hannah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hannah) wrote2025-06-25 08:15 pm
hannah) wrote2025-06-25 08:15 pm
Lunch investment.
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.
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.
mx. tozka (tozka) wrote2025-06-25 05:06 pm
tozka) wrote2025-06-25 05:06 pmEntry tags:
reading wednesday
2025 Reading Log | 41/200 yearly goal (+6 from last update)After my last Reading Wednesday post (way back on June 4th), I got sucked into reading a ton of Naruto fanfic (KakaIru to be more specific) which has of course slowed down my book reading. However, I did manage to finish all of MomsDarkSecret's queer fantasy series, Bright Isle.
They're self-published original fiction works (available to read here on FictionPress, first book titled "The Wizard of Bright Isle") and so have many of the problems that such things have, like the occasional typo and meandering POVs. BUT overall they're enjoyable stories with low-stakes problems and satisfying consequences for the villain characters, plus multiple queer relationships. They do have romance though it's very light and not necessarily the focus of the plot, which is more about running a kingdom with evil wizards and greedy nobles trying to mess things up all the time.
Something about the writing style (especially in the first book) reminds me of old school fantasy books, like maybe from the 1980s? Like, books where the kid finds out he's a wizard and is basically like "okay, if you say so" and then there isn't much introspection on his changed circumstances and he just gets on with things.
I did enjoy the series but perhaps I shouldn't have read all of them one after another. There's a lot of repetition of plot points-- the greedy nobles/evil wizards just DO NOT LEARN-- and it became very obvious the author didn't want to actually permanently harm any of her non-evil characters, ever, so the tension doesn't work as well as in other books where people DO get just a little bit maimed.
As for my current reads: I'm like halfway through a 500k fanfic that's the first in a series, so I don't expect my book-reading pace to pick up any time soon. :P
Punk (runpunkrun) wrote2025-06-25 08:52 am
runpunkrun) wrote2025-06-25 08:52 amEntry tags:
Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I will read anything Adrian Tchaikovsky writes, and I read this, where a robot valet makes a decision his programming can't account for and is then thrust out of the safety and predictability of his manor home and into the chaos of the unknown, but it's a book that can't seem to commit to a perspective or tone. I mean:
This is not a page turner. At one point, I swear to god, Libby predicted it would take me 23 years to finish reading it. But it's Tchaikovsky, and so finish it I did. Even when dealing almost entirely with robots, his science fiction is humanist, concerned with individual choices, with no one person or group being the big bad. Instead the friction comes where systems overlap without comprehension.
There's also a short story set before this book that you can read at Reactor: Human Resources by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Contains: the collapse of human civilization, robot harm and death.
Inside his decision-making software there were two subroutines in the shape of wolves, and one insisted that he stay, and the other insisted that he could not stay.Is this robot valet on Tumblr? Nothing in the text justifies such a distracting choice.
This is not a page turner. At one point, I swear to god, Libby predicted it would take me 23 years to finish reading it. But it's Tchaikovsky, and so finish it I did. Even when dealing almost entirely with robots, his science fiction is humanist, concerned with individual choices, with no one person or group being the big bad. Instead the friction comes where systems overlap without comprehension.
Charles, House said at last. We are only following instructions.This book is a world-building slow burn that examines the overlap of automation and humanity, and comes to a dire—but logical—conclusion.
There's also a short story set before this book that you can read at Reactor: Human Resources by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Contains: the collapse of human civilization, robot harm and death.
conuly (conuly) wrote2025-06-25 10:17 am
conuly) wrote2025-06-25 10:17 amCame home and passed out
Ooof, I do not know how people do it who do this for early voting as well!
Delphi (they/them) (delphi) wrote2025-06-24 09:55 pm
delphi) wrote2025-06-24 09:55 pmEntry tags:
REC: Untitled Ouizzy Vampire AU Gifset by by emilee (Our Flag Means Death, Frenchie/Izzy Hands)
Fandom 50 #21
Untitled Ouizzy Vampire AU by![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
derekstilinski
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Frenchie/Izzy Hands
Medium: Gifset
Length: 3 gifs
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: dark/horror, ambiguous ending, constructed reality, au: supernatural, infatuation, temptation, fear play, bloodplay (distantly implied)
Description:
This is my second rec for a constructed reality graphic from this same creator, and this one uses some absolutely brilliant editing to bring together what I'm pretty sure is Vengeance Is Mine and an episode of the TV show Bedlam (neither of which involve vampires) to create an AU where vampire!Frenchie and human!Izzy have a charged encounter in an abandoned church. The application of colour, the selection of eyelines, and the addition of other small edits all make this incredibly convincing, and the concept itself is very, very good to me.
I imagine this Izzy having some sort of protective interest in the church—a paid caretaker, a nosy neighbour, maybe a former vicar or member of the congregation who lost his faith after some tragic event. Whatever it is, he intends to roust out whoever's been squatting there, only to slide straight through "Oh no, he's hot" to "Oh fuck, that's a vampire" and into a dark and hot standoff between charmed predator and captivated prey.
Seriously, this is the gift ofderekstilinski's work. Three gifs and a fully formed universe full of potential stories pops into existence.
Untitled Ouizzy Vampire AU by
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Relationship: Frenchie/Izzy Hands
Medium: Gifset
Length: 3 gifs
Rating: SFW
My Bookmark Tags: dark/horror, ambiguous ending, constructed reality, au: supernatural, infatuation, temptation, fear play, bloodplay (distantly implied)
Description:
In the first gif, Izzy steps uncertainly through the doorway of an abandoned church and stops in front of a flight of stairs. Frenchie jumps out at him theatrically onto the landing above, grinning in front of a full-length panel of stained glass. In the second, Frenchie's eyes glow and his lips part in the dark confines of a confessional. In the shadows on the other side, we glimpse Izzy's rapt and frightened eyes. In the third, Frenchie says something tensely and then flashes a persuasive fanged smile in the vestibule of the church, intercut with Izzy staring at him and swallowing hard, one hand pressed to the side of his face and neck.
This is my second rec for a constructed reality graphic from this same creator, and this one uses some absolutely brilliant editing to bring together what I'm pretty sure is Vengeance Is Mine and an episode of the TV show Bedlam (neither of which involve vampires) to create an AU where vampire!Frenchie and human!Izzy have a charged encounter in an abandoned church. The application of colour, the selection of eyelines, and the addition of other small edits all make this incredibly convincing, and the concept itself is very, very good to me.
I imagine this Izzy having some sort of protective interest in the church—a paid caretaker, a nosy neighbour, maybe a former vicar or member of the congregation who lost his faith after some tragic event. Whatever it is, he intends to roust out whoever's been squatting there, only to slide straight through "Oh no, he's hot" to "Oh fuck, that's a vampire" and into a dark and hot standoff between charmed predator and captivated prey.
Seriously, this is the gift of
fred_mouse (fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-25 11:14 am
fred_mouse) wrote2025-06-25 11:14 amEntry tags:
Things that make me laugh
in the paper I'm reading right now, I found the sentence
"All these models end up being specific cases of a generalized stochastic differential equation."
and actually laughed out loud (it helps that I'm working from home today; specifically from bed, so that maybe my lower back will stop hating me. I can read just as well in bed, having spent a lot of the last year training to read from the laptop in exactly this position :) And thus laughing is not disruptive)
Why did I laugh? As I explained to artisanat, that is the first jargon filled sentence where I've understood every word and what it means. And then I was asked for examples of words I don't know, which at this point I can think of 'constructivist framework' and 'epistemological' (I'm starting to get a feel for the latter; the former I have zero idea)
ETA: the next sentence read
"We cannot provide a detailed account of these models since they require a certain level of mathematical expertise."
hannah (hannah) wrote2025-06-24 10:50 pm
hannah) wrote2025-06-24 10:50 pm
Post-script.
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.
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.
conuly (conuly) wrote2025-06-24 10:13 pm
conuly) wrote2025-06-24 10:13 pmThe air today went from "walking around in soup" to "walking around in an oven"
but I still wasn't prepared to pop into a pizza shop on my lunch break only to find that it was cooler in the pizzeria than the outside. If that's not terrifying I don't know what is.
Tucker McKinnon (jazzfish) wrote2025-06-24 05:13 pm
jazzfish) wrote2025-06-24 05:13 pmEntry tags:
and ... done?
I ... I guess that's that.
My group members stepped up at the last minute and helped out with the paper, so I turned that in on Thursday. I also explicitly abdicated all responsibility for putting together the five-minutes-each video recordings for the group presentation. I recorded that last night, realised this morning that it was actually under five minutes but also how to fix it, re-recorded it, and sent it off. And just now I hit Submit Quiz on the final.
I'm ... done? Grades will be out at some point to confirm that I did in fact pass, both "sufficient unto graduation" and "sufficient unto my own arbitrary standard". (Pretty sure I did, but grades for this class have been Not Terribly Forthcoming, so there's the possibility of an unpleasant surprise. Not at all likely, but possible.)
Onward. After credential: chop wood, carry water. Time to get (more) serious about ye jobhunt.
You cannot know what happens next.
My group members stepped up at the last minute and helped out with the paper, so I turned that in on Thursday. I also explicitly abdicated all responsibility for putting together the five-minutes-each video recordings for the group presentation. I recorded that last night, realised this morning that it was actually under five minutes but also how to fix it, re-recorded it, and sent it off. And just now I hit Submit Quiz on the final.
I'm ... done? Grades will be out at some point to confirm that I did in fact pass, both "sufficient unto graduation" and "sufficient unto my own arbitrary standard". (Pretty sure I did, but grades for this class have been Not Terribly Forthcoming, so there's the possibility of an unpleasant surprise. Not at all likely, but possible.)
Onward. After credential: chop wood, carry water. Time to get (more) serious about ye jobhunt.
You cannot know what happens next.
Sholio (sholio) wrote2025-06-24 12:50 pm
sholio) wrote2025-06-24 12:50 pmEntry tags:
Not to tempt anyone but ...
While we're waiting for h/c-ex to reveal in July, this just showed up on EAD ...
ANNOUNCING TERRIBLE TEMPERATURE TROUBLES FLASH FEST: a multifandom flash fest for all your terrible temperature troubles!
Nomination & Sign-ups: Now-June 30.
Assignments Out: July 2.
Works Due: July 10.
Work Reveals: July 11.
Creator Reveals: July 17.
All times at 11:59 PM Eastern.
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/temptroubles2025/profile
https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/23809
Hypothermia ... heatstroke ... etc ...
(And it's one of those 1-fandom minimum request/offer exchanges, I'M JUST POINTING THIS OUT, IN CASE IT IS RELEVANT TO ANYONE.)
I realize this would be a terrible time for me to sign up for anything because I'm leaving tomorrow and I'll be gone until July 4 (Mom stuff again), but there's still almost a week of writing time after that.
ANNOUNCING TERRIBLE TEMPERATURE TROUBLES FLASH FEST: a multifandom flash fest for all your terrible temperature troubles!
Nomination & Sign-ups: Now-June 30.
Assignments Out: July 2.
Works Due: July 10.
Work Reveals: July 11.
Creator Reveals: July 17.
All times at 11:59 PM Eastern.
https://archiveofourown.org/collections/temptroubles2025/profile
https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/23809
Hypothermia ... heatstroke ... etc ...
(And it's one of those 1-fandom minimum request/offer exchanges, I'M JUST POINTING THIS OUT, IN CASE IT IS RELEVANT TO ANYONE.)
I realize this would be a terrible time for me to sign up for anything because I'm leaving tomorrow and I'll be gone until July 4 (Mom stuff again), but there's still almost a week of writing time after that.
Sholio (sholio) wrote2025-06-23 08:49 pm
sholio) wrote2025-06-23 08:49 pmEntry tags:
Dungeon Crawler Carl books 1-3
Okay, the previous post has the non-spoilery intro to the series, so this is the one with all the spoilers. I finished book 3 this evening (of seven books so far), and I'm still having a terrific time.
( Spoilers )
( Spoilers )
conuly (conuly) wrote2025-06-29 08:25 pm
conuly) wrote2025-06-29 08:25 pmSo not looking forward to tomorrow
It's gonna be one long, long, long day. Also hot. Long, hot, hard - and miserable.
Happy Mayoral Primaries, I guess? At least the poll site is airconditioned. (At least... I assume it is? Oh god what if it isn't.)
Oh, and I nearly forgot - the Arab/Israeli dove and rose mural has been painted over. Saw that on my way to CVS today.
*******************
( Read more... )
Happy Mayoral Primaries, I guess? At least the poll site is airconditioned. (At least... I assume it is? Oh god what if it isn't.)
Oh, and I nearly forgot - the Arab/Israeli dove and rose mural has been painted over. Saw that on my way to CVS today.
( Read more... )
hannah (hannah) wrote2025-06-23 07:14 pm
hannah) wrote2025-06-23 07:14 pm
Winding down.
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.
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.