You may get nothing but Ghost lyrics between now and July. I'm trying to learn the words to the new songs, but it's coming slowly. But the music is super catchy so I'm sure I'll get there.

Ghost is weird. They bill themselves as Satanic metal, but and they have a few songs that bear that out, but most of their songs are more pop or hair metal. And despite the lead singer saying that the new album is "darker," I'm finding it really hopeful. And as I said, their music as a whole is very catchy. We've got 1 month to concert #1. I can't wait.

Day two post back scritches, and my lower back is still peeved. I dislike it. IT's not as bad as yesterday, but still cranky. We'll see if today is the kind of "work things out" cranky or the "get worse as the day goes on" pissed off.

I've got some good steaks to cook, so I'm hoping for the former.

Tomorrow is a quiet day--nothing much going on. Friday night after work, we need to drive down to get Jess' computer from best buy. Then we're going to go forth and get a late dinner. It's a fairly long drive, so we're best waiting til my sister gets home at 6 to go fetch.

I got a reminder on facebook that 8 years ago on this day, we went to see a wrestling PPV. It was fun, but nothing we felt the need to do again.

This weekend is pretty busy. I've got a haircut and we've got to pick up the computer Friday night, the appointment to drop off Mao for cremation after a decade at least, and then off to a work party at the bowling alley. I will probably not be bowling, owing to the bad back, but I will go and have snacks and visit with people.

Sunday is less busy, with just two games, one that I'm DMing and then one that poisontaster is.

I'm definitely going to be sleeping in on Sunday.

Oh, and *finally* we're closing on the house. No more albatross around our neck.

And on that note, I'm going to go consider the merits of pants. Everyone have a wonderful Wednesday!

Posted by Mike Glyer

https://file770.com/warner-holme-review-the-tribute/

https://file770.com/?p=122883

Review by Warner Holme: Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette’s The Tribute. While the team’s previous Snowpiercer was a very terrestrial post-apocalyptic story, this one is instead a spacefaring bit of military science fiction. Humanity is in a losing war with a fairly unknowable … Continue reading →

https://file770.com/warner-holme-review-the-tribute/

https://file770.com/?p=122883

Posted by Greg Ross

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2025/06/04/the-arc-of-narrative/

https://www.futilitycloset.com/?p=70881

In 2020, three researchers from UT Austin and Lancaster University examined 40,000 fictional narratives and discovered a consistent linguistic pattern. Articles and prepositions such as a and the are common at the start of a story, where they set the stage by providing information about people, places, and things. As the plot progresses, auxiliary verbs, adverbs, and pronouns become more common — words that are action-oriented and social. Near the end, “cognitive tension words” such as think, realize, and because become more common, words that reflect people trying to make sense of their world.

These patterns are consistent across novels, short stories, and amateur (“off-the-cuff”) stories. “If we want to connect with an audience, we have to appreciate what information they need, but don’t yet have,” said lead author Ryan Boyd. “At the most fundamental level, humans need a flood of ‘logic language’ at the beginning of a story to make sense of it, followed by a rising stream of ‘action’ information to convey the actual plot of the story.”

At this website you can view the graphs produced by various example narratives and even analyze your own.

(Ryan L. Boyd, Kate G. Blackburn, and James W. Pennebaker, “The Narrative Arc: Revealing Core Narrative Structures Through Text Analysis,” Science Advances 6:32 [2020], eaba2196.) (Thanks, Sharon.)

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2025/06/04/the-arc-of-narrative/

https://www.futilitycloset.com/?p=70881

This is the freebie for the June 3, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from mama_kestrel, in honor and memory of Lord Matthew the Confused. It also fills the "validation" square in my 6-2-25 card for the Pride Fest bingo. This poem belongs to the Draft Dawgs thread of the Arts and Crafts America series.

( Read more... )

Hippie Chicks: A Different Feminism

Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo’s Daughters of Aquarius: Women of the Sixties Counterculture (2009) is the only monograph to date that has given these women a place in the history of feminism. Instead of portraying them as stereotypical earth mothers, nymphs in peasant dresses, or strung-out domestic drudges—the antithesis of feminism—the author demonstrates how these women broke with both the middle-class housewife and the rising career woman to recover the value of women’s productive labor in rural America. They rejected both liberal feminism’s insistence on state-guaranteed rights and radical feminism’s rejection of gender binaries to forge their own version of female empowerment.


This is the feminism that I grew up with. I found it more impressive than the feminism I studied in college.  it was a lot more diverse, too.  There were the earth mothers, the free lovers, the farmers, the crafters, the musicians, the ball-busting bitches, the blythe spirits, the radical activists, the wanderers -- so many girls and women who didn't fit the mainstream mold and weren't interested in academic feminism.

The usual mess of interesting things I've read, most of them quite out of date, in approximate order of my having read them. Brought to you by my browser crashing twice when I tried to start it after my most recent reboot.

As always, I use Export Tabs to wrangle this. And maybe my current 1,625 tab count will decrease some after I close all these?
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/export-tabs/odafagokkafdbbeojliiojjmimakacil?hl=en

Some good news from the south:
Woman who went on the lam with untreated TB is now cured | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/07/woman-who-went-on-the-lam-with-untreated-tb-is-now-cured/

Mechanical Watch – Bartosz Ciechanowski
https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/

How a North Korean Fake IT Worker Tried to Infiltrate Us
https://blog.knowbe4.com/how-a-north-korean-fake-it-worker-tried-to-infiltrate-us

How I Got My Laser Eye Injury - Funranium Labs
https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/07/how-i-got-my-laser-eye-injury/

( Read more... )

1. The bathroom faucet was dripping for a couple days and could not get it to stop, but it miraculously stopped dripping yesterday. Not sure why, but I'm glad.

2. I have been meaning to upload a picture for a while, but I have pretty much completed my flowers & nature lego shelf in the garage. There are still more nature sets, so I will probably remove some things and put out others eventually, but for now this is all of our nature-related stuff. I really like how this looks together.



3. I was not expecting rain today but it rained a bit! Not a ton, but it did get things damp. No rain tomorrow, though, which is good because we're going to Disneyland.

4. I decided to take tomorrow off. No reason. My usual Wednesday meeting was cancelled and we'd been planning on going to Disneyland tomorrow as Carla's last visit before she'll be out of town for a week and a half visiting her family, so I just decided what the hell, why not just take the day off.

5. Molly's getting that sun!

I think the reaction to the DW season finale elseweb can be best summed up by
I have now seen three entirely independent incompatible theories
explaining that it was Clearly All Because Of
behind the scenes Stuff
with no cited sources
just, you know, the writer thinks it is obvious.

Whatever was going on with the Watsonian level, I have seen so many people bounce straight to the Doylist for readings, I think it is safe to say many are Not Happy.



Being Not Happy at the unalterable things is exhausting though, I hope they find some Happy to hang out in as well.

Fandom: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Pairings/Characters: Lily Wright & Pippa James, Jack Wright & Lily Wright
Rating: Teen and Up
Length: 8,492
Content Warnings: Alcoholism, Missing Persons, Grief/Mourning
Creator Links: ryyves' Ao3
Theme: Female Relationships, Character Study, Angst

Summary:

Spoilers for King Falls AM episode 68, set before the first King Falls Chronicles (ep 56-57).

It’s far from the last email Lily gets about King Falls. Sometimes the name is hidden in postscripts, sometimes bright as highways at midnight, and every time it catches in Lily’s heart like a frightened canary, yellow and waning.

Lily doesn’t delete them, not one. She files them away in a quiet folder of her work email, so she doesn’t have to see them in her inbox. There are things that can be said with distance, and this is one of them: that if she deleted every mention of King Falls, she would delete every rope thrown to Jack. Every hope, or something that runs even deeper.

Some fear, perhaps, that she is not where she is supposed to be.

Or: Pippa puts up with way more of Lily's shit than she should have to.


Reccer's Notes: This is such a wonderful character study that explores Lily's character and gives her and Pippa's friendship a spotlight. The writing style is beautiful as well.

Fanwork Links: the gallery of our bones

In trying to tidy my closet and the dresses I've got in there, I'm now seeing how many "nice" dresses I have that cover a fairly wide variety of situations. It's nice to see that the ones I bought well over a decade ago are still largely holding up well.

In other news, while my sister in law E. and my brother J. are planning on going to Cancún, I somehow doubt they're at all interested in visiting the Chicxulub crater. Some people just don't know how to have a good time.

Posted by Mike Glyer

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-6-3-25-old-rossums-scroll-of-pixled-credentials/

https://file770.com/?p=122878

(1) DR. DEMENTO SIGNING OFF. RadioInsight reveals “Dr. Demento Show To End With 55th Anniversary” – and he’s already done his final regular show. Barret ‘Dr. Demento‘ Hansen will retire from his program when it reaches its 55th anniversary in … Continue reading →

https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-6-3-25-old-rossums-scroll-of-pixled-credentials/

https://file770.com/?p=122878

Remember what my roommate said? Ha.

I have a sprain and a fracture. I walked around with no support for two miles on that yesterday before I could get home to ice and tight-wrap it for compression. Just tightened my shoe. It felt like usual low-grade sprain pain to me.

Glad I went to the podiatrist for X-rays today because I thought sensation in my toes was a bit off. I've sprained both ankles so many times I have actually lost count. Sometimes I don't even go to the doctor for it anymore.

I've had my ankles and feet X-rayed many times during a sprain situation, but this is the first time they found something. At the doctor's office I went right to the X-ray machine, without needing directions, from being such a veteran.

(In my near 52 years, this is my second fracture. Never had a full break. My first fracture was when a Volvo door closed on my thumb while I was in high school. That was agonizing. It didn't help that it tore off the fingernail and left a long wound that had to be stitched up.)

Today, I walked around with a big podiatric boot on my left foot for a while, and now my right calf is also killing me for compensating. They gave me a smaller boot this time, so it's a little lighter and it doesn't make life even harder by going all the way up to the bottom of my knee like my original did. Soooo, I have to spend four weeks in the boot.

A Rainbow of Queer Books for Pride 2025: Pink

HAPPY PRIDE 2025! For Pride this year, we’re changing up our usual rec lists. Instead of doing books with specific identities or themes, we’re focused this time on cover color! Throughout the month of June, we’ll be doing 8 rec lists, each with covers inspired by one of the colors of the original Gilbert Baker Pride Flag. We drew a little additional inspiration from the meaning behind the color and why it was included in the original LGBTQIA+ flag (in this case, hot pink = sex), but we prioritized color over meaning. That said, there are definitely a few steamy stories in this load of pink tales! In a few days, we’ll be back with our second post – red – but until then, check out this whole bunch of awesome pink-covered queer books.

Poke a bigot in the eye! Read and recommend queer books this month.

Fandom: Ghosts (US)
Pairings/Characters: Hetty & Flower
Rating: G
Length: 708 words
Creator Links: OpalEssence 
Theme: female relationships

Summary: Following Season 2, Episode 5, when Hetty meets Molly the maid, she must attempt to come to terms with the fact that Elias' betrayal was entirely of his own will and desire. Luckily, Flower is there to help her move forward.

Reccer's Notes: The author of this fic does a great job capturing how these characters speak, especially Flower.  It is a reflective, but wholesome scene, one that I could have very much seen playing out in the show.

Fanwork Links: AO3

 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, June 3, to midnight on Wednesday, June 4. (8pm Eastern Time).




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 

This is a hard copy anthologizing/reissuing "The Warrior's Apprentice," "The Mountains of Mourning," (novella) and "The Vor Game." It turns out my family had owned a hard copy for eons but I'd never tried it, probably because it was part of a series and I wasn't sure where to start? IDK, but having read the Cordelia books I was very ready to jump back into this world!

"The Warrior's Apprentice" follows Miles after he fails the entrance exams to the Imperial military academy. Because of the poison he was exposed to in utero, he's topped out at 4'9" with very brittle bones; however, as the son of Cordelia and Aral, he's a natural military genius. He takes some time off visiting his grandmother on Beta Colony, and likes this plan because he thinks he might be able to find the place where the mother of his childhood friend/crush is buried, and impress her, after their computer hacking attempts fall short. The "seventeen-year-olds' skewed priorities" premise is fun. However, Miles quickly fails upward, and winds up accidentally acquiring a few, then several, then many, mercenaries loyal to him. This quote is actually from "Mountains of Mourning," but it sums up "Warrior's Apprentice" to a tee:
(The Tumblr post about "you ever fuck up so hard you accidentally overthrow a dynasty" seems relevant here, although Miles is more concerned about keeping his emperor on the throne than deposing him.)

Bothari, who we met in the Cordelia books, is Miles' lifelong bodyguard (he carried Miles around before he learned to walk, at age four and a half). Early on, Miles realizes the horrors of war, when he orders Bothari to torture a captured pilot until he spills his secrets; Bothari removes the man's brain implants, which winds up killing him, and Miles carries that on his conscience forever afterwards. Later, we get closure of sorts to Bothari's plotline; again, I'm not entirely thrilled with the way he goes back and forth between "a character who makes bad decisions but has the potential to grow beyond them" and "Cordelia's dog." (He and Miles have a conversation about "hey if I die you'll bring my body back to bury at your mother's feet, like a dog, right? "...????" "Your father said I could. He gave me his word as Vorkosigan." Miles, speaking for the reader: "okay, when my father and I give our word as Vorkosigan that means it has to be done, that is a long-running theme of this series, but also why are we having this conversation.")

Bujold is very good at "leaving out the parts people skip." I thought the Cordelia books were a little crisper in terms of "one thing following into the next;" these novels are a little more "things happening to Miles/him failing upwards," so they don't quite rise to those heights. However, "Mountains," and "Weatherman," the novella that got turned into the opening chapters of "Vor Game," are very tautly paced!

"Mountains" sees Miles journey into the Dendarii mountains (namesake of the mercenary troop) to investigate a case of infanticide; an infant who was born with a cleft lip was found dead a few days later, and the mother suspects the father. The Barrayarans' extreme prejudice towards "mutants" means that Miles is a very prominent symbol of change, and Aral putting him on the case makes that even more prominent. (I guess it's hinted at that Barrayaran was inadvertently separated from the rest of the galaxy early in their terraforming process, so evolution went awry and everyone's inherited a fear of "mutants" ever since, but I wanted a little more about that.)

What's powerful about this is the relationship that Miles has with his late grandfather, Piotr, and the shadow he casts over the story. Piotr was very prejudiced against Miles, but Miles still burns offerings for him. This lends a stark contrast to the way the mystery plot resolves, and the fact that Miles can speak so highly of him says a lot about his own character:
"Weatherman" sees Miles sent to be a weather officer on an Arctic island where infantrymen train so he can learn to work with, and under, ordinary people who don't share his intellect. Hazing ensues. So do even worse problems, and while Miles is really trying not to rock the boat (so he can get promoted to an actual spaceship), he winds up having to defy authority anyway--on behalf of people he has good reason to dislike! Bujold's afterword (in this edition anyway) has some fascinating backstory about how she came up with some of these themes.

Anyway, after that, it goes back to mercenary shenanigans, and again, I feel like this part is not quite as compelling but still very good. There's a great scene when one officer in the mostly-male Dendarii complains about how someone else betrayed them and took over, and a woman officer politely points out "actually, if the rest of you had paid attention to how he treats me, maybe you could have assessed his character earlier." Their different reads of the situation say a lot about how sexism can inadvertently take hold in institutions, without being too heavy-handed about it. Another very funny and too real situation: the bigwigs are like "our security systems are classified and airgapped, how could anyone have exfiltrated data?" "Well, it just takes one person who's looking up information on the classified network and also willing to talk to someone outside via the unclassified network." "Are you saying we have to be on guard against insider threats, too?!?" Being a spy is hard :(

A few more highlights:This is way too real, please tell me there is fanfiction of it:

• "Naismith" is like the "Smith" of Beta, "Mr. Naismith" is everyone's "John Doe" name
• "Naismith" is a rare name, but it's everyone's "George Washington" name because of Cordelia, everyone realizes it's an alias but it's the obvious alias an idealistic Betan would pick
• everyone assumes he named himself after this Naismith for the irony because he's so small!

The cover art is a double-sided Jack (the playing card) with one view of Ensign Vorkosigan and the other direction as Mr. Naismith. I can't tell if his facial features are supposed to be distorted/strangely proportioned because of his disabilities? At the risk of being a prejudiced Barrayaran I must admit he doesn't look very attractive to me :/ but I'll try to keep an open mind, appearance isn't everything!

Bingo: "Warrior's Apprentice" and "Mountains of Mourning" were originally published in the 80s; the former was also a previous readalong.

⌈ Secret Post #6724 ⌋

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


01.


( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #961..
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.

Forbes: Taylor Swift And Blake Lively: Subpoena, Spectacle And Scrutiny.
IMO, dragging Swift in just to get attention, and then pretending Lively is the one dragging Swift in is just showing off how little Baldoni's team has on the legal side.

Reminder: Lively is suing over violations of her (and her female costars') right to a safe workplace. Leave Taylor Swift out of this.

The LA Times: Blake Lively backed by advocacy groups in legal fight with Justin Baldoni over #MeToo speech law

I don't think it's being reported enough that Baldoni's team is trying to strike down the law protecting survivors of sexual violence and discrimination from defamation suits. As in, get it declared unconstitutional because suing your victims should be part of Free Speech. Holy Fake Feminism, Batman.

Here's more about the law that Lively is invoking because this is a labour issue: Legislation to Protect Survivors of Sexual Assault, Harassment, and Discrimination from Weaponized Defamation Lawsuits Signed by Governor.

Here's a Bloomburg piece about on of the "inspirations" for why California decided it needed this law [archive link]: Ex-FTC Commissioner Faces Storm of Sexual Harassment Claims.

One of the women in that case helped put together one of the amicus briefs [PDF of court document], so that the law she helped draft, intending to protect people like her, doesn't get struck down. She has now been stalked, harassed and doxxed for speaking up in support of the law, because the Lively hate train people are truly free of hinges.

8 episodes is way too short for Doctor Who. The core of the show is the Doctor + Companion(s) relationship(s) and there isn't any time for that in these Disney seasons.