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But so it doesn't get lost in the crowd, don't forget about the protest on the 14th!

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Ideally something I can get through the NYPL or the Queens Public Library (I haven't yet re-upped my Brooklyn Public Library card. I ought to go do that this weekend or the week after.)

I suppose I should set a good example and rec something to all of you first. Lemme see....

I did recently enjoy both Long Live Evil and How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying!

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This is the same little squirrel that's been trying to break into my bedroom for the better part of the past ten days. Once it actually got into the house it was immediately chased by a cat and had cause to regret all its life choices.

We removed the cat and opened the front door very wide and absented ourselves from the area, so we think it's gone now.

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I think it's a baby. Not just because it's so small, but because the other window squirrels will shamelessly stand up or bang on the glass if they think they can catch my eye, but when this one realized I was there it hunkered down very small and actually turned its face away a little.

I hope it's all right now that it's outside where it belongs.

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Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

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which is a soap opera with many of the trappings of a space opera. Interestingly, the show never comes down with a final opinion on whether or not it's a bad thing for those little planets to get absorbed by the empire/space UN or not - the protagonists mostly feel like it's awful, but almost everybody they meet who isn't from their home planets seems to think that it hardly matters who technically rules the planet so long as somebody does. But most of those people either have no context to claim an informed opinion or are themselves from the PSA, so....

On a different note, I continue to hold the opinion that their deceased friend may have had strong convictions, and he died for his beliefs, and he might even have been as remarkable and amazing as the two protagonists seem to believe, but he also sounds like a lot. Like the sort of person who doesn't want to get a cat because of abstruse concepts of moral philosophy that nobody cares about but him, but who sure is willing to keep arguing about it until they cave from sheer exhaustion, and then presumably keep arguing because they ought to have caved due to agreeing with his position.

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And I may have noticed that I need something new to listen to.

Now, I've said this before and I'll definitely say it again, but audiodramas are, hands-down, the gayest media I have ever consumed. So, in honor of the occasion, three lists:

The End's collection of LGBTQ+ audiodrama with at least one completed season

A search of Audiofiction.co.uk's entire catalogue for audiodrama with LGBTQ+ creators

A search of Audiofiction.co.uk's entire catalogue for audiodrama with LGBTQ+ characters

at one point Holden sleeps over at a former teacher's house and wakes up to find that teacher patting his head, which prompts Holden to leave.

And I guess we can interpret that scene and the teacher's motive in a lot of ways, but I gotta say, I never expected one of those ways to be "Well, it's obviously innocuous, and the fact that Holden interpreted it as a sexual advance proves he's lying about the 20 times he claims he's been the victim of sexual assault already".

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Which, I'm told, has prompted all the usual gross comments about the girl playing Hermione. Ugh. Why are people so disgusting?

(Also, fuck JKR, but she's not the one being awful inside this complaint. Not to fear, I'm sure she'll find a way to outclass them soon enough.)

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OP: Hey, looking for a board book series from when I was a kid! It was traditional fairy tales and fables, and the part I really remember is the illustrations! I'm sure if I see those illustrations I'll know it's the right book!

Me: Care to describe these illustrations? Even a little? Were they brightly colorful or more muted, or maybe black and white? Were they realistic or cartoony?

OP: Oh, they looked similar to the hare and the tortoise board game! Like, when I saw that I first thought it was the books!

Me: Oh, I guess you're gonna make me google that instead of providing a link, cool.

Guys, it turns out there are at least five different editions of this game, each one with a totally different art style.

Meanwhile, on a different thread on the same post:

Other Commenter: Could it be Aesop's fables?

Me, silently: WTF, buddy? That's not a suggestion.

OP: Oh, no, it was more colorful than that!

Me, a bit less silently: WTF? Like... what edition are we talking about? You need to help us help you!

All comments are paraphrased, but seriously.

Edit: I am absolutely dying at this point to ask who, exactly, OP thinks Aesop is, but that conversation is not going to go anywhere productive. I'd really better forget the whole thing.

That, or we have a new dog on the block that sounds a lot like a turkey and which will not shut up.

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Watch on YouTube

Apparently it references a short story. Who knew?

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The Wikipedia article on the motif of the star and crescent gave a lot more information than I'd expected, but I still don't know why it's so associated with Islam in the present day.

Speaking of symbols made literal, here is a snake saved from eating its own tail. I don't know anything about snakes, but this does look like a vet's office, so if the vet thinks that hand sanitizer is the way to go then it's probably the way to go. (Also, I strongly suspect most of the people in the comments talking about how hand sanitizer to make a snake not eat itself is animal abuse or that the fact that the snake did this is a clear sign of animal abuse don't actually know any more about snakes than I do. If they're right, it's not because they really know.)

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But time moves on. What, exactly, do you call "realistic contemporary fiction" once it's no longer contemporary? It's not exactly historical fiction either, since writers of historical fiction generally make specific choices in bringing the past to life, ideally with few or no whoppers of mistakes.

I sometimes say "then-contemporary", but... well, it sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?

(On a related note, it looks like now people are less likely to say "issues book" and more likely to say "social issues book", is that accurate? I'm not loving a change that involves using more words to get to the same meaning, but okay.)

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She can put weight on her foot, but after she walks for a while she doesn't want to. Still, it's recovering pretty rapidly, that's the important thing.

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So no vet trip, I guess!

but Paramount Plus won't cooperate at all. So I finally convinced E to watch some Prodigy with me!

Man, I really love that theme song. Also, I'm gonna just say, maybe it's because it's aimed at a younger audience but this show does the best technobabble - just enough to explain, not enough to confuse or bore.

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We're pretty clear on the cause, she got tangled up in some vines, and we've washed her foot carefully with soap and water. We'll wash all of her later and maybe soak her foot with some epsom salt, that should help. Well, I mean, the bath will just make her smell better, but the soak should help. I really, really don't want to go to the vet this week if I can avoid it, but if the swelling won't go down we may have to.

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A note to anybody who wants to read this: I get the impression that we're supposed to think that the "original" book was written with prose so purple it might as well have been in grape-scented marker. The effect can be a little much, but hey, at least nobody gazes outward with a glint in their silvery orbs, limpid, lambent, or otherwise! But yeah, if you aren't able to get into it within a chapter or two, that's not going to improve itself.

I liked it, but to be fair, I like most things I read.

Oh, one more warning - somebody at Goodreads was going on about the fact that the author either misunderstood or willfully misused the term "Ladies in Waiting" for this book. I don't quite agree that it's something to get so annoyed about, but we've all got our thing. I don't like books which have potatoes in pre-Columbian Europe (or not!Europe). You'll all be pleased to note that I observed no potatoes in this book.

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I named her that, not the company. I thought it was a pretty, old-fashioned name, something buoyed by the fact that Charlotte in Charlotte Sometimes is told by her 50-years-ago counterpart's younger sister that it's funny that she has such an old-fashioned name - and that book was written in the 1960s!

Take a look at how often the names "Emma" and "Charlotte" appear on each state's top three names for girls.

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but we've got a new semi-feral slipping into our house, one of last year's kittens. So, uh, I'm still not allowed to fix that basement window I guess?

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The comments rapidly go off the rails, but there are three links there to go through.

There's more linkage here.

I genuinely do not have the energy to read all of this. I will be sending out an email to my senators, I guess.

We skipped the one with the weird future Borg drone, because it's sad. And also the plot makes no sense - how can Seven's nanoprobes make a future drone just by assimilating the Doctor's mobile emitter? The logic does not hold up. Anyway, we'll go back to that episode later.

Then there's the one where we're told that Torres has been spiraling for months and that Paris has been pushing for his new Delta Flyer for at least as long, but actually both those things show up out of nowhere because TV hadn't really committed to arc-based storytelling at this point. And they resolve just as fast, too! Chakotay cures B'Elanna by shoving her forcibly into a holosimulation of watching all her Maquis friends die and then giving her a tough love lecture about how much people care about her. This can not be a valid therapeutic technique! Seems more likely to make it worse. But it doesn't - she develops new motivation, shakes off those survivor guilt blues, saves the (extremely rapidly built) Delta Flyer and all aboard with her brilliant quick thinking, and then eats banana pancakes with enthusiasm and a renewed zest for life.

Also, if she's got the medical knowledge of a first year nursing student then why the hell isn't she the one picking up extra shifts in Sickbay instead of Tom? That man gets too much plot. (For that matter, when Harry was in that weird AU, we found out that if he hadn't been on Voyager he would've gone into ship design and done pretty well for himself. The building the Delta Flyer plot should've been his endeavor, properly spread out over several episodes. Harry doesn't get enough of the plot.)

But really, Voyager needs to hire a few nurses, hire an extra doctor, and hire a fucking therapist. The Alpha Quadrant cannot possibly have a monopoly on therapy. (And in the meantime, would medication help B'Elanna?) The nurses and doctor could be hired temporarily, exchanging work for passage in Voyager's general heading. There's sure to be plenty of people willing to take that deal. The therapist would really be better off as a more long-term gig, but if they'd stop for a few weeks and really look I'm sure they could find somebody qualified who'd like to do some serious traveling.

Also also: Back when we met the Malon, the garbage hauler was pissy about them talking to their government about those converters because, as he strongly implied, the government would absolutely accept this technology, especially if it came free, with help from experts in setting it up. But... did Voyager even bother to talk to the Malon government, because they seem to have written off the entire culture.

And then we watched the episode where it turns out Species 8472, convinced that humans are a serious threat, have replicated the Academy in order to learn how to infiltrate Starfleet and gather intel for future defense. Which... honestly, the evidence they have against humanity is pretty damning. They only really have ever met two other cultures, one of whom is the Borg and the other of which allied with the Borg in order to slaughter them. And yes, Voyager even has a Borg on their very ship, like, I'd be worried about this too!

But this time Janeway flipped a coin and it landed on "diplomacy", so they tried that and it worked beautifully.

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The clowns running the FDA have proposed restricting access to covid vaccines, to people over 65 or who have certain medical conditions. There's a public docket for comments on the proposal.

Your Local Epidemiologist has a good post about the proposal, including that the people suggesting this know that nobody is going to do the placebo-controlled tests of new boosters they want to require.

Possible talking points include:

Families and caregivers wouldn't be eligible for the vaccine, even if they share a household, unlike the current UK recommendations.

Doctors, dentists, and other medical staff wouldn't be eligible either.

My own comment included that the reason I'd still be eligible for the vaccine is a lung problem caused by covid.

Seriously, this is just exhausting.

Any ideas? Should we give up and order new ones? What is that disgusting stuff anyway?

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Metafilter is having a, uh, lively discussion on whether or not this study proves that contemporary English majors can't read.

There's a lot of potential ways to divide the commenters into two groups, but the one I expected the most was "people who think the correct way to deal with unfamiliar references in literature is to immediately look it up" and "people who think the first group needs to learn to use context clues already".

As always, I am in the second group, and every time the first group appears in real life I find myself wondering if they somehow weren't taught this skill at school. I well remember the worksheets! (To be honest, they were a little hit or miss for me - 95% of the time they just used text with words they assumed the students would be unfamiliar with, which I was never actually unfamiliar with. But the other 5% of the time they used text with made up words or with blacked out bits of text, and that was fun, and presumably we all learned a great deal. Or at least in theory... one of the reasons I had such a good vocabulary as a kid was because I read so much and never looked anything up except for fun, so... well, the point is, my classmates probably learned something! And I use that skill every time I try to read something in Spanish.)

Anyway, I'm really posting this because of two reasons.

1. Somehow, nobody has posted about the lawyer cat from the pandemic. Did they all forget? Or not see that?

2. This paragraph: One of the interesting thing about the Inns of Court is that we have some early dance choreography and melody lines not found anywhere else, in a collection that was used there to teach the law students how to dance. Of course the choreography document predates Dickens by a couple of centuries...

Somebody needs to explain wtf is up with this because wtf.

Edit: No, I thought of a third thing, which I forgot because of the second thing.

3. When your kids are very little, every well-meaning person everywhere will tell you that it's all right for them to watch a little TV, just so long as you watch with them and discuss what you're watching, and ask them questions about it. Watch actively, and train them to do so. And it wasn't until the niblings were in middle school that I realized I wasn't actually doing that the way people keep saying - instead of talking about the plot and "what do you think happens next" my running commentary during TV shows and movies goes "Wow, that background music is awfully forboding for such an apparently hopeful scene" and "Ugh, he put a blanket over her, I guess they'll hook up now" and "That transition sure is cheesy!" and, once, "You think you'll be happy when you get to Omashu , but obviously not", which prompted the kids to ask why and I had to actually think about it. (Because they left the secret tunnel and then had to climb a mountain which blocked their view of the city while chatting about how amazing it'd be to get to the city. If everything was hunky-dory then there would've been no mountain, they would've emerged from the tunnel and seen the city right there.) I don't know if the way I did it was better or worse than what people kept saying to do, but it doesn't seem to have hurt the kids and their ability to pick up on foreshadowing!

With or without feet.

There's a few people in that thread adamantly going up and down asserting that, duh, how could the rest of us be so dumb as to not know that certain types of toilets are specifically designed to be flushed with the foot. None of them have provided any sort of evidence for this claim, which makes me think that their evidence boils down to "Mommy told me when I was a kid" or "Well, I flush with a foot so I just sort of assumed", and - man, I hate when people do that. Fucking back up your claims, or at least qualify them. "I was told by my preschool teacher, but I've never verified it" would be a lot more honest and less annoying.

Anyway, I have emailed the manufacturer most often mentioned in the comments to ask for their opinion. Mostly because that is how things ought to be done, but also because if these flushers are designed to be flushed with the foot, great, but if not then we have to ask if the other contingent, which is equally vociferously asserting that foot flushing increases wear and tear on the mechanism and causes breakdowns, needs to be taken seriously. Because what's really not okay is breaking the toilet for everybody who comes after you - and sure, you'll say that you are not the sole person responsible for breaking the toilet that much faster, but c'mon, everybody says that.

So let's see what we see, and in the meantime, let's also all wash our hands. With soap and water, thanks.

It was so long we had to resetup Paramount Plus on the PS4, which was a job and a half.

Also, Jenn kept trying to guess the ending for one episode so I've banned her from watching with us. I mean, not really, but I'll probably keep saying it for a few more days.

We watched the one with the Demon class planet, which is sorta meh all around but which is important context for one of my favorite ever ST episodes. It's weird that that's my favorite episode, as it's sad and bleak and also doesn't really go anywhere, but I love it.

Then there's the one where Seven's basically all alone for a month, and honestly, this was a terrible idea all around. Voyager is a big ship, you can't run it with two people, and that's if you can expect everything to work smoothly with no problems which obviously they couldn't because of the scary nebula. They should've gone around. Also, at the end Harry makes an ill-conceived joke about Tom being locked up in small places as a child, and what if he had been, Harry? You'd feel awful, and from now on that's my new headcanon. Tom laughed, but he was only hiding his pain....

(Also, it's super weird to me that one of the first evil hallucinations Seven manifested was a creepy creepster. She was a Borg! She was assimilated as a small child! Where was she even drawing that from!?)

Then there's the one with the slipstream drive that's all an elaborate trap, and my man, I get that you're crazed with grief but I think you should have bigger priorities than some petty revenge.

And then there's Night. The crew spends half the episode moping that they're going through a boring, starless region of space. You'd think they'd be happy that they finally have time to finish their concertos and catch up on their reading, but apparently not! They only perk up when they have a chance to avert a genocide. Which, lemme say, they didn't even fucking try with that garbage hauler. I get that the episode and his behavior is supposed to be about us, but they could've pointed out to him that if he comes back with them he can have a monopoly over this cleansing device and make money hand over fist, easily twice as much as he's making now with a lot less risk and labor. But no, they'd rather write Hoggish Greedly instead, even though that characterization doesn't make any damn sense and it requires the crew to be completely undiplomatic.

I mean, I guess I'd be happy too if I could singlehandedly stop a genocide, but damn, I like a little downtime! What is wrong with them? I think they were just itching for a fight, and that's why they picked one.

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in a pot, not in the dirt, but still.

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and sung them all to sleep and stolen all their hoarded gold and jewels and, idk, silk and spices and shit, and then she rows back to shore... using a broadsword? I mean, doesn't the boat already have oars? Actual oars, which will work better for their intended purpose? She doesn't need to jury-rig something, she can just steal his sword and row back in the normal way!

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OMGWTF

This is not a drill. Contact everybody.

Write to them, call them, do not stop pestering them.

One thing only, and it can be described as "Their awful dystopian presidency still isn't as bad as our real one".

This is the show where one character asserted his expertise in a certain matter on the grounds of being a Star Trek fanwriter, and then almost immediately thereafter suggested they take the elevator instead of the stairs. Nothing bad happened on the elevator, but nevertheless....

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For the job I would like the least, but any job is a job, right? So wish me luck. (Edit: No, nevermind. Dude called me before I left for the interview and kept me on the phone for an hour all to tell me he was certain the commute would not work out. This did not require an hourlong phone call, or, indeed, a phone call of any length at all.)

Also, today is A's birthday, so happy birthday! They will never see this.

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Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

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I repeat, a baby squirrel.

Or... well, a child squirrel? It's not a baby baby, it's furred and alone and eensy and also miserably wet. But not so teensy weensy that it obviously shouldn't be out by itself.

The Rusty Quill Big Bang is open for writer signups.

And by the way, there's an Ao3 feed for Stellar Firma, except I misspelled it because they're all British and their accents are non-rhotic:

ao3_stella_firma_feed.

Anyway, I definitely would recommend you listen to some of those audiodramas and maaaaaaybe do the fan thing as well.

I'm realizing now that I really ought to have some nice shirts that are short sleeves, maybe a skirt or two. It's gonna get hotter. Ugh.

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Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge sea worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

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Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

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it looks like they didn't even try here. But I guess "composing entirely new jokes and punchlines" is outside the job description.

Admittedly, the joke's not that funny in English either.

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Watch on YouTube

Several people have made comments to the effect that the Catholic Church is still, well, run by old Catholic men (and thus not as progressive as we might want) and I realize now that the correct answer to all such comments is “that’s really the crux of the matter”.

1. My neighbor liked this song so much he threw a brick through my window to hear it better.

2. A: Yeah I'm tone deaf in the sense that I'm really bad at distinguishing musical pitch, but I have no problem distinguishing tone in Punjabi or Mohawk (tonal contrasts exist only on stressed syllables)."
B: Most Southern Ontario comment of 2025
A: I've been clocked

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What we know:

He's not as photogenic as the previous one, way more photogenic than the one before.

He's an American (from Chicago) with Peruvian citizenship after having lived there many years.

He chewed out JD Vance that one time for being completely and utterly wrong and heartless.

He's about as progressive as we can hope for from Catholic hierarchies - no dramatic rebound to traditionalism, anyway.

He wasn't the bookies' favorite choice, so if you bet on him you made serious cash.

(and we've dug ourselves out of this hole) I'm putting as much as I can every paycheck towards eye surgery. I don't even want eye surgery, it sounds scarier than dental work, but at 43 I think I have to accept reality: I am never going to learn to reliably put my glasses somewhere they won't break and I won't lose them.

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Trapped, trapped, trapped, trapped, trapped on hold! Trapped on hold! Trapped on hold! Trapped on hold, on hold, on hold! Trapped!!!!! We apologize for the delay. Please hold!

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"Oh, we're going to make fun of this doofus and his inability to understand basic things, like how employment works!"

What I was actually listening to:

"Wow, at-will employment is super dystopian, good thing it doesn't exist in the UK! Or the EU, I guess!"

(They don't say "at-will employment", or mention that it exists elsewhere)

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and then we bumped into Casper, the Maine Coon. It was a very fluffy walk!

I still haven't seen Sebastian but my neighbor on the corner who has adopted the super friendly stray cat (not soon enough to prevent the most recent batch of kittens) told me she's seen him within the past few weeks.

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Text taken from

thisfinecrew:

A proposed rule was made to look like red tape reform, but it’s a power grab. It would let Trump fire thousands of key career civil servants with ease (think Schedule F 2.0).

Public comments are open until May 23.

Clicky!

They say such awful things to each other, and always at the top of their lungs. The neighbor on the corner was just complaining to me about it, but who can blame the kids? It's their parents! They're not there, and when they are there they're worse than the children are, and set a terrible example all the time.

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