Next to the Pond

Learning how this works....

[javanne]

Hope you’re wellll 🫶🏼

Just sitting here reporting bot posts from fanfiction.net. Somebody's set up a fake ID and is posting advertisements for an AI site as comments. Can't delete them. Joy.

[javanne]

Holiday Mall Music

Really hate “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Perfect illustration of how people will treat you like shit until you have something they want. As long as it isn’t something they can take from you after beating you up. Or bully you into donating. What the song doesn’t mention, is that…🎵🎵🎵 next verse

The day after Christmas, the reindeer bullies go right back to their previous behavior. The next bad-weather Christmas, Santa, who’s been letting this bullying go on forever, finds out that Rudolph has left for a high-paying job at NORAD. 🎵🎮👾

Dasher and Dancer have to wear lanterns on their antlers. They enjoy a series of CFIT*s involving trees, hills, skyscrapers and mountains.

*CFIT: Controlled Flight Into Terrain

Three more days and Christmas music will be over for ten months.

[javanne]

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it!

Today is our Thanksgiving holiday. Usually it's a huge family feast, but this year it's just our household, four people. The virus that's going around has left us tired. We discussed the many traditional dishes and somehow they just did not appeal - they are a lot of work and a lot of cleanup. We decided upon one of our favorite meals plus an apple pie to make it special. Everyone immediately relaxed. The pie is in the oven, the chicken in its marinade, nobody is overworked or cranky. We are all thankful. Blessings to all.

[javanne]

Sending good wishes your way 💕 I hope the holidays have been good!

Thank you for your kindness. Holidays are still iin the future

[javanne]

I hope you’ve been doing great! 🌷🌸

Urf, yes, pretty well. Just very busy while getting over a virus which caused fatigue. Our pond was part of a garden tour yesterday, and while it was very enjoyable it was also very hard work. Today we are sitting around saying things like "TGThat's over for another year." Meanwhile a bud on our lotus grew four inches taller in two hours while we watched.

[javanne]

I hope life eases up for you soon because I relate 😭 ♥️

Oh, I do hope things go well for you!

[javanne]

given what you'd told me, I hope you survived this week :'D get some rest!

Have tried the resting, will now administer coffee!

[javanne]

[javanne]

Well, that was quick

This summer went by right under my nose. I was there but only just. No energy, no enthusiasm, just fatigue.

In May, this Martian Death Flu arrived and settled in. It just never went away. Sorta like your roommate's sponging SO who eats all your food, taps into your internet, smokes inside, pays no rent or utilities and leaves messes for someone else to clean up.

Suddenly...

The fall flowers are blooming: aster, ironweed, fall clematis and watermint, and the milkweeds are seeding

Waitaminnit, I was entitled to summer!...

Baby bun rab is almost grown.

Butterflies are almost gone.

Tomorrow we cover the pond. We always put up the hoop house for Halloween, so we can play spooky video inside it. The weather here tends to go sour quickly after the 31st.

[tkingfisher]

Warning: Long post about something very near my heart.

About three inches from it, give or take.

Tumblr, meet Cancer-Bob. (Bob, this is Tumblr. They’re lovely, but they’re gonna hate you.)

I got diagnosed with Bob about six weeks ago. (It’s fine, I’m not gonna die, I’m just gonna have a really shitty few months.) As is the way of my people, I started doing a comic about it. Except it’s not really a comic, because there’s only one picture in it, but it’s more a comic than it is anything else. A comic made entirely of words, I guess?

It’s mostly me screwing around with Typorama and word balloons and the alcohol ink tools in Procreate. I knew that if I had to draw hamsters or wombats, I’d never keep up. My energy levels are, uh, variable. But it’ll tell you the saga, or at least some of it, and I got really into making it, and I commit some spectacular atrocities with fonts.

(It’s ok to laugh, by the way. Some of it’s hilarious.)

(Also I’m very sorry, I can’t do alt text for all these. If someone wants to type them out, I will embrace you as a savior, but it’s just…a lot.)

This is only part one of rather a lot, but Tumblr has a 10 image limit from the app. I’ll put up more tomorrow. And I only just started chemo in real life, so there’ll be more. And then, if fate is kind, someday there won’t have to be.

I love you all, you know that?

[contentment-of-cats]

Labs day.

Let's spin the wheel on how many tubes of blood come out.

[javanne]

The Lion Pot

A family favorite, found years ago in a shop long gone. I fell in love with the sleeping lion, iron stains and all - it had been stored under dripping pipes. It's just plaster, and you can see that years of acidic rain have taken their toll in spite of protective treatments. I have never been able to find another. The hole rotted through the bottom is actually beneficial, as it originally had no drainage at all, and I'd have to tilt it after a rainstorm to pour the water out. Every year it's filled with annuals, with alyssum or lobularia for fragrance.

First Daughter's Terribly Fancy Fibonacchi-petaled waterlily is blooming

and the unstoppable untidy Colorado.

This petunia, often sold as Starry Skies or Starry Night, is temperature-sensitive. Cooler nights and warmer days produce the white spots and patches. It's the only petunia I'm permitted. While working for a landscaper, First Daughter developed a passionate hate for petunias, except for this one. I had to persuade her that Calibrachoa is not just a tiny ninja petunia trying to sneak up on her.

Just to prove my choices aren't all blue and purple

It's been hard this year. A spring flu went thru the neighborhood, a really unpleasant one, leaving me desperately tired for a month and not particularly enthusiastic about doing anything since.

[contentment-of-cats]

A checklist

Discontinue landline service - I only kept the number for Mom when her memory got glitchy.

Finalize my burial arrangements just in case - it will ease my mind to have that handled. I already prepaid my cremation.

Do the Big Out. Downsizing is very much on my mind. Mom was a borderline hoarder. I was told time and time again how ungrateful I was, so it was hard for me to de-stuff my space. I want to go extreme and do Swedish Death Cleaning.

Review life insurance and change beneficiaries. Get non-taxable long-term care insurance - premium refund and death benefit. Some long-term care benefits are taxable as income, and some have premiums that have tax credits.

Set up a trust account to handle health and LTC premiums.

I found out first-hand the value of health insurance when I turned up with cancer. I will have to maintain this policy until I am eligible for MediCare - if I live that long. LTC insurance should cost me about $3k per year in premiums, but when you consider that Mom's care ran about $12k per month? Not that much.

[javanne]

I am so sorry for your loss. Since she was in care, the following may not apply, but just in case...

Something I learned when my common-law sister died: never pay a bill for her care. Nursing homes, hospitals and ambulance companies will pressure you for money, swearing that MediCXXX will reimburse you for it. This is a lie and they know it; MediCare and Medicaid won't reimburse squat. The company beancounters are trying to get you to foot an inflated bill that MediCXXX would halve or deny.

If a landlord or creditor yells at you for money, tell them that nobody gets paid before the government gets its taxes. If they threaten to sue you or confiscate the deceased's car or possessions, hang up. Get a lawyer if they keep it up.

Strangers or shirttail cousins may call you with "She promised me I could have..." Maybe she did, but the gummint gets its cut first, and if everything else has to be sold to pay taxes and legitimate bills, that's the way it is. If it's not in the will, no. Sorry. If the laws are the same in your state as in mine, you will need many copies of her death certificate. Credit cards and utilities will not close an account without one. The DMV will demand one when you sell her car, cancel her license and turn in her license plates. In your case, this may already been taken care of. I do hope so.

You may get phone calls from 'paralegals' demanding all sorts of info and hinting at a possible inheritance. It's an attempt at identity theft. One of these called me demanding a copy of the will. I refused and told her to go look it up at the County building; her angry response indicated she knew she couldn't get past their security.

I do so hope you don't have to put up with any of this!

[vague-humanoid]

Hate pastor says trans-supportive parents should be “shot in back of the head”

"We can string them up above a bridge so that the public can see the consequences of that kind of wickedness...

[bartfargo]

And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love

Yes, they'll kno-ow we are Christians by our love

[javanne]

I spent two years in a faith-related college, and it cured me of organized religion forever. The students, and we had many flavors of Christianity among them, got along fine. The Catholics were bussed off to Catholic services because by them the school Sunday services didn't count, but everyone had to attend the Wednesday evening services in the school chapel. The regular preacher was a sweet tolerant loving man who lost his congregation when a parishioner started a rumor about the class he taught in Comparative Religions. They said he taught "-isms" which of course meant Communism, right? His church fired him. He hired on with the school. But they had to give him some rest, so occasionally a local reverend would be called in to preach. We were just inside the northern edge of the Bible Belt. Most of them were okay, knowing that they were preaching to an audience of various related religions. But one disastrous Wednesday they got in the leader of a personality cult of the worst stripe. He was a pinched, bald, furious, fist-clenching little vulture. He mantled over his podium and fixed us all with a mad beady eye. Dripping hate and rage, he informed us that the only Saved Souls in the world were the members of his own congregation. Anybody else - all of us, and all the world, and anyone who dared disagree with him on the smallest detail of any discussion - was eternally damned and deserved it. This little ant-hill tyrant had promoted himself to God, a jealous hateful God who despised most people of His own creation. He'd collected a congregation that agreed with him. Or at least the older menfolk did; nobody else would have had a vote. And that is why I have never joined a church again; their leaders are human, and far too many humans are like this.

[original-honeychiles]

Read this and save a life - YOUR OWN

From a surgical nurse and certified CPR teacher:

Please pause for 2 minutes and read this:

1. Let’s say it’s 7.25pm and you’re going home (alone of course) after an unusually hard day on the job.

2. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated.

3 Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm and up in to your jaw. You are only about five km from the hospital nearest your home.

4. Unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far.

5. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy who taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.

6. HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE? Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.

7. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.

8. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.

9. Tell as many other people as possible about this. It could save their lives!!

10. A cardiologist says If everyone who gets this mail kindly sends it to 10 people, you can bet that we’ll save at least one life.

11. Rather than sending jokes, please... contribute by forwarding this mail which can save a person’s life.

12. If this message comes around you... more than once… please don’t get irritated... You should instead, be happy that you have many friends who care about you & keeps reminding you how to deal with a Heart attack.

please take the time and boost this post by reposting it and sending it to those you love because we all need to understand how to quickly deal with heart attacks

[palenoface]

as someone who has been having signs of a heart attack recently, i’m really glad i found this post

[javanne]

The Magnificent Hunk: MUST DEFEAT THE EVIL BUNNY RABBIT!! Bunrab: Whut?

[themirokai]

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.