amplificathon

Now that I have once again been so blessed as to watch Murderbot episodes 6 & 7 (and a rewatch of 5) a few maundering, meandering thoughts about the divergences and the complementary creatures that the books and the tv show are.

Also some massive digressions, because that is how I roll.

Which, fair warning, is where I shall start.

( Read more... )

fresne

So, um, this is very long. I am very much enjoying the show. I very much enjoy the books. I think they complement each other in interesting ways. While also understanding that not everything hits for everyone. See also, folks I was *sure* would like the Good Place and bounced right off.

Anyway, post Covers Ep3-5.

( Read more... )

fresne

I've been posting some essays over on Tumbler about Murderbot tv and it occurs to me I should also post them here, given long form, etc.

So, something written when I'd only seen up to episode 3.

( Read more... )

tsuki_no_bara

it was SO HOT today. SO. HOT. i worked from work because for all its faults the ugly building where i work is arctically cold in the summer.

my roommate is GONE and all her stuff is GONE and she left me her orchids (two, small ones) and some random food and some random cleaning products but she is GONE. she came back saturday with her parents and her mom took over the dining room table to pack the remaining ceramics (and said something along the lines of "it doesn't look like there's been any progress" so i reassured her that even tho there were a bunch of things left it was SO MUCH BETTER than it had been and there was SO MUCH LESS STUFF) and her dad dealt with the plants outside (sort of) and my sister and i packed around them. eventually they all left with almost everything - my roommate left a bunch of stuff in the fridge and freezer - she was going to come back sunday but texted me that night to say she was on her way and then she and her dad reappeared and took what was left. and then i was alone. :D just me and my sixty boxes.

(when i got home thursday night my roommate had moved everything into her room and i thought it was the emptiest the apartment had ever looked since before we moved in.)

my sister came over saturday morning and helped me pack until we ran out of tape and while we were out getting more my roommate showed up with her parents. we filled sixteen boxes in like three and a half or four hours which was super helpful and then she had to leave and i lay on my bed in front of the fan to get out of my roommate's way and after she left i did some more. and friday i worked from home and packed some and the woman who wanted my bookcases came and got them and i just enjoyed being in the house alone.

and on sunday i got a late start and packed boxes and contemplated my navel and tried to cope with how hot it was. so hot. ugh.

i'm all caught up on resident alien and it is such a weird show but i really like it.

i should be packing but i am intimidated by the kitchen.

Current Mood: dying of heat
Current Music: resident alien

yourlibrarian

1) I've been seeing a lot more posting on

common_nature, very encouraging! Have added the first of my waterfall photos there, of Latourelle Falls.

2) Looks like there is a spammer at work on Squidgeworld. I got 3 comments to different posts within a few hours today, two with outright solicitations for commissions.

3) Saw Dune 2, and thought it was ok. It's almost as if the movie was made to be the direct opposite of David Lynch's version in casting and tone as well as visuals. ( Read more... )

4) Finally saw the Barbie movie as well. I can see why it did well. Given its remit and likely limitations, I thought it did a good job. It had a clear direction, and it did it well and with both humor and heart. I also quite enjoyed its ending. That said, I think the film itself opened the door to a more incisive critique which it didn't follow. ( Read more... )

5) This past month is turning out to be an expensive one. My partner's sister had a roof leak in her spare bedroom, which went on long enough that it damaged the bed underneath it before she noticed. Since this was where my partner stays when he visits his family, a replacement was needed. So we decided to move his current bed there and get a new one. ( Read more... )

Poll #33282 Kudos Footer-528

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scrubjayspeaks

As the summer weather kicks into high gear, the Frog and Opal Bar is offering a new line of chilled drinks, available with and without alcohol, to serve during their extended summer operating hours. The staff have been brewing sun teas with refreshing additions like hibiscus flowers, seashells, ballpark grass, and sugared mosquitos, all chilled with preserved hail from winter storms. Come inside and cool off with the best of summer and something to take the edge off the worst of it.

---

LL#1268

scrubjayspeaks

*nervous laughter* I have made a mistake…

In addition to two appointments this week, one of which required about 8 hours of driving, I helped dogsit. E needed to go to an event down in my neck of the woods, but her partner recently got injured. Watching over two dogs alone was going to be an issue, so I got tagged in as backup.

Which is how I ended up running full-tilt through deep, soft beach sand whilst attached to 80 pounds of deranged young dog. I am not a runner. I am fat and have bad knees. I am the strong-man body type, thank you. But by the gods, I said I would help wear this dog out, and I was going to do it or die trying.

I did not die, though I did fall down at one point. Within hours, my muscles were informing me that mistakes had been made. Today, the morning after, I am sore as hell.

Sore muscles aside, I had a lovely time getting to know E’s partner, as we’ve mostly just seen each other in passing before. And the three of us had a nice dinner together and I got to catch up with E. No regrets; just a lot of Tylenol.

Oh, but I did realize something: this was the first time I had reason to run since surgery. I might be sore after the fact, but nothing hurt in the moment. Because I didn’t have ten pounds of ballistic boob attached to me while I was doing it. I could feel the difference in the moment and marveled at it. Even with the best, most restrictive sports bras money can buy, running used to be painful and awkward.

So I’ve once again spent a long weekend exhausting myself worse than the work week could ever hope to. (x_x)

Lewisia: 1 new piece written (oops)

Day job: 25.5 hours, with Thursday and Friday both off

Listening: AQUARIUM CITY by Louie Zong (thought this sounded suitably summery)

Aftermarket Parts: got through the second doctor appointment, so all I have left is seeing my prescriber which is never traumatic

Clock Mouse: 1289 words

Other: dentist, unloaded hay, primary doctor, dogsitting

peasina

Thought I'd start sharing some of the things I make here :-) This week, bead phone straps!

I made the one on the right in late April and have been using it with a homemade decoden phonecase (that I might share another time, especially if I make more) in the same colours since. It came in very handy at a recent fandom meetup as a fidget toy ^^

The pink one is a gift for my friend. I made her a phone strap already for Christmas last year, but the beads were cheap and the colour wore off them after a couple of months, so I'm popping this one in the post for her today as an upgrade.

The middle one has no owner right now (and also no clasp - I've some on the way) but I'm in love with that big bead that looks like an iced cake.

It's honestly been too hot to do anything other than string beads on elastic these last few days. I love sorting through my various pots for colour schemes and trying to level out the big chunky ones so the strap is comfortable. I'd love to make some fandom inspired ones at some point. I'll share here if I do ^^

Thanks for looking 💚🫛

meteordust

Wow, what an electric episode. Fantastic in so many ways. But I admit my first reaction in the first ten minutes was "Ahhhhhhh! Jeffrey Combs!" I loved him in Deep Space Nine as Weyoun, and then he kept popping up in so many other science fiction shows. It was a real delight to see him show up here.

( Spoilery reactions )

Current Mood: geeky

fred_mouse

Between one thing and another, I haven't been keeping up on dreamwidth. I'm spending the next hour or so attempting to clear out - there were 317 tabs open in the dreamwidth window when I started; it will be interesting to see where I get to. So many posts from mid-May I was going to reply to; giving myself permission to abandon. And then I'm going to do the same thing with the backlog of my inbox.

And how do I get to 317 tabs? By every day or two scanning my reading list, and opening everything longer than a paragraph that I expect to want to read. This means I can get 'caught up' over breakfast, even if not everything gets read!

luzula

I went around and took a few pictures of what we're growing! We had a long dry spell in the spring, which had me worried that there would be drought, but since then we've have some proper rainy weather, which is good. The dry spell made a dent in the slug population, so we've mostly escaped any serious damage (and the ducks do their part, as well). Now it’s sunny again, and most of our vegetables are doing quite well, although there are a few failures, of course.

( Lots of photos under the cut )

summerpodficswap

Summer Podfic Swap assignments have been sent!☀️✨

(Please remember to keep your recipient secret until after reveals.) If you have any questions about their requests/Do Not Wants, feel free to contact the mods via email and we'll seek clarification for you. If you have any concerns about your match, please contact the mods ASAP at summerpodficswap at gmail dot com.

Gifts are due by 11:59 PM EDT August 17th. Details on how to post your gift to the collection are included in the FAQ (https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Summer_Podfic_Swap_2025/profile#faq), but please contact us if you have any difficulties. Once you have fulfilled your assignment and added your gift to the collection, feel free to add treats as well! Happy podficcing!

Gift Deadline: August 17th 11:59 pm EDT, right before midnight
Gift Reveals: Late August
Treat Deadline: August 31st 11:59 pm EDT, right before midnight

missizzy

It has officially gotten hot enough out that the upper lock on our front door no longer works; it sometimes refuses to in the heat. The lower lock is still working fine, but we may finally call a handyman to deal with it. If it would be safe for him to do such work with conditions being as they are predicted to be during the upcoming work week. The worst of the heat won't even start to come in until tomorrow, according to my weather app this morning. But even so, I'm basically going to do my handful of errands today almost as soon as I can do so with the dry cleaners being opened when I get there.
It's also complicating arranging a second date. We're both too old to be walking anywhere in this. Though I'm hoping there's a weekday evening we can find some dinner venue we can both easily metro to after work.
My Comic Con badge arrived on Wednesday. We should probably book our flights soon. My mom has actually managed to make arrangements with a friend for company that week, though my sister may get her friends to look in on her again as well.

ursamajor

I started writing about our May concert weeks ago, and then got caught up in the swell of all of our June concerts. Three down, two to go!

hyounpark's mom and sister came out for our May concert - they'd wanted to come for Bocelli, but we took a look at ticket prices and required hotels and were like "even for a once in a lifetime thing like this we cannot in good conscience ask you to shell out mid-four-figures for a weekend in Napa." So instead, they came out for the reprise of Here I Stand: Paul Robeson, which also included Jasmine Barnes' Sometimes I Cry, and Brahms' 2nd Symphony. The performance went well, and was recorded! So I'm looking forward to being able to share that when it's released.

We also stuffed ourselves silly that weekend, but it was a good chance to just hang out at Leonard and Sara's and be lazy and have family time. Takeout sushi from Miyozen and wings from Wingstop while we worked on puzzles; curries for dinner from House of Curries; an excellent Hunanese dinner at Wojia the following evening.

H might have been a little more strategic on the eating front; 36 hours after we were onstage at the Paramount, he ran Bay to Breakers. I happily raced him across the city on the train per usual; devoured soda bread and a ganache cold brew on the beach at Sunset Dunes while waiting for him to catch up.

After that, we launched straight into prep for Beethoven and the symphony gala fundraiser. While we were waiting to go onstage for the gala, my little corner of sopranos was by what was very clearly The Party Table at the fundraiser. Highly amusing. We made ABC News for like half a second, and I was mostly blocked by the piano; perils of being a short soprano, lol.

Beethoven's 9th last Friday was the official wrap on our season, and I'm glad our director said what he did about it in his introduction, referencing that Beethoven was writing it in a time of much upheaval; that no matter the challenges, in our community, we seek and elevate joy; that this is our calling as musicians. An die freude, indeed.

*

We're approaching six years out here in California, now; as of yesterday, celebrating 20 years together with

hyounpark. (25 years on LJ/DW, at least off and on.) It seems like the universe is recognizing it, nestling into that theme of growing community ties. Just in the last week alone:

- H and I went to an a cappella concert on Sunday at the Freight, and one of the musicians was a college classmate.
- one of the additional singers we brought on for B9? Turned out to be my elementary school music teacher, who now lives less than a mile away from us. She was like, "Oh my god, I was so strict in those years!" Me, ever the diplomat: "Eh, I'd call it orchestral." Everyone in listening distance cracked up.
- on my way to rehearsal on Tuesday, I ran into one of my biking friends as they were going into BART and I was coming up out of BART. I'm finally starting to run into people serendipitously more often!
- at bike brunch last Friday, one of my friends from the food writing class I took in March was at the cafe we'd ridden to, and apparently they bike too, so of course I invited them to join us on future rides.
- at the B9 concert, friends in the audience included new biking friends, old fandom friends, and even older elementary school friends.

And now, we just got a last-minute song added to our setlist for the Bocelli concerts this weekend about 45 minutes ago, so I go cram. And make sure my clothes are washed. And check the Wine Country weather. And overhydrate. And make sure of our carpool. And that I have coughdrops. And sunscreen. And shoes that are both concert-dress-appropriate and walkable for tromping across the vineyard grounds.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: when it's dark, can this world revive

scrubjayspeaks

“I thought fairy rings were supposed to grow where tree stumps were rotting,” he said, gazing out over the field, “or spots where something dead and buried was decaying.” She looked up from where she had been closely examining a rough line of fruiting bodies, then she guided him over to one edge that gave a better view. She swept her arm out to indicate a long, one might say draconic, curve as of a tail joining a vast body, picked out in assorted mushrooms, and grimly said, “Yes, exactly.”

---

LL#1267

tsuki_no_bara

hello my flist! my roommate has officially (if not entirely) moved out! by which i mean she left a lot of stuff in the kitchen, i think mostly food, and there's still some stuff in her bedroom and she seems to have left her coats but by and large she's out. she's coming back this weekend to clean (not sure what she expects to clean since i'll still be packing and my shit will be everywhere) and get the rest of her stuff but i now have space! so i can finish packing! so exciting! last weekend my sister and i measured my new place so i even know where everything is going to go. and i can bring my dining room table which is kind of a relief. i'm getting rid of two smaller bookcases - i listed them on facebook marketplace and they went like *that* - theoretically the woman who claimed them will come get them tomorrow - but everything else will fit. i really didn't want to get rid of my dining room table.

today because it was like 90º and we had the day off for juneteenth my sister and i went to ikea while my roommate moved out. we didn't get anything but i looked at new bookcases and coffee tables and my sister looked at armoires and i should have made her wait while i looked at lamps - there's no overhead light in either the living room or my bedroom in the new place - but part of me wants to move in first and then see what i need and where it will fit. ikea was CROWDED. which. well. it was exceptionally hot and a lot of people no doubt had the day off and what else are you going to do when it's brutally hot besides go where there's a/c? right? besides, ikea. :D

and then we went back to her house and had salad for dinner (god bless whole foods and their prepared foods department) and watched the first mission: impossible because last weekend after the measuring we went out for dinner and saw mission: impossible - the final reckoning which went on a bit too long in places but was overall a really good ride. it probably helps to have seen the previous mission: impossibles but i've seen maybe half of them and could still follow along. if it's your thing and you've seen dead reckoning part one i highly recommend it.

and then sunday and the rest of this week i packed around my roommate's shit and sorted kitchen stuff and tried to imagine what it will be like to not have to wait ten minutes for someone to get out of the bathroom when you desperately need to pee. yesterday was the monthly support staff lunch at work and there was hardly anyone there! it's been quiet all week altho to be fair it's the summer and summer is generally quiet.

last wednesday was the admin retreat which is really half a day of professional development (the most useful speakers were the two folks from campus police because they had actual information rather than the kind of vague info we got from the time management guy) (it's important to know who to call in an emergency) and half a day of social stuff. the theme this year was carnival - like carnival side shows like you get with the circus - so the social stuff this year was carnival games and bingo and general hanging out at the boat house. one of the admins a dressed up as a fortune teller and told us our fortunes and mine was that i would see a cute dog. and as we were walking back to the building i saw two - count 'em - cute dogs. this is a future i can totally get behind.

and the weekend before that (so like almost two weeks ago) was family graduations - cousins j&m's twins graduated from high school and while we missed the actual graduation (it was moved inside on account of rain and they didn't have enough seats for all the extended family) we went to the party and then cousin r of j&r got her phd and we went to that party. both parties on saturday! the twins first and then cousin r (whose party was going to be outside but did i mention the rain? torrential. so she moved it inside) and my mom even came up for all the celebrations. my sister had a brunch on sunday for cousins from the other side of the fam and that was fun too and then monday mom went home and my life was consumed with moving again.

and now it's HOT. i finally took the flannel duvet cover off my bed last night. it is the MIDDLE of JUNE. wtf.

in totally other news scientists have actually created the world's smallest violin. no word on whether or not it plays my heart bleeds for you.

was there something else i wanted to tell all you lovely people? i don't remember! us politics are a shitshow and we will not be rehashing them right now and serenity was on tv half an hour ago and i still really like it. resident alien is back and i still really like that. (speaking of things alan tudyk has been in. :D ) and i finally finished the rewatch of andor s1 and am on to s2! i've only seen the first ep tho so don't tell me what happens.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: free guy

hagar_972

I'm alive, everything's fine. I mean, everything's clearly not fine, but.

mific

Going slowly with my into-a-bar fic, but meanwhile, I made art of Uhura from the mirror universe to celebrate Juneteenth day. Click through for the full size pic on AO3.

starandrea

Quarterly update!

I've started learning Cantonese, and it's approximately one hundred times easier than Mandarin (because I already know Mandarin; other language learners say learning Mandarin after Cantonese is comparable). It feels more like continuing than starting over.

Last week I reached 100 works on my Chinese AO3 account (none in Cantonese yet), a bit more than 100k words total, which tells you about how long they are. My English account has 248 works, and that's more than 6 million words.

English DW: 8779 entries
Chinese DW: 358 entries

♥ good books
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, by George Leonard
This book is about how important the time between climactic moments is, or for language learners (it's not about language learning, but it was recommended in one of my language learning groups): why "the intermediate plateau" is life and we should learn to love it.

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, by Oliver Burkeman
This book is about why we don't have to respond to every demand for our attention in order to be a good person, and that knowing how to set a burden down is as important as knowing how to carry it. This was a spontaneous pick, and I expect to reread.

♥ good show
Murderbot, on Apple TV+
The Murderbot Diaries book series by Martha Wells is just as good, arguably better as there's more of it, and available in Chinese translation. Also as an audiobook read by Kevin R. Free in English, who is a perfect SecUnit narrator, and by an enthusiastic AI in Chinese, which is very funny.

♥ great pet accessory
Cooling blanket!!! Daphne says it's her favorite new toy in at least a day, and I'm glad I got the biggest one so we can both use it at the same time.

♥ new in the gardens
6 lupins, 5 roses, 4 weigela, some ferns and hostas and irises from friends and neighbors and the compost pile, a plethora of plant sale finds including more colors of bee balm than I knew existed (I thought it was red or pink but apparently there's also purple and allegedly "rose" which is... what color is that? I will find out if it lives long and strong enough to blossom). Poppies and sage and forget-me-nots, some Solomon's seal and geraniums and even pansies for community reasons.

For future reference, overwintering spring bulbs in garage planters did not work well, but moving overwintered canna and dahlia rhizomes from boxes by the front door to half-full pots in the garage during the early spring did work, somewhat to my surprise. Some had roots by the time I put them in the ground and some did not, but none sprouted early (at least none continued sprouting after being moved to the garage), and so far an intimidating number of them are up and swinging.

♥ new in the dollhouses
I used a chibi metal bookmark to make a couples' portrait for the music room, and then I found some lotus coasters I bought in Vermont last year during the eclipse and set up one as a backdrop for the flute/stand. Dragon earrings as wall-hangings are not as cool as I expected, but scrapbook quotes about the moon and stars as wallpaper make up the difference.

What else do I usually post about? Let's see... dog, writing, dollhouse, garden, language.

I guess that's it! In the world of challenges I'm enjoying

chenqing_100 and

fandom_empire, and looking forward to

battleshipex. In the world of sports the dog has joined me and Marci for some paddling and I think this might be the year she learns to swim. (Not really, but she fell in for the 4.5th time and for the first time did not freak out, so that's progress.)

And now, the weather.

虫洞的彼岸有这么一个地方，一个只有恋人才知道的地方
勇敢的、充满希望的、迷失的、忠诚的、也许就是我和你
你是否愿意和这些傻傻的梦想家一起来
我们称之为家园的星球希望能很快见到你
就在庇护月卫

"There's a place beyond the wormhole, a place that only lovers know
The brave, the hopeful, the lost, the true, maybe me and you
Won't you come with these fools and dreamers
To the planet we call home
We hope we'll see you soon on Sanctuary Moon"

atamascolily

Continuing to plow my way through Nero Wolfe novels wildly out of order: Fer-de-Lance, A Family Affair, Too Many Clients, Might As Well Be Dead, The Final Deduction, Murder by the Book, Three Witnesses. I don't understand how they decided what to put in the omnibus editions--Fer-de-Lance (1934) was in the same volume as novels from the 1950s, why?--but I'm grateful because it's helping me complete the set.

Incredible how Rex Stout just pantses his way through every time; it makes it tremendously difficult to guess the answer in advance when not even the author has a clue at the beginning (although it's significantly easier in the shorter works due to space constraints). Why do I even bother researching how to construct mysteries from scratch for casefic when I could just be making it up as I go along??

The other fun thing about Stout's corpus (apt choice of words for Nero Wolfe) is that you can see how technology and culture marches on, yet the core elements constant throughout. I jumped from the Depression to Nixon (you can tell Stout loathed Nixon) and yet somehow Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe are still detecting in real time over a 40 year period. The same thing happened with Sherlock Holmes, going from gaslamps to the eve of World War I, but it's still fascinating. Fer-de-Lance has a lot of Early Installment Weirdness, though, which makes sense, since it was the first book and Stout was still figuring out the formula; once he did, he churned them out with remarkable alacrity.

But lest you think I have done nothing but follow hard-boiled New York detectives for the last month, I've also branched out to Seishi Yokomizo, a 20th century Japanese writer who specialized in period mysteries, since I was able to find some of his stuff in English. Suffice to say it's a very different vibe but some things are still the same.

(I am probably going to end up writing a casefic soon, and so all of this is grist for the mill. But also, as I think I've mentioned before, I'm weirdly fascinated by mysteries as a genre, not so much for their contents, but their structure and characters.)

Also reading Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance, which is non-fiction, but a) extremely funny, and b) explains so much about why the Terra Ignota series is Like That, actually. Highly recommended.

(it almost makes me want to re-read the Terra Ignota books again, but I'm not sure I can handle that right now - I have such a love/hate relationship with the series because on the one hand the premise is right up my ally but it also means dealing with the most unreliable narrator of all time (who I loathe) and a cast where it is extremely difficult by design to decide who to root for. Which is also true of history, and Palmer's approach to it, but I handle it better when we're talking about the Borgias or Machiavelli and not fiction for some reason.)

Volume 4 of Dinosaur Sanctuary is... okay, I guess? Still frustrated by the ongoing tension between what I want this manga to be and what it actually is. Also The Summer Hikaru Died V5 ended its latest arc and it feels like we didn't accomplish much, but damn if the volume didn't have another great ending, so I guess we'll see what happens--this is a manga that nails "atmosphere" but I'm not sure about "plot". TBD.

Also reading [REDACTED] for [REDACTED] which is a big project I can't talk about for a while, if ever, but has been filling me with so many feels and revelations, so there's that.

In other news, Crunchyroll dropped the final Thunderbolt Fantasy movie with NO ANNOUNCEMENT WHATSOEVER aside from a post on its newsblog, so, uh, way to promote your own shows there. I've already written about my feelings on tumblr, and it turns out I like the movie more than I expected based on the summaries from people who saw it in theaters, BUT I still posted the fix-it fic anyway. Anyway, I have watched it about 4 times all the way through and certain individual scenes way more than that.

Murderbot tv - episodes 5-7

Murderbot TV - episodes 3 - 5

Murderbot TV - to Episode 3

i am not a warm weather creature

Anxiety

Lake Lewisia #1268

Done This Week

I made a thing: Phone Straps

Babylon 5 - S1E16 - Eyes

(no subject)

Vegetable gardening!

Summer Podfic Swap matches are out!

Heat Dome Incoming

to reach the brightest light, to reach the mighty sun

Lake Lewisia #1267

i am a leaf on the wind!

(no subject)

Mirror Uhura

"life's too short and time is flying, I'm looking for baggage that goes with mine" (mimi, rent)

mid-June media update

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