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conuly posting in

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1. Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I have an 8-year-old daughter, “Amanda.” Amanda loves to sing, but if I’m honest, her voice is awful. I’ve learned to tolerate it. But my husband tells her to stop every time she sings in his presence, and it hurts her feelings. In response to my telling him as much, he says her singing is like fingernails on a chalkboard, so he shouldn’t be expected to “endure” it. When I suggested we get her some singing lessons, he said he didn’t want to “waste money on a lost cause.” Should I sign her up anyway?

—Vocally Challenged

( Read more... )

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

2. Dear Care and Feeding,

My parents divorced when I was 13. Within a year, my dad married my stepmom, who had a son who was 2 at the time, and a little over a year later, they had my half-sister, “Anna.” Anna’s birthday was two weeks ago, and I bought her a Nintendo Switch 2 (I discussed it with my dad and stepmom ahead of time, and they agreed to it).

The problem is that Anna’s half-brother, “Jacob,” has more or less appropriated it for himself, and Anna has called me up saying she has been able to use it all of three times since I gave it to her.

Jacob has literally taken it for himself—as in it’s in his room and Anna can’t access it. My dad and stepmom seem to think this is perfectly acceptable and have made no effort to make Jacob return it to Anna. I wouldn’t have a problem if Anna were sharing it with Jacob, but I didn’t buy the gaming system for it to be given over to him. I am ready to ask my dad and stepmom to either make him return it to Anna or reimburse me for the cost of it so I can buy her a new one. Thoughts?

—Confiscated Console

( Read more... )

kaberett

Reading. ( Regula Ysewijn, McKinley Valentine, David J. Linden, Ann Leckie )

Skimmed several more pain-related papers.

... and I am also making some actual progress on catching up with my reading page! By which I mean "... I'm almost a whole entire week into May." I make no promises about how far I'm going to actually get.

Watching. 'nother episode of Farscape: S02E05 The Way We Weren't. Will concede that this made me go "... okay, yeah, I see why I needed to watch everything that went before, and damn it I am Having Some Feelings".

I have now sat or indeed wiggled my way through through Squish The Fish (Cosmic Kids' "baby yoga") in its entirety, it being a great favourite of The Toddler. I continue to have fascinating conversations about things that are easy for toddlers versus for grown-ups with the resident physiotherapist.

Cooking. A sweetcorn, tomato and runner bean curry, unearthed via Eat Your Books when I realised I had somewhat unintentionally got the nice organic veg box people to bring us runner beans (of which I am generally suspicious because of the texture of the pod).

Two loaves of actually vaguely competent bread (turns out scraping together the executive function to make the timing work... works better).

For breakfast this morning: the next recipe from the Welsh cakes book, being blackberry and apple splits (thereby using up some of the stewed apple in the freezer!). Could stand to have significantly less sugar than the recipe suggested and frozen blackberries very much want to make something that could only generously be called a purée rather than a soup, and definitely benefitted from being left to stand and cool before any attempt is made at the actual splitting, but A is very happy so I am content :)

Eating. Pizza Express takeaway to go with the Farscape on Tuesday evening when we were very, very tired.

Lunch in the café at Forty Hall this afternoon, featuring orange-and-lavender loaf cake!

Blackberries and onions and tomatoes and my mother's fig jam. Many very good food. Very pleased yes.

Exploring. Forty Hall! We went on an ADVENTURE this afternoon to get LUNCH there, which was slightly complicated by the part where ( breathing, everything is fine )

such that I spent a significant amount of time on the way both there and back again going "nope, need to stop" and spending a while lying on the grass staring up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds through the various oak trees we passed. I have thoughts about this specific medical experience that I might write up elsewhen, BUT we WENT ON AN ADVENTURE and explored the farm shop and had lunch/afternoon tea in the café and walked around the walled garden and went home VIA THE (outskirts of the) BEAVER ENCLOSURE (thank you all, looking up that link means I have just discovered that TOURS NOW EXIST as of last month!!!) (more context: first beavers reintroduced to London after something like 400 years, back in 2022). Very very pleased to have managed this.

Creating. Hmm. I haven't been creating, as such, but I have definitely been consulting with A about some 3d prints to make sorting the in-game currency easier at Admin: the LRP!

Growing. Everything is tomatoes. I have not managed to get overwintering onions going; maybe tomorrow?

Rooted lemongrass potted up; let's see how long it takes me to kill it this time.

Observing. Alas no beavers, but lots of excellent birds, including two excursions (one solo, one partnered) to visit the cootlings :) The one that hatched last (by a considerable margin) is very definitely still no more than about half the size of its elder siblings!

gallusrostromegalus_feed

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793430413731299328

fishing-lesbian-catgirl:

Just saw someone with “use whatever pronouns you use for yourself for me” in bio. I honestly never considered the depth the pronoun metagame could have, we’ve barely scratched the surface with this shit

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793430413731299328

dwstatus_bsky_feed

https://bsky.app/profile/dreamwidth.org/post/3lxpw2iy6qs24

Reminder that we will begin geoblocking connections from Mississippi tonight, plus new news: we must also temporarily block signups from users under 18 from Tennessee. dw-news.dreamwidth.org/44774.html
https://dw-news.dreamwidth.org/44774.html

https://bsky.app/profile/dreamwidth.org/post/3lxpw2iy6qs24

andrewducker

The kids take it in turn doing a variety of things, so that we don't have arguments every single night over who gets to choose teethbrushing things, who gets to be first to get put into pyjamas, who gets to check inside the parcel box when we get home, who gets to choose who gets out of the bath first, etc. This month, Sophia has odd numbered days and Gideon has even numbered days. Except that they swapped yesterday and today so that Gideon could have his birthday.

Except...that a few months ago we used the app Chwazi, where everyone puts their finger on the screen and then it picks someone (to be first player in a game, for instance). And Gideon loved it. So last weekend when I asked who should get out of the bath first he said "We'll play the finger game." - and I asked him if he'd be sad if he didn't win, and he said no, and then he and Sophia played it, and he lost, and I had to wash the hair of a sobbing child, who kept saying "I thought I would win!"

So this weekend, I asked him who was getting out of the bath first, and he said "Finger game!" and I said "Do you remember how sad you were?" and he said "Very sad!" and I said "So you should just choose." and he said "I have a plan, this time the person who loses will go first." And, of course, he won. And so, again, I had to wash the hair of a crying child who thought he'd found a way to beat probability.

All of which is to say that if you want to beat people at games of chance then I recommend 5-year-olds, who are both terrible at understanding it, and completely fail to learn from that.

gallusrostromegalus_feed

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793423097105711104

1five1two:

‘Apple Treeometry’. Adam Hillman. 2020.

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793423097105711104

gallusrostromegalus_feed

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793422756301717505

auroradiation:

Loimos Chapter 1
Keep reading

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793422756301717505

gallusrostromegalus_feed

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793422490025246720

roach-works:

avocadohertl:
nightlight-dot-exe:
barebitchinbodkin:
willkill4pudding:
andhumanslovedstories:
andhumanslovedstories:
I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook
“The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first and settles in as the gentle present” are you kidding me this quote has propelled me through at least three emotional crises
“The desert seems vast, even endless. And yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow.”
That quote literally got me through grieving my brother like WTNV goes HARD
A List of Some of My Favorite Quotes From This Insane Podcast:
“You are beautiful when you do beautiful things.”
“The present tense of regret is indecision.”
“We understand so much, but the sky behind those lights– mostly void, partially stars– that sky reminds us we don’t understand even more.”
“Be proud of your place in the Cosmos. It is small and yet it is.”
“Believe in yourself. You are an ancient, absent god, discussed only rarely by literary scholars. So if you don’t believe, no one will.”
“Death is only the end if you assume the story is about you.”
“Whisper a dangerous secret to someone you care about. Now they have the power to destroy you, but they won’t. That’s what love is.”
“Are we living a life that is safe from harm? Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?”
“When we talk about teenagers, we adults often talk with an air of scorn, of expectation for disappointment. And this can make people who are presently teenagers feel very defensive. But what everyone should understand is that none of us are talking to the teenagers that exist now, but talking back to the teenager we ourselves once were – all stupid mistakes and lack of fear, and bodies that hadn’t yet begun to slump into a lasting nothing. Any teenager who exists now is incidental to the potent mix of nostalgia and shame with which we speak to our younger selves.”
“We are not history yet. We are happening now. How miraculous is that?”
“Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error.”
“We have nothing to fear except ourselves. We are unholy, awful people.”
“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A basilisk.”
“There’s nothing under your bed. There’s nothing in your closet. Nothing waits in every darkness. Nothing is the most terrifying thing of all.”
“The night sky is ten miles wide, eight miles deep, and floats three miles up. Its favourite food is grape jelly. It wants to be a drummer.”
“Look to the sky. You will not find answers there, but you will certainly see what everyone is screaming about.”
“Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it is certainly less work.”
“And now, a special report. Crocodiles: Can they eat your children? *YES.*”
“Lie down and look up at the ceiling and breathe with those curiously fragile lungs of yours and remind yourself: Don’t worry. Don’t worry. All is as it was meant to be. It was meant to be lonely and terrifying and unfair and fleeting. Don’t worry.”
“As long as I’m reminding myself things, I’m a good person, worthy of love – both from myself and others.”
“Guns don’t kill people! It’s impossible to be killed by a gun. We are all invincible to bullets and it’s a miracle!”
“Everything is exciting! Particularly existence. Existence is the most thrilling fact of all.”
“There is a monster under your bed. A monster at your window. A monster any place you imagine one. You project your monsters on the world.”
“You miss 100% of the bank robberies you don’t commit.”
“I like my coffee like I like my nights. Dark, endless, and impossible to sleep through. ”
“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.”
“And now, the weather.”
I discovered this podcast at the beginning of high school, and let me tell you, it rewired my synapses.
Not only was it my first experience with positive LGBT representation, it was the show I clung to when everything else went to shit. Whatever was going on in my life, I knew I had this show in my corner, making me laugh, making me cry, making me feel okay about my place in the universe.
I owe the creators of this podcast more than I could express.
“the lights over the Arby’s” is such an intrinsically queer piece of writing that it hits me *hard* every time.
“We will never be the same again. But here’s a little secret for you: no one is ever the same thing again after anything. You are never the same twice, and much of your unhappiness comes from trying to pretend that you are. Accept that you are different each day, and do so joyfully, recognizing it for the gift it is. Work within the desires and goals of the person you are currently, until you aren’t that person anymore, and everything changes once again.” (from Episode 75)
“The universe is vast. You are also vast. So is an ant. There are different sizes of infinity.”

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793422490025246720

iamrman posting in

scans_daily

Writer: Bill Mantlo

Pencils: Ed Hannigan

Inks: Jim Mooney

If a rampaging Electro wasn’t worse enough, Spidey must put up with Jonah incorrectly publishing stories that he has just died.

( Read more... )

rocky41_7 posting in

booknook

Title: Siblings
Author: Brigitte Reimann
Translator: Lucy Renner Jones
Genre: Fiction, historical fiction

This review will be briefer than I wish, because I’ve got two fingers taped up (injury) and it makes typing a pain. This morning I finished book #12 from the “Women in Translation” rec list, which was Siblings by Brigitte Reimann, translated from German by Lucy Renner Jones.

This book was published in 1963, just two years after the Berlin Wall went up, but takes place in 1960, before the Wall. It’s a book about three siblings, but really it’s a book about Germany’s future. The core of the novel is the relationship between the protagonist, Elisabeth (“Lise”) and her brother, Uli; and their views on the German state.

Lise is an adamant supporter of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; aka communist East Germany) and communism as a whole. She views it as her generation’s chance to right the injustices of a capitalistic world. Uli, on the other hand, while supportive of communism, resents the GDR for what he views as a lack of opportunity and its petty politics. At the start of the novel, Uli has decided to defect to the west, and Lise and her partner Joachim are trying to convince him to stay.

Throughout these efforts, the shadow of their eldest brother Konrad hangs over them—Konrad has already defected, years earlier, and is firmly settled in West Germany, though not without struggle.

This book is very politically philosophical. As mentioned, it’s about Uli and Lise (and Konrad), but it’s really about the future of Germany. Not yet 20 years out from the end of WWII, this is not an easy question (and there is a lot of finger-pointing to go around about who did what for the Nazis while they were in power). The book definitely leans in favor of supporting the GDR. While Uli and Konrad have their gripes about it, these are generally cast, through Lise’s viewpoint, as self-centered, or fig leaves for their real issue, which is that they cannot let go of a capitalist ownership mindset. Even where she acknowledges their complaints as valid—such as Uli’s frustration at the stunted opportunities for anyone who is not a Party member—her attitude is essentially that they need to tough it out for the sake of making the communist experiment work, or that it’s a reasonable trade off to avoid what she sees as the cruelties of capitalist West Germany.

It's the closest I’ve ever come to reading a pro-communism book (even Soviet authors I’ve read have been pretty staunchly against the Party, a la Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna), which made it interesting in that respect, as well as in how it addresses the ways the split of Germany affected individual Germans and German families.

However, the prose is very “tell not show” and this, combined with the highly philosophical nature of it, kept me at arm’s length from the characters and their lives.

Nevertheless, it’s fascinating from a historical perspective.

denise posting in

dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #6813 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #973.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

full_metal_ox posting in

cranky_old_fangirls

Heads up: Typepad is shutting down on 30 September 2025; back up and/or port anything you’ve got posted there.

https://everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08/typepad-is-shutting-down.html

Current Mood: disgruntled

oursin

This week's bread: loaf of Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread Flour, v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut, strong brown flour, possibly rather too many in the way of pinenuts.

Today's lunch: halibut fillets, panfried (the packet possible exaggerated cooking time), served with samphire sauce; with La Ratte potatoes roasted in goose fat, baked San Marzano tomatoes, and Boston beans roasted in pumpkin seed oil with fennel seeds and splashed with gooseberry vinegar (a bit too al dente, not sure if this was innate or due to inadequate cooking time/temperature).

polyamships_mod posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

niqaeli

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

drglam

My sweet little man Byron is almost certainly leaving me soon.

Here he is enjoying some sun today
https://bsky.app/profile/drglam.bsky.social/post/3lxpeliaqas2v

And Sunday when he seemed fine.

https://bsky.app/profile/drglam.bsky.social/post/3lx3ywhtkis2q

Thursday at the emergency vet, when we thought he might have some time

https://bsky.app/profile/drglam.bsky.social/post/3lxidnmsitk2e

gallusrostromegalus_feed

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793405692471115776

kaity–did:

lantaren:
amalg-em:
chaumas-deactivated20240115:
adastra-sf:
lilithsaintcrow:
“Take year 3 student Emma Glenfield, who started with a simple question about magpies and wound up conducting some cutting-edge research almost by accident.“
Do magpies target you? This eight-year-old’s viral research could explain why
"I watched the people he swooped and I recorded it,” Emma said.
“Then I got everything I recorded and I figured out that the people Mr Swoopsalot swooped were male, they were tall, and that they had thin or receding hair.”
ALT
y'all i don’t usually say this shit out loud but please read the link. she got 30 THOUSAND responses to her survey. THIRTY THOUSAND. And she’s eight. So learning how to use MS Excel for that data wasn’t really an option.
So she made a graph out of Legos. LEGOS!!
This kid is an absolute genius and I am so excited for her.
@kaity–did you might enjoy some excellent parenting referenced here because my favourite part is how her Mum encourages her to keep a journal with questions and things she is interested in! And encourages her to keep doing stuff she’s passionate about (maths) even when other kids her age aren’t! ❤
I love the journal thing and might steal that for myself…
Oh this is the sweetest and honestly most interesting thing I’ve ever seen! I don’t think we have Magpies where I’m from !!

https://gallusrostromegalus.tumblr.com/post/793405692471115776

cosmolinguist

I woke up in the early hours of this morning from an intense bad dream. But when I described it to D this morning as "my usual 2025 nightmare...my friends and I fighting in the streets," he made a perfectly understandable but inaccurate assumption: "what, like a fight club?"

No, I said, not fighting each other. Fighting nazis.

But being very silly about which of our friends we could best in physical fights ("well P's out, she has a broken leg" "...do we have to fight each other?"), while snuggling in bed on the one morning a week I don't have to get up as soon as I'm awake, did a great job of dispelling the visceral misery the dream left me with.

Saved from angst by silliness, this feels like the story of my life these days heh.

umadoshi

Two wildly different media signal boosts:

--The Murderbot & More Humble Bundle is available for almost two more weeks! (I already have all but one ebook in there, so I'm not pouncing personally, but it's a great collection!)

--Via a couple of people, Javier Grillo-Marxuach recently shared on Bluesky that The Middleman is now streaming on Archive.org. (This is probably my definitive answer to the classic "what canceled show would you revive if you could?" question, although at this point it's not really "revive" so much as "magically keep from being canceled in the first place so it could've just carried on". This show deserved so much more--or at the bare minimum, to have had its season 1 finale actually filmed, while in this timeline 12/13 episodes were filmed. Like. Come ON, studios.)

Profile

Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺

August 2025

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Page Summary

conuly in agonyaunt - Two letters in the same column
kaberett - vital functions
gallusrostromegalus_feed - Just saw someone with “use whatever pronouns you use for yourself for me” in bio. I hone
dwstatus_bsky_feed - (no subject)
andrewducker - Life with two kids: A matter of probability
gallusrostromegalus_feed - ‘Apple Treeometry’. Adam Hillman. 2020.
gallusrostromegalus_feed - Loimos Chapter 1
gallusrostromegalus_feed - roach-works:avocadohertl:nightlight-dot-exe:barebitchinbodkin:willkill4pudding:andhumanslovedstories
iamrman in scans_daily - Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #66
rocky41_7 in booknook - Book review: Siblings
denise in dw_news - Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts
case in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #6813 ]
full_metal_ox in cranky_old_fangirls - Typepad is going away on 30 September 2025.
oursin - Culinary
polyamships_mod in fandomcalendar - [MULTIFANDOM] Polyartober 2025
niqaeli - ...hi.
drglam - Byron
gallusrostromegalus_feed - “Take year 3 student Emma Glenfield, who started with a simple question about magpies and woun
cosmolinguist - Hey, think the time is right for a palace revolution
umadoshi - Media signal boosts

Style Credit

Style: Starflower for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Rounded Star 005

Page generated Aug. 31st, 2025 10:15 pm

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Two letters in the same column

vital functions

Just saw someone with “use whatever pronouns you use for yourself for me” in bio. I hone

(no subject)

Life with two kids: A matter of probability

‘Apple Treeometry’. Adam Hillman. 2020.

Loimos Chapter 1

roach-works:avocadohertl:nightlight-dot-exe:barebitchinbodkin:willkill4pudding:andhumanslovedstories

A List of Some of My Favorite Quotes From This Insane Podcast:

Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #66

Book review: Siblings

Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts

[ SECRET POST #6813 ]

Typepad is going away on 30 September 2025.

Culinary

[MULTIFANDOM] Polyartober 2025

...hi.

Byron

“Take year 3 student Emma Glenfield, who started with a simple question about magpies and woun

Hey, think the time is right for a palace revolution

Media signal boosts

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August 2025

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