Realizing last night that I have for decades thought of myself as a full year older than I chronologically can have been for my first real job—I was fifteen—led into a crumble-to-dust reminiscence about the number of bookstores once to be found in Lexington Center, which gave me some serious future shock when we walked into Maxima while waiting to collect our order from Il Casale and it occupied the exact same storefront as my second job, also as a bookseller; it was perhaps the one form of retail to which I was natively suited. My third job was assistant-teaching Latin, but my fourth I accidentally talked my way into by recommending some titles to a fellow browser. spatch's anniversary gift to me was a paperback of Satoshi Yagisawa's Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (trans. Eric Ozawa, 2010/2023). It was teeth-shockingly cold and we all but ran with our spoils back to the car.
We had set out in search of resplendent food and found it in polpette that reminded us of the North End, a richly smoky rigatoni with ragù of deep-braised lamb, and a basil-decorated, fanciest eggplant parmesan I have encountered in my life, capped with panna cotta in a tumble of wintrily apt pomegranate seeds. Hestia investigated delicately but dangerously. After we had recovered, Rob showed me Powwow Highway (1989) right before it expired from the unreliable buffer of TCM because he thought and was right that I would love its anger and gentleness and hereness, plus its '64 Buick which has already gone on beyond Bluesmobile by the time it is discovered in a field of clunkers and a vision of ponies. It has no budget and so much of the world. As long as we're in it, we might as well be real.
Current Music:David Byrne, "What Is the Reason for It? (feat. Hayley Williams)"
Jane thought her most beautiful present was the first she opened. It was a lovely little wrist watch. On the card with it was written "From Hyde Park and myself with best wishes. Your Mr. Browne." But presently she opened a parcel which made her forget there were any other presents in the world. It was a plain cardboard box with none of the grand American fixings of massed bows and flowers. Inside was something done up in brown paper. Inside that was an exact duplicate of David's reed pipe. On a piece of paper David had written, "Happy Christmas. I'll teach you to play this. David."
The evening finished with carols. Tim played and everybody stood round his piano. On the top of the piano, where he could keep his eye on it, was Brent's trick box. Rachel had her arms hugged to her and inside them were Posy's old shoes. Jane, wearing her wrist watch, held the box with her pipe. As Tim crashed out the opening chords of "O, come all ye faithful" everybody's eyes were bright, even Aunt Cora's, but nobody's eyes shone quite so shiningly as Jane's.
Ancient Antarctic water-mass upheavals unleashed stored carbon—and may hint at our climate future.
As the last Ice Age waned and the Holocene dawned, deep-ocean circulation around Antarctica underwent dramatic shifts that helped release long-stored carbon back into the atmosphere. Deep-sea sediments show that ancient Antarctic waters once trapped vast amounts of carbon, only to release it during two major warming pulses at the end of the Ice Age. Understanding these shifts helps scientists predict how modern Antarctic melt may accelerate future climate change.
2015 - A decade ago! Oh right, I was dirt poor by the end of the year because I remember thinking I wasn't going to get to see the new Star Wars film in theater.
Furious 7 - So my late partner and I had fallen in love with this crew in the first movie. She LOVED Brian. And... well. Paul Walker died before completing this one. And then they released it on her anniversary with me. So Yeah. Saw it twice in theater.
Jurassic World - This looked interesting, was okay, but wife and I both had Issues with it. And then, of course, Pratt lived up to his name, and I let the franchise go away. Still kinda want to see the one with the original trio.
Carol - I don't do arthouse style films, I protest mightily. AND YET. I decided to see what the fuss was about, and FELL IN LOVE. Cate and Rooney sold the story. (and having read up about the author, wow it's toned down from the inspirations / she was a helluva bitch it looked like)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens - such characters! such potential! Shame they never made more after it to explore Finn and Rey and Poe in a way that highlighted EVERYTHING THAT MADE THEM INTERESTING! (It did however set me on the SW track of writing, so I can't complain too much)
Many, many years ago, my department
operated one of the university's secondary authoritative DNS servers,
which was used by most everyone with a university subdomain and as
a result was listed as one of their DNS NS records. This DNs server
was also the authoritative DNS server for our own domains, because
this was in the era where servers were expensive and it made perfect
sense to do this. At the time, departments who wanted a subdomain
pretty much needed to have a Unix system administrator and probably
run their own primary DNS server and so on. Over time, the university's
DNS infrastructure shifted drastically, with central IT offering
more and more support, and more than half a decade ago our authoritative
DNS server stopped being a university secondary, after a lot of notice
to everyone.
Experienced system administrators can guess what happened next. Or
rather, what didn't happen next. References to our DNS server
lingered in various places for years, both in the university's root
zones as DNS glue records and in people's own DNS zone files as
theoretically authoritative records. As late as the middle of last
year, when I started grinding away on this, I believe that roughly
half of our authoritative DNS server's traffic was for old zones
we didn't serve and was getting DNS 'Refused' responses. The situation
is much better today, after several rounds of finding other people's
zones that were still pointing to us, but it's still not quite over
and it took a bunch of tedious work to get this far.
(Why I care about this is that it's hard to see if your authoritative
DNS server is correctly answering everything it should if things
like tcpdumps of DNS traffic are absolutely flooded with bad traffic
that your DNS server is (correctly) rejecting.)
In theory, what we should have done when we stopped being a university
secondary authoritative DNS server was to switch the authoritative
DNS server for our own domains to another name and another IP
address; this would have completely cut off everyone else when we
turned the old server off and removed its name from our DNS. In
practice the transition was not clearcut, because for a while we
kept on being a secondary for some other university zones that have
long-standing associations with the department. Also, I think we were optimistic
about how responsive people would be (and how many of them we could
reach).
(Also, there's a great deal of history tied up in the specific name
and IP address of our current authoritative DNS server. It's been
there for a very long time.)
PS: Even when no one is incorrectly pointing to us, there's clearly
a background Internet radiation of external machines throwing random
DNS queries at us. But that's another entry.
Today I'm trying out a new recipe for Banana Banana Bread that I found in All Recipes. This one uses 5 bananas where my usual one takes 3, and butter instead of oil. I made half the flour whole wheat. Partway through I realized there was no other flavoring besides the bananas, so I added a teaspoon of cinnamon. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. :D
EDIT 12/5/25 -- This turned out pretty well. It's a bit prone to falling apart, but may set up more as it cools. It has quite a strong banana flavor. I don't think I'll replace my usual recipe, but this certainly works for using up a lot of bananas.
When we say that we want equality, what do we mean? Same pay for everyone? Same caloric intake? Same size of house? Same amount of electricity consumed every day? Same amount of household waste? Same amount of political power, influence, or fame?
Mollion says some job candidates have always misrepresented themselves, but AI has made the gap between presentation and reality even wider—making interviews and written materials even less reliable.
“On top of that, traditional interviews simply don’t reveal real skill, work style, responsiveness, or judgment,” Mollion told me. “People can say all the right things in an interview, but none of that guarantees how they actually perform on the job.”
I've been saying for years that brief resumes, college degrees, and office interviews offer very little indication of an applicant's actual ability to do a job.
I spent much of this day putting off a couple of things I really need to do. I've done one of them, and I can leave the other until tomorrow!.. or do it after I write in here. Both are 'getting in touch with someone' tasks.
In the meantime I'm watching Doctor Zhivago (DVD from the library). Shockingly, I'd never seen it before. (I say shockingly because I remember when it came out, and there was "Lara's theme" of course, all over the place.)
I just put From Here to Eternity and A Place in the Sun on my Watchlist (i.e. queue).
The book group book for January (no meeting in December) is a long, dense biography. It's much more fun to read about Sunset Boulevard! Now that's a movie I'd like to see again!
Title: To Bristle or not to Bristle? Word Count: 3 x 100 Rating: PG-13 Characters & Pairing: Parvati Patil, Lavender Brown Content: humour, mild sexual reference Disclaimer: The characters, settings and HP Franchise as a whole are owned by JKR and not by me. I make no profit from writing this piece of fanfiction. Summary: Harry's facial hair gives him hitherto unimagined opportunities. A/n: Unbeta'd. Written for harry100's Prompt #532: "Beard"
AO3 link | Her Turn (300 words) by Merfilly Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer [TV] Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Willow Rosenberg & Buffy Summers Characters: Willow Rosenberg, Buffy Summers, Dawn Summers [Buffy & Angel Universe] Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Post-Canon Summary:
Willow left a letter...
Her Turn
This one, it's not for you. You get that, right? This time, it's about me. It has to be me. You can't… you can't keep reaching. I know you love me. I know you would want to step up, to take my place. You've always been the one making the sacrifice. That's who you are, the One. You changed the game to begin with, and then when that wasn't enough, you changed the whole playing field.
Okay, maybe I had something to do with changing the gameboard up. But I was only able to do it because of you, because you had so much faith in me. I need you to have that faith in me now. I need you to be the stronger one, the one who has to live, to keep facing the evil.
Hopefully it won't be as bad, not once I do this.
All my love.
Dawn wasn't used to seeing her sister frail, not even after all the losses they had faced. She'd guessed, though, that this one might be the breaking point, and hurried to get to Buffy's side. She saw the paper crumpled in a fist, but ignored it, just turning her sister to hold her.
At first, Buffy was stiff. The grief broke to Dawn's coaxing, a howl of pain and denial. Dawn just held on, petting her hair, tears streaming on her own face.
"Maybe… maybe it didn't end her?" Dawn suggested once the crying gave way to the heavy silence.
Buffy pushed the crumpled paper to her sister, letting Dawn read Willow's own words. It made Dawn swallow hard, as the pain and finality gripped her all over again.
She couldn't give into it, though. Buffy needed her. Buffy had lost Willow, and Dawn needed to step up even more.
Dreamt Jeff Bridges was the paterfamilias of a clan of actors/stunt/FX crew, who all had kind of a Western vibe even though hardly anyone makes Westerns anymore. Following a wild chase scene, I had to trackhi. down in a bar and talk him into coming back to help shoot the climactic scene of their latest gig, but he didn’t know me and had no reason to trust me.
After listening to my speech about how he should do it for the sake of his daughter (Fay Masterson), he went to the men’s room while he thought about it. Some bystander started bad-mouthing him, and I told the guy off with the line: “Fuck you. WE’RE working for Tarantino!” while glancing around to see if Tarantino was in the scene, pulling a director’s cameo.
Except in the dream I couldn’t quite remember his name, so I said Victor Tarantino.
Now considering the possibility this was a movie about a movie being directed by Quentin Tarantino’s fictional less-successful brother Victor (played by Quentin, natch).
I think it’s important to note, when writing a series of essays about “comfort watches,” that not every movie on that list is going to be a comfortable watch. Some of them might even be hard-“R” movies with lots of violence, portraying a decaying civilization where law is rare and order is even more so, and where everyone in the movie is pretty much just hanging on by their fingernails. These movies are not nice! Nevertheless there is something relentlessly rewatchable about them, something that makes you just settle in on the couch for a couple of hours with a smile on your face, maybe because you’re sure glad you don’t live there. For me, Dredd is one of those films. The world of Mega-City One is a terrible place and I hope never to take up permanent residence, but I’m happy to visit. That is, from behind a pane of bulletproof glass.
For those of you not familiar with the 2000 AD comic feature on which the film is based (and have otherwise and correctly blocked the painfully bad 1995 Sylvester Stallone film made from the same source material from your brain): The world is fucked and irradiated and almost all of it is a wasteland, except Mega-City One, with 800 million people stretching across the Acela Corridor of the United States. Most people there live crappy lives in “megablock” apartment complexes that can house 50,000 people, and along with residents, are filled with crime and drugs. Law enforcement is sparse and in the hands of “Judges,” empowered both to stop and punish crime at the same time. Basically, life sucks, and if you do crime, you’re likely to get away with it, but when you don’t, some extremely well-armed dude is going to shoot you in the head about it. Fun!
The titular character, Dredd, is a judge, who never takes off his helmet and rarely speaks more than a sentence at a time. He’s assessing a trainee judge named Anderson, who also happens to be psychic (in the Judge Dredd mythology there is a whole thing about mutants and such, and it’s not really more than waved at here). Dredd and Anderson enter a megablock after a drug-related crime, which for various reasons annoys the local drug lord named Ma-Ma; she locks down the entire megablock and puts a hit out on the judges. From there, things get real messy, real quick.
As noted earlier, this comic book material was made into a movie before, in 1995. It just did not work, not in the least because it was far more of a Sylvester Stallone vehicle than a Judge Dredd movie — here’s Stallone galumphing around without his helmet so you can see his face, complete with overly-blue contacts, here’s Stallone tromping through a bunch of sets that look like sets, not slums, here’s Stallone bellowing Dredd’s catchphrase “IYAMDELAW” with scenery chewing abandon, and being saddled with Rob Schneider as comedy relief because it was the 90s and apparently that was just what was done back in the day. This movie was made by Hollywood Pictures, which at the time was Disney’s off-off-brand, and while the movie was rated “R,” every inch of it gave off a soft PG-13 vibe. This was a movie that yearned for its hero to be made a figurine in a McDonald’s happy meal.
Dredd, which came out in 2012… is not that. From the opening moments, Dredd makes it clear that this future, shot on location in South Africa, is literally trash; everything is run-down, nothing is new, the color scheme is graded heavily into sicky yellows and greens (except for the blood, which is super, super red). This Mega-City One doesn’t feel like a bunch of sets; it’s ugly and tired and feels all-too possible. Dredd himself, played by Karl Urban, is night and day from the Stallone iteration. When he says “I am the law,” it’s not a bellow. It’s a deeply scary intonation of facts. And he never takes off his damn helmet.
It helps that Dredd isn’t trying to do too much. The movie isn’t trying to jam in seven different storylines and five movies’ worth of worldbuilding into a single film. It keeps to a single story, a single day, and, mostly, a single location. After a brief opening voiceover, you learn about the world diagetically. For longtime fans of the Judge Dredd world, there are little easter eggs here and there but nothing that winks at the viewer. For everyone else, you learn just enough of what you need to get through the story, and everything else is atmosphere. The story is economical, partly because it had to be — the film had a budget of no more than $45 million, half of what the 90s version had to work with more than two decades earlier — but also partly because Alex Garland, who wrote the script (and who largely edited the movie after it was shot) was smart enough to realize every thing he wanted and needed to say about this world could be done with one, admittedly extreme, bad day in the life of its protagonist.
And what is there to say about Dredd himself? Largely that Urban plays him not as a star vehicle but as an archetype. Urban’s Judge Dredd could hang out with Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name quite handily. The two of them wouldn’t say much, but they wouldn’t have to; like understands like. Dredd doesn’t explain himself, has no extended monologues that are a journey into his interior life, and there is no indication that, when he is off the clock, he does anything but stand in a room, silently, waiting for his next shift. In the movie, Dredd isn’t focused on anything other than what’s directly in front of him, and Urban isn’t focused on anything other than getting Dredd to his next scene. Now, you can argue whether Urban’s low and mostly emotionless growl in this film constitutes good acting in a general sense. I don’t think you can argue it isn’t just about perfect for what the character is supposed to be, in the context of the film.
Judge Dredd, the comic book, is known to be a satire of both US and British politics and both nations’ rather shameful but continual flirtation with fascism, but as George S. Kaufman once said, satire is what closes on Saturday night. Even when one acknowledges that satire doesn’t have to be overtly funny, and is often more effective when it is not, there is nothing about Dredd that feels particularly satirical. Garland’s version of Mega-City One doesn’t present as satire or even as a cautionary tale; it just feels like a fact. Shit went bad. This is what’s left.
There is no world in which individuals should be walking around, embodying an entire legal process whole in themselves. “I Am The Law” is the very definition of authoritarianism and in the real world should be actively and passionately fought against. In Dredd’s world, however, this battle has already been fought, and lost. You get the law you get, piecemeal and not enough of it, and if you’re not actively a criminal, you’re happy with what little you get at all.
This is not a world I ever want to live in, and I will be happy to spend the rest of my life fighting against anything like it. But as a spectator, it’s fascinating, and in Dredd, it feels close enough to real to pack a punch. Everything in Dredd is some flavor of bad; everyone in Dredd is some level of desperate. No one is happy and everyone is looking for an escape of some sort. In this context, Judge Dredd is a strange and compelling constant. He’s not happy or sad, or fearful or mad. He is, simply, the law. That’s all he is. That’s all he needs to be.
Hey all, it's December and that means it's time to share your suggestions for next year's themes!
You can comment on this post with up to 10 suggestions. Comments will be screened, but I'll unscreen mine so you can get a feel for how it goes.
Suggested themes should be new to the comm and broad enough to sustain a month of recommendations, and I'm going to be more particular than I have in the past, as I'd like to focus on general themes that make it easier for everyone to participate. To give you an idea of what this means, I'm aiming for themes that have at least 5,000 completed works on AO3. I've also preloaded the list with some common genres that, surprisingly enough, we haven't done yet, like fantasy.
I'll drop by your comments and let you know which of your suggestions meet these guidelines. As part of this process I may offer slight alterations or rework themes to make them more inclusive.
If you can, check out our spreadsheet of past themes before commenting to make sure your suggestions aren't already on there.
I'll add the suggestions to this post once they've been confirmed, but I still, somehow, don't have all the past themes memorized, so if I make a mistake or if I accept a suggestion that is hurtful or badly worded, let me know.
Theme suggestions will be voted on later this month and the most popular will advance to the monthly theme polls in 2026.
There are many reasons, unrelated to artist reimbursement, why Spotify is the dirt worst of the streaming platforms. I trust by now you are aware of these.
I want to make it very clear that I am not criticising anyone for using streaming platforms. Everyone streams, living is hell and we all love music. [...]
As you can see, the vast majority of people who streamed All Hell did so using Spotify. Unfortunately, of the major streaming platforms, Spotify pays significantly less per stream than anywhere else.
If everyone who streamed All Hell on Spotify had done so using Tidal instead, we would have received an extra £31,847.38, which would double the amount we made from streaming of the album in this time period. Or if everyone used Apple Music it would have been £12,331 more.
"But what do you use, jwz?" none of you are asking. I'm glad you asked! I do not use any streaming platforms. I purchase music as files that then live on my computers and computer-like devices that are backed up on hard drives that I own. I listen to them with headphones that have analog cables.
When at all possible, I purchase music from Bandcamp, because of all the options available, that is the one where the artists make the most money.
When an album is not available on Bandcamp (as often happens with bands signed to major labels who contractually prohibit the bands from making their music available on Bandcamp) I have been using Qobuz, which seems to be the least-bad second option at this time. The files are high quality and DRM-free.
voiceinmyear, a community to share any kind of audio-based narrative entertainment. Here you can recommend, critique, signal boost or otherwise enthuse about: - podcasts, both fiction and non-fiction - audiobooks - podfics - audio essays - YouTube or other video formats are fine as long as it can be enjoyed without visuals - apps, platforms or websites to access or discover any of the above.
Just created and I'm keen to post some content soon, but also thrilled if anyone else wants to jump in and share some aural joy.
Current Mood:relaxed
Current Location:Bed
Current Music:The chickens wot want to be let out but I'm busy chillin'
• You have 2 days time to submit an icon for this prompt (in other words, until prompt 2690 gets posted)! • Prompt 2686 has been closed. • If you have any questions regarding the prompt, feel free to ask in a comment. • To submit an icon you simply reply to this post with the following information: Icon: Claim: (only necessary if it's a specific claim) Status: (e.g. #1/10 - number of icon completed/table size)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sovay![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
