Defect

Dec. 6th, 2025 01:52 pm
adrian_turtle: (Default)
[personal profile] adrian_turtle
I heard there was a new version of the musical Chess, much better than the original. I don't know the details, but I think they added some outside narration for context, to help it make sense? And changed the focus? (I am not really worried about spoilers. Even if they make the plot less inane, the audience should be there for the music, not the plot.)

A big problem with reviving a Cold War musical in 2025 is that there is a major plot point about a guy choosing to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US. It's 40+ years ago, so the Soviet government is the conventional Bad Guys. The only obstacles to this are coming from the place he's leaving; there aren't any worries that the US might not let him in. The song that nods to paperwork barriers plays it as a joke. Neither because he's from their great enemy, nor because he's just generally a foreigner. For an audience that doesn't remember the 20th century, that just doesn't make sense. The difficulty with getting INTO America is obviously the hard part.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide

(Story at link is about an incident yesterday. Immigrants with green cards who had paid all fees and passed all tests and screenings for citizenship, and were minutes from taking the oath of citizenship in a historic building in downtown Boston...were stopped because the government disapproves of their countries of origin.)

Write every day: Day 6

Dec. 6th, 2025 10:33 pm
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
[personal profile] luzula
Well, it's great that it's the weekend, but my day was SO FULL and I'm very tired (in a good way) and did not even write an alibi sentence. Ah well. How about you?

Tally:
Read more... )
Day 5: [personal profile] china_shop, [personal profile] sylvanwitch, [personal profile] badly_knitted, [personal profile] goddess47, [personal profile] chestnut_pod, [personal profile] trobadora, [personal profile] brithistorian, [personal profile] sanguinity, [personal profile] cornerofmadness, [personal profile] carenejeans,

Bonus farm news: We went and got four trailer-loads of manure from a nearby farm with horses. The ducks thought Christmas had come early (they love eating worms).

(observed)

Dec. 6th, 2025 08:05 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

[personal profile] angelofthenorth gave me my birthday presents today! I thanked her and said I was surprised because it's not my birthday yet. But V and I always have a joint party - after their birthday and before mine - and that's today.

She sensibly pointed out that they won't see me for my birthday, as I'll be off doing family xmas things by then.

So, yeah, why not, today's my birthday.

(no subject)

Dec. 6th, 2025 01:33 pm
skygiants: Moril from the Dalemark Quartet playing the cwidder (composing hallelujah)
[personal profile] skygiants
I am home! with my own cats! and my own computer!! This is very exciting because I have spent most of the last two weeks traveling, including last Monday when I spent about 24 hours total stumbling through different airports getting rerouted onto different flights before finally getting to achieve my dearest wish at that point, Be Horizontal.

In the course of that extremely long day I watched two French movies on planes:

Au revoir là-haut/See You Up There )

La venue de l'avenir/Colors of Time )

also recent reading

Dec. 6th, 2025 11:46 am
thistleingrey: (Default)
[personal profile] thistleingrey
(Formerly stalled drafts have been nudged by end-of-term exams, in progress.)

Sonali Dev, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, The Rajes 1 (2019)
Recipe for Persuasion, The Rajes 2 (2020)
Incense and Sensibility, The Rajes 3 (2021)

Beyond the pairwise romance ostensibly cranking its plot, the first book is a love letter to third-culture kids whose lives have been bent by contradictory familial expectations, and an acknowledgment of bits of the wreckage wrought by postcolonial aspiration. Light touch, relatively, but I appreciate that these books say some of the quiet things aloud about costs and---better---that several characters encourage each other to speak to someone specific.

"Raje" isn't ordinarily a surname, which makes it a good choice.

Perhaps the most important feature of the setting, as a fix-it, is that when the kids who figure in these books as adult characters were growing up, several older relatives were local. I also appreciate the queer side-character situationship, whose arc suits the books' setting.

Anyway, four books total---none for Mansfield Park, which I think would be tough to fit. The fourth is The Emma Project (2022), which I've begun.
kat_lair: (GEN - cunt)
[personal profile] kat_lair
***

Title: Courting (Un)Conventions 
Author:[personal profile] kat_lair
Fandom: Enola Holmes
Pairing: Enola Holmes/Viscount "Tewky" Tewkesbury, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson 
Tags: Implied Relationships, Courting
Rating: G
Word count: 837

Summary: Courting is, in Enola’s opinion, mostly about other people, not the two principal players.

Author notes: Written as a [community profile] fandomgiftbasket gift for [personal profile] midwinterspringwrites

Courting (Un)Conventions on AO3

Courting (Un)Conventions )
***

[syndicated profile] smbc_comics_feed

Posted by Zach Weinersmith



Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The worst part is that there's always one guy among the flock who can't stop also replying all.


Today's News:

Thirty Six Years

Dec. 6th, 2025 08:19 am
muccamukk: Single shamrock inside a white border. (Misc: Shamrock)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Thirty-six years ago today, a lone gunman murdered fourteen women at Polytechnique Montréal, before taking his own life.

The names of the women were:

Geneviève Bergeron
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Maryse Laganière
Maryse Leclair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz


CBC: Montreal to honour 14 victims of Polytechnique massacre at ceremony.

Globe & Mail: Progress on combatting intimate-partner violence stalling under new government, advocates fear.

Deth of Siv, etc

Dec. 6th, 2025 03:57 pm
oursin: Cartoon hedgehog going aaargh (Hedgehog goes aaargh)
[personal profile] oursin

What is this that this thing is, when, okay, one is aware of all the woozing and grumbling about the various delivery services, but here is the ROYAL MAIL being pretty bad.

Yesterday I had an email saying they had delivered a parcel.

There was no parcel.

I looked at the proof of delivery and behold, that was Not Our Front Door they were sticking it through, it was the wrong colour and one could see the corner of a glass panel (ours is solid wood).

So I went on to their site to try and delve a bit further and, my dears, it is HORRENDOUS, one suspects it is designed to make people Just Give Up.

For example, the 'contact us' link, that actually goes to a 'Help and Support' page that lists a whole range of possible contingencies that one has to sort through to discover one that matches the occasion.

And once I had come across the Advice relating to item (presumably) misdelivered to wrong address, advice was, to contact the sender.

I have no bloody idea who the sender was being as how I was not even expecting a Royal Mail delivery, have been back over my emails and texts and no, I did not receive any previous message involving that particular tracking code.

There is a passing allusion to possible scanning errors.

The only means of contacting them is by phone, and when I tried, and had made my way through the menu options, the wait to speak to a person was 50 minutes.

I am leaving all this pro tem in case a) it was misdelivered and gets put back into the system b) it never actually existed in the first place.

But, really.

And in other, perhaps more minor (?) annoyances of Modern Life, what is this thing that this thing is of 'Cooking Instructions on Back of Label'? that you then have to detach, in the hope that it will actually come off in one piece that one can actually decipher....

ETA Parcel has now turned up, either in today's post or popped through letter box by neighbour to whom it was delivered in error.... Is friend's book I was in anticipation of.

2025.12.06

Dec. 6th, 2025 08:09 am
lsanderson: (Default)
[personal profile] lsanderson
Swedish navy encountering Russian submarines ‘almost weekly’ – and more could be on the way
Moscow ‘continuously reinforcing’ its presence in the region, says Swedish chief of operations Capt Marko Petkovic
Miranda Bryant Nordic correspondent
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/06/swedish-navy-chief-russia-baltic-presence-ukraine-peace

DoJ moves to eliminate sexual abuse protections for LGBTQ+ people in prisons
Memo says the policy shift, which advocates call ‘reckless’, was designed to align with one of Trump’s anti-trans orders
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/doj-prison-lgbtq-sexual-abuse-protections

US federal judge orders release of Epstein grand jury materials
Ruling compels unsealing of documents from 2006-2007 federal investigation into Epstein in Florida
Joseph Gedeon in Washington
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/federal-judge-epstein-grand-jury-materials

Trump releases racist blueprint for the world
by Oliver Willis
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/12/5/2357010/-Trump-releases-racist-blueprint-for-the-world?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_11&pm_medium=web

Frank Gehry obituary
Canadian–American architect who explored crumpling and fish curves in such buildings as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao
Charles Jencks and Oliver Wainwright
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/dec/06/frank-gehry-obituary

From Bilbao to Las Vegas: Frank Gehry’s incredible architecture – in pictures
The award-winning designer and architect leaves behind unique buildings all across the world from Dundee to Düsseldorf. He died after a brief respiratory illness at the age of 96
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2025/dec/05/frank-gehry-architecture-in-pictures

Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘Serious ethical concerns’
Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence
Carey Gillam
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/monsanto-roundup-safety-study-retracted

‘I’ve had all the luck you can get’: Michael Caine retires for the fourth time
The 92-year-old actor made the announcement again as he received an award at the Red Sea international film festival in Saudi Arabia
Catherine Shoard
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/dec/05/michael-caine-actor-retires-for-fourth-time

Alexander Skarsgård's encounter with Miriam Margolyes
Alexander Skarsgård reveals to Graham Norton that he once almost rented a room in Miriam Margolyes’ condo in Santa Monica.
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0mkfwyw/alexander-skarsg-rd-s-encounter-with-miriam-margolyes
dewline: Text: "Empathy in Silence" (empathy-2)
[personal profile] dewline
Geneviève Bergeron (b. 1968), civil engineering student.
Hélène Colgan (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
Nathalie Croteau (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
Barbara Daigneault (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
Anne-Marie Edward (b. 1968), chemical engineering student.
Maud Haviernick (b. 1960), materials engineering student.
Maryse Laganière (b. 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique's finance department.
Maryse Leclair (b. 1966), materials engineering student.
Anne-Marie Lemay (b. 1967), mechanical engineering student.
Sonia Pelletier (b. 1961), mechanical engineering student.
Michèle Richard (b. 1968), materials engineering student.
Annie St-Arneault (b. 1966), mechanical engineering student.
Annie Turcotte (b. 1969), materials engineering student.
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (b. 1958), nursing student.

resisting entropy

Dec. 6th, 2025 11:47 am
wychwood: You could call science fiction my escape / but if so mainstream fiction was my prison (Fan - escape from mainstream)
[personal profile] wychwood
My boss gave me a Christmas present, which is very nice of her! It's... a coffee mug (I only drink cold water) with snowy London landmarks on it (why).

In other puzzling news, I haven't had to wade through two inches of water to get to the station since last spring! I was assuming it was just because we'd had such a dry summer, but there have been several downpours which 100% would have flooded the station entrance last year now. We had a whole thing where the back of our site kept flooding and our management company spent months arguing with the water company about whose fault it was, and eventually the water company admitted it was them and did a bunch of work on the main road to fix it; I'm thinking the flooding by the station must have been part of the same problem, since it's the parallel road downslope. Who knew it was actually fixable without completely reconstructing the whole rear station entrance area! My wet boots thank them from the bottom of their soles.

I've been experimenting again with the automation software at work; at this stage it's a process of continuous failure - you create a process, you run it, it falls over, you spend ten minutes working out why, you fix that, it falls over at the next step, you spend fifteen minutes and call a colleague to fix that, rinse and repeat. On the other hand, the buzz from getting anything to work (I would say "a process" but I haven't actually got a complete flow for anything yet!!) is pretty good. And if I can get the flow I was working on yesterday up and running, it'll save me a couple of hours of extremely tedious manual checks every fortnight, and I'm all in favour of that.

Off to Oxford

Dec. 6th, 2025 12:58 pm
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

I'm playing for Cambridge Womens Blues against Oxford Womens Blues tonight. My BUIHA stats page tells me this will be my second game for Cambridge WBs against Oxford WBs, hopefully it goes better than the last one three years ago. None of my teammates from that game are playing today, although five of the Oxford women are the same (and one of those five was on my Biarritz tournament team this summer).

My stats page also tells me that I have scored more points against Cambridge Huskies than for them (1 is more than 0), and that two of my current teammates were my opponents in my WBs v Huskies game three years ago. I have no memory of either of them in that game.

The Womens Blues game is immediately followed by a matchup between the Mens Blues teams, so I'm looking forward to watching that, before we all pile on the coach back to Cambridge.

(no subject)

Dec. 6th, 2025 12:36 pm
oursin: hedgehog in santa hat saying bah humbug (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] gillo and [personal profile] laughingrat!
beanside: (Default)
[personal profile] beanside
Greetings from Monroeville, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh! I'm sitting here sipping shitty hotel room coffee and waiting for the free breakfast to start so I can get actual coffee. Sadly, that's not for about an hour, so shitty coffee it is for now.

Yesterday was a long day. I got up at 5 and worked for 4 hours, which was busy. I did a lot of schedule work. It turns out that being able to look at the schedule and see where you can move people to open up slots, or to fill things and how different appointments could fit together is not a thing that people can do according to my boss. Sounds fake, but I'm actually good at it. I can take a slot that has openings on one MRI machine, and see who I could move to open up a spot on another machine for a STAT patient. (We're getting so many openings on the 1.5 machine, and all we need is 3T slots for MRIs.) Part of my success is that I'm very stubborn, and also competitive.

After that, we walked the dog, who had multiple delivery men to distract him, and did not want to poop. It was very sad. Then we went back and got out stuff and headed out onto the highways. IT snowed most of the way through MD, but thankfully had not laid on the road. Once we got past Hagerstown, the snow stopped, and we made good time.

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch and continued up. Including lunch and bathroom break, it took about 4.5 hours, which isn't terrible.

After that, we lounged on the sofa (this room is enormous. Seriously HUGE. It's got a little living room area and a desk and I like it (even if I slept for shit).

Then, it was off to get dinner. I had put in a reservation at a place that was about 4 miles away. Sadly, Googlemaps took us this tiny windy two lane road that was somewhat difficult in the pitch dark, so by the time we got there, nerves were somewhat shredded.

We went to Eighty Acres Kitchen and Bar who had excellent food and amazing service. Our server, Liz was SO good. She seemed to have a sixth sense for when we needed another Shirley Temple. The gnocchi was softer than I'm used to, and I had some texture issues, but the flavor was spot on. My duck breast was well cooked and so full of flavor, and it came with a shreded half sour red cabbage that cut through the richness and made it even better. Jess had the Short Ribs, which were also really outstanding. After that, we finished up with a creme brulee, which made me happy.

Then it was back to the room, where I mostly failed to sleep well. No real shock there.

Today is the big day! Comic Con! I also may have signed up for another picture of us with Freddy and Jason. (Robert Englund--with iconic glove) and Ken Kurtzinger--in full costume.) Since I loved that shitty movie, I'm excited. (Supid, shitty movie being Freddy Vs Jason.)

I have promised to refrain from climbing Frank Grillo like a tree, likewise for Ron Perlman.

I wish I had some great pose planned for my pictures, but alas, I just want a hug from Ron Perlman. Beauty and the Beast was a formative show for me, and I dearly love the Hellboy movies. Ooh, and Hannibal Chau from Pacific Rim. He also was deeply entertaining.

We'll see how it goes! If the pictures are not terrible, I'll consider scanning them and posting them here.

Tomorrow, we shall go forth back to the con, so we can do the Transformer's panel and Jess can get their picture.

Okay, almost time for breakfast. Everyone have an outstanding Saturday!

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