Took a very long nap, here's the zoom

Monday, 20 October 2025 17:57
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke
Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!
 
Video encouraged but not required!
 
Topic: Crafting Hangout
Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
 
Join Zoom Meeting
 
Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

(no subject)

Monday, 20 October 2025 22:43
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
Today was a successful Cleaner Day and an okay day of Wrath of the Righteous.
The Core difficulty continues to be frustratingly lumpy.
I only needed two goes at Iz because the first go had everyone in the wrong formation and the one with the midnight bolt died immediately. I haven't had as much practice at the Iz boss fight because of the time when I one shot him with Daeran doing Dismissal. Like that was a very cool win but it taught me nothing.
I didn't actually set out to do Iz that time, I went for the Falls and then realised it was sitting right there and it seemed churlish to not go pick up the Queen when it was that simple.
I did the Angel myth path challenge next and the actual required part was fine, easy even, but there was one of those stupid big purple rocks and that took three tries and a ridiculous strategy. (It is impossible to beat subsonic hum, but a Heal spell with fix everyone stunned by the hum. So keep Daeran out of range, let Ember into range to Hellfire it, summon everything you can handily achieve, elemental swarm worked great, let the summons take the actual damage and hedge the rock in, then Heal Ember and let her kaboom it. Works if and only if the initiative order goes just right. Stupid rocks are the only thing that's actually challenging on this part of this difficulty. But we're about to hit level 20 so soon if the game gets more difficult we don't get any better to face it. Shall see.)
Now I didn't mean to do the Prison but it landed right in front of me so okay, guess I'm going to try it with this random half dozen.
Gave up for the night because I am sure I saved it but it did not act saved when I quick loaded. Time to get some sleep and hope it behaves itself when it wakes up.

Core was so difficult to start with I gave up repeatedly, but at this end there just isn't much that can land a hit on a 19th level adventurer, and whatever does, Daeran can fix it.
Now if I can just figure out how to get Woljif to hit on less than a 20 it'll be golden...
sholio: aged sepia paper with printed text saying "If undelivered, return to Air Ministry, London" (Biggles-london air ministry)
[personal profile] sholio
I return to Whumptober! Obviously the days are completely off at this point, but I'm doing a bit of catch-up.

No. 13: “How dull is it to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished.”
Never Enough | Insignia | Forced Retirement

Biggles & EvS, late in canon (600 wds)
Also posted on Tumblr.

600 wds under the cut )
vivdunstan: Photo of little me in a red mac at Hawick (hawick)
[personal profile] vivdunstan
This is so sad to see. My dad was depute rector at Hawick High School from 1971-1996, and for most of his time working there his office was in the Henderson Building that's now been demolished. I knew that building and his office from when I was very tiny. Long before I went to the school as a pupil. It was a beautiful building, really nice architecture. I wish they could have kept it.



Here's a glimpse of what the building looked like before this last week.


Image © Crown Copyright: HES

I was just talking to my Mum earlier this evening, and mentioned that the Henderson Building must be nearly gone if not gone already 🙁
wychwood: Sheppard tossing a coin (SGA - Shep choices)
[personal profile] wychwood
I have been enjoying the slightly calmer pace of life; being back in a work routine has really helped, so that even being out every evening last week was not actually that stressful! However it looks like I'm going to be spending next week, or possibly the week after, at my mother's while dad goes to shut up the house in France for the winter, so I shall be all out of sync again... The plus side is that the main thing I miss when I'm there is my computer gaming, and right now I am doing basically zero of that (well, a couple of hours of The Sims 4 at the weekend, but that barely counts).

The second attempt at my annual diabetic retinopathy check was rather more successful, and I came out with a clean bill of health (yay!). Tomorrow I have my flu and COVID jabs, although the NHS has reduced the criteria so extremely this year (even dad doesn't get one, and mum only does because she's literally just finished chemo!) that I'm going to have to pay for it. There's definitely more fun things I could do with that £75, but I'll take it.

Work has also calmed down slightly, to the point where I can actually find some time to spend on the urgent things my boss wants me to work on, instead of purely on emergent... stuff. I am solidly three months behind on reporting, but the big testing project I was supposed to be doing this month has shrunk because most of the work is not in fact ready for testing yet. The next round, early next year, will therefore be much worse, but that's next year's problem (and hopefully I should have more support from the rest of the team then, because it's not the start of the academic year! or so I can dream).

And now I need to run around and get things ready for the cleaner tomorrow, instead of accidentally doing nothing for another hour.

Strasbourg. St Thomas's church

Monday, 20 October 2025 20:45
cmcmck: (Default)
[personal profile] cmcmck
Another Protestant church

The church preserves it's old organ console which was played by both the young Mozart (R) and Albert Schweitzer.


More pics )

PSA - DW notifications

Monday, 20 October 2025 21:56
trobadora: (Dude - where's my LJ? by just_like_rogue)
[personal profile] trobadora
The AWS outage is affecting DW notifications - some are delayed, some may be lost.

I only noticed I wasn't getting emails about my own comments after I'd already posted a bunch, so I hope they'll get delivered eventually! In the meantime it's probably useful to manually check back for new comments/replies.

(None of the websites and services I used today were noticeably affected otherwise, luckily. I hope everything has come back for everyone else.)

Pinch Hits & Mid Sign-Ups Notes

Monday, 20 October 2025 13:31
yuletidemods: A hippo lounges with laptop in hand, peering at the screen through a pair of pince-nez and smiling. A text bubble with a heart emerges from the screen. The hippo dangles a computer mouse from one toe. By Oro. (Default)
[personal profile] yuletidemods posting in [community profile] yuletide_admin
Sign-ups close at 9pm UTC 24 October. We're more than halfway through sign-ups - if you haven't signed up, get in quick! If you have signed up, we're glad to have you. Please check all your details are correct.

If your sign-up includes a letter link, please make sure that link works for all viewers! In particular, if your letter is on tumblr, please set it up to be viewable for people who do NOT have tumblr. If you're using Google docs, we recommend linking a web-published version of your letter.

Pinch hits

Pinch hits are a major part of Yuletide. Pinch hits are writing assignments that need to be claimed by volunteers, and pinch hitters are the writers who claim and fulfil them. Currently, we publish pinch hit details on [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits, but we also send out notifications of new pinch hits to members of the Yuletide Discord server who have taken on the "yulephs" role, and to anyone subscribed to the Google Group for Yuletide pinch hits.

If you're interested in helping out by taking on extra assignments, please check that you're signed up to receive notifications by one of these methods! We'll send a test message out soon.

Sign-ups

We've introduced some new features this year! You can now request up to 8 fandoms, and you may fill out a form (linked from the sign-up form) if there are people you would prefer not to match to. Beginning in 2023 we have also included an additional tag checkbox where you can specify whether you want all of your requested characters to appear, or if you’d be happy with particular combinations you specify, or any combination your writer chooses.

If you have questions about any of these, please email us at yuletideadmin@gmail.com! We'd like to make sure things go smoothly for you.

Requesting characters can be a tricky aspect of Yuletide, so just in case, here's a refresher:

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Coincidence?

Monday, 20 October 2025 19:48
oursin: Grumpy looking hedgehog (Grumpy hedgehog)
[personal profile] oursin

Another flare-up of lower-back issues. This will be the third time this has happened with Academic Thing impending.... (podcast particiption scheduled for tomorrow). Can do without this, really. in particular the associated insomnia.

***

Further cause of miff: thought from listing in back of an NYRB paperback that there was a Jessica Mitford volume I did not have - further delving reveals it is merely The Making of a Muckraker under a different title with a new introduction and one chapter that is not in my 1979 Quartet p/b. Huh.

***

Honestly, I look at the headshot at the top of this piece and go, 'man, he is such a square he is cubed': after 70 years of hip-shaking thrills, is rock’n’roll dead?

Come on (thanks Chuck): styles of music have their day and time moves on.

Will concede that have recently been reviewing books leaning heavily on popular music culture of the 50s-70s and its impact, but you know, that was a particular time and context, and anyone doing rock now is pretty much a tribute band or very very retro, surely?

It was clear from the works I was reviewing that The Scene was constantly shifting and moving on and developing niche scenes differentiating themselves from The Mainstream and so on and so forth.

And it is one thing to be nostalgic, and to be interested in a bygone epoch of popular music culture, and another to believe that it has to keep on being a living scene.

umadoshi: (tomatoes 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
Reading: As of midweek, I'd read nine novels (well, eight and a novella) this month, which is very pleasing given that I usually consider that a good number for a full month, never mind just about halfway through one. (Of course, for the last few days my brain's done an about-face and decided that I'm going to be just reading a cookbook now, thanks.)

Since my last accounting, I've finished KJ Charles' All of Us Murderers (gothic murdery queer romance), Freya Marske's Cinder House (which I wish I'd realized going in--or perhaps more importantly, when I bought it at full price--is a novella, although that didn't keep me from enjoying it quite a bit), Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians (very solid, but I feel I've met my quota for books with mutilation for a while), Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle (not so much my thing, maybe [whatever that is], but I sure see why it's a classic!), and E.K. Johnston's Pretty Furious (a satisfying "~good girls~ lash back at the fucking patriarchy and its associated bullshit" read).

Now I'm reading through the aforementioned cookbook, Bee Wilson's The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen, which swiftly made its way onto the inherently-aggravating-but-complimentary list of cookbooks bought in ebook that I now want in hard copy.

Also, [personal profile] scruloose and I are...maybe a third?...of the way into Fugitive Telemetry (having decided to listen to Murderbot in chronological order rather than publication order).

Growing: In a shocking development, our Tiny Tim tomato plant (which we bought immediately before the drought turned unmistakable official, and therefore have since watered once or at most twice since putting it in) has produced a couple handfuls of ripe fruit! [personal profile] scruloose reports that they're tasty! We're over halfway through October!

Bundle of Holding: Ghastly Affair

Monday, 20 October 2025 14:04
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A bundle for Daniel James Hanley's tabletop roleplaying game of Gothic and Romantic Horror in the decadent, disastrous age of Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon, and Lord Byron.

Bundle of Holding: Ghastly Affair

Rani Icons

Monday, 20 October 2025 17:52
purplecat: Kate O'Mara as the Rani (Who:The Rani)
[personal profile] purplecat
No sooner does one make a whole load of icons of the Rani than two more come along.


The Punjabi Rani in her Red Bavarian dress and cloak. Mrs Flood in her black dress with white collar and cuffs, arms crossed. Mrs Flood in her red Jacket.  Head and shoulders Mrs Flood and the Punjabi Rani - face to face looking at camera.  Publicity shot. The Punjabi Rani in her read leather jacket.  Waist up. Close up side view of the Punjabi Rani's face.

My 0.02 Euro on the Louvre jewel heist

Monday, 20 October 2025 09:17
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

In case you've not heard about yesterday's theft of some of the French Crown Jewels from the Louvre yesterday, CNN has a good article about it. There is one paragraph from the article that I have issues with:

Christopher Marinello, the founder of Art Recovery International, said that if the thieves are just looking to get cash out as quickly as possible, they might melt down the precious metals or recut the stones with no regard for the piece’s integrity.

I suppose it's technically true that they might do this; I just don't think it's at all likely. I don't think the thieves will be looking to cash out quickly because, given the degree of planning that apparently went into this operation, I think the items were sold before they were even stolen. I think it likely that their new owner, who probably lives in Russia or the Middle East, has already taken possession of them. (And if I were one of the thieves, I'd be extremely worried that said owner might decide that their generous payment for the items wasn't sufficient to ensure my ongoing silence.)

bycocket / bycoket

Monday, 20 October 2025 07:11
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
bycocket or bycoket (BAI-kaw-kuht) - n., a hat with a high crown and a wide brim turned up in back and coming to a point like a beak in front, worn especially in medieval Europe.


St. Helena in her fashionable (as of 1380) bycocket
Thanks, WikiMedia!

Now mostly associated with Robin Hood, but it was fashionable for both men and women (see pic) from the 1200s-1500s. Also sometimes called abacot or abococket, formed by assimilating "a bycocket" into one word. In French this is now called a chapeau à bec, hat with a beak, but the original name (which English took on) was bicoquet, from bi-, double +‎ coque, shell, which I can sort of see.

---L.

QOTD: On exihibitions

Monday, 20 October 2025 08:33
brithistorian: (Default)
[personal profile] brithistorian

“Exhibitions, like dreams, are temporary phenomena — but, also like dreams, they leave indelible traces in our experiences. Through a dialectical short circuit, exhibitions draw from the material culture of the past, are situated in the present, and anticipate futures.” (Adam Szymczyk, in “Passages: Koyo Kouoh, 1967-2025,” Artforum, Sept. 2025)

This was something I really enjoyed learning about in my museum studies classes. An exhibition tells a story. Sometimes it's a simple story, like people "People like Monet and our museum needs money." (Although hopefully even an exhibition like that can still tell a deep story.) Sometimes its a more complicated story, like "Here are some interesting and/or controversial things that contemporary artists are doing. You may find some of them shocking, but you should see them anyway.". And sometimes, an exhibition tells a story that can totally change the way people things about something, such that the exhibition lives on in peoples minds long after the wall tags have been taken down and the objects have been returned to storage.

For example, I would be very surprised to find someone who'd studied art history or museum studies in the US who had never heard of the 1992 Maryland Historical Society exhibition "Mining the Museum". This exhibition was mentioned in several of my classes, to the point that as soon as we heard "1992" and "Maryland" together, we'd start nodding, knowing what was coming next. In this exhibition, conceptual artist Fred Wilson combined items from the museum's collection that would typically be found in an art exhibition with items that are tied to the state's slave-owning past and would usually be hidden when discussing the art of the era. One photograph from the exhibition has become a shorthand for the whole thing. It's of a case labeled simply "Metalwork, 1793-1880," which contains a number of elaborate silver cups and pitchers as well as a pair of iron slave shackles.

The story that the exhibit designer is trying to tell is generally summarized in the large wall text at the beginning of the exhibition, which I've observed many people to skip over in their rush to get to the "good stuff" (i.e. the objects). If you're someone who skips over the wall text at the beginning of an exhibition, I'd like to urge you to do not do that — the experience of viewing the items will be even richer if you have this story in your mind as you view them. And if you're someone who already reads the wall text (thank you!), try keeping that story further to the front of your mind as you view the exhibition. You'll come to see that not only do the individual items have meaning, but the order in which you encounter them as you move through the exhibition and they ways in which they're juxtaposed spatially will also contribute to telling the story.

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