mneme | Reading

And thus, we arrive at the end of another work week -- and probably at the end of the short project that I took on, which seems to be working pretty well. We will, of course, keep an eye out for bugs, but I should be able to work on something different next week.

Tomorrow is the last full day of K's spring break, so we are making a ginormous brisket for dinner. We are also working on getting her income tax return filed for her summer job.

And anything else that needs to be done. Whatever that may be. :)

skygiants

Sometimes you read a book at exactly the wrong time, and you're like 'god this stupid big fat fantasy novel. Why are you six hundred pages. Why is everybody Sexy. What's the point of you. I'm tired' and sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time and you're like 'thank god! actual worldbuilding!! somebody had a good time getting weird with this! please tell me more about how weird you're getting!!' and I think I could easily have gone either way on Tessa Gratton's The Mercy Makers depending on the four books I'd read just previous as well as the time of the moon. But as it happened, at the point I read it I was really hungering for something, ANYTHING that felt like it actually cared about depicting a unique and distinctive society with characters that felt like they actually belonged in that society, and The Mercy Makers gave me that in spades, so I ended up really high on it! I had a great time! Please understand that I mean it lovingly when I say that it felt like a visual novel high fantasy dating sim!

-- this is a bit disingenuous for me to say, I haven't actually played more than a bit of any of the long visual novel high fantasy dating sims I'm thinking of, but I have read extensively through

alias_sqbr's write-ups of them and the book profoundly reminded me of something like [

alias_sqbr's description of] My Vow To My Liege, where a player character has to play a lot of really dramatic political games to decide the fate of the kingdom, while surrounded by Hot People, and different elements of the plot will play out depending on which Hot Person she's closest to --

Okay, so we are in a fantasy empire that is built around a central religion that values Balance and forbids Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques. Our heroine Iriset, of course, is an atheist who's wildly gifted with Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery and Medical Techniques, and is also the daughter of a criminal mastermind. Iriset and her father have carefully crafted a secret identity illusion so that everyone thinks that someone else is the Heretical Magical Plastic Surgery Mad Scientist Genius and that the famous criminal mastermind's daughter is just a nice girl who's not really involved, so that when her father eventually gets arrested -- as indeed is the inciting incident of this book -- Iriset can hopefully stay free and rescue him instead of also getting arrested herself as a famous magical heretic.

For some reason, however, after her father's arrest, Iriset -- whom everyone knows is a criminal heiress but, once again, thinks is a nice and sweet criminal heiress who's not really involved, rather than an amoral heretic mad scientist -- is sort of non-consensually invited to become one of the handmaidens of the Emperor's hot sister as part of complex political schemes, so she spends the rest of the book in the palace, where she meets the following hot people:

- the Emperor, an earnest and well-intentioned young man who is really devoutly religiously dedicated to maintaining the Balance of the Status Quo
- the Emperor's sister, Iriset's boss, whose job as per official tradition for the Emperor's sibling is to be a priestess who placates the religion's divine devil-figure by going and being really sexy at a shrine every day, but has political visions and ambitions for the Empire far beyond her Sexy Role
- the Emperor's fiancee, a very sweet princess from neighboring island kingdom, who is a fundamental element of the Emperor's sister's overarching plans for an empire that expands through marriage alliance instead of conquest
- a mysterious, suffering, untrustworthy fairy sort of creature who has been publicly imprisoned behind the Emperor's throne for the past several hundred years and is now just sort of a standard part of the decor

In addition to these obviously romanceable characters, Iriset also has an existing criminal boyfriend on the outside of the palace who she's attempting to get in touch with and coordinate with about Operation Rescue Her Dad, and she also meets a palace maid and a fantasy-nonbinary magical architect (uses one of several archaic gender forms) who in the dating sim version of this would probably be secret or hidden routes.

The first, like, two hundred pages or so of this six hundred page book are mostly just Iriset wandering around the palace, trying not to be too obviously a heretical mad scientist, building various schemes for father-rescue and trying not to get distracted by much she would quite like to bang any or all of these hot people. And, again, at another time I might have gotten bored, but at this point in time I was really just enjoying the slow rich worldbuilding. It's weird! It's interesting! Everyone always wears elaborate masks and facepaint except for the foreign princess who's confused by the whole system, and we've reinvented a different kind of four humors system so everybody's like 'well of course she would act this way, she's got too much ecstatic force in her system', and the political conversation about marriage reform refers to the law that forbids conquered peoples within the Empire from marrying within their own ethnic group for a certain number of generations, and there are several archaic genders that are no longer used and people have chat about how actually we should bring them back because two is an imbalanced number and four would be much more balanced -- what I'm trying to get at is that it feels like the people in this book think in ways that are shaped by their world, and not by ours. The plot in its actual happenings is constantly contriving itself so that Iriset will be pushed into a position where, eventually, she'll have to Rebel Against Empire, but the thought patterns that get us there feel distinctive and grounded in the world and setting that Gratton has built.

But eventually, of course, we are going to have to get some plot and it is obviously going to have to involve Chekhov's Heretical Plastic Surgery and messy identity porn. ( the rest is spoilers )

madfilkentist posting in

girlgenius_lair

Clank crunching time.

billroper

I got the notice that our replacement mattress has shipped and should be here in a week. My lower back is greatly looking forward to this -- except, perhaps, for what it's going to take to get it upstairs and onto the bed. The shipping notice says that the mattress weighs 150 pounds. Whee!

calimac

The late blogger Kevin Drum was under treatment for many years for multiple myeloma, which eventually killed him about a year ago. He wrote often about his medical adventures, and had particularly strong feelings about a medication he was on, a steroid named dexamethasone, which he called "the evil dex."

What exactly was evil about it he never made exactly clear, but it seems that it prevented him from sleeping, leaving him groggy all the time.

I do not have myeloma, but I have been taking intermittent courses of dexamethasone - one to four days each - and have to report differently. It doesn't seem to have caused any disruption in my sleep, which has actually been getting less disrupted lately, and though that may be because I was taking the dex in the mornings, I've had it in the afternoons with no further effect.

What it does cause is a spike in blood sugar, which has to be watched over carefully. And either it or some of the other medications I've been taking at the same time has been causing constipation, about which the less said the better.

vvalkyri

Which before I explain I should offer condolences to those who knew the person in Bostonish who recently died. I did not, other than somewhat by reputation and very much in passing, but she was very special to many people and seemed like someone it was yet again my loss to not know.

But this post is inspired by my mild befuddlement at just how much Rusty Old American Dream by David Wilcox makes me cry.

Some of us on the mutual Aid group are meeting at dew drop inn later tonight for a planning meeting. And someone referenced a song called Uneasy Rider that mentions a Dew Drop Inn (its lyrics are quite the ride) and something about the first lines gave me the earworm.

So I brought up the YouTube and I was singing along and started crying. And then later grabbed the lyrics to drop back into that chat and sang it without the YouTube and was back to sobbing.

I certainly didn't get enough sleep last night. But come to think of it I kind of remember this song has often done this. It's probably easy enough to figure out which lyric.

In other news it's been nice out today and I was up till 6:00 a.m. because someone called at 3:00 when they saw I was up because I sent something to a group chat and I guess that was helpful because I did actually almost finish unpacking from Presidents Day weekend. But it was less helpful because when I finally managed to get off the phone at 5:00 I was quite awake.

I had had tentative plans with happy that I had forgotten about and then remembered and then sent him a note at 5:00 saying hey I'm not in bed yet even and then his meeting ran late enough that he messaged right about the same time I actually opened my eyes and then we made our way to falafel and came back and I'm sad that falafel Incorporated is no longer carrying their vegan shawarma because they've started doing chicken shawarma and they had already had chicken shawarma but I think they're just trying to keep their menu very narrow. But I expressed my dismay and then someone else came in and is vegan herself and doesn't like falafel so she left and did not buy anything and I noted that maybe the people behind the counter might want to keep a running tally as to how many people Express dismay and how many people then leave without buying something. Their vegan shawarma was amazing.

But the falafel salad was also good.

And then somehow the last two and a half hours have gone poof. Some of it has been trying to follow up on maybe getting some kites made since No Kings 3 is the same day as the Cherry blossom kite festival and one of the events will be pretty nearby.

And then there was trying to signal boost a call for people to call their Congress critters and complain about dismantling department of education and trying to shove special education in with like department of Labor.

And then I'm not even sure.

I'm kind of tempted to go to Blues tonight because I like both of the people DJing but then that complicates matters for the earlier part of the evening.

And I'm also just so exasperated with kind of everything of late.

And how is it March?

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

Being in what the medical people I've spoken to lately say is reasonably good health for my age. My blood pressure has responded well to my latest prescription (10mg/day of lisinopril). But walking more than .75km hurts, and I am NOT thankful for that.
Ginger, garlic, chocolate, and coffee. And other tasty things too numerous to mention.
Free faxing with Dropbox.
My mail finally catching up with me. (Too late to prevent problems, but hopefully not too late to prevent disaster.)
My support groups.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

zenlizard

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: indescribable

vvalkyri

So I scroll back 14 days but if anything's important with you from before 14 days then I couldn't easily scroll back.

I don't even remember when it was I last posted. There's all sorts of things I've been highly annoyed about lately but haven't really been posting here. I just got back from steel City Blues which I'd sort of been debating whether I was going to or not and eventually decided literally the night before possibly even the day of.

I had a couple weeks of my leg being highly annoying and that finally finished in the aftermath of President's Day weekend, which was also very very good.

I bought a new phone right before President's Day weekend because my normal phone was busy rebooting itself constantly. And I hate this phone so much. Nothing is where it's supposed to be it's incredibly slow the system UI keeps crashing and I didn't come to the conclusion that I wanted to try to return it to Best buy until after the two weeks window for doing so and besides they were going to charge like a $50 restock fee. So bleh. I also am pretty sure that even though nominally I got all my messages to transfer they did not in fact transfer because I sent some birthday greetings to various people and I was like wait a second there should be some sort of message history there and indeed at least with one of them she had messages history...

Drove back from Pittsburgh yesterday and boy howdy was it not hugely clever or two opt for the not toll road. I spent time driving through clouds in the dark. On one lane needs direction roads which every so often actually had reflectors. Do not recommend.

I managed to host some acro in my lobby tonight, with the guy who's nice enough to let me base him and my next door neighbor.

I had done a very little bit of acro over President's Day weekend and otherwise it had been weeks and weeks. And I probably will be doing a blues class instead on Sunday and a friend who lives only a couple blocks away is moving to Alaska so I don't see myself going up to Laurel for acro on Saturday and besides there's the March for science and maybe I'll be there in a frog costume because oh right yeah I was part of that state of the Swamp Thing and I'm quite happy about it.

Last week was I went up to the Wilson building to be part of the free DC filling the hearing room for the MP d oversight hearing.

By the way, DHS is trying to buy a big Warehouse in Maryland where there's a number of different ones. Other places have been successful so far at making that not happen.

I really need to do better at not doing things by dictation

redbird

The trip to New Orleans was very good for

cattitude, who had an easier tiee finding food he could eat and enjoy than Adrian and I, but the few days of warm weather did us good as well. (And then the trip home was physically difficult and painful for Adrian, unfortunately.)

I did more walking each day, including but not only the travel days, than I expected or planned, and found it less difficult than I would have predicted.

Saturday afternoon we met my brother at House of Blues, because they had outdoor music and a performer he liked. That was fun, and Adrian enjoyed dancing with an enthusiastic stranger. I think that was the day we took a streetcar downtown in search of lunch, only to find lines for the relatively small number of places with outdoor seating. But I'd wanted to ride a streetcar--streetcars are part of the New Orleans transit network, not just a tourist attraction, so we could get one a couple of blocks from our hotel.

Our hotel had a courtyard, which was part of why Cattitude chose it. The courtyard had an unexpected, charming cat. The drum circle I mentioned in the previous post was in the park across the street from our hotel, which is part of why Mark recommended it.

Also, the New Orleans airport terminal plays music, not very loudly, over the PA system, which is entirely fitting for an airport named after Louis Armstrong, and much better than what comes over the PA at most airports.

billroper

I've merged the reference counting changes to our code so that we can build it for testing. There will be a brief shakedown cruise, but I think we'll end up with things being much more stable once we finish this up.

marycatelli posting in

girlgenius_lair

Plan. . . let us say . . . "K."

billroper

Today was another day of mild refactoring around one of my classes at work. This included adding a reference counter (which I had removed in an excess of enthusiasm for Java reference counting that was not entirely warranted) and changing many of the calls that fetch a member of the class to use try-with-resources to guarantee that the close() method will be called and the reference count reduced.

Tomorrow, I hope to start testing this. All of the unit tests are running, but that just proves that nothing acutely stupid is happening. It's the *system* tests where all of the action will be here.

And I want to see if this runs or just sits there and starts smoking. :)

kayla_allen

Today the stars aligned and Lisa and I went over to Big R and bought a pallet (390 logs) of Pres-to-Logs. Lisa connected the utility trailer to her pickup truck, and I followed her over there. I fortunately remembered to bring a previous purchase receipt that has the SKU for the pallet, because they can never find it. They tend to think that I meant either a six-log packet or a ton of wood pellets, because that's what most people buy. Anyway, there was no problem once she looked up the SKU ($349 for 390 logs), except that initially she tried to enter the quantity as 390, and thus the subtotal was $136,110! Not that they could have sold me that many, even if I had the fleet of trucks and forklifts.

Eventually the forklift operator appeared and brought out a pallet of logs. Lisa had me sit in the truck and hold the brake pedal, which helped the operator shove the pallet into the trailer to get it over the axle. He then trundled off without the loading ticket, and I had to chase him down and give it to him.

We came home and Lisa parked the pickup and trailer in the East Lot. We'll start unloading the logs when Lisa feels up to it. It's a lot of work, and I can't do as much heavy lifting as I used to be able to do. (Yes, I know, and I am not complaining. It comes with the territory. I never was much of a tomboy.) I'll be much happier with a full woodbox, and the unit cost of the logs in a pallet is much better than buying them in small bundles.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

ericcoleman posting in

filk

Beth Kinderman, Naomi Hinchen, Blind Lemming Chiffon, Mark Horning, John McDaid, Jen Midkiff, Clam Chowder, Griff The Filker, K. L. Kahan As Wyndreth, Cynthia Mcquillin, Tim Griffin, Death Ingloria, Mikey Mason

Available on iTunes, Google Play and most other places you can get podcasts. We can be heard Wednesday at 6am and 9pm Central on scifi.radio.

filkcast.blogspot.com

seawasp

GODSWAR is now released. The Mask of Ares and The Spear of Athena are now available!

We continue snippeting with the first main chapter...

( Let's meet our actual protagonists... )

redbird

[Ny is gravely ill, unconscious, and unlikely to recover:]

Update: Ny is gone. As of a couple of hours ago, she no longer has brain function, and will be moved off life support after evaluation for organ transplant, and allowed to die peacefully, not necessarily immediately.

[my earlier info was via princessofgeeks, who linked to

goss's post]

Current Mood: upset and sad

denise posting in

dw_advocacy

On Friday, the judge hearing our VA case issued a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing Virginia's SB 854 against any Netchoice member (which means us!) while the lawsuit proceeds. Judge Giles's ruling is a little technical in places and covers a number of legal issues that I keep meaning to get around to explaining someday so folks can have a better grasp on the kind of things they'll see argued in cases like these, like strict scrutiny and associational standing, but the end result is still pretty clear, I think: the judge agrees Netchoice has made a strong enough showing right from the start that the law is unconstitutional to block the state from doing anything to enforce it until the full case can be heard.

This is only the beginning of that particular fight and we still have a ways to go, but it's great news for us, for all our users from Virginia, and for the internet as a whole. Three cheers for the Netchoice team and the outside litigation counsel, who are Clement & Murphy for this one! The full docket in RECAP: NetChoice v. Jason S. Miyares, 1:25-cv-02067, (E.D. Va.).

calimac

At Corflu, where the banquet was catered at our hotel meeting room from a Puerto Rican restaurant nearby, I was pretty sure I'd been to that restaurant before. Having gotten home, I went to leave a review on Yelp and discovered that not only had I been there (nine years ago, a wonder I remembered it) but I'd reviewed it.

Had I checked my review, I could have been definite on something I was trying vaguely to recall during conversations at the banquet. The food line offered two kinds of plantains, green and sweet. What I recalled was getting a mixture and liking one but not the other, but I couldn't remember which one. Turned out that what I'd written back then was, "The fried green plantains were fairly dry and crunchy, the sweet ones far too intensely sweet and got over anything they touched."

That was in contrast to general opinion at the banquet, which is that the green ones were inedible while the sweet ones were quite good. (I didn't have either this time.)

billroper

The treadmill left for its new home today and the library looks a good bit less crowded. This is good.

In keeping with the theme of moving things, today at work was largely spent rearranging things so that I could combine two classes into one. I think that's done and I can move on to the next bit of this project tomorrow.

Yay, me!

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Joshua Kronengold

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Joshua Kronengold

Reading

End of Week

(no subject)

Friday's page

Rest Easy -- Later

the evil dex

Surprise tears

Thankful Thursday

Plan?

Oops I seem to have gone forever again

more about the New Orleans trip

You Can Count On It

Wednesday's Comic

Refactoring

You Can Get The Wood

This week on FilkCast

The Mask of Ares: Second Snippet for the Re-Release!

bad news about @minoanmiss

Victory in Virginia!!

mystery solved

Moving Things Around

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February 2026

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