Hikaru no Go

Thanks so much for making my gift!

I am gloss on AO3. I am open to treats.

( Likes and DNWs )

( Canon - Paige Lewis )

( Church of Whale Fall - Louie Zong )

( Detroiters (TV) )

( Ffern Green Knight Commercial )

Meme from sweettartheart

What is a food you loved as a child but do not enjoy anymore?
I really can't think of anything besides various processed meat things - Vienna sausages, devilled ham sandwiches, liverwurst, chopped chicken liver pâté - that just sound gross to me now. I didn't love them back then so much as ate them without issue.

What’s a food you used to dislike but now enjoy? What changed?
I've always been a pretty adventurous eater, but I don't think I liked spinach much. It was invariably old and tough, more like bad kale than anything. Now I add frozen spinach to so many meals, and saag paneer is one of my favourite dishes to order.

If you could eat only one cuisine for the rest of your life, which would you choose?
Indian, Mexican, or Salvadoran. I can't narrow it down further than that; each has tons of variety and flavour and I would never get bored.

What food instantly makes you feel comforted or happy?
Pastina with butter and parm, buttered white rice, or avgolemono soup.

What food reminds you most of your childhood?
Pot roast, vague "curry", spectacularly yellow (served with little dishes of peanuts and banana pieces[??] along with chutney), tuna casserole with potato chips, crescent-roll "empanadas" filled with sloppy-joe meat, and southern New England crispy thincrust pizza made by Greek immigrants.

Are there any foods you think are overrated?
Not really, though I'm not interested in steak and grilling and smoking and that sort of thing. (In general, I'm really put off by that online thing where people get incredibly aggressive about food opinions. It's all good! So what if someone makes [X] in a way your sainted grandmother never did? You don't have to eat it, chill.)

What traditional dish from your country would you recommend to a visitor?
From the US, I love succotash, as well as baked beans. From Canada, poutine, I suppose? Maybe yellow pea soup?

Who is the best cook you know, and what makes their food special?
Honestly, probably I am. Which isn't to say that I am anywhere near exceptional, but I love cooking and I feel pretty confident making a variety of dishes and trying new things. I just wish our kitchen had any room whatsoever and that more than one burner worked on the stove. Then I would be unstoppable, or something.

<strong>What is a food you loved as a child but do not enjoy anymore?</strong> <strong>What’s a food you used to dislike but now enjoy? What changed?</strong> <strong>If you could eat only one cuisine for the rest of your life, which would you choose?</strong> <strong>What food instantly makes you feel comforted or happy?</strong> <strong>What food reminds you most of your childhood?</strong> <strong>Are there any foods you think are overrated?</strong> <strong>What traditional dish from your country would you recommend to a visitor?</strong> <strong>Who is the best cook you know, and what makes their food special?</strong>

online reads

Orbiting Space Junk: Torrey Peters and the impossibility of the great trans novel (Oakland Review of Books) This is an extraordinary essay, weaving together thoughtful criticism of Detransition, Baby, personal memoir, and a chronicle of the rapid changes to public opinion on trans issues over this decade.

The Long Game of Preserving the ‘Livers of the River’: The endangered elktoe mussel, hard-hit by Helene, plays a critical role in keeping rivers healthy. A state biologist is on a mission to save them. (The Assembly) While this piece could have been written and edited a lot better, the core information presented is very interesting.

The House Between the Trees (GMA) This is such a sad, beautifully-written account of an elderly Filipino woman trying to care for her two schizophrenic sons.

Fortnite Will Give Kids What They've Always Wanted: AI Pride And Prejudice Fan Fic: Neal Stephenson's company Whenere is bringing an AI-driven storytelling platform to Fortnite. (Aftermath) This is both appreciative of actual fanfic and hilarious about the stupid project.

No one actually likes AI influencers (Garbage Day)

A lot of ink has been spilled about the weird doomsday nerd sex cult running Silicon Valley and all the users suffering from AI psychosis, but not nearly enough has been written about the grifter nihilism that has wormed its way into the heart of not just AI or crypto, but social media, as a whole.

Someone ‘Torturing’ LLMs in a Robot Prison Has Triggered the Dumbest Debate in AI Yet: The "AI Torture Chamber" has opened an upsetting and absurd window into the effective altruist obsession with "model welfare." (404 Media; Sept 30)

One of the most heated discussions occurring on X at the moment is about the ethics of a GitHub project in which a person is running Saw-like “torture” and “pain” experiments on a series of locally hosted large language models, causing a series of effective altruists and people who believe LLMs are sentient to beg GitHub to delete the project on the grounds that the AI is suffering and that this glorified text adventure game is somehow cruel.

It makes me so mad that these fascist nerds are legitimately distressed by this, but completely comfortable with immiserating entire human populations and devastating the environment.

The man who planted a forest in Turkey's Mardin: Sehmus Erginoglu began clearing a waste site in the historic southern city 26 years ago. Today it is home to thousands of trees. (Middle East Eye, 2019)

One green shoot at a time: the women restoring mangrove forests in the oil-ravaged Niger delta: In a region of Nigeria blighted by decades of pollution, Martha Agbani and her team are not just replanting trees but regaining ownership of their lost lands and livelihoods. (The Guardian)

The Poetics of Indigenous Carto-Activism (C Magazine, 2021)

What does it mean to know a place and what social, political, cultural, spiritual, or geographical perspectives contribute to this knowing? For decades now, visual artists have been addressing questions of place through the implementation of mapping as an aesthetic expression and form.

ETA, Well, this is terrifying:
Exposing AdFection: How Discover-Tech Turned Targeted Ads Into a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware: This is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. We call the technique AdFection, and show how it was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru’s spyware. We also uncover Discover-Tech, and show how the company helps mercenary surveillance vendors track and hack devices around the world. (Citizen Lab)

Israeli firm used ads to enable espionage, Canadian researchers say (CBC)

But Thursday's report marks the first time researchers have documented how “zero-click” spyware attacks can be enabled by targeted ads, Citizen Lab says.

“Zero-click” means that users don't need to click on a link or actively do anything for their devices to be targeted with spyware.