Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Feels good to be physical

Aug. 31st, 2025 05:57 pm
flexagon: (squirrel)
[personal profile] flexagon
Overall, I had a really nice week of focusing on what I wanted to focus on, taking it easy in between energetic bouts of focus, and feeling good about all that. I went back to basics as was foretold by the prophecies my last post; cooked a bunch of chili on Monday and ate it all week for lunch, and did a lot of working out, and created a new tracker sheet for Things I Would Like to Be Maintaining. The day I did that is the first day I really did my desired two sets of pistol squats, so I got to write that down and be happy about it! I'm also flirting with my old straddle pancake program (owww, I can feel that) and trying to think how much cardio to do, and finding motions that really get at the jank in my shoulders. I've invented a sort of weighted chicken flapping action that I like a lot, for that last thing; I also have a backbend semiprivate buddy and a walkover semiprivate buddy, which is wonderful and makes me feel like I have companions for the journey.

I attended my town's condo board meeting, and watched them approve the conversion of my condo-to-be. Apparently one has to declare one's intention on that kind of conversion, and then there's a waiting period of a year before the conversion can happen?

Time was spent with the next generation of humans:
  • I hung out with the baby squirrel all day on Friday, and it was pretty nice. We made blue Jell-O with gummy sharks in it (more amusing than delicious, to my adult taste buds), and timed their laps on a bicycle in the small nearby cemetery while also getting to talk with [personal profile] apfelsingail, and hung out snuggling and playing Blue Prince for a lot of the afternoon. I didn't get hooked on Blue Prince last time I played, but this time I think maybe I'm more interested and might buy it for myself?

  • Today I took a long walk with Birdie, who's back from two weeks in Italy and more or less prepared for classes to start. We came back to my place and I dug up some baby pictures of her that she'd never seen, from when her parents brought her to visit my apartment in summer 2003, and she gave Caltrop a present of a little bird-shaped cat toy. We found a good spot for outdoor handstand photos over behind the high school, but didn't indulge... this time.


Time also was spent with my partners, of course: watching Wednesday with the bug, and going to the deCordova sculpture museum with the squirrel. The snuggle is real.

I've been listening to Someone You Can Build a Nest In, because it won the Nebula, and it's funnier than I expected but also extravagantly mid-2020s-progressive and full of plot holes; I have no idea how it won the Nebula. Or where the science fiction has gone, really, from the whole list of finalists. Even the Hugo finalists are packed with SF/F hybrids this year (the two SF entries are both by Adrian Tchaikovsky, who seems determined to move the "genre" industry toward SF as a solo effort and through sheer volume). Where's a science fiction fan to get her recommendations? Maybe the Arthur C Clarke award... though that's limited to books that are published first in the UK, maybe that's less restrictive than it sounds.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] 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.

Moon of the Crusted Snow

Aug. 31st, 2025 11:05 am
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice, 2018 sf novel. The power and phones go out in a small Ojibwe Anishinaabe community in northern Ontario; they slowly realize there is a more widespread (national? global?) breakdown happening, although they (and we) never find out much about it. I found this most interesting in its low-key "how might these people react and adapt to this" parts and less interesting when it got bogged down in the inevitable white man antagonist trying to take over/take advantage. I mean, that definitely is how that would go down and it's fair for Rice to say so but I didn't really feel like we needed an antagonist beyond the situation. I have heard the idea before that for indigenous/First Nations people the apocalypse already happened (in 1492/1620/local year of colonization); Rice states that explicitly, in a conversation between the protagonist and the wise elder, that their world has ended repeatedly and they've survived, so this apocalypse is just another one. Possibly this book is one of the places that originated or popularized that idea? Anyways it felt like an important work of the postapocalyptic genre, and I'm definitely curious to read the sequel and see where Rice takes it.

Where the Axe Is Buried

Aug. 30th, 2025 04:24 pm
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler, 2025 science fiction novel. Some interesting stuff going on here, but it didn't quite come together in the end for me; I went back and did some rereading which helped, but I continue to have various issues with this book which I am of course going to talk about at length as I do, behind the cut.

Read more... )

Anyways. Interesting book and I'll be curious to see whether it makes the Hugo ballot with his related novella having just won.
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
If you missed the live recording of the Murderbot interview episode at WorldCon, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JRHSABM24

This includes the special message to me that the show's cast sent, which was awesome.


***


I'm still sick, but getting better bit by bit.

Among Ghosts

Aug. 29th, 2025 12:22 am
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
Among Ghosts, Rachel Hartman, 2025 YA fantasy (or possibly middle-grade? really heavy/graphically violent middle-grade??). Set in Goredd some years/decades/(centuries??) prior to Amy or Seraphina/Tess, but was written to stand alone and imo would read just fine if you've never read any of her other work. There is a *lot* going on here in terms of plot elements/characters/things needing resolution but I felt like it all fit together and hung together. More emotionally resonant for me than the second Tess book. Some really heavy/bleak events and backstory but I thought Hartman handled it well (matter-of-factly without downplaying); she also did a really nice job with the lighter and happier stuff. A sequence involving a bird was just gorgeous (as well as doing a neat job of letting her fill in some of the stuff happening outside the protagonist's POV). I do recommend this but I wouldn't give it to a younger reader without getting a rundown on some of the content, which I suppose I will put behind this cut.

Read more... )

Second cut for more specific spoilers Read more... )

Wanted, A Gentleman

Aug. 29th, 2025 12:10 am
psocoptera: ink drawing of celtic knot (Default)
[personal profile] psocoptera
Wanted, A Gentleman, KJ Charles, romance. (Not actually sure if it was a novel or novella.) I'm behind on writing up books so I'm doing them easiest-post-first instead of chronologically. The publisher of a personal-ads newspaper teams up with a formerly enslaved businessman to find the eloping daughter of the latter's former enslavers, with a lot of attention to what it might have felt like to be trying to make long rapid journeys by stagecoach. Charles is so good at making her characters people (and people who I feel like I haven't met before, even if they are also tropey or types).

(no subject)

Aug. 28th, 2025 04:55 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
It's my birthday! gosh wow!

Long time viewers may be familiar with Kat's birthday lore, which is this: Please join me in celebrating my birthday! The way you do so is by eating ice cream and ideally snapping a photo of it, or you, or both and sending it to me. This can happen literally anywhere in the world, and it can happen literally anytime (I've been getting photos for about two weeks now!)

The "ice cream" part is not literal --anything that feels to you like a treat, ideally frozen, counts!

If you are local, there are two bonus celebratory options:

1) COME DANCE WITH ME TONIGHT! I am running a "no-planning-just-vibes" Scottish Country Dance tonight, Thursday, 8/28, 7-9pm in the NESFA clubhouse (504 Medford St, Somerville). We're gonna do mostly Scottish by people requesting dances or figures, but I might throw in some ceilidh, a few waltzes, heck, maybe a bit of blues...we'll make it work!

2) COME EAT ICE CREAM WITH ME TOMORROW! I am gonna do my usual Davis Square Ice Cream Adventure tomorrow, Friday, 8/29. I plan to be in Davis from about 7:30pm-11pm, and get ice cream for myself at 8pm and 10pm. Join in for as little or as much of that as you fancy! Bring a friend I've never met if that friend wants to eat ice cream! Wave at me as you ride through the square on your way to something else! Come at the last possible minute and encourage a bad decision staying-up-to-late party! The possibilities are endless, it's Friday night woot woot!

(there may or may not wind up being a "well dang I also really like Gracie's, y'all wanna hang in Union instead" at some point this weekend. Watch this space. Planning is easier when it's not also the beginning of the school year)

~Sor
MOOP!

historical farm life

Aug. 27th, 2025 06:22 pm
the_shoshanna: Merlin, reclining (for the history)
[personal profile] the_shoshanna
Thanks to [personal profile] dorinda, I've been introduced to the BBC's historical farm series, in which a historian and a couple of archeologists spend a year working a farm as it would have been worked in some historical period, ranging from WWII to the Tudor era. I really like them! They're not deep history, but seeing how things work in practice (what does it look like, feel like, smell like to thatch a roof? make cheese? light a coal range?) is fascinating, and the people doing it are delightful. It's generally the same three in all the series, with a couple others popping in -- I'm really sorry Chloe Spencer, who was in the first series, didn't return for the later ones, because I really liked her, and it was nice to see two women working together; after that it's just Ruth Goodman, the historian, with a couple of men. (Except that her daughter, a specialist in historical clothing, sometimes joins her, which is very fun!)

I love how the reenacters interact with each other. They all get along, and there's no manufactured tension, just occasional gentle joshing, as when Peter lost the dice throw and had to be the one to dig out the seventeenth-century-style privy they'd been using. ("This job is grim," he tells the camera.) The food is especially interesting to me! It looks more varied and tastier than I'd often have expected; obviously most of the recipes that survive from the earlier periods are on the luxe end, and they're portraying fairly well-off farmers, but even so, when you're sticking to period ingredients and cooking methods (no cooking oil or fat other than animal fat! sealing the oven door with flour-and-water paste!), I was expecting a bit more, well, pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, you know? Which, to be fair, they do also eat. And the WWII urgency to massively increase domestic food production, which (not being British) I didn't really know about, drives that series in fascinating ways -- as do the effects of rationing.

It took me a long time to think, wait, are they really drinking raw milk in all these early-set series? It sure looks like it! At the beginning of the first series, I think it was, which reenacts 1620, the voiceover notes that, due to modern health and safety laws, they can't actually live in the cottage; but then later on they do seem to be living in it, given that they're using the privy at night (and washing clothes with ammonia derived from their own rotted urine), so I'd love to know more about that kind of behind-the-scenes stuff. Sometimes I almost yelp "At least tie a cloth over your faces!" when they're doing something like sweeping out decades of powdery dried birdshit from cottage rafters. (Did you know that the wing of a goose makes an excellent duster! I do, now!) But in general I trust that they took reasonable safety precautions, despite the occasional offhand comment about falling off a roof or being butted by a cow...and anyway the shows are 12-20 years old, so it's too late to worry about it!

But they're pleasant and interesting and warmly human and I recommend them to anyone who might like that kind of thing, because it's the kind of thing you might like! Also some of the scenery and cinematography is gorgeous.

Back

Aug. 27th, 2025 10:46 am
marthawells: Murderbot with helmet (Default)
[personal profile] marthawells
I'm back, sort of. We did a week of vacation after WorldCon, then got sick on the last day, so I'm still recovering. Covid tests were negative, so I think it's just a bad cold. It probably wouldn't be so bad if we hadn't had to do a full day of travel from 6:00 am to 10:30 pm to get home.


More later, but one of my favorite things was the really wonderful piece that N.K. Jemisin wrote about me for the program book.



***

Big thing I wanted to mention here: https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books

This is a 14 ebook Humble Bundle from Tor, (DRM-free as usual) and you can select a portion of the price to donate to World Central Kitchen.

it's been way too long

Aug. 26th, 2025 04:12 pm
the_shoshanna: a menu (menu)
[personal profile] the_shoshanna
have a recipe! I've made this twice in the last week or so, it's freaking fantastic.

Roasted Squash and Kale Salad

2 delicata squash
olive oil
2 bunches kale
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp smoked paprika
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
⅛ ground cloves
⅛ cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
½ Tbsp brown sugar
1 cup pecans, roughly chopped
½ cup dried cranberries
½ red onion, minced
2 Tbsp maple syrup
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 425°F. Halve the squash lengthwise, scoop out seeds, and slice into half-inch-thick semicircles. Toss squash pieces with a little olive oil and spread them on a couple of baking trays (I use silicone baking mats), overlapping as little as possible. Bake about 25 minutes, until some pieces are browning on top; flip them halfway through if you like. When they come out, dump them into a large bowl.

Meanwhile, strip the kale leaves from the stems and roughly chop the leaves. (I generally dice the stems and save them for soup or the like, but you can also dice them and use them here, or just toss them if you're not a fan.) When the squash comes out of the oven, pile the kale on the baking trays, drizzle the piles with a little olive oil, and toss and massage the leaves with your hands (watching out for the hot tray underneath) until they're well coated and a bit tender. Bake the leaves in the same oven until wilted and crisp in some spots, about 5-10 minutes. When they come out, add them to the bowl with the squash.

Meanwhile, combine the cinnamon, paprika, nutmeg, cloves, cayenne pepper, and brown sugar in a small bowl, add the nuts and 1 or 2 tablespoons olive oil, and toss to coat. When the kale comes out of the oven, spread the nuts on the baking trays (here is where a baking mat is great, since otherwise melting sugar might stick) and bake them in the same oven until toasted and candied, about 5 minutes. Add them to the squash and kale; be sure to scrape in any coating that has come off the nuts. Add the cranberries as well.

Meanwhile, in the same bowl in which you mixed the nuts and their coating (which surely still has a fair bit of leftover coating mix in it), whisk together the onion, maple syrup, mustard, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice. Whisk in more olive oil, anything from another couple tablespoons to a quarter-cup. Taste and adjust. When you have it as you like it, pour the dressing over the salad and toss everything together. Eat warm or at room temperature.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

(no subject)

Aug. 25th, 2025 11:36 pm
sorcyress: Drawing of me as a pirate, standing in front of the Boston Citgo sign (Default)
[personal profile] sorcyress
First day of school!

Here are some patterns that I did today that I really like:

*Got out of bed at the first hit of my alarm.

*Got the dishes out of the dishwasher before eating breakfast

*Read book on the bus to and from work

*Zeroed my work email inbox for the day

*Dealt with any dishes hanging out (including the handwash stuff) when I got home from work

Here are some things that aren't patterns but also got done today:

*Hung out with Clayton, my work-bestie, for a goodly chunk of time

*Had very productive Geometry work-group, which is especially nice because it's basically the same people as last year, but was a WAY less contentious first meeting

*Spent over an hour chatting with my new mentee, who is _shiny_ new to teaching and I really hope continues to maintain their optimism and enthusiasm and stuff. I think they will, they're excitable but also in their late twenties so not quite as naïve as some.

*Did some of the HR paperwork which is especially fun because I ignored it all last year. This includes watching the entire Conflict of Interest training, which is an hour of unskillable, un-speedable modules which must be watched in order and if you leave one in the middle you have to restart it from the beginning. I also read the ten minute summary which I'm pretty sure sufficed to do the thing, but I have strong feelings about actually reading the shit work makes me sign.

*To be clear, I read the summary first and watched the video at home while playing Stardew Valley, I'm not paid enough to give _that_ my full attention.

*Attended a bunch of meetings and stuff, mostly fine-to-good. As I have previously observed, the fewer people in the meeting the more useful and interesting it gets.

So it's a pretty good first day! I am feeling cautiously optimistic about the fact that the school has not introduced dozens of all new structures that will definitely fix everything, and instead is working to improve and refine the existing structures. (Okay, there is one new structure, but it is to replace an old one that stopped existing, so it should be the same ideas within a slightly different workflow. And even that, the principal was like "yeah, I expect it to be good this year and awesome three years from now" so she at least claims to understand change takes time.)

Being temporarily disabled is a drag, but having the cane felt both good as a visual indicator, and genuinely useful for any of the standing around. My boss absolutely fished for details and got as much as "yep, it was something I needed and it will heal soon". (Clayton on the other hand got "my gyno wouldn't let me keep my uterus once it was out but he took pictures for me!" and this is part of the difference between Real Friend and Boss).

It was nice to see all my coworkers, including some unexpected heart-lifting delights. It turns out I do like the adults I work with and not just the kids!

First day with kids is Wednesday (one class for two hours of orientation) and then Thursday I see all five of my classes bang-in-a-row. I can live with the exhausting Thursdays because they mean I have a prep last block again, which is so deeply superior to having a prep penultimate block like I did last year (and therefore having a short time to rest before having to go back and teach more which is so hard to drag yourself to).

For now, I am going to get some ice cream with Austin, and then continue to take it easy for the rest of the evening. Maybe I'll even get to bed at early-bedtime instead of late.

I hope the things you do bring you joy as well.

~Sor
MOOP!
flexagon: (Default)
[personal profile] flexagon
This last week's theme, if there was a theme, was "staying up until 1AM reading". Also, half-assing my workouts, which is something I'm explicitly working on fixing. (Half-assing my lunches is strongly related; I'm not quite eating enough early in the day.)

Fun thing: playing Öoo from end to end. You play as a cute caterpillar who looks like the game title, and it's just an inventive little puzzle-platformer that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Also fun: reading The Witch Elm with the bug as part of our two-person book club. I am starting to feel a little torn on Tana French; she writes wonderfully about deep friendships but also has a lot of idiotic male main characters, and wanting to wring their necks while I'm reading isn't always pleasant. She also writes smart women, and sure enough, my favorite book of hers so far has the smart woman as the narrator. Looking over her books, I think there's one more of those.

Confusing: spending a few hours pulling black swallow-wort (or sometimes just its pods), on the nicer days and while listening to Alien Clay on audiobook. It's a pleasant enough endeavor, and I'm up for an hour or so when it's nice out, but it's hard to know whether I'm doing any good.

Slow: the buying-a-condo project. I spent time on it last week, measuring windows -- they're all the same -- and ordering window blinds, privacy window film, coat hooks. Also applying for homeowners' insurance for the thing. And informing the closing agents that the way I'm taking title is Sole Ownership, thankyewverymuch... of the options they offered me, all of them were for joint title. Feeling the burn of being a single person in a world designed for couples, I guess, and I'm not even single!

I submitted my second crossword puzzle to the NYT, this one aiming at much earlier in the week. It's easier; the theme is simple but cute. Construction of the puzzles is a little bit dangerous for me, in that it can be very distracting and engaging. In terms of feedback loops, dynamism and discovery, the "fill" part is midway between a video game and programming... both of which are known to bring on flow states, and make people wonder where the last 2-3 hours went. So, while I think this is a fun creative thing and suits my needs in a lot of ways, I also should be careful with it. (With that said, I have a proof of concept complete on my third puzzle. My plan is to take a break from filling to re-score a bunch of words, and give the poor flooded NYT staff a chance to accept or reject the first two puzzles. They have a limit of 3 in the queue per constructor, anyway).

All of this is in the continued context of wanting to wind down the big projects and do a better job with smoothly running my days. In particular, I want to be exercising differently. Lots of things are going great, but some are not. It's been pretty easy, over the last few weeks, to start addressing the various bits of joint jank that had built up in my body -- and this is part of the "going great" -- but it's been less easy to regain some of the strength moves I used to maintain as an absolute minimum a few years ago. So I want to get more regular about those. So far the Turkish Get-Ups are on their way back, just the way I used to do them, and I am LOVING that; but chinups are much slower to return, and I probably will need to get back to 3x/week to get real gains there at this point. Pistol squats too. In general it's always been harder for me to gain than to maintain, and standard strength moves haven't been my #1 fitness priority for the last few years of handstand obsession, but I miss them. I know it might be harder to get them back now that I'm older, but I also let them go for a while, so who can tell? I want to pick them back up. And as mentioned earlier, that means I need to start eating better lunches. Back to basics, as a true priority, is likely to feel really good. So with that, I'm getting on the elliptical machine like I meant to an hour ago. :P