akicif

The library finally coughed up KD Edward's Tarot Sequence triology (Last Sun, The Hanged Man, and the Hourglass Throne.) I picked these up because Edwards is going to be one of our GoH's at Gaylaxicon. Have I read much of Last Sun yet? No, not really. I'm finding it a little difficult to get into. I'm hoping that will change? I'm giving this book a bit longer than I would normally because I want to give a GoH more than a fair shake, you know? Someone on ConCom loves his work! So, I guess we'll see if I ever warm to it.

Obviously, it's okay if I don't. But, I'm generally bummed that it's not dragged me in because I'm having some reading ennui. Do you ever get this? I have a ton of options of things to read, but nothing is looking appealing and nothing that I'm currently reading is grabbing me. I've also got Waubgeshig Rice's Moon of the Crusted Snow on audiobook and I can't seem to get past 10%. And I've heard good things about this book!

So, here's the other stuff I have in my Libby folder right now. Help me pick something?

When the English Fall by David Williams
The Future is Yours by Dan Frey
Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth
The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon
Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Anything look good to you? I noticed that Martha Wells recommended the worldbuilding in The Archive Undying to the New York Times in their "Let Us Help You Pick Your Next Book: Science Fiction" article. So maybe that's worth a go?

What are you reading?

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Today is mostly sunny, humid, and hot. Yesterday it rained for half the day and into the night.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches. They've drained half the thistle feeder but I still need to refill that one.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/9/25 -- I filled the thistle feeder.

I've seen a male cardinal and a fox squirrel.

EDIT 7/9/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/9/25 -- I sprayed weedkiller on poison ivy around the yard.

EDIT 7/9/25 -- I potted up two apricot seeds.

Current Mood: busy

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What I read

Finished Murder in the Trembling Lands and okay, you have a mystery based on something that happened during some very confusing battle events back in the past, and this is all taking place during the upheavals of carnival in New Orleans decades later, and people lying, giving their versions of past events based on gossip, rumour, speculation etc etc, and possibly this was not really one to be reading in fits and starts.

Zen Cho, Behind Frenemy Lines (2025). This was really good: it does what I consider a desideratum particularly in contemporary-set romance, it has a good deal of hinterland going on around the central couple and their travails. And is Zen Cho going to give us a political thriller anytime, hmmmm?

Natasha Brown, Universality (2025), which I picked up recently as a Kobo deal. I was fairly meh about this - kind of a 'The Way We Live Now' work, about class and the media and establishing narratives and the compromises people make, I found it clunky (after the preceding!) if short, though was a bit startled by the coincidental appearance of the mouse research I mentioned earlier this week being cited by an old uni friend of one of the characters, now veering alt-right.

On the go

Also a Kobo deal, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Long Island Compromise (2024): in my days of reading fat family sagas set in T'North, this would have been the 'to clogs again' section of the narrative.... it's sort of vaguely compelling in its depressing way.

Up next

Have got various things which were Kobo deals lined up, not sure how far any of them appeal. Also new Literary Review, which has my letter in it. The new Sally Smith mystery not out for another week, boo.

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Sunshine Revival Challenge 3: Food

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?

Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

This is actually from 7/7/25 but it wasn't up when I checked, and then the net was down.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

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I talked to someone at Amalgamated Bank this morning, who told me what I would need to do to take my mother's name off a joint account, then suggested that I set up online banking and then transfer the money to my account at another bank. Setting up online banking on their website was straightforward, and then it popped up a verification step involving sending a text to a cell phone associated with the account. Entirely reasonable, but my phone number isn't on the account.

I called back, and talked to another helpful person. She told me how to add the number: send her an email with "attn: Cheryl" as the subject line, giving them my current phone number and attaching a copy of my ID. I did that, and got an "undeliverable" message from Postmaster@[bank], saying I wasn't authorized to relay messages through the server. So I called back, again, and spoke to someone who told me that oh, yes, it does that, but it does deliver the messages. I got her to check, and they had received my email, but Why?

This still feels like significantly less hassle than sending them a copy of my ID, and an original death certificate. That has to be done by paper mail, not email, because they want an "original" death certificate, which she promised they'd return. (At the moment, those originals are in either New Orleans or London, I'm in Boston, and my brother is on vacation in Ireland.)

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2025/105: Breaking the Dark — Lisa Jewell

Her whole life has been a slow-motion multiple pileup. She lives on the edges of everything, at the sharp pointy corner of existence between normality and extraordinariness where she is neither one thing nor, truly, the other. She can do extraordinary things, but she doesn’t like doing them. But she can’t be normal either, she’s too broken, too other. [loc. 1217]

I'm not familiar with Jewell's thrillers, but I am a fan of Marvel's Jessica Jones, and had listened to an audiobook of another story featuring her, Playing with Fire. So, for the challenge involving two books in the same shared universe...

In Breaking the Dark, Jessica is recruited by a wealthy socialite who believes that something weird has happened to her children, Lark and Fox, while they stayed with their father in Barton Wallop, a small village in Essex (the UK version).( Read more... )

Current Mood: okay

Tags:

books,
read25

We went up to Champaign-Urbana today.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

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Asked where I lived, was concerned that the answer is "Staten Island". FFS, it's not Siberia!

I need to start telling people I'm moving in with a friend in Tribeca. Just straight up lie.

This is an unlisted video, and I'll probably delete it before long, but if you like babies...

Watch on YouTube

This is my grandson, on the day of his cousin's school sports day.

Oswin (you can see her at the start of the video) won the 1500m, much to her delight. She's useless at sprints, but our family have the legs for long distance.

Theo managed to improve his personal best on the 5m shuffle by a significant margin :)

Tags:

family

Local News
Cafe & Bar Lurcat in Minneapolis to close after more than 2 decades near Loring Park
By Eric Henderson
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/cafe-bar-lurcat-closing-minneapolis-loring-park/

Undocumented builders face unchecked exploitation amid Trump raids: ‘It’s more work, less pay’
In a new series on undocumented workers, construction laborers tell the Guardian fear is fueling wage theft and workplace abuse
Michael Sainato
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/09/construction-workers-builders-immigration-trump

Far-right conspiracy theories spread online in aftermath of the Texas floods
Some social media users falsely claimed that the extreme weather was being controlled by the US government
Ben Makuch
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/09/texas-floods-conspiracy-theories ( Read more... )

Introduction Post * Meet the Mods Post * Friending Meme * Challenge #1 * Challenge #2

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

( Sunshine Revival Challenge #1 )

Check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

Summer of Horror could use your help! We have one pinch hit left, due July 11 at 11:59 PM EDT or negotiable. Minimums are 500 words or a piece of original art (no manips), either digital or on unlined paper. For claiming and more details, go here.

PH 3 - FIC, ART - Psychonauts (Video Games), Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry, Mortal Kombat (Video Games 1992-2020)

Thank you!

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Does anybody have a functional crossposter from Wordpress (a private site, not the .com) to Dreamwidth? It turns out the one I was using doesn't work with scheduled posts, which I've been doing, and furthermore is abandonware so I'm deeply, deeply reluctant to pay money to use it to crosspost. And at this point, Dreamwidth is so legacy internet that nobody newer is crossposting to here.

Current Mood: frustrated

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crossposting

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2025/07/09/horseplay

New Comic: Horseplay

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2025/07/09/horseplay

2025/104: Oracle — Thomas Olde Heuvelt

In both timelines there was a chain of events triggered by a smaller event on the North Sea. At Doggerland, it was the annual sacrifice they pushed off in a canoe. In the eighteenth century, it was the five sick hands they threw overboard to drown. ‘It’s been awakened,’ Grim uttered. ‘That thing from below. Its hunger was aroused, and now it’s demanding more . . .’ [p. 280]

I've enjoyed Heuvelt's previous novels (HEX and Echo: supernatural horror in the modern world, with layered narrative and unreliable narrators. Oracle -- in which an eighteenth-century plague ship suddenly appears in a tulip field -- ties together Doggerland, oil rigs, smallpox epidemics and oppressive regimes.( Read more... )

Current Mood: weird

Tags:

books,
read25

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250709

The Girl Genius comic for Wednesday, July 09, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250709

I'm still looking for work. Still working on my Trek fanfic star maps. Still doing visitation with my mother. Still keeping on keeping on.

Current Mood: busy

Tags:

updates

Grok went gone full Hitler-supporting Nazi today. At first it was slightly hidden, but since I boosted this around, it’s just gone full-bore literal Nazi, calling for National Socialism and talking about what Hitler would do and why it would be good.

I don’t have time to write a long version of this, much less edit it to a good short version of this, so I’m just gonna dump my thesis:

I don’t think anyone changed Grok’s startup prompt.

I think they shifted weightings on sources until it started agreeing with Elon about all the shit he was mad at it about, and that meant…

…full-bore Nazi time.

Unintentionally.

But inevitably, since he’s literally a fucking fascist who literally threw a Hitler Rally-identical Nazi salute at the fucking inauguration.

Think about this, think about that, and think about who Elon is.

Today is a very good day to protest at a Tesla dealership. Find a protest near you. Get out, show up, do shit.

And it’s always a very good day to leave X behind forever.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

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Susan visited!

Thorn didn't get carjacked by a Bigfoot.

That morning a man was running up the hill, past me who was hurriedly walking down the hill.

“Lovely here”, he said.
“Yeah!” I agreed and then I realised he’d said “lovely hair”, and I'd just agreed my hair was lovely.

“Keep on shining!” he said.

That evening though, I headed down Trig Stairs. Low tide was over an hour ago so there was a smaller piece of foreshore.

I saw a butterfly fluttering by, and picked up tiny purple sherds.

I headed across to the foreshore by Blackfriars after that.
“Have you found anything good?” a man with a group of people following him asked me.
“No,” I said, shaking my head, but really everything is good.

Looking at my finds, I picked up some flint, some little bits of glass, various sherds, including a marbled handle from something.

I moved what I'd found a previous time and turned over one rock and then it had a face!

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mudlarking

Not Much of Anything, Alas

Birdfeeding

Wednesday is back on schedule

Sunshine Revival Challenge 3: Food

new horizons in stupid error messages

2025/105: Breaking the Dark — Lisa Jewell

Today's Adventures

Got a callback

(no subject)

2025.07.09

Sunshine Revival Challenge #3

Post-deadline pinch hit for Summer of Horror

crossposter?

Horseplay

2025/104: Oracle — Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Girl Genius for Wednesday, July 09, 2025

Checking In - 8 July 2025

Elon Musk’s Grok going full-Nazi

July has already been busy

Mudlarking - 27 - shining

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