Saturday, May 23rd, 2026 12:05 am
People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

What does honor mean to you? How important is it to you? Does your culture value honor? What exemplifies honor in your culture?


"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.... The friction tends to arise when the two are not the same....There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

"Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And
outlive the bastards."
Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

Saturday, May 23rd, 2026 11:26 am

I'm running on fumes, I think. There are a lot of Things needing doing. Why I thought signing up for an academic presentation (thankfully, I picked the 20 minute rather than the full hour option) at a con I'm on the committee for was a good idea, ... eh. I mean, it is a good idea from a lot of standpoints, but the 'how much energy I have for anything' is not one of them

I have a friend arriving Monday to stay for ... three days? four days? I have not done the yak shaving tasks that will allow the spare room to be set up; I have a memory that there was a reason to delay setting up the bed, but I do not remember what it was. I also have not sewn the funny shaped fitted sheet I had been planning, and probably won't at this point.

And there are two things complicating my day. My bank has changed its system again, and I'm on the ~fourth card in a year (they cancelled their credit cards; moved us to debit Mastercard. Now they have cancelled that service, and shifted to Visa. In there was the expiry of another card) -- that went live today and I have no idea whether anything I want to do money wise will work. Which goes poorly with the issue that the mob who provide my email services as well as web hosting for SwanCon are suffering a DDoS attack, and so several to do items are in limbo waiting for that to clear up. *sigh*

Friday, May 22nd, 2026 10:48 pm
Yeah lane assist, I'd do that IF I could see it. It rained for 335 miles from my door to [personal profile] evil_little_dog's. Some places I couldn't even see. From Cincinnati to Louisville I'm not sure we ever got above 25 mph.

Luckily it was mostly uneventful (lots of accidents none near me) and the Jetta gets surprisingly good gas mileage.

have some recs for fannish 50


Undeserved Mercy Torchwood

Through The Ring Stargate Atlantis

Live! Starsky & Hutch

Musical The Owl House

Soulmate The Owl House

Protocol Torchwood

All Roads Lead To Haven Hazbin Hotel

Childhood The Owl House

Opposite Hazbin Hotel

Gambler's Fallacy Hornblower - C. S. Forester Hornblower

Unwritten 镇魂 | Guardian

Recuperation 9-1-1

Handyman Teen Wolf

Flyer Derby The Owl House

Picnic The Owl House

Play Time Teen Wolf

captivated captive Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates

Horror (Movie) The Owl House

Seasons The Owl House

Cozy Evening Stargate Atlantis

Before The End Torchwood

Human Realm The Owl House

Fairytale The Owl House


The Salvage Yard The Trixie Belden Mysteries - Julie Campbell Tatham & Kathryn KennyThe Three Investigators | Die drei

Bedridden Teen Wolf

Normal-ish Hazbin Hotel

Learning to Compromise Teen Wolf
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 11:30 pm
New Friends
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1268
[Monday afternoon, 13 November of 2017]


:: Jaliya arrives with dessert, and a surprise. Jules is taken aback by the enthusiastic reaction. Part of the Lodestar story arc in Polychrome Heroics. ::




One of the security guards marched in with a silvery kitten perched on his shoulder. Jaliya walked a few paces behind, with her eyes more often on the kitten than on where she placed her feet. She waved to Jules. “Hey, I brought the dessert.”

“Thanks, Jaliya,” Jules began. “This is Noah Peterson. He’s got some interesting allergies, and he prefers hot food to cold.”
Read more... )
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 10:16 pm
'Roly-poly' Bugs Are Great Garden Composters

A detritivorous diet increases the speed of decomposition in dead plants, animals or poop, increasing the bioavailability of nutrients in the soil. This gives plants a higher chance of survival by providing better quality soil. It's not just what roly-poly bugs add to the soil, but what they take out too.

Turns out these guys love heavy metals. After studying the composition of their insides, scientists found that roly-poly bugs ingest a lot of heavy metal contamination from our soil. That's why they can live and thrive in areas contaminated with toxins like lead, cadmium and arsenic. Once they've ingested these toxins, they become crystallized within their guts, meaning a construction site contaminated with heavy metals could effectively be cleaned by a bunch of hungry roly-poly bugs.



Here at Fieldhaven, we have lots of pillbugs. I saw some crawling around the new picnic table garden the other day, attracted by the soil in the pots. Aside from performing useful tasks themselves, they also tend to carry other soil organisms along with them, which boosts the bioactivity and health of the soil.  You can attract them by putting a handful of damp, dead leaves under a weight such as a brick or a pot.
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 10:15 pm
Einstein’s “wormhole” may actually reveal a hidden mirror of time

What if wormholes were never cosmic tunnels at all? New research suggests Einstein and Rosen’s famous “bridge” may actually reveal something even stranger: time itself could flow in two directions at once. Instead of connecting distant places in space, these bridges may connect mirror versions of time deep inside quantum physics, potentially solving the long-standing black hole information paradox and hinting that our universe existed before the Big Bang.
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 09:31 pm
[community profile] summerofthe69 has posted its theme calendar.  There are some double themes this year.  The fest will run 6/9 through 9/6.  This activity may appeal to people with writing, art, romantic, and/or blogging goals. 
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 08:35 pm
How Your Backyard Birds Realize You Are Trying To Help Them

This documentary explores the cutting-edge science behind the "Benefactor Shift." We examine peer-reviewed studies from the University of Vienna, Cambridge University, Oxford, and published research in Animal Behaviour, Science, and Ecology Letters to decode how wild birds read human intentions, test our cooperativeness, and use us as literal shields against the natural world.

Read more... )
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 08:18 pm
These are active communities in Dreamwidth from Winter 2025-2026. They include things I've posted, but only the active ones; the thematic posts also list dormant communities of interest. This list includes some communities that I've found and saved but haven't made it into thematic posts yet. This post covers J-Z.

See my Follow Friday Master Post for more topics.

Read more... )
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 06:21 pm
Title: Pink Slime
Author: Fernanda Trias
Translator: Heather Cleary
Genre: Literary fiction

Last night I finished book #18 from the “Women in Translation” rec list, which was Pink Slime by Fernanda Trias, translated from Spanish by Heather Cleary. Pink Slime is a dreamy nightmare of a novel set in the aftershocks of an ecological disaster as one woman struggles to hold onto her life.

Nothing is as it once was: society has been upended by the “red wind” that kills anyone caught in it; the narrator is divorced from the husband she first met in childhood; and she has left her job in journalism to work as a caretaker for a disabled young boy.

This is a reflective book; there is very little plot. It drifts between the narrator’s present, her memories of the past, and in some cases, a future-tense look at the next few minutes. She observes the ways the government tries to cover for the damage the red wind continues to do, and the way society continues to fracture. She continues to visit her ex-husband in the hospital, although his condition never changes. She continues to fight with her mother.

In some ways, Pink Slime is a story about someone trying to hold onto a life that is already gone. The narrator clings to the past, for obvious reasons—it was better than her present. And yet, nothing new can be made until she releases that hold.

The thing that will stick with me most about this book is the birds. In the narrator’s world, the birds have gone. Where, no one knows. It is a topic of frequent discussion among the townsfolk. Will the birds come back? It reminds of a line from a Florence + The Machine Song: “What if one day there’s no such thing as snow?” Ecological disaster brings with it a poignant grief. How do you explain birds to a child who’s never seen them but in picture books? What is lost for each of us when an animal or plant or phenomenon is destroyed?

I enjoyed the morose, grief-stricken mood of the book, but it does feel directionless at times in a way that’s not wholly captivating. I can’t say what I take away from it on the whole. I would be curious to read more from this author.


Saturday, May 23rd, 2026 12:35 am
Happy belated 520 Day, everyone!

Our annual Guardian Reverse Exchange revealed two days ago, and our collection is full of gorgeous works! We have a whole bounty of drama and novel works, fanfic, fanart, podfic and vids this year. So happy-making! :D

My own exchange experience this year is all Ya Qing-centric, yay! I received a delightful Ya Qing vid from [personal profile] amedia:
These Boots [General]
Characters/Relationships: Ya Qing & Zhu Jiu, Ya Qing & Wang Xiangyang, Ya Qing & Ye Zun, Ya Qing & Ying Chun
Content Tags: Celebrating BAMF!Ya Qing, 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange 2026, Prompt Fill, Gift vid, Fanvids, Short vid (just over a minute)

Summary: Ya Qing is SO DONE with all her co-conspirators.

And I wrote a Ya Qing/Zhu Hong fic myself, for [personal profile] plingo_kat:
Unwritten (3,017 words) [Teen]
Relationship: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong
Characters: Ya Qing, Zhu Hong, Ying Chun, Snake Tribe's Fourth Uncle
Content Tags: Post-Canon, Post-Fix-It, Guardian Treaty, Yashou Worldbuilding, Yashou History, Fu You's Legacy, High Chief Zhu Hong, Pre-ship, First Kiss

Summary: It's foolish to have a quarrel with a dead woman, but Ya Qing does. She's had it for years, ever since she began to realise how much the Guardian Treaty and Yashou neutrality were holding her people back. Fu You's legacy looms large among all the Yashou tribes, and everything Ya Qing did was to try and escape it.
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 05:12 pm
So the Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network, where I volunteer, is scraping the bottom of their bond fund. If you have a few pennies to toss, now would be a really exceptional time.

(I personally have been scratching my head trying to figure out what kind of best talent show this town has ever seen might be helpful to the overall cause, so I guess if there's anything you've ever wanted to see me do or post about particularly that might work as a fundraising incentive, let me know???)
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 09:49 pm

The only thing I am going to say about the draft EHRC guidance that has been laid before Parliament today is what I got in the email from Not A Phase this evening.

FUEL JOY. FUND RESISTANCE.

A final draft of the EHRC’s Code of Practice has been laid before Parliament by the Women & Equalities Minister. While the update is undeniably regressive for the UK’s trans+ community, please keep in mind:

* The Code is important, but it does not change the law.

* There is no criminal law prohibiting trans+ people from gendered spaces such as bathrooms.

* There are no laws allowing harassment in bathrooms.

* Gender reassignment is still considered to be a protected characteristic, meaning trans+ people are legally protected from harm in all settings.

* Venues are not obligated to become gender police, nor are they legally required to have gendered spaces (such as gendered bathrooms). Going fully gender neutral is an option.

Then a link to their full statement, and to donate, and I know a good marketing campaign when I see it but it really is true that these donations fund joy. What I call transgym here all the time is in fact a Not A Phase program, so from this I get all the mental and physical benefits of exercise, community, confidence to work out safely on my own without hurting myself or perishing from social anxiety, and a better relationship to my body. It's no exaggeration to say it's one of the few things that's made the biggest positive difference to my life in the last few years.

Friday, May 22nd, 2026 10:13 pm
[community profile] booknook's Paid Account expires on 2026-06-05. It will then revert to the default, free account type. I received the notification via email and thought some people might appreciate the warning. I'm not the one that upgraded [community profile] booknook. I also don't know who did (but am very grateful!). So this post is in case anybody is depending on [community profile] booknook's Paid Account features. I hope this isn't too disruptive to anybody's use of [community profile] booknook.
Tags:
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 02:55 pm
I really need there to be a Baby Yoda in Spaceballs II: The Search For More Money.

Extra bonus points if he's called Go-Gurt.

I have no plans to watch the Grogu movie. But I want a Go-Gurt shirt.
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 01:25 pm
The closer I get, the more I'm looking forward to this, fully online though it is. That aspect does take some of the shine off the con weekend - there's a limit to what can be managed as far as dealers' room, art room, etc go when you're working out of zoom rooms, Discord channels and the dreaded google whatevers - but still.

I'm three quarters of an hour, give or take, from my first panelist slot of the con and... asking myself the eternal question: Is that a worn spot in the fabric, or is that schmutz on my shirt? :P

Wheeeee!
Friday, May 22nd, 2026 01:23 pm
Today is cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a small mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I filled in the two big pots. I added 4 assorted coleus and 1 dusty miller to the grape pot. I didn't have time to pick up a white trailing filler like sweet alyssum this time, but the pot still looks pretty good and will look better once the small coleus grow out some. I added 2 blue lobelias and 1 dusty miller to the blue pot.

This would've been a lot easier if I could've bought everything for those pots at the same time, but it was a case of one place having nice accents but no fillers vs. other places having affordable fillers but not nice accents. *sigh* The lack of widely available fillers is a serious pain in the ass. I use those to unify the diverse plantings: dusty miller, white or colored alyssum, white or blue lobelia.

So I've got 6 dusty millers and 6 blue lobelias to mix and match with other things or find somewhere else to put. I've got 4 coleus left, which will make one or two pots depending on size. Progress! Finishing those two big pots was my top priority for today. \o/

Also I'm really loving the fan flower I tried new this year. It looks like half a flower with petals on only one side, and makes a great component in a mixed pot. It came in multiple colors; I got a white one. It's in a pot with a new spreading yellow thing that's also new, and a yellow-and-white nemesia. Nemesia is beautiful and comes in many colors, but it's a bit delicate and has died on me in the past. The ones I got this year are thriving though. These are all things I bought in individual pots. If I could get them in 4-packs, I could do more with them, but the higher price of individual pots limits what I can do.

I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I potted up the remaining coleus in two medium pots, each with 2 coleus and 1 dusty miller. Those look pretty good.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I planted 2 blue lobelias and 1 white impatien in the rain garden. I potted up the rest of the impatiens in two pots with a dusty miller each.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I filled a trough by the new picnic table with most of the remaining flowers: 8 vinca in the middle (various shades of pink and white), plus each end has 1 dusty miller between 2 blue lobelias. The color combination is a bit odd, but hopefully it will attract more pollinators.

Something has been eating the leaves off some of my marigolds. I have no idea what. Most insects avoid it because of the smell and taste.

Also earlier in spring, I built a large tomato cage from sticks. The tomato and peas in that one are dramatically bigger than the others. I may make more of those, although it does get in the way a lot more than the short metal cages.

It's spitting rain, but not enough to make me come in early.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

It's drizzling more steadily now.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 5/22/26 -- I planted the last 3 red-and-yellow marigolds in the barrel garden.

I sowed zinnia seeds in the tulip bed, north notch of the prairie garden, and middle north-south strip. I sowed blanketflower seeds along the middle strip.

The rain seems to have let up.

I am done for the night.