sparowe: (Casting Crowns)
Kate ([personal profile] sparowe) wrote2025-10-29 03:37 am

UpWords - Max Lucado: [From] 27 October 2025

The Battle Belongs to the Lord


“‘The battle belongs to the Lord” (1 Samuel 17:47 MEV). When everyone stared at Goliath, David never gave him the time of day. David found a source of strength into which he could tap. The right thoughts led to the right reaction.

No one needs to tell you giants roam this world. No one needs to tell you this life is a battle. But maybe someone needs to remind you the battle belongs to the Lord. You never fight alone. You never fight solo. You never face a challenge without the backup of God Almighty. God is with you as you face your giant. With you as you are wheeled into surgery. With you as you enter the cemetery. With you, always. Silence the voice that says, “The challenge is too great.” And welcome God’s voice that reminds, “The battle belongs to the Lord.”

Read more Tame Your Thoughts: Three Tools to Renew Your Mind and Transform Your Life

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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-10-29 01:07 am
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Good News

Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?

sovay: (Viktor & Mordecai)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2025-10-29 01:55 am

And I'm sorry that I forgot that binders don't go in the dryer

The construction turned out not to be on an adjacent street; we were misled by it not being roadwork. It is the re-roofing of a house diagonally across our street and we have no idea how many days it will last except two is already more than enough. I can't believe we are still afflicted with construction, it just changed levels. I wanted to do anything with my brain this evening and fell asleep instead. On the bright side, it occurred to me to look into the current whereabouts of the members of my beloved Schmekel, the short-lived and brilliant, all-trans, all-Jewish klezmer-punk band that gave the world such gems as "I'll Be Your Maccabee" (2010)" and "I'm Sorry, It's Yom Kippur" (2011) and discovered that while the keyboardist has remained a musician, the bassist went into the medical profession, the guitarist became an award-winning game designer, and as of last year the drummer is the rabbi of a congregation in western Massachusetts, which is great. Any mention of Martin Buber will to this day instantly earworm me with "FTM at the DMV" (2013).
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-10-29 12:05 am

Poetry Fishbowl Report for October 7, 2025

Our theme this time was "Witches and Wizards." I wrote from 1 PM to 4:30 AM, so about 13 hours 30 minutes, accounting for breaks. I wrote 8 poems on Tuesday plus 2 later in the week.

Participation was up, with 11 comments on LiveJournal and another 28 on Dreamwidth. A total of 12 people sent prompts.


Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the October 7, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"The Disappointing Daughter"
"The Unretired Witch"
"What Wizardry Is All About"

"New and Innovative Approaches"


Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from October 7. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include: [personal profile] janetmiles and Anthony Barrette. All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There is 1 tally toward a bonus fishbowl.


The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.
soc_puppet: Dreamsheep, its wool colored black and shot through with five diagonal colored lines (red, yellow, white, blue, and green, from left to right), the design from Dreamwidth user capri0mni's Disability Pride flag. The Dreamwidth logo is in red, yellow, white, blue, and green, echoing the stripes. (Disability Pride)
Socchan ([personal profile] soc_puppet) wrote2025-10-28 09:24 pm
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Convention Accessibility Timeline

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine I used to work with at AnimeIowa contacted me with questions about running Accessibility for the convention he's since joined; I've rounded up everything I could think of and sent it to him, though I don't doubt I'll be thinking of things I missed for a while longer 😛

Anyway, that was more floating around the back of my mind than anything, until I found out about TwitchCon's major accessibility fails, including (among other things) not having a ramp to the main stage for one of their Guests of Honor, for three years running. I'm no professional, just a passionate, self-taught amateur, but even I can fix something that egregious after the first time!

With that in mind, I'm going to do my best to start sharing some of the stuff I thought about and planned for Accessibility back when I was running it for AnimeIowa. I've got a bare bones timeline for stuff to do posted at [community profile] access_fandom already (with questions and input very welcome!), and am planning to share more there as I get the wherewithal. Because my efforts and knowledge aren't perfect, but I still somehow did better than a convention with corporate funding to throw around.
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-10-28 08:47 pm

Today's Adventures

We went up to Champaign-Urbana today.

Read more... )
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-10-28 08:46 pm
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Fungi

Before plants or animals, fungi conquered Earth’s surface

Fungi were Earth’s first ecosystem engineers, thriving long before plants ever took root.

Fungi’s evolutionary roots stretch far deeper than once believed — up to 1.4 billion years ago, long before plants or animals appeared. Using advanced molecular dating and gene transfer analysis, researchers reconstructed fungi’s ancient lineage, revealing they were crucial in shaping Earth’s first soils and ecosystems
.
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ravena_kade ([personal profile] ravena_kade) wrote2025-10-28 07:09 pm

(no subject)

My friend was returned to the hospital yesterday. The rehab hospital is not really a hospital.

On Friday I recd a call saying that she could not swallow and she was afraid she would never walk again. Since she could not swallow they ground up her pills and that burned her throat. Now she suconsciously fears swallowing and is not eating.

On Sunday she was better and doing therapy.

Yesterday at lunch I get a call that she had to return to the hospital via Emergency Room. She did not get there until 7 PM. I know she had an MRI, but no one has the results.

Today I visit her at 11 AM. She was in a bay in the ER in the pit/core. She was out of it and all the noise had her confused and she thought she was in a Casino. She knew who I was and pleaded with me to help her with a game. a nurse came in and I asked if anyone else had seen her today. No. She could not eat. and she kept spitting in a bag they had given her. She was choking. I stayed for a bit and then left.

At 3 I went back. She was still confused and thought people were going to throw her out. The nurse came in and said they were moving her to a room and gave her IV bag 2 big syringes full of pain killers. I was able to go up with her and get her settled in. I called her roommate and let her know what was going on. The healthcare proxy still had not heard back from any Doctors. Doing this stuff via phone just doesn't work well.

I will go into work tomorrow and visit a few times in the day. She is on the 9th floor of where I work.
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brickhousewench ([personal profile] brickhousewench) wrote2025-10-28 06:55 pm

Executive Function Theft

Via [personal profile] beradan comes an article about the concept of Executive Function Theft:

When thinking about Executive Function Theft in the home or personal relationships, the outcome that cropped up was that of decision fatigue. Does one person in the relationship have to decide what is for dinner every single night, and also to arrange all of the logistics of acquiring the food, preparing it, cleaning up after dinner, deciding what can be saved for leftovers and what needs to go into a lunch box the next day? Is their decision-making ability wholly captured in those tasks while the other person is getting to relax or to plan a project?

Two different pieces of literature came to mind when I was considering EFT in the home. One was a quote from the excellent book Equal Partners by Kate Mangino:

“While his female partner continues to do housework for twenty, twenty-six, thirty-one more hours — he can devote this time to hobbies, relaxation, exercise, hanging out with friends, sleep, work and/or continued education. Essentially, he has the opportunity to do so much more with his life than she does.” — Kate Mangino, Equal Partners, Chapter 1

I felt this dovetailed nicely with a 2008 article from the University of Michigan:

“Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families.” (Press Release for the study)

If a woman is doing at least 7 more hours a week of housework –think of all of the decisions that are included in that, and all of the executive function needed for her to complete that housework. What is it that she must remember which needs to be cleaned or ordered or prepared and what is the outcome of her spending that much additional time on the minutiae of the relationship or family?


While reading I immediately thought, sounds a lot like glue work or emotional labor, just one more service people lower down on the totem pole are expected to provide. =(

Yep, the author mentions that later in the article:
I don’t think you can have a conversation about Executive Function Theft without also talking about the mental load and invisible labor and emotional labor. All of these concepts are connected.
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masquerading as a man with a reason ([personal profile] ysobel) wrote2025-10-28 02:52 pm

Duolingo alternatives

Found an article with suggestions and am noting for future checking-out. This isn't my personal recommendation, but if any of y'all have used these, feel free to comment.

* Drops ("Language Learning Games: Drops"). Mostly vocabulary rather than full sentences. Free accounts limited to 5min/day. Paid upgrade available. Company also has apps for specific languages incl Korean, Tagalog, and others

* Busuu. No time limits for free accounts, at least. Paid upgrades available.

* Memrise. Free plan is more vocab than full sentences. Grammar lessons require paid.

* Babbel. Exclusively paid r/th freemium. Mostly just European languages.

* LingoDeer. Has Asian and European languages - there is also a games app for Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Chinese and German. Mostly paid.
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Jesse the K ([personal profile] jesse_the_k) wrote2025-10-28 03:08 pm
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rave: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst's remarkable reference work, The Elements of Typographic Style, provides a full semester of type history in less than 400 pages. It's not just the book's elegant design nor well-chosen exemplars that so thrilled me I read both the 2nd and 3rd edition, dropping more than 50 stickies along the way. The current edition, version 4.3, is out of print and still focuses exclusively on printed material.

Bringhurst is a poet and translator. That last vocation has brought him into regular contact with non-Latin alphabets, and the Elements of Typographic Style provides the best advice I've ever seen in English regarding how to set type with accents, diacritics, and other "analphabetic characters."

context: why I care )

Archived links )


I drafted this review a decade ago, and I still believe it, so it’s a proof of life post.

muccamukk: Close up of parted lips painted with sparkling rainbow lipstick. (Misc: Rainbow Lips)
Muccamukk ([personal profile] muccamukk) wrote2025-10-28 11:35 am
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October Link List

Very scattered, some references to U.S. Politics.

On the YouTubes (and a Podcast)
[youtube.com profile] Schmowd3r: PI Investigates the Blake Lively "Situation" (3:42h).
Probably not a lot of new information on the Blake Lively piece if you've been following the case, but it's well laid out. The first section is largely about trying to detect bot campaigns, and he has some really interesting thoughts there. Also, he's an entertaining presenter, and am adding him to my subs.

[youtube.com profile] LilShopofAli: Some of y’all still don’t understand desirability and it shows (1:40h).
This is a bit dated as it's about the topic du jour from a couple months ago, but I really like how Ali can take the discussion of the moment and expand it into a video about the wider cultural context. Very well done.

[youtube.com profile] olurinatti: How “This Didn’t Age Well” Destroyed Media Literacy (0:42hr).
Great video about thought-terminating cliches and how they affect the way we talk about media.

[youtube.com profile] ophie-dokie: censorship is coming for you next (& you're cheering it on) (1:02hr).
Can we stop running to cling to mommy's apron the state and demand stuff get cancelled? It's not going to end well.

Search Engine Podcast: A Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet (0:47hr, no transcript?).
If the medium is the message, and the medium is algorithmically-driven short-form video, what messages are we dealing with right now? Thoughts on Gen Z, and the world they're stuck in.


I Failed to Think of a Theme, and Failed, so Random Shit Posted in Order Bookmarked:
Kyrianna: Portraits.
Surrealist watercolour portraits of people with disabilities, manifesting symptoms of pain and restriction on their bodies. Really beautiful and affecting.

The Tyee: Unifor Undaunted as Amazon Ramps Up Its Anti-Union Fight.
"A union leader says newly certified workers are keen despite the company’s legal counteroffensive."

Tom's Guide: How to disable Copilot in Windows 11.
This was quite easy, and I wish I'd done it months ago.

TGEU: International Day of Action for Trans Depathologisation 2025.
I thought the demand list was really well laid out. These folks are doing such important work.

Spitfire News: Survivors deserve better storytelling.
A call to improve how journalists and content creators talk about violence and abuse. There's an open letter linked, and Kat also helped set up [instagram.com profile] survivorstoriesdeservebetter.

CBC: 'A healing event': Heiltsuk doctor performs rare delivery of Heiltsuk baby in own homelands.
An early labour in Bella Bella, B.C., where the hospital isn't equipped to deliver babies, had a happy ending.

The AV Club: Spotify stands by ICE recruitment ads despite artist backlash.
A growing number of artists have boycotted the service over its founder's investment in military AI.
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Punk ([personal profile] runpunkrun) wrote2025-10-28 10:24 am
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Skim, words by Mariko Tamaki and art by Jillian Tamaki

It's 1993 and Kimberly Keiko Cameron (aka "Skim" because she's not [idk, the reference doesn't really land for me—like skim milk? so, not skinny? not white?]) is sixteen and goes to an all girls school in Canada. She's learning to practice Wicca, has a cast on her dominant arm, a crush on her drama teacher, and doesn't seem to like her best friend very much.

Ah, teen angst. Rendered here in a flat, sketchy greyscale with a lot of attention to faces and hair, which makes the main characters easy to identify, especially as the smooth, delicate rendering of Skim's face evokes ukiyo-e, a style of Japanese art popular during the Edo period (1615–1868). It makes her stand out and even seem out of place, like something from another era. It's an interesting contrast to the swoopy bangs and hoop earrings of her peers, all of whom appear to be white.

The story's pretty low key for its content—an inappropriate flirtation, the suicide of a popular girl's ex-boyfriend, the tension between Kim's divorced parents, a growing realization of what it means to be queer—and the central interest is the conflict between Kim and her best friend, though it's not clear if they're growing apart or were never really suited for each other, and being in love in a way that makes it feel like it might destroy you. It's clear it's slowly destroying the teacher, even as Kim seems blissfully unaware of this, a disparity that's handled with skill and that hints at the full size of the adult world while simultaneously rendering the hyper-specific compressed world of a teenager, allowing both to be true.

Contains: f/f; teacher/student romance; frequent references to suicide (including jokes) following one off screen; use of gay slurs.
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-10-28 12:19 pm

Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy and cool.

I haven't fed the birds yet, but we heard a great horned owl hoo-hooing out in our yard!  :D  That's awesome.  I don't think we've had one since a few years back when an owl and several crows fought over the yard for the whole summer.

EDIT 10/28/25 -- I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, possibly goldfinches.

I put out water for the birds.

It's spitting rain.

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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-10-28 12:05 pm
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Crafts

Unraveling the Drama Between Hank Green and the Knitting Community

Hank Green has been a knotty boy. One of the latest episodes of his YouTube show, SciShow, is all about knitting and how science is elevating the lowly craft to a place of actual importance. You know who finds that take distasteful? Knitters.

Read more... )
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stacys_musings ([personal profile] stacys_musings) wrote2025-10-28 11:30 am

Musings

On the mends, feeling a ton better from last week. My appetite has come back like a roaring lion. Must keep it under check, so I don't become a blimp again. We went over qualitative research methodologies in class today (well, I did it yesterday, too, with my other class) and tomorrow I'll be going over quantitative research methods. This is what I love; research. I wish classes didn't require me to get up so early, but I am extremely thankful to be working right now. I know of so many others who aren't working or are in worse financial shape.
I have a student who just admitted she hates tomatoes. How the heck does someone not like tomatoes? In any event, when I get home I have a nice butternut squash soup waiting for me, with some roasted squash seeds to add to it. I've been eating more cottage cheese lately; I got the regular kind (low fat, but with salt) because otherwise it's a mouth of sour-tasting cottage cheese.
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brickhousewench ([personal profile] brickhousewench) wrote2025-10-28 09:46 am

Five Random Things makes a Post

I don’t know how British Petroleum stays in business, they’re always the most expensive gas stations in the area. Gas in Lowell is well under $3.00 a gallon and has been for a while now. The local Gulf station was at $2.77 the last time I drove by. But when I was in Methuen on Saturday one BP station was at $3.33 and the other was at $3.69! Almost a dollar more than in Lowell!

*****

DiGiorno seems to have decided that they can save money by putting one less slice of pepperoni on their personal supreme pizzas. The last two I have bought have had only four pepperoni instead of the usual five slices. *sad face*

*****

I finally caved in and turned on the heat Saturday night. The house was down to 62 degrees, and we aren’t supposed to get temps above 60F at all this week. So I figured it was just going to get colder (we got down into the low 30s Saturday night). So time to turn the heat on.

*****

My sister was visiting my parents last week, and she sent me a bunch of pictures of my little brother Benne the Bengal cat. He’s so freaking cute. I just wish he was a little more cuddly with my parents. They both would love for him to be a lap cat. But he’s not. =(

*****

I had a fifth thing in mind when I was going to bed last night. Can I think of it this morning? No.
As you can see, not a whole lot post-worthy going on right now. Well, that’s not true, I have a couple of recent road trips and adventures to write up. But that’s going to have to wait until I have more time to write. =P Anywhoo, here’s a short post, as proof of life.
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sartorias ([personal profile] sartorias) wrote2025-10-28 08:18 am
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Boston

I love Boston so much, especially this area around Harvard. The trees are rich with color, the air is brisk, requiring all my layers of flimsy California-wear, and the sidewalks brick with lumps of tree roots. I love it all.

Yesterday I went with Nine to the Mapparium on the other side of the river. (The bus ride down Massachusetts Ave is great for scenery!) If you've never heard of it--I hadn't until one of the Viable Paradise workshop writers clued me in--it's an enormous glass globe that you can walk into, to see the entire world, worked in jewel-toned glass, as it was in 1935. It was constructed to be a reminder that we are all in this world together; a needed warning then, as now. (Naturally those who need it most won't see or hear.)

We had a great time looking, then testing the amazing sounds created by voices enclosed in glass.

Afterward we met up with Rushthatspeaks for tea and chocolate at L.A. Burdicks. Oh, they know how to do chocolate so, so right. Delish. We chatted and reminisced and cackled like maniacs. Today we'll visit the Fogg to see a Botticelli that is usually hidden in a private collection. I can hardly wait!

I'm coming down from the high of a very successful workshop, and a month of splendid visiting and seeing and fast-lane busy. The workshop writers are so talented and so focused, and all this in beautiful Martha's Vineyard.

Tomorrow homeward bound!