gem.
The Good Lord Bird (2020 miniseries), starring Ethan Hawke as John Brown and an large cast including Daveed Diggs, Orlando Jones, and...Killer Mike? Sure, why not.
Did I know about this one? I bet I did—it won a lot of awards—but everyone's brain was oatmeal in 2020 and I am not sure I formed long term memories. Also maybe I heard of it and assumed it was about the Lord God Bird (the ivory billed woodpecker) because who wouldn't assume that?
Anyway the assessment of this is mostly a lot of awards and a positive rotten tomatoes rating so probably a safer bet watching Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass instead of Ronald Reagan as George Custer, yeow.
Well, that escalated
30/8/25 11:24yhlee
Sheep and alpaca! Raw unprocessed fiber bought directly from a local-ish farmer. I reckon processing this will be my hobby project for the rest of the year.
Fiber animal wonders about her own fate. :) :) I have...10g of catten floof (which is very spinnable!).
ETA: Also, this may have happened /o\
Peeple B weerd
30/8/25 16:25oursinCasn't seem to locate link to the article but apparently taking your dog to the movies is a thing these days? YOY? - and apparently one reason is so as not to have to get in a dogsitter for pooch while out at the pictures. What happened, we asked, to leaving one's faithful canine to guard the house during one's absence? O tempora, o mores, etc.
Presumably contra-indicated viewing would be Old Yeller....
***
Also in modern-day weirdness, another thing that is apparently A Thing is doing Extreme Days Out, which involves jetting off at the crack of dawn to some touristic spot, doing The Sights (at presumably a brisk pace) and then jetting home again, no doubt to soak in a recuperative hot bath.
Aside from the horrid environmental impact going on with this, how far can anyone be enjoying Tourist Spot if they're going at high-speed clip to fit everything in? It sounds like hell. No time to stop and stare and appreciate. Point thahr, misst.
I was therefore delighted to come across this in Lucy Mangan's column:
[O]ver breakfast I read about the great sunflower fields at Westgate Farm near Walsingham, Norfolk, which for the two weeks that the mighty blooms are in mighty bloom across its 16 acres invites people to come and pick their own for a small fee. Have you ever heard of anything better? Desire – no, need – filled me.
I demanded my husband – the driver of the family, for Walsingham is a short car trip away – abandon his desk, crowbarred my son out of bed and by 10am we were looking out over acres of sunflowers under an azure sky, and do you know what? It was even better than I had imagined. It’s just sunflowers, you see. Sunflowers almost literally as far as the eye can see. All facing the same way, because they are – get this – flowers that follow the sun.
We followed the little dusty tracks that led through the fields and wind about so that eventually you are facing the flowers and they are facing you, and the effect is so joyful and uplifting that even your family hostages begin to break into smiles.
We picked our allowance of five each and were home by lunchtime. They are now in a massive vase I was once mocked for buying but which I must have known somewhere deep in my soul was meant for this, and life is good.
Even if I was then depressed by her mention of the high levels of Ye Clappe in North London, sigh.
Allbingo and Crowdfunding
30/8/25 00:07ysabetwordsmith posting in dw_community_promoallbingo provides a space for creative people to share their work, using bingo cards for inspiration. crowdfunding is a community for creators, patrons, and fans of cyberfunded creativity.Further details below ...
( Read more... )
jadelennoxI can't really drink alcohol anymore so there's no point in saving a bottle of something expensive and wonderful for when the day finally comes.
I briefly wondered if I should acquire a vuvuzela so I have it when I need it, but I realized this will be basically a textbook example of a moment for which shofarot are made. I can usually get a good trumpet blast or nine. I'm prepared.
See you all in the streets. Maybe it will happen tomorrow.
(no subject)
29/8/25 20:10flemmingsGot out the sleep hoodie last night because using the window fan made the room too cold. I need the white noise now that the air purifier tends to screech and the standing fan would be even more chilling. But it's a problem I must solve some time soon. A pity one can't testdrive air purifiers to find the ones that aren't 'whisper quiet.'
Speaking of noises, it's the air show this weekend with practices today and clear sunny weather on all three days. Have thus fortified myself with gin and wine and shall stay indoors for the next three afternoons. Possibly with ear plugs.
But did go out today to a new restaurant/ café on Bathurst that replaced a neighbourhood greasy spoon of long history. It's nice enough and the owners are decent guys but it's noisy-- music at top volume and waiter having loud dudebro guffawing conversation with regulars. Service is slow, since people come to talk, obviously; and the eggs bennie are two small eggs, served on a slice of toasted sourdough, with a drizzle of Hollandaise on top. Toasted sourdough is the kind of thing that pops crowns and fillings, and the eggs had a truly disconcerting tendency to, well, crumble. Couldn't get them on my fork, and if I eschewed the fork, then they fell off the toast, in pieces. How different from the Eggs Dilemma of my beloved and now closed By the Way, snerf.
Speaking of noises, it's the air show this weekend with practices today and clear sunny weather on all three days. Have thus fortified myself with gin and wine and shall stay indoors for the next three afternoons. Possibly with ear plugs.
But did go out today to a new restaurant/ café on Bathurst that replaced a neighbourhood greasy spoon of long history. It's nice enough and the owners are decent guys but it's noisy-- music at top volume and waiter having loud dudebro guffawing conversation with regulars. Service is slow, since people come to talk, obviously; and the eggs bennie are two small eggs, served on a slice of toasted sourdough, with a drizzle of Hollandaise on top. Toasted sourdough is the kind of thing that pops crowns and fillings, and the eggs had a truly disconcerting tendency to, well, crumble. Couldn't get them on my fork, and if I eschewed the fork, then they fell off the toast, in pieces. How different from the Eggs Dilemma of my beloved and now closed By the Way, snerf.