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Because Biden told HHS that they couldn't stick kids with people who would make them more likely to be bullied into self harming, and Trump hates everything that Biden stands for including protecting kids from people like him, Trump is trying to stick LGBTQ kids with unsupportive "traditionally Christian" families. He's getting his stooge, RFK Jr., to propose scrapping protections for LGBTQ+ kids in foster care.

The Trumpist regime is trying to sneak another shortened comment period by us too quickly for people to protest. If you want to register a comment about how much these people hate children, etc, here is where to do so. And if you want to read the whole weasel-worded decision, you can do so here.

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( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

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starfleet academy

( books (Ghattas, Raybourn) )

yarning
Made and sent 2 catnip-silvervine hearts (to the same customer who has ordered about nine of them now). Missed yarn group due to cold, torrential rain, and DST. Made and sent 2 multicolored kickbunnies. Finished the turquoise kickbunny for kitten academy's current momcat (her kittens are 2 weeks old and adorable!), but haven't gone to the post office yet. Continued Easter carrots after messaging the customer to confirm the number and cost (so stressful!). Now they just need smiles and hanging loops.

healthcrap
I loathe springing forward. Still can't get up at a decent hour. Daytime vertigo is now coming randomly. In the night, it's mostly connected to lying in bed/rolling over/getting up to go to the bathroom. Fun times. I do feel a bit better overall. I got all my healthcare coverage renewal info uploaded and am impatiently awaiting a telephone appt. Tongue still has a hole in it, but it's shallower than it was and is slowly healing...if I can just keep from biting it. Had to start a new tube of benzocaine.

#resist
+ Check locally for anti-war protests. I'm finding Reddit and Instagram to be fairly good sources if you check often. (Last Saturday was a national protest, but I didn't know about it until just a couple of hours beforehand. Doh!)
+ March 28: #50501 No Kings Protest #3

Thanks for the kind comments on recent posts. I've been terrible at replies. I hope you're all doing well! <333

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"A nice fried egg, sir."

"And what, pray, do you mean by nice? It may be an amiable egg. It may be a civil, well-meaning egg. But if you think it is fit for human consumption, adjust that impression."

—PG Wodehouse,"Mulliner's Buck-U-Uppo"

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quotes

I keep intending to be better than a once-a-week blogger, but here we are on another Wednesday.

What am I doing with my life? Still much the same. I've added A-Ihsan mosque to the places I patrol, since, as discussed in previous posts, things drag on relentessly and so we are losing more and more volunteers. Very reasonably? As I told the folks at the Food Communists the other day, the only reason I'm still here is because I don't have a life to get back to!

I did intend to tell you all the story of the day I was stalked by a drone as I watched over school children getting off buses.

Image: A distant and blurry shot, but very clearly a drone.

It was maybe last Tuesday? But some time last week, I was at my usual spot waiting for the several buses that stop near my location to do their thing, when I noticed a drone buzzing around. I alerted dispatch and promised to try to get film or a still picture. Friends? I have now learned that it's a good thing that the resistance did not need me to be its archivist. This was the BEST shot I got despite the fact that at one point it hovered directly in front of me for several long seconds. Did I hit record? I thought I did! Instead, I was just pointing my phone at it. I now know that while I do have the presence of mind and wherewithal to have my camera pointed mostly in the right direction, I am, in fact, much more likely to take crystal clear video of the sidewalk than the clear and present threat. Sheesh.

In fact, I initally thought that all I got a picture of was something that looked like I took a picture of the sun. Luckily, I found this picture with a tiny dot on it that, once enlarged (like the picture above), you can clearly make out the shape of the drone.

Do I think it was ICE or the cops?

I can't say for sure.

There are hobbiests out there with a poor sense of where to fly these things, but the reason I stand at the corner I do is because there is a very large concentration of Somali families that live in the nearby apartments.Also? That moment it chose to drop low and hover directly above and slightly in front of me was weird. I can't explain it, but it definitely exuded threat. Maybe it was a hobbiest trying to make sure I got a good look and thus would know that it was NOT a threat, but it "stared" at me until I waved. Then it finally flew off, like it wanted me to know that we saw each other.

Our various rapid response groups try to keep track of drones, because people think they see a lot of drones--though usually at night. I am pretty confident that I can spot the difference between an airplane, a helicopter, and a drone even at night, but, when it's just lights in the dark, I wouldn't swear to it. This was broad daylight, and there is no mistaking this for anything else. My picture isn't great, but it's a picture of a drone. Who it belongs to? Uncertain. But it was in a vulnerable neighborhood and spent a lot of time circling me and the school bus drop-off area.

Otherwise, despite a few lulls and the Food Communists trying to figure out a sustainable schedule that doesn't exhaust its volunteers or its funds, I still spend an hour or two packing groceries pretty much every day that they're open and in operation. Food is still flying out the door. Food insecurity is real? But, also there are plenty of people who are still trying to recover from Metro Surge, wages lost because of it, etc.

I did manage to read a couple of things, though! Shawn needed me to go to the library pick up some Minnesota-centric cookbooks to be donated to the history center and, since I was there, I decided to peruse the manga section. I brought a bunch home. But, in the last couple of days I read A Man Who Defies the World of BL by Konkici (Volume 1) and My Oh My, Atami-kun by Tanuma Asa. Both are lightly humorous, the first largely being a send-up of all the yaoi tropes. I actually like My Oh My, Atami-kun better because... well, largely because I'm a tough sell on comedy, generally, and part of me felt like A Man Who Defies the World of BL was asking me to lean into the supposed hilarity of trying to avoid catching Teh Gay and so it ended up feeling a touch homophobic. This sense was made worse by watching the first episode of the live-action TV show by the same name. My Oh My, Atami-kun also plays into the stereotypes a bit, by having Atami being the kind of gay who is constantly falling in love at first sight. But, there's a lot more found family stuff that's taken very seriously and some really great straight + gay friendships that are continuing throughout (I read the first volume that I got from the library and then immediately tracked down everything that's on the pirate sites. Whcih, shame on me, but I liked it that much.)

My Thirsty Sword Lesbians game ended up being canceleld for the second time in as many months, but people were sick and some were travelling and had thought they could videocall in, but couldn't after all. Alas!

So, that's me. I'm just keepin' on keepin' on in the resistance and life. How's by you?

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Who is stalking the son of the man convicted for causing the Seryong Lake Disaster?

Seven Years of Darkness by You-Jeong Jeong (Translated by Chi-Young Kim)

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Just finished: Lullabies For Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill. Naturally, this was great, and surprisingly uplifting at the end. I don't have a lot to add after last week—if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

Currently reading: Indigenous Ingenuity: A Celebration of Traditional North American Knowledge by Deidre Havrelock and Edward Kay. This is a kids' book about technologies and traditional knowledge systems used by pre-contact Indigenous peoples. I'm reading it for work but it's been on my radar for awhile. It's quite good and informative, if you can get past three things that I find cringe: 1) the kind of writing for children that includes lines like "Do you think you would enjoy being creative?", 2) a certain exuberant reiteration of "gosh, weren't Indigenous people SMART and RESOURCEFUL" as if they're not that now, and if we need to be constantly reassured, and 3) it's pretty American-centric, though it does mention Nations on the land currently known as Canada as well. But very useful overall, and the problems I find with it are largely centred around my own dislike of how books for children are written and fairly significant but subtle framing between the US and Canada as to how we talk about Indigenous civilizations and sovereignty.

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books

NDP MP Lori Idlout crossing floor to Liberals, bringing Carney closer to majority

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photography

* Upper Canada Films announced The Hockey Player, a feature documentary following Luke Prokop, the first openly gay hockey player under contract in the National Hockey League. Link to announcement on Prokop's insta

* The newly acquired squid's immigration process is taking longer than expected. He might be out a few games. This really sucks because we suddenly have an opening on the line he's expected to be on. One of our players took a boot to the face. Hopefully he's doing okay, but he's going to be out for a bit. Teams are very secretive about injuries so no idea how bad it is.

My mother has recently upgraded her phone. When I tried moving the SIM card from the old one to the new one, my fingers couldn't get it seated properly. The old one has a proper tray; her new one has a slim, bottomless frame. Perhaps they've changed the SIM spec and we need to swap the little card, I thought (that's what was wrong the last time I couldn't lodge a SIM in a new phone). My mother and I agreed to meet at the phone carrier's nearest retail shop.

The staffer at the shop was neutrally matter-of-fact as she clicked the SIM into its frame. Thanks, kind staffer.

Just my fingers' insufficiency of sensory feedback, and my long habit of being gentle with tiny bits of hardware, lest they snap. I guess the positive part is that while repeatedly mis-orienting the SIM, I could tell that my fingers were about to snap the little frame, but it feels like an enormous waste of time to have had to go to the shop, after I'd set up everything else on the new phone. (Less than an hour round trip, including my stop for a takeout lunch on the return, but still, a waste.) I apologized to my mother afterwards, and she shrugged and gestured to my cane; for her, those things go together. For me they don't!

OTOH, these are ways that one may learn about current capabilities and limitations, while still taking classes remotely and before attempting to find a paying job likely to be less kind about unexpected physical deficits that almost no one my age who can walk into an office would have. I've applied to a few long-shot jobs over the past year, and that's done.

From another angle: I've had the good fortune to seek employment in each decade of my age so far. IME, folks who sought new jobs mostly in their twenties---and not since---are likely to have the unadjusted false idea that one looks for whatever one can do. In middle age, one checks also for what one cannot reasonably do, to save some time/effort all around: if a hiring manager wouldn't believe in the possibility, there's not much point in trying to convince them. Atop that, I guess, is stuff like abrupt gaps in dexterity for a person with otherwise (even now) above-average dexterity.

(Once, as hiring manager in lieu, I declined to interview a former stay-at-home parent reentering the workforce who posited in a cover letter that homeschooling several kids was equivalent to managing multi-month office projects. No, it's also challenging, complex work, but one mode doesn't confer the skills of the other mode, and the open job req wasn't entry level.)

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"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time-when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."

Carl Sagan, A Demon-Haunted World, 1995

(A Demon-Haunted World was Sagan's penultimate book, he died in 1996 of pneumonia from a form of leukemia at the age of 62.)

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quotes

The raccoons are fight-dancing, upright,
with outraged, horrible noises.
The night is illegible,
the streetlights dead staves.
You move into each orbit of darkness
like an extinction.

Time the storyteller is tired.
She begins many stories
but loses track of the endings.

What will happen to the angry raccoons?
In the morning, count the cats,
count the birds, count the worms,
count the earth.

No doubt we will find all the endings
in the end.

Last night I officially gave up on linux backup software and modified one of my existing backup-by-rsync scripts to backup my user account on the linux system to its new external drive. I took

ravan's suggestion of adding the -delete argument to the rsync command; this should reduce the incidental duplication and reduplication of moved files.

As I went to bed, my first backup was still running. Subsequent ones will be much faster.

When I'm happy with the results, I'll remove the -v argument and substitute -q, then arrange to run the script from cron.

I'm a bit concerned that on a system with no local mail service, there will be no effective way to learn about errors from the cron job. I may have to install a rudimentary mail server just to get emails from cron sent somewhere where I'll see them. (Maybe some of the full fledged backup systems handle notifications via the system's notification manager, but I doubt it.)

Overall, I'm very disappointed with the offerings. There were far too many missing features, lots of missing or broken documentation, and one feature I didn't want - extra encryption for the backups, on top of any full disk encryption one might have on the receiving media. I don't object to this being available - you'd probably want it if backing up to a different machine - what I object to is making it mandatory (restic), or broken documentation that should have told me what encryption scheme to use to have no encryption (borg).

Deduplication would have been nice, given the mess I have from prior non-use of -delete in rsync-mediated backups. Also because it would save a lot of backup time when I move big chunks of data to new locations in the file system. But I need to clean up that mess anyway, and with an rsync backup I can do the same 'mv' within the backup files as I'm doing within the source files, thereby avoiding a stupid copy-to-new-location and delete-at-old-location.

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computers,
linux

I've been using the AP as my source of US news headlines. I started with its daily email summary, which was actually one of a pair - morning and evening - and they presumed all readers subscribed to both. I didn't want twice-a-day news, but also didn't want to get stories framed as extra details/reaction to some story I'd never seen. Since my main reason for following daily new was to know about unicorn events that I might need to act on, I subscribed to their breaking news alerts, but never got around to unsubscribing from their morning summary.

My main news source is the Guardian. I pay them. The household also has paid subscriptions to local paper(s) that basically don't do national or international news.

This morning I clicked on the "read more" link in one of the AP emails, and got a spam wall - a requirement of a "free account" to continue reading. AP already knows my email, and IIRC they've bombarded me with unwanted extras - mostly ads for other newsletters - every time I've subscribed to one of them. Their "free" account will presumably involve more of the same, plus collecting and selling the details of what I click on - though frankly I'm surprised they aren't already doing that, via extra arguments to the links in their email newsletters.

I haven't decided yet whether I'll respond not by signing up, but by deleting my existing free email subscriptions.

Yes, I get it that they would like to be paid, and this is a step towards getting money from free readers like me. Moreover, they have a perfect right to refuse to provide a free service. But OTOH, their daily summary emails are a very poor imitation of what I'd prefer to be reading. To be suitable, they'd need to include breaking news that turned up between e.g. midnight my time and 6 AM my time, and *not* presume I'd already read their afternoon news email summary. I'm not eager to pay for service this bad, not even in wasted time.

I could, of course, create an account using an email alias, and deactivate that alias once confirmed, to avoid the expected flood of ads for other services. But they'll probably require me to use that email to login, and the gods alone know whether their login screen will play nicely enough with my password safe that I won't need to memorize my login ID.

I'll decide when I'm more awake, since I'm almost always at my grumpiest pre-coffee and pre-breakfast.

Meanwhile, I wonder how long they've had this spam wall, but I didn't notice because I didn't click on any of their stories.

[Edited to add: the Guardian seems to have mostly equivalent email subscriptions available. These may be the best available answer to AP's new feature.]

[Update: it seemed that I could click on AP break news alerts and see the underlying story, but not on links from their morning summary email. So I thought I might keep the alerts, for now, and drop the morning summary. But then I found that it's not that simpler - this evening I can follow links from the morning summary.]

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Desperate passengers and crew escape their ailing starship, only to find an angry, vengeful oligarch waiting to greet them.

This Insubstantial Pageant by Kate Story

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I got mail from

romantical, thank you so much! ♥

Good news, Rosie has resurfaced!

She messaged yesterday apologising for not being in touch and for any confusion and frustration that had caused. Then said both classes would be back next week, and asked if I wanted a one to one/weigh in this Thursday or Friday. That would have been fine for me, but James always gets his at the same time and would have been at work, so the appointment was pushed back to next Wednesday after class.

Of course, I told her she has nothing to apologise for. Obviously something has been wrong, and while I do think the organisers of the scheme should have kept people informed better than they did, I don't blame Rosie herself for needing and taking the time off.

So, you can be glad I'll stop posting about her being MIA, and instead will change back to posting about her being evil!Rosie again. Which she will be, I suspect I'll need scooped off the floor after class on Monday after two months off. And yes, I've still been going to the gym, but I know I don't push myself as much on my own, especially so as all the strength machines are done sitting down.

I continue to be amused about the TikTok colab offers that James receives. The latest was for black hair dye, and all I could think was, do they even look at the people they're offering this stuff to?

Look who's finally using the ( the wall furniture )

https://xkcd.com/3217/

One little fact can change a lot of family history.
( Read more... )

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family history

After 3 years of prep and struggle to get a permit, today was the first day of construction at Henry St. That is to say the crews came in, hauled away a bunch of junk that we couldn't get rid of fast enough (detritus from 27 years of living there plus the junk left by former tenants. YAY!

( Read more... )

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A friend let me know about a new Bureau of Prisons guideline for treatment of inmates with gender dysphoria, which you can read in its entirety here. The short form is that they're denying trans inmates gender-affirming care despite medical consensus, and substituting conversion therapy, which has been proven to be harmful and does not in any way "cure" gender dysphoria.

( My friend's letter, posted with permission )

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lgbt+,
trans rights

I guess I cannot do the necessary suspension of disbelief/price of admission be in Workplace Fandoms anymore because what I've osmosised of The Pitt Season 2 is a lot of "should characters X, Y, and Z forgive Character A who was abusive and also stole patient medications and -- this part I'm unclear on but it sounds likely -- also practiced medicine in an ER while under the influence? It's very important question on if his apologies were good enough or if people should forgive him or be his friend again" and I'm like "that person should be fired from the hospital, this is not a buddy sitcom where they're all over at each other's apartments and dating each other and their warm opinions of each other matter, this is an emergency room, they are coworkers in a high-pressure high-stakes environment, not friends, he should be fired and they should never see him again and get to decide if they want to invite him to their bookclubs or poker nights or whatever, but the question of 'should they forgive him, has he done enough' is irrelevant because he should lose his medical license."

Canada Roles Awards seeks to celebrate the games and art created by the Canadian tabletop Roleplaying Game Industry.

2026 Canada Roles Awards

Watch on YouTube

Out my front window I can see:

* White flowers from the potato vine in the backyard
* Dark pink of the flowering crabapple
* Fresh pale green growth on the podocarpus
* Several fruit in different stages of ripening on the limequat tree
* Fresh growth and some flowers on the redcurrants bushes
* Fresh growth on the rosebush and fig tree
* Fresh growth on the dwarf pomegranate that we've decided is coming out this year. 😢

Of the plants that we're going to remove I'm saddest about the pomegranate.
We're also going to take out two Chinese Fringe bushes because they're crowding the citrus trees, and two shrubs at the end of the patio that aren't thriving at all.

My plan is to cut down the foliage and ask Sergio to take out the stumps, and maybe dig them out a little bit so we could try and plant something else in their spots.

Current Mood: busy

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* D&D has licensed it's Forgotten Realms world setting (the setting with Baldur's Gate in it) for a romantasy book by C L Polk coming out in June.

That looks interesting. I haven't read any C L Polk.

The corebook and 19 supplements for Tab Creation's tabletop fantasy roleplaying game Age of Ambition.

Bundle of Holding: Age of Ambition

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bundle of holding

Our beloved floofy bun, Rowan, passed away a week ago. He was ten years and four months old (the average lifespan of pet bunnies I saw quoted some places is 2-4 years, and 10 years is the expected upper limit for his type of bun) and was healthy, cheerful, friendly, and sweet his whole life; he died very suddenly at home, apparently of old age. I miss him - he was always more friendly and cuddly than Japp - but I'm glad he had a long, happy life.

( Read more... )

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bunnies

And there's an increase in mortality with every change of the clocks.

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* Goaltender Interference by Ari Baran - This book was recc'd to me so much. I read the other Ari Baran books in order to get to it, and then I didn't like it much.

I am very glad I read the other books. Ari Baran's stuff is still the best hockey m/m I've read outside of Rachel Reid's books. But yeah, this didn't do it for me.

I've heard that a popular m/m hockey book had name choices that are very distracting if you are a Kraken fan. Well, found the book! Unlike a certain other situation also involving squiddy names, I am very sure this was unintentional. But wow, the name choices threw me out of the book a few times. That made it harder to get into, but I don't think a F&R on the names would have helped much.

( spoilers )

If you notice the phrase 'Buffalo Pothole Bandit' in there, I believe that's the name of a street artist who has done two 'residences' here doing guerilla repairs of streets and sidewalks. I think know where one other fill is, but I haven't made it out there. Some of his repairs are illegal road repairs, and I do need some shots of this literal street art.

Video of a pan and zoom onto that little picture.

Been a while since I've seen a fairy door. This is a cell phone grab I got out and about. May grab a better shot later.

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photography

Several of my larp friends are going wild for Dungeon Crawler Carl, now.

I refuse to not be aware of the books and I've finished the first two in the last two days, so I'll be doing the next one today or tomorrow.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Rat te Kāinga

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Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

=

Signal-boosting much appreciated!

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Last week was once again mostly swallowed by work and I'm very tired, plus I have to final-read a rewrite this afternoon.

Between Friday night and yesterday, I managed to read a couple manga volumes and

scruloose and I saw the new ep. of The Pitt.

That's all I've got right now.

Current Mood: exhausted

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weekly proof of life

It was the second craft fair of the year yesterday, and it went okay. Quiet with only a few sales, but at least we made our table costs this time, and even had money left over after buying coffee. Not that it started that well, it was held in a church, which is a lovely venue, but to get there you have to park on the other side of a very busy road and go down to the greenman crossing. We did that, James carrying the A Frame we use to hang the hanging stuff, me trundling the festival trolled loaded with two big crates and three bags. Finally got to the other side of the road only for some guys in a passing van to yell we'd dropped a bag, and yep, there it was sitting on the other side of the busy road.

Thankfully, some lovely ladies grabbed it and brought it over to me, but still, not the best start.

We were talking to the organiser at the end of the fair, and I was saying how we hadn't made the table cost at our last fair and she was worried the same had happened that day. I could reassure her that wasn't the case, but even if it was, it's our risk to take. At this time of year we're really just out keeping PyroRex's presence going, hanging on until people have spare money again.

To which end, we're at another fair next Saturday, this one in aid of the cat rescue. Historically, not a good one for sales at any time of the year due to the location which has no passing footfall, but a cause we believe in so we'll be there trying to raise some funds for both us and the cats.

Right now James and my Sil are out watching Chris McCausland's stand up show which started at 4. It's their thing, watching comedy shows together. It's also a show they've been waiting a long time for as James bought the ticket back in 2024 as a Christmas present for my SiL thinking the show was happening in 2025, but in fact, it was actually March 26. So, after all that time I hope they enjoy it.

He sent me a message earlier, and I thought he'd managed to see Chris or something, but nope, he'd spotted one of the new Just Eat robot delivery things that have just arrived in Sunderland and sent me a video of it trundling past. They are cool to see, though, I do wonder how long it'll be before one ends up thrown in the river wear or vandalised.

And now as I have an evening alone I intend to have an early lobster bath and book. I know, shocker, right?

The Heechee artifact could end hunger... if humans could somehow reach it.

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (Heechee Saga, volume 2) by Frederik Pohl

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* Stream for Oops All Goalies game tonight will be here. Starts in about 2 hours from when I am making this post.

* Newest squid is NCAA path and minored in theater? He did contemporary dance to round out his minor? Huh, we might only have him until the end of the season, but he could be interesting if he sticks around.

McCann is claiming they are putting McMann next to him in the locker room and are also putting them on the same line. We are trying to figure out if he is kidding. He doesn't typically kid, he showed an emotion in front of the press once in Vancouver over a decade ago and is still paying for it. But also McMann being a first liner is not what people are expecting. We'll see in a few days.

On March 9, there's a global women's general strike--- more information on the range of activities can be found here. (I tagged for a lot of different types of actions, accordingly, but there may be more ways to participate that I didn't see.)

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The UTI was the cause after all, but they had to try different medications before they got an effective one, which is apparently why he had a couple of partial relapses. He got to go home for dinner Friday, though.

Wax had the shift that lasted until 7 pm yesterday, and she had to work today and was too tired to go grocery shopping, so tomorrow will be ruined too by knowing we have to leave the house. Tristana continues to complain any time I am with Sipuli up until about 4 pm. I am trying out alternate hours.

Now that it's been above freezing for a week, it's even above 15° in the coldest room in the house, and there have been sunbeams daily. I've swept under all kinds of furniture that we usually don't, and put away Mt. Laundry that has been covering the office daybed all winter, and scrubbed the kitchen cabinet doors, and checked on the bunny four or five times each day.

He seems to be doing well as a lone bunny, but I can't help being concerned about him. Tristana greets him, but they've never figured out how to play together like she did with Rowan. I keep trying to rearrange his bunny furniture to spark his interest and giving him enrichment boxes (a box that teabags come in filled with hay with some dried fruit and a used dry decaf teabag hidden in it: he's crazy for teabags). We ordered him one of those hay cubes, but it hasn't arrived yet. They haven't had one of those in a few years (we've mostly bought a series of hay tunnels more recently).

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Good gravy, this semester is tough. I'm juggling a million different things and keeping my head above water, but only just. Admittedly, a number of things I am juggling are not work things (birthday trip planning! proof of Canadian-ness! community service!) and everything will get 100% easier when it is above 50° every day and the world isn't pitch black at 6pm, but until that time is upon us, I am apparently going to be surviving on pizza and hummus.

My internet, which is allegedly FIOS, is periodically deciding that it does not want to be an internet, it wants to be a lumberjack, and rebooting the router does not do a whole lot. This is kind of a problem given that I work from home and build things on the internet. I feel like I'm back in 1998 on dial-up. I spent thirty minutes fighting the phone tree and then the customer service agent tried to sell me a new router and a new plan, which: no. I want the thing I am already paying for to work!

Implementing a shared zookeeper routine is working out super well so far; I get to play with a friend's kid so she can concentrate on chores and she keeps me from becoming one with the couch, which is my true desire.

This morning both computers displayed the quality standards of their developers.

The Mac did its usual thing. Safari had crashed, taking my windows with it. Not notable enough to record, since it happens multiple times a week, ever since "upgrading" to Sequoia, aka MacOS 15.5 (24F74).

The Kubuntu system had two windows/processes/apps that could not be given focus, and/or weren't responsive to being selected, and farthermore had ceased to receive input from the net. One was ProtonMail and the other was Discord. The system had been up for 7 days. It had also had multiple issues with the rsibreak app in the period it had been up; I'd been killing and restarting it when they occurred.

After rebooting the Kubuntu system, ProtonMail was once again functional, but Discord was demanding that I update it yet again - this being a manual process that also involves using a web browser. Sadly, thanks to the non-functional session management software, all my browser windows will appear on the same virtual desktop, creating a PITA nuisance to sort out, even though I was able to look through each virtual desktop before rebooting, and kill off any unwanted windows that were among the lucky few that were visible (and thus easily selectable) in the horizontal, thumbnail-including set of firefox windows available to select.

It looks like Canonical is consistent - they force updates approximately weekly, thanks to firefox both being a snap and changing that frequently. And their idea of "stable enough to ship" is that things might work for about a week before needing to be restarted.

This is not the sort of thing I want to encounter early in the morning before the kettle boils.

On the good side, my new backup disk on the linux system (not yet in use for backups) mounted correctly at boot.

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My first chore today was to send off the information my tax guy needs for the part of the Ranch that is held as a corporation. Corporate taxes are due March 15, not April 15. Sigh.
This afternoon I took the tractor down to the arena and spent a lot of time going in tight circles as fast as I could. According to someone I talked to that is the secret for leveling out an arena. My arena had big lumps in it where truck loads of sand were dumped. Over time the lumps have gotten better, but it has been easy to see that it was far from flat. The circles seems to have worked, the arena looks a lot better, but then it always looks better after it has been all stirred up and the footing is soft. Leslie Miller was there, she came to camp for the weekend. So were Glen and Alice. They all helped first clear the arena so I could work it up, and then set for this weekend's Obstacle Practice. It was fun up until I had to race back to the house to meet Denise who came and trimmed Firefly's feet.
Off early tomorrow to finish setup and get ready to greet riders. Only 5 coming Sat and 7 on Sun.

* Crave has made a dedicated Heated Rivalry youtube channel so all BTS and features by them are in one place.

* Also Jacob Tierney Gets Netflix Series Order For Alexander The Great & Aristotle Drama based on The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

I'm worried I lost my kindle when I misplaced my red bag in which everything is. Well, not everything, but perhaps my kindle. Or maybe not. My kindle might be under my bed. If it's not under my bed, I'll have to replace it sooner or later. I'm a bit wary of looking and finding out one way or another.

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No big moves for the Kraken. Divisional rivals making moves will impact us a bit.

We now have a McMann in addition to our McCann, and Ryden Evers in addition to our Ryker Evans? Front office, what did our announcers do to deserve this? I mean, outside of all the things they have done. KHN is a bit chaotic.

To think when the season started I was excited over the idea of a Nikke Kokko call up so we'd have a Nikke Kokko and a Kaapo Kakko in the same game. Still hasn't happened! Kokko is a strong goalie prospect so he will get some NHL ice time coming up, but calling up a goalie is very different from calling up a skater.

Also, people telling us to not worry over who McMann might be edging out, he's a bottom sixer... probably on our fourth line... Dear god, y'all do not understand how Kraken fans feel about our fourth line.

* Our fourth liners are mostly our own, home grown draft picks developed on our own farm. We are a baby team. We don't have many developed in house yet.

* Our team's very streaky runs this year map *very* tightly to whether our fourth line is in order or we've lost key members to injury or roster moves.

* Our fourth line has Melanson. The team, our broadcast team, and the fandom... which of these three groups is actually more into Melly? Eddie Olczyk, former player NHL player and also former Pens coach, is on our broadcast team and he's yelled that we should field him every game more than I have

I get that this is baffling to fans of... pretty much every team. Rangers just found out how we feel about our home grown fourth liners when they grabbed Kartye on waivers, our undrafted sometimes-call-up.

Also, if he clicks with us, it sounds like he'd be more of a middle sixer? We also haven't announced re-signings of most of our pending UFAs and RFAs. McMann is also a pending UFA, but if someone doesn't re-sign we could look at him as a replacement. We've got the cap space for where he's expected to sign in free agency. Kraken's big announcement today was posting the re-signing of our team captain for two more years, full NTC, which means he's probably retiring here. That and most of who is staying and not is likely already set, just not announced/recorded yet.

https://xkcd.com/3216/

A friendly session of D&D for a worthy cause reminds former friends why they parted.

Rerolled (The Last Session, volume 2) by Jasmine Walls & Dozerdraws

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Events, dear friends, have been piling up faster than I can write about them—personal tragedies, global horrors, and work conspiring to keep me at a pace where I have not yet emerged from under the weight of one massive project before I'm saddled with the next. Needless to say things are happening but I get approximately 15 minutes of laptop time a day if the subway cooperates and it's largely spent answering emails.

Anyway, on with the podcasts. This week's episode is from a new-to-me podcast, A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein. I heard him on Bad Hasbara and he was very funny and insightful, and his actual podcast doesn't disappoint. My favourite episode so far has been "She Had Elon's Baby. Then, Leopards Ate Her Face," featuring Ashley St. Clair and Juniper.

I didn't know the name off the top of my head but Ashley was one of those far-right grifters/pick-me girls who is very traditionally pretty and thus assumed that there was no need for feminism. She wrote an extremely transphobic children's book that I had actually heard of because it was on one of Queen Coke Francis's video essays*. The title of the episode is not precisely accurate, in that the leopards in question started gnawing Ashley's face before she gave birth, as she had started to turn away from her transphobic stance when she was pregnant with her second child.

You have questions. I also had questions. One of the reasons this particular episode is so good is that Matt handles everything as responsibly as anyone can. He has Juniper (the trans podcaster/editor who, among other accomplishments, popularized "goblin mode"), who was the one who engaged with Ashley as she made her turn away from the dark side. Neither one of them softball the conversation, laying the harms that Ashley did out very clearly, and questioning whether she has actually changed or whether this is another grift (for the record, neither of them conclude that it's a grift).

It's a hard listen because obviously it is. Trans people are being targeted for genocide around the world and especially in the US, and Ashley was one of its instigators. It asks hard questions: Can people change? Is the community that they harmed obligated to believe and accept those changes? What does it mean to make amends and reparations, or to build trust? What can we do to deradicalize people (note: Ashley's redemption arc seems to have started with queer and trans folks engaging her online, which I'm legitimately surprised at)?

Anyway it brought me a little bit of desperately needed hope so maybe it will help you too.

* Check her out if you do YouTube video essays. She's a drag queen who mainly covers culture war stuff and she's hilarious.

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podcasts

It is a little dry, but today I got the tractor out and graded the road. Hopefully we will have a light rain soon to settle the gravel in it's new home.

This weekend it Obstacle Practice. I'm mostly ready.

The greenhouse is full of little plants growing lustily.

Last week the ladies from the basket weaving group came out to help cut back willow trees. They did some cutting, and a lot of harvesting of small willow twigs, most around 2 feet long. I used the chainsaw and the loppers. We got a tiny area done. On the way back to the car I realized there was an elderberry tree there. It was HUGE, one stem was at least 16 inches in diameter and probably 40 feet tall. I'm used to thinking of elderberry as a shrub. I cut back several of the smaller stems and the ladies harvested from the downed wood. They were very excited about it. Elderberry is used to make flutes, rattles, arrows and all kinds of things. The elderberry, will grow back strong and straight. It is a fire ecology plant and responds really well to being cut, or burnt.
I'm so happy that I've made contact with this community of people!

Birds who've flown the old coop

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