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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-05 02:36 am

Poem: "To the Rational Mind"

Today's second freebie was inspired by new prompter [personal profile] gs_silva. It also fills the "Very little worth knowing is taught by fear." square in my 11-1-25 card for the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo fest. It belongs to the fandom Doctor Who. and follows "Time and Relative Dimensions in Magic" so read that first or this won't make much sense.

Read more... )
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-05 12:14 am
Entry tags:

Early Humans

2.7-million-year-old tools reveal humanity’s first great innovation

Ancient hominins in Kenya’s Turkana Basin crafted the same style of stone tools for 300,000 years, weathering fire, drought, and shifting ecosystems.

Researchers uncovered a 2.75–2.44 million-year-old site in Kenya showing that early humans maintained stone tool traditions for nearly 300,000 years despite extreme climate swings. The tools, remarkably consistent across generations, helped our ancestors adapt and survive. The discovery reshapes our understanding of how early technology anchored human evolution.
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-05 12:10 am
Entry tags:

Hard Things

Life is full of things which are hard or tedious or otherwise unpleasant that need doing anyhow. They help make the world go 'round, they improve skills, and they boost your sense of self-respect. But doing them still kinda sucks. It's all the more difficult to do those things when nobody appreciates it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our accomplishments and pat each other on the back.

What are some of the hard things you've done recently? What are some hard things you haven't gotten to yet, but need to do? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your hard things a little easier?
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rebeccmeister ([personal profile] rebeccmeister) wrote2025-11-04 04:35 pm
Entry tags:

Here we go again [status]

On Saturday, while perusing random videos on one of those internet video streaming services, we encountered an old BBC documentary about the lighthouse-keepers at the Bishop Rock lighthouse, who would head out for an approximately 2-month tour of duty, returning home for a month off between shifts. Bishop Rock is the westernmost point in the U.K. and apparently often experiences really fierce weather.

Anyway, it was a fantastic documentary.

Meanwhile, in contemporary times, S is now off again for his own tour of duty, first to the Midwest, then back to his 27-foot BoatyBoat (Tartan) moored in the Sacramento River Delta. So it's back to just me and the cats at the homestead here for a while.

I can't complain, but it's always an adjustment. Both of us benefit from having some major introvert time, but it's different knowing I'm heading home to just two cats rather than two cats and a human.

There's no major lesson in any of this, at least not one I've ever figured out. Just lots of little ongoing steps to try and figure out how to make a way in this world as we know it.
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-04 03:11 pm

Poem: "Time and Relative Dimensions in Magic"

Today's first freebie was inspired by a backchannel prompt from new prompter [personal profile] ljgeoff. It also fills the "Fairy Ring" square in my 11-1-25 card for the Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo fest. It belongs to the fandom Doctor Who.  The sequel is "To the Rational Mind."

Read more... )
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-04 12:41 pm
Entry tags:

Food

Sunflowers may be the future of "vegan meat"

Sunflower flour emerges as a sustainable, nutrient-packed, and surprisingly meat-like plant protein innovation.

A collaboration between Brazilian and German researchers has led to a sunflower-based meat substitute that’s high in protein and minerals. The new ingredient, made from refined sunflower flour, delivers excellent nutritional value and a mild flavor. Tests showed strong texture and healthy fat content, suggesting great potential for use in the growing plant-based food sector
.

Read more... )
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-04 12:39 pm

Birdfeeding

Today is  mostly sunny and mild.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/4/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a lot more sparrows.  The sky has clouded over and is acting like it might rain.

EDIT 11/4/25 -- I did more work around the patio.



.

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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-04 11:57 am

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this space as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Fairies and Fey." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for fairies, seelie or unseelie sidhe, the Wild Hunt, elves, other types of fey, Radical Faeries, other queers, tricksters, contraries, rebels, adventurers, mentors, historians, explorers, magic users, partners, teachers, leaders, dark lords, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, fantasy species, activists, other unusual fantasy folk, doing magic, doing things backwards, causing mischief, breaking rules, caring for the land, exploring new territory, meeting new species, upsetting predictions, twisting tropes, flipping stereotypes, expecting the unexpected, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, coming out, running away from home, going off the rails, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, other fantastic activities, Underhill, faery rings, the forest primeval, underwater, underground, liminal zones, castles, ruins, dungeons, dragon lairs, schools, kitchens, campfires, libraries, apothecary shops, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other phantasmagoric settings, faerie magic, unusual magical systems, magical artifacts, enchanted musical instruments or weapons, quests, time periods other than medieval, governments other than monarchy, dragons, unicorns, enchantments, potions, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, fey time distortions, time travel, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, polarity, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.


Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo Card 11-1-25


Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia is about live happy lesbians in a quirky fantasy world.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy about a blacksmith and a golem.

Dragonsilk is about trauma and recovery.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with a few really exotic characters.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household, where the line between truth and fantasy isn't always clear.

The Ocracies features all the political systems other than monarchy.

The Odd Trio is about a family consisting of a dwarf, an elf, and a human.

P.I.E. is urban fantasy about paranormal investigations,

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. Eric the Elven King has interdimensional refugees. Officer Pink features centaurs and mystic shifters. Vybra of the Broken Angels specializes in fantasy sex and often dresses as a fairy.

Practical Magics is low fantasy with a prosaic focus.

Quixotic Ideas is contemporary fantasy where magic integrates with modern life in positive ways.

The Ursulan Cycle is genderbent King Arthur.

Or you can ask for something new.

Boost the signal to reveal a verse in any open linkback poem.

Read more... )
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Every Day Above Ground ([personal profile] mallorys_camera) wrote2025-11-04 10:20 am
Entry tags:

Road Trip!



Fabulous Deecey-Virginia trip.

Trip down somewhat problematic as the Poughkeepsie train station was out of parking places, so I had to limp in the rain on mysteriously injured leg a mile and a half from adjunct street parking place to the train, plus my Penn Station train was an hour and a half late due to coastal New Jersey track flooding.

However:



Shaken! Not stirred.

###

The next day was Halloween. We took a stroll around Alex's neighborhood.

Alex lives in a city that was founded in colonial times (though no traces remain of that). For the first 150 years or so, it remained a bucolic settlement surrounded by tobacco fields until time and proximity to the corridors of power in nearby Washington, D.C. transformed it—inevitably!—into a residential commuter hub. (I imagine in those early, pre-WWII days, the commuting was all done by trolley.)

Alex lives in a charming brick house that was built to house the earliest residential commuters. It is the house her husband grew up in.

Some of Alex's neighbors take Halloween very seriously:



https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BKox5nPBQ/

Then it was time for the main event: Trick or Treat!!!!

Skeleton costumes are like the Chanel suit or the little black cocktail dress of the Halloween universe, so I didn't have to pay much attention to my own plumage.

Other members of the household went far more elaborate—in particular, Alex's beautiful daughter H who could easily snag a job as a double when Chappell Roan makes her cinematic debut:





Even after (conservative estimate) 80 or so trick-or-treaters, the Bottomless Candy Bucket didn't give out. Though the stragglers had to make due with Dum-Dums.

###

Most of the places people visit in the Deecey area are closed due to the government shutdown. (And you might think the Trump administration would have better taste than to host a Great Gatsby party at Mar-a-Lago mere hours before food benefits lapsed for 14.2 million Americans due to said government shutdown. But if you thought that, you'd be wrong.)

The ones that are funded through their own foundations remain open, and among those is Gunston Hall, the ancestral home of Founding Father George Mason, whose name I vaguely remembered from the John Adams & Benjamin Franklin bios I devoured last summer.

Before the Gilded Age, American mansions were not particularly imposing:



But this one is located on magnificently beautiful grounds::

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1BYoVZJRwG/

Fun factoids learned at Gunston Manor:

(1) This (to me somewhat hideous) shade of green was the most popular for the houses of the ultra-wealthy in the late 18th & early 19th centuries because the pigment was made from copper verdigris, and thus the paint was very expensive:



(2) Alex is the great great great great great great great great grandaughter of George Mason. She learned this long after she started visiting Gunston Hall! I do not see the resemblance.



The next day, we went thrifting!

Alex is like the Queen of Thrifters, so this was very much like taking a master painting class from Rembrandt.





In the evenings, we watched the BBC's version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I have seen before but could watch endlessly (even though it completely fucks up the ending), such a dithering fan girl am I.

I was convinced Alex would love it!

And either Alex did, or Alex is such a good hostess that she pretended to with a magnificent display of sincerity to please her guest.

###

Anyway, terrific time. Which will give my heart resistance since the next two and a half weeks are promising to be quite the slog. Sigh...
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-03 09:51 pm
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-03 09:28 pm

Photos: Lantern Terrarium Assembly Part 1 Gathering Materials

My air plants arrived today. :D So I gathered materials to start assembling the lantern terrarium. (Start with Photos: Fairy Garden Lantern Deconstruction. Continue with Photos: Lantern Terrarium Assembly Part 2 Testing the Fit.)

Walk with me ... )
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-03 05:51 pm

Native American

22 Ways To Celebrate Native American Heritage Month

November is Native American Heritage Month, when we all come together to honor and celebrate the culture, traditions, history, and contributions of American Indian and Alaskan Natives.


They left out the Real Rent / Voluntary Land Tax movement, where people of non-indigenous heritage send money to the nearest extant tribe or sometimes a formerly-local tribe that was ousted to live elsewhere. If you don't have that option, you can also chuck it into any current fundraiser to obtain land for a tribe or fight legal battles over land. Closely related, if you own land -- especially big enough for some of it to be wild or nearly so -- consider programs to share access with tribal people. Some folks have negotiated deals where the tribe will help manage the territory in return for sharing use of it, which can grant you access to much better techniques.
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house_wren ([personal profile] house_wren) wrote2025-11-03 01:09 pm

fall

Thank you all for your posts.


Nature report:
After a quiet spell, the birdfeeders are busy. Juncos have returned.
Tamarack trees have turned the color of the double-yellow line.
We see deer often in our field, but this is the first year we have seen so many bucks.


I'm knitting banana socks; it's mindless and miraculously my hands are not hurting.
https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/banana-socks-5


For the first time I went to the local Power of 100 group. Everyone kicks in $100 and then votes on where the money will go. It meets once a quarter for less than an hour each time. There is no overhead, no paid staff. There are enough members at the local group that they give away over $12,000 each quarter. I'll be able to participate without having to attend in person, which is what I'll do in the future.


I've now got an excellent physical therapist, who listened to me, made copies for herself of all the information I brought, and who, I believe, will work with me, not against me. This is a first.


I'm hanging on to good things so I don't dissolve in despair about the world.
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-03 12:51 pm

Science Fiction

Five Ways Science Fiction Can Expand Beyond Homo sapiens

* The Past
* Cryptic Populations
* Sideways in Time
* The Future
* Science!

It left out crossbreeding with other species (like Spock in Star Trek) as well as backbreeding where remnant genes become more prevalent due to environmental pressures until speciation occurs. Regarding the latter, Sherpas are already a borderline species because they can survive at higher altitudes than other Homo sapiens due to their Denisovan heritage.  They are at least a definable subspecies based on habitat adaptations, more realistically a remnant population of Denisovans with heavy Homo sapiens introgression.  But when you start talking about biological differences among humans, then humans immediately start doing stupid things, so most scientists won't do it.  Anyhow, if the Sherpas became isolated from other humans and stayed in the Himalayas, environmental pressure would push them toward more Denisovan-like traits.
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-03 12:43 pm

Birdfeeding

Today is mostly sunny and mild.   

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

My air plants arrived!  :D  So today I need to assemble the lantern terrarium.

EDIT 11/3/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard and started laying out pieces for the lantern terrarium.

EDIT 11/3/25 -- I've been working on the lantern terrarium, trimming the branch that will go inside and testing a few air plants to fit it.  Currently I have it soaking in a tray of water to rehydrate the lichens.

EDIT 11/3/25 -- I've done more work on the lantern terrarium.  I have the main branch soaked, and I picked up some more twigs and chips in hopes of creating more spaces to lodge the air plants.  I've glued the first piece in place, the chip I cut off the bottom end.

While I was outside, I saw the great horned owl and heard it hooting.  Then I heard a shriek.  A baby owl!  :D 3q3q3q!!!  I am 99% certain that the conversation translates to this:

Baby: "I'm hungry!"

Mama: "Shh.  Go to sleep.  Shh."

Baby: "FEED ME!"

Mama: "It is the middle of the DAY.   Now GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP."

EDIT 11/3/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 11/3/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 11/3/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

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wispywillow ([personal profile] wispywillow) wrote2025-11-03 09:11 am

11.03.2025

.











265Daredevil1We Again Beheld the StarsApril 1989October 28, 2025JJDD 61
266Daredevil1A Beer with the DevilMay 1989October 29, 2025JJDD 61
267Daredevil1CremainsJune 1989November 01, 2025JJDD 62
268Daredevil1Golden RutJuly 1989November 02, 2025JJDD 62
269Daredevil1Lone StrangerAugust 1989November 02, 2025JJDD 62
270Daredevil1BlackheartSeptember 1989November 02, 2025JJDD 62
5Daredevil Annual1A Friend in Need...September 1989November 02, 2025JJDD 62
4TF: Sector 7🎬WeaponDecember 2010October 29, 2025
45.5Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesIDWPrelude to VengeanceApril 2015October 30, 2025
46Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesIDWVengeance (pt. 2)May 2015October 30, 2025
19Marvel Comics Presents1OvertureMay 1989November 02, 2025JJDD 62
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rebeccmeister ([personal profile] rebeccmeister) wrote2025-11-03 05:59 am
Entry tags:

Weekend things [bicycling, projects, rowing, food]

Originally S and I had been hoping to undertake some form of boating expedition on Saturday, but then his work had some form of emergency that required he be on call for the day. So instead, I got up and made pancakes and pumpkin pie, did a bit of much-needed bike maintenance (brake pads, new chain, fender bolt replacement), and then hied me over to the Troy Farmer's Market for some market goods and Coffeeneuring.

how about a cut for length and photos )
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ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-11-03 12:05 am
Entry tags:

Monday Update 11-3-25

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Today's Cooking
Gaming
Birdfeeding
Worldbuilding
Art
Birdfeeding
Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories Bingo Card 11-1-25
Philosophical Questions: Accuracy
Moment of Silence: Patricia Crowther
Birdfeeding
Holiday
Books
Wildlife
Garden of Repose
New Year's Resolutions Check In
Follow Friday 10-31-25: Kpop
Bingo
Climate Change
Birdfeeding
Today's Adventures
Sustainability
Birdfeeding
Good News

Trauma has 34 comments. Affordable Housing has 57 comments. Robotics has 95 comments.


There will be a Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, November 4 with a theme of "Fairies and Fey." I hope to see you then!


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $191 to be complete. Maiara and Arthur discuss taking notes.


The weather is cool and fall-like now. It rained a couple of days. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, two goldfinches, and a male cardinal. A great horned owl has been hoo-hooing outside. :D Currently blooming: dandelions, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, sweet alyssum, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, firecracker plant, tomatoes, violas. Tomatoes, ball carrots, and groundcherries are ripe. Fields are almost all harvested.