[syndicated profile] scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

See this plot of land, or more accurately in this picture, this plot of snow? It’s the plot that lies directly east of our church property. There had been a house here for many years but a couple of years ago there was a fire, and the house had to be demolished. For some time after that the plot was undeveloped and then, a few weeks ago, it went up for sale.

We bought it.

Why? Because it’s adjacent to our church property, it was within our budget and it potentially gives us room to do some cool stuff. It’s the third expansion of our property since we first made an offer on the church in 2021; we added the parsonage before we closed on the church, then the house directly north, which we tore down because it was in disrepair, making the land a side yard and parking lot for the church, and now this plot to the east. I’m pretty sure this is it for land acquisition near the church, and our land acquisition in general. I don’t want to keep buying up land like I’ve been buying guitars.

So what will we be doing with this plot of land? For the moment, not much. It’s winter now and it’s covered in several inches of snow, and there’s a reasonable chance, given the fact we’re not even in the cold part of the season yet, that the snow will stay (or be added to) for the next couple of months at least. That’s fine. After that, the short term plan will be to seed for ground cover and local pollinating plants and let the bees and birds at it for a while. Beyond that, we’ll see. Now that we own it we have time to think on the best use for it, for us and for the community. We have some ideas, but they’re all very preliminary (i.e., we haven’t actually considered how much work they would require and how much they might cost). In the meantime all we have to do with it is keep it maintained and not an eyesore. We can manage that for sure.

So, merry Christmas to us, we got land this holiday season. Again. Next year, I think we will just get each other socks.

— JS

We’ll Meet Again

Dec. 3rd, 2025 09:16 pm
eiffel_71: The Big Match opening title (Default)
[personal profile] eiffel_71
England Women friendly v Ghana in Southampton last night. Emerged from Southampton Central station just before 5 pm into steady rain. With my coat hood up, walked on to the city centre and called at KFC for a Festive Tower.

I looked up bus info to the Chapel Arms, where I was due to meet Rachel, but with the wait it would have taken 22 minutes, and it was walkable in 20. So it was back up with my coat hood as I set off down the well-lit path through the city park and on to the pub.

I walked into the pub and saw a few people in England shirts but no-one I knew. I was on the point of leaving when through a window I spotted Rachel outside vaping. She was the only friend of mine there. I guess the competing calls on everyone’s funds that December brings, and people’s annual leave running low, accounted for the others giving this game a miss. She had a few other Arsenal supporting girls with her and we all had a desultory chat over a quick drink, while keeping tabs on the early kick-offs Spain v Germany and Scotland v China, then tootled up the road to the ground.

Rachel was sitting in a different block so after passing through the turnstile we said goodbye and wished each other a Merry Christmas then headed for our respective seats. I was in a side section behind the goal, four rows up from pitch level. Fantastic view. The pyrotechnics before kick-off were amazing with glorious explosions of red and gold and plumes of white smoke. Ghana had a lively contingent of fans in the near section of the long side to the left of my stand, who wore bright colours, displayed lots of flags and kept singing all game.

Sarina gave starts to seven girls normally benchwarmers. On 6 minutes there was a Christmas fairytale for one of them, Southampton born Lucia Kendall, as the ball landed perfectly for her in the penalty box and she scored in front of her home crowd. Any hopes of another goal feast like Saturday were steadily dashed, as Lioness shots went wayward and a resolute Ghanaian rearguard soaked up the pressure. At the other end Anna Moorhouse played a blinder in the England goal - watch out Hannah! My heart sank on 20 minutes when Chloe Kelly, my favourite current Lioness, clutched her knee, then, after playing a short pass, went down. She limped off and was replaced by Beth Mead.

The second half carried on in the same vein. In injury time sub Alessia Russo headed against the post, drawing groans all round. Ghana got the ball and, their tails up, went surging down to the other end. I thought : we’re going to end up with a bloody draw. No fear - the attack ended with Anna Moorhouse gathering the ball. Then play stopped and we realised there was going to be a VAR call. The upshot was a penalty to England. Taylor Hinds, one of the new girls, was standing there holding the ball for so long that I thought she was going to take it. That would have been nice, but she handed the ball to Alessia Russo who converted. 2-0.

I had to walk halfway round the outside of the ground to get to Britannia Road, where the shuttle buses left for the station. One bus departed while I was in the inching queue but there were two more still in place and I got boarded on the first of those.

On the train to Fareham, standing in one of the doors areas, I got talking to a family who’d also been at the game. My travels following the Lionesses came up. When I said I’d been at the 2015 World Cup in Canada the young lady stood on the other side of me said she’d also been there. She hadn’t seen a Lionesses match but had been to a Canada game in Toronto.

And that’s it for internationals until March.

Photography

Dec. 3rd, 2025 04:45 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The Upper East Side tailor who took poetic street scene photos over six decades from his shop window

“For 60 years, using a 5 x 7 view camera and then a twin lens reflect camera, Albok took as his subject people and passersby outside his shop, and New York City life during the Depression, and World War II,” per NYU. “Central Park, children, street scenes, and people at leisure were also among his preferred subjects.”

He described his Depression-era photos as a way to combat the degradation of poverty. “I photographed many poor souls, trying my best to leave them their most precious heritage—their dignity,” he said. “There is nothing else left.”

[syndicated profile] whateverscalzi_feed

Posted by John Scalzi

See this plot of land, or more accurately in this picture, this plot of snow? It’s the plot that lies directly east of our church property. There had been a house here for many years but a couple of years ago there was a fire, and the house had to be demolished. For some time after that the plot was undeveloped and then, a few weeks ago, it went up for sale.

We bought it.

Why? Because it’s adjacent to our church property, it was within our budget and it potentially gives us room to do some cool stuff. It’s the third expansion of our property since we first made an offer on the church in 2021; we added the parsonage before we closed on the church, then the house directly north, which we tore down because it was in disrepair, making the land a side yard and parking lot for the church, and now this plot to the east. I’m pretty sure this is it for land acquisition near the church, and our land acquisition in general. I don’t want to keep buying up land like I’ve been buying guitars.

So what will we be doing with this plot of land? For the moment, not much. It’s winter now and it’s covered in several inches of snow, and there’s a reasonable chance, given the fact we’re not even in the cold part of the season yet, that the snow will stay (or be added to) for the next couple of months at least. That’s fine. After that, the short term plan will be to seed for ground cover and local pollinating plants and let the bees and birds at it for a while. Beyond that, we’ll see. Now that we own it we have time to think on the best use for it, for us and for the community. We have some ideas, but they’re all very preliminary (i.e., we haven’t actually considered how much work they would require and how much they might cost). In the meantime all we have to do with it is keep it maintained and not an eyesore. We can manage that for sure.

So, merry Christmas to us, we got land this holiday season. Again. Next year, I think we will just get each other socks.

— JS

thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
to focus entirely on commercial manufacturing, i.e. data centers and AI requirements.

I can't fault them, they're going where the money is, and they are required to pursue maximum shareholder value, as sick as that may be.

To illustrate the state of weirdness going on in the memory market, a "typical 32GB DDR5 RAM kit that cost around $82 in August now sells for about $310, and higher-capacity kits have seen even steeper increases." People are being told that if you need a new computer or upgrade right now, forget it. Wait a year or two. Russet is getting a new MacBook Pro from work, but Apple is a bit insulated from this kerfuffle, plus work is paying for it.

The weird bit is that high-end graphics cards spiked as AI stocks started soaring, and now graphics cards are coming down in price. But memory and solid-state drives are soaring. One thing becomes reasonable, and everything else gets priced out of reach.

Micron will continue shipping Crucial memory through February 2026 and will be honoring consumer warrantees as needed. After that, they will only be selling Micron memory to commercial customers.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/after-nearly-30-years-crucial-will-stop-selling-ram-to-consumers/

Oncoming default deadline

Dec. 3rd, 2025 09:28 pm
[syndicated profile] yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

There's a new post up on the Yuletide Admin comm regarding Oncoming default deadline. Please note that there may have been a delay between that post and this crosspost.

You can go through to DW to check the details:

Dreamwidth Post

If you have follow-up questions, they can be asked in the DW comment section using a DW login, OpenID with another login, or a signed anonymous comment.

Write every day: Day 3

Dec. 3rd, 2025 10:49 pm
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
[personal profile] luzula
Ugh, very busy today, but managed 100 words of longfic. How about you?

Tally:
Read more... )
Day 2: [personal profile] goddess47, [personal profile] garonne, [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] alightbuthappypen, [personal profile] trobadora, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] brithistorian, [personal profile] cornerofmadness, [personal profile] chestnut_pod, [personal profile] carenejeans, [personal profile] ysilme

Day 3: [personal profile] china_shop

Bonus farm news: Tasted our Brussels sprouts for the first time. Delicious!

current stitching, and

Dec. 3rd, 2025 01:46 pm
thistleingrey: (Default)
[personal profile] thistleingrey
Still knitting: while I address a request, Sundial has gone on hold, a few colorways from its probable end. I have enough scraps after all to vary the latter's sequence of hues out to reasonable scarf-length.

For trying to restart weaving: spent some time with old notes and recent reading/viewing. (No new notes. For example, Long Thread, a magazine publisher, lets influencers rent ad space in their newsletters, but they're never useful (delete, delete) when they repackage info from older practitioners and researchers who're still active. If one knows about the latter, it's better to visit the source.) Besides Susan Foulkes, whose blog I've read almost since its start, off the top of my head there's Laverne Waddington, Liz Gipson, Annie MacHale, and Linda Hendrickson, for expert weavers and reliably clear teachers who've shared info generously.

I will never want or need to do this, but check out Hendrickson tablet-weaving with wire.

I've checked my yarn stash for something warp-suitable---similar yarn weight to the scraps for Sundial, but with a different tension requirement. Years ago, tiny skeins of cotton yarn were sold in sets of a few colorways, the fingering-weight equivalent of worsted-weight dishcloth yarn. They were marketed ten years ago (when big-box craft stores still walked the earth in my region) for fingerweaving or basic knotting as "friendship bracelets"; narrow bands are exactly what they're intended to become. Lion, the manufacturer, makes some sets from acrylic yarn nowadays, but a couple of all-cotton sets are still sold. The two packets in the kitchen craft drawer are plenty for playing with before I try hemp or wool.

One reason to restart weaving: another way to use up yarn scraps from knit and crochet. :)

(TIL that Lion bought Quince the yarn company in 2023. Not surprising that something would've; could be worse.)

Criminally underdressed.

Dec. 3rd, 2025 09:17 pm
[syndicated profile] thebloggess_feed

Posted by thebloggess

So. Last night I went to Windcrest (it’s part of San Antonio) because they have this decades-old tradition where people put up incredible holiday decorations and people can drive through the neighborhoods for free. I was chosen to be one of the judges of the Christmas Light-Up because the theme this year is “storybooks” andContinue reading "Criminally underdressed."

Resource: Domestic Medicine.

Dec. 3rd, 2025 03:36 pm
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] little_details
https://domestic-medicine.com/

This website is an unromanticized purview of historical health care, with an emphasis on household and community practices shared and recorded by women and the overlaps of medicine and cookery.

Author Stephany Hoffelt’s credentials: Continue. )

(Content note: Hoffelt, with her lived experience, research into historical context, and insistence upon practical results, has a whole catacomb apiece to pick with both the patriarchal medical establishment and the proponents of a Magical Pagan Witch Sisterhood who got burned by the millions for providing safe and reliable herbal abortifacients.)

Oncoming default deadline

Dec. 3rd, 2025 03:01 pm
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

Default deadline

The deadline for a simple default on Yuletide is 9pm UTC on 10 December - just under one week from now. Please check the link - this isn't the same time of day as recent years.

The default deadline is the cut-off point for defaulting on your Yuletide assignment without a penalty. This applies if it's your first Yuletide, or if you posted successfully last time you signed up or took a pinch hit. Default before this time, and you're free to sign up again in future. If you're not sure whether the default deadline applies to you, please talk to mods (yuletideadmin@gmail.com).

Sample reasons to default:
  • You want to

  • You can't reconcile the canon, your writing strengths, and your recipient's DNWs

  • Life got in the way

  • A new installment of canon ruined your ideas

  • You use generative AI such as ChatGPT, and you just saw the rule that that's not allowed in this event

  • You can't see how to get the characters to do what you want them to do

  • You want to


People default every year for a variety of reasons. We don't need to know why, and we wish you well. When we open sign-ups, we recommend that you don't sign up unless you're confident you can write a story by the deadline. But after you've signed up, things may happen, and it's okay to withdraw, if that's what makes sense for you. See full information about defaulting at the FAQ.

To default, go to your assignment at the collection, and press the default button.

Assignment deadline

All original assignments, and all pinch hits sent out prior to the default deadline, are due at 9pm UTC 17 December (which is a DIFFERENT time of day to last year). Countdown

Pinch Hits

We have an outstanding pinch hit at [community profile] yuletide_pinch_hits. Please get in contact if you can help!!!

Betas & Beta Help Needed

We warmly welcome beta reader volunteers at the beta post and on Discord. See the FAQ for more information about finding betas if you need one!

Note: on the Yuletide Discord, requests for betas, or for brainstorming help that might give away what you're writing, are handled by DM-ing someone who currently holds a Hippo role. Please read the server FAQ before seeking a beta. Give your Hippo the relevant details and make sure you can receive messages back.

Treats and Posting

Click here for instructions on posting your assignment or treats. If you've finished your assignment and are considering treats, check out the app, and don't forget the promo post where people have advertised their canons. You may find something amazing there! Check out the prompts from pinch hitters too.

Keep Yuletide Madness in mind. The Madness collection is for stories under 1,000 words and stories which do not exactly fit the fandoms and characters requested. These works must still be gifts for other participants.

AFK post

We will also put up an Away from Keyboard post shortly on the [community profile] yuletide comm. The purpose of this post is that if people know they won't be able to respond to their gift until late in the anon period, or even until the new year, they can let their author know ahead of time. (Not being able to read and respond until several days after the collection opens is normal, though - many people will have family and other obligations!)

Happy December!


Schedule, Rules, & Collection | Contact Mods | Participant DW | Participant LJ | Pinch Hits on DW | Discord | Tag set | Tag set app

Please either comment logged-in or sign a name. Unsigned anonymous comments will be left screened. And specifically, if you would like to get a treat, we need your AO3 name so we know whom to give it to!

ffutures: (Default)
[personal profile] ffutures
This is a bundle of the RPG Worlds Without Number by Kevin Crawford from Sine Nomine publishing, a far-future sword-and-sorcery RPG:

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/WorldsWithoutNumber


  

While this is the first bundle devoted exclusively to this game, the full rules were previously in the Sine Nomine rulebooks bundle from 2023, and a free version with some parts omitted is available on line. This bundle does add the atlas and a campaign setting, and seems to be pretty good value - it isn't really my sort of thing but if you like far future fantasy it's probably worth a look.
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished O Shepherd, Speak! - as ever, Lanny manages to find himself at major historical events. A particularly fascinating thing considering that news story about Hitler's DNA - he is admitted to the bunker and takes a slice of bloodstained sofa-cover.... In the aftermath of WW2, he has been left money to work for World Peace and he and friends are working for this. One thing I do find a bit curious about Lanny's generally progressive line is that the civil rights question (was it being called that in the 30s/40s?) doesn't seem to feature: maybe because he was brought up in Europe and mostly lived there? His focus on the World Stage???

Val McDermid, The Skeleton Road (Inspector Karen Pirie #3) (2014): not sure this was really doing it for me - there was a point where it just seemed to be going on and on.

Have plunged into a re-read of Barbara Hambly's Silver Screen mysteries (getting myself back up to speed on the series with a new volume forthcoming): so far Scandal in Babylon (2021) and One Extra Corpse (2023). Possibly one reads for the evocation of Hollywood at that era rather than the actual mystery plots, but good, anyway.

On the go

Saving Susy Sweetchild (Silver Screen #3) (2024)

Still dipping into Some Men in London, 1960-1967.

Up next

I am feeling the siren call of The Return of Lanny Budd.

I also realise that I have managed to sign myself up for 3 bookgroups meeting in January, 2 online (Pilgrimage, first meeting, Dance to the Music of Time, concluding volume) and 1 in person (fairly) locally - have managed to fight off suggestion that we read the Mybuggery wot won the Booker, but am now committed to the extremely LOOOOONG new Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

***

Further to yesterday's mysterious email from Academic Publisher, have received a further and more official-looking email today:

You may recently have received a message from us with the subject line "Welcome to [redacted] GCOP".
This email was caused by a system error. You can therefore ignore it and do not need to take any action.
Apologies for any confusion the message may have caused.

***

holiday love meme 2025
my thread here

Good news!

Dec. 3rd, 2025 08:18 pm
watervole: (Default)
[personal profile] watervole

 First off, the detox on news and Facebook has done a lot to improve my quality of sleep.

 

Second, and far more important, my son who has been looking for a job ever since his entire office were unexpectedly made redundant around 10 months ago, has finally found a new job.

And the kind of job he really, really wanted.  He could have got a coding job quickly, many of his friends did.  But he wanted to be involved in problem analysis, requirements analysis, planning the breakdown of work for a team.

He was doing some of that in his previous job, but it wasn't reflected in his job title.

But he's starting around 10 days from now: it's well paid, it's not to far too travel, and he only has to go into the office for two days a week.  The rest can be done from home on flextime.   (Which is very handy for when Theo - now age 1 and crazily adorable - is unwell and can't go into the nursery.  His wife's office day is different, so they can cover all bases - and Richard and I can help out when necessary.  we have him on Fridays anyway, as we don't want to miss out on him growing up.

He already loves being read to.  And listening to me singing to him :)

 

So, happy Granny!  (Apart from having flu, which has triggered a bad asthma attack to keep it company...)

 

 

 

pauraque: drawing of a wolf reading a book with a coffee cup (customer service wolf)
[personal profile] pauraque
This is the fourth and final part of my book club notes on A Thousand Beginnings and Endings. [Part one, part two, [part three.]

I missed this meeting because I was totally exhausted and doubted my ability to form words. I did read the stories, though!


"Daughter of the Sun" by Shevta Thakrar

This love story had a lot going on and I didn't understand it well enough to summarize it. )


"The Crimson Cloak" by Cindy Pon

A dawn goddess falls in love with a human. )


"Eyes Like Candlelight" by Julie Kagawa

A kitsune falls in love with a human. )


"Carp, Calculus, and the Leap of Faith" by Ellen Oh

[Note: This story is included only in the paperback edition, not the hardcover or the ebook.]

A girl whose mom is pressuring her to become a doctor gets support from her dad. )


the end

There were some really cool stories in here and I'm glad we read them. Not everything was to my taste, but the quality of writing was high. It was great to explore folklore outside of Western traditions and see the connections and contrasts.

The group will continue with As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories, which is a title that might be relevant to the interests of a few of you here! It's a brand new collection that just came out this year and I'm really looking forward to it.

Birdfeeding

Dec. 3rd, 2025 01:59 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy and cold.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a lady cardinal, and two male cardinals.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/3/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I saw several sparrows playing in the snow, splashing around in it as if dustbathing.  :D

EDIT 12/3/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 12/3/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.
 

Forty Years

Dec. 3rd, 2025 01:26 pm
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Like a lot of queer people, Shawn and I are sort of flexible about the day we call our anniversary. We both dated other people as we figured out our love and how the hell it was going to work. It was a messy time, but we were together as "roommates" in college since December of 1985--somewhere in there we both left our assigned roommates for each other, so it's kind of our U-Haul day. Or, as I sometimes like to joke, the day I moved in and forgot to ever move out. 

So, yeah, if you do the math, we have been together a STAGGERING number of years. 

We usually, officially, celebrate on the first of December, but this year a dear friend who comes for Friendsgiving arrived life-threateningly infected and so we spent that day with him at United Hospital. Someone else might say that our anniversary was "ruined," but that would be a lie. What would have ruined our anniversary is if our friend had died. So, you know, the hospital was right where we all needed to be! No regrets. None whatsoever.

But, I don't want forty years together to go unremarked. So, today I ordered some flowers for Shawn that I hope will be delivered to her office before she leaves for the day at 3:00 pm. I'm going to maybe make something special for dinner tonight. Who knows? But, hopefully, we can think back on that trip to Target for holiday gifts back in 1985 and feel like it was all worth it.