paraka. Network

1. I decided to take my midday walk before lunch rather than after, in an attempt to get a little more shade, but it was still pretty awful and I ended up not being able to take that long of a walk. But I did stop in at a new to me cafe across the street from work called Da Vien and got an ube cream coffee, which was delicious.

2. I had a dentist appointment Tuesday but rescheduled it on Monday when I wasn't feeling well, in case I was still feeling gross on Tuesday, as I did not want to be stuck in a dentist's chair while having digestive issues. I wasn't able to get an early morning appointment for any day next week like I usually prefer and was only able to get 10am on Monday, and it's going to be a longish session, so I just decided to take the day off rather than schedule work around it.

3. We had been considering maybe getting a membership for the Natural History Museum as they are pretty reasonable (and we only need to buy one, as it's good for the member plus one guest), and then I got an email saying they're currently running a 20% off promo for membership, so I went ahead and signed up. It's actually good for both the museum and the tar pits, but the annoying thing is that the tar pits are closing as of this past Tuesday for two years for rennovation lol. So in this case it's only good for the one museum. But it gets you free access to all the separately ticketed exhibits, as well as 10% off food and merch.

4. Sleepy angel!

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james

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tielan

"Money were not an issue" is a bit of a tricksy phrase.

Do you mean I could buy anything and anyone in the world? Like, no amount too large, no cost beyond contemplating?

Or do you just mean I get all my basics provided? Bills paid, insurances, food, etc?

Because I'm talking about a situation where "if I need the money to buy anything, I have it" in which case, I'm not thinking about me, I'm thinking BIG SCALE.

--

1. What would you do right now, if money were not an issue?

Buy the Australian government. Everyone's for sale at the right price, and you said 'money not an issue'.

Actually, no, I would buy one of the major news/media companies networks. Straight up. Fire everyone, rehire a bunch of people, kill AI, the whole deal.

smaller scale

Oh, you mean personally?

Buy several properties. Townhouses to rent out to friends/people who are struggling. Do it up, solar, water tanks, garden beds, etc.

At least one land property up in the hills - probably about 2-3 acres. Same thing, although a little more intensive.

If we're not talking about the big broadscale kind of stuff, I'd get the roof replaced and the walls insulated, sort out some under-house storage spaces, and redo the garden.

2. What would you do for the next three years, if money were not an issue?

Sort out the house and the land.

Write that novel. (Yes, really. *sigh* I've been saying this for the last twenty-five years.)

3. What is bringing you the most joy right now that requires little or no money?

Fanfic writing.

4. What types of things do you find enjoyable that require no money?

Walking around the neighbourhood. Gardening (although a lot of that tends to cost money in inputs). Reading fanfic.

5. Is there anything you've been meaning to do for a long time, but put off because of money?

...I'm guessing getting the roof replaced and the walls insulated doesn't count?

Pay off my sister's mortgage? IDEK.

--

I was going to talk about jobness and the next stage of work, but not out in the open, I think.

Tags:

friday five

primeideal

I read both "Blackout" and "All Clear" by Connie Willis for the "Duology" squares; I'm reviewing them both in the same post, but I'll drive myself crazy if my tag count isn't correct, so adding this one retroactively because I finished "Blackout" around this time. :P

Tags:

books: sff bingo

kaberett

Last week I got Influenced to acquire Specific Shoes For Lifting In as opposed to merrily carrying on in my DMs. They arrived on Tuesday! Which meant I had them for squats yesterday. The only difference I have noticed so far was how confused I was by? my standard set-up? suddenly being the wrong height? Suddenly the cups were too high for me to be confident I'd be comfortably able to rerack the bar once I'd got significant weight on it.

... they are barefoot shoes. they have minimal soles. I'm nearly three centimetres shorter!!!

Meanwhile today's hobby has been working out a bunch of protein numbers, in relation to both the She's A Beast protein mush and the offerings of The Organic Protein Company (my second order from them having also arrived... on Tuesday). The former on account of I'm making my own yoghurt rather than using Fage 2% and I wanted to work out how it compared to the numbers Johnston quotes, whereupon I was alarmed to find out that I cannot by any reasonable means match her asserted 36g (but can if I assume she forgot she'd already added the peanut butter to it...); the latter out of curiosity about how preciously precise I might want about serving size (answer: I am not tracking ANYTHING else closely enough to care about a gram or so of protein each way in my shakes, good grief).

( sorry about the horrid formatting, I'll fix it in the morning (maybe) )

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #7125 ⌋

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

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 08 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1017.
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.

devilc

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contingencycon posting in

fandomcalendar

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nanila

Before we left Washington DC after our brief but packed visit, my colleague and I paid a visit to the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. We decided to walk from where we were staying, forgetting that the park around the capitol was completely blocked off for the fair. This turned what would have been a 13-minute walk in the sweltering heat into 35-minute walk in said heat. By the time we got to the museum queue, which stretched beyond the shade of the building, we were melting.

At least we had an odd aerobatics display involving parachutes and upside-down flags to entertain us while we queued.

Happy, happy nerds, who have successful achieved museum entry. And air conditioning. Blessed, blessed air conditioning.

Lunar module LM-2 feet. Gold on the outer side, black on the inner side facing the main engine exhaust. Thermal management!

Aforementioned LM-2 main engine.

LM2 from above.

Pioneer!

CubeSats.

The excellent little Sorato rover, developed by the Japanese company ispace, which sadly hasn’t flown.

IceCube neutrino observatory.

So many treasures in the space hall.

This still blows my mind. These holes are where the debris impact craters were drilled out and studied when Hubble’s original Wide Field Camera was removed and replaced, and the flawed camera returned to Earth.

Delighted colleague with Hubble’s backup mirror.

Dava Newman’s spacesuit.

The aftermath of 16 years in space.

Telstar. Fantastic little spacecraft. Most excellent cat (RIP Telly).

Epilogue: I didn’t end up replacing my SR-71 blackbird hoodie, because I thought most of the designs in the shop were rather tacky. Everything’s gone to these big screen-printed images that take up the entire front or back (or both) of the item. My old hoodie just had an attractive sewn logo on the top left side on the front. I settled for a t-shirt that had a similar printed logo on the front.

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starandrea

zhoumojun: welcome to our danmei club
zhoumojun: I mean our chinese learning server

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discord

glinda

I've been on jury duty this week, which involved a lot of waiting around, so I finished a library book, did a lot of knitting, and stress-wrote a fic.

Ain't No-one Else To Blame But Me (1464 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Siblings, Hockey, Family Dynamics, Sibling Rivalry
Summary: Alexei’s first love was hockey; it did not love him back.

Anyway, what else? Movies! I have been watching them!

Pretty much on the spur of the moment, I went to see my local art house cinema’s Mystery Movie last Friday night. (My horror movie buddy, texted me the night before to see if I fancied it, we’ve done a horror mystery movie before and that was great but I wasn’t certain about one where I didn’t even know the genre. However, I haven’t see this friend in ages - she got married earlier this year, so she’s been busy - and I wanted that part of the evening, so I decided that actually I do trust the film curator enough that it’ll be a good time so said ‘fuck it’ and agreed.) To our mutual amusement it turned out to be Slither, an early 00s ridiculous splatter-fest that my buddy had actually seen in the cinema when it came out but it’s been so long since she saw it, all she could remember was that it had Nathan Fillion in it - or as she put it ‘the guy from Castle’. We laughed, we squealed, we heckled - a well/badly timed jump scare led to me wearing half a glass of wine - it was a pretty packed screening, full of fellow film nerds also having a good time. (Was it a good movie? No. Was it a good time? Absolutely. We do not require our horror movies to be good, though we like it when they are, but we do need them to commit to the bit.) And then afterwards, we went for cocktails and spent a glorious couple of hours ripping it apart, analysing the tropes and generally nerding out about horror movies, in between catching up on life.

My original plan for Friday night was to go and see The Mandolorian and Grogu because that seemed a good time for a Friday night when I wanted to turn my brain off and enjoy some action. The screenings were pretty limited near me, but I spotted there was one Sunday lunchtime, so I zoomed home from swimming and made it to that one. My main criticism of this film is that I think it wasn’t sure who it’s audience was, it didn’t seem to be willing to commit to whether it was a family film or not. There were whole sections with Grogu and the little mechanic aliens that were clearly aimed at kids, but a big chunk of the plot is all bounty hunters and gladiator style fights to the death. So like tonally, a bit all over the place, I wish they’d decided what kind of film they were making because for the record I’d have watched either version but there was a bit of whiplash going on there. (You could have cut a good half an hour/forty-five minutes out of it with no really storytelling loss, but I enjoyed spending time with those characters so it didn’t drag.) But, I can’t claim that I didn’t enjoy it. I watched three seasons of the Mandolorian purely for Djin and Grogu learning out to be a family and fighting bad guys, I’d likely have watched another three, so I was quite happy to watch another two and a bit hours of them doing their thing. Plus Sigourney Weaver as a New Republic senior officer, all very moral relativist but coming through in the crunch nonetheless, very hot.

And finally! I’ve had a documentary open in a tab on youtube for about six months, after reading a blog post about it somewhere, and I finally got round to watching it. Listers is a charming little indie documentary film by two brothers who discover the concept of competitive birdwatching, fall down a rabbithole investigating and end up spending a year living in a van making a film about doing their own ‘Big Year’. It’s both delightful and bizarre, just a fascinating deep dive into this whole other world and it’s dramas and foibles by two guys who’re outside it enough to see it’s eccentricities and have perspective on them, and fully aware that they have in fact been sucked into the culture of it. It’s a film made with a great deal of affection but also a clear sense of the ridiculous.

Mood cheerful
Music Marillion - Sugar Mice In The Rain

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osprey_archer

A few weeks ago, scrolling through Tumblr, I was arrested by a quote:

“I can’t think what it’s like to be certain. I’m afraid that it’s impossible for me. There isn’t a place for me.”

His voice was tense, excited, full of passion. As he went on, it became louder, louder than the voice I was used to, but still very clear.

“Listen, Lewis. I could believe in all the rest. I could believe in the catholic church. I could believe in miracles. I could believe in the inquisition. I could believe in eternal damnation. If only I could believe in God.”

“But you can’t, I said, with his cry still in my ears.

“I can’t begin to,” he said, his tone quiet once more. “I can’t get as far as ‘help Thou mine unbelief.’”

We left the ridge of the Roman road, and began to cross the shining fields.

“The nearest I’ve got is this,” he said. “It has happened twice. It’s completely clear – and terrible. Each time has been on a night when I couldn’t sleep. I’ve had the absolute conviction – it’s much more real than anything one can see or touch – that God and His world exist. And everyone can enter and find their rest. Except me. I’m infinitely far away for ever. I am alone and apart and infinitesimally small – and I can’t come near.”

This comes from C. P. Snow’s The Light and the Dark, and of course I had to read it at once.

Now unfortunately this turns out to be one of those rare times when my book instincts have led me astray. The above excerpt electrified me, but the rest of the book was… it’s fine. It’s well-written. Our narrator (Lewis) is telling us the story of his friend Roy (the speaker in the above extract) and his struggles with recurring melancholia.

Roy hopes that if he can come to believe in God, that will cure his bouts of despair. When that doesn’t work, he decides to try the next best thing, “a feeble simulacrum of his search for God,” by attempting to embrace the Third Reich.

Given the kind of God Roy was looking for, based on his passionate declamation that “I could believe in the inquisition…in eternal damnation,” it strikes me the move from God to Hitler actually makes perfect sense. God the Fuhrer seems like just the sort of deity who would delight in damning people for the hell of it, too.

You might imagine that Roy’s flirtation with Nazism put me off the book, but in fact I had gotten annoyed with Roy much earlier, simply because I felt that the author was continually leaning over my shoulder breathing “Isn’t he dreamy?” Young, handsome, deeply and romantically sad; slender yet strong, intellectually brilliant, showered in honors to which he is indifferent; a notorious womanizer who had a brief gay love affair in his youth –

I did entertain the possibility that Snow may have meant us to read Roy as gay, adding an extra subtext to his despairing “There isn’t a place for me.” But upon reflection I think this briefly-alluded-to affair is simply meant to add to Roy’s aura of irresistible dreaminess. Women want him, men want to be him; but men also just want him. Don’t you, dear reader, also want…

“NO,” I said, heaping rejection like coals of fire on poor Roy’s head, like an angry god myself.

So in a way it was a bit of a relief when Roy started flirting with Nazism, as I felt released from any obligation to like this beautiful sad boy. Look how sad he is. How could you dislike anyone so sad and so beautiful at the same time? He does perhaps allow his sadness to lead him into excesses, but it’s just because he’s so darn SAD, don’t you understand? Well, look, I think we can all agree that “fanboy for the Third Reich” is simply an excess too far.

Unfortunately, now that I’d decided I was allowed to hate him, I began to find him far less annoying. It helps that when the war starts, he signs up to fly for the RAF, mostly because he knows the death rates for pilots is high, but at least he’s fighting for the right side even if he is also sighing re: the Nazis “If they had been just a little different, they would have been the last best hope.” Last best hope for WHAT, Roy? This is genuinely unclear to me, because he recoils whenever he has to interface with a specific example of Nazi doctrine, like their policies toward the Jews or their desire to conquer Europe, when considered as a concrete fact rather than in the abstract. (In the abstract he thinks unification is a good idea and, after all, it will never be accomplished peacefully.)

So he’s still fumbling about in basic political incoherence, but he nonetheless achieves a certain pathos in this section. Despite myself, I felt some of the tragedy of this beautiful sad full-grown man who is clearly always going to be spiritually a beloved boy in C. P. Snow’s heart.

Snow is actually quite a good writer, I think, but would have been even better if he could have gotten out of his own way. There’s no need to constantly point out Roy’s dreaminess. He’s put enough of it on the page that readers could notice it on their own, if they were only left alone.

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cakewrecks_feed

Posted by Jen

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/its-the-i-of-the-tiger-2026

When CW reader Jamie ordered a birthday cake for her husband Jim Bob, she encountered one of the funniest dilemmas I've seen yet - and that is really saying something.

The problem?

Her baker had never heard of the letter J:

And apparently thinks Birt and Hday are two separate words.

(Give it a minute.)

(Theeeere it is.)

Um....

Any guesses?
Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller?

Two of the most misspelled words I see on cakes are "congratulations" and "confirmation." So when someone is foolish enough to order a "Congratulations on your confirmation" cake, HILARITY WILL ENSUE:

Thank goodness the baker made up for it with all those great decorations.

Wrecky minion Tabatha was having a bad day, so she decided to swing by the discount rack at the bakery for a little pick-me-up. Then she asked the baker to write "Eye of the Tiger" on it, since we all know that's the best song for a bad day training montage. (I'm picturing slo-mo clips of rampant toe-stubbing, pink slip shredding, and bad haircut reaction shots.)

Anyway, as it turned out, Tabatha got an even bigger pick-me-up than she bargained for:

Greetings, from We of the Turkeys!

And finally, when it comes to baseball bats, this baker is ALL THUMB:

NAILED IT.

Thanks to Jamie, Ashley R., Sandi M., Tabitha G., & Amanda F. for knowing something was wrong with that last wreck, but not quite putting her finger on it.

*****

P.S. Friendly reminder:

Punctuation Saves Lives

*****

And from my other blog, Epbot:

https://www.cakewrecks.com/home/its-the-i-of-the-tiger-2026

scaramouche

Books in the old unread pile: 3

A friend gave me an old family copy she had of Donna Tartt's The Secret History a few years ago. We must have been talking about the book (maybe I'd told her how I'd stumbled on some posts about it on tumblr) or she must've described the some of story to me as we were chatting about books we've enjoyed, and got me curious. I wish I could remember what we'd discussed, but anyway I have now read it.

Actually I just finished it a few minutes ago, so I don't know how I feel about it overall. I know that I was at first reading rather clinically, in appreciating the prose and turns of phrases and ways Tartt uses the narration to drop self-aware foreshadowing, then when the first murder is reported to the narrator I couldn't put it down and kinda inhaled the rest of it. I think that says something good about the writing and how compelling I found it? And how fascinating it is to read about a series of trainwrecks, one after another, as the characters make all sorts of bad choices that spiral out and bounce back (like some of my fav crime fiction, but different) yet remain compelling to read about in horrified fascination. Perhaps I shall look for some discussion tomorrow, when I have cleared my head.

Mood tired

Tags:

books,
year 2026

glitteryv posting in

recthething

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fanvids/fanart/podfics/other kinds of fanworks/fics/fancrafts have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

celli

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writing

james

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vass

Books

Finished listening to the audiobook of Monkey King (abridged, Monkey-centric, version of Journey to the West translated by Julia Lovell, narrated by Kevin Shen.) It was very fun.

Tech
Dug out the soldering iron etc that I bought years ago with the annual intention of learning electronics this year. Now to check whether they work and haven't become damaged over two moves and mumble years of storage.

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culture consumed

torachan

1. They got the AC fixed at work! The guy was already working on it when I got there and he seemed to get it fixed pretty quickly. Everyone else in the office was very excited about it not being so hot, too.

2. I finished up the second of the Star Wars movie poster puzzles.

These really are fun little puzzles, though I will be glad to move on to something a bit more challenging once these are done.

3. Carla arrived safe and sound in Wisconsin this afternoon. Unfortunately the AC was not working well on the train, which is not what you want for an almost two day journey during the height of summer, but at least it wasn't fully off, just spotty in the rooms while still being nice and cool in the hallway. And now she's in the hot, muggy midwest, but at least her aunt and uncle's house has AC.

4. There is a new yuzu green tea from my favorite bottled green tea brand (Itoen's Oi Ocha series) and it's on sale at work through today. I only noticed it today at lunch when I bought a bottle for myself, so I bought a case (12 bottles) before I went home, so I could have them to bring for lunch. When I just buy a drink here or there I don't always use my employee discount as I always use the self-checkout and don't always have my badge with me to scan, but if I make a larger purchase I always make sure to, so I got the employee discount (which is only 10% but better than nothing) plus the sale price.

5. Jasper loves hanging out on this box in my closet lately. If I can't find him, this is always the first place I look!

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hrj

I had my first physical therapy appointment today, though I've been doing some exercises 3x per day since last Thursday (cast-off day). She took measurements of various angles of range-of-motion and set up a more tailored set of exercises. Turns out there's an app for that: has a list of the exercises with demonstration videos and timers. I like that.

I got praise for my exercise technique (including having done a lot of finger work even before the cast came off). Typing as therapy is approved. I got clarification on the timeline for weight-bearing. (Timeline started at the operation, so I'm already up to 2-3 lbs occasionally.) The brace is only for extra protection when I feel I need it, plus at night. (I think they assume I flail around more in my sleep than I actually do.) I have a compression glove for general wear, which will help with mobility as swelling is part of what I need to overcome.

I have follow-up appointments weekly for the rest of the month to assess progress and adjust exercises. Yesterday I went to the gym for treadmill time, which I plan to make a daily thing.

The typing is slow and slightly painful, but my key-accuracy is much better than my first attempt several days ago. And last night I pulled out my almost-finished socks and did the cast-off (which I've been joking about for some time).

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health

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paraka

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Style: Regatta for Summertime by ninetydegrees
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[ SECRET POST #7125 ]

Russia's summer of discontent? Heh, that's nothing. Winter is coming

Contingency Con - Person of Interest Fan Convention

Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum

heavenly path

Things I've Been Up To

Book Review: The Light and the Dark

It's The "I Of The Tiger"

Book Log: The Secret History

Community Recs Post!

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