flaneurs | Member Posts

This year I'm doing Community Thursdays. Some of my activity will involve maintaining communities I run, and my favorites. Some will involve checking my list of subscriptions and posting in lower-traffic ones. Today I have interacted with the following communities...

* Comment on Just One Thing (8 July 2026) in

awesomeers.

* Commented on Check-In Post - July 8th 2026 in

get_knitted.

* Commented on "Speak Up Saturday" in

tv_talk.

* Posted "Agriculture" in

first_nations_freaks.

Current Mood: busy

weofodthignen

Another day of sunny but pleasantly un-hot weather, with the hills visible in the clear air. Prudence came trotting up the steps for breakfast, Monty approached me asking for food twice—in the driveway in the afternoon, then in the garden in the early evening—then when I took out recycling after dark, Prudence materialised from the shadows (the motion sensor light over the side door no longer reacts unless you approach from way down the driveway or jump up and down). She walked almost right up to me, but shied away when I offered my hand.

ysabetwordsmith

“IMPOSSIBLE!” No Work Food Gardens Based on Wild Edible Ecosystems

About 20 years ago, after I first started studying Permaculture, I went to work for a very sustainable Permaculture-oriented CSA farm. One day, after working all morning painfully tending, pruning, and weeding a patch of cane berries, I went for a bike ride along my favorite trail. Black raspberries were in season, so I went home, grabbed 3 3 gallon buckets and filled them up with raspberries.

That was when it hit me. NOBODY was working tending these, except for perhaps the deer and birds fertilizing them. Meanwhile, my own hands were covered with scratches from my morning work.

This is an example of humanity's earliest agriculture: encouraging plants we find useful in places where we go, and occasionally ripping out ones we don't want there. Wild plants can mostly take care of themselves. You don't have to fuss over them like delicate domestic fruits and vegetables.

My approach to laissez-faire permaculture is similar. I plant new things that seem promising. I try to help them establish. They live or die. The ones that live, I expect to take care of themselves. Some of what I grow is really good at that. \o/

Current Mood: busy

magid

2 pounds of beets
4 pounds of carrots
12 pickling cucumbers (I chose the smallest I could find; some were rather larger than I like)
12 summer squashes (I chose large ones, including some pattypan, some zucchini, and some zephyr two-toned ones)
8 heads of green garlic
two bunches of green curly kale (I swapped one for a fennel)
1 pound of salanova leaves (‘baby lettuce’)
1 pound basil
take what you want mint and parsley (I chose a bit of each)

First thoughts: roast the beets to add to a salanova salad with walnuts, feta, and a bit of mint. Cole slaw with the second of last week’s cabbage and some carrot. Dilly cucumber salad. Roasted squash. Squash and fennel relish with garlic. Summer squash kugel. Lemon-tahini kale salad with sunflower seeds. Pureed basil to put with last week’s puree and olive oil.

( from the farmer’s email )

oursin

What I read

Finished Second Wind, which was really a bit kitchen-sinky in all the stuff that happened to Our Hero the Physicist Turned Weatherman - I thought Rare Form of Bovine TB was really going a bit far after all the flying through hurricanes etc.

Finished Free for the book-group - account of growing up in Albania just before and just after the Fall of Communism, in a family with rather a lot of intricate backstory on both sides. And a lot of it narrated via perspective of very young person who is, understandably, not being told everything by the parents and living under that particular regime.

Then read JD Robb, Stolen in Death, (In Death #62) (2026), and while I am always pleased when Dallas is not chasing a serial killer or someone with weird perverse agenda, this one did not seem to me one of the top entries in the series, quite apart from the jewel theft from the TATE!!! blooper. (I was trying to construct any scenarios in which there would be v pricey jewels on display alongside, you know, all the PAINTINGS and some sculptures.)

Then I re-read, the first time in a Very Long Time, George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866). A lot of it reads like practice-steps for Middlemarch, which has so much more going for it. The plot-stuff to do with legacies, lost heirs, etc, is pretty clunky. Felix himself is somewhat of a pain. There's not much of her humour. Even so, there's some terrific stuff there.

On the go

Winifred Holtby, Poor Caroline (1931), which I appear to have re-read slightly more recently than I thought, though still not very recently.

Up next

There's a new Literary Review. Otherwise, feel I am on a bit of a re-reading things kick.

ysabetwordsmith

"Plural Checklist" by leathersys on tumblr -- copied on DW by

synecdoches

I recently found an interesting survey on Tumblr by leathersys, called the Plural Checklist. They made this as a quiz for people who think they may be plural/multiple, but don't have classic amnesiac barriers, since a lot of quizzes and diagnostic tests are geared toward the most obvious dissociative symptoms. I like the questions, but I strongly dislike Google and don't want to send this info to a stranger, so I'm going to copy the questions here and consider my answers. Most of the questions were very insightful-- some shockingly so-- and only one or two of them made me feel like an out of touch old man.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today's word is "doff." Many folks will know it from "doff a hat" meaning to tip or take off. However, it's also used widely in fibercrafting to mean removing fiber from a tool.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Pop Culture Squad has a post about current Batman threads. In one of those, Oliver Queen / Green Arrow explains to Bruce Wayne / Batman what is wrong with the tech industry nowadays:

Ollie has a turn as the crusading liberal ex-millionaire, as he has a few opportunities to let us all know what he really thinks of Generative AI companies founded by tech bros. There’s one point where Ollie fills Batman in on it all. "They’re another generative AI company. Scraping personal data. Stealing art and stories and knowledge. Polluting and poisoning. Using masses of energy and water. Taking what the world actually needs to produce what nobody wants."

It's that last line I want people to remember and use to describe what is wrong with generative AI: "Taking what the world actually needs to produce what nobody wants." That's it in a nutshell.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is partly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds. I've seen a small flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/8/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/8/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 7/8/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 7/8/26 -- We started breaking up the parts of the birdgift tree that had fallen into the south lot. There's about twice as much mow path past it now. We dumped 2 wheelbarrows of sticks into the firepit in the ritual meadow.

EDIT 7/8/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 7/8/26 -- I cracked open 2 apricot pits and got 2 big perfect seeds. I cracked open two batches of cherry pits and got several good seeds. I think the advice to let seeds air-dry for a few days is bad. One day at most. They shrivel up pretty fast.

I walked around for a bit. I saw 2 bats flying quite low in the house yard, and more flying high over the road and other places. I'm not sure if they're the same bats or not. I don't know how many I actually have.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?

Current Mood: busy

weofodthignen

I only took a short walk today, after traipsing around a supermarket for quite a while (and cutting back ivy yesterday, which surely counts as exercise). I started off waiting for the light at a busy crossroads, and saw 4 Waymos while I waited. All cruising empty and presumably aimlessly; one was decorated with a colourful cartoon in an attempt to make us like it, so I recognised it when it passed me again after circling around the streets. I decided to count the things ... and didn't see any more for the rest of the walk, even though I went around the park, where there are usually a couple of the things loitering, spinning their sensors. Maybe I should make a habit of counting.

ysabetwordsmith

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by a prompt from

gs_silva. It also fills the "Ambiguous Situation" square in my 6-1-26 card for the Hazbin Hotel Fest. This poem belongs to the series Schrodinger's Heroes.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

yourlibrarian

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

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

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

2) Watched Elle ( Read more... )

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

England versus Mexico. ( Read more... )

Portugal versus Spain. ( Read more... )

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

Argentina versus Egypt. ( Read more... )

Switzerland versus Colombia. ( Read more... )

Poll #34812 Kudos Footer-597

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Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

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ysabetwordsmith

... is repeating itself. This post compares Washington, D.C. with occupied Berlin from the perspective of someone who's seen both.

Never forget.

Current Mood: busy

nanila

While my colleague and I were speaking about Srs Bsnss with our industrial partners last week, we heard a roaring noise outside the window. The 250th anniversary flyover displays by the fighter jets had begun.

We grabbed our hats and sunglasses and went onto the roof to have a closer look.

Watch on YouTube

It ended up being a very close look indeed. (I would like to point out that none of us were the ones clapping.)

Watch on YouTube

This was a more comfortable view of the formation flying.

Watch on YouTube

Here they are coming from t’other direction.

This continued for around 10 minutes before they all zoomed off, presumably to base for a little rest from the heat.

kaberett

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

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

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

[Gru's plan goes here]

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

oursin

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students.

This would be rather startling to the ladies who had studied as home students, at Somerville, Lady Margaret Hall, St Hugh's and St Hilda's, before women were admitted to Oxford degrees which was what actually happened in 1920 -

- and those ladies who were still around were there to collect the degrees they were now entitled to.

I am so hoping that this is a blurb produced either by AI or by some intern at the publishers who has not actually read the book but has gathered that it is about women going to Oxford in 1920?

Because if the book is written in some apprehension that there were No Female Students among the dreaming spires before 1920 I hope the author is visited in her sleep by the shades of all, or at least some of, the women who were, who included some notoriously stroppy and acerbic characters.

This is even more egregious than the historical romance which posited a daughter of an Oxford prof at a date of obligatory celibacy for College fellows, which is a bit niche perhaps, but Women's Struggle for Education is surely well-documented???

(Come on down, Vera Brittain, The Women at Oxford: a fragment of history)

In further Did Not Do The Research, or at least have a Brit-Picker, JD Robb Stolen in Death has significant plot around theft of Important Jewels - from the Tate in London, wtf, surely you meant the V&A....

ysabetwordsmith

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Don't add to the casualty list in an emergency." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I picked this theme for today from the selected list of themes, because of the violent storms that swept through central Illinois in late June. Here's my post about Tornado Alley moving from the Great Plains through the Midwest to the Southeast.

Among my previous poems that mention tornadoes or other violent storms are "A Tornado of Thought," "Windswept," "Know What You Stand For," "Better to Meet Danger," "In Growth, Reform, and Change," and "Nature's Great Masterpiece," and "The Pequot War."

Established settings in Tornado Alley: Omaha Reservation and Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska (Polychrome Heroics), Stillwater, Oklahoma (Polychrome Heroics), Waxahachie, Texas (Schrodinger's Heroes), River City and Ava and Bluehill, Missouri (Polychrome Heroics), Onion City and Urbanburg, Illinois (Polychrome Heroics), Easy City, Louisiana (Polychrome Heroics), Ninovan, Tennessee (Daughters of the Apocalypse), Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center
for Elephant Conservation in Florida (Daughters of the Apocalypse).

I'll be soliciting ideas for first responders, troubleshooters, activists, rebels, Women Who Run with the Saberteeth, explorers, refugees, runaway youth, housemates, siblings, parents, teachers, clergy, police, soldiers, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, failure analysts, ethicists, other people who get into dire situations, running into a fire while others are running out of it, rescuing people, protesting, rebelling, planning, panicking, throwing in the towel, escaping, running like you stole something, adventuring, divorcing, teaching, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, war zones, disaster areas, wastelands, trails, sailing ships, distant lands, the forest primeval, prehistory, liminal zones, schools, homeless shelters, prisons, hotels, churches, sharehouses, campfires, laboratories, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, stores, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where disasters happen, cataclysms, natural disasters, climate change, the end of the world, S-risks and X-risks, unhappy relationships, PACE your planning, protest rallies, travel mishaps, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, supplements that turn out to be mutagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Hazbin Hotel Fest Bingo Card 6-1-26

Winterfest in July Bingo Card 7-1-26

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

An Army of One has some serious challenges between the Galactic Arms.

The Bear Tunnels introduces modern principles to people in the past, in hopes of preventing genocide.

A Conflagration of Dragons features the Six Races struggling to survive as the dragons take over more and more territory.

Crystal Wood is about how the mass death of trees can wreck civilization.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse has people trying to find enough resources to survive, when former cities are unsafe.

The Moon Door explores a women's chronic pain group and lycanthropy.

Not Quite Kansas deals with demons, magic, and other mayhem.

One God's Story of Mid-Life Crisis follows Shaeth as he works on becoming the God of Drunks after quitting as the God of Evil. Addiction always has the potential for disaster.

Path of the Paladins includes some really awful situations due to divine politics and mortal foolishness.

Peculiar Obligations deals with Quakers, pirates, and organized crime.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. Among the more relevant threads are Berettaflies, the Big One, Dr. Infanta, Iron Horses, Officer Pink, Shiv, and Trichromatic Attachments.

Schrodinger's Heroes has a lot of situations that can destroy things, up to and including whole dimensions.

The Wandering is a series about fantasy time travel where people loop back within their own lifespan.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: creative

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy and warm. We got a little rain yesterday.

I fed the birds. I haven't seen much activity yet.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/7/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a gray catbird splashing in the big red birdbath.

EDIT 7/7/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 7/7/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

Sparrows and house finches are eating from the hopper feeder.

EDIT 7/7/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I also walked around the yard a bit. Cosmos are blooming in the east-west strip of the prairie garden. Sunflowers are up in several places but not blooming yet. There are some zinnias too. :D

EDIT 7/7/26 -- I cracked 6 apricot pits and got 4 usable seeds, which I bagged in damp sand to cold-stratify in the refrigerator.

Fireflies are out. Cicadas are singing. I saw 2 bats swooping over the house yard.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

sanguinity

And with this installment, I have finally caught up on my library overdues -- things got a little hairy there, while I was trying to bull my way through our final Hum 110 book of the year. Happily, we don't get charged overdue fines, just a replacement fee when the library decides getting their book back has become a lost cause. Which hasn't happened yet, knock wood. *juggles books faster*

Kelley Armstrong, An Ordinary Sort of Evil (2026)

Fifth novel in the Rip Through Time series (not counting another four novellas under the author's private imprint), in which a police detective from 2016 Vancouver BC becomes displaced in time and solves crimes in 1860s Edinburgh, Scotland.

This was a particularly fun installment, but the big question I had going in was: do Duncan and Mallory finally kiss? The novel came out a month ago, and this is the first time in years when a Rip Through Time novel has come out and I haven't gotten a rash of comments on my Duncan/Mallory story (the only one on AO3!) from readers frustrated that they STILL weren't kissing in the novels. So I had my suspicions.

Spoiler:

They kiss. And a decent kiss it was, too! Although I flatter myself that I did it better. ;-)

I need to go back and pick up the most recent novella, which is sitting unread on my ereader, but all in all, I'm very pleased with this installment.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

Read-aloud with

grrlpup; first read for her and second read for me. Unlike nearly every other book in the Vorkosigan Saga, this one is neither mystery nor MilSF, instead being very domestic. (It is hilarious to me that every time I prepared to read the next section and asked Grrlpup for a "last time in Gentleman Jole" recap, she nailed it. She does not nail it with mysteries or MilSF, at least not without a ton of scaffolding on my part.) I still very much like this one for all the things it made canon, although as noted before, it is rather babies-forward. I've been holding off on finishing writing a couple of fic until I finished my re-read of this; I suppose it's time now to push those higher in the queue.

Btw, this finishes our planned reading of the Vorkosigan Saga (although we may go back and pick up Ethan of Athos at some point). Next up for cooking-and-picnics read-aloud time: the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik.

Grace Lin, The Year of the Dog, (2006 / 2018)

Middle-grade semi-autobiographical novel about a fifth grader deciding what she wants to be when she grows up, all while learning to navigate her second-generation Taiwanese-American identity. (Spoiler: she wants to grow up to be an author who writes books with Chinese people in them! Congratulations, Grace, on achieving your childhood dreams! So few of us do!)

Published for the 2006 Year of the Dog, then reiussued for the 2018 Year of the Dog, this new edition has more family stories at the end, as well as an interview between Grace Lin and Alvina Ling, Grace's childhood friend, present-day editor, and a character in the book, reminiscing on the development of the book and how Grace altered events from their childhood and for what narrative purpose.

(btw, Grace and Alvina host a children's lit podcast together: Book Friends Forever. Grrlpup is a regular listener -- I honestly thought the podcast was called "Grace and Alvina" until two minutes ago.)

Loved this book when I first read it, and I'm delighted to say it holds up on re-read. And the new bonus material at the back is a real treat!

Meredith Broussard, More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (2023)

Exceptionally clear overview of technochauvanism (tech bros thinking they're smarter and better than anyone who has ever tried to solve a particular problem before) and algorithmic bias (when technology reproduces the same racist, sexist, cissexist, and ableist biases of society at large). Each chapter discusses specific algorithmic failures in a different domain: facial recognition, policing and courts, testing and academics, digital accessibility, gender, and medical diagnosis. She also has a chapter devoted to algorithmic auditing and a concluding chapter that highlights various efforts to check, correct, or regulate biased algorithms. (Alas, a lot of the U.S. efforts have since been set back, if not gutted, by the Trump Administration. Stay strong, E.U. -- we're counting on you!)

This book played havoc with my library holds list. It also wasn't great for my browser tabs. Let me share two:

Heat Listed. Chicago's predictive policing program told a man he would be involved with a shooting. But it couldn't determine which side of the gun he would be on. Instead, it made him the victim of a violent crime -- twice. (Person of Interest was ripped from the headlines -- this story even happened during 2013! But instead of "the Machine" saving Robert McDaniel's life, it got him shot instead. Twice.)
How Eugenics Shaped Statistics. Exposing the damned lies of three science pioneers. (Galton, Pearson, and Fisher, damned eugenicists, all, and one of them was in bed with Nazis. Basically, how the p-test was invented to give eugenics the veneer of objective truth. I am pissed that NOT A SINGLE ONE of my years of statistics classes mentioned any of this. Article has some good conclusions that statistics needs to relax its death grip on "objectivity" for ethics reasons, which my statistics classes have done, but it'd have been nice to have the ethics object lesson actually in class.)

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Flâneurs

Member Posts

Community Thursdays

D.O.P.-T.

Permaculture

Farm share, week 5

Wednesday has made an appointment to see the dentist

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Vocabulary: Doff

Artificial Intelligence

Birdfeeding

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D.O.P.-T.

Poem: "Its Weirdness Is Evident Without Comparison"

On to the Quarterfinals!

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we have achieved PLYWOOD

Is this the blurb writer, or does the author actually believe this?

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