hannah: (Pruning shears - fooish_icons)
(posted by [personal profile] hannah on Jun. 26th, 2025 09:31 pm)
The thing that's getting to me about my part time gig - more than pretty much anything else - is that I keep having to defer to my client's doctor's appointments and other such obligations. I know how hard it is to get an appointment with a specialist in a reasonable timetable, and adding in factors like her having to schedule a car because she can't use the stairs to get to the subway, it becomes exponentially more difficult to arrange, let alone attend.

It's not the deferring so much as knowing if we met at least twice a week, we could build some momentum on tackling the decades of accumulated legal paperwork and really get going.
schneefink: Hotguy and Cuteguy thumbsup (Hermitcraft Hotguy and Cuteguy)
(posted by [personal profile] schneefink on Jun. 26th, 2025 11:02 pm)
I've barely scratched the surface of the massive MCYT AUfest Battleship works bounty, but I'll be leaving for a week-long vacation with my gf at my grandparents' tomorrow so here's part 1 of recs. 11x fic, 1x webweave, 3x comics/art; a wild mix of AUs and genres and pairings, mostly for Hermitcraft, some Life Series, DSMP, QSMP.

11x fic, 1x webweave, 3x art )
hannah: (Backpack - keepacalendar)
(posted by [personal profile] hannah on Jun. 25th, 2025 08:25 pm)
Yesterday was largely a smoothly running operation. Once things got set up, it was easy to tell people to feed the ballot into the scanner until the machine caught it and to wait a moment for the confirmation screen, and being told to wait a moment as part of the general instructions helped people do so. There was a moment someone didn't wait, didn't see he'd marked his ballot badly enough it couldn't be read, and he was thankfully barely out the door for us to get him and tell him to fill out another one.

There was another moment someone used a red privacy sheet instead of a black one, which had us worried for a moment before we found out the only major difference in the sheets is the color and any ballot inside them's good to be accepted. A few affidavit ballots got spat out, and so did some with extra marks. Sometimes a ballot needed to be fed in from the other end to get accepted by the machine, and it never mattered which side faced up.

Setting up the machine was easy, except for the part where someone needed to come and troubleshoot one of them, leaving us to open about 15 minutes behind schedule. It didn't cause a backlog or an issue, and all in all, we serviced just over 1300 people - about the same as the election last November. There were more babies and animals this time, and about the same number of children, but beyond that, the adults of all ages blurred together after a while so I can't speak to the represented demographics. Just that a little over 1300 ballots were processed by all the machines, with people showing up early and still coming in at 8:59PM.

Closing the machine was trickier because while all the steps were direct and granular, there were still moments I wanted to double check a part of the process with someone, and with everyone working on something, nobody could say "I'll be with you in two minutes, hold tight until then," which didn't help. But we got it done, and while we were out a little later than in November, with the sunlight having lasted longer and the day itself being much less stressful, it evened out.

One amusing moment came when someone tried to juggle a paper takeout bag, an iced coffee in a plastic cup, and a ballot, and I told him to put the coffee down onto the floor. Which he did. Something in how I told him to do so had one of the other poll workers laughing throughout the day.

Another amusing moment came in the last fifteen minutes of the day. Someone wanted them to work faster and I said we could glare. They looked away and said sure, and when they looked back, they jumped and cried out - because when they'd looked away, I'd pulled out a hard stare to demonstrate the kind of glaring I was talking about. I broke into laughter and they did, too, but man, what a moment to have.

One other poll worker was reading the Robert Caro books on Lyndon Johnson, which had us talking about systems of power, whether power corrupts or reveals, good research methods, and hypothetical Caro-level biographies we'd like to read. One person said Sacajawea and the LBJ reader said Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. I told him I'd want to read one on Tom Cruise, which, given it's a theoretical Caro-level biography, would talk about things like the history of cults and the rise and fall of various aspects of the American film industry to give full context the way Caro's LBJ books talks about the daily life of pre-electricity rural Texas and his Robert Moses book talks about the geology of Long Island to help the readers understand where those men were really coming from.

We also speculated on whether someone would get a 51% plurality and secure a spot directly from the ballot box. We chatted about market tonics and sourdough starters and the terroir of wheat. On occasion, one of the voters was upset about the concept of ranked choice voting, and sometimes they voted for one candidate instead of ranking anything and at least one person cast a blank ballot as a political statement. After twelve hours, I stopped saying people could take pens and stickers and simply told them to take pens and stickers. I ate lunch and dinner in a nearby park and otherwise spent most of the unpleasantly hot day in an air-conditioned building.

Overall, while parts of it could've gone better, I had a good enough time I think I'll probably be back in another few months.
hannah: (Breadmaking - fooish_icons)
(posted by [personal profile] hannah on Jun. 25th, 2025 08:15 pm)
Not quite a paella, not quite a pilaf, not exactly a risotto. Certainly a cooked stovetop rice dish. Certainly based on a riff of a paella, working with what I had available. Certainly cooking the rice with the other ingredients and broth to make sure it all came out nicely. And pretty much all of it green, too.

Green spring onions from the market, because I had plenty of them. A stalk of green garlic, too, the cloves roughly chopped, the stalk sliced in half to infuse more garlic flavor. A couple of zucchini, sliced both thin and thick. A head of broccoli, cooked first to make sure the stalks got soft along with the florets. Herbs, spices - some parsley, a blend, a couple dried chili peppers, fresh black pepper, large-grain salt. Sushi rice since I had a cup and a half left in the bag and wanted to use it all up.

The original riff involved tomatoes, and I didn't want to go without any, and I didn't feel like adding anything red or even yellow to throw off the colors. So I used a can of chopped green tomatoes I bought a while ago because I'd never seen them before and found them intriguing, and they turned out to be exceptionally well suited to sweeping up a little corner of the kitchen.
petra: Barbara Gordon smiling knowingly (Default)
(posted by [personal profile] petra on Jun. 25th, 2025 05:38 pm)
June 25th is Yuri Day in Japan, and, why not, here too.

If you would like a drabble or poem of f/f in a fandom I know, please prompt me! Crossovers, rare or never-before-conceived-of pairings, all are welcome.

Since today is Yuri Day, male characters are not invited to today's prompts, even Rule 63'ed. As a caveat, I would technically accept Thirteenth Doctor prompts under that stricture as the Doctor is genderfluid, but since I only saw a few episodes of Thirteen, I don't have much to say about her.

Ideally, leave me: Poem or Drabble, Fandom(s), Character/Character, Prompt.

Feel free to spread the word.
umadoshi: (plague doctor (verhalen))
(posted by [personal profile] umadoshi on Jun. 25th, 2025 02:10 pm)
Over a month after the arrival of our (in my case, long-yearned-for) Microclimate Air3 powered respirators, I finally took mine out on its maiden voyage yesterday. (It may result in me going more places than I have been, but it may also mainly result in me feeling safer in the places I do go.)

Yesterday there was a casual in-person meeting at Dayjob where the team properly met the two people who our office's managing editor answers to. Donuts were promised (and turned out to be quality donuts, although I opted not to bring one home with me [since I sure wasn't about to unmask to eat anything there!]. Fun times in needing to be picky about what I spend my sugar intake on). We also had a heat warning, so I was all the more glad/relieved to have a drive to and from the meeting rather than taking transit for the first time in, oh, three years or so.

I'll put most of the rest under a cut, but I do want to note--especially since probably at least one or two of you clicked on the link for the Air3, and the price looks horrifying--that I'm incredibly glad we didn't order ours immediately when they first became available, because at that point the Air3 alone (as opposed to the kit) was more like $1000 USD. The original plan wasn't for [personal profile] scruloose to get one at all, given that initial price and given that they have a respirator setup that works well for them. But then a few weeks later, the price dropped to $549(/$649 for the kit with extra stuff, which is what we opted for, as well as a few extra filters etc. in the name of minimizing future need to deal with shipping), so we got to say "Well, that's still really spendy, but it's also now not completely outrageous to get two." (And then we wound up having to contact the company because of shipping/import charge shenanigans, but those were on the courier's side, not Microclimate's, and the person [personal profile] scruloose dealt with was great, so it's all good.)

I should also note that one of the review videos I watched about this made sure to point out clearly that its price (which initially was a MAJOR jump up from how much the Air2 cost when that was available) was in line with the cost of other NIOSH-certified powered respirators. It's far from cheap, but it's not the gouging attempt it might seem like. (I do wonder what the deal was with the massive price drop so soon after its release, though!)

And now, the actual experience: )
hannah: (Interns at Meredith's - gosh_darn_icons)
(posted by [personal profile] hannah on Jun. 24th, 2025 10:50 pm)
Despite the stress and a small number of concerning moments, I don't regret working the polls today. Partly because I didn't have to be online, largely because I was in an air-conditioned room most of the day.

I got up at 3:15AM and I got back to my apartment at about 10:30. I'm not sure how easy sleep's going to come tonight, which means I'm really very thankful I called everything off tomorrow.
seascribble: the view of boba fett's codpiece and smoking blaster from if you were on the ground (Default)
(posted by [personal profile] seascribble on Jun. 22nd, 2025 05:28 pm)
Spoilers for everything.  I have over-all been enjoying it still! Learned that it was conceived as a 6 episode show but Apple ordered 10, which definitely explains some things.

Shipping feelings: I have read a lot of good, weird stuff about Gurathin and Murderbot being autistic and strange at each other in various ways involving wirefucking, gunport fingering, and Fucking For Science. As the author of that last one says, "aroace murderbot truthers do not @ me. you know already that god likes you best," I think there's a world where MB can be like "ew put my mouth that I use to talk on a human?" and also be kinky without obliterating the character we get in the books.

Also have read a bunch of good stuff about ART and Murderbot: this amazing one where ART writes Murderbot a sex act code and it's weird and they talk and I just found the vibes and the voices and the way the topic was approached to be perfectly in character. 

And this one which fucking REWROTE MY BRAIN CHEMISTRY, half the TL has already rec'd it because I've been screaming about it to anybody who opens a DM with me, the fucking INTIMACY, the tenderness, the most relatable piece of media since the actual books. The voices and interaction are perfect, the feelings are perfect, the nonsexual kink and sensory overload and praise kink ("ART said, Your recent security performance continues to meet expectations. I couldn’t deal with that either,") are perfect, it's all perfect, go read it. 

And because I wouldn't be me if I weren't bringing the gross: here's some fic where Iris masturbates with Perihelion's help and it gets its robot rocks off on acoustics. It's the highest quality what if you jerked off with your sibling and your sibling was a giant sentient space ship fic out there, I'm convinced. 
alias_sqbr: the symbol pi on a pretty background (Default)
(posted by [personal profile] alias_sqbr on Jun. 24th, 2025 05:36 pm)
Local radio station triple J is doing a Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, and I thought it would be fun to make a playlist of Australian songs, in roughly descending order of how much I like them, and then compile my ten votes from there. My actual vote included less white dudes/took into account what was already in the system etc. And I am sure if I made this list on a different day it'd have been different songs!

hermionesviolin: image of Matilda sitting contentedly on a stack of books, a book open on her lap and another stack of books next to her (Matilda)
(posted by [personal profile] hermionesviolin on Jun. 23rd, 2025 08:14 pm)
I am skeptical about the utility of the Synod service project this year -- like, how effective is it necessarily to build a Banned Books Library in a church? (Last year's project -- putting together packs of menstrual hygiene products -- felt to me much more like we were doing something actually helpful.)

But am I gonna seed this service project by donating some banned books written by trans people?  Probably.

(Speaking of supporting trans authors: The Transfeminine Review's Pride Month mutual aid drive)

There was a webinar this afternoon:
Join us to learn more about our General Synod service project this year focusing on creating Banned Book libraries in Kansas City and across our wider Church! We'll dive deeper into why banned book libraries matter, how to participate in this year's service project and how to create a banned book library in your congregation.
Synod this year is in Kansas City -- co-hosted by the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference and the Missouri Mid-South Conference (Missouri; Arkansas; and Memphis, Tennessee) -- and one of the panelists on the webinar (who's on the staff of the Missouri Mid-South Conference) said that Missouri is the #3 state in the country for the most banned books. I'm not sure where that stat comes from -- and if it means number of books banned or number of book bans (so, like, if Book A gets banned 10 times, does that count as 1 or 10), and if this is a cumulative total or for the last year or what -- but it does help suggest why this issue is so big for the Synod organizers. [Interestingly, I had just been on this banned book list from the project's toolkit, and Kansas is not on it at all. In fairness, it's a September 2023 article that says, "Reproduced here, the PEN list covers books that were banned or challenged during the first half of the 2022 school year—the most recent data available." So it's not the most comprehensive list. But still.]

On the subject of, "how effective is doing a Banned Book Library in your church?" excerpts from the chat during the webinar: Read more... )
hannah: (Library stacks - fooish_icons)
(posted by [personal profile] hannah on Jun. 23rd, 2025 07:14 pm)
Putting myself to bed several hours early tonight to aim for enough sleep to be functional and present tomorrow. I'm going to pull out as many stops as possible to try to be asleep before 10PM. A long cold shower, a farmer's market tonic, everything I can manage.

Possibly even the AC for a little while.

It's made most of the afternoon and evening into a waiting game where I know I can't commit to much, and it's made it difficult to focus on small things - more than usual, at least. Most of my Wednesday plans are cooking and planning out the Andor panel discussion topics, and that's at least a little more pleasant to look forward to.
schneefink: Hotguy and Cuteguy thumbsup (Hermitcraft Hotguy and Cuteguy)
(posted by [personal profile] schneefink on Jun. 23rd, 2025 06:34 pm)
The main gameplay phase of [tumblr.com profile] mcytblraufest Battleship is over. Team Nether! *raises fist in triumph* We finished third (out of five teams), and we fully cleared all three boards, before work reveals even. I had such a great time on my team, with our two strider mascots Dirk Slow and Aragorn Steady. Massive props to the mods, everything ran very smoothly. In the first board every field had very cool flavor text even, and the bosses were very cool (we defeated the Wither Storm!)

I ended up with ten (!!!) gifts!
And I'm proud to say that despite that I reached my semi-serious goal of creating more gifts than I received. Though if I get more treats after this I'll give up. I've never received so many comments on one day as I did yesterday, it was great.

My wonderful gifts:
Sharp teeth and spring rain, Hermitcraft SMP
3.4k, Mumbo & Etho, fantasy AU, platonic kink
Summary: That anticipation, now cooled, mingled with fresh dread as the blank, flat space on the horizon tore open.
A thousand-year old dragon emerged from the void and blocked out the sun with his wings.
Mumbo gulped.
“Oh, Gem!” he fretted. “You expect me to dom that?”
Why I love it: Excellent premise, very cool worldbuilding, great character voices and development of their relationship.

Careful People, Hermitcraft SMP
1.3k, Cleo/Etho, cyberpunk AU post-divorce
Summary: "We'll be careful," says Etho.
"We're not careful people," Cleo reminds him.
"Maybe we know better now!"
Why I love it: I love the banter. Them. So divorced and yet.

seven more shorter ones and one piece of art under the cut because this got long )

The three weeks of the event were very intense. Multifandom Battleship starts soon and I don't think I'll sign up for it even though I had a great time last year, but that'd be a bit too much. Unless...

And now, off to read more from the collections! All Ages and 18 Plus, almost 1.200 works in total already, and there are still almost two weeks of the anon period.
bironic: Neil Perry gazing out a window at night (Default)
(posted by [personal profile] bironic on Jun. 22nd, 2025 10:31 am)
Discussion of menstruation, reproductive organs, surgery recovery )

I took off work ’til the end of the month. My mom came for a week, my sister for almost a week, and now it’s “vacation” with daily-ish friend visits. I’m hoping my brain will permit playing around with a vid for some of the time. I have ideas for a show and a movie, neither of which I had any plans to vid until compelling songs presented themselves.
.

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