oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-06-13 04:54 pm

Various & misc

Don't think I've previously either come across this or posted it, but who knows: Out on the Town: Magnus Hirschfeld and Berlin’s Third Sex: 'Years before the Weimar Republic’s well-chronicled freedoms, the 1904 non-fiction study Berlin’s Third Sex depicted an astonishingly diverse subculture of sexual outlaws in the German capital'.

***

Something else suitable for Pride Month: Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love (review):

provides an original and stirring account of a non-commodifying queer love between two women and nonhuman nature—a love that was the defining relationship of Carson’s life and yet has been downplayed in heteronormative tellings of her story. So, too, is Maxwell’s work a convincing argument for this queer love’s formative role in the writing of Silent Spring, as well as an empowering message about how embracing queer feelings might function as a catalyst for “political and personal power” in contemporary environmental politics.

***

I think I have some copies of The Pioneer journal associated with this club, but they are somewhere in the maelstrom (I am gearing up to Doing Something About this, having acquired intelligence of a body that will collect books for charity): The Pioneer Club (1892-1939): A ladies' club at the forefront of late Victorian social reform, which suffered a long, slow decline in the early 20th century.

***

Peter McLagan (1823-1900): Scotland’s first Black MP:

[S]ources suggest that McLagan’s mother was probably of Black Caribbean or Black African descent.... McLagan’s father, Peter McLagan (1774-1860)... enslaved over 400 people on his plantations and personal estate in Demerara.

In fact there is strong evidence as mentioned in that article that he was by no means the first Black MP. Issues of class and family connections clearly played a significant role up to the mid-C19th.

***

An ancient writing system confounding myths about Africa:

'How come a country that did not have a colonial past in Zambia had so many artefacts from Zambia in its collection?'"
In the 19th and early 20th Centuries Swedish explorers, ethnographers and botanists would pay to travel on British ships to Cape Town and then make their way inland by rail and foot.
....
The Swedish museum had not done any research on the cloaks - and the National Museums Board of Zambia was not even aware they existed.

***

Artist's work to restore damaged shell grotto (I put this in a short story once.) (My own theory is that it was originally A Folly. Doing things with shells was as I recall quite A Thing in the C18th and Mrs Delany and her mate the Duchess of Portland had a rather less concealed shell grotto?)

misura: AI8 - Kris carries his guitar (Default)
misura ([personal profile] misura) wrote in [community profile] smallfandomfest2025-06-13 05:36 pm

fanfic, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), Edgin/Xenk, Fake relationship

Title: tell me lies (tell me sweet little lies)
Author: misura
Fandom: Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Pairing/Characters: Edgin/Xenk
Rating/Category: PG/slash
Prompt: fake relationship
Spoilers: not really
Summary: Edgin asks Xenk to be his fake boyfriend. For Reasons.
Notes/Warnings: posted to the AO3
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal ([syndicated profile] smbc_comics_feed) wrote2025-06-13 11:25 am

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Print

Posted by Zach Weinersmith



Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
If someone does this and does, the liability lies with Canada.


Today's News:
conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2025-06-18 12:52 am

"Is there anything you'd like to tell us about yourself?"

No, but I'd like to tell you that you urgently need a proofreader. Are you aware that you just made me answer the same question about my desired salary three different ways? Once was plenty enough! Also, why are you asking what currency I want it in, and since you are asking, why is one time US dollar at the top of the drop down and the other two times it's alphabetical under "United States"? Did you even look at this before posting, and once again afterwards?

(These people really urgently need help with this, but unless this is a Secret Test I guess telling them wouldn't help me much.)

Alternative answer to the question: "Yes, I'd like to tell you that I really need money, please give me some, with or without hiring me first."

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


Read more... )
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
prettygoodword ([personal profile] prettygoodword) wrote2025-06-13 07:44 am

polyamory

polyamory (pol-ee-AM-er-ee) - n., the state or practice of having romantic or sexual relationships with multiple partners with the knowledge and consent of all involved.


Okay, so poly- means many rather than specifically large, but that's because operates on discrete rather than continuous sets. It comes from Ancient Greek polús, many, from a PIE root that meant both many and much, so agnostic on the discrete/continuum divide. As for the word, it was formed in 1992* as a derivative of polyamorous, which was coined in 1990 pairing it with Latin amor, love. Other words with poly- include polygamy ("many marriages"), which was used as a pattern for coining polyamory, and polyglot ("[speaking] many languages").

* Interestingly, the first recorded use is the proposal to create the Usenet group alt.polyamory.


Bonus prefix: I wanted to also use super- but it has many meanings other than just large, most related to being either over or above in literal or metaphoric ways. So it's a bonus.


And that wraps up a week of 'large' prefixes. While it's tempting to go onto a week of prefixes that are actually large/long, time to return to the regular mix next week.

---L.
chanter1944: a slightly faded picture of a three-legged torbie kitty cat (supermodel kitty)
Chanter ([personal profile] chanter1944) wrote2025-06-13 08:58 am

it's Friday the thirteenth

Ooga booga. If I encounter any black cats today, I'll count them as excellent luck. If there are construction-related ladders above me and I'm unaware of them until after I've walked under, however...
squidgestatus: (Default)
squidgestatus ([personal profile] squidgestatus) wrote2025-06-13 01:27 pm
Entry tags:

Back Up *MOSTLY*

All on-premises Squidge services (squidge.org, Image Hosting, SquidgeWorld, Classic Squidge, IRC) went down Thursday night at approximately 6pm Pacific time due to network issues.  We seem to be mostly up this morning, with the exception of Classic Squidge which only hosts a very small number of websites that depend on a very insecure, outdated version of PHP.  That said, there could still be burps here and there.  If you have questions, please let us know.  Thanks!
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-06-13 09:04 am

A Rebel’s History of Mars by Nadia Afifi



The embittered Martian aerialist and the nonconformist live a thousand-plus years apart, in different solar systems. What, then, connects them?

A Rebel’s History of Mars by Nadia Afifi
spikedluv: (summer: sunflowers by candi)
it only hurts when i breathe ([personal profile] spikedluv) wrote2025-06-13 07:49 am

The Day in Spikedluv (Thursday, June 12)

Again, I had some time before I had to drive to the hospital, so I got some chores and computer stuff done.

I did a load of laundry, the usual amount of hand-washing dishes, and scooped kitty litter. I finished System Collapse, watched an HGTV program, and sent my mom some more messages.

Temps started out at 67.8(F) and reached 77.7. It was so nice out this morning, I got in a walk before I left to go visit mom.


Mom Update:

Mom was miserable today. more back here )
sabotabby: (doom doom doom)
sabotabby ([personal profile] sabotabby) wrote2025-06-13 07:11 am
Entry tags:

podcast friday

I dunno, why not make yourself more anxious this week. It Could Happen Here has the ability to send James Stout, an experienced war journalist, to LA to cover the uprising against ICE kidnappings. There's a lot of coverage in today's episode, which I'm currently listening to, but for detailed reporting, listen to "On the Ground in LA."

The scale of the so-called riots will surprise you—they surprised me, and I've been to LA. It's a very big city and unlike during the wildfires, very little of it is actually on fire. The uprisings, which are direct responses to people's families, neighbours, and colleagues being kidnapped by an out-of-control paramilitary organization, are actually only a few thousand people. Which is not to denigrate the bravery of those people—quite the opposite!—but to poke holes in the regime's propaganda.

P.S. If you are going to a protest this weekend, please ignore that "non-violent wave" thing and other similar memes going around. It is an op. If violence erupts and you do not want to be involved, don't sit down. Get out of there. I do not want to see a generation of young protestors with traumatic brain injuries, please. Also avoid bridges (don't let yourself get kettled or arrested en masse), and if you get teargassed, use water, not milk or anything else. Stay safe, I love you.
sovay: (Lord Peter Wimsey)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2025-06-12 11:16 pm

Wish they'd drop the knife in the peep-show parking lot

Current events currenting as they are, I appreciated reading about Gertrude Berg and hearing the news from Spaceballs: The Sweatshirt. [personal profile] spatch came home with T-shirt swag for the latest Wes Anderson film and it is almost parodically minimalist with its screen-print of Air Korda.

I enjoyed Agatha Christie's Ordeal by Innocence (1958) so much that I am mildly horrified to discover that of the one film and three television adaptations to date, none appears to be simultaneously faithful to the novel and good. It doesn't push its interrogation of the amateur detective as far as Sayers or Tey, but it does care about what the question of justice looks like when the first fruits of a well-intended posthumous exoneration are neither closure not catharsis but instant rupture down all the fault lines of resentment, distrust, disappointment, and malice that the open-and-shut obviousness of the original investigation glossed over. Was justice even the spur to begin with, or just a belated alibi's anxious sense of guilt? The plot wraps up like its dramatis personae all had somewhere else to be, but until then it hangs out much longer in its misgivings than many of Christie's puzzles. Some of its ideas about adoption and heredity have worn much less well than its premise, but I like the scientist explaining that his work in geophysics is too technical to afford him to be absent-minded.

In all the studio-diorama aesthetic of the video for Nation of Language's "Inept Apollo" (2025), the shot of the Tektronix 2205 made it for me. I grew up with a 2465.
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
oursin ([personal profile] oursin) wrote2025-06-13 10:01 am

(no subject)

Happy birthday, [personal profile] arkessian and [personal profile] ironed_orchid!
pilottttt: (Default)
pilottttt ([personal profile] pilottttt) wrote in [community profile] common_nature2025-06-13 01:19 pm
Entry tags:

And now about the spiders

This big and scarysmall and not scary at all spider was discovered on our ceiling. It was my macro lens that made it big and scary ;)

See the big and scary spider )

conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt2025-06-13 03:24 am

(no subject)

Dear Meghan: Our 11-year-old daughter is not motivated by personal hygiene. She will shower when reminded to, but she does not wash her hair effectively (I still have to wash it for her sometimes to make sure it gets clean). She is in puberty and is starting to get pimples on her face, but she will not wash her face at night unless I basically walk her into the bathroom and do it with her. When she brushes her teeth in the morning, she still has morning breath afterward, so clearly is not doing an effective job.

I am at a loss. We have worked with her and, frankly, nagged her for years, and I’m just tired of it. Is this developmentally appropriate? We do not believe she is neurodivergent, and she’s a great kid — smart, social and involved in a lot of activities. I don’t understand this refusal to do the basics of effective personal hygiene. The approach we’ve been taking is clearly not working, so I would love some advice. Thank you!

— Nagging Not Working


Read more... )
torachan: (Default)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-06-13 12:20 am
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. So much ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh work stuff today, but I stopped at Disneyland on the way home and had a lovely dinner.

2. Ollie was just writhing around playing with this blanket for no reason. Super cute.