[syndicated profile] dorktower_feed

Posted by John Kovalic

This or any DORK TOWER strip is now available as a signed, high-quality print, from just $25!  CLICK HERE to find out more!

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Silver Elite: Chapter 39-40

Nov. 18th, 2025 11:46 pm
[personal profile] penwalla
Wren returns to Hamlett.

She is anxious, but still has time to be distracted by how hot Cross is. Wren, Cross might literally be here to kill Tana and Griff.

And speaking of Tana and Griff:
the book is gaslighting me about wren's character )

Silver Elite: Chapter 38

Nov. 18th, 2025 10:40 pm
[personal profile] penwalla
The next day, Wren goes to her first briefing.
wren shut up about how hot the fascists are )


Saving Sky Puppies

Nov. 18th, 2025 10:55 pm
cornerofmadness: (Default)
[personal profile] cornerofmadness
My writers' zoom meeting went on too long for me to do a fannish 50 today AND I know the only way to not get spoiled for the finale of Hazbin Hotel is to watch it tonight when it drops at midnight (provided the storm leaves me power) so I won't be back to do it then so I'm getting on with it.

So my day, the thing I wanted to say was I saved a sky puppy. We were cleaning up the dissections today and I hear a student scream Dr. Dana there's a BAT in the sink.

Me thinking sure there is I was just at the sink like 90 seconds ago. I go over and sure enough there is a Big Brown Bat (legit name) in the sink. She's cold and shivering and wet AF because it's pouring outside for like the last 12 hours (can't wait for the ice slick tomorrow) So this is the A&P lab and I don't have leather gloves to safely catch her without getting bitten.

I go looking for the wildlife profs (leaving the students in charge of Batty, just keep an eye on her and where she goes if she leaves the sink) No one is around. The wildlife prep room has no damn gloves that I can see. I go into my micro to get the thermal gloves we use for the autoclave. My coworker has moved them god knows where.

I pop into the environmental science lab and she's there. No gloves but we do have a catch container. We go get Batty (who very obviously had to come down through my fume hood) and we put her under the skybridge to the other building where she can hang out and get dry. Poor thing.


ETA - the Midnight drop for Hazbin is west coast time. ARGH. That's 3 am here. whines piteously

Silver Elite: Chapter 36-37

Nov. 18th, 2025 09:37 pm
[personal profile] penwalla
It's time for the elite test.

It is both simple and stupid: there are twelve recruits and six slots, so they go into rooms in pairs and whoever taps out first is eliminated. The six winners get to join Silver Elite.

this book is sapping my will to live )

Silver Elite: Chapter 35

Nov. 18th, 2025 09:19 pm
[personal profile] penwalla
Wren emerges from her interrogation exercise exhausted and filthy. She has four days off to rest, so she gets to eat a good meal and shower. Her colleagues are all equally shell-shocked.
if you're worried about Wren being traumatized, don't be )


a little redux (a big redux?)

Nov. 19th, 2025 12:45 am
[syndicated profile] neilgaiman_feed
posted by Dan Guy

There are a few remaining copies of the 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big or, The Fairies' Parliament, by John Crowley, with art by Peter Milton. More information here.

cover of Little, Big

While you are there, there is also a 15% off coupon for the trade edition and/or posters, as well as an invitation to make a donation in support of horticultural conservancy.



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[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

unfavorableinstigation:

sandersstudies:

I think a great way to improve communication with kids (and adults) is to make every yes or no question a this or that question.

I started doing it when after brain surgery my husband had trouble forming responses to questions for a while, and realized that the habit was helping my students engage more truthfully with me.

Some examples:

Yes/No: “Did you clean up your room like I told you?”

This/That: “Did you clean up already, or do you still need to do that?”

Yes/No: “Are you going to sit quietly?”

This/That: “Are you ready to sit and do our quiet activity, or do you need some time by yourself first?”

Yes/No: “Are you doing anything fun for your birthday?”

This/That: “Are you having a party on your birthday, or are you going to relax?”


I think many children (and adults!) are averse to telling adults “No,” especially when a command is implied. (“Did you clean your room?” “Are you going to sit quietly?” Hmmm if I say ‘no’ I will be in trouble with the adult.) So they are actually pretty likely to just lie and say what they think you want to hear.

Presenting a this or that question provides an alternative to lying, a ‘no, but’ scenario where they are presented with the reasonable consequences of a No (“if you’re not ready to sit quietly, you cannot do our quiet activity with us yet.”)

I find it useful professionally with adults too - “Did you have a chance to finish that project, or is it more of a next-week item?” When done sincerely (rather than passive-aggressively), it gets over rough ground lightly: it gives the other person a solution you clearly already find acceptable, so they don’t have to flail around trying to defend/excuse themselves, they can just take the solution and everyone can move on.

[syndicated profile] gallusrostromegalus_feed

euniexenoblade:

Y-yes I would really like that Miss 👈👉

Oh what? I did the hand thing wrong? Sorry I’m still new to this subbing thing. Um. Like this? 👆👆 No? Like this? 👍👎 No?

Oh I got it! I’d really like that M-Miss 👆👆👇👇👈👉👈👉🅱️🅰️

flamingsword: We now return you to your regularly scheduled crisis. :) (Default)
[personal profile] flamingsword
My friend [personal profile] genderjumper said, “There's a meme I cannot easily share here about neurodivergent folks having eclectic career tracks and a friend inspired me to do my own list of occupations.” And now I am sheeping my own way along this meme!

Childcare Lackey
Unpaid Tutor
Freelance Prankster
Librarian’s Assistant (volunteer)
File Clerk
Fried Chicken Distributor
Magic the Gathering Referee / Comic Salesperson
Cancer Care Volunteer
Coffee Slinger
Sword Shop Assistant
Call Center Wage Monkey
Copying Machine Slavey
Professional Person-Rubber
Volunteer Phone-Banker
Bath Product Artisan
Professional Nose
Short-Lived Booth Babe
Scientific Interviewee
Server Maintenance Codemonkey
QUILTBAG Community Moderator (unpaid)
Autism Research Autodidact (unpaid)
Business Criticizer

This is roughly chronological? But y’all know how my memory do.

Reading your mind is like foreign TV

Nov. 18th, 2025 05:30 pm
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
As far as I can tell, after three or so nights of pain-driven sleeplessness broken only by the occasional hour unconscious, I crashed so hard last night that I may have slept as much as fifteen hours, which would be amazing except that we are now on the later side of autumn and I slept out all the sunlight in the day. My entire plan had been to take a walk this afternoon. Tomorrow I have a round of doctor's appointments starting early in the morning, but it's not exactly the same thing. Have some links.

1. Mythic Delirium Books is reviving! In order to celebrate the relaunch and their ten-year anniversary, they are offering a deal on three of their most acclaimed collections, all of which I can recommend from reading as well as general enthusiasm for the press and its authors. Various combinations and formats available and an enticing pre-order bundled if you order through their own website. Check it out! Mythic Delirium was the home of my first published poem twenty-four years ago when it was a cardstock-covered 'zine with black-and-white interior illustrations and my affection for it has not dimmed even now that it publishes actual trade-bound books.

2. Until [personal profile] selkie sent it over to me, I had no idea an online archive had been compiled of the Call, the historic English-language newsletter of the Workers Circle. I am thrilled, even if the first article I selected was, in 2025, a little like being socked in the jaw by 1942:

America is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Bill [of] Rights. The Bill of Rights is the Magna Charta of our fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech and press, of petition and assembly, of religion. Together with these go concomitant rights such as the security of the home against the military, against search and seizure, and the recognition of due process of law and trial by jury. In brief, the Bill of Rights stands as a guarantee that the individual and the home are inviolate unless certain clearly defined legal procedures are followed.

Before the rise of totalitarianism, we took these freedoms for granted. They were part of the air we breathed. Now we realize that they are a precious heritage, that they are worth preserving and defending. America is not Utopia. Unemployment, economic crises, poverty and need in the midst of plenty, slums and avoidable sickness, are still with us. But as long as the Bill of Rights prevails, as long as we have freedom of speech and of assembly, of petition and protest, of criticism and political organization, there is hope abundant. With these freedoms, we can go on working for the things we hold dear and good, inveighing against injustice wherever we find it, improving the lot of the masses. Without these, we are lost, doomed either to abject silence or the concentration camp.


3. I missed it for Armistice Day, but Frederic Manning's "Leaves" (1917) is a delicately upsetting war poem and completely at the other end of effects of language from his novel Her Privates We (1929).

Cone of Silence (U.S. Trouble in the Sky, 1960) does such wonderfully anoraky suspense about human factors in aviation accidents that it should not be faulted for including Peter Cushing in its cast and then not having him play the brilliant, haunted designer of the Atlas Phoenix which seems to be doing too close an impression of the de Havilland Comet for the comfort of BOAC, but I did have to adjust to that being Noel Willman.

P.S. Dammit: now TCM has tabletized itself and in the process apparently expunged its considerable database of linked articles, not to mention the hitherto useful indices or even listings of cast and crew. Because what I want when considering a movie is not even to know who's in it unless I can recognize someone from the visual tile which could be anything from a random frame to a production still to part of a poster. The player itself has also been reorganized into a much less pleasant interface. Is there some kind of literal race on to the enshittification? Isn't that one where the only way to win is not to play?

[ SECRET POST #6892 ]

Nov. 18th, 2025 06:45 pm
case: (Default)
[personal profile] case posting in [community profile] fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6892 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.


More! )


Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #984.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.