mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
[personal profile] mistressofmuses


This week, the Baba Yaga hut sticker from the "folkgore" pin collection, by Kim Kuzuri and Aspenhearted. My teal pen died, but the metallic green almost worked!

This was a fairly good week, but a busy one. Time spent with Taylor at the beginning of the week was good. Though as busy as the week felt, I didn't really get very much done. Maybe it was just that work felt like a lot. The concert later in the week was great, and I was very glad we went. Feeling some pressure over how much I have going on next week and how much I also feel like I need to catch up from this week... Not sure when I'll have a good chance to, but I'll try to do more.

Goals for the week:

  • I did get together with Taylor from Sunday - Tuesday
  • We went to our concert on Thursday
  • I did not finish the third snowflake exercise
  • I did finish reading Overgrowth
  • I did not cancel my dentist appointment
  • I did not go to the bank
  • I did do the June tracking grids
  • I did not put my laundry away
  • I did not finish my May book reviews
  • I did go get crickets for Berry Mad

Tracked habits:

  • Work - 5/7
  • Household Maintenance - 3/7
  • Physical Activity - 2/7
  • Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
  • Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
  • Meta Work - 4/7
  • Personal Writing - 2/7
  • Other Creative Things - 0/7
  • Reading - 6/7 - mostly on Overgrowth, but also a good chunk of Installment Immortality with Taylor, a little bit of Duma Key with Alex, and a little bit of my ebook side read
  • Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday listened to some youtube and music in the background at work, listened to a Re: Dracula episode and then more music; Monday a very short Re: Dracula and more music; Tuesday, listened to music early and later abandoned place videos; Wednesday had storm chasing in the background and another Re: Dracula, plus music; Friday we finished the last two episodes of The Handmaid's Tale; Saturday a Re: Dracula episode and some paranormal videos in the background.
  • Video Games - 2/7 - Taylor and I played some more Final Fantasy XIV. We played through the second and third parts of the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raids (the Nier crossover), finished the Dark Knight and Red Mage job quests, then another extra quest for the general class quests, then the Sorrow of Werlyt trials. Finally next time we can do the next part of Shadowbringers!
  • Social Interaction - 4/7

Total words written: 0

Daily Check In

Jun. 4th, 2025 09:23 pm
senmut: Yusef looking back over shoulder, book open in lap (TOG: Yusef)
[personal profile] senmut
*\o/* Word Count Step Count Headache?
Daily 1,059 9,485 no
Monthly 5,218 38,017 1 days
[syndicated profile] snopes_feed

Posted by Grace Deng

The claim circulated in connection with the Kelly Loving Act, a bill named in honor of a transgender woman killed in an anti-LGBTQ+ mass shooting.

Indie horror game news

Jun. 4th, 2025 06:51 pm
olivermoss: (Default)
[personal profile] olivermoss
* Exit 8 is being adapted into a movie Trailer

* Phasmophobia is being adapted into a move Deadline article

* Bloodstained is getting a sequel Trailer

Whether it's good or bad, I am glad to see that Phas is getting a movie because they spawned a whole genre. Copying what they spent years developing became a massively successful business model.

Along the same lines, it's good to see Bloodstained being so successful. 'Metroidvania' style gameplay is the underpinning of so much of the entire gaming market. Iga, who designed the 'vania' half, got treated like shit by Konami. Once he was able to get away from them, he crowd funded Bloodstained during the golden era of video game crowd funding, but actually delivered unlike most other projects. Now Iga has gotten to make another game while Konami just does terrible things to the Castlevania IP.

(no subject)

Jun. 4th, 2025 08:47 pm
skygiants: Jane Eyre from Paula Rego's illustrations, facing out into darkness (more than courage)
[personal profile] skygiants
Over Memorial Day weekend [personal profile] genarti and I were on a mini-vacation at her family's cabin in the Finger Lakes, which features a fantastic bookshelf of yellowing midcentury mysteries stocked by [personal profile] genarti's grandmother. Often when I'm there I just avail myself of the existing material, but this time -- in increasing awareness of the way our own books are threatening to spill over our shelves again -- I seized this as an opportunity to check my bookshelves for the books that looked most like they belonged in a cabin in the Finger Lakes to read while I was there and then leave among their brethren.

As a result, I have now finally read the second-to-last of the stock of Weird Joan Aikens that [personal profile] coffeeandink gave me many years ago now, and boy was it extremely weird!

My favorite Aiken books are often the ones where I straight up can't tell if she's attempting to sincerely Write in the Genre or if she is writing full deadpan parody. I think The Embroidered Sunset is at least half parody, in a deadpan and melancholy way. I actually have a hypothesis that someone asked Joan Aiken to write a Gothic, meaning the sort of romantic suspense girl-flees-from-house form of the genre popular in the 1970s, and she was like "great! I love the Gothic tradition! I will give you a plucky 1970s career girl and a mystery and a complex family history and several big creepy houses! would you also like a haunted seaside landscape, the creeping inevitability of loss and death, some barely-dodged incest and a tragic ending?" and Gollancz, weary of Joan Aiken and her antics, was just like "sure, Joan. Fine. Do whatever."

Our heroine, Lucy, is a talented, sensible, cross and rather ugly girl with notably weird front teeth, is frequently jokingly referred to as Lucy Snowe by one of her love interests; the big creepy old age home in which much of the novel takes place is called Wildfell Hall; at one point Lucy knocks on the front door of Old Colonel Linton and he's like 'oh my god! you look just like my great-grandmother Cathy Linton, nee Earnshaw! it's the notably weird front teeth!" Joan Will Have Her Little Jokes.

The plot? The plot. Lucy, an orphan being raised in New England by her evil uncle and his hapless wife and mean daughter, wants to go study music in England with the brilliant-but-tragically-dying refugee pianist Max Benovek. Her uncle pays her fare across the Atlantic, on the condition that she go and investigate a great-aunt who has been pulling a pension out of the family coffers for many years; the great-aunt was Living Long Term with Another Old Lady (the L word is not said but it is really felt) and one of them has now died, but no one is really clear which.

The evil uncle suspects that the surviving old lady may not be the great-aunt and may instead be Doing Fraud, so Lucy's main task is to locate the old lady and determine whether or not she is in fact her great-aunt. Additionally, the great aunt was a brilliant folk artist unrecognized in her own time and so the evil uncle has assigned Lucy a side quest of finding as many of her paintings as possible and bringing them back to be sold for many dollars.

However, before setting out on any of these quests, Lucy stops in on the dying refugee pianist to see if he will agree to teach her. They have an immediate meeting of the minds and souls! Not only does Max agree to take her on as His Last Pupil, he also immediately furnishes her with cash and a car, because her plan of hitchhiking down to Aunt Fennel's part of the UK could endanger her beautiful pianist's hands!! Now Lucy has a brilliant future ahead of her with someone who really cares about her, but also a ticking clock: she has to sort out this whole great-aunt business before Max progresses from 'tragically dying' to 'tragically dead.'

The rest of the book follows several threads:
- Lucy bopping around the World's Most Depressing Seaside Towns, which, it is ominously and repeatedly hinted, could flood catastraphically at any moment, grimly attempting to convince a series of incredibly weird and variably depressed locals to give her any information or paintings, which they are deeply disinclined to do
- Max, in his sickroom, reading Lucy's letters and going 'gosh I hope I get to teach that girl ... it would be my last and most important life's work .... BEFORE I DIE'
- Sinister Goings On At The Old Age Home! Escaped Convicts!! Secret Identities!!! What Could This All Have To Do With Lucy's Evil Uncle? Who Could Say! Is Their Doctor Faking Being Turkish? Who Could Say!! Why Does That One Old Woman Keep Holding Up An Electric Mixer And Remarking How Easy It Would Be To Murder Someone With It? Who Could Say That Either!!!
- an elderly woman who may or may not be Aunt Fennel, in terrible fear of Something, stacked into dingy and constrained settings packed with other old and fading strangers, trying not to think too hard about her dead partner and their beloved cat and the life that she used to have in her own home where she was happy and loved .... all of these sections genuinely gave me big emotions :(((

Eventually all these plotlines converge with increasingly chaotic drama! Lucy and the old lady meet and have a really interesting, affectionate but complicated relationship colored by deep loneliness and suspicion on both sides; again, I really genuinely cared about this! Lucy, who sometimes exhibits random psychic tendencies, visits the lesbian cottage and finds it is so powerfully and miserably haunted by the happiness that it once held and doesn't anymore that she nearly passes out about it! Then whole thing culminates in huge spoilers )

Anyway. A wild time. Some parts I liked very much! I hit the end and shrieked and then forced Beth to read it immediately because I needed to scream about it, and now it lives among its other yellowing paperback friends on the Midcentury Mysteries shelf for some other unsuspecting person to find and scream about.

NB: in addition to everything else a cat dies in this book .... Joan Aiken hates this cat in particular and I do not know why. She likes all the other cats! But for some reason she really wants us to understand that this cat has bad vibes and we should not be sad when it gets got. But me, I was sad.
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] books
I really hate to give up on a book, but sometimes, there are too many other tempting things on the horizon to keep ploughing through an active read in the hopes it gets better. Today I put aside Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling. While I would have liked to have gone all the way to the end before making a judgement, there just over 9 hours still to go on the audiobook and the book has simply not given me enough to power through that.
 
At nearly 9 hours in (about halfway) my overall feeling towards this book is indifference. Towards the plot, towards the characters, towards the setting. It's very generic fantasy and just doesn't give much to bite onto outside of that. The first half of the plot has some fun adventure elements, but when the mentor-figure, Seregil, becomes incapacitated partway through, the youthful protagonist Alec is simply not enough to carry the story. The second half of the story is more political intrigue, and I can't help but compare it to The Traitor Baru Cormorant which I'm also currently reading, and that comparison does Luck in the Shadows no favors. 

Seregil and Alec's escapades are fun, and it's interesting to see the creative ways they go about their tasks, but for me it's not enough to make up for the lackluster plot and detailed but unremarkable worldbuilding.
 
There's a disappointing dearth of women in the story, although one of the fantasy kingdoms in which the second half of the story takes place has been ruled by a succession of queens for centuries. There is some casual queerness in the story which I liked, but when I looked for more reviews on this to help me decide if it was worth pressing on, I learned (SPOILER) that Alec and Seregil become a couple later on. Given that Alec is barely sixteen at the start of this book, and Seregil is a middle-aged man, I'm just not here for it.
 
This is the first book of a series (the Nightrunner series), but my general feeling on series is that it's a cop-out to rely on later books to make up for weaknesses in earlier books. Particularly here, where each book gets longer, the author is asking for me to take a lot on trust that this story will get better with time.
 
I really wanted to like this book, as I really want to like all fantasy novels, but it's just not worth the amount of time investment needed. Also, in general, not looking for stories about adults falling in love with teenagers. Disappointing, but there are other things to move on to.

2025 Disneyland Trip #38 (6/4/25)

Jun. 4th, 2025 05:55 pm
torachan: a cartoon owl with the text "everyone is fond of owls" (everyone is fond of owls)
[personal profile] torachan
Today was an early morning trip, so I took my magic key in, in hopes of finding all the rest of the stations and unlocking it today.

Success! )

that Wednesday book thing

Jun. 4th, 2025 08:24 pm
cornerofmadness: (reading)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
I was thinking about real life experiences that would NOT make believable characters (cause I'm living with it right now)

For example this home HOW much money do you need to get your curtains to be an exact match to your wallpaper? Someone needs this in a story. Surely this is the beginnings of a haunted house

What I Just Finished Reading:

Under This Red Rock - Mindy McGinnis - it didn't end like I thought it would so I was happy. Still this is a heavy book

The Smoke in His Voice - good story lost in the world's worst grammar/sentence structure. the editing is absolutely rubbish.


What I am Currently Reading:

The Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan PI mystery and it is very good so far.

West By God - horror

Anima rising - a good reads Frankenstein retelling giveaway win but also real person fanfic of Klimt and others and so far it's not great.


What I Plan to Read Next: Something for the popsugar challenge probably or one of the books I won from Goodreads
volkameria: Iris (Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter) opening her mouth to say something (pic#iris_mouth)
[personal profile] volkameria posting in [community profile] 100words
Title: Same Shoe, Different Fit
Fandom: Crossover between The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy and Dungeons and Daddies: The Peachyville Horror.
Rating: PG
Notes: More of an abstract compare/contrast interpretation of the prompt!


It took me a while, )

Daily Check-in

Jun. 4th, 2025 06:04 pm
starwatcher: Western windmill, clouds in background, trees around base. (Default)
[personal profile] starwatcher posting in [community profile] fandom_checkin
 
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday, June 4, to midnight on Thursday, June 5. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33202 Daily Check-in
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 19

How are you doing?

I am OK.
14 (73.7%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
5 (26.3%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
7 (36.8%)

One other person.
7 (36.8%)

More than one other person.
5 (26.3%)




Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
 

followup on the art thing

Jun. 4th, 2025 04:20 pm
ysobel: A man wielding a kitchen knife and making an adorable yelling face (rage)
[personal profile] ysobel
(see tag for details)

I got an email from the art dude announcing that he's temporarily opening registration to his courses.

(Still full price, just you usually can't sign up, just get on the waiting list. Which I had not explicitly done.)

I unsubscribed. Grumpily.

I can understand his logic -- entering a contest to get X indicates interest in X -- but this wasn't opt-in, and it should have been '

Day 1597: "A very bad situation."

Jun. 4th, 2025 03:29 pm
[syndicated profile] wtfjht_feed

Posted by Matt Kiser

1/ Trump’s tax and spending bill would add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit and push 10.9 million more Americans off health insurance by 2034, according to a new estimate by the Congressional Budget Office. The bill extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, eliminates taxes on tips, and imposes deep cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The CBO projects $3.7 trillion in lost revenue and $1.3 trillion in spending cut – a $2.4 trillion increase in the deficit. The agency also said 7.8 million people would lose Medicaid coverage, including 5.2 million under new work requirements, and another 1.4 million would lose coverage due to immigration restrictions. Speaker Mike Johnson, nevertheless, dismissed the findings, saying, “We’re not buying the CBO estimates,” while Sen. Ron Johnson called the package “grotesque” and said: “I refuse to accept $2 trillion-plus deficits as far as the eye can see as the new normal.” Trump, meanwhile, continues to demand passage by July 4, while Elon Musk urged his followers to call their lawmakers and encourage them to “KILL the BILL.”(Associated Press / ABC News / New York Times / Wall Street Journal / Bloomberg / Politico / NBC News / CNBC)

2/ Marjorie Taylor Greene admitted that she didn’t read the Trump-backed spending bill before voting for it, saying she just discovered it includes a 10-year ban on state regulation of artificial intelligence. “Full transparency, I did not know about this section,” Greene said, adding, “I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.” She now says she won’t support the bill when it returns from the Senate unless the AI language is removed. Rep. Mike Flood made a similar admission, saying he was unaware the bill limited judges’ ability to hold federal officials in contempt. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed the House by a single vote after a late-night scramble and pressure from Trump. Lawmakers were given hours to review the final 1,038-page text before the vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, meanwhile, downplayed Elon Musk’s criticism that the package is a “disgusting abomination” that would “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit.” Johnson said Musk is “flat wrong, and I’ve told him as much,” while Thune added: “This is a 51-vote exercise […] and the alternative isn’t a good one.” (HuffPost / Daily Beast / Politico / New York Times / The Guardian / The Hill / Washington Post / USA Today)

3/ Trump raised tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports to 50% — more than doubling the rate imposed in March. He said the increase was needed because earlier tariffs “have not yet enabled” U.S. producers to reach sustainable capacity. Manufacturers, however, warned that it will raise prices on cars, appliances, and canned goods, and lead to job losses in industries that rely on imported metals. Tariffs on the UK, meanwhile, were left at 25% under a pending trade deal, though Trump said that could change by July 9. Canada called the tariffs a “direct threat to Canadian jobs,” while Mexico said they were “unsustainable” and would seek an exemption. (CNN / New York Times / Washington Post / Bloomberg / Axios / CNBC)

4/ Trump called Chinese leader Xi Jinping “VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” U.S.-China trade talks stalled less than a month into a 90-day pause on tariffs after China refused to lift export restrictions on rare earth minerals, which U.S. officials saw as a breach of the May 12 agreement. Trump responded by claiming China “TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US” and said he made a “FAST DEAL” to “save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation.” Beijing, however, denied violating the deal and called U.S. actions “groundless,” citing new restrictions on tech exports, student visas, and warnings against Huawei chips. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, meanwhile, said the talks were “a bit stalled” and likely required a call between Trump and Xi, though none has been confirmed. (CNBC / CNN / The Hill / Washington Post)

5/ Trump demanded the Federal Reserve cut interest rates after a private jobs report showed hiring slowed sharply in May, a drop economists linked to growing business uncertainty from his trade policies. ADP reported 37,000 new private-sector jobs – the weakest since March 2023 and far below expectations. “ADP NUMBER OUT!!! ‘Too Late’ Powell must now LOWER THE RATE. He is unbelievable!!! Europe has lowered NINE TIMES!” Trump posted immediately after the report’s release. Last week, Trump told Fed Chair Jerome Powell during a White House meeting that he was “making a mistake by not lowering interest rates.” Powell, however, told Trump that Fed policy “must be guided by objective economic data, not politics.” (CNBC / Axios / CNN / USA Today)

6/ Putin told Trump he’ll “have to respond” to Ukraine’s drone strike on Russian air bases housing strategic bombers, casting doubt on a ceasefire and undermining Trump’s repeated claims that he’d end the war “within 24 hours” of taking office. After a 75-minute call, Trump admitted it was “not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace.” The Kremlin, meanwhile, accused Ukraine of stalling diplomacy through “terrorist acts,” including attacks on rail lines and bridges. Ukrainian officials dismissed the accusation and called Russia’s ceasefire offer an “ultimatum.” They pointed to continued Russian strikes on civilian areas and front-line advances during the talks as evidence that Moscow “has no genuine intention of ceasing hostilities.” (Associated Press / Politico / ABC News / Bloomberg / Axios / New York Times / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / CNBC)

The midterm elections are in 517 days.


✏️ Notables.

  1. The Trump administration revoked federal guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions when needed to stabilize a patient’s condition. The guidance, issued in 2022 after the fall of Roe v. Wade, directed hospitals receiving Medicare funds to follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which mandates stabilizing care in medical emergencies – even in states that ban the procedure. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the guidance “does not reflect the policy of this Administration” and promised to “rectify any perceived legal confusion.” (Associated Press / The Guardian / Bloomberg / New York Times / Washington Post / Axios)

  2. The Education Department said Columbia University may lose accreditation after determining it violated federal anti-discrimination law by failing to stop harassment of Jewish students. The department accused Columbia of “deliberate indifference” following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and formally notified its accreditor, which must now decide whether to penalize the school. “This is not only immoral, but also unlawful,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. (Bloomberg / Axios / CNBC / Reuters)

  3. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting the wife and five children of the man charged with throwing Molotov cocktails at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder. Immigration officials detained the family and moved them to a Texas facility, despite a pending asylum case and no charges against them. The judge warned that deporting them “without process” could cause “irreparable harm.” Lawyers called the detentions “patently unlawful” and said that “punishing individuals for the crimes of their relatives violates the very foundations of a democratic justice system.” Mohamed Sabry Soliman told police he acted alone, planned the attack for over a year, and “never talked to his wife or family” about it. (New York Times / Washington Post / Politico / Wall Street Journal / NBC News)

  4. Federal prosecutors charged two Chinese nationals with smuggling a toxic plant pathogen into the U.S. that the FBI described as a potential “agroterrorism weapon.” Zunyong Liu entered Detroit Metro Airport in July 2024 with baggies of Fusarium graminearum hidden in tissues; he later admitted he brought it to conduct research at the University of Michigan, where Yunqing Jian worked. Investigators recovered messages between the pair discussing how to hide biological materials in shoes and books. (Reuters / NBC News / ABC News)

  5. The Justice Department dropped its civil lawsuit against former Trump adviser Peter Navarro over his use of a private email account and failure to return presidential records. The one-page filing offered no explanation and said both sides would “bear their own fees and costs.” The DOJ had accused Navarro of using a ProtonMail account to conduct official business and withholding records that should have gone to the National Archives. The Justice Department declined to explain the reversal. (Associated Press / CNN)

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[personal profile] inkcharm posting in [community profile] fandom_icons
CANON: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
CHARACTERS: Gustave.
ADDITIONAL INFO: 60 Icons, Act 1.
CREDIT TO: [community profile] inkonic


HERE @ [community profile] inkonic

PSA: Stop Hiding The Gay Books

Jun. 4th, 2025 06:21 pm
rhoda_rants: Kate McKinnon as Holtzmann (overalls, wild hair, cool glasses) in Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (holtzmann)
[personal profile] rhoda_rants
Dudes. Jerks. Wine Moms.

Stop hiding the gay books.

This has been happening all year, btw. I haven't noticed a marked increase of this kind of behavior since Pride started. It's been going on for months.

But y'all. You're wasting your time. You might think you're wasting mine, but I reshelve books all day long, whether they got moved accidentally or on purpose. Who do you think will get bored faster?

Oh, also: when you have to reshelve things, you also scan them, which flags them in the system as "in library use," meaning the computer goes, "Hey, people read this a lot! Let's keep it FOREVER!"

So: I will find them. And every time I do, I will move them to the DISPLAY shelf. You came in with an agenda and an hour of bigotry to perform during your lunch break.

I'm here every day for eight hours in a row. You won't win this.

As you were.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
Sometimes it's hard to come back from a vacation high. It has been good to snuggle the cats, sleep in a soft bed, take a shower, and be reunited with my remaining pairs of bike shorts.

But boy, this one twee houseboat just speaks of a very different sort of life:

Day 5: Weedsport to Green Lakes State Park

Day 5: Weedsport to Green Lakes State Park

Day 5: Weedsport to Green Lakes State Park

It was definitely a relief to have a break from the news. A good reminder that there are drawbacks to being glued to it all.

On the other hand, the horseshoe crab's tank needed attention, the clownfish were hungry, the ants needed watering and a temperature boost (I'd turned the heater down while away), and the windowsill plants were all thirsty.

And there's a lot of boathouse and rowing stuff on the horizon.

I am so much more motivated now to make sure we get out on some silly Petrichor adventures, and sooner rather than later!

I have to wonder whether there's a way to set up Petrichor with a boat tent. And a proper galley box. Hmmm....

I should probably finish varnishing first.
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