90 questions for discussion. 1. If your body could speak to you, what would it say?
It would say, the exercise is great, but you need to lose some more weight. Twenty pounds was just the beginning. I keep making desserts. And we eat them.
I do chair aerobics, but need to do them more then 30 minutes at night. I'll lose more, it'll take time.
noun: 1. The spreading of a liquid, color, light, aroma, etc. 2. The passage of a fluid through an organ or tissue, for example, to supply nutrients or oxygen.
(or ever) but I also don't want to not do it, so here we are I guess?
In order to make this a normal post, let me say that my Robert Moses counter is incrementing up again. It has now been 0 hours since the last time somebody brought up Robert Moses, but it's my fault for reading an article about walkable cities and then scrolling to the comments.
This should be evident by the vast number of posts I have not done here since, oh, mid-February. I'd been steadily building up a stock of pots in the studio for a late March or early April firing, interspersed with afternoons desultorily working on taxes. Visits to the dentist slowly, incrementally getting ready for the premolar implant that's finally gonna be finished next week.
Then everything blew up.
I got an email from my gallery in Olympia; they'd asked about a squirrel tall mug back in February, right after I'd loaded the kiln. Didn't have one, offered to put one in my next firing. They said that'd be fine, it would give them time to put an order together.
A thousand-dollar wholesale order. (That's $2000 worth of pots at retail). So I had to make another dozen serving bowls. Nine pasta serving bowls. Three more colanders, and I broke my hole-cutter and had to go down to Oregon Art Supply for a new one. I'd already made 60 tall mugs, so diverting 18 to them wouldn't be that hard, and I'd be making soup bowls regardless. Honey jars I'm pretty sure I have left over from the last firing. But between this order, an eight-place dinner set and platters that didn't fit in last time, plus Empty Bowls for Food for Lane County, there's going to be precious little space for more pots for Saturday Market. Club Mud's studio sale is coming up in early March, so I needed to sort out some pots for them. I've precious few seconds at the moment, so I planned to pick out firsts that I had most of, so as not to handicap my Saturday Market opening. Backed the van out of the carport and over a screw, so got an extremely flat tire. The bead was broken, so I couldn't just inflate it and drive to Les Schwab, had to jack it up. For some reason, the body came up off the ground, but the wheel didn't, something something rear suspension? I had to put a second jack under the axle, but the car doesn't have a jack, just some sort of strap, and how does that even work? Wound up stealing the jack from Denise's papermaking press, and finally got the tire off and down to Schwab's. They fix flats for free, which was a bright spot, and one of the reasons I go back to them when we need new tires.
And now it's March, I'm still only halfway through taxes, I had to preside over the last Club Mud meeting because the president was out with pneumonia. I'm going to the dentist on Tuesday, I'm flying back to Wisconsin next Friday to meet with nephew and wife to try to get a handle on the Brookfield house situation, and also steal a day to go see my mother. I volunteered to run an Empty Bowls Throw-athon at Club Mud the Saturday after I get back, and sometime before April 4 I have to get the van sorted and restocked for Market. And I only finally got all the pots home from my last firing today. But there's a wren who's been singing in the blackberries outside my studio, the waxwings came through yesterday, and a chickadee has rediscovered our seed feeder. Violets have been blooming outside my studio door since late February, and the first three daffodils are open.
I woke up hungry at 6:00 this morning, and came out and ate my Cheerios, but didn't have coffee. Then I went back to bed and slept til 10:30. I got up and had coffee and checked to see if my Funko Pop had appeared. Spoiler alert... it hasn't.
I puttered on the computer for a few hours, checking for the Pop every hour, and finally went into the bedroom. I played solitaire for awhile, then started reading a Ngaio Marsh mystery that I had on my TBR pile.
I read that til 6:00 and then started trying to get the Teams up and running to Team the FWiB. Spoiler alert... I couldn't. We ended up using my phone.
At 8:00 I went to my D&D game. I started out having to use Discord on my phone but as the battery drained I restarted the computer and got Discord up, an surprisingly it worked quite well.
The game was fun, we battled lizard-men, bug bears, grey ooze, and an owl-bear.
I self rec'd my 9/11 story on the Starsky and Hutch Facebook group. For anyone interested, it's here on AO3:
The Sports Bra has changed their fryer oil to soybean. Glad they posted a sign so I didn't find out the hard way? But, that scuttled my plans to eat out and watch the PWHL game tonight. That might end my end my trips out there, if I can't have a snack, only beer. 3 hours is a long time to only have beer. I was getting to the point where some people sort of noticed me as a hockey regular.
But, I did stay for a while tonight and watched 45 minutes of red hot ice-repair-action. There was a hole in the ice. The repair kept not holding. Shortly after the teams went back to the locker rooms I decided to just ditch and go home. It was standing-room only so I couldn't even sit there and work on some writing.
Иглесиас справедливо замечает, что с поддержкой у публики действий в Иране дело плохо - не столько потому, что 41% за и 59% против, при том, что дела в первые дни идут вроде бы очень хорошо - сколько потому, что поддержка в целом идет вслед за Трампом. Кто за Трампа, за войну с Ираном, кто против, тот против.
Это не 100% - есть заметная часть MAGA-контингента, которая не соглашается с крутым поворотом на 180 градусов от предвыборных обещаний "никакой войны с Ираном", "конец бесконечным войнам" итд. итп. И есть заметная часть американцев, которые против Трампа, но поддерживают как минимум эти бомбежки. Но основная линия раздела тем не менее проходит по поддержке Трампа. И одна из главных причин этого - это растущее ощущение в американском обществе, что республиканцы "за" Израиль, а демократы "против". Это еще очень далеко от правды, но ближе к ней сейчас, чем 5 или 10 лет назад, и откровенная поддержка Трампа - именно лично Трампа, а не президента Америки - со стороны Нетаниягу и официального Израиля сыграла в этом, думаю, немалую роль.
Последствия этого очень рискованного решения, подозреваю, мы будем расхлебывать вне зависимости от того, что сейчас случится в Иране. Стоит надеяться, что проект выхолащивания американской демократии не вполне удастся, и в конце концов эта самая коррумпированная за много лет администрация, во главе которой стоит президент с самой низкой поддержкой населения в целом за много сроков, отдаст бразды власти. И что тогда? На графике мы видим, что за последние два года впервые американцы в целом поддерживают Израиль меньше, чем палестинцев, в нашем конфликте с ними. Эта динамика ни к чему хорошему не ведет.
Еще 10 лет назад премьер-министр Израиля, прилетая в Америку и выступая в Конгрессе, получал овацию почти всех членов обеих партий. Еще два с чем-то года назад, после 7/10, Байден демонстративно прилетел в Израиль, организовал поставки огромного кол-ва вооружений, и помог освободить подавляющее большинство заложников. А вот что будет в следующий раз при власти демократов, предсказать сложно, но скорее всего хуже. И немалая доля ответственности за это лежит на Биби, за то, что поддерживал каждую ложь Трампа, и выступал публично на тему "Байден был такой плохой, а Трамп такой хороший", порывая с укоренившимся в израильской дипломатии принципом "Америка нам друг, в ее внутренние разборки лучше не встревать".
Я не говорю, что не надо было начинать войну с Ираном, уничтожать его ядерные установки, убивать Хаменеи итд. У меня нет твердого мнения, правильно это было делать сейчас или нет, у меня нет понятия о том, что показывает разведка итд. Было бы здорово, если режим аятолл реально можно было бы сместить, но тем, кто уверен в этом, напомню, что всего 2 месяца назад Трамп кинул таких же уверенных в свободной Венесуэле. Впрочем, может, и случится смена режима без огромной крови и хаоса, кто знает? Я ничего не знаю о будущем. Но все равно думаю, что вписываться всей страной именно лично за Трампа (а "за Трампа" означает "против демократов") было большой ошибкой.
This new Ninja Crusade Bundle presents The Ninja Crusade, the tabletop fantasy roleplaying game from Third Eye Games of ninja, conspiracies, and martial arts.
Futuristic fiction doesn’t always have to be dystopian, and in fact author Lauren C. Teffau wanted to show readers a more hopeful narrative where people work together for the betterment of the planet and a goal of reaching a brighter future. Follow along in her Big Idea for Accelerated Growth Environmentand see what a more optimistic future could look like.
LAUREN C. TEFFEAU:
We are living at the intersection of competing futures. Ones we thought were inevitable and others being forced down our throats by billionaires, technocrats, and foreign interests that are counter to our own. This fight over our collective future is happening while the climate crisis rages on, institutions are tested, and the informationsphere weaponized. It’s no longer a question of how to avoid the worst outcomes, but how bad those outcomes will be.
But I firmly believe optimistic stories about the future are our way out of the doomloop. Not because they’ll accurately predict what is to come, but because they give us something to work toward, together. To that end, I wanted to explore what an international response to the climate crisis would look like in my latest book, the eco-thriller Accelerated Growth Environment, and introduce a generation of readers to one possible future full of cooperation, resilience, and competency porn.
Such a goal is not completely out there. Once upon a time, the world came together to reduce ozone emissions in response to the discovery chlorofluorocarbons were punching a hole in the atmosphere. The effort was so successful, the ozone layer is on track to completely regenerate, according to Wikipedia, by 2045. That’s amazing, even moreso considering that level of international coordination seems impossible today. But maybe, just maybe, it’s something we can work toward in the years to come.
So imagine things change, and the political will is finally ascendant to tackle the climate crisis. Enter the Climasphere, a groundbreaking megastructure that can support nearly every biome on Earth and grow plants essential to rewilding efforts across the world, signifying a new era of climate cooperation. It’s also the high-tech setting for Accelerated Growth Environment. Principal Scientist Dr. Jorna Beckham just wants to focus on her research while her horticulture techs are on break following the grueling inaugural harvest.
She manages the habitat with the help of her trusty robot sidekick Savvy while Commander Kaysar sees to everything else. But when an explosion rocks the Climasphere, Jorna is the commander’s number one suspect. Her family belongs to a technology-adverse religion that believes the Climasphere’s genetically-altered plants are a rejection of God’s gifts to humanity. Jorna must clear her name if she wants to keep her dream job and any possibility of a future with the commander.
I’m honored Accelerated Growth Environment is the first acquisition and release from Shiraki Press, a new publisher specializing in hopepunk stories for a brighter future. Keep an eye out for more titles from them in the months to come.
And never forget we are capable of great things—we need to be. No matter all that has happened this year as we grapple with betrayals of the past and the predatory power grabs of the present, we must remember all the amazing things we can do in preparation of the future we will build together.
Yesterday I decided to work on the long postponed adaptation of ancient DOS games, long ago purchased from GOG to run on my current linux system. They were neatly packaged for an earlier version of Ubuntu, but the DOSBox version they included was so old it required specific ancient versions of libraries neither present nor available for current versions of Ubuntu.
The fix was to install a current version of DOSBox, then modify each game's startup script to use that rather than the version included in their package. Bonus if I also freed up space by deleting the DOSBox version they came with. This proved to be utterly trivial - more trivial than changing each game's DOSBox configuration so that it will play nicely with my monitors, and allow me to conveniently move my mouse out of the game window. (I'd already had to do that earlier, to get them playable on a previous linux system.)
I went a bit farther than that. I condensed the scripts and other extras for one game, losing the ability to report issues to GOG, which doesn't support these games on recent linux versions. I got it down to one ultra-short script. And then I downloaded some games that weren't pre-packaged to run on linux - first DOS games I already owned from GOG, then others, elsewhere on the net, which I'd owned on diskette several decades ago.
I now have CIV I working on the linux box, and Merchant Prince ready to adapt. Both were games I loved, back in the day, which GOG hadn't chosen to adapt. (Possibly there were license issues.)
С утра читаю группу "А помнишь, как в Южном Гумбольдте"... - о людях, которые там тусили в 90-х. Меня туда тянуло со страшной силой. А я там почти ничего не успела не то чтобы увидеть, а даже просто доехать. Даже пройти по китовой тропе до Shelter cove, где надеялась поселиться или поселить семейство. А что касается людей, я там уже никого не знаю - даже сообщество по ДнД закончилось в Эврике, где они были много лет, что тут сказать обо всем остальном. Бедный мой Lost Coast.
Sometimes when I'm bemoaning the fact that most cakes today are just plastic flotsam delivery vehicles...
Here's your cake, enjoy! Just don't try to eat that thing. Or that one. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that.
...Or that.
...I remember there's a REASON bakers rely so heavily on flotsam and toys:
Nemo? More like Ne-NO, am I right?
[Ba-dum-CHA!]
I... I think this is supposed to be Spider-Man:
Hold me.
Now, see, this would have been perfect if the customer had actually ASKED for a zombie-fied Spongebob:
As it is, I'm pretty sure little Levi needs therapy now.
This Darth Vader cookie is so ridiculously pathetic that I actually kind of love it:
(At least, I hope it's Vader. If not, then I'm never getting those thirty seconds of squinting back. Never EVER, you guys.)
Seriously, it's so bad I want to hug it.
And I like how the baker just gave up on the other cookie cakes, like she was all, "YOU GET VADER OR YOU GET NOTHING."
And finally, let's end with a little mystery:
WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?
Please, you guys, I have to know.
It says "Where Kermet," so of course my first thought was Kermit the Frog. But it's blonde and has four eyes with a giant red clown nose. Or is the red thing its mouth? And why "Where Kermet?" Where Kermet what? Where he stores his wigs? Where he met his untimely demise?
I went back to Holly J.'s original e-mail, seeking answers, and was delighted to find she'd included a few more angles of the mystery:
....
Well, THAT clears things ups, doesn't it? 0.o
Hang on. Holly says she thinks this is... MISS PIGGY!? Really? I mean, I guess she must be right, but... How. HOW. How is this possible?
I will not rest until I have answers!
Or until I get tired. Or John gets back with our burritos.
But otherwise, TOTALLY NOT RESTING.
Thanks to Sabrina, Kristen O., Sean K., Patrice D., Tori S., & Holly J. for pointing out today's character flaws. We know it's only because you care, guys.
This one has the word "spiffing" in the title AND comes with a lovely green-and-gold cover, so folks will recognize your sophisticated taste while begging you to stop telling these terrible, TERRIBLE jokes.
Уже писал много лет назад это, но война с Ираном, похоже, была неизбежна.
Прежде всего потому, что с одной стороны, после аннексии Крыма в 2014 большой войны в 2022 текущего фактического полупредательства США, особенно в период Трампа, ни один мировой лидер уже не может всерьёз доверять американским гарантиям безопасности. С другой стороны, пока Иран обещает уничтожить Израиль, ни один лидер Израиля не позволит Ирану получить ядерное оружие.
А так, конечно, Иран имеет право на ядерное оружие. Только вот нет возможности убедить Иран, что без него ему будет безопаснее, без возвращения территорий Украине и компенсации разрушений и смертей. И нет возможности допустить, чтобы Иран с текущим режимом имел ядерное оружие.
Поэтому эта война во многом стала результатом бездействия администрации Обамы в 2014 году и безответственной политики 2022-2025 годов, когда военная помощь Украине со стороны США многократно ставилась под вопрос, блокировалась или прекращалась сторонниками Трампа, а потом и позже его администрацией, при этом администрация Байдена проявляла нерешительность и непоследовательность в оказании помощи.
Today we travel to Brazil to learn about its national dish, feijoada. The Brazilian version of this Portuguese dish (called feijoada à brasileira in Portuguese, or "Brazilian-style"). This stew consists of black beans, beef, and pork and it served with rice, collard greens, sliced oranges, to name a few sides.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pattrose
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
Things have not slowed down.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
