austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
[personal profile] austin_dern

Back to Closing Day at Cedar Point, with a guest. As mentioned the weather was just nice enough, and the staff just short enough, that everything was closed or crowded.

Worse, though, is that MWS started to feel pained, and went back to my car to sit a while and drink ice water while painkillers tried to do something for him. We couldn't think how awful it would be to have the first trip to Cedar Point in years have the center knocked out like that. (And he's had similar problems before, one day at Kings Island being knocked out when he was nauseated after an hour or two and had to go back to the hotel room to sleep for hours.) [personal profile] bunnyhugger worried that the day was a bust, but I kept my usual optimistic self and insisted that it was going to be fine. If nothing else it was going to be a day at Cedar Point, what's terrible about that?

And after about 6 pm the crowds did seem to be diminishing, with the line to Top Thrill 2 looking short enough to be worth trying out. So we did, stuffing all our things into the same locker and everyone relying on me to remember the number (I could remember where it was but had to reverse-engineer the number from that). And got into a line that didn't look much longer than what we'd had during our Halloweekends visit; we might have time to ride both this and Siren's Curse. Then the ride went down.

A good number of people jumped out of line ahead of us, but they never played the ride-is-closed-for-the-rest-of-the-day announcement. No real word will ever go out about how long they expect the problem to be, but we were heartened when a train loaded with people did go out and ride successfully. That turned out to just be discharging the people who were already loaded up and there was more maintenance to do. We kept an eye on the clock and on the eventually launched test trains and were on the brink of leaving when they announced the ride was open again, to great applause.

Then, of course, the Fast Lane --- which had been empty --- filled up, probably with parkgoers who saw the ride had been closed and had a minimal line-cutter's wait. So our wait kept on waiting. Finally the 8:00 closing hour passed. We would get one ride on this, our one roller coaster of the day, and that only if the ride didn't go down again.

It did not. We got up to the station finally, where as usual the ride operator was assigning seats. Within limits: he offered the people in front of us the choice of front seat or back on the next train. They picked back. So he gave the three of us rows one and two. Front seat. We both deferred to MWS for the front row; we'll likely have more chances for a front-seat ride than he will, for next year at least. I tried to defer the other front seat to [personal profile] bunnyhugger, but she took the second row, so, there I was, having my first front-seat ride on a coaster of this size since, probably, that time at Great Adventure we got to ride Kingda Ka (RSVP) repeatedly at the end of that night.

Top Thrill 2 does not have the single acceleration of the original Top Thrill. But it does have three linear induction accelerations, and a nice long hang after the reverse one, peering down hundreds of feet and, for me this time, nothing obstructing my view but the track. And when we crested the top hat it felt again like we were being pitched out of our seats --- no seat belts, by the way; the restraints are just that cozy and good --- and could see the whole park, closing up, in the darkness. Then a rocket back down and a brake to a stop and applauding for what a fantastic ride that was.

We staggered off the ride --- the ride photos booth was unattended and it turns out you can't just buy a ride photo anymore anyway --- before remembering that we had to get our stuff out of our locker. And then we also had to get MWS's milestone photograph. We had all forgotten to get a sheet of paper with 100 on it, but he was able to type out 100 on his phone in a big typeface --- the thing I'm told the kids do --- and we got to the entrance of Top Thrill 2 for the scene. They had already turned off so many lights that our pictures came out lousy, unless we turned the flash on, in which case they came out lousy in a different way. Still, he reached his milestone, and on a quite good coaster, and from the front row, in a way that has a story behind it. Great stuff.

Still, it was a day that saw us ride only a couple of carousels, and the loaded-to-capacity(!) train from back of the park to the front, and one roller coaster, plus eat some cheese-on-a-stick and fries. It wasn't the good low-key riding bonanza we had been hoping for. Maybe opening weekend will be different.


Now? I have a couple scattered pictures from April and May as I tried to talk Motor City Furry Con's lost-and-found into acknowledging my existence and returning my camera. Not enough to be worth sharing, though. Instead, here's the first couple pictures with my brand-new used camera, and I bet you can guess what's first on that new photo roll.

P1080537.jpeg

It's Athena! Who doesn't see what the point of this thing shoved in her face is.


P1080538.jpeg

With the flash you get to see her eye color and her concern that I'm covering part of the flash rectangle with my finger.


P1080540.jpeg

There we go, that's a slightly better camera flash. Yes, her food dish reads DOG.


P1080541.jpeg

She went upstairs in her hutch and sprawled out where she could look disapprovingly at me.


P1080543.jpeg

Got a little closer and got a slightly different look of 'what are you bothering me about?' picture.


P1080545.jpeg

I turned off the flash and turned up the ISO and got a more naturalistic view of our all-black rabbit in her hutch.


Trivia: The longest animation strike in the United States was the May-December 1947 strike against Terry Toons. Source: Terrytons: The Story of Paul Terry and His Classic Cartoon Factory, W Gerald Hamonic.

Currently Reading: The New York Game: Baseball and the Rise of a New City, Kevin Baker.

As promised

Nov. 20th, 2025 10:30 am
leecetheartist: A lime green dragon head, with twin horns, and red trim. Very gentle looking, with a couple spirals of smoke from nose. (Default)
[personal profile] leecetheartist posting in [community profile] drawesome
Title: Card selections
Rating: G

Content Notes: I drew these in pencil first and then watercolour pencil, and fountain pen over them.

So these are some very small works I've done to help raise fun for our local community Shed open day on Saturday (it's like a Men's Shed, but for everybody. We have carpentry, pottery,  art group, welding, turning etc etc) They're going to be pasted on some greeting cards and put in a cellophane envelope. I've been given 6 envelopes, and as you see there are eight designs so two won't make the cut.  They're going to go for $5AUD each, and we were told not to spend too much time on them, so they're a bit less detailed than my usual.
 
8 fantasy animal designs









The Mighty Nein 1x02

Nov. 19th, 2025 07:52 pm
settiai: (Mighty Nein -- settiai)
[personal profile] settiai
Continuing on my previously posted thoughts about episode 1x01, I just finished watching episode 1x02.

Spoilers under the cut. )
liam_on_linux: (Default)
[personal profile] liam_on_linux

(Repurposed HN comment.)

The BSD/Linux thing was there right from the start, but it was more complicated than a simple us-vs-them. The thing is that there were a whole bunch of competing commercial Unix-like OSes in the 1980s.

But there were other prejudices as well.

In Proper Grown-Up Unix terms, PCs were toys, poorly-made weird little things that were no more than office equipment. So nothing worth using ran on the 386.

There was no local bus yet, no IDE or EIDE, slow AT expansion bus, no processor cache, and so on -- meaning a forest of proprietary or semi-proprietary extensions and buses and special slots. This opened up a market for a vendor to port to Brand X PCs and Brand X's own weird storage and display.

Enter Interactive Corp, which tried to combat this, and worked on Unix ports for various vendors' hardware. Expensive OS for expensive machines.

And there was SCO which wasn't proud, wasn't fancy, ran on commodity kit, and didn't try to be a general purpose OS like that white lab-coat brigade expected. So SCO Xenix worked, and you could run apps on it, but in the box there was no C compiler, no networking, no X11, nothing. It was a runtime-only OS and it was still expensive.

Everyone sneered at it but it did the job. I put in a lot of it.

Then if you weren't paying, someone else was who would never see the word "Unix", there were all the vastly expensive RISC boxes with their vastly expensive expansions and vastly expensive -- well, everything. Sun, HP, DEC, IBM, SGI, loads of company would sell you rooms full of workstations, single-user minicomputers with big screens. They cost as much as a house.

Actual BSD ran on actual minicomputers that cost as much as a small street of houses and those dudes wouldn't even look at PCs.

Which left a market for enterprising vendors squeezing Unix-like things onto low end kit.

Various flavours of BSD, including BSD/OS; SCO Xenix in both 286 and 386 versions; Interactive 386ix; several vendors' own-brand licensed Unixes, including Dell, later, an official Intel one that mainly ran on Intel's own pizza-box workstations.

And all the proprietary computer vendors entered the game too. Commodore did Unix for high-end Amigas; Atari did Unix for high-end STs; Acorn did Unix for high-end Archimedes; Apple did Unix for high-end Macs, allegedly originally just to get a US military deal; etc. etc.

All these are still $1000 per instance OSes though.

Then, universally scorned, MWC Coherent, a real Unix-like OS for $99... and QNX, which was apparently good but mainly focused on real-time stuff, and cost more than the casual could afford.

(As a European I never saw this but it was in all the ads in all the US mags. There was a lot of "cheap" American stuff we didn't get over here, like paid-for shareware. We had metered phone calls so no BBS scene. Only rich Americans got that stuff.)

Coherent was so good that AT&T accused them of theft and sent Dennis Ritchie around to check. He came back and said, no, it's legit.

And Andy Tanenbaum's Minix, a toy for students, not for real work, but essentially free with a book.

These latter indirectly showed that you _could_ copy AT&T's holy grail and make it work, so while Richard Stallman was building all the tools but choosing the wrong kernel and sabotaging the whole thing, along came this Finnish kid with his learning exercise, and excited beardies on Usenet said that it actually worked and it was at least as good as Minix and was getting to Coherent levels.

So the point is, there was a spectrum, from legendary machines made from purest unobtainium, to ludicrously expensive x86 stuff for very specific (and ludicrously expensive models) of PC kit, to the still ludicrously expensive SCO that got no respect, to "cheap" stuff that nobody had in Europe because it had no business purpose. There was legendary free stuff in America but it only ran on room sized computers that cost as much as a lottery win, so I never saw it. "Free" as in "it's free if you're so rich it doesn't matter."

And "free" shareware that was "free" as in "the phone bill to get it will cost more than just buying a commercial version in a shiny box".

But there _was_ a spectrum, from vastly expensive to "a small business will pay for this", down to theoretical stuff in America that you could dream about... which paved the way until the point where an ordinary PC was a 32-bit machine with a memory management unit and hundreds of megs of disk and several megs of RAM, and suddenly, this Lin-Min-Gnu-ix thing was doable, if you had a beard and a checked shirt with black jeans and wore hiking boots every day. 

LGSM

Nov. 19th, 2025 09:43 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

So many meetings today. I had to run a focus group, I had to talk to my manager about something stressful (it turned out fine), I had to have a meeting that felt important but probably wasn't, about a task I totally overlooked somehow (very erikphobic of the DfT to launch a consultation with a deadline right after my own big deadline!!), which was supposed to last half an hour after the usual end of my work day and actually overran even that tomorrow...

Also today, in other Boo Meetings news, I realized I have the other focus group tomorrow evening, which means I can't go to any of the Transgender Day of Remembrance events that my friends are going to (though me being unable to go does free up D for another thing that's more "fight like hell for the living" than "mourn the dead" and I think that's fine too).

The good part of my meetings today is the one where a colleague and I were in an external meeting which was arranged by the other organization so it was held on Google Meet rather than Teams as we are used to. This is only relevant because on Teams I have my background blurred and in this thing I never used before (I could barely even unmute myself or hang up at the end of the call, never mind such niceties as adjust my background!).

In the debrief with my colleague, after the normal stuff, she said "off topic but I spotted the distinctive design of a pits and perverts power in your background. Dope, love it." I had noticed my background was clearer and sharper than I was used to, but I didn't think anyone else would notice that! And indeed I didn't really notice the poster, as distinct from the mirror or the door covered with coats (they hang on hooks over the door) that are also visible behind me. It was very sweet that it was one of my queerest colleagues in this meeting and I'm glad she noticed.

She asked where I'd gotten it from and I explained about this event the others had gone to, put on by one of V's friends, and that I'd been brought the poster as I hadn't been able to go (I think I was in London for a work thing actually, or something like that). My colleague explained that she'd been wanting one of these posters for years but always wanted the money to actually go to a queer person or something. She decided a museum would be close enough, some good cause. I checked and they're still selling the poster, and at a very reasonable price too! So much so that I feared the shipping would ruin the good deal and offered to pick her up one and get it to the London office the next time I'm there for work, but she ended up finding other stuff in the shop that'd make good Christmas presents for her friends so she didn't need to take me up on that offer.

The shop listing does a good job of explaining the poster:

Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) is an activist group that formed in solidarity with the striking miners in 1984. Mark Ashton, one of the founders, saw the struggle of the miners as the same faced by gay people fighting for their rights against a government that would not listen.

LGSM organised fundraising events like the one depicted in this poster from a concert from 1984 featuring Bronski Beat at Camden’s Electric Ballroom. Designed by LGSM member Kevin Franklin.

"Well that meeting has been productive on several levels" she said after all this. And that was a nice way to go into my last meeting of the day (the one that took until what I thought was dinnertime if not bedtime!).

flying bikes and floating shelves

Nov. 19th, 2025 09:12 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

Tonight [personal profile] diffrentcolours@tech.lgbt drilled holes in bricks to install brackets that let us hang our bikes from the wall. It frees up a bunch of space in our dining room, where they've just rested against the radiator forever. It also makes the bikes look like they're floating in the air.

I helped by being there to hand him things as he needed them so he didn't have to keep stepping on and off the stepstool in the corner that even he needed to get the brackets at the correct height. I said it was a shame he didn't have a little floating shelf there to put all the stuff on, and he said "Yep, instead I have you for a floating shelf." I was very happy to be a furniture -- I didn't want the job of drilling which I find scary because I'm prone to fucking it up.

Well that was weird

Nov. 19th, 2025 09:33 pm
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
[personal profile] davidgillon

4AM-ish I wasn't asleep, and heard something which I couldn't work out if it was an aircraft or thunder.

So I popped open the bedroom window to see if it was any clearer that way, just caught the very end of it, and still couldn't tell.

I stood listening for a while, as it's rarely that quiet, and I could hear a freight train going past in the cutting down the hill - you can only really hear the trains at that time of night as otherwise they're drowned out by the traffic noise.

And then, for about 10 seconds, I heard the distinctive clip-clop, clip-clop of horse's hooves. WTF?

If you hear hoofbeats, suspect auditory illusions?

I have no idea what it actually was, but it sounded like hoofbeats. At 4AM.

conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
People at /r/englishlearning need to stop saying "Song lyrics/poems don't have to be grammatical! Don't try to learn English through songs/poems! People just do whatever, ungrammatically, to fit the rhythm/mood/rhyme scheme!"

This may be true, I guess, but funnily enough it's never true when people say it. At least half the time, the quoted text isn't even archaic or nonstandard!

That said, I do like reading (most of the) comments in that subreddit. There's always something! Cut for appropriateness )

*************************************************


Read more... )

New Stargate?!

Nov. 19th, 2025 10:23 pm
trobadora: (McShep bronzed by ahkna)
[personal profile] trobadora
According to Gateworld, Amazon (which owns the franchise now *sighs*) has greenlighted a new Stargate series! And it's not a reboot!

I was never into SG-1, and I still resent Brad Wright and Joe Mallozzi for the way they ditched SGA in favour of SGU, dumped on SGA's female fans, and then were offended when SGA fans weren't interested in SGU. But I really loved Stargate Atlantis. It was my main fandom for many years, and I have so many fond memories both of the show and the fandom. I haven't rewatched it in a while, but it's one of the things on my list that I definitely want to go back to when I have some time and no energy for new stuff.

My main ship was McShep, but even more than that, Sheppard was my favourite character, and I loved reading Sheppard gen. My secondary ship - a tiny pool noodle of a rarepair - was Teyla/Bates, and I still wish it had been more popular. (Maybe if I'd written fic myself? Unlikely, but ... *g*)

Still, even though I was very active in SGA - I co-ran [livejournal.com profile] sga_newsletter, co-modded [community profile] mcshep_match and [livejournal.com profile] mensa_au and [livejournal.com profile] teyla_bates, among other things - I never wrote any fic for it. Part of it is that I got into SGA during my three-year writers' block (which Doctor Who eventually broke), but even afterwards, despite my brain being constantly full of scenarios, they never crossed that line into writing. Possibly in part because the fandom was big and kept me busy! But surely that can't explain it entirely, and I'm honestly not sure what other reasons there might be. (Why do some fandoms never make me write? A mystery for the ages! *g*) Anyway, it'll be interesing to see, when I eventually rewatch again, whether that'll change ...

And it's very unlikely the same magic will happen twice, but when/if a new Stargate show does happen, unless the premise is itself unappealing, I'm absolutely giving it a chance.

30 in 30: Dragonriders of Pern

Nov. 19th, 2025 02:05 pm
senmut: Ramoth and Mnementh's mating flight (Pern: Dragons Mating)
[personal profile] senmut
AO3 Link | To Care For Them (100 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Dragonriders of Pern
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: F'nor [Dragonriders of Pern]
Additional Tags: Drabble, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Summary:

In a world where the queen flight ended less tragically...






F'nor leaned back against Canth, watching Brekke and Wirenth in a moment of unguarded love between them. Ever since the near-tragedy at High Reaches, there had been a fragility to dragon and rider alike, yet F'nor could see the healing.

He and Canth had beseeched Ramoth to allow Wirenth to be here despite her known antipathy for more than two junior queens, and the matriarch had insisted of course her daughter should return.

Soon, he would need to focus on F'lar's need to tackle the Red Star. For now, he and his brown had a duty to Wirenth and Brekke.

(no subject)

Nov. 19th, 2025 07:25 pm
summerstorm: (Default)
[personal profile] summerstorm
I didn't make a post about it here because I'd already been whining about it everywhere else, but last week on Monday, I got a package I'd ordered -- torn and empty. Just a torn, empty envelope that the delivery guy was like, shrug about and ran off without even telling me what I could do about it. So I went to the physical store and they said they couldn't do anything about online orders, and then called the delivery company and they opened a case, then they closed that case on Tuesday. I had to call the online store then and in fairness, everyone was nice about it, but as the days passed I got more and more frustrated, and I basically lost the entire week to paralyzing anxiety (compounded by my mom suddenly pointing out that she was for real running out of money, despite having asked her a million times to keep me updated precisely so it wouldn't shock me into paralyzing anxiety). Even emailing to ask for updates only got me an automated message.

Since it still wasn't resolved this Monday, I called again, and at least I got actual information out of the person who responded -- they'd been waiting (allegedly, but I believe it) for the delivery company to get back to them about their search for the items I ordered, and the delivery company was taking its sweet goddamn time. Apparently they HAD received my emails and tried to fast-track it for my sake, and I finally got a bit of a timeline -- that if the delivery company didn't find the stuff in 48 hours, they'd process a refund. I did not think the delivery company would find the stuff, to be honest, because it looked far more like "someone ripped this open and stole the contents" than "the paper caught on something and ripped and everything fell out." But okay.

So finally today I got a resolution and I should be getting the money back in the account I paid from (my Wise.com account, which I mostly got just so a specific friend of mine can send me money, because for some bullshit US/Canada sync reason they couldn't keep doing it through Paypal) soon, I hope. The upside is they still seem to have the one item I was afraid I wouldn't be able to order again, and also it's on sale now. So I may end up saving money.

I'm still boggled about a delivery driver just giving somebody an empty package, like what kind of policy has to be in place for that to happen? That's fucking weird. But at least I no longer need to be worrying about it.

Wednesday . . .

Nov. 19th, 2025 09:41 am
sartorias: (Default)
[personal profile] sartorias
Finished unboxing the upstairs library. So, lots of books, though none read. But earmarked a bunch for revisit, such as The Gammage Cup, which had been shoved back and forgotten for years. Now neatly stacked, and ready to dip into again.

Also, after four days of lovely, lovely rain off and on, back to toiling my steps. To get myself moving again, I had to bring out the big guns: listening to Rob Inglis' enchanting reading of Lord of the Rings. Reflecting that, while in Middle Earth, their era has forever passed, I can be introduced to young Frodo and company all over again, and re-attend the birthday party, enjoying the humor anew.
Also reflecting on how much influence anime has had in so many fantasies written by younger authors.

Stargate

Nov. 19th, 2025 12:30 pm
settiai: (Daniel -- dar_jeeling)
[personal profile] settiai
Okay, this is definitely not news that I was expecting to see today. Amazon has apparently greenlit a new Stargate series set in the same continuity as the past ones, so it's not a reboot.

A lot of familiar names from both the original movie and the shows have signed on as producers. Martin Gero, Brad Wright, Joseph Mallozzi, Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich...
thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
"Oh, well, you see there's still an on-going investigation! We CAN'T release them!"

The stage was set a few weeks ago when Trumplestiltskin told Bondi to investigate Bill Clinton and the Democrats. So now the files are part of an active, on-going investigation and it could conceivably be argued that they can't be released. At least until the investigation is concluded. Even though in the 20,000 pages that have been released thus far Clinton's name has not appeared.

Regarding the claim that the release of the files will endanger the privacy of victims or other innocent people in the files, the bill that was approved yesterday did address those concerns, so that claim is null. Also, any CSAM or identifying photographs are also redacted, so that's null.

And again, what's Mike Johnson going to do? The bill ordering the documents to be released has no teeth to it. So what, he'll hold members of the government in contempt and order PAM BONDI to prosecute them? Yeah, that'll happen.

What I think would be the likely result is if the Justice Department doesn't release them despite this law passing is that we'll have a Deepthroat event and more tranches of the documents will happen to leak.

We shall see.

Article is behind a free paywall requiring registration:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/19/epstein-files-justice-department-release/


I should have included one very important piece of information on the court throwing out the Texas redistricting plan. It was concluded that it was blatantly and baldly illegal on the simple premise that it was racist and racially discriminatory. A very important point.

RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN TEXAS? SAY IT ISN'T SO!

Another point in California's Proposition 50, their redistricting plan to fight Texas' redistricting. The original plan was that it had a trigger - if Texas went through with their plan to redistrict, so would California. From what I read last night in two different sources - neither of which was 100% official but tended towards that way - that trigger was removed in the legislative process before it went to the public vote. So theoretically, if Prop 50 survives court challenges, the redistricting will happen and the count in the house of Democratic seats will go up in California's representation.

Of course, it is widely believed that in next year's mid-term elections that there will be a huge backlash against the incumbent party and the Dems will gain a large number of seats in both chambers. But as that election is over 11 months away, I'm not holding my breath. Too much will happen between now and then, memories are short and there's no telling what the state of the country or the political landscape will be then.

Wednesday there was SNOW

Nov. 19th, 2025 03:52 pm
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished The Golden Notebook - had a few comments about Lessing and blokes and plus ca change and allotropes of excuses in yesterday's post.

Decompressed with a Dick Francis, Slay-Ride (1973), which is the one set in Norway - period at which The War, resistance, Quislings etc still hangs heavy over them - not a top specimen of his, I spotted Dodgy Person very early on (but maybe protag does not read thrillers....).

Then got a jump on the next volume in the Dance to the Music of Time reading group, Temporary Kings (#11), which is the one set at some kind of cultural conference in Venice.

Also the latest Literary Review.

On the go

Continuing to dip in to Some Men in London 1960-1967.

Was agreeably surprised by the arrival of my preordered Cat Sebastian (had forgotten it was due), After Hours at Dooryard Books, which is being v good so far.

Up next

Latest Slightly Foxed.

2025.11.19

Nov. 19th, 2025 07:47 am
lsanderson: (Default)
[personal profile] lsanderson
A large crowd of observers and protesters gathered at the scene of a federal law enforcement operation in St. Paul Tuesday. MPR News reports “federal agents wearing clothing marked ‘FBI,’ ‘DEA’ and ‘HSI’ — Homeland Security Investigations, part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — were seen at Bro-Tex Inc. … It was not immediately clear what prompted the operation.” Via MinnPost
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/11/18/st-paul-federal-law-enforcement-operation-draws-protests

A Dakota-led nonprofit has unveiled its vision for the restoration of St. Anthony Falls. Bring Me The News says “nonprofit Owámniyomni Okhódayapi shared design plans on Monday for the area around the Upper Lock of the Mississippi River. … Native plants will be reintroduced … with seeds and soils sourced from Dakota tribal lands in Minnesota.” Via MinnPost
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-lifestyle/dakota-led-nonprofit-unveils-design-plans-for-st-anthony-falls-restoration

Nearly all immigrants detained in Trump Chicago raid had no criminal conviction
Data sharply contradicts officials’ portrayal of immigration sweeps as effort to fight ‘worst of the worst’ criminals
Roque Planas
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/19/trump-chicago-immigration-raid

Trump officials wrongly deport trans woman in violation of court order
Officials admit ‘inadvertent removal’ after court ruled Britania Uriostegui Rios should not be sent to Mexico
Lucy Campbell
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/trump-mexico-deportation

Man pours liquid on woman and sets her on fire on Chicago subway
Victim was hospitalized in critical condition and suspect taken into custody following incident on city’s train system
Maya Yang
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/man-sets-woman-on-fire-chicago-subway

Trump faces criticism for referring to female Bloomberg reporter as ‘piggy’
Critics accuse the US president of trying to ‘shut women journalists up’ with ‘demeaning language’
Jeremy Barr in Washington
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/trump-calls-reporter-piggy-bloomberg

Neanderthals and early humans ‘likely to have kissed’, say scientists
Study from University of Oxford looks into evolutionary origins of kissing and its role in relations between species
Nicola Davis Science correspondent
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/19/neanderthals-early-humans-kissed-research-evolution

British woman among four tourists killed in blizzard at nature reserve in Chile
Four people also rescued alive at popular Torres del Paine reserve in Patagonia amid heavy snowfall and strong winds
Matty Edwards
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/18/british-woman-among-four-tourists-killed-in-blizzard-at-nature-reserve-in-chile

The Kessler Twins sisters Alice and Ellen die together aged 89
German pop duo who last year said their wish was ‘to leave together’ had joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald
Angela Giuffrida in Rome
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/18/the-kessler-twins-sisters-alice-and-ellen-die-together-aged-89

Stranded whale euthanized after failed rescue attempt off Oregon coast
Young humpback whale was found washed ashore and individuals had rallied together to try to help
Shruti Rajkumar
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/stranded-humpback-whale-euthanized-oregon

Fanartist rec: Kaitlin Wadley

Nov. 19th, 2025 01:28 pm
mekare: Kira Nerys at her computer, drinking from a mug (ST Kira)
[personal profile] mekare posting in [community profile] drawesome
Fanartist's name: dorkbait, Kaitlin Wadley
Content Notes: some works are explicit, or feature injuries (think of the Winter Soldier here)
Medium: traditional, mixed media
Artist's main websites: Official website, [tumblr.com profile] dorkbait
About this artist: Kaitlin is a professionally trained artist from the US. I first came across her work on Tumblr while I was deeply in Marvel fandom after the Captain America films. I love her style of painting portraits and the focus on portraying vulnerability and identity issues from a female gazey perspective.
The stuff from the 2010s was mostly ink, gouache and acrylics, but it seem she recently started embroidery art too (see example below).

I think partly my work with Bucky does stem from a kind of longstanding frustration with the MCU’s continued refusal to give me what I want. It’s kind of a vicious cycle, because I go into the movies hopeful but knowing that I’m probably not going to get a coherent emotional arc or an examination of Bucky’s psyche, and then of course neither of those things ever happen. So I end up thinking, well, I guess I better make that for myself!

Source: This article at the Daily Dot by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw

I can relate to this quote so much, especially regarding all my feelings about Bucky several years ago.

Examples:

silk embroidered bird (G rating)

Bucky Inktober piece from 2015 (I‘d rate this one T because of "viscuous nightmare fluid"), it‘s best to look at the whole Inktober series in sequence because each art piece also features a bit of writing which shows Bucky‘s journey dealing with recovering his sense of self.

Young Man with stigmata from 2023 which clearly shows her Renaissance painting influences (look at that hand!). This is Interview with the Vampire fanart of Armand, I think.
[syndicated profile] schneier_no_tracking_feed

Posted by Bruce Schneier

Kendra Albert gave an excellent talk at USENIX Security this year, pointing out that the legal agreements surrounding vulnerability disclosure muzzle researchers while allowing companies to not fix the vulnerabilities—exactly the opposite of what the responsible disclosure movement of the early 2000s was supposed to prevent. This is the talk.

Thirty years ago, a debate raged over whether vulnerability disclosure was good for computer security. On one side, full disclosure advocates argued that software bugs weren’t getting fixed and wouldn’t get fixed if companies that made insecure software wasn’t called out publicly. On the other side, companies argued that full disclosure led to exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities, especially if they were hard to fix. After blog posts, public debates, and countless mailing list flame wars, there emerged a compromise solution: coordinated vulnerability disclosure, where vulnerabilities were disclosed after a period of confidentiality where vendors can attempt to fix things. Although full disclosure fell out of fashion, disclosure won and security through obscurity lost. We’ve lived happily ever after since.

Or have we? The move towards paid bug bounties and the rise of platforms that manage bug bounty programs for security teams has changed the reality of disclosure significantly. In certain cases, these programs require agreement to contractual restrictions. Under the status quo, that means that software companies sometimes funnel vulnerabilities into bug bounty management platforms and then condition submission on confidentiality agreements that can prohibit researchers from ever sharing their findings.

In this talk, I’ll explain how confidentiality requirements for managed bug bounty programs restrict the ability of those who attempt to report vulnerabilities to share their findings publicly, compromising the bargain at the center of the CVD process. I’ll discuss what contract law can tell us about how and when these restrictions are enforceable, and more importantly, when they aren’t, providing advice to hackers around how to understand their legal rights when submitting. Finally, I’ll call upon platforms and companies to adapt their practices to be more in line with the original bargain of coordinated vulnerability disclosure, including by banning agreements that require non-disclosure.

And this is me from 2007, talking about “responsible disclosure”:

This was a good idea—and these days it’s normal procedure—but one that was possible only because full disclosure was the norm. And it remains a good idea only as long as full disclosure is the threat.

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vivdunstan: Part of own photo taken in local university botanic gardens. Tree trunks rise atmospherically, throwing shadows from the sun on the ground. (Default)
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