boji

goals_on_dw is a community for people who like goals and goal setting. A key focus is New Year's resolutions, that being among the most popular contexts for such activities. Although the most common time is January 1, "new year" can also refer to other calendars or cultures, whatever works for you. Alternatively, just pick a time that works for you and go for it. You can introduce yourself or make new friends here.

We talk about different goal systems, pros and cons of resolutions, arts and crafts for tracking goals, human psychology, and more. You can share your resolutions or other goals. There are weekly check-in posts in January, and monthly ones in the rest of the year, for folks to talk about their accomplishments. December-January is the most active period, and it starts ramping up in November as lots of people begin thinking about their goals for the next year.

2026 Free Printable Calendars, Planners, and More is the guide post for this years goal-setting activities. For more details on relevant topics, see "Things You Can Talk About Here."

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Current Mood: busy

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-linwelin-said/

Posted by an

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291948

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer’s personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today’s post is with Linwëlin, who volunteers as a Tag Wrangler on the Tag Wrangling committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I wrangle tags for several smaller fandoms and I help with translating tags from Spanish to English so they can be wrangled. I mostly pick up fandoms to wrangle that have a majority of Spanish tags.

I think the most interesting part of translating tags is finding the different meanings of words in different regional dialects other than my own español rioplatense. It’s fascinating to me how within the same language a word can have a ton of different meanings, or the same concept can be named a ton of different ways. Look up all the ways you can say ‘popcorn’ in Spanish and you’ll see what I mean!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

It all depends on my energy and pain levels, but I usually break it up into smaller chunks of time (just an hour or two at a time) as often as possible because that’s what I can usually manage best.

Sometimes, though, I get in The Zone™ and I might only realise it’s been eight hours when my partner calls me for dinner!

What made you decide to volunteer?

I joined fandom later in life than most others I know, but I found the community just in time—it’s helped me through some of the roughest moments in my life. It’s provided an escape, a way to express my creativity when all my other hobbies were inaccessible to me.

I don’t have disposable income to donate, but I do have spare time, and I wanted to give back somehow to this community that has given me (and many others) so much. When I saw the call for Spanish-speaking volunteers back then, I decided to give it a shot!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Managing my own time and energy without burning myself out is the hardest part. I’m disabled, and my chronic pain (along with the medication I take and the side effects of it all) means that I have to be very careful about pacing myself if I don’t want to crash and burn.

I would like to spend a lot more time wrangling than what I can feasibly (and sustainably) do on an average week, but my health has highs and lows. Sometimes I can sit down for eight hours and have a blast translating and shovelling a ton of tags, and sometimes I can only sit for half an hour and only manage to do one or two tags. Sometimes I’ll only be able to do the bare minimum for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll bounce back.

The biggest challenge is accepting that not every day will be a satisfying marathon of productivity and efficiency, give myself some grace, and try to work with my limitations, not against them. I end up achieving a lot more when I manage that.

I mention all this because I was a bit afraid when I applied that my disability would make it impossible to keep up with the commitment of volunteering, but I’ve found that not only can I, but I enjoy it immensely. I’ve found community and support within the OTW, and personally I’ve never felt alone or lacking in help and resources. I hope this gives a new perspective to someone reading this who might be on the fence about it!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read a lot of fic, and fandom is my main creative outlet, especially on hard days. I love writing, and lately I’ve been listening to and learning how to record podfic as well. I like to participate in drabble writing events, sprints, and other mostly-small challenges.

I’m also trying to learn how to draw! I have a lot of scenes I’ve pictured in my mind and I hope to someday be able to bring them out into the real world.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you’d like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/five-things-linwelin-said/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291948

yume_hanabi posting in

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ysabetwordsmith posting in

newcomers is a community for people who are just getting started on Dreamwidth, in the tradition of

twitter_refugees and

reddit_refugees. This community supports former users of other platforms who are moving to Dreamwidth because their previous platform has become untenable or has closed. As such, it will increase activity with each wave of new users, in hopes of helping them get settled in Dreamwidth so they want to stick around. It also serves previous users returning after a long hiatus, people who want to do more with a Dreamwidth blog that was only intermittent, or anyone else who wants help connecting and figuring out how to use this venue.

The community is highly active at present because Pillowfort is closing. Many posts are appearing to help Pillowfort users who are migrating to DW.

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Current Mood: busy

kcfmod posting in

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musesfool

My latest package from Penzey's was delivered yesterday...but not to me. I emailed them and they are shipping me a new box, which hopefully arrives here instead of in some other building, 508 feet away (this is apparently where UPS told them it was; people and packages sometimes go to the wrong address because they mistake an 8 for a 3, so that's what I'm guessing happened here). I hope whoever got it enjoys the allspice and cinnamon sugar!

*

I don't know how many of you subscribe to Elie Mystal's substack/newsletter thingy, but I recommend it because he is the BEST, and today's newsletter said this about that godawful Microsoft Copilot ad:

The point of AI is not to enhance your own work like the tech-bro mafia keeps insisting. The point of AI is to steal somebody else’s work, potentially everybody else’s work, and pass it off as your own. What the other guy (who happens to be Black) did with talent and hard work, you can do in a day with AI and no skill but metastasizing jealousy. The ad is promoting the fact that AI allows you to be the worst version of yourself.

I could not agree more. Every time I see the ad, I'm like, why would I want to be the asshole who steals my co-worker's work (among other people's)???

I know I'm preaching to the choir here on LLMs, and I can even admit there could be some use cases for it at work (they are pushing it so hard! our interim CIO wants to give me an enterprise license to test it out, since he knows I break every new thing they give me in weird and unrepeatable ways, and that would be useful for them, but I've said no three times now!), though the only one I could envision myself using it for is to make certain charts or graphs in Excel or Powerpoint that I only make once in a very long while and can never remember how to do because they require a lot of fiddling and customizing.

Anyway, I am very glad it's the weekend. This afternoon felt like it was never going to end, but it finally did, and I took a 45 minute nap and felt a little better about everything afterward.

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: talk's for lovers dancing under moon beams

I wasn't thinking in anniversaries but tumblr posts reminded me it has been
twenty years on the 22nd since the first broadcast of Torchwood.

... it's actually easy to look then in my DW...
https://beccaelizabeth.dreamwidth.org/763228.html
seems I liked it from the start.

I had a bunch of feelings about this time interval that are not strictly speaking about Torchwood.
Compare and contrast sort of feelings.
It has not been a fun set of feelings.

My life has been somewhat easy to summarise since 2013 and that has not been on the whole a good thing. Nor have my efforts to improve on that got very far. Tiny tiny steps.

But Torchwood itself is of the good, or at least fascinating.
And Big Finish just announced that the Legacy audios next year will be available on CD after all, presumably because a consistent number of us still buy them, so I can tell there's at least that many audio Torchwood fans left.

The thing is Torchwood is a story of good dedicated people doing everything wrong, much of the time. Being slotted into a Lawful Evil system and getting really good at helping their mates who are also in the Lawful Evil system and therefore fitting right in. Being required to act in secrecy and from that alone doing all sorts of awful things for the secret. Which everyone a bit knows anyway. It's all sharp edges and contradictions and people being their most fucked up selves.

It's brilliant.

... it's varying qualities of brilliant at all times, but it's so much more fun to take big swings and miss than it is to be tidy.

Very messy show.

I should rewatch some on the TV. ... honestly the little app for audios is so much easier to fit in my day I have been living in audios lately. But I never actually watched Miracle Day so technically there is more (ambitious, flawed) Torchwood waiting for me any time...

tracingthestars posting in

I'm a newcomer to Dreamwidth and am still getting my footing, but I made a community for Solo TTRPGs - these are tabletop role-playing games that are made for one player, or solo-play rulesets for group play games like D&D and Pathfinder. If you don't have the time for a group ttrpg, solo play games can help scratch that itch. There's a huge variety of game styles and settings, and many are easily accessible via print & play.

Learn more by visiting the Solo TTRPG Community. :)

ysabetwordsmith posting in

followfriday

Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

Current Mood: busy

musesfool

Just got an advertising email from King Arthur Baking about brown butter cream cheese frosting. I could have used that on Monday in place of the frosting I did make. Sigh.

*

Slow Horses
( spoilers for all of season 6 plus the season 7 preview )

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Rangers vs Maple Leafs on tv

fiachrastudios posting in

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flaskbringer posting in

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I know I need better sources but AI keeps moving more things into the sphere of things I know I don't know, sometimes by way of contradicting itself a bunch.

Today I asked the google something that ended up with realising doors don't work the way they did when I was in school and my mental image hasn't kept up even after knowing some things about fire doors.

Nipping out for a smoke (John Constantine) has so many more ways to get you locked out and setting alarms off, and fewer ways to fiddle the door to get back in.

Also I may need to rewrite quite a bit of what I've written so far.

AI google gave me delightful calculations on how to make an under the road tunnel disability compliant, and the short answer is don't. Or don't start with an existing one. There are rules about width, height, lighting, and slope, that all add up to needing a really wild amount of runway to get down to a pedestrian underpass. Putting a lift in both ends won't upgrade the width compared to the old versions. And also ceases to function without power or in certain emergencies. Which is unacceptable.

Yet you also can't put a bridge in (same problem more height longer ramps now with bonus fall risks) and pedestrian crossings on a road are inadequate for the age range of projected users, and basically there are so many infrastructure things that seemed like they made sense at the time but couldn't now. And that makes sense! But... everything is more complicated than I'd ever had to think and it's amazing how much of it you need to think of before you can write one little spooky story.

Or, you know, get creatively wrong. One of those.

But thinking about the sheer flow of people and how it interacts with fire safety and emergency planning and also routine but annoying things like how wet everything will get... everything is very complicated forever.

My characters can find a lot of this out the hard way but only if I learn it first.

Which I only can for reals if I find actual proper sources.

For things I now know I don't know.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-october-2026/

Posted by an

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291942

AO3 Tag Wranglers continue our processes for wrangling canonical additional tags (tags that appear in the auto-complete) which don’t belong to any particular fandom (also known as “No Fandom” tags). This post overviews some of these upcoming changes.

In this round of updates, we continued to adjust existing canonical “No Fandom” tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships. We also continued to streamline creating new canonical tags, prioritizing more straightforward updates which would have less discussion compared to renaming current canonical tags or creating new canonical tags which touch on more complex topics. This method also reviews new tags on a regular basis, so check back on AO3 News for periodic “No Fandom” tag announcements.

None of these updates change the tags users have added to works. If a user-created tag is considered to have the same meaning as a new canonical, it will be made a synonym of one of these newly created canonical tags, and works with that user-created tag will appear when the canonical tag is selected.

In short, these changes only affect which tags appear in AO3’s auto-complete and filters. You can and should continue to tag your works however you prefer.

New Canonicals

The following concepts have been made new canonical tags:

Acts of Service
Acts of Service as a Love Language
Bickering as a Love Language
Gift Giving as a Love Language
Making Tea as a Love Language
Music as a Love Language
Physical Touch
Physical Touch as a Love Language
Spending Quality Time Together
Spending Quality Time Together as a Love Language
Words of Affirmation
Words of Affirmation as a Love Language
Halloween Fluff
Halloween Parties
Pumpkin Patches & Farms
Armpits
Armpit Hair
Armpit Licking
Canon-Typical Body Horror
Canon-Typical Horror
Existential Horror
Eye Horror
Folk Horror
Gothic Horror
Horror Comedy
Horror Movies
Medical Horror
Mild Body Horror
Religious Horror
Slasher Horror
Space Horror
Supernatural Horror
Surreal Horror
Jumpscares
Scary Stories
Otome Games
Yumeshipping | Self-Shipping

Subtag/Metatag Revisions

Additionally, we continued to adjust existing canonical tags to add or remove new subtag and metatag relationships, which help users find related content and filter in/out content as they browse works on AO3.

Consensual Possession is now a subtag of Consensual and Possession
No Use of Y/N for Reader-Insert is now a subtag of Reader-Insert
Pyromania has been removed as a subtag from Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Serial Killers has been removed as a subtag from Psychopathology & Sociopathy

In Conclusion

While some of these tags may be tags and concepts you’re intimately familiar with, others may be concepts you’ve never heard of before. Fortunately, our fellow OTW volunteers at Fanlore may be able to help! As you may have seen in the comments sections of previous posts, Fanlore is a fantastic resource for learning more about these common fandom concepts, and about the history and lore of fandom in general. For the curious, here’s a quick look at a few articles about concepts related to this month’s new canonical tags:

While we won’t be announcing every change we make to No Fandom canonical tags, you can expect similar updates in the future about tags we believe will most affect users. If you’re interested in the changes we’ll be making, you can continue to check AO3 News or follow us on Bluesky @wranglers.archiveofourown.org or Tumblr @ao3org for future announcements.

You can also read previous updates on “No Fandom” tags as well as other wrangling updates, linked below:

For more information about AO3’s tag system, check out our Tags FAQ.

In addition to providing technical help, AO3 Support also handles requests related to how tags are sorted and connected. If you have questions about specific tags, which were first used over a month ago and are unrelated to any of the new canonical tags listed above, please contact Support instead of leaving a comment on this post.

Please keep in mind that discussions about what tags to canonize and what format they should take are ongoing. As a result, not all related concepts will be canonized at the same time. This does not mean that related or similar concepts will not be canonized in the future or that we have chosen to canonize one specific concept in lieu of another, simply that we likely either haven’t gotten to that related concept yet or that it needs further discussion and will take a bit longer for us to canonize it as a result. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Lastly, we’re still working on implementing changes and connecting relevant user-created tags to these new canonicals, so it’ll be some time before these updates are complete. If you have questions about specific tags which should be connected to these new canonicals, please refrain from contacting Support about them until at least three months from now to give us adequate time to do so.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/updates-to-no-fandom-additional-tags-october-2026/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=291942

bookscorpion posting in

The Art of Games is a community to celebrate the hidden art in video games. Share your favourite screenshots, landscapes, and details. Gifs/screenshot edits are welcome!
Rules are here.

nicki

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rhi

Much more Leverage than X-Men, although it's very much set in a world with mutants and other heroes and villains. Chapter 1 just went up, Chapter 2 goes up Friday, and Chapters 3 and 4 -- the epilogue -- go up Sunday once I'm happy with a battle in chapter 3.

Hope y'all enjoy and now I'm gonna go fight with my not really Spook Me fic a little more.

It's About Consequences is here.

Current Mood: accomplished

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

rhi

This is originally from budgetbytes, but to be honest, I have amended it so freaking much that I have to type it up somewhere, because at this point, the original printout has too many notes to be easily read while cooking. So.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

2 cups unsweetened applesauce
2 large eggs
1/2 cup light brown sugar (more if you like it sweet)
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 Tbsp (1.5 tsp) ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1.2 tsp orange peel
3/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
4 Tbsp butter, melted

Mix all of this together in a large bowl. Once whisked smooth, add

1 cup milk or plant milk

I also add 2 scoops of protein powder, of whatever flavor you'd like in an oatmeal cookie. I use vanilla, horchata, or cappuccino. It will not hurt to leave it out, though.

Add
1 cup of dried fruits (craisins, raisins, dried blueberries, dried cherries -- whatever)
3/4 cups chopped nuts (I've used almonds, walnuts, or pecans)
1 cup of flour (or GF flour -- this last time, I used 1/2 cup of all-purpose GF and 1/2 cup of almond flour), &
3 cups of old fashioned rolled oats.

Stir until combined. Pour it all in a lightly-greased 9 x 13 pan and bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes.

Serves 8. It's good hot or cold, and reheats well. Made to this recipe, it's about 500 calories, 15 grams of protein, 70 grams of carbs, 10 grams of fiber, 20 grams of fat. (The protein on this is with 2 servings of protein powder added.)

Current Mood: cheerful

arcanetrivia posting in

Ahoy there, adventure gamers!

monkeyisland is a community for the beloved classic game series Monkey Island, featuring the comedic swashbuckling adventures of the improbably-named Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™. Anything about Monkey Island is fair game: your own fanworks (art, fic, videos, games, music, cosplay, memes/silliness, whatever), recs of others' fanworks, livestreams/let's-plays, discussions, news and articles, tips for messing about in the game resources or scripting, requests for hints, screenshots, all that good stuff. If Monkey Island is your ~~jam~~ ~~rum~~ rum and jam (it's an old pirate favorite, everybody knows that), then come on over and have a grog.

oceangrey posting in

I noticed that there was no overarching community on Dreamwidth catered towards aspec users (that I know of—although there are a couple of neat ones focusing on different aspec identities) So I made one! It's

aspec_community . Technically I created it as a continuation of the community I made on Pillowfort, but it's open to any Dreamwidth users who want to join :)

Current Mood: determined

Today... well, the previous awake time started on Tuesday, so I did Tuesday tasks just before midnight, then I thought hmmm, I shall just finish the Smile in Wrath of the Righteous.

... sixteen hours later...

I did indeed finish the Smile, and all the way up to the Chapel, though not all of it.

Hard is very hard and I am increasingly unconvinced I built anyone right.

I have played Wrath of the Righteous for over two thousand hours, which would be more impressive if character build screens didn't count, or if I wasn't always playing turn based. I have no idea how people win the other way.

Somewhere in there I achieved minimum standards through Wednesday but I am not impressed with me. Today is for Not Playing Computer Games Actually.

Which gets harder because the iplayer stopped working on my apparently too old to update TV so I have to use the games box if I want to watch Doctor Who. ... games have been winning over video Doctor Who. Possibly because I can put audios on in the boring bits in theory...

elisi

So, Darcy and I started watching The Boroughs. It's basically Stranger Things but with old people instead of kids. Not important.

What I want to talk about is one of the actors (not an old people) - his name is Seth Numrich and he looks uncannily like James Marsters.

It is distracting. I want to bleach his hair & see how he does with a London accent...

ETA: Something's up with Squidge images, had to re-upload.

Current Mood: curious

settiai

I mean this from the bottom of my heart:

Fuck EA.

Current Mood: irate

queen_ypolita

Finished since the last reading post
The Mysteries of Naples: Marta, or Faith, which I felt ended quite abruptly, but then again, long as it is, it's the first of three parts. The main characters are mainly rural poor in a world that's fundamentally arbitrary and not fair on them, or petty criminals who feel that's the only way to get on in the unfair world. Except Marta, of course, who's frequently described as a saint. While I'm somewhat curious to find out what happens to them next, I'm not sure I really want to see the next part out.

Currently reading
Started reading England: A Natural History by John Lewis-Stempel. Still reading Shut Out.

Reading next
Not sure

elisi

Dear

a_phoenixdragon, I wish you the happiest of birthdays! And that the coming year brings happy days and a brighter future and far less stress. 🫶

selenak

In which everyone has daddy issues, except for Friday and Edith, who have survivor guilt issues instead. Also: the history of AI in the MCU gets a massive addendum.

( Spoilers don't have to pay royalties for Pinoccio songs because it's Disney )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Munich

https://www.transformativeworks.org/translated-ao3-notification-emails/

Posted by therealmorticia

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=290215

For many years, our coders and translation volunteers have been working to internationalize AO3. Today, we are excited to announce that registered users will now be able to receive notification emails from us in another language! If you are logged in to your AO3 account, you can go to your Preferences page and choose the locale that we will use when sending you emails, such as kudos or subscription notifications.

We are starting off by enabling the option to receive notification emails in Simplified Chinese (中文（简体）). After we are sure that the new preference is working correctly and the translated emails are going out smoothly, other languages will be enabled – hopefully very soon!

Note that we are not translating user-created content, such as fanworks or comments. For example, in a translated kudos email, the subject “You’ve got kudos!” and the number of guests who left kudos will be translated. However, the list of usernames and the titles of your works will remain in their original languages.

When will my language be available?

Simplified Chinese (中文（简体）) is currently the only available language, because we wanted to focus on enabling the locale preference. More languages will be made available once we’ve confirmed that the new preference is working correctly. This staggered rollout allows us to get the completed translations to you as soon as possible, instead of delaying them until everything is fully coded, tested, and translated.

Why are some emails still in English after I select a locale?

AO3 has over 30 different types of emails, but not all of them are translated yet. Instead, we are focusing on the most common emails, as well as some emails that are needed for technical or security reasons. As translations for more emails become available over time, we will start sending out the translated versions based on the locale you’ve chosen instead of the default, English text. This means that some emails may remain in English for some time, or be partially in English, even after you select a different locale in your preferences. Enabling a language as soon as the most used emails are translated helps get translations to you faster.

Additionally, we can’t send translated emails to guests, such as notifications for replies to comments you left without logging in.

Can I volunteer to translate emails in my language?

Yes! The Translation committee accepts translator applications year-round, and would love to hear from you, whether you’d like to join an existing language team, or pioneer a team for a language we don’t cover yet! Please note that our translators work on a variety of content, including AO3 email localization, FAQs, news posts, and other documents, and if you pass our selection process, you’ll receive several different types of tasks to work on. If you enjoy working in a team and would like to help make even more content available in your language, please get in touch with Translation!

Why isn’t the rest of the site translated?

We chose to translate notification emails first, because they are relatively self-contained and thus simpler to translate and technically implement compared to the full website interface. This has allowed us to use the emails to develop coding standards and translation processes which we can now utilize for the interface. We’re already making progress on this, but we can’t promise anything yet.

If you have experience with web application development, especially in Ruby on Rails and internationalization, you can become a code contributor to help us further this and other initiatives.

I spotted an incorrect translation, how can I tell you about it?

Please contact Translation with the following information, and they will review your suggestion.

the subject line of the email notification
a full quote of the text that you believe is incorrect
and an explanation of what you think it should be changed to and why

We’re excited to move forward with this important work to make AO3 more accessible to our international user base, and we look forward to adding more languages, as well as internationalizing the main website interface, in the future!

https://www.transformativeworks.org/translated-ao3-notification-emails/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=290215

joseph_teller posting in

So, trying to find a way to make things more manageable I have set up my first community here on Dreamwidth:

Our Modern Times

This is so current events (politics, wars, scandals etc.) that I would have covered back on Pillowfort in a separate community to avoid causing anxiety or triggers for folks that are have issues can avoid such in my own personal journal.

As usual, I have a Liberal, LGBTQIA+ positive and anti-Republican anti-Fascist anti-genocide and Anti-AI Authoritarians tendency on what I cover, post and discuss. I welcome others with like interests that want to join the community (it's set to open at present) but you can also choose to not join if its likely to cause you anxiety, distress or you just want to ignore these things right now.

I mostly post links to Youtube videos, articles from legitimate sources (not the Trumpie controlled news outlets but respected professional journals, newspapers, and the occasional commentator that I consider reliable in their analysis of things).

I post to inform, discuss what is being said to the content, and what folks can share of their own views and other useful material they may have come across.

Current Location: Cambridge

settiai

My attempt at finally catching up on Critical Role continues. We'll see how long I manage it?

As with previous posts about the current campaign of Critical Role, this will be a combination of quotes, random thoughts, and some speculation. And it's obviously full of spoilers (albeit vague ones in places).

( Spoilers under the cut. )

Current Mood: sore

saiditallbefore posting in

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musesfool

I watched them raise the Knicks' championship banner and that was nice. I still don't care that much about regular season basketball.

I brought 120 cupcakes to work this morning (the 3 trays I linked to a picture of yesterday, plus a 4th tray of mixed apple cider/cinnamon brown sugar) and they were all gone by 3 pm. More people were in the office than usual, I think, but still, there are frequently leftovers and today there were none. Several people told me this was the best batch yet (!!!) and that they did not think the cinnamon brown sugar cream cheese frosting was too sweet, so that was nice. Maybe the refrigeration helped ameliorate the sweetness - cold tends to mute flavor - but I didn't bother having one when there were still 2 orange cranberry left. *g* the apple cider went first, which was not a surprise, really. I'm thinking about swapping it in for my current apple cider recipe for Christmas, since I also liked it better than that one, which always seems a little dry. I guess we'll see!

This weekend, I am going to focus on cookies instead, I think - cherry almond biscotti and orange cranberry cookies. Though it's only Tuesday, so plans could change!

*

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Knicks vs Sixers on tv

imhilien posting in

literaryquotes

The vampires behind Bracher seemed more enthused at this news than Comic-Con attendees at the sight of Nathan Fillion.

- Alex Shvartsman

Current Mood: contemplative

Not doing much. Bit of reading, bit of research, not much writing. The more research I do the more I find Problems and Pitfalls to the main plot idea, which is what you want in a plot, but it isn't always going from building regs to actual drama smoothly.

Got some Halloween stickers. Because I stopped and thought about where I could put things before I bought a Halloween top hat skeleton statues. ... I am still thinking about the statues. I mean technically I could put them on the windowsill but. Stickers are good.

Looked in a pencil case I haven't used lately, discovered Mystery Stickiness. Which is still not resolved, but. Only one pen in there was a different sort of pen than I usually get, and when I pulled it out with a dettol wipe, sure enough, weird sticky ensued. It was printed with a shop name and phone number in white and the white smeared right off on the wipe. It's like the slightly soft pen sweated the writing right off. Sad and sticky. So I wiped it real good until nothing was coming off it any more and put it in the kitchen to deal with later. I put it in a different holder than I meant to and then just decided to leave it for a bit because if stickiness damage then damage done. The rest of the pencil case is probably still at least slightly sticky so mystery unfun cleaning awaits for later.

The internet needs to know, obviously.

The more I read about ... anything I start reading about lately, the less surprised I am about things failing. Like we're in a very Find Out phase of history. Here are consequences and new knowledge and regulations that were written in blood and fire, and oh now everything has to be changed to work with the new knowledge. Makes sense, important stuff, but, so many complex ways to fail are now known in such detail, and fixing them is going to be harder than starting over, except we're in the middle of things so we can't stop the world to start over.
( Read more... )

Hospital building to world building, gold pieces to endowments and grants, schools for tieflings and targets for bigots, all wrapped in so many systems of real world rules and regulations... start with any one piece and the threads go out and out everywhere forever. Everything is complex in so many ways.

Okay, not getting new solutions right now so I'll go away.

It's interesting following each thread out through the existing rules and complications though.
Just need to be better at that...

settiai

Current Mood: sleepy

musesfool

I spent most of yesterday making cupcakes to take to work tomorrow. I ended up making cinnamon brown sugar with cinnamon brown sugar cream cheese frosting (which is way too sweet, imo, though thankfully the cupcakes themselves are not particularly sweet), a new-to-me recipe for apple cider donut muffins dipped in cinnamon sugar, and orange cranberry with orange Swiss meringue buttercream (I love these and I made them the first year I made cupcakes for Christmas, but no one else seemed to like them as much as I did, so I swapped them out for lemon, then peach, and now strawberry; I do like the strawberry ones quite a bit, but not as much as these *hands*) (pics).

Now, I am le tired.

*

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Rangers vs Ducks on tv

elisi

Really interesting dissection of para-social relationships

Diary Of A CEO Responded To My Takedown. I Wasn't Ready For This

Watch on YouTube

From the description:

This video is about why our brains can't tell the difference [between someone we have only met online and someone we know IRL], and what that same wiring does to a man that 50 million people are watching.

It started because I wanted to take the Mickey. Then I read the research, and the piss-take died in my hands.

Current Mood: thoughtful

koreanfandomsex posting in

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settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: accomplished

https://www.transformativeworks.org/october-2026-membership-drive-thanks-for-your-support/

Posted by Myst

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=290123

The Organization for Transformative Works’s October Membership Drive is over and we are delighted to say that we are finishing with a total of US$314,539.76 raised. We are particularly pleased that 7,623 donors chose to either take up or renew OTW membership with their donation, exceeding our goal of 5,000 members.

These donations came from 9,131 people in 86 countries: thank you to every single one of them, as well as to all of you who posted and shared the news about the drive! The OTW would not exist without its users all around the world, and your continued support for us is our absolute pride and joy! We are so glad to know that our ongoing mission to support, protect, and provide access to the history of fanworks and fan culture continues to resonate with the people that matter most of all: the fans themselves.

If you were intending to donate or join and haven’t yet done so, don’t worry! The OTW accepts donations all year and you can always choose to become a member with a donation of US$10 or more. Memberships run for one calendar year from the date of your donation, so if you donate now you’ll be able to vote in the 2027 OTW Board elections, which will take place in August of next year. And our exclusive thank-you gifts are available whenever you donate!

https://www.transformativeworks.org/october-2026-membership-drive-thanks-for-your-support/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=290123

settiai

Current Mood: thoughtful

maevedarcy posting in

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elisi

So, I am subscribed to the blog Doomsday Scenario ('Reporting and thoughts from Garrett M. Graff, trying to answer if things are as bad as they seem'). He posted a number of 9/11 articles which I meant to share but... didn't. So here they are, late.

What We Get Wrong About How 9/11 Began: The 17 minutes that changed America

25 Years: Three stories about the legacy of 9/11

selenak

In which the show about diplomatic shenanigans and can't be with, can't be without marriages is back, and asks: how to we reflect what's going on in the real world, just, you know, with everyone in power being intelligent? What if we still had professionals in the US public service and everything wasn't a cresspit of corruption and malignant stupidity? The result, btw, is still a world which could be heading towards WW3, but, you know: at least no one voted for the orange menace and his equivalents in European parties. Also: this is still the best show since The Americans to make long term m/f relationships absolutely fascinating instead of relying on the will they/won't they came.

( Spoilers also love the cast, now joined by Jodi Whitaker, as much as ever and would still prefer living in that reality, dangerous as it is )

On a very different note: since a few days, the internet has decided it needs a rerun of the crazy behaviour back before The Odyssee was released and where there was endless fighting just based on two trailers. The latest cause, it seems, is the trailer for Gerta Gerwig's next movie, an adaptation of The Magician's Nephew, one of C.S. Lewis' later Narnia novels which is simultanously a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Now, I never read the Narnia novels as a child, I read them as an adult woman, and therefore have no childhood memories to hold sacred, or, conversely, to feel betrayed by. I liked them well enough when I did read them without considering them the non plus ultra of children's novels. Or fantasy. Or religious allegory, come to that. I thus lack either protectiveness or seething resentment (looking at you, Philip Pulllman). But much as the estimable Ms Gerwig is an interesting director, I was and am curious what she'll make of Narnia, and think it already a very good decision NOT to go for one of the first three novels which were adapted in recent viewer memory. The trailer looks like this:

Watch on YouTube

Which had me go from mild interest to "this looks good, now I'm really looking forward to watching it!" Naturally, if you look at social media, you'd think Gerwig is Salman Rushdie just after he's published The Satanic Verses, only in an US evangelical context. Seriously, you'd think she had adapted the bible and this was some alternate Universe where Jesus Christ Superstar never happened, given some of the objections to the music used in the trailer. There will be undoubtedly much more of this until the movie is released, God (and Aslan) help us. In the meantime: the girl playing Polly is adorable in the trailer, and OMG, is that Daniel Craig as Uncle Andrew? It is. Given he also starred in the not very good Golden Compass (as Lord Asriel) in the early 2000s, this makes him the first actor to have starred in both a Narnia and a His Dark Material adaptation. Cheers!

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Munich

zappobrien posting in