mneme | Reading

I happened, by pure chance, to see a link to the stream at the moment when the latest Starship flight test launched. Now, I'm sitting here, watching high resolution video coming back showing me the curvature of the Earth.

This is just amazing. I remember grainy video from Gemini when I was a kid.

I'm spending a lot of time saying this today, but wow.

redbird

This year's Wiscon was all-online, and billed as a "gap year," with fewer program items than I'm used to, and no dealers room.

I went to two program items--a "US immigration law and worldwide fandom roundtable" and a panel on "the wild world of modern agtech and why isn't it showing up in current SF."

The roundtable was about as cheerful as you'd expect, with a lot of discussion of both past and feared legal difficulties in traveling to cons, and alternatives like smaller gatherings and online cons. Most of us thought that online wasn't as good as in person, but that it's significantly better than nothing. (There may be some selection bias here: people who didn't think an online con was better than nothing wouldn't bother attending.) And a couple of people noted that their choice has been online or nothing at least since 2020, for reasons like disability or budge that don't have much to do with Trump.

The panel on current and future agriculture was fun. Some of the "what SF is getting wrong" was about TV and movies, showing a garden plot that's much too small for the population it's allegedly feeding, and that the fictional future is even worse/stupider about monoculture than the real world today.

Other than that, I hung out on the Discord server. Most if not all of the program items were recorded, and will be available to convention members for a week after the end of the con, but I may not get around to watching any of them, even less interactive things like readings and the guest of honor speeches.

billroper

If all of these posts I am seeing explaining they are fakes are really fakes, we are all doomed. I mean, who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying eyes?

Apparently Google has dropped something called Veo3. And if it can be believed, this little AI tool is making fake videos really easy. And cheap. For example (assuming I can embed this link below):

You need a dog.

Wow.

elisheva_m posting in

little_details

I'm trying to write a scene where two co-workers are trouble-shooting a new custom security or encryption routine. Someone else (who isn't present) wrote the code and he will have been careful to ensure it works before sending it to them. So maybe something in the implementation of it?

The scene is dual purpose, showing their interaction growing closer while also hiding something else in plain sight. The tech part of it can be whatever is plausible and easy to convey without bogging it down in details. I am so out of touch with that sort of thing I don't know what's plausible any more.

What could go wrong with uploading the new code into their office network or onto their phones which would need a bit of trouble-shooting? The kind of thing one person might overlook and another catch. Preferably with them being literally close while they do this. And again - easy to convey without bogging it down in details. Jargon is fine.

Edit: Turns out jargon is not fine. Well it would be in the sense I meant, but that's not how it was taken. Am overwhelmed by how much I can't understand well enough to follow here, let alone distill into a few phrases. I know the readers for my lakorn-novel are non-existent but I can't swamp them with details.

Edit 2: Sorry to have bothered everyone. I'm just going to trash this. It was a stupid idea in the first place. Thank you for your time.

vvalkyri

I should start pulling more of my Facebook entries over here. Here's my most recent:

Wanna get started with Freeway Overpass Banners? Found the link for Backbone Campaign's overpass banner making zoom workshop for tonight at 8 EDT (first was 5/22) - scroll down, & forward to those interested.
https://www.backbonecampaign.org/workshop_20250527

Well actually my most recent was responding to the news that HHS just announced c19 updated vaccines no longer recommended for healthy children are pregnant people, and I invited people to go look up the long covid rates including for children and teens and just why it's more dangerous to have covid in pregnancy.

I need to get back on the road. I just drove out to Winchester for a blood draw, my penultimate lyme vaccine trial visit.

Heather Cox Richardson's post for today spends time on West point but also reminds us that there were 23 states attorneys who started preprep for all the legal challenges we've seen back in February of 24, starting with close reading of Project 2025. Many of us are far from impressed with most Senate Democrats, but it's worth realizing that they are not the entirety.

It was a really good weekend, even if I couldn't manage to do all the things I wanted to do and missed things I would have liked to do.

skygiants

I've had great luck in the past with the sort of kdrama in which an angry immortal supernatural woman has to hang out in contemporary Seoul with a nice mortal boy. We were hoping The Judge From Hell would be that sort of kdrama, and, technically, it is; I think in its heart it would love to be Hotel del Luna. Unfortunately, it has also decided that what it wants to be is a violent revenge fantasy with incoherent and punitive ethics. Interspersed with wacky shenanigans! and a healthy dose of Catholicism?

Okay, so the premise: our heroine is Justitia, the DEMON JUDGE of the UNDERWORLD, THIRD IN LINE to the THRONE OF HELL, whose job is to sentence unrepentant murderers to unending torments. However, when a nice young judge gets murdered and accidentally ends up in her domain instead of the lesser hell where she belongs, Justitia refuses to listen to her pleas of innocence, gets ready to sentence her anyway, and promptly gets her wrist slapped by her superiors: she's gotten complacent! Time to go to Earth, wearing the body of the dead judge, and learn! about JUSTICE!!!

Given that Justitia's initial mistake involved accidentally sentencing an innocent person, you might be forgiven for thinking that Justitia's job on Earth might involve perhaps getting justice for the wrongly accused, or learning to temper justice with mercy and a little bit of nuance, or even uncovering faults and corruption within the justice system as it exists. haha! no. Justitia's job is to hit a quota of Unrepentent, Unforgiven Murderers On Earth and sentence them to unending torment, just like in her day job. She does this by chasing them around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimic the things they have done to their victims and beating them up, then stamping them on the forehead with a little stamp that says GEHENNA while then the doors of hell open and an ominous voice roars GEHENNA!!!! and they get sucked into hell. We did not enjoy the excruciating sequences of murderers being chased around a sequence of nightmare scenarios that mimicked the things they had done to their victims, which the show obviously wants us to find cathartic and satisfying. We did enjoy the ominous voice that roared GEHENNA!!!! It made us laugh every time.

( this got long but tbh not as long as it could have been. this show was so incoherent )

sorcyress

Sunday of work weekend was fine (and complicated and stressful because Mice) but mostly uneventful and my brain went a little sideways for some parts of it, which was not the best. I think maybe the most satisfying part of Sunday --and a little bit of today-- was developing new skills and practicing at them some, and getting reasonably good at them.

The new skill from yesterday was sewing, and specifically doing a very fine whip stitch with almost hidden stitches to get the edge on for a quilt (basting? Is that what it was?) I was taught by Kimberly-(Lucretia's-Mom) who is entirely lovely and was calm, good at teaching, and a lovely conversationalist. I will probably never love sewing, but it's good to remember that it and I can be friends, and it's very good to have chances to learn skills with it sometimes.

The new skill from today was Ditch Digging! Elliot was in charge of doing some path-shaping to get water to travel the correct directions (off the path) and a little bit of berm shaping and the like. My first ditch was, uh, a little too extreme, but I took his good feedback and by the end of it, I think I had a pretty good sense of how to make the path go the ways I wanted it to.

In the afternoon, I did a little bit of other helpful things, and then suddenly was gifted with the truly wonderful present of a working Hobart. Well okay then, I *will* wash the last few dozen loads of dishes, since I don't have to then drag them through the sanitizer as well! Critically, this meant all the flatware, which was going to be _miserable_ to have to drop in the sanitizer and then retrieve. I also now know exactly how many trays are at camp (both the Good Kind and the shitty kind.) The margin is...a _lot_ closer than I would've expected, honestly.

It was _so pleasant_ to spend the last three hours of my work weekend in the kitchen, by myself, just me and the music cranked and the hobart humming along and round after round of dishes. Isaac even brought me some soap so that I wouldn't have to run to Dingle every time I needed to wash my hands between dirty side and clean side. It is good to learn new skills and get better at them! It is also real fucking good to just do skills that I am already competent at and feel like I have good agency for.

It was also really nice to feel like I could make Actually Useful And Sensible Decisions about how to run things through. My only concession to Amanda being the Head Of Kitchen was to send a text being all "I'm doing the rest of them and you can't stop me", I didn't need to ask her for advice because I could think through all the things that needed to happen and just...do them!

Like, there's this thing I do where I be Extremely Confident which dovetails in interesting ways with that thing I do where I be Extremely Nosy About How Everything Everywhere Works. I worry that people might not be standing up to me enough about their own expertise sometimes --like, it is cute for Seramay to defer to me on cabin opening things, he has _way_ more experience doing so than I do! But also, I do have a fair chunk of experience and I tend to be competent in general, so yeah, it's not unreasonable to be all "okay Kat, go get the clotheslines up in the Bamps and the hill, have fun".

Anyways, it felt nice to be helpful (Amanda sent me a very nice text at the end when I was finished) and it was very nice that I got to do a _lot_ of dishwashing which is my absolute favourite job at camp 5ever. I don't mind opening cabins, and digging/carrying/general grounds nonsense is fine. But this particular work weekend I got to send...gods...Okay so like, there were 16 flats of just trays to go through the Hobart and that wasn't even half of what I did today. I probably pushed well over 200 flats through on Saturday? 300 maybe? I wish I had counted, because it was _wonderful_.

*and* I got to fill four fire bins, which is close to half the ones at camp, and is my other favourite job. I loved _so much_ two years ago when I got to do the camp safety audit and I briefly knew where literally every fire extinguisher was at camp. I also love running through and checking the AEDs, although I noted that they weren't up yet for this year.

So yeah, this was a very satisfying work weekend where I did a lot of things I liked, and made some good connections because of it. (I was working with this summer's dishwasher on Saturday and gave her plenty of random advice; this year's potwasher is totally new to camp and I think I left a good impression. And the head cook for the weekend is charming and I think I have successfully charmed them in return).

I really don't want to go back to the real world. LCFD in a couple weeks, which is good, but man, there is a _lot_ of grading between here and there.

~Sor
MOOP!

billroper

After I got back from lunch and grocery shopping, I asked everyone to please come out and make at least an initial assault on the garage, because I would like to be able to park my car there again before next winter, so starting now was a good idea.

Progress was made. A number of things were consigned to the garbage or will be added to it closer to trash day. A number of other things, including outgrown bicycles, were put in the back of the van to go to Goodwill. And some things were put away or taken into the house for sorting.

There is still a lot of stuff that needs to go. And other things that need to be given away.

(Anybody local want a roughly 8x10 olefin Oriental rug in red and cream that has been rolled up in the garage for a long time? It will clearly need a good cleaning.)

silvercat17

The One Where They're Human (and Also Magical Warriors)

(Originally posted at Silver Does Stuff)

( Read more... )

kevin_standlee

I was mostly a spectator this long holiday weekend (except during the grocery shopping trip), but I have had Words with Kayla, who was changing earrings multiple times per day, for good and sufficient reasons. Unfortunately, both earring holes ended up bleeding a little bit. We applied witch hazel and I've suggested that we leave the simple pearl studs in place for a few days and apply the Claire's Pierced solution 2-3x/day to help them heal a bit.

In the meantime, I need to get some sleep so I can get back on my normal work schedule tomorrow.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

bunsen_h

Is a half-baked biscuit fully baked once?

spectrum_09 posting in

girlgenius_lair

Quite Impossible.

vvalkyri

depression risk after medical DC

Otherwise, balticon husband lovely. This is not actually related. Hey it's over an hour earlier than I went to sleep yesterday and another hour earli6 than Friday ...

kevin_standlee

This afternoon, Lisa (whose sleep schedule has rotated back to the Dreaded Day Shift) asked if we could go to Reno for some grocery shopping and other errands. After I said goodbye to Kayla for the rest of the day and packed the small coolers with ice, Lisa and I headed into Reno. First we went to Staples for something Lisa wanted, then it was off to WinCo Foods, where it was much less crowded than it usually is on a Sunday afternoon. There were a few things she wanted that she couldn't get there, so we went to Raley's for them.

I'd been up since around 4 AM, which isn't that unusual for me, but my eyes were burning as we turned for home. I think there is a lot of pollen in the air. I can see that the cottonwoods are starting to shed. I'm glad I have tomorrow as a holiday and am not traveling this weekend any farther than I have already gone over the past two days. Kayla might go to the Wigwam tomorrow, but that's about the limits of our ambition at the moment.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

callibr8

Nothing better on a cool rainy Sunday than revisiting the glory that was Conflikt in 2017, when Judi Miller was a featured guest, and graced the stage with her brilliant ASL embellishments of the songs being sung. If you need cheering up, go take a listen, here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLxBioJmHs31grtYB3pHk8jFvTCPkJB0Nb

Profound gratitude to Jeffrey Cornish for uploading this.

Current Mood: drained
Current Location: Castle Greyskull
Current Music: Conflikt 10 filk playlist

billroper

Yesterday, my good friend Amy McNally posted an image of a breakfast sandwich that she can, sadly, no longer acquire, because the restaurant that served it has long since closed. I sympathize with this.

On the late, lamented series "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist", two of the principals ran a restaurant named Maximo's, where you could order from any of a variety of other restaurants in town and they would retrieve the food from all those different restaurants and serve it to you. This was an interesting concept, but not what I'm looking for. What *I* want is to be able to get food from all of the restaurants that I used to love that no longer exist. I mentioned this in response to Amy's post and Callie Hills said that I should write that song.

Well, yes. I have been contemplating writing that song for a few years now. It just wasn't coming together.

Until this morning when I realized that:

1) I had the chorus.
2) This should really be a duet with me and Gretchen and banter between the verses.

I broached this to Gretchen this morning and now we have a song. Gretchen is not convinced that the song is improved by the banter, but we'll see how that develops. In any case, it can be sung with or without banter, so here is the banter-free version for your perusal.

I hope you like it!
( Lyrics inside... )

$mdlbear: blue fractal bear with text "since 2002" (Default)$

mdlbear

It feels like it's been a busy week. I have actually gotten a few things done. (Some of them today, which doesn't really count.) Most notably, making travel arrangements to get to D.F.D.F..

It's also been a good week for finding stuff, including an obituary for my father, written by his friend and co-worker Walter Slavin [pdf]. Also, a box containing a small carpet, two plastic bins of memorabilia, and a number of old hard drives (which need to be looked at and erased before being discarded) that I thought had been left behind,

Happy Lilac Towel Day Also note that last Sunday was Mount St. Helens Day, so you'll find several more links immediately under the cut.

You'll also find the Epic v. Apple Contempt order, which is epic in more ways than one. I haven't had that much fun reading a court order since SCO v IBM. It's worth an extended quote:

In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option. To hide the truth, Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath. Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly. [...] The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
This is an injunction, not a negotiation.

For a musical finale, here is Duetto buffo di due gatti (Duet for Two Cats). Put your drink down before listening.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: D.F.D.F next weekend, also see post

billroper

Thanks to everyone for the lovely birthday wishes.

I had a nice birthday. Aside from writing a new song, I had work to do at work. This included watching a project that I've been involved in and have been pushing since December get merged into the main codebase. This will fix up our JDeveloper build system to be a lot simpler and more maintainable. Different versions of this project have apparently been kicking around for years and this turned out to be the one that pulled all of the different threads together and got it done. Most of the changes were done by the build team -- I just got to keep testing it. :)

In and around that, I fixed a few bugs and managed to find time to duck out for a nice birthday lunch with Gretchen at City Barbeque. Gretchen made plans for dinner that involved pan pizza for us from Lou Malnati's while the kids ate macaroni and cheese, because they are not fond of pan pizza. This worked out nicely. Dinner was very silly and introduced me to at least one song that I am surprised that I haven't heard someone sing at a filk. (I suppose that I could pick it up, but it's not really my style.)

After dinner, K invited me to play one of the Mario games against her on her Switch. Since it was a game that wasn't likely to give me motion sickness, I said sure and we had a good time dodging piranha plants. After that, we all regrouped to the family room where we showed the kids "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". They had never seen the film, but now they know where all of the lines that we quote from it came from.

("Sharp pointy teeth.")

It was a good way to spend the day. :)

Today, I got some laundry and some cleaning done. I also updated the website to include the new song, which was useful, because it helped me find some more software that hadn't been installed yet on the new computer (Notepad++) as well as get my setup for Filezilla completed so that I could get to the website.

We've moved into the "shopping for series" mode on streaming. I suggested that we might try "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", because we like the lead actress on "High Potential" and it's available on Hulu. Gretchen wasn't that impressed by the first episode, feeling that it was very predictable. It reminded me of "How I Met Your Mother" in some ways (I think it's a period thing) and I'd like to try a few more episodes to see how it settles in. We'll see what happens.

kevin_standlee

Something I'm going to have to pay close attention to at the conventions I'm attending this year (Westercon/BayCon, Worldcon, and World Fantasy Con) is pacing myself. Kayla is going to get pretty excited, and that could lead to overwork. I love Worldcon, but we'll be turning sixty years old in August, and going without sleep is something that I could do much more easily thirty years ago than now.

I suspect that getting enough sleep is going to be a huge issue for us. I hate the idea of having to take mid-day naps or something like that. Worldcon is apt to be the biggest challenge, particularly inasmuch as I'm saying in the party hotel, which is the farthest away from the convention center, so even getting back to the room for some rest in the middle of the day is going to be a challenge.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

seawasp

Didn't get to post this yesterday.

Some people are more surprised than others by this turn of events...

( ... one of them for different reasons... )

But why wait?

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Joshua Kronengold

December 2024

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Joshua Kronengold

Reading

High Resolution

Wiscon report

Your Lying Eyes

Tech/code question

(no subject)

(no subject)

More Work Less Weekend

Heave Ho!

The One Where They're Human (and Also Magical Warriors)

Hey, Watch Those Ears!

Etymology

Monday's Comic

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Memorial Day Shopping

filk is for sharing

The Time Travel Cafe

Done Since 2025-05-18

Yesterday and Today

Pacing

FENRIR: Chapter 35

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December 2024

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