conuly

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

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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.

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

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OMGWTF

This is not a drill. Contact everybody.

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

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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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.

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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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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(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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"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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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.

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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It's a nicer place - and a lot less busy! - than the other one, even if I did have to take a long bus ride to get there and then cross Hylan. They need to put a sign on their front door, the one that's locked, saying that the main entrance is around the corner. I mean, I figured it out, but....

I gotta say, I'm a little weirded out that they asked me to just confirm my SSN. What if I remembered it wrong? Oh god, what if I did misremember it? I've had it memorized literally since before my father died, when I was a kid, but I always worry that I memorized it wrong and I've been switching up two specific digits this entire time. Normally I'd just check, but as my card is misplaced that's obviously not a thing I can do.

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and somehow or another I still can never recall the plot. I'm not even sure if the problem is that I never understand the plot as I read it or if the problem is that I understand it just fine but forget it immediately thereafter.

And yes, I've read Deep Secret. It's not as helpful as it ought to be. Anyway, just boasting, because that makes this an even better find than usual!

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Or, rather, a list of lists. There will likely be some overlap.

Newsweek

IAmerica

Mobilize

Fiftyfiftyone

The NYC Bar protest

A different NYC protest

Please share!

Although, for some inexplicable reason many of them straight up refuse to say "picture book" and will instead talk themselves into circles describing picture books instead.

Anyway, for what probably is a more explainable reason, lots of them falter when trying to describe what the artwork looks like. They'll either say "It's sorta like a cross between X and Y" or they'll say "It's weird/unusual/unique", which is a completely useless statement.

I've got a few standard questions I ask when I'm trying to get them to actually be clear, but I'm wondering if anybody has any other suggestions that might be helpful. ( Shoving mine under a cut so as not to influence people's thoughts unduly )

Also, don't want this getting buried in links: Compilation of Protests and Actions Against the UK Supreme Court

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Clicky!

Also, I meant to say re: the utilities that you are all the best and I absolutely love you :)

(Still need to call National Grid and still don't wanna.)

And they make you show up in person for an interview after, so I made my appointment for today, very carefully in Manhattan because that's easier for me to get to than the office on Staten Island.

I don't know for sure if it's their screw-up or mine, but my appointment did not go through. Judging from the conversation I had with the guard, plus the ones I overheard, this is not an uncommon problem. I tried to reschedule, but the best I could do is tomorrow - at fucking Hylan Boulevard, exactly where I did not want to go.

At least I can take consolation in the fact that I handled the situation with good grace. When I showed up, there was one woman in the whole crowd of people complaining about it, very loudly, about how obviously she made an appointment because how else would she even know the office was here, she made it in Manhattan on purpose, she lives in Jersey, and on and on and on, and she was still complaining when I'd given up on convincing the system to let me reschedule for the same office, thanked the guard for his advice to screenshot the confirmation screen right away, and left.

I don't see what she thought all that complaining was going to do. If I'd thought asking them to squeeze me in would work I would have tried that, but I guess that, having already wasted half her day, she thought the best option was to waste the rest of it as well.

That's insane for NYC April, right?

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