hannah: (On the pier - fooish_icons)
([personal profile] hannah Aug. 8th, 2025 10:10 pm)
Walking down the stairs to the subway platform, a group of what I assume are tourists are standing right at the bottom, talking and not moving. The train's pulling in and I don't have time to think: I tap my knuckles against the back of the one right in front of me like I'm knocking on a door.

Amazingly, it works perfectly.

What also worked perfectly was twice tonight, getting into the station and to the platform within a minute of the train pulling in, where I walked down or walked up and it's arriving just as I am. It's now something where I have to stop saying it never happens and go to saying it almost never happens. Because it's now happened at least once.
selenak: (Gaal Dornick - Foundation)
([personal profile] selenak Aug. 8th, 2025 07:45 pm)
In which Gaal unleashes her inner Hari, and lots of revelations happen in all plotlines.

Spoilers need to get the plan back on track by any means necessary )
hannah: (On the pier - fooish_icons)
([personal profile] hannah Aug. 7th, 2025 11:11 pm)
Leaving for Brooklyn a little early today fully knowing I didn't need to be at the client's house until a little later than usual left me able to walk around a bit and explore the neighborhood. Mostly walking under an elevated subway platform and peeking at the flowers and butterflies in a large fenced-off industrial lot that's largely been left to its own devices for the last few years. I didn't go down to the Gowanus Canal, and any temptation to do so was tossed aside when I realized it smelled like a fertile beach at low tide. Then I decided to savor the smell of a beach at low tide for a while and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I wandered through a nursery and made my way over to a sandwich shop that doubles as a grocery and picked up some spicy jarred peppers, then went across the street and had an ill-advised espresso. I found a used record store that made the hard call to stop at cassette tapes, and spent a little while watching a pair of crows up in an old leafy tree. I don't think I'd want to make the move out there, and moments like crows up a tree make me consider it as a charming fancy.
selenak: (Visionless - Foundation)
([personal profile] selenak Aug. 7th, 2025 04:29 pm)
Since because of Foundation I'm currently watching Apple plus again, I also marathoned the first season of Silo, which I didn't have the chance to do last time I watched Apple. In the meantime, I had watched the series Paradise over a the Mouse Streaming Service, and in reviews, comparisons to Silo had been made, which enhanced my curiosity. (Now that I've seen the first seson, I know why, though I would say the shows are far more different than similar, even the resoective premises. At best, you have some parallels in some of the conditions and in one of the results. Which is why I still think it was a mistake to not conclude Paradise (which had a good season, don't get me wrong, but I think the quintessential core story is told within it) as opposed to giving it another season, whereas I look forward to Silo's second season (because while the first one has a concluded main story arc, it is very much written as the start of a larger story).

Spoilers don't know who built the Silo, or why )
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redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird posting in [community profile] thisfinecrew Aug. 7th, 2025 09:27 am)
If anyone wants to call RFK Jr. to complain about him not funding vaccines, the phone number is 202-690-7000. I called during office hours (8:30-5 Eastern time) and got voicemail. The message asked for a phone number, and claimed someone would call me back.

If anyone wants a script, my message was:

My name is Vicki Rosenzweig. I’m calling from Boston, to demand that the secretary restore funding for MRNA vaccines. He must make the fall covid and flu boosters available to everyone. I’m immune-compromised, and my safety depends on my family being vaccinated and not giving me a virus. My phone number is [your number here]

Edit as appropriate.
gwyn: (middleman german film)
([personal profile] gwyn Aug. 6th, 2025 05:04 pm)
I don't think I've mentioned before (well, because I never post, so how could I have) that I'm going to WorldCon this month, because it's in Seattle and I figure this is the only chance I'd ever have to do that. I don't have any particular interest in the Hugos or things like that, but I've been going to SF cons since attending my first Norwescon back in 1983, I think, although that definitely tapered off after I discovered what we used to define as "media fandom" back in the day. It was a way to separate SF cons, which were primarily literature based in the olden dayes, from the kind of fandom as we know it now, which encompasses a much wider array of stuff, especially TV/movies. I'm so old, I remember the sneering way the gatekeeper wannabes talked about people who were at cons for Star Wars and Trek or even Road Warrior or whatever. Kind of ridiculous, when you think about it.

ANYway, I'm actually pretty nervous about it. I'm only going on Friday and Saturday, and of course it looks like a lot of the panels I want to see are in the late afternoon/evening (especially [personal profile] wickedwords ' fanfic panels). So that means I'll be basically without any place to rest or relax (I don't know, maybe they'll be better than Emerald City Comic Con, but there was literally no place to sit and rest if you were less than perfectly abled, or even sit and eat most of the time, and there will be a couple thousand more people at WorldCon than ECCC) except on a floor or what have you, and since I live here, I'm just going to take a lyft in or maybe the water taxi. And my fatigue has been through the roof lately; I've been trying a new drug and it's making things actually worse, plus this month is turning out to be just bananas crowded for me. I just need time to regroup but there isn't any.

I thought about getting a hotel nearby, but I'm not sure it'd be much better; when I hurt, I hurt. The room blocks are all sold out, too, so anything would be pretty pricey, plus I'd have to wait to check in, and then check out, when I'd be doing con stuff, so it seems fairly pointless.

I do wish I could go to some of the other days' events, since [personal profile] marthawells is the GoH this year, but, well, cancer always has other ideas. WorldCon does seem kind of different in that they don't frontload all their best stuff on Fridays and Saturdays; it's a long con, and I would love to go to a couple other days, but that's not in the cards. I also wish so much I could go to nighttime events, especially because I love masquerade contests, but I know my limitations. I will have to look into whether having a day pass for Friday will allow me to see the streaming masquerade event...

I'm hoping to see [personal profile] mecurtin, and I think a few other fellow fans here on DW are going, so if you might want to meet up at some point (I honestly don't know what to expect about going through reg on Friday, I had a horrendous experience with Sakura Con years ago, where I was trapped in line for six fucking hours and it left my body broken in a way I've never recovered from, but WorldCon does have an accessible line so fingers crossed), I would love to see people, just because I'm afraid of being lonesome--and also, being able to see people will help with the stamina part, I think. And of course, if you want someone to roam the dealer's room, I will definitely be looking to do that.
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lizbee: (Star Trek: La'an)
([personal profile] lizbee Aug. 7th, 2025 09:31 am)
So I've been a SNW skeptic since it was first announced, and have never been impressed by the show. But I've gotta say, I've seen six episodes of the third season, thanks to screeners, and we are so far yet to hit a good episode. We have, however, hit several repetitive m/f relationships, multiple love triangles, weirdly a lot of antisemitic subtext, and the decidedly bad look of Pike trying to stop his girlfriend from consenting to life-saving medical treatment.

Mostly I think this is because Akiva Goldsman is a hack who doesn't understand Star Trek or subtext, but also I wonder how much is because the seasons are being filmed back-to-back, and so there's no opportunity to see and respond to criticism. Ironically I think part of Discovery's problem was that it was too responsive to fandom, but Goldsman can't be left alone to pursue his creative vision because he doesn't really have one. 

Anyway, at this point I'm only watching because I have a podcast, and also out of a sick eagerness to see if Pike will have to murder his girlfriend and have manpain about it, or if she'll sacrifice her life to save him. 

(I've seen people theorise that the problems this season are due to the show pivoting in a more conservative direction to appease Skydance, and I am sorry to say that these scripts predate the 2023 strikes. Like, there was time for the writers to go back and think, "Oh, there's some dodgy stuff here, we should fix that!")
watersword: A steel bridge and a wooden pier near turquoise water. (Stock: pier and bridge)
([personal profile] watersword Aug. 6th, 2025 07:11 pm)

After a day in which I received yet another depressing work email, I tried to give my brain some happy chemicals by watching Local Hero (1983) and live-texting [personal profile] roaratorio about it. This is a delightfully weird little movie, in which Peter Capaldi is a BABY and has several extra limbs when he runs, everyone's hair is VERY fluffye and they all wear beautiful tweed, the Scottish landscape is beautiful, and the conclusion is an anticapitalist fairy tale. I enjoyed myself thoroughly. (My brain is still pretty unhappy, but there's only so much a two-hour movie can do against the hellscape we currently live in.)

I have successfully killed my first spotted lanternfly and am rewarding myself with the last of the blueberries I picked last weekend. Blueberrying with a three-year-old is an excellent experience, do recommend. Both of us had a great time. (Did his mom have a great time? She says so and I'm choosing to believe her.)

Today I was woman enough to take myself to the garden after work and I was thusly rewarded with the cosmos, finally blooming. I do think I should give up the other garden plot; it's expensive and I just don't go there enough to keep the plants happy. (But the raspberry patch! my heart wails. Self, you missed the raspberry season entirely.)

For anyone registered to vote in Massachusetts -- you can sign up to get reminded when it's time to officially sign papers to put on the Massachusetts ballot a measure to repeal the Massachusetts constitutional amendment that took the right to vote away from people serving felony sentences.

From an email from Progressive Mass:
Unlock Democracy in Massachusetts

In 2000, Massachusetts passed a constitutional amendment that took away voting rights from people incarcerated for a felony conviction. This stripping of rights was in response to political organizing happening in prison. The Empowering Descendant Communities to Unlock Democracy project and allies aim to get voting rights restoration on the statewide ballot. If you are a registered voter in Massachusetts, please take a minute to fill out our pledge form now: https://tinyurl.com/uvrpledge. Once the Attorney General approves the language, organizers will reach out to those who filled out the pledge with dates/locations for nearby signature collection efforts.

The EDC to Unlock Democracy is is committed to ensuring that democracy does not stop at prisons and jails in Massachusetts. It is a collaborative project between the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition, the African American Coalition Committee at MCI-Norfolk, Healing our Land, Inc., and more. To get in touch email EDCtoUnlockDemocracyMA@gmail.com.
hannah: (Running - obsessiveicons)
([personal profile] hannah Aug. 5th, 2025 09:48 pm)
2.25 miles in 30 minutes and two seconds this afternoon, which is proof that steady, regular practice is boring until you see the results and have proof it's been working all along. And after, you feel better about doing more of it tomorrow.

Other minor accomplishments include figuring out a workaround to buy another movie ticket - the webpage with the movie listing and the link to buy a ticket wasn't working, but the page where I could buy the ticket by itself was still around, so I checked my browser history until I got it - and getting back to the ongoing original project after a couple of weeks away from it. I'm slowly planning the next project, and the fics to work on in between. A sense of ongoing momentum is always a good way to help get out of bed in the morning.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird posting in [community profile] thisfinecrew Aug. 5th, 2025 10:08 am)
July was a quieter month on the community, with four posts:

On July 17, [personal profile] gingicat posted about virtual Good Trouble Lives on rallies.

On July 22, [personal profile] executrix post about a Womens March program on feminism and fan culture.

Also on July 22, [personal profile] gingicat warned about apparent voter registration shenanigans and linked to a place to check your registration.

On July 30, I posted about a call for public comments about gender-affirming care.

Thanks to everyone who posted.

Here's a poll to tell us what you've been doing:

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 17


Since the last check-in, I....

View Answers

called one of my senators
4 (23.5%)

called my other senator
4 (23.5%)

called my congressmember
4 (23.5%)

called my governor
1 (5.9%)

called my mayor, state rep, or other local official
1 (5.9%)

did get-out-the-vote work, such as postcarding or phone banking
0 (0.0%)

voted
1 (5.9%)

sent a postcard/email/letter/fax to a government official or agency
6 (35.3%)

went to a protest
4 (23.5%)

attended an in-person activist group
3 (17.6%)

went to a town hall
0 (0.0%)

participated in phone or online training
3 (17.6%)

donated money to a cause
10 (58.8%)

worked for a campaign
1 (5.9%)

did textbanking or phonebanking
0 (0.0%)

took care of myself
10 (58.8%)

not a US citizen, but worked in solidarity in my community
2 (11.8%)

did something else (tell us about it in comments)
4 (23.5%)

committed to action in the coming month
2 (11.8%)



As always, everyone is free to make posts about any issues and actions they think the comm should know about. You can also drop some information into a comment to our sticky post if you'd like the mods to do it.

If you're looking for information on anything else, you can use our tags to check for any ongoing actions or resources relevant to the issues you care about. I try to keep the tag list up-to-date. If you need a tag added, you can DM me.
selenak: (Linda by Beatlemaniac90)
([personal profile] selenak Aug. 5th, 2025 10:07 am)
After thoroughly rainy four weeks, I finally had the time to upload my photos from a very sunny week at the start of July, dealing with two islands in the Northern Sea. I was staying on one, and for the first time had the chance to visit the other. Which is worth a little pic spam.

Düne Rotes Kliff Kampen


Photocut alert )
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selenak: (Bardolatry by Cheesygirl)
([personal profile] selenak Aug. 2nd, 2025 03:03 pm)
Stella Duffy: Theodora : The Empress Theodora is one of those historical characters I am perennially interested in, and I have yet to find a novel about her entire life that truly satisfies me. So far, Gillian Bradshaw's The Bearkeeper's Daughter comes closest, but a) it's only about her last two or so years, and b) while she is a very important character, the main character is actually someone else, to wit, her illegitimate son through whose eyes we get to see her. This actually is a good choice, it helps maintaining her ambiguiity and enigmatic qualities while the readers like John (the main character) hear all kind of contradictory stories about her and have to decide what to believe. But it's not the definite take on Theodora's life I'm still looking for. Last year I came across James Conroyd Martin's Fortune's Child, which looked like it had another intriguing premise (Theodora dictating her memoirs to a Eunuch who used to be a bff but now has reason to hate her) but alas, squandered it. But I'm not giving up, and after hearing an interview with Stella Duffy about Theodora, both the woman and her novel, I decided to tackle this one, and lo: still not the novel about her entire life (it ends when she becomes Empress) I'm looking for, but still far better than Martin's while covering essentially the same biographical ground (i.e. Theodora's life until she becomes Empress; Martin wrote another volume about her remaining years, but since the first one let me down, I haven't read the second one).

What I appreciate about Duffy's Theodora: It does a great job bringing Constantinople to life, and our heroine's rags to riches story, WITHOUT either avoiding the dark side (there isn't even a question as to whether young - and I do mean very young - Theodora and her sisters have to prostitute themselves when becoming actresses, nobody assumes there is a choice, it's underestood to be part of the job) or getting salacious with it. There are interesting relationships between women (as between Theodora and Sophia, a dwarf). The novel makes it very clear that the acrobatics and body control expected from a comic actress (leaving the sexual services aside) are tough work and the result of brutal training, and come in handy for Theodora later when she has to keep a poker face to survive in very different situation. The fierce theological debates of the day feature and are explained in a way that is understandable to an audience which doesn't already know what Monophysites believe in, what Arianism is and why the Council of Chalcedon is important. (Theological arguments were a deeply important and constant aspects of Byzantine daily life in all levels of society, were especially important in the reign of Justinian and Theodora and are still what historical novels tend to avoid.) Not everyone who dislikes our heroine is evil and/or stupid (that was one of the reasons why I felt let down by Martin). I.e. Theodora might resent and/or dislike them in turn, but the author, Duffy, still shows the readers where they are coming from. (For example: Justinian's uncle Justin was an illiterate soldier who made it to the throne. At which point his common law wife became his legal wife and Empress. She was a former slave. This did not give her sympathy for Theodora later, on the contrary, she's horrified when nephew Justinian gets serious with a former actress. In Martin's novel, she therefore is a villain, your standard evil snob temporarily hindering the happy resolution, and painted as hypocritical to boot because of her own past. In Duffy's, Justinian replies to Theodora's "She hasn't worked a day in her life" with a quiet "she was a slave", and the narration points out that Euphemia's constant sense of fear of the past, of the past coming back, as a former slave is very much connected to why she'd want her nephew to make an upwards, not downwards marriage. She's still an impediment to the Justinian/Theodora marriage, but the readers get where she's coming from.

Even more importantly: instead of the narration claiming that Theodora is so beautiful (most) people can't resist her, the novel lets her be "only" avaragely pretty BUT with the smarts, energy and wit to impress people, and we see that in a show, not tell way (i.e. in her dialogue and action), not because we're constantly told about it. She's not infallible in her judgments and guesses (hence gets blindsided by a rival at one point), which makes her wins not inevitable but feeling earned. And while the novel stops just when Theodora goes from being the underdog to being the second most powerful person in the realm, what we've seen from her so far makes it plausible she will do both good and bad things as an Empress.

Lastly: the novel actually does something with Justinian and manages to make him interesting. I've noticed other novelists dealing with Theodora tend to keep him off stage as if unsure how to handle him. Duffy goes for workoholic geek who gets usually underestimated in the characterisation, and the only male character interested in Theodora in the novel who becomes friends with her first; in Duffy's novel, she originally becomes closer to him basically as an agent set on him by the (Monophysite) Patriarch of Alexandria who wants the persecution of the Monophysites by Justinian's uncle Justin to end and finds herself falling for him for real, so if you like spy narratives, that's another well executed trope, and by the time the novel ends, you believe these two have become true partners in addition to lovers. In conclusion: well done, Stella Duffy!


Grace Tiffany: The Owl was a Baker's Daughter. The subtitle of this novel is "The continuing adventures of Judith Shakespeare", from which you may gather it's the sequel to a previous novel. It does, however, stand on its own, and I can say that because I haven't read the first novell, which is titled "My Father had a daughter", the reason being that I heard the author being interviewed about the second novel and found the premise so interesting that I immediately wanted to read it, whereas the first one sounded a bit like a standard YA adventure. What I heard about the first one: it features Shakespeare's younger daughter, Judith, running away from home for a few weeks dressed up as a boy and inevitably ending up in her father's company of players. What I had heard about the second one: features Judith at age 61 during the English Civil War. In the interview I had heard, the author said the idea came to her when she realised that Judith lived long enough to hail from the Elizabethan Age but end up in the Civil War and the short lived English Republic. And I am old enough to now feel far more intrigued by a 61 years old heroine than by a teenage one, though I will say I liked The Owl was a Baker's Daughter so much that I will probably read the first novel after all. At any rate, what backstory you need to know the second novel tells you. We meet Judith at a time of not just national but personal crisis: she's now outlived all three of her children, with the last one most recently dead, and her marriage to husband Tom Quiney suffers from it. This version of Judith is a midwife plus healer, having picked up medical knowledge from her late brother-in-law Dr. Hall, and has no sooner picked up a new apprentice among the increasing number of people rendered homeless by the war raging between King and Parliament, a young Puritan woman given to bible quoting with a niece who spooks the Stratfordians by coming across as feral, that all three of them are suspected after Judith delivers a baby who looks like he will die. (In addition to everything else, this is the height of the witchhunting craze after all.) Judith goes on the run and ends up alternatingly with both Roundheads and Cavaliers, as she tries to survive. (Both Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell get interesting cameos - Stratford isn't THAT far from Oxford where Charles has his headquarters, after all, while London is where Judith is instinctively drawn to due to her youthful adventure there - , but neither is the hero of the tale.)

Not the least virtue of this novel is that it avoids the two extremes of English Civil War fiction. Often when the fiction in question sides with Team Cromwell, the Royalists are aristo rapists and/or crypto Catholic bigots, while if it sides with Team Charles the revolutionaries are all murderous Puritans who hate women. Not so here. Judith's husband is a royalist while she's more inclined towards the Parliament's cause, but mostly as a professional healer she's faced with the increasing humber of wounded and dead people on both sides. Both sides have sympathetic characters championing them. (For example, Judith's new apprentice Jane has good reason to despise all things royal while the old friend she runs into, the actor Nathan Field, is for very good reason less than keen on the party that closed the theatres.) Making Judith luke warm towards either cause and mostly going for a caustic no nonsense "how do I get out of this latest danger?" attitude instead of being a true partisan for either is admittedly eaier for the general audience, but it's believable, and at any rate the sense of being in a topsy turvy world where both on a personal level (a marriage that has been going strong for decades is now threatening to break apart, not just because of their dead sons but also because of this) and on a general level all old certainties now seem to be in doubt is really well drawn. And all the characters come across vividly, both the fictional ones like Jane and the historical ones, be they family like Judith's sister Susanna Hall (very different from her, but the sisters have a strong bond, and I was ever so releaved Grace Tiffany didn't play them out against each other, looking at you, Germaine Greer) or VIPs (see above re: Cromwell and Charles I.). And Judith's old beau Nathan Fields is in a way the embodiment of the (now banished) theatre, incredibly charming and full of fancy but also unreliable and impossible to pin down. You can see both why he and Judith have a past and why she ended up with Quiney instead.

Would this novel work if the heroine wasn't Shakespeare's daughter but an invented character? Yes, but the Shakespeare connection isn't superficial, either. Judith thinks of both her parents (now that she's older than her father ever got to be) with that awareness we get only when the youth/age difference suddenly is reversed, and the author gives her a vivid imagination and vocabulary, and when the Richard II comparisons to the current situation inevitably come, they feel believable, right and earned. All in all an excellent novel, and I'm glad to have read it.
hannah: (steamy drink - fooish_icons)
([personal profile] hannah Aug. 1st, 2025 09:18 pm)
I've committed myself to the baby shower next week. Unless something comes up, I'm going to be bringing some homemade watermelon shrub. I don't know how many people are attending, but whoever's going to be there had better enjoy the shrub. I offered to make a cake, but my brother J. and his wife E. are going with a store-bought Wegman's cake. I said I could do black raspberry or even parsley, but no dice.

It was fairly remarkable both J. and E. were at the family dinner tonight. I didn't mention anything about it, not even a vague remark, knowing better than to draw attention to it. I didn't mention anything about it being done at my brother R. and his wife G.'s apartment, or that E. plans to bring her A/C unit over and install it there for the afternoon. I know she's starting her third trimester. It still strikes me as indicative of something beyond simple physical ease, because moving it seems a major undertaking.

Of incidental and blogging note regarding A/C units and their logistics, the power in half my apartment was out for about four hours today. Yes, half. The southern half. The northern half with the fridge and computer was fine, but the lights on the other side of the apartment, including the bathroom, were out for a while while the power company did some work on the roof. It was the tidiness of the outage that's staying with me.
watersword: A film roll. (Stock: cinema)
([personal profile] watersword Aug. 1st, 2025 09:22 pm)

I want to watch something on Kanopy whilst embroidering. Criteria: not stressful or depressing; don't need to be glued to the screen; silly is acceptable, stupid is not. Things I know I've seen before are marked with an asterisk. Yes, I know some of the films listed do not fit those criteria. cut for poll length )

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resonant: A crow with something in its mouth. Text: KEEP CALM AND CARRION (keep calm and carrion)
([personal profile] resonant Aug. 1st, 2025 02:50 pm)
Last time I saw my hairstylist, she had just bought four chicks and was embarking on a lifestyle of backyard chicken-keeping. She told me all their names. It was sweet.

Turns out chick-sexing is an imperfect art. Over the intervening month, she started to hear one of the birds crowing, but it took a while to figure out which one. It was Dottie.

My stylist called everybody she knew out in the county until she found someone who was both interested in rooster and zoned for rooster. When she was carrying Dottie out to the car to take him to his new home, he crowed a goodbye at the coop as they passed.

Out of the coop they heard some farewell cackling. And more crowing.
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oracne: turtle (Default)
([personal profile] oracne Aug. 1st, 2025 09:10 am)
We had some big thunderstorms Thursday afternoon and the heat seems to have broken for now. Although humid, it was in the mid-sixties Farenheit this morning when I did my jog. I have opened windows!

On my jog, I have occasionally, rarely, had a male observer yell something catcall-y from a car or whatever, but this morning, I got a solemn thumbs up from a middle-aged woman whose car was stopped at the light, and a smile from a younger woman jogging the opposite direction while I was doing my cooldown walk. That was really nice.
selenak: (Demerzel and Terminus)
([personal profile] selenak Aug. 1st, 2025 11:10 am)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Alas, the last two episodes were so incredibly mediocre that I can't bring myself to properly review. I'll watch the rest of the season, but if it doesn't pick up in quality soon, that will be it for me. Shame, I like the characters, but now they're really going for the laziest storytelling and took completely the wrong lessons from what worked before. On to the sci fi tv show which keeps enthralling me:

Foundation 3.04.: In which a long term mystery is finally resolved, and new questions arise. )
hannah: (Martini - fooish_icons)
([personal profile] hannah Jul. 30th, 2025 08:22 pm)
Earlier today I said the most exciting thing that's happened to me at all recently was meeting Tom Cruise at the red carpet, and that's still true. The most luxurious thing that's happened to me at all recently was having lunch today at Le Bernardin.

Yes. That one. The one with three stars.

One of my clients worked in finance back in the late twentieth century and invested carefully over the next few decades, so while she doesn't have the money to eat there anywhere close to frequently, she can afford to do so every couple of years and leave a big tip without worrying about it. She recently had major surgery and decided to celebrate being able to eat solid food again with lunch there. Herself, myself, and the mutual friend who put us in touch.

The website told me business casual, so I wore a nice dress. Not one of my fanciest dresses, but a very nice dress that's got a lot of good memories woven into the fabric. I made sure to clear my calendar and hold my calls - on Monday, I said I wouldn't be available to work today without any elaboration - and arrive with a smile and an empty stomach. I also arrived with good timing, walking up to the door just as my client got out of her cab. I told the woman at the coat check, "I'm with her," and felt a thrill at being able to say it, and another thrill at walking into a space that's designed for people to have a good time. It was like the best Frank Lloyd Wright house done to larger scale, with carpet to catch the noise and polished wooden ceilings to keep the air fresh. Window shades kept the dining room cool, butter came in itty-bitty tureens, cutlery and napkins were swapped out at every course, waitstaff never spoke to each other while serving patrons and instead saved all verbal communication for when they were out of hearing range. Wine was carried on trays instead of by hand, the women's bathroom had tampons and pads in the stalls, four kinds of breads were offered from a basket that got regularly replenished. I asked for one of everything.

There was a three-piece amuse-bouche at the start and a three-piece Petit Fours at the end, all brightly flavored, arranged to provide a nuanced and delightful texture experience - broth with a piece of sashimi topped with a basil leaf, a tiny salmon pie topped with roe, a cod croquette topped with just enough spicy sauce to keep things exciting; a passion fruit macaron, a tiny berry cake, a chocolate-pear truffle.

I thought about starting with a cocktail but went with a spiced thyme lemonade to keep my mind and tongue sharp. First course was cod, second course was hiramasa. Both came with a sauce poured at the table. Both were made of simple ingredients at the apex of quality served freshly cooked and still warm from the kitchen, and I ate as neatly as I could to make sure I didn't miss anything. The real amazement, like with the start and the end selections, was just as much the flavors as the textures. It didn't just taste great. It was fun to eat everything. There was always something going on, whether it was how deep the sauce went or the way the vegetables crunched. When you got it all happening, you had to stop to take it all in. But there wasn't a rush. We were there over three hours and nobody so much as nudged us.

After lunch was an espresso shot and a small pot of tea that smelled like a jasmine black, which tasted even better than it smelled. Dessert was a selection of four sorbets. They were all top-line, with three of the four being flavors you could find elsewhere, though probably not quite as masterfully made: mango, strawberry, blueberry. The fourth flavor was something I've never seen anyone do anywhere else, and that all three of us agreed was the standout item in the meal, more than any of the other courses, more than anything else. Thai basil. Sweet, spicy, summery, fresh. Lawn green, crayon green. It sparked my tongue up. I loved the cod and I had a great time with the hiramasa and the bread was excellent and it was all wonderful, and that almost incidental sorbet had us all awestruck.

The mutual friend left for an errand. The client and I took a taxi uptown, because there wasn't any other way to end the meal. One last moment of luxury for a meal I'll be thinking about for a very long time.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird posting in [community profile] thisfinecrew Jul. 30th, 2025 02:30 pm)
The FTC is inviting public comment about gender-affirming care for minors, and alleged deception by providers. They are blatantly looking for attacks on gender-affirming care, but every unique comment posted may slow down whatever crap they're planning here.

Personalizing these comments is good, even if it's just "I'm writing from Boston."

I'm posting at the request of [personal profile] minoanmiss. If anyone has a good script or talking points, I'd be delighted to add them to this post.
rydra_wong: The UK cover of "Prophet" by Blaché and Macdonald, showing the title written vertically in iridescent colours (prophet)
([personal profile] rydra_wong Jul. 30th, 2025 07:03 pm)
[personal profile] troyswann would like people to talk to about Prophet, please:

https://troyswann.dreamwidth.org/1130697.html

Also, if anybody wants to talk Prophet with me, please do.
Tags:
hannah: (Luke Skywalker - elefwin)
([personal profile] hannah Jul. 30th, 2025 08:58 am)
It's bleakly hilarious to me that a couple days ago, I went on about how the new Fantastic Four movie was unlikely to give me what I wanted in a Fantastic Four movie - how it might be a good movie and a good superhero movie, but as a Fantastic Four movie, I didn't think I'd enjoy it - and nobody but nobody at the table knew me well enough to say, "The Thing keeps kosher."

In this case, the humor comes from it really being that easy to get me interested and invested and in not knowing how much more obviously Jewish I need to be for people to understand it's that easy, and the bleakness comes from thinking that a kosher grocery and a synagogue would be newsworthy to me and utterly forgettable to the people who'd gone to see it.
forestofglory: A green pony with a braided mane and tail and tree cutie mark (Lady Business)
([personal profile] forestofglory posting in [community profile] ladybusiness Jul. 29th, 2025 08:21 am)
In the last few years I’ve gotten into Chinese reality shows. I like them because they are relaxing, feature teamwork, and often have fun outfits and stage design. They are also helpful for my Chinese language study.

The term for all of these shows in Mandarin is zongyijiemu (綜藝節目) which I most often see translated as “variety show”, but seems to be a term for any kind of unscripted TV. I’ve used the term reality show here because that’s what I’m more familiar with and what I think will be more familiar to Lady Business readers.

Reality shows are a bit of a sidestep from my love of Chinese dramas. I got into these in part because I wanted to see my favorite actors in other contexts, and because I wanted something that worked for me to watch in short chunks, but was low stress. I have RSI problems with my hands and it helps to take frequent short rests, and these types of shows work well for me as things to watch in my hand breaks. These shows tend to have quite long episodes (over an hour) and I would have trouble watching an episode in one go but they work for me in smaller pieces.

Read more... )
Title: Just To Ask A Dance
Fandom: The Old Guard & The Old Guard 2
Music: Just To Ask A Dance by Heartworms
Summary: 'think I'll die/ when you die, I'll die, a mutual sigh/ with your hand in mine'
Notes: Premiered at DC-Slash 2025!
Warnings: quick zooms in the source, flickering lights, blood, violence

AO3 | bsky | DW | tumblr | YouTube
petra: A blonde woman holding an electric guitar (Corner Gas - Wanda rocks out)
([personal profile] petra Jul. 27th, 2025 05:47 pm)
97 years isn't long enough to have someone that amazing around.

My favorite song by him, as an old erotica-peddler, is "Smut."



What's your favorite?
Five Musicians Who Owe Their Careers To Stack Moore (And One Who Doesn’t) (394 words) by Resonant
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sinners (2025)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Elias "Stack" Moore, Billie Holiday, Paul Simon, Lil Nas X (Musician), Rhiannon Gidden (Musician), Sarah Vaughan (Musician), Prince (Musician)
Additional Tags: music industry, RPF if you're a real stickler
Summary:

It's who you know.



Beta thanks to [personal profile] mific and [personal profile] terminally_underwhelmed.
the_shoshanna: my boy kitty (Default)
([personal profile] the_shoshanna Jul. 27th, 2025 11:33 am)
The heat index is going to hit 42C/103F here today, omg, this Canadian is not used to this. Good thing I made out like a bandit at the thrift store the other day (took in a load of donations and therefore went shopping): three cute little dresses and a pair of shorts, plus a Columbia rain jacket that was only $10 so I'm also ready for the tropical downpour that is predicted here.

I sanitized my devices to go through US border control, and then I was not only not inspected or interrogated, I didn't even have to speak to a person at all! I have Nexus/Global Entry, and all I had to do was unmask for a photo and be waved through. Which is pretty cool, except for the part where it's terrifying.

The friend I'm visiting is under a lot of stress these days (I mean, aren't we all) and last night she wanted to watch something enjoyably distracting, so we watched Conclave and she loved it. Yay! For me it was a repeat viewing, and definitely held up. I do still wonder what Sister Shanumi was doing in the cardinals' quarters that evening, though; I feel like there's a lot more backstory there than we saw. (Also I highly recommend this story https://archiveofourown.org/works/62100625 ("Oh, Sister" by veganthranduil) to anyone looking for more of Sister Agnes.) Next up may be Kpop Demon Hunters, about which I know very little (ditto kpop itself) but which I keep seeing people praising. On the face of it I wouldn't think it would be my kind of thing -- I've never been much for animation -- but I wouldn't have thought that about a movie of old men arguing about how to divvy up power amongst themselves, either, so you never know.

My latest haircut is not great -- sometimes my stylist knocks it out of the park, and sometimes she fouls out -- and I am sad that my first time in five years or more with two other friends I'm seeing on this trip will be with bad hair!
brokenframe: (Default)
([personal profile] brokenframe posting in [community profile] vidding Jul. 26th, 2025 09:32 pm)
Title: Bad Moon Rising
Character: Peter Hale
TV Series: Teen Wolf
Music: Bad Moon Rising cover Mourning Ritual feat. Peter Dreimanis
Length: 3:29
Streaming/download at: DW | Tumblr
selenak: (Livia by Pixelbee)
([personal profile] selenak Jul. 26th, 2025 06:48 pm)
The awesome Helen Mirren turns 80 today. Long may she continue to rule and remain with us! I think the first thing I remember watching with her that made me sit up and pay attention was her as D.I. Jane Tennison, but since then she's never disappointed in any role I've seen her in, both before and after Tennison. I have a particular soft spot for her Elizabeth II and Alma Reville, I must confess. Most recently I took up someone's dare and watched "Caligula - The Ultimate Cut". Caligula, if you don't know: Became (in)famous as basically a late 1970s porn movie with famous actors (among others Peter O'Toole as Tiberius, John Guilgud as Nerva, Malcolm McDowell in the title role, Helen Mirren as Caesonia, Caligula's last wife) due to the fact that even for a 1970s movie, it had a crazy production history: first the scriptwriter - none other than Gore Vidal - and the director, Tito Brassi, fell out and Vidal withdrew his name from the script, then the director and the producer fell out, and since the producer was the then owner of Penthouse, he went back to the set with some Penthouse girls, shot some hardcore porn and inserted into the already shot footage. The example most quoted for how this worked was that where the scene had a non-explicit threesome between Caligula, his sister Drusilla and Caesonia, the released version added two other women spying on them and having very explicit hardcore f/f sex while doing so. This caused the director to withdraw his name as well and the actors making somewhat embarrassed quips for the next few decades (other than MacDowell, who was seriously pissed off about the then result, and Mirren, who was debonair about it and called it "an irresistable mixture of art and genitals"). Then in 2024, a dedicated film fan named Thomas Negovan released the result of some serious work - he'd gotten access to all the shot footage, and recut the entire movie, going back to Vidal's script and using exclusively takes not used for the late 1970s release (and none at all from the porn additions, not that the actual movie is without sex scenes, au contraire), with the result that a pleased McDowell praised him for rescueing "one of my best performances" from cinematic oblivion. Reviews I had read did concede that now there is an actual storyline and (some) character development. (A scene in question singled out and compared/contrasted: apparantly, the original cinematic release version had Caligula simply shouting crazily "crawl, crawl!" at the senators, who did it. The Ultimate Cut version, by contrast, has this scene near the end, with some overtones of Camus as Caligula has long gone from delight to disgust at how no matter what he does, people will obey and abase themselves, and the longer version of this scene has him asking for increasingly outrageous things, cultimating in the "crawl, crawl" and the declaration he hates them for being like that. (Mind you, earlier in the movie when one brave young man did stand up for himself, this resulted in Caligula interrupting the guy's wedding night to rape him and his bride both.)

In case you're wondering whether the result is worth watching: depends. Certainly as opposed to, say, I, Claudius' Caligula (and his avatar in Babylon 5, Cartagia), who are evil from the get go - in the case of Graves' Caligula literally from birth, he's already a creepy kid when his parents are stil alive - the Ultimate Cut's Caligula has some humanity in him and the introduction sequence makes a point of providing the audience with the backstory of his father Germanicus dying (in this version definitely courtesy of Tiberius), then Agrippina the Elder and Caligula's older brothers all at Tiberius' orders (unlike the death of Germanicus, this is not disputed), with Caligula and his sister Drusilla as the sole survivors (because in this movie, Caligula's other sisters don't exist, though I'm told the porn version actually identifies one of the women having the hardcore f/f as Agrippina, but as the on screen dialogue makes much of Drusilla and Caligula being the sole survivors, I assume in the porn version's Agrippina the Younger would not have been Caligula's and Drusilla's sister), and their incestuous relationship actually one of the very few human, non-abusive and tender relationships happening in the entire movie, with Caligula having the not unreasonable under the circumstances belief that he needs to be Emperor or he's toast as well, only for absolute power to bring out increasingly the absolute worst in him. Buuuuuuuut this existing personal development does not correspond with a general development, by which I mean that since the movie after the introduction with its tragic backstory for young Caligula and the introduction in which he and Drusilla are in a "we two against the world" mode as each other's sole sources of human affection goes on to present Tiberius' life in Capri as a non-stop orgy already, there's no sense that Rome itself pre Caligula is much different than Rome ruled by Caligula. (Incidentally, about the orgy there and the later orgies, which I assume were shot by the original director, since they're certainly rating M or 18, so to speak, but don't have the actors with dialogue do something more explicit than touch someone's nipples, they're the opposite of tiltillating in that no one gives the impression of actually enjoying themselves as opposed to acting on first Tiberius' and later Caligula's orders. The sole exceptions being the scenes involving Caligula, Drusilla and Caesonia.) The Capri sequence does have a moment that gets across human emotion, which is the Nerva scene they hired Guilgud for: this Nerva isn't the later Emperor; he's an old friend of Tiberius who tells his former pal he can't bear the degredation his once friend has sunk to anymore and commits suicide, and Tiberius' reaction to this is when O'Toole actually gets to do some non-hamming-it-up acting. But mostly it numbs you down in its viciousness and it pretty much sets the tone for the film.

Some of the violence is outré and camp, such as the machine decapitating people in the arena who are buried up to their necks in sand, and thus hard to take seriously; otoh the whole Caligula first menaces and then rapes the young couple sequence is violence of a very different type, and genuinely frightening. Drusilla and Caesonia are the two outstanding female roles (and the sole women with personalities); it's another interesting contrast to the I, Claudius versions, in that Drusilla there was a none-too-bright but not personally malicious ditz, whereas here she's depicted as not without her own ruthlessness (she talks Caligula into getting rid of Macro, for example), but also smart and (within this movieverse) sensible, and later the sole person with the courage to argue with Caligula; it's her death (by illness) that removes whatever restraint he has left. Caesonia, too, is depicted as a smart woman (described in dialogue as profligate, but we don't see her having sex with anyone other than Caligula, and in the one threesome scene with Drusilla); Mirren gets hardly any lines in the first half of the movie when Drusilla is still alive but conveys a lot with facial acting, and then in the second half (when she is the character he has most dialogues with) basically becomes the sole person a) aware why Caligula is actually doing all of this ("Do you have to show them your contempt so openly?" "I don't know how else to provoke them"), and b) who among the various sycophants around them still has it in them to be dangerous. As opposed to Drusilla, she doesn't argue with Caligula directly, but she is great at keeping the balance between presenting her critique in a playfull manner and challenging him but withdrawing the moment she senses it could go against her and distracting any ire to another target while returning to her subject in a different way. It's a good role for a young Helen Mirren; this Caesonia is neither a good person nor an evil overlady but a cunning survivor (right until she gets murdered directly after Caligula, that is).

Around these interesting character depictions, however, is, as mentioned above, non-stop viciousness (some sexual, some not) to a degree that it just numbs you down emotionally. In a word: Grimdark. I've said elsewhere that the reason why I, Claudius works in a way many of its imitations didn't is that I, Claudius doesn't just consist of its spectacular villains (be they Livia or Caligula, the two main antagonists, or Sejanus), but offers a sympathetic main character and some other non-evil supporting characters you actually care about, so that when bad things happen to them, you feel for them. None of the various victims and/or targets in Caligula gets enough personality to make it to memorable human being, with the arguable exceptions of Nerva (in the Tiberius sequence) and of the young couple whom Caligula rapes for no other reason that the bridegroom pissed him off by standing up for himself. Drusilla and Caesonia, as mentioned, are interesting and Caligula himself certainly is a charismatic performance by McDowell, who manages to get across Caligula's inner scared child who never grew up along with the increasingly destructive and self destructive nihilism as he figures out that "I can do whatever I want" is neither safe nor as satisfying as he'd assumed but essentially empty. It's now discernable why so many good actors actually signed on to this project (beyond the cash they got). But I wouldn't say their (good) performances are enough reason to put yourself through nearly three numbing hours of grimdark. (Sorry, Thomas Negovan.)
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