♥ mixed language

I was watching a Chinese vlogger open some mail and she was like, "If you can guess what's in this, leave a comment," and I immediately thought, "yi ben livre." Which is a combination of French and Chinese that I blame on Language Jones because youtube had just shown me a thumbnail of his video "Stop Mixing Languages." (And he speaks French, which I assume was the connection my brain made, since when I started learning Chinese it was ASL that I kept substituting with, probably because it was my most recent non-native working language.)

♥ language in dreams

The other funny thing about that is that it's a reminder of how differently we think, since I know a lot of people don't think in words and I definitely do. The other day I saw a discussion of dreaming in non-native languages, and several advanced language learners seemed convinced this phenomenon is either imaginary or "bogus" (not sure exactly what they meant by that), despite multilingual people assuring them it's real and normal. I remember my glee the first time I woke up and realized I'd been dreaming in Chinese. But I know a lot of people don't remember their dreams, either, so it must just be different brains with different experiences.

♥ AI face editing

Relatedly, I hadn't noticed any AI face editing until tonight, when I was watching my one of my favorite Taiwanese vloggers and suddenly thought, "wait, that's not a real face shape." (China has a relatively extreme "beauty filter" culture, and constant exposure to it may make people more likely to slide across the line from "very idealized" to "straight up anime" face without realizing it.) I googled AI face editing, and now I can't stop noticing people's teeth. I hope that passes quickly.

♥ AI face editing and faceblindness

Oh, but also, I found a helpful English video about a Chinese demonstration of AI face editing (the comments were definitely from non-Chinese viewers), and it included a demonstration of live AI face-swapping at the end. I'm faceblind, which I didn't think about at all until the face-swapping demonstration, because the face-editing was very clear to me. I could easily see the difference between the edited and unedited faces. But I could not see the difference between an original face and a face swap. It was amazing: the narrator would be like, "here's a Tom Cruise face swap" and I was like, "it's the same guy," and then the narrator would be like, "and here, obviously it's Scarlett Johannsen" and I was like, "what obviously; what are you talking about, it's obviously the same person."

So anyway, I don't know what that means, except that there's something different about AI face editing that's visible to me as a faceblind person in a way face-swapping isn't. (By comparison, I mean, I've never recognized editing without a comparison until tonight, and this wasn't "that face looks edited" or even "that face doesn't look real," but literally "that's not a normal human face shape." It looked perfectly real, it just wasn't biologically possible.)

♥ training with the pup

Finally, Daphne and I met with a dog trainer today, and as I told Marci, "I was impressed by him." She was like, "That's not a reaction you usually have to men." I know. So rare. (I often get along better with old men, and he says he's been training for 50 years, so maybe the pattern holds.) On the strength of our first meeting I agreed to a few "private" classes rather than a group class. No money was exchanged until the end of today's session, so I don't want to gush until we meet again, but he did everything right in the initial evaluation.

I have several pictures of the "coyotes," but none at the top of my camera roll, so I searched my photos for "wolf" (since that's what these coyotes look like to me). My photos turned up an actual Irish Wolfhound, whom I don't remember meeting at all, along with several pictures of Mimi running, which I found hilarious and charming.

Then I searched for "coyote," and lo, this picture came up.

( coyote and friends )

One of our neighbors has two cardboard "coyotes" that she puts by the river to keep geese from coming up on the banking. Apparently real coyotes move, so the geese are more convinced by this ruse if the coyotes are not in the same place every time they pass by.

The same neighbor also has a hammock, hence my explanation, "She says the rent to sit in the hammock is to move the coyotes, so I moved a coyote."

(I first encountered the coyotes years ago, at night, while I was out walking with Mimi by flashlight. I genuinely though we had come upon a live animal and I quickly scooped Mimi up and backed away. Mimi was completely unworried, which I admitted after the fact should have been a clue.)

Having just finished the rough draft of a Project Hail Mary fic, as is customary, I'm obligated to ask if anyone knows where I can find an icon. I've checked fandom_icons and I'm sure there's another place or two someone else already knows about.

I've got to figure out a title, so thankfully, I'm not in a huge rush.

1) Looks like this obsession with identifying people online is spreading to all sorts of places. I've been working with two survey companies for a long time for some extra cash. One of them recently prompted users to verify their accounts, offering better opportunities if they did. The other unexpectedly asked me to set up verification to access my account, which included uploading ID and revealing other information.

This is an account I've had for over 20 years. No matter what age I was when I opened it, I would clearly be of age since, and I have contacted customer service various times in the past due to problems. They know I'm a real person who has almost always accessed them from the same IP. I even had "diamond status", meaning I got extra points with each survey completed for faster rewards, as a result of being such a longtime member.

Apparently that was unimportant. I closed my account and they have not contacted me. Makes me wonder how many other people are doing so as well.

2) Watched Elle ( Read more... )

2) Brazil versus Norway. ( Read more... )

England versus Mexico. ( Read more... )

Portugal versus Spain. ( Read more... )

United States versus Belgium. ( Read more... )

Argentina versus Egypt. ( Read more... )

Switzerland versus Colombia. ( Read more... )

I meant to post last night but I could barely keep my eyes open so I went to bed early (and missed a super rare Mets comeback in Atlanta!) and slept for 10 glorious hours! I felt great at work today, and got some stuff done, and made some suggestions about the September board meeting agenda that I am sure the CEO and the Chair will not like, but they wanted to get radical and also not overrun the meeting time by 45 minutes again, and I offered a good way to do it to my boss. We'll see if anyone bites.

I am off tomorrow for the dentist - it should just be a cleaning (though I am braced to hear I need yet another crown) but I am always so tired when it's over. And my team meeting on Tuesday got cancelled so I am tempted to take next Tuesday off since I'm already off Wednesday (my birthday), Thursday, and Friday of next week. My boss was like, sure! but I'm still thinking about it.

I thought I had something else to post about but I can't remember... oh right, I finally watched Project Hail Mary the other night. I enjoyed it but it was too long. And there was not enough Eva Stratt, who was the best thing in the movie.

*

(I was fucking around on my phone for the last few hours, while Kaylee slept on her blanket. The second I got my laptop out, Kaylee came over and started to purr aggressively next to me. You can't be on my lap right now, baby.)

These are probably going to be brief, as my memory isn't that strong six months later.


Searching for Serafim: The Life and Legacy of Serafim "Joe" Fortes by Ruby Smith Díaz
(Local author, read before she gave a talk for Black History Month.)

Short biography and a poem about a Caribbean Black man working as a lifeguard in Vancouver, BC, in the early 20th century. The records of Serafim Fortes are pretty slight, and almost all from the perspective of white people—who treated him as a sort of mascot, and talked about how great he was despite his race—so Smith Díaz is mostly reading against the grain of the historical record, and speculating lot. I normally do not like history books that include this much speculation, however, Smith Díaz is very clear about when and why she's filling in ideas, and I think it works in this context. It introduced me to Marie-Claire Graham's concept of "speculative archiving" as a way of dealing with gaps in the record created by historical violence, which this book is more or less an example of. I appreciated that Smith Díaz did not shy away from or excuse records of Fortes behaving poorly. Very much worth a read as a local history, and as an example of navigating a fragmented and racist archive.


Everything Is Fine Here by Iryn Tushabe, narrated by Nneka Okoye
(Canada Reads Longlist, which I wish had been on the shortlist.)

A coming of age novel about a young woman in western Uganda, who discovers that her beloved older sister is a lesbian. One's reaction to that premise might be, "Oh no!" but this novel was not a tragedy about queer bashing, though the setting and my knowledge of Ugandan politics made it a tense read.

(I also felt that my ((at this point rather hazy)) knowledge of Ugandan geography, culture and food helped me a lot, including having been in the same places described in the book. There's a lot of cultural detail and non-English terms dropped in without explanation, so remembering what most things were saved me a lot of looking stuff up.)

But most of the novel is about a teenager trying to figure out both the world and herself, in a family with a lot of internal conflict and pressures. There's a few cases of sixteen-year-olds making poor choices, but for the most part the novel offers its characters a lot of grace. It's about discovering the world can be a lot bigger than you're told it is, and offering and receiving second chances. Really loved this one.


Witch King by Martha Wells, narrated by Eric Mok
(Reread before getting into the new one.)

I'm really glad I reread this, as I initially rushed through it to find out what happened, and as a result didn't remember several key plot points, which turned out to be essential to the second novel. There are a lot of moving parts!

Basically still love everyone in this band, and appreciate getting a novel about decentralising power, rather than building empires.


Queen Demon by Martha Wells, narrated by Eric Mok
Really enjoyed this one, also, though it ends in a more obvious cliffhanger than the first one, which stands more or less on its own.

Mostly just like the characters and enjoy spending time with them. It's again nice to see people struggling with the work of consensus building, interspersed with battle scenes, lol. I like Kai slowly coming out of his shell in the first timeline, and how much the characters have changed over the centuries between the flashbacks and present day. It really nicely both shows the long-range consequences, and builds up tension as the plots weave towards each other. Bit bummed out by some of the casualties along the way.

I hope we get the next one soon!

(by which I mean, A very bravely ventured back to B&Q again, this time DID get The Goods, aaaaaaaand then discovered that even cut down they didn't fit in the car so they still needed to be attached to the roof rack with ratchet straps--)

we have achieved PROOF that the windows CLOSE when they have ratchet straps slung around both TOP and BOTTOM

we have a house at 26.7°C and an outside world at 26.1°C and it's time to go to bed

[Gru's plan goes here]

-- but hey, maybe at least we'll manage to discourage it from getting significantly warmer in here? and maybe I'll wake up early enough to open the house up usefully while we're still below 20°C tomorrow morning?

In another burst of Shetland-related creativity, I... wrote a fic? For the first time in a decade?? I've never written boyslash before??? What is happening. Anyway here it is:

sail your sea, meet your storm (2380 words) by usuallyhats
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Shetland (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Duncan Hunter/Jimmy Perez
Characters: Jimmy Perez, Duncan Hunter
Summary:

"I don't know," Duncan half shouts over the din, "I just want to be out there," and he's gone before Jimmy can say anything more. Without really considering what he's doing, Jimmy follows him out, closing the door behind him in an attempt to keep the storm outside where it belongs.

She's fine, no worries - well, not fine fine, she's at the hospital, but it's nothing to worry about.

Taking the bus back from the hospital always gets me thinking about Hurricane Sandy. They named a corner after those two boys. They'd be in high school now, or even entering college. It's easy to judge their mother - and don't get me wrong, I do judge her, because she made every possible mistake from before the storm even hit, starting with not evacuating - but people do dumb stuff all the time and it usually works out just fine. People don't usually die because they did something stupid, they don't usually lose their kids over it.

It's been rainy too. It's really just a maudlin way to start a week.

But I still think, every time I take that bus from the hospital, that those kids should've gotten to grow up, and instead they didn't even get to go trick-or-treating that year.

The moral of this post, inasmuch as there even is one, is that if your area is under an evacuation order, or ought to be, fucking evacuate. Or if you've decided to shelter in place, shelter in place. Don't try to evacuate after the storm is already upon you. That's how it all goes wrong.

At one time, the cellar of the current palace was made up of dank, dim chambers where the palace's slave-servants slept and sometimes worked. When the previous Chara made up his mind to free all the palace slaves, there was much discussion over what to do with the former slave-quarters. The somewhat belated consensus by the palace officials was that these rooms were unfit to live in. There was talk of turning the rooms into storage rooms.

To everyone's amazement, the palace's community of eunuchs came forward and asked that the dank, dim chambers be given over to them. They had never before had a place in the palace that belonged solely to them. Many of them, being recently freed slaves, had lived in the slave-quarters; they considered this their home, one that might finally belong to them, rather than to their slave-masters.

The Chara graciously granted them their new quarters and forbade anyone who was not a half-man from entering the quarters, except by invitation of the eunuchs.

I can testify that the eunuch community has done a marvellous job of redecorating the cellar, so that it is bright and cheerful. One room alone has not been touched: the slaves' punishment room, which remains as a stark reminder of this place's bloody past.

If you are invited to visit the eunuchs' quarters, I strongly advise you to visit the punishment room. My advice grows even stronger if you keep slaves yourselves.

[Translator's note: Free-man's Blade includes a visit to the slave quarters, courtesy of a half-man.]

This survey is run by the person who runs the Gender Census. It is looking for information about what first names nonbinary (defined very broadly) people use.

If this describes you, go get represented!

A combination of procrastination and anticipation, I purchased new glasses. The glasses I should've already purchased are the bifocals for my new prescription. I'm trying progressives this time, but I'm stuck without anything good for mid-range. Bad for reading a script while moving. Ahead of the ballgame getting cheap character glasses for the next show. Starting to get a collection of no-frills, kinda ugly backups.

Took a nice long walk after work with Psyche. Didn't take Barklee, who slows us down trying to sniff everything.

Vampire Lestat has another great episode. I love probing Psyche's memories of the series while avoiding spoilers.

Yesterday was a very big day at the zoo for us, with special guest stars in the shape of my dad, stepmom, and youngest stepbrother, who all joined us there to celebrate Squidling's birthday, followed by a special dinner at Red Robin (his favorite, despite being vegetarian by choice ... mostly he just likes their dirty sodas, I think). So, anyway, especially after not getting as much sleep as usual due to fireworks on the 4th of July, we needed a slow day today so that Squidling could recover, so we instituted a project day. He had a new gundam kit to build from his birthday, and The Boy had one from his birthday a few months back, and... so I had to find something to do (other than laundry, which I also did).

As it happens, my stepmom had given me a couple of new shirts a few months back and, while I'd really liked the look of them, they'd turned out to be too big when I tried them on at home. So I decided to put my sewing skills to use and rework them to fit.

This is always a bit of a dodgy proposition with Squidling around, because he tends to get very upset that I am "destroying" my clothes and "cutting them into shreds," which... no. I am cutting them very deliberately so that I can re-sew them, in order to have garments that I will actually wear. But no amount of explaining this to him has gotten it into his head to this point (although I hope that now that he's seven he can tell by being present for the whole process that this is different... some of it is just a thing he pulls out to be mad at me about, though, so we'll see...).

Anyway, shirt number one (a white and green floral sleeveless blouse) was a pretty easy job: turn inside out, lay a similar shirt that fits me over the top, mark the new side-hems with pins, then cut with pinking shears and sew up the sides again. ...Then undo the underarm and fold it down to create a bit more space. Tada! All finished.

Shirt number two was a bit trickier. The intended design is loose and boxy, so I didn't want to take it in too much, but... I also don't favor designs that are too loose and boxy, and the whole thing was very much a whole size too big for me. The sleeves looked good, though, all the way down to just beneath the underarm, so I left that and just had to deal with everything from about the bust down. Two other complications: this shirt had about two-inches of slit hem at the sides, which I liked and wanted to preserve / recreate in the new version, and the shirt is made of that thick, textured cotton gauze, so I had to be really cautious of unraveling... and did I mention I do all my sewing by hand? Ah, yes. So, again, inside out with the shirt, lay a similarly-styled shirt that fits me over the top to get the proper side hems, but then leave some added space because, again, I wanted to preserve some of the intent of the original. Re-sew the sides down toward the bottom hem, then figure out where I want the bottom hem to fall on me and pin that with the split sides preserved but making sure to carefully hem everything and make sure I'm not leaving any loose edges, even on the inside of the shirt. It took quite a while, but I'm very happy with the result.

And now I have two new summer shirts (both appropriate for wearing at the museum or to other nicer events!) that actually fit me. Hooray!

but at least it's cooled down!

(I always picture all this rain after a heat wave like somebody reaching up and literally wringing out the damp air.)

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

( Read more... )

(Backdated entry: 2026-02-09. Memories may have frayed...)

Auditions for Urinetown. I'd been thinking about getting back into theater since we moved and I realized there was an established community nearby, but it's taken a long time to find the courage. I had excuses earlier (shows that I didn't know or didn't look interesting, misaligned times for auditions or performances), but I didn't realize how scared I'd been until I was experiencing extreme anxiety in the house getting ready to go. Almost pulled out. Eventually talked myself down and made it to the theater (after frantically searching for my keys).

I went in hoping for Officer Lockstock, or maybe Cladwell, but I was trying to temper my expectations. I didn't know the politics of the theatre, and as well as I might do at the audition, I didn't know what talent might be there, or how much faith would be put into an unknown actor to be reliable. Still, I was pretty sure I could land Tiny Tom in the ensemble. But when I got there, the director was pretty upfront about not having a lot of the regulars available, so I thought I might have a good chance.

I felt like I'd made a good impression reading for Hot-Blades Harry. I did a reading straight (high-energy, barely controlled bloodlust), but got a chance to read a second time and went for something more Peter Lorre creepy, which got a lot of surprised laughs.

Finished the evening with prepared song "Not a Common Man" from American Psycho, which fit range and the theme of the show. I had been naive about the ability to get a karaoke backing track, but I eventually did some Audible hacking to get something passable.

I was asked to prepare "Cop Song" and "Don't Be the Bunny" for a potential callback for next week, which seemed like a good sign.

Star: She said the rent for sitting in the hammock was to move the coyotes, so I moved a coyote.
Marci: That's a great quote. It's even better without any context.

I'm forgoing a couple chances to go to the movies this week out of a sense of personal responsibility. I can afford the price of the tickets, but not the time it'll take. For example, I knew tonight I could take the evening for The Master on 70mm, but with a meeting this afternoon pushing cooking lunch for tomorrow until after I'd done my writing for the day, I couldn't make it out. I don't think I can do Wednesday afternoon, either.

I'm hopeful about Thursday afternoon, though.

In reasonably positive news regarding the writing, I managed 2000 words, which is unusual enough to warrant a mention.

Reconciliation Theatre: Women of the Fur Trade.
I caught this recently and loved it. Wonderful local cast, fast paced and funny. I think it'll be in Victoria in the fall, if people aren't around for the list of tiny smol towns it's hitting this month.

Keep Android Open: Your phone is about to stop being yours.
Starting September 2026, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID. Every app and every device, worldwide, with no opt-out.

tulipathy on BlueSky: Thread About GenAI in Heated Rivalry fanfic [ETA: Need to be logged in to read, very brief summary in comments].
I'd been hearing rumblings about this for a while, but I guess it's broken open now. How depressing for the fans.