Signs of Life, by Barbara Krasnoff
Jun. 12th, 2025 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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So I found Krasnoff online and asked about it, and she posted the story on her blog, so now I can share it with everyone! Hooray! Here it is: https://krasnoff.wordpress.com/signs-of-life/
That anthology was really ahead of its time, and I’m glad some of the stories are finding new life (and hopefully new audiences)! I hope y’all like it!
Thank you, kind stranger!
Jun. 11th, 2025 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
( Read more... )
bikeshare rant, and library stuff
Jun. 11th, 2025 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Nothing deep here, just griping about today.
Avi and I set out to the Drexel Museum of Natural History. I took Indego ebike, to not worry about leaving my bike out locked, and to keep up with him. That was mostly okay, though my bike started making rattlings sounds on the way, and 20th has so many potholes, and manholes that are deep enough to potholes. I am once again baffled by how the US goes all-in on car dependency, yet can't keep the streets smooth.( Read more... )
To leaven the negativity: the museum was decent. Nice hall of dinosaur fossils (or their casts), and a lot of good dioramas. OTOH even making a second pass, I'd basically squeezed it dry in 2-2.5 hours, and our first pass took just 1.5 hours. Is that good value for $22 full-price ticket? I doubt. Fortunately we weren't paying full price.
Logan Square was kind of nice, with its flowering bushes and water fountain, and I finally checked out the main library of Philadelphia. Was nice to be in a big library again, and I accidentally found a shelf full of bicycling books, several of which I checked out.
But Philadelphia hasn't gone in on the sort of checkout technology where you can 'turn off' a book after checking it out, so that it doesn't set off the detector. At my branch library (which has no self-checkout), the librarian gives my books to me after I've gone through the detector. At the main library, you need to have brought your printed receipt with you; I ran into a bit of trouble because I'd actually turned in some other books I checked out, to make room in my backpack for the bike books, and didn't keep the first receipt for the remaining book from the first set. Fortunately the guard decided I probably wasn't doing an elaborate scam to steal one book.
Oooh! Prodigy has a Mirror Universe episode!
Jun. 14th, 2025 03:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Also, damn, Chakotay has got some arms! Is this true IRL? I don't remember ever seeing the live actor ever without sleeves....
Also also, I honestly love every time Gwen gets a moment of happiness, no matter how small. She really has had a miserable life. Every second chasing replicated pie over the ship, or squirting whipped cream into her mouth, or, one hopes, finally spending some time playing goofy holodeck games, is a second worth living. And so, I will say, I appreciate that the animators took the time to let her smirk a little when Evil!Chakotay proposed starting his torture session with "the cute one", aka Murf the Indestructible. You gotta find those moments of joy when you can, sweetie!
(Question: Are mirror tribbles... nice? What about their new team pet, Bribble? Would Bribble have a goatee and be evil in the mirror verse? How sapient is that thing, anyway?)
( Read more... )
Why do things always go from bad to worse? Why can't they go from bad to somewhat less bad?
Jun. 12th, 2025 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In personal news, how many nos is one expected to get before they get a yes?
( I managed to find some non-doom-and-gloom links to shove in here as well )
The power of one-lane streets
Jun. 11th, 2025 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I want to talk about one-lane city streets: streets with only one travel lane (and are thus also one-way, at least for cars.)
Advantages:
- They're great for pedestrians, with only 3 meters to cross to get out of the active car zone. (A pedestrian refuge between each lane would give similar benefit; in reality you'd likely only get that in a one-lane-each-way street.)
( Read more... )
US Politics: Vaccine Advisory Committee decimation.
Jun. 10th, 2025 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Public comment to CDC ACIP vaccine committee opened on 6/9, and closes 6/20 at 11:59pm EDT . If you think that sounds bafflingly short, that’s because it is. The current regime changed the rules for public comment periods and didn’t tell anybody, probably to make it sound like the public are less invested in politics than previous administrations, and prop up the illusion of confidence in this regime. 🤬🤬🤬 Fuck THAT noise!
Link outside the HTML if anyone needs that:
https://precaution.substack.com/p/tell-the-cdc-we-need-broad-access
two-lane street: Christian
Jun. 10th, 2025 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I previously talked about different bidirectional two-lane streets in Berkeley/Albany. Gilman, which was narrow, and annoying and crossable; Marin, which was wide (parking, bike, wide travel, plus turn lanes), and a high-speed stream of death. Tonight I'll talk about Christian, also two-lanes, and even narrower than Gilman since there is parking on only one side[1]. It is objectively much more crossable than Marin, but has felt more annoying than Gilman, such that on my casual walks with no destination, I will often avoid crossing it. Why should this be the case? I don't know, but some ideas. ( Read more... )
This week on FilkCast
Jun. 10th, 2025 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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
LEP 10.6.
Jun. 10th, 2025 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
My theory that you should always prime any conversation that includes even a little bit of moral ambiguity by asking how someone feels about furries keeps bearing out.
Happy Pride, have a crisis zine
Jun. 9th, 2025 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
So we made a Crisis Planning e-zine, which collates and cleans up all our crisis planning essays (and adds a little new stuff besides) and put it up for sale for $5.
Happy Pride.
Crisis Planning: Legal/Medical Stuff
Jun. 9th, 2025 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Series: Essay (Crisis Planning)
Summary: A guide to living wills, health care agents, organ/body donations, and DNR/MOLST/POLST forms (i.e., how to make sure you get the care you want and not the stuff you don't when you're unable to make your desires known).
Notes: Winner of the fan poll this month! If you want to support my work, join LiberaPay or Patreon and get double-weight for your votes. Also, these crisis plan essays have proven so popular (and regrettably necessary) that we have made a whole ebook of them up for sale for $5 here.
Nobody likes to think about this stuff, but seriously, think it over, especially if any of the following is a concern of yours:
• Ending up under the care of your abusers if medically incapacitated.
• Being denied medical care you need, leading to your “merciful” death.
• Making sure your loved ones know what to do if you’re in a coma.
• Donating your body to science.
( Read more... )
( Citations )
Birdsong of Shaker Way by Ann-Margaret Lim
Jun. 11th, 2025 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
when you wake, you hear birds
in the garden, in the yard. Birds
up and down, ushering in one more day
in all the houses on Shaker Way. Birds
on telephone lines, light posts. Birds
twit, twittering on trees
hailing fellow birds
with a nod of beak—gray kingbird;
top-hatted, streamertail
tuxedoed, doctor bird—
busy-bodied hummingbird
tucking in, out, of pink, red ixoras
punch-drunk in love. Birds
preening for, chatting up other birds—
the oriole, the grass quit, in mid-song
on the lawn, in a dance of birds
an all-day-long conference of bird;
red-headed woodpecker
—drummer boy, or girl bird
in this daily symphony of birds
—an orchestra on Shaker Way
in serenade of each perfect day with birds—
from the very first mockingbird
heralding, in solo warble
one more day, filled with birds—
brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:
precious, diamond-throated
sweet song, miracle-toting birds
the-gift-of-day-is-here birds.
Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird.
You lift me up bird.
You sing the day beautiful, bird.
Link
Trying to rapidly finish Prodigy, on Season 2
Jun. 10th, 2025 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Anyway, Rok's friend in her tragic backstory was clearly no more able to leave that situation than she was and though I can see there's too much plot for that to happen in canon I really hope they could rescue him.
Speaking of tragic backstories, I cannot believe a. that Dal tried to say his was the worst and b. his version of being "the worst" absolutely skips past the part where ( Read more... ) But seriously, dude, you grew up as a slave on a mine full of child slaves. It's not a situation people get into because their life was just so great beforehand. If everything was hunky-dory, none of you would've been targeted in the first damn place. You all have a terrible backstory, you don't need to prove it!
Moving on, Murf continues to also be the best, but ffs, can somebody get him an AAC? Or a whiteboard, at least? Teach him sign language? This is a solved problem even in the real world, surely Starfleet can figure it out!
Nothing to say about Jankom, he's just there. *shrug* And I feel kinda ditto about Zero, tbh. I mean, I like them, but....
Ma'Jel, between her cool hair and her increasingly consternated expression as the turbolift got more and more crowded, is clearly not one of the most unemotional Vulcans out there. (I don't care what Vulcans say, the opposite of "logical" is not "emotional", it's just "illogical".) I feel like she and our darling T'Lyn would have a lot to talk about.
The adults on the ship - this show is clearly trying to walk a fine line between keeping them competent and allowing the kids to run circles around them. I'm not sure it always works, but I appreciate the effort, and also I appreciate how they were careful to make it clear that the adults, whether they're being strict or a bit Too Much, are only acting the way they do because they're sympathetic. (Frankly, all the kids could stand to appreciate their new situation a bit more - except Rok, she already gets it - but I understand why they're struggling a bit.)
( Gets a bit spoilery )
( Ugh, the news )
Well, I read the news
Jun. 9th, 2025 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Unfollowing. Feel free to do the same.
Jun. 8th, 2025 08:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I also will possibly be on here less to keep up with things for the next month or two, so if you have my contact info and want me to see a post of yours, please send me a link? School is going to head back into kick-my-ass mode here in another week or two, and possibly stay there as things move from science-heavy to the business and legal classes I am required to take. 😞😞😞
I have a headache just thinking about it.