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Elizabeth Leiston
A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even, Episode 1

At the beginning of every anime season, I try to sample most new shows to determine what I’ll be following during the season. The goal is no more than 16 series. A lot of average / so-so shows end up in the Time Permitting queue. My actual commitments are short.

The summer anime season is especially difficult to kickstart because I’m generally unavailable the second week of July. I’ll be offline, and anime will be on hold. I’ve started to sample shows, but already there is a huge backlog that is clamoring for my attention. Well, it will have to wait until later this month. For now, I’ll post the incomplete compilation of assessments. There are placeholders for shows waiting for my review.

( This Season’s Anime Below The Cut )

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Tsundoku Additions, July 2026

Today I had lunch in Portland with my friend Jim. I don’t go into Portland often, so I merged the lunch date with some errands. On a sunny day with a high around 79°F, outdoor walking was a perfect activity.

( A Fine Day )

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A friend reported that it was taking him 20 seconds to load my journal (as opposed to only a couple of seconds for other people's). Other people's journals weren't slow, just mine. And only when logged in.

Can anyone replicate this? (I'm putting in a support request to DW over it, and it would be good to know if this is something special about him, or a more widespread problem.)

And before anyone asks, yes, we've replicated on multiple browsers, multiple devices, and multiple networks.

Edit: Support ticket raised

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1. Challenging the EHRC Code of Practice: A Judicial Review (I've just donated): (tags:UK transgender bigotry law CrowdFunding )
2. Endometriosis could be diagnosed by blood test: (tags:endometriosis blood GoodNews )
3. If this is Tuesday, Doctor Who must have just ended: (tags:drwho TV UK bbc )
4. A Hacker's Arrest Reveals Microsoft Can Track Users Via a Windows Device ID | PCMag: (tags:surveillance Microsoft windows )

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Today we went to Berwick Upon Tweed, to a friend's birthday.

I didn't know exactly when we'd want to come back, so I bought an "Open Return", thinking that this would mean we could return on whichever train we wanted. That being my memory of how they worked. Only to discover that because we'd booked to go there on a Transpennine train, the return trip also had to be on a train from the same operator. Which, as there were only trains at 16:09 and then nothing more until after 19:00, we could either leave early, or be stuck there with the kids until very late.

I am completely baffled by this. There seemed to be, as far as I can tell, no way of getting an actually flexible return trip.

Anyone with experience of the train setup want to tell me if this is how it's now supposed to work?

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1. Pretty much all countries like Israel less than they did 4 years ago: (tags:israel polls )
2. British politicians are doing God. Voters would rather they didn't.: (tags:politics religion uk )
3. Tusk warns 'critical months' ahead for Poland in face of Russian threat: (tags:Russia Poland war doom )
4. Yes, Elon Musk is responsible for the deaths of millions: (tags:murder ElonMusk USA )

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Shopping Bag and Gift from Jenni
iPhone 13 mini photo

I am reminded of Botan Kamiina’s thoughts, wondering How many more times will we be able to drink together? Or in my case, How many more times will I be able to spend the day with my BFF? Not many, I fear. So I’ve been thinking any day I spend with Jenni might be our last one. Soon, we’ll be living in different states and seeing each other even less often than we do today.

With this in mind, I vowed to cherish every minute of this day – and I did. Our mission / plan was simple – lunch and shopping in Woodburn.

( A Day in Woodburn )

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About 6 weeks ago I noticed that I was out of contract with my ISP, and they'd put up my price by inflation, to just over £40 for 300Mbit..

So I checked, and discovered I could go back in to a 2 year contract for £39. And that they no longer had a 300Mbit contract, that was for 500Mbit. So I cut my price and got 50% more bandwidth.

And then a couple of days ago, I noticed that they had an offer on - to sign up for 900Mbit for the cost of 500Mbit. So now I have 900Mbit internet for the same price I was paying for 300Mbit in May.

(I could be even cheaper with a different provider, but Zen have awesome customer service, and we both work from home, so I want someone who fixes things fast when they go wrong.)

What boggles me slightly is that I now have 100Mbit upload. Which is how fast my home's internal network was until about 2 years ago.

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Good morning from windy Scotland, where the children were sitting in their car seats in the front drive waiting to be picked up and taken to Portobello beach, where the parents of one of their friends are looking after them today.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

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Now that I'm sure my Teva sandals fit well enough for me to walk to the store and back, I have ordered a second pair online, as planned. This pair is purple, which they didn't have at the brick-and-mortar store. Mail order has real advantages, but shopping in person let me try them on. This is one of four or five different styles I tried on that afternoon.

Yesterday was the first time I'd walked any distance in these sandals. I grabbed them while pulling on clothes and hurrying out before it got too hot (extreme heat warning starting at 10 a.m. yesterday).

For my reference, these are Teva Tirra sandals in a women's 9.

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1. An animated exploded view of how pull-back toy cars work: (tags:cars toys visualisation )
2. PlayStation will stop releasing games on discs in 2028: (tags:playstation storage obsolescence thefuture )
3. For the First Time, a Cell Built From Scratch Grows and Divides: (tags:biology Technology impressive )

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1. Supreme Court takes sledgehammer to much of federal government’s regulatory structure: (tags:USA law doom )
2. Palantir Acquires Pentagon For $800 Billion - (The Onion): (tags:business war funny satire )
3. Brand new 'Bricktastic Beasts' trail opens at Edinburgh Zoo for summer: (tags:lego zoo edinburgh )

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1. White working-class children 'failed by schools system' (more support needed for reading, more apprenticeships needed): (tags:uk class Education )
2. NHS trust defies Supreme Court ruling to respect trans patients' identities: (tags:lgbt transgender GoodNews uk bigotry law )
3. A personalized vaccine for melanoma cut the risk of cancer returning after five years: (tags:cancer vaccine viaKenny )
4. Astronauts returning from six-month missions describe a persistent 'observer' sensation — the feeling of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame, weeks after they're back on the ground: (tags:space psychology )

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This is mostly just to say "hi, still here." There's not much going on here.

After the cats' annual checkup, it turned out that one of them (Molly) has a urinary tract infection. We gave the vet the OK to run more tests using the same blood sample, to identify the pathogen.

It's some form of E. coli. I picked up the pills on Saturday, while cattitude was out of town doing family stuff. He got home late last night, and we just gave Molly the first of seven pills. Once we've done that, they want us to bring Molly back so they can draw more blood to check that the antibiotic did the job.

Adrian and I took the opportunity of Cattitude being away to cook and eat mushrooms: stuffed mushrooms Friday, and a mushroom-barley casserole Saturday. We agreed that the casserole was easier, and it was less work, so we're unlikely to make stuffed mushrooms again. (Adrian pointed out that the stuffed mushrooms weren't difficult, it was the difference between "easy" and "very easy.")

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Having read some of the proposals by Andy Burnham on devolution, I'm not a fan.

This is largely because everything depends on Mayors. And I have a strong dislike of the "Everyone votes for a single mayor, who power then flows down from" approach.

Scotland doesn't really have mayors. Scotland has provosts. And the provost is the head of the town council. And they don't distribute power - they help organise. You vote for your local councillors, and then *they* get together and work out between them how they want to manage things, and that person is then the point of coordination. They're a manager, helping make the process of decision-making between the councillors you chose run as smoothly as possible.

And that, frankly, is the kind of government I want. A somewhat messy one that has to argue, compromise, and work things through, rather than one where The Big Guy In Charge runs roughshod over everyone.

*who, thanks to the council voting system in Scotland, are much more likely to actually be someone who want representing you, and you don't get a single party in charge nearly as often. Of the 32 councils in Scotland 3 are majority controlled, and in one of those the majority are Independents.

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1. Twenty-six years of evidence on drugs. Twenty-six years of cowardice.: (tags:uk politics drugs decriminalization )
2. How big are the loopholes in the Conversion Practices Draft Bill?: (tags:LGBT transgender bigotry healthcare law UK )
3. Edinburgh festivals are worth nearly 850m to the Scottish economy: (tags:Scotland Edinburgh festival economy )

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Botan Kamiina
Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk, OP Animation
Do I love Botan? Why, yes! Yes, I do!

We’ve reached the end of the season. It certainly didn’t go as I expected. I managed to watch the full season of 15 anime series. That is approximately the number of shows I would watch in a season back when I was working. I guess in retirement, I haven’t managed to make any more space for anime. I should plan for a watchlist of 14 shows (i.e., about two per day) for seasons from here on out. In my working days, I could watch up to 20 shows a season – although that definitely was pushing it. I preferred 16 and no more than 18. I think 14-16 is a reasonable target.

This season I couldn’t (didn’t) even make time for popular Re:Zero S4 and Ascendance of a Bookworm S4. I frittered my attention on lesser shows that didn’t require any level of concentration. I guess I was in it for low-effort entertainment. That said, there were two excellent series that I followed: Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk and A Hundred Scenes of Awajima – and of those two, only Botan merits a place in my library. Coming in third was Witch Hat Atelier. Everything else was an also-ran.

( Final Notes on All the Shows I Watched )

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Nicky's journal

Anime Summer 2026 Assess 1 of 2

Friend, Food, and Books

Anyone finding my journal slow?

Interesting Links for 07-07-2026

Interesting Links for 06-07-2026

Interesting Links for 05-07-2026

Train annoyances

Interesting Links for 04-07-2026

A Grand Day Out

Interesting Links for 03-07-2026

Internet Go Whoosh

Photo cross-post

sandals

Interesting Links for 02-07-2026

Interesting Links for 01.07.2026

Interesting Links for 30-06-2026

(no subject)

What I don't like about Andy Burnham's plans for devolution

Interesting Links for 29-06-2026

Anime Spring 2026 Wrap-up

February

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9 1	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28