Listening: mostly lofi from Bits & Hits and Yellow Cherry Jam 🍒💛
Reading (book): Finished Hemlock & Silver (it was good!), need to start something new
Reading (article): See the hidden fungal network so big it could stretch to Proxima Centauri and back (Scientific American / June 11, 2026)
Watching: Andor S2, Abbott Elementary
Playing: Wandering Village
Making: a color-phasing crochet blanket
Current challenges: imminent smoke/heatwave, adversarial work meetings, burnout
Please clap: Returned my library books and mailed several packages to friends I've had sitting around
Looking forward to: Pathfinder game resuming after a long hiatus. I've missed my doomed druid
The little things: Very proud of my several elbow bruises from working on the heavy bag at Muay Thai 💪
Went to a wedding at a vineyard and saw an eagle! (I didn't get a picture of it because my hands were full with my UV umbrella, but the grapes were pretty too and much easier to catch on camera.)
Reading (article)
I love mushrooms!!! Every so often I daydream about what it would've been like if I'd gone into a scientific career with field research. It sounds like a lot of fun.
Researchers have created the first high-resolution global map of the extent of one of Earth’s largest—and least visible—living networks
Watching
Still on the Andor rewatch, plus Abbott Elementary. I need to get back to my YouTube queue. Also playing/watching my roommate play:
Playing
I haven't played a lot of city builders, but I was too enchanted by the art style and the concept not to pick this one up. You're managing a symbiotic settlement on the back of an adorable leviathan as it travels through various biomes. (Also, if you want it to be less cute, you can sacrifice a villager to your leviathan if the residents revolt.) The art in the game intro reminds me a little of Scavengers Reign!
The Wandering Village is a city-building simulation game on the back of a giant, wandering creature. Build your settlement and form a symbio
Making
This blanket from Hookandfibermade! Simple pattern, so I'll hopefully finish it this week despite being a bigger project. These giant yarn skeins were taking up too much room in storage so I paused my other projects to knock this one out. It's fun watching the colors change and working from two skeins at once!
all i did this week was go through the hell of finding and buying a new-to-me car, a late model subaru crosstrek with a bit over 50k miles on it. that’s genuinely all i did this week. there was a lot of very unpleasant back and forth between me and the dealership but it’s done now :) i can finally relapse into a well-earned psychotic break :)
i am upset an electric vehicle won’t work for me but i literally can’t make it work. my neighborhood isn’t gentrified enough yet and there aren’t any slower charging stations open near work when i need them to be open. i am continuing to contribute to the global climate crisis by being a single commuter with a long car commute. this is the newest and most reliable car i will probably ever own and hopefully this car will keep most of its trade in value for a few years until something shifts in the EV charging situation near me. or i move to a bougier apartment complex. much to consider.
rip my beloved subaru, march 2021-august 2026. saying it succumbed to rust makes me feel like a bad car owner but nobody in texas really understands that northeast road salt eats cars alive no matter how careful you are. can't believe i don't have a better picture of this thing.
listening: cherry lips (go baby go!) by garbage
reading (article): obligatory one month without social media on my phone substack essay by kate wagner
reading (book): the everlasting by alix harrow. a review i read was like "what if brienne of tarth and milo disneyslegendofatlantis got together?" and yeah
watching: Devil Girl From Mars (1954, dir. MacDonald). so strange. wish i liked it. plus a long digression about cowboyfic.
playing:...fallout 3
making: car shopping :(
listening
how did i find this? background music for an equestrian on instagram who does very funny reviews of horse books but most of her content is about riding actual horses. her mare is named ahsoka like the star wars character.
really grungy alt pop. rarely do i fall in love with a song so hard and fast.
-
reading (article)
it didn't change my life
from my favorite architecture critic and mcmansionfromhell darling kate wagner. there are so many quotes i want to pull i would essentially be putting the entire article on here.
Beyond this weird attitude towards reading and one’s other preoccupations, many of the depictions of phone life made by phone detox content are just straight up kind of ridiculous. Paragraphs upon paragraphs are spent detailing the hard and brutal struggle to put the phone down in a way reminiscent of the gonzo addiction memoirs that were popular in the mid-2000s. When the task is framed as, for lack of a better term, fentanyl-esque, would you, personally, want to attempt it? It doesn’t take a cognitive scientist to realize that when we expect something to be extremely difficult, surprise, our brains tend to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
being on my dang phone at work is something i really struggle with. i feel like most of the time i am just killing time here until i get enough time to get my student loans forgiven and get my pension fully vested. this job is a good movie financially but not so much for like. upward career mobility. i see a lot of the very worst of people at this job. i am trying to counteract that with more volunteering but there is a lot of inertia. both in me and my community.
back to the phone, where activism and community building mostly do not happen. i can and will lose literal hours to instagram, which is not good for my blood pressure and is much much much harder to curate and train than any other social media's algorithm i'm on. mostly it wants to sell me supplies for cat fostering, quack cures for mcas, eds, and """""""neurospicy""""""" hacks and supplements. this does not make me feel great. my rss feeds make me feel slightly better (depending on the feed) but i am perpetually caught up on my rss feeds. tumblr is much a more curated and fun place, but i can only go so far down my dash before the app crashes and very few mutuals are active when i am at work.
shocker, i do feel better and more settled when i am actively doing something (chewing through my physical tbr, knitting and listening to podcast or audiobook, working on citizen archive stuff, writing postcards, etc). and then i have stuff to actually talk about for the tuesdayposts, which is the whole point of the tuesdayposts, bc i feel better when i am poking around in a bunch of different formats of things every week. i need a lot of variety in my input and i need a lot of passive social interaction, neither of which i have been giving myself lately. i am a terrible zookeeper.
-
reading (book)
the everlasting by alix harrow.
From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part–even if it breaks his heart.
Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest hero: the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters—but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.
Centuries later, Owen Mallory—failed soldier, struggling scholar—falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives—and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.
But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend—if they want to tell a different story--they’ll have to rewrite history itself.
my bestie really twisted my arm about this bc i do Not like time travel or time loops. this is a book where everything is fine the whole time :) this is a book that will not hurt you :) come closer :)
BIG gruff canonically bisexual lady knight and her pathetic little. bard? historian? follower? her guy. deal with colonialism, fealty, loyalty, and PTSD together. not a straight book. not a hetslop book. sort of hetero plus. it has been so so long since i have read a good queer book written recently. this is partially bc queerness is not the focus of the book. it didn't save anything but it sure fucking was there.
one of THE most fascinating villains i have ever read. i do support womens' wrongs i want to read more about them.
@dying-suffering-french-stalkers there is a sort of weary closing a restaurant, putting the chairs up, and turning the lights out behind you vibe i think you would really love. a dogged determination to witness the very end of something.
-
watching
Devil Girl From Mars (1954, dir. MacDonald). not good. not good! i must agree with 12-year-old octavia butler who said to herself "i can write something better".
REMARKABLY horny for a fifties british movie made for about five pounds. the titular devil girl from mars, in pvc and silk stockings and high boots (i wish she had a crop, but she does have a large and weird robot control device, as well as a raygun) is on earth to capture men as breeding stock. bc the matriarchal population of mars isn't doing too good. they are several centuries post-overthrowing their old society so they managed for quite some time! occupies such a weird niche in film and feminist history.
a youtube channel i follow restores the wackiest selection of older movies and this one was one of their recent projects, which means you can watch the entire thing right on youtube.
i think this movie would be a big hit in a very far-off part of one of my fics. i don't know when i'll ever return to writing about fallout: new vegas. i think i would have to completely rewrite it. i think (i hope) i have become much better at identifying story elements and writing techniques that work for me, and i don't know that this fic really serves me or what i wanted to get across any more.
but my loose plan for the first half of "blow a kiss, fire a gun" was courier six not contending with the fact she can't do shotgun diplomacy any more, responding VERY poorly to separate NCR and legion remnant plots, stalking down the strip with a missile launcher and causing a lot of damage. therefore, the "you're a hero but you have to leave" sequence, taking the boys up to salt lake city to see about solving the salt shortage in a more permanent way and establishing a better trading route (skirting around zion). goofs and hijinks and falling into rivers and such. i had such a plan in my head for salt lake city, including a very old legion diplomat and a very old NCR diplomat across the street coexisting with each other, but it would end with the denver dome sending an airship to pick her up for negotiations (is there a fight on top of the airship? yes of COURSE). i think the denver dome is a matriarchal society full of lesbians who don't quite keep slaves, but men are definitely a severely curtailed underclass. aesthetically they are much more art deco and much more engineering as a representative profession for social improvement through technological progress. i think it would be neat for six to reckon with the fact that she's been sort of blowing off old world problems as problems caused by boys, and seeing that a matriarchal society is doing just as bad would make her think. i also think slamming her against second-wave feminism would be interesting and funny.
anyway, they'd be very impressed with her TWO wives and TWO subservient men. if she gets back to vegas alive she's going to have a lot to talk about with arcade.
-
playing
playing fo3 is making me want to play fo4, which (to me) is a very elaborate settlement sim and a bunch of space on the way to maine and nuka cola world. todd how did you fuck up so bad. the bones of an interesting thing are here but it's so fucking empty. every time i talk to an NPC i get nothing funny or useful or interesting. WHY IS IT ALL SLAVERY, TODD??? how come the biggest quest is paradise falls??? how come i can't do anything about charon??????
however, it is so good minute-to-minute at making me want to keep playing it!!! infuriating!!! it's been so long since i played and so much of it Looks like fnv with regards to interior textures, i am so convinced that the next metal box i open will have something good, or the next mostly-destroyed building will have a terminal with some interesting entries. i would settle for a funny little tableaux that does not involve a gnome or a toy or a toilet. the most interesting thing i have seen so far is sometimes a dead raider in the metro will have scattered stimpaks around, like they were trying to heal before succumbing to mirelurk.
again. fallout would be so good if it was good. what if there were more ghouls. everything with underworld is so much more interesting than megaton or rivet city and they feel so much more like real people than almost anywhere else. the brotherhood in this one might as well be little cardboard shadow puppets.
-
making
shopping for a car is second only to moving for "most wretched drawn out expensive and fuck-up-able" activity known to man
had what i can only call an Unwell Woman thought, which was "my tuesdayposts aren't as good when i'm super depressed so i need to get less depressed faster". not something i can explain to my psych in our fifteen minute quarterly meetings.
listening: mangetout (the dare remix), wet leg
reading (article): conference drama! Troubling new details emerge on diabetes ouster controversy, Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica
reading (book): darth maul: shadow hunter by michael reaves, darth maul: saboteur by james luceno (short story), and darth maul: lockdown by joe schreiber
watching: more hbomberguy
playing: ...fallout 3
making: fishtank
mackie i PROMISE you do not want a can of chickpeas
listening
listened to a lot of party music while driving around and being disappointed by aquarium shops. very fun to bellow YOU WANNA FUCK ME, I KNOW MOST PEOPLE DO!!! while in a very small hatchback navigating between and around every lifted pickup truck in america. it does cut the tension yanno
-
reading (article)
American Diabetes Association blocked publication of op-ed articles so the authors posted them as a preprint.
i looooooove conference drama. i also love the conference using the cops specifically to kick these guys out when they were protesting on public property lmao. great work by our boys in blue yet again
-
reading (book)
why do i like darth maul? i just think he's neat.
After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to bring the Republic to its knees. Key to his scheme are the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation. Then one of his Neimoidian contacts disappears, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor down.
But he is too late. The secret has already passed into the hands of information broker Lorn Pavan, which places him right at the top of Darth Maul’s hit list. Then, in the labyrinthine alleyways and sewers of Coruscant, capital city of the Republic, Lorn crosses paths with Darsha Assant, a Jedi Padawan on a mission to earn her Knighthood.
Now the future of the Republic depends on Darsha and Lorn. But how can an untried Jedi and an ordinary man, stranger to the powerful ways of the Force, hope to triumph over one of the deadliest killers in the galaxy?
Shadow Hunter is Vocabulary Words: The Novel. it's mostly about the dad of a guy reaves wrote a trilogy about. maul is sort of incidental. i would describe this as one of the more heterosexual star wars novels. two fully grown adults (one with a child in elementary school) have the beginnings of attraction for each other and are kind of embarrassed about it. i don't remember this happening in his trilogy but that's probably bc he had a woman coauthor.
Saboteur originally came as a novella in the back of Shadow Hunter. maul just kind of fucks around and pits two mining conglomerates against each other. he gets to do some cool spy shit. tarkin is there briefly. not the worst star wars novella ive ever read.
From the mind of Joe Schreiber, New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Death Troopers, comes the delirious follow-up to last year's Darth Plagueis. In a tale of retribution and survival set before the events of The Phantom Menace, Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious dispatch Sith apprentice Darth Maul on a secret mission to infiltrate a criminal empire operating from inside Cog Hive Seven--a hidden prison teeming with the galaxy's most savage criminals. There, he must contend against the scummiest and most villainous in gladiatorial death matches while carrying out his masters'' clandestine commands. Failure is not an option; success will ignite the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi Order.
i think this is the best quality Book out of the three, insofar as like. having an interesting plot with a little puzzle to solve and being aware of dramatic irony. i do Not think maul needed to be here. this is schreiber's OC puppeting a maul suit, functionally. it reads like an adaptation of your dad's favorite prison breakout movie (complimentary). it really starts falling apart once schreiber starts tying it into galactic politics and schemes. the last few chapters are pretty painful, which is even more annoying than usual bc we've been having so much fun with genuinely interesting and thematic setpieces and big monsters.
schreiber wrote a well-recieved horror novel set inside star wars (death troopers) that i didn't like when it came out. i don't know that i care enough to try again. at the end of his acknowledgements, he spends a full paragraph thanking god, his lord and savior, which was a little jarring. i cannot find any more information about what flavor of christianity he practices.
-
watching
ive watched the hbomberguy Classics (plagiarism. sherlock. autism. clips of the aoc stream). i need to remind myself what it feels like to like something and to do that i am watching someone else really love something.
i do not like games that revolve around learning bosses and getting good, bc i am not very good at video games. i am an old woman whose reaction times are dogshit and i did not grow up with controllers. this did make me want to play bloodborne. perhaps on a modded god mode so i can wander around being nosy instead.
-
playing
i am unable to start up fnv without bursting into tears, i have too fraught a relationship with massachusetts, and i don't have it in me right to buckle down and learn how to play 1 or 2 or tactics. so dc it is.
out of the vault. killed moriarty. on the run. all i truly want to do is poke around the metro with charon while listening to three dog on the radio but there is SO much in between stuff to do first.
-
making
look at my glassware one more time.
the thing stopping me from setting up my secondhand fishtank is that i couldn't figure out how to properly leak-test it inside a bin (didn't have one big enough) and my tub is too slanted and narrow for it to fit properly.
i forgot i have an entire front porch.
so it sat outside for two days, didn't leak, and i brought it inside and went off to actually get some live freshwater plants.
forgot how bad hobby shops can be. not just fish hobby shops. any hobby shops. i am going to try several other shops in the actual city later this week but i acquired some overpriced sacrificial hornwort to help cycle my tank bc i was impatient and didn't have it in me to go to any more new places.
here's my goal: a small school of uncomplicated fish i can watch while listening to my audiobooks and falling asleep when i get home from work in the mornings. bc right now the thing i do before falling asleep is hold my phone two inches from my face and kind of wind myself up about stuff. which is not good for my blood pressure.
so i am going to get 8-10 chili rasboras (boraras brigittae) and whatever snails hitchhike in on my plants. since they are from the indonesian archipelago swamps, they like a blackwater tank; or soft, warm water with a lot of leaf litter and sticks that will release tannins. this is within my skillset to provide, although i think i may have to invest in distilled water or a countertop distiller.
i have been slowly acquiring bits and pieces from the local amazon returns warehouse. the only thing i bought new in this picture was black sand to cap off the flourite. yes!!! even the prime and flourish were unopened amazon returns!!!
i have never once had an emergency siblingchat for a good reason but we made history last night. however! we are not counting our chickens before they are hatched
listening: default, django django
reading (article): No Return: Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain? William Finnegan for the New Yorker
reading (book): The Blacktongue Thief, Christopher Buehlman
watching: plagiarism
playing: genshin
making: museum trip, framing needlework, built a medicine cabinet, acquired a lamp
phil was hoping some pizza would hatch into her mouth
listening
here is some “art pop” that i could uncharitably describe it as “edgy stomp clap”. however as soon as you listen to it you will be like ah! this IS some kay bullshit.
very frightening to watch myself fall victim to nostalgia. every time i find a piece of music that really scratches my brain there’s an 80% chance it was made during the first obama administration, during my most malleable late high school and early college years.
how’d i find this? went to check if one of my favorite bands (Findlay) put out any new music (no) and futzed around with the “we think you might like this!” thing at the bottom.
-
reading (article)
Wayback Machine
No Return
Did an experienced alpinist leave his girlfriend to die at the top of a mountain? William Finnegan for the New Yorker
they do not make guys like this author any more, guys who have written for one specific magazine since 1987.
one of the minor but just as heartbreaking asides in this story is how the girlfriend’s family would rather keep an idealized version of their dead daughter than see her killer brought to justice. like yes! this was a complicated case! but it was not a suicide or an accident!
The Gurtners were called to testify in court. Jelinek, Plamberger’s attorney, suggested that their refusal to blame Thomas showed “true human greatness.” It also aligned, of course, with his defense. Many observers were shocked by the Gurtners’ support for Thomas, but it didn’t seem strange to me. Whatever the facts of the case, the parents would prefer to believe that their daughter had died pursuing an ambitious dream, and that her boyfriend had loved her.
-
reading (book)
A USA Today bestseller!Set in a world of goblin wars, stag-sized battle ravens, and assassins who kill with deadly tattoos, Christopher Bueh
Kinch Na Shannack owes the Takers Guild a small fortune for his education as a thief, which includes (but is not limited to) lock-picking, knife-fighting, wall-scaling, fall-breaking, lie-weaving, trap-making, plus a few small magics. His debt has driven him to lie in wait by the old forest road, planning to rob the next traveler that crosses his path.
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.
Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants.
Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva's. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.
great premise! yet another book i had on hold for months that i returned within minutes. a combination of things:
a deeply dnd brained way of writing an action scene. terrific game to play for some people. very ill suited for telling a story or getting across an action scene in an engaging manner. i never ever want to read an author describing how a fast action (the DnD™️ move) might work in real life
many things, places, and peoples in this book are a few letters off from real life Western Europe. make your own stuff. stop making me try to place everything on a mental map of our world as soon as you mention it.
extremely complex frontloaded worldbuilding. i refuse to believe that five seasons and fifteen months and ten day weeks and specific day names for each day of each month are going to be plot relevant. for what purpose do i need to know this in the first two chapters???
-
watching
put this on to keep me company while i did a lot of tedious handwashing and ended up just watching the whole damn thing again and not handwashing very much.
-
playing
they put a second smaller game inside genshin as they so often do. very similar to playing dredge, except you are swimming around and beating up the fish instead of rod and lining it. one of THREE!!! upgrade trees. a fully voiced main questline that took me three hours to finish. this is a time limited event btw. the time limit is six weeks but it’s absolutely crazy how this is something that will go away.
-
making
you can go for a frighteningly long time as an adult without having any fun at all. so i took myself to the museum for a specific exhibit. yum yum yum very tasty i want to eat it. diorama and modelmaking as art for its own sake is not something i have seen before! also saw a very important picasso exhibit that confirmed i still do not like picasso. bopped around for nearly an hour and a half before my knee gave out.
The most comprehensive survey to date of Hew Locke’s work, “Passages” showcases the spectrum of his practice through three decades of his sc
really delightful bit of embroidery on a very sheer muslin where the traveling stitches on the back are just as important as the stitches on the face. delicious depth and technique. pour it directly into my open mouth.
in my own needlework, framed a whole bunch of stuff and only bled on it a little bit.
also, scammed my bestie’s husband into helping me put together this medicine cabinet that has been sitting in a box in my home since march. (daddy issues alert) very healing to the inner child &tc to put something together with a calm man. we fully put it together backwards and his response was “oh huh. oh well. we know how to take it apart.” there was no tantrum there was no immediate blaming of anyone else around there was no week long sulk. nothing was thrown. no voices were raised at all. we took our time and were no obsessed with efficiency. wild!
also also, acquired this lamp at a yard sale down the street for $10. we are approaching the correct scale of lamp for my dining room, and the very narrow one that lived here before will go back in my bedroom. if i had a more understanding landlord AND adequate ventilation in my apartment, i would replace the fan with a big paper lantern and a dimmer bulb. alas.
reading (book): the daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty
watching: fallow
playing: genshin update
making: ironing stuff
listening
i am not loving the youtube mixes as much as spotify. the first five to eight songs are songs i have saved or am vaguely familiar with and then it always devolves wildly into stuff that does not match the stated vibe in the playlist title at ALL but is theoretically something people in the same age range might be listening to? there was a my chemical romance mix that gave me four nirvana songs in a row and then some reel big fish. not even any of the popular nirvana songs. i am not familiar enough with reel big fish to know if that was a popular song. anyway this has been EMBEDDED in my head bc youtube keeps starting the dance mixes with charli
-
reading (article)
The Houston Progressive Caucus has accused the city's Office of the Inspector General of covering for the mayor’s office because it is a div
more clown corruption behavior from my corrupt clown mayor. this man is NOT getting reelected he has lost the mandate of heaven (too openly corrupt)
City Controller Chris Hollins called for Mayor John Whitmire to suspend his senior adviser Chris Brown, but the mayor is defending him. The
my mayor's financial integrity advisor is a personal friend of the mayor, makes $127k a year, and two and a half years into his job has physically come into work thirteen times. this county HATES working from home so this man is for SURE not working from home
-
reading (book)
Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles.
But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.
In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.
After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...
this is the front two-thirds of a completed trilogy. i read the first book when it came out in 2017, loved it, and slowly acquired the physical copies before i moved down here. have i picked them up again? no. i did, about a year ago, vaguely rec them to my bestie bc she loves a pair of protagonists that are fucking idiots and boy howdy are these a pair of fucking idiots. nahri does magic page fucking two but has convinced herself it's just bc she's so good at being a con artist. she's really honed her skills, yanno. i also love a woman who takes what she wants with both hands. the guy is fine. i love him bc nahri loves him so much.
anyway. the first book came off my bestie's libby holds as these books came onto kindle unlimited so we have sort of been binging them? very stressful to read. everything happens so much. a lot of modern western romantasy (this trilogy is straight up fantasy with a romantic element) my bestie reads is very... the last twenty or thirty years based? like it's dealing with someone's shitty king dad and the consequences of his actions. this is dealing with hundreds and thousands of years of policy and politics. chakraborty is so good at good intentions that worsen things for literally everyone.
OOOH i love political intrigue and whispers in the halls of the palace!!! this is a straight heterosexual romance happening in the b-plot when an active political crisis is not unfolding but i can't hold that against it. i have some libby holds about to expire i but am both very excited and very nervous to start the third book
-
watching
fallow.
-
playing
and now for a genshin update. hit hard pity on her but did not spend money aside from the $5 battle pass i buy approximately every other month so i am pleased.
one of the beefier updates we've had in a while, bc we went to the moon, the moon in the fucking sky. moon's pretty fun. moon's hiding a lot of lore we had to excavate. on the [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT] at the top of the space elevator, there are what i'm choosing to interpret as glenn fireflies in this game that loves a glowing slightly moving dot. these were probably ice from the flash cooling loops, but some were also cosmic rays and minor debri.
from the friendship 7 mission:
John Glenn: "This is Friendship Seven. I’ll try to describe what I’m in here. I am in a big mass of some very small particles that are brilliantly lit up like they’re luminescent. I never saw anything like it. They round a little; they’re coming by the capsule, and they look like little stars. A whole shower of them coming by.
They swirl around the capsule and go in front of the window and they’re all brilliantly lighted. They probably average maybe 7 or 8 feet apart, but I can see them all down below me, also."
CAPCOM: "Roger, Friendship Seven. Can you hear any impact with the capsule? Over."
John Glenn: "Negative, negative. They’re very slow; they’re not going away from me more than maybe 3 or 4 miles per hour. They’re going at the same speed I am approximately. They’re only very slightly under my speed. Over. They do, they do have a different motion, though, from me because they swirl around the capsule and then depart back the way I am looking."
^space elevator from moon to [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT]. what's the big glowy thing? don't worry about that either
-
making
there's this lady (well, several ladies, it seems to be a popular video topic) doing instagram reels about making her home one percent nicer every day, which seems more sustainable than getting my shit together september, where i get my shit together during the month of september. the following is making my house about a tenth of a percentage point better but i already had the iron out.
this is one of my favorite towels. this is an EXTREMELY good vintage linen teatowel. i didn't even buy it in cranberryland new england i found it down here for 79c. nearly half its usable width has been taken up by various wrinkles, bc it wants to be longitudinally wrinkled So Bad you can see the heavy color change along the edges. so i got it just under dripping wet and then really put my back and elbows into ironing it flat. we shall see if it recrumples next time i wash it.
why i had the iron out in the first place is bc my least favorite part of needlework is framing the damn things. these have been languishing for months and (with the blackwork) years. i need to give them another blast of steam in the hopes they flatten out a bit more.
i did not set out to mention american imperialism twice during this big stupid birthday week but it happened anyway
listening: you can't run from yourself, aurora
reading (article): are you enjoying our linguini? by francesco pacifico
reading (book): lethal affairs, an adventure from the elite operatives series by kim baldwin and xenia alexiou.
watching: where do hills come from?
playing: brief genshin update
making: bisexual history, q2 retrospective
listening
is this an anime opening? yes. do i have any intention of watching the anime? no. i simply like this artist who does a lot of nerd shit collabs, including a lot of vocals for genshin. i like a song that sound like a large winged creature is taking off.
-
reading (article)
How American tourists took over everything.
part of my tragic backstory is that i spent too many of my formative years growing up on the jersey shore, where tourists are so important to the local economy the school year does not start until AFTER labor day. bc u need all hands on deck to squeeze that last hurrah out of tourists.
i frequently wanted to murder tourists. i cannot imagine being in hospitality in a nicer country and having to deal with floods of american tourists. the gelato worker in this article deserves a fucking medal. there's a bunch of tourism and empire thoughts rattling around in my brain
So when the American family slows down time to reflect on gianduia, or pistacchio, or arachidi salate, it feels as though they are not reflecting on flavors with us, they are talking to us as if we were curiosities of history, oddities, eccentricities, exotic pralines with the gift of speech. They love to hear us talk, explain our gelato flavors. We are the funny-talking people who explain flavors. They are the protagonists of history; we are not. They are slow because they are the main characters; they own their time. They own time.
Other tourists are also slow, as slowness is the main aspect of not knowing where you’re going — a relative slowness compared with the people around you, busy with the tasks that make up their life. An American family’s slowness is something else altogether. They don’t feel rushed. They have the kairos that you get from being at the center of an empire. Their time is blessed, and their thirst for knowledge is something everyone must submit to.
-
reading (book)
i must preface this with: it's kind of endearing that lesbians have their own poorly-aged action spy thriller series. straight men have SO many of them. but this one is lesbians!
Elite operative Domino is no stranger to peril and impossible situations. Trained all her life to be just as comfortable fighting terrorists as mixing with the gala crowd, she is proficient at playing any role necessary to accomplish her objective and believes the cause sanctifies the means. But her latest assignment to investigate journalist Hayley Ward will test more than her skills, ingenuity, and courage, because this time she faces the ultimate dilemma: a choice between loyalty and love.
i think i am pretty easy on this book bc of the reading experience: my bestie hung out at my house for nine hours on saturday bc her husband and children were watching soccer with her inlaws. what WE did was read and constantly interrupt each other about our books. she's reading city of brass, which is second on my list after a library book, and i read another one of kim baldwin's insane lesbian thrillers. i had a lot of fun demanding she guess what song they danced to at an AIDS gala in DC in 2008 (Michael Buble's cover of Crazy Little Thing Called Love), or what fucked up lowrise jeans everyone was wearing with what bizarre business casual top. we were SCREAMING with laughter bc on a tuesday in june from five PM to eight PM this bitch drove her little blue convertible mustang from BALTIMORE!!!! to BROOKLYN!!!!!!!!! in THREE HOURS!!!!! you would be lucky to be past atlantic city in three hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
this book does suffer from (what seems like) all three editors and two writers are white women who do not live on the east coast or have a lot of contact with non-white, non-english-speaking people. our heroine walks into a bar in miami past "a young Asian couple speaking Japanese". hm???? hello?????? the spanish-speaking detective in this book is sprinkling one random individual word of spanish in his paragraphs.
published in the beautiful far distant year of 2008, it is about the level of a post-9/11 action flick. the opinions about international relations are not very good. the authors' opinions seem mostly to be that their leads' enemies are imperial america's enemies. she kills a guy from kuwait in a cafe in a bazaar, a guy from cuba as he's doing a business deal in a hotel in miami, an american sex trafficker hiding out in the jungles. the big bad is a corrupt senator who's trying for a presidential run.
however! kim and xenia do have the juice. this was a genuinely tense and fast-paced, fun read that went balls to the wall until the literal last page. i have all the books in this series except the fifth one so they will be slowly returning. wish i owned these during the lesbian romance novel project.
-
watching
they're the men. and here's the map.
absolutely no idea how i stumbled across these gentlemen. i think i watched the correct sequence of autistic special interest videos to unlock a good rec from youtube.
very dry british humor, a persistent commitment to the handmade and costumed bit. there's claymation in this one.
-
playing
genshin: running around prefarming for a new waifu dropping this week (along with a new map area. we are going back to the moon. yes the moon in the fucking sky). finding little odds and ends just cheerfully out in the open. do i even have EYES!!!
-
making
got bored with the suggested files in the national archives transcription project, decided to simply search the word "bisexual" and see what happened. the most interesting and useful result, which i have now fully transcribed, is a folder full of photocopied early nineties press mentions of bisexuality.
CRUCIALLY, the article from this bonkers cover is included.
it is both heartening and disheartening to read these and discover we have essentially the same discourse and the same problems, with the exception of AIDS no longer being a death sentence. everyone has a personal and specific definition of bisexuality. everyone feels very alone and rejected by the larger gay community. lesbians continue to be mean as shit to bi girls. everyone is convinced we only want to cheat, have threesomes, eat hot chips, and lie. however (among people who could safely speak to national magazines without fear of losing their jobs or retribution) it is very nice to read about bi4bi couples just like. living their lives.
and now for a q2 retrospective. in no particular order
joined a credit union
poked at my student loans
had people over to my house twice for dedicated hangouts
had my bestie over approximately once a month as i make my house a nicer hangout space for her specifically (generally i go to her place)
vet visit for da gorls (we survived)
flew home :(
baby brother graduated college and is off to law school :)
8x overtime weekends :(
BIG raise :)
relationship upheaval :|
national archives transcriptions really keeping me from going insane at work
flooded my downstairs neighbors twice :(
landlord selling the apartment in the near future :(
medical stuff that would have been longer than the above list if i broke it out by itself. again, pro life tip, do NOT be unemployed for fourteen months without health insurance.
reading (article): community air conditioning savings, grist
reading (book): mostly spindle's end by robin mckinley, a sleeping beauty retelling. plus some others i bounced off
watching: finished frieren, an anime about grief and (separately) demons
playing: next fest
making: fiddly little needlework projects, hit a thousand pages transcribed
let's check on my favorite gay cat
listening
this has been previously featured as a tuesdaysong but it's relevant again.
I'm just a brain with a pet body
I'm just a feeling in the room
I'm just a finger on the trigger
On a Friday afternoon, ooh
-
reading (article)
this is not Tremendously relevant to me since i will be a lifelong renter, but i was reading this like yeah yeah yeah of course some boston suburbs have banded together to bulk buy this...and also a little bit of houston??? i didn't think woke shit could happen in texas, but the texan is SO fond of feeling like they outsmarted someone else in order to get a good deal
Bulk buying is a tried-and-true way to get discounts on rooftop solar. Now programs aimed at heat pumps are popping up too, helping people s
-
reading (book)
back to ripping through a fat pile of physical books i've accumulated during my travels, feat. carrot mousie. five books enter one book stays.
mirkheim by poul anderson: i cannot start a huge series in the middle and i don't think i would fall in love with this series based on the wiki overview. will go in my friend's recycling bc it's very brittle and the back cover is pretty mangled.
her majesty's wizard by christopher stasheff: time travel (not my favorite) and weirdly catholic. googled the author and he was a weird catholic. to the free bookstore with you.
tales of robin hood by clayton emery: sorceress described as a "woman in heat". no thank you. to the free bookstore with you.
cowboys are my weakness by pam houston: extremely heterosexual. girl stop trying to be serially monogamous. just have a roster. this one's signed but it will also go to the free bookstore bc someone will eat it the fuck up there.
and finally spindle's end by robin mckinley.
All the creatures of the forest and field and riverbank knew the infant was special. She was the princess Briar-Rose, spirited away from the evil fairy Pernicia on her name-day. But the curse was cast: Some unknown time in the future, Rosie would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a poisoned sleep from which no one could rouse her.
Katriona is the princess’s kidnapper—and savior. A young fairy, she is apprenticed to and lives with her aunt in the small village of Foggy Bottom. The two of them raise the princess as if she were their own in order to protect her. No other human, not even Rosie herself, knows her true identity.
But Pernicia is looking for her, and Pernicia is formidably powerful and tirelessly intent on revenge for a defeat four hundred years old. Two village fairies and all the animals in the realm may not be able to save Rosie. . . .
published in the far-off year 2000, i feel this would be new adult if it existed back then. a book concerned with rose growing up, but mostly focused on markers and milestones of adulthood in your early twenties and thirties.
i grabbed this for a quarter at my favorite religious thrift with the worst fucking vibes, and read through half the first chapter standing there in the aisle before i really blinked. really fun intro to a magic system. very chatty, personable authorial voice. feels like catching up with the girls. not quite a horsegirl book but does have two Really Good Horses.
-
watching
finished frieren, series that hit my bestie pretty hard (positive) and hit me a little less hard (depression). this is going to sound like damning with faint praise but it's been a minute since i watched an anime with things to say about its world and like. themes and shit. as opposed to "we need to solve a big problem or find something NOW". absolutely bananas fight scenes, what a good use of their budget. i am SO scared of fern.
-
playing
i have finally lost interest in the library sorting simulator. got a good eighty hours out of it tho.
it's next fest! bc i have exclusively played powerwash simulator and library sorter on steam it is serving me one million job and sorting game demos.
Feeling overwhelmed? Hi, I’m Molly. I help people sort their space, organize their belongings, and bring calm back into their lives. Let’s t
i like the art and general layout of this, but the placement and overlap of items is a little finicky. i think it is a little Too permissive in letting you put anything anywhere. i want to see a complete level the way the designers intended that way i can get a better idea of spacing etc lol. it feels like those little sticker book scenes that come with tweezers? where you have Some creative freedom but there is very obviously an intended vision? cute! i think they'll get some good feedback and hopefully improve their snap-to-grid and iron out some of the finickiness.
two levels so far, a kitchen and a convenience store. very fun to open every drawer and cabinet and unpack every box. quite a bit of the real-life feel of having to sort of empty every cabinet and drawer, throw everything on the floor, and then go from there
-
making
had a four-day weekend bc last wends i was Not able to have an procedure i still need (not due to malpractice this time, my body was simply not cooperative and there's nothing i can do to make it more cooperative :)))))))) and had a tiny bit of a meltdown about it and called out of work :)
the next two pieces have a lot of glow-in-the-dark thread but we have been under a flood advisory for most of this week and it has been overcast basically 24/7, so showing off the glow-in-the-dark-ness will have to come later.
finished this incredibly gaudy needle book i started in uhhhh. i couldn't find an appearance from any of the 2025 tuesdayposts. so it's been hanging around for a while. if you are true and pure of heart you can very carefully remove the wire from wired ribbon and use it as normal ribbon. random poly felt, poly ribbon, glow in the dark thread, a lot of backstitch and whipstitch, and the loopy bit is pekinese stitch (not from peking, possibly not even from china). as we can see i do NOT need to buy needles anytime soon.
finished this little project i started around my birthday last year. it did not come with quite enough orange thread to finish the pumpkin so i improvised a mackie to fill the space. glow in the dark thread for her eyes and locket as well bc why the fuck not. fringing the edges is my least favorite way to finish a piece but i think it fits the piece.
also, transcribed a thousand pages in the national archives transcription project. pretty underwhelming thousandth page but most of them are lol. don't mind my pip-boy anti-glare dark theme, really a limited number of things i can do to my extremely locked down work computer
