m_cobweb | Reading

Colossal Biosciences is planning to bring back the giant moa, a 3m (10 foot) tall flightless bird that went extinct around 600 years ago, shortly after humans arrived in New Zealand. Peter Jackson is one of the major investors. Considering the difficulties the Australians had when dealing with emus, which are only 2/3 the size of the great moa, they really need to consider that there was probably very good reason that the early New Zealanders wiped them out.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3115/

'Tin pest' makes more sense to me. Tin just doesn't want to be locked down in a shape like that. I get it. But why would any metal want to grow hair??

https://xkcd.com/3115/

brithistorian

I love YouTube Music — it's a great streaming system and gives me access to music that I could only have dreamed of when I was younger. But there's one thing about it — a small thing really, but still big enough that it bothers me: When you have a playlist, it should be a trivial thing for the software to add up the running times of all the songs in the playlist and give you a runtime for the playlist, and this works for shorter playlists, but once a playlist reaches 5 hours or more in length, the program gets lazy and anything over 5 hours is either "5+ hours" or "5 hours [XX] minutes," where [XX] isn't the actual number of minutes past 5 hours, instead the point after 5 hours where the software got lazy and decided to stop adding. Not a deal killer, not even that big of a deal, really, but it's annoying.

sistawendy

I have a tiny little front ~~yard~~ garden. It came with a couple of sourwood trees, half a dozen oakleaf hydrangeas, "Sky Pencil" Japanese holly, and ~~two~~ one species of bush that I haven't identified yet. (Yeah, I know there's an app for that. The Tickler has it, so I can ask them.)

What's interesting, though, is the ecological succession. When I first moved in, I had lots of bare bark mulch and plenty of golden orb weaver spiders. The spiders are no longer quite so prominent, and clover covers most of the bark mulch now. I haven't tried to remove the clover because a) that would be too much work, b) the bees love it, and c) I don't have anywhere near enough capacity in my little yard waste bin for it. Seriously, I fill that bin weekly for months in the spring & summer as it is just pulling up dandelions & thistles. The Tickler says they've never seen clover grow as tall as it does at my place, and I haven't either.

But wait! There's more! Willowherb, with tiny pink flowers, is a native plant that's volunteered in the last couple of years. I'm also leaving it alone because pretty.

And then, over just the last year, the yarrow arrived in grand style. It's now taller than I am, with plenty of inflorescences. Its biomass rivals the clover, so I'm leaving it alone for the same reasons as the clover.

At this point it's all I can do to keep the lavenders I planted from getting choked by clover or shaded by yarrow. I replaced some hydrangeas with lavender because the former don't handle the dry summers nearly as well. Indeed, a common theme here is drought tolerance: lavender and yarrow come through the dry Seattle summer (yes, we have them) without any trouble, the clover and willowherb turn brown but bounce right back in the spring, and the poor hydrangeas & Japanese hollies just burn unless they get lots of shade. I replaced the sun-damaged holly with oregano & thyme back in the spring, to my great satisfaction.

Since clover is a legume, I can't help wonder if the symbiotic nitrogen fixation that happens in legumes (the subject of my dad's Ph.D. thesis!) is preparing the way for species like willowherb and, more dramatically, yarrow.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

sistawendy

I spent a couple of hours at the Merc last night*. Said hi to A&J. A had some recommendations about having fun in New York City. First, stay in Brooklyn or Queens because the normies have taken Manhattan and all the nighttime fun is in the outer boroughs and even New Jersey. Second, regular club nights aren't really a thing due to the vile economics of NYC real estate. Sure, fun happens, but not, for example, monthly fun.

I also saw

aaminahlefae. If I'm going to think impure thoughts about another woman, it helps that she's a) queer and b) not that much younger than I am. But she, like A, was there with a brand new dude. Between that and the hand-holding femmes, it was an unsubtle reminder that I gotta git me a woman. But first I needed to stop coughing.

Speaking of the vile economics of real estate, Good Sister waited until after 0900 her time to text the other two of us one more thing to sign. I do believe we have gone pending, to close Aug. 11th if all goes atypically well. Do you remember that scene in The Lord of The Rings where Aragorn releases the ghost army after they've disposed of a bunch of orcs? Good Sister is the ghost army.

If that date is when it happens — I'm deathly afraid of jinxing it — it won't be a minute too soon for me either; I have plans for that cash starting with repaying the balance of my 401(k) loan. I was telling

aaminahlefae that I'd like to get more work done on my face if I can afford it. Given the Situation, though, I may end up sitting on it.

*Shallow fashion details: little flowy sleeveless black dress from Blackwood Castle, gladiator sandals, collar with big silver angel wings. Because I'm a Florida girl and I know how to dress for (relatively) warm weather.

Current Mood: refreshed
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Duke Ellington, "Take the A Train"

brithistorian

Two days ago, Twice and Blackpink both had comebacks on the same day: Twice's "This is for" and Blackpink's "뛰어(JUMP)" (links go to the videos, so as not to spam your feed with two embedded videos).

Blackpink's song is a 1-song single, per YG's strategy of keeping Blinks starved for new music from Blackpink, while Twice's song is part of a 14-song album, keeping with JYP's strategy of giving Once as much music as they could possibly want from Twice. I prefer the JYP strategy — at first I was a bigger fan of Blackpink than of Twice, but eventually I got tired of waiting for new songs from Blackpink.

Two interesting things I noticed:

Twice Jeongyeon has had difficulty meeting the ridiculous weight standards imposed on K-pop idols (i.e. still not fat by any measure), so in recent comebacks Twice's stylists have started dressing everyone but Jeongyeon in midriff-baring tops. I don't know if this was done at the company's request or at Jeongyeon's, but they did it again this time.
Blackpink's song actually includes the English lyric "Are you not entertained?"

brithistorian

I've got an idea about the plotting one of my fics, but I'm not sure if the idea I've got right now is the right thing. So. . . if any of you have read my fic "Turning of the Year" — or if you feel like reading it right now — and you'd like to give your input on the future course of the story (at the risk of possibly getting spoiled), send me a message.

sistawendy

That stupid cold — my COVID test came up negative — made up in brevity for what it lacked in manners. Good thing, too, because I'd like to be social this evening without spreading the ick. Maybe Shin Black ramen with fishcake helped me recover quickly.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, the offers and counter-offers for Mom's house have been flying. Work was busy yesterday, so between meetings I was sneaking a peek at documents and frantically signing them. If we lost a sale because if I was too slow and Good Sister flew out here and cut me into easy-to-carry sections, no jury would convict her at this point.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Peter Gabriel, "Mercy Street"

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3114/

That was quicker than usual! The cabin's sprinkler system often makes it really hard to keep anything lit.

https://xkcd.com/3114/

sistawendy

I spent yesterday in bed with mucus, aches, and reading material to keep me company. The irony here is that the only crowds I was around for the whole Fourth of July weekend were at Uwajimaya, and I wasn't there that long. I did go to Lambert House on Monday, and given how stuffy it was in the carriage house at St. Mark's, I'd put my money on that as the source of the ick.

Finished Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Pretty good characters. Action and plot complicated to the point of frenzy. It doesn't have what The Expanse has: the thing that makes me want to buy the next book right away. But I wasn't in the mood to read something challenging; see "sick" above.

Oh yeah: Good Sister texted & called me while I was in bed to give me the play-by-play on all the hot, hot real estate action. (Did I just make a sexual allusion involving real estate agents? That's so not my kink.) It's looking to me as if this might actually happen in the next few weeks, but you know what they say: never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.

Current Mood: sick
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: "The Goon Show" from Nov. 9, 1954: Lurgi

cupcake_goth

Remember how I said the Wegovy has cut down on the impulse shopping noise in my brain? It still has, but when a bunch of things on my "to buy someday Real Soon Now" all have sales over the 4th of July weekend? Yeah, I spent a lot of money. But this means that a dress, jacket, pendant, and art book were less than they had been, so yay?

... and this will certainly keep me from buying ALL THE MERCH at the MCR concert. Yes, it will.

:: shifty eyes ::

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3113/

We're building on our earlier success getting web developers to pay to change the backslashes in our displayed payment URL to forward slashes.

https://xkcd.com/3113/

cupcake_goth

On Sunday night I ordered pork spring rolls from my favorite place with the idea of having one for dinner, and one for lunch the following day. As I was taking the second bite of my dinner, the Stroppy One turned to me and said that it had way more garlic than usual. He was right, because as he was saying that, I noticed my mouth and lips were burning and felt like welts were rising. I got a refund from DoorDash, and gave the Madwoman in the Attic the second spring roll. Sooooo apparently I'm even more sensitive to garlic than I thought, and I'm really mad about it.

---

My Chemical Romance alert! There's a post on Tumblr that's about the runup to the show with details being constantly added. Apparently setup for the concert has already started, which is unusual. I wonder if that's why there's more time between concert dates; I'd assumed it was because the band finally learned they need to rest between shows, but maybe not. The band has been hinting on social media that these concerts are "so much more than just playing The Black Parade". Needless to say, the fandom has collectively been losing our minds.

(THE CONCERT IS THIS FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY!!!)

Yes, looking forward to this concert is one of the few things helping me cling to sanity right now.

sistawendy

Good Sister is scrambling to find an electrician to get all the outlets working in Mom's house. One of the contractors ran into an issue, and GS tells me that niece E had found non-functional outlets months ago at least. Oh by the way, since those are (mostly?) the original outlets from 1974, they look unattractively old. GS already had GFIs installed, which weren't there originally: if memory serves, they weren't required until 1975.

My sister has already gone through the informal hiring route — a co-worker of E's, as I recall — and found it wanting. There may be an open house this weekend, so the pressure is on. However, our agent is sanguine, and Good Sister says that interest in the place is robust.

But y'know, it just sort of figures that there'd be one last damn thing having to do with Mom and her house. I'm honestly amazed that GS limited her venting to maybe a minute; she's certainly earned more.

She wanted to know what price ranges I was willing to accept. I'm deeply unwilling to be a hardass because a) I don't feel like gambling with stakes this high, and b) I don't want my poor middle sister to have an aneurysm because I dragged this out too long. I don't know what Evil Sister's feelings are on the subject, but I'm pretty sure there are limits to her evil.

Current Mood: SMDH
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Nicola Conte, "Jazz Pour Dadine"

brithistorian

Yesterday I finished reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I enjoyed it, but was frustrated with the ending — it seemed like it didn't end so much as just stopped.[^1] Today, I learned from cmcmck's comment on my July book record that this is actually the first book of a trilogy. This makes me feel better about the ending — I'll give an author more leeway on an ending when I know that a book is part of a series. But even if Mantel does give us a satisfying ending at the end of volume 3, that's still not going change the fact that, as much as I enjoyed the book, it feels like slice-of-life Thomas Cromwell fanfiction. (Of course, because it was professionally published and won awards, the literary establishment would quarrel with that characterization.)

[^1] Well, it didn't just stop — it reached a stopping place where one of the subplots had just resolved — but it didn't reach an actual conclusion.

brithistorian

Yesterday when I was in the grocery store, the music system started playing Elton John and Kiki Dee's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", and my mind started rewriting the lyrics, turning into part of a M/M mafia musical rom-com. Specifically, it's the song in Act 2 where the two main characters realize they have feelings for each other. Below are the new lyrics I wrote for the first verse, where person A is the small business owner (I'm thinking baker) who's in debt to the mafia[^1] boss and person B is the thug sent out by the mafia boss to collect on a loan.

A: Don't go breaking my arm. B: I'm s'posed to shatter your knee. A: Tell Vinny I'll get him his money. B: He's not so patient like me.

[^1] I just looked it up (because of course I did), when using mafia in a generic sense you don't capitalize it, and when referring to a specific organization (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia), you do.

sistawendy

Good Sister texted me a few hours ago to tell me that the house I grew up in is back in the online listings. There are an even hundred photos of it, including several shots from a drone. It's a little the worse for wear since the five of us moved in in 1974, but the updates since then are mostly for the better in terms of salability. To quote GS, "Sell, baby, sell."

I haven't lived in that house year round in forty years. I found myself mentally reconstructing what each room looked like in the seventies and eighties. If only the walls could tell what they've seen and heard: my sisters' dramatic teen angst, my furtive gender explorations, my mother's drunkenness, my father swearing as he hurt himself during house and garden projects. But also music echoing off the floors as one of us practiced; the dinner table conversations that so often seemed to degenerate into something, well, degenerate; all the plants that I didn't know were exotic and the Florida critters right outside the doors.

Could it have been better? In that time and place, with my parents and sisters, probably not. And it sure as hell could have been worse.

I hope it becomes a good home again for somebody soon, and not just because of the money.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: the cello concerto by Camille Saint-Saëns

brithistorian

7 July
- Wolf Hall: A Novel (Hilary Mantel)
9 July
- Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 23 (Tomohito Oda)
- The Cartoonists Club (Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud)
10 July
- Adulthood Is a Gift (Sarah Andersen)
14 July
- I'm in Love with the Villainess, vol. 4 (Inori)
- Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma, vol. 13 (Yuto Tsukuda)

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3112/

After determining that his body was full of pipes carrying iron-rich fluid, our current theory is that the dagger-shaped object precipitated within the wound.

https://xkcd.com/3112/

brithistorian

This morning I was going to listen to Funkadelic's One Nation Under a Groove, but for one reason or another it's not available on YouTube Music, which is my streaming service of choice. So instead I decided to listen to American Eats Its Young. I'm only five songs in (out of 14) and I'm just blown away. I think it's both an amazing sign of how forward-thinking George Clinton was and a disheartening sign of how similar this country is today to what it was in 1972[^1], when this album was released, that the political messages in this album are still amazingly relevant today. If you don't have an hour and 10 minutes to listen to the whole album, I'd recommend the songs "If You Don't Like the Effects, Don't Produce the Cause" and "Everybody Is Going to Make It This Time."

[^1] Whether that's a result of lack of progress or of progress followed by regression is a discussion for another time.

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Hemidemisemiferal

You'd think that Peter Jackson would have seen Jurassic Park...

Unsolved Physics Problems

Computers, do computer things better!

Nun geeks out on her own front yard.

First a celebration, then (maybe) something to celebrate.

Some things never change...

A question about plotting one of my fics

Nearly an heiress, and nearly virus-free.

Building a Fire

Sniffle. Cough.

Buy yourself the motivation

Fix This Sign

Betrayed by deliciousness

Because of course there's a hitch.

Book reaction: Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)

Musical fanfic

My mom's house is listed online.

Books read, July 2025

Geology Murder

Album of the day: Funkadelic, America Eats Its Young

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May 2024

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