ysabetwordsmith: Damask smiling over their shoulder (polychrome)
This poem is spillover from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] readera. It also fills the "Do What You Love" square in my 2-1-26 card for the Valentines Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by [personal profile] janetmiles. It belongs to the Kraken thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "But an Empty Shell," "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful," and "Filled with Things You Don't Know" ($49) so read at least the first two or this won't make as much sense.

Read more... )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Today is partly cloudy and cold.  Patches of snow remain, separated by stretches of bare muddy ground.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a large flock of sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/9/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 2/9/26 -- I did more work around the patio. 

I am done for the night.

ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
This poem is spillover from the February 3, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by [personal profile] janetmiles. It also fills the "Respect Limits" square in my 2-1-26 card for the Valentines Bingo fest.


"Books That Bite Back"


Some books are easy reading,
while others really are not.

There are the vindaloo cookbooks
and the guides to growing hot peppers.

There are the essays about ethics
and the history books written by losers.

There are the comparative religion texts
and the papers on quantum mechanics.

Just like food that commands respect,
there are books that bite back.

neonvincent: For posts about geekery and general fandom (Shadow Play Girl)
I was thinking of using this as part of the preview image for 'Fantastic Four: First Steps' vs. 'Superman' for Best Cinematic Adaptation Film at the Saturn Awards. I probably should have.

ysabetwordsmith: Artwork of the wordsmith typing. (typing)
These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Buffalo Seed Company Order
Science
Birdfeeding
Website Updates
Early Humans
Birdfeeding
Philosophical Questions: Pregnancy
Artificial Intelligence
Birdfeeding
Website Updates
"An Inkling of Things to Come" is now complete!
Follow Friday 2-6-26: London
Economics
Food
Birdfeeding
Community Thursdays
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Cuddle Party

Safety has 43 comments. Food has 44 comments. Wildlife has 36 comments. Food has 64 comments. Robotics has 135 comments.


Last week's Poetry Fishbowl went well. I am still writing.


The 2026 Rose and Bay Awards are now open for excellence in crowdfunding. It's time to vote for your favorite projects!

The award period for eligible activities spans January 1-December 31, 2025.
The nomination period spans January 1-January 31, 2026.
The voting period spans February 1-February 28, 2026.

These are the handlers for the 2026 award season:
Art: [personal profile] gs_silva Nominate art! Vote for art! (4)
Fiction: [personal profile] fuzzyred Nominate fiction! Vote for fiction! (3)
Poetry: [personal profile] gs_silva Nominate poetry! Vote for poetry! (4)
Webcomic: [personal profile] curiosity Nominate webcomics! Vote for webcomics! (5)
Other Project: [personal profile] curiosity Nominate other projects! Vote for other projects! (4)
Patron: [personal profile] fuzzyred Nominate patrons! Vote for patrons! (5)


"An Inkling of Things to Come" is now complete. Shiv and his classmates finish their first worldbuilding session.


The weather has been frigid here, but is slightly less cold than it was. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a large flock of sparrows, one female and three male cardinals, and a starling.
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dewline: (canadian media)
Does anyone know if this movie is still "in print"?

Noting the cast list including Paul Gross, Mary Walsh, Henry Czerny, Louis del Grande, even Harvey Kirck!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buried_on_Sunday
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
... arrived today!  :D  They always send a surprise extra packet of something, this time 'Evening Sun' sunflower, which looks to be a cultivar that produces medium-size flowers in shades of red.  That ought to be fun.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Earth still had seasons during its longest deep freeze

A planet locked in ice can still experience seasons, climate swings, and solar rhythms, according to new research. For decades, scientists pictured Snowball Earth as a long pause in climate history, with movement and change frozen in place.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Today is sunny and chilly.  Large patches of ground are visible, but there are still large patches of snow too.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/8/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a flocks of sparrows.  I heard a cardinal but didn't see it.

EDIT 2/8/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

I saw a male cardinal.

I am done for the night.

 
neonvincent: Bakersfield isn't the end of the world (Bakersfield icon 1)
I was planning on writing a post about this video. Instead, I wrote BBC News asks 'Why is Bad Bunny's Super Bowl show so controversial?'

theradicalchild: (Rad at Computer)
My sleep score was 85/100, with duration being the worst part, though I'm never really deeply asleep as I used to be once upon a time.

Autocorrect on my iPhone was being a real bitch making incorrect suggestions so I turned it off. I still really struggle typing shit correctly on my iPhone and iPad, another mental thing I really struggle with.

I did my laundry today and had no issues.

My town's Methodist church has men's breakfast monthly on the first Saturday of each month but when I went the women were doing some shoe/clothing thing, and they said they were having it at Lil-Tex, a local restaurant in walking distance, but when I went there and looked around I didn't see anymore familiar so I said no. Luckily I had had breakfast at home, and I drove to the city park and took a walk.

I shopped for a few things at Walmart afterwards.

When I dropped what I bought off at home I met a woman near the police station--I had a hard time finding the bluebonnet mural she told me to meet by--to sell her a painting I had done way back in high school around the turn of the millennium for $10.

IMG 2176

I did a voice recording thing on Upwork this morning but the client obviously didn't speak English as a first language and he asked me vague shit about pronunciation of certain names, and asked if I could refer friends to him, so I asked in my Discord server, but no takers.

I did manage to get some of my novel from my latest notebook typed up and I'm nearing the end of it, with the one afterward being the final novel that has my novel.




unnamed

I intended to comment about this yesterday but it was getting late, but
Cryin' Chuck Schumer acted like a dickwad since Trump wants proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote in elections, and he partially shut down the government as a result--luckily it seems to be over. But I'm really sick of the whitest politicians in the world (though Schumer's a Palestinian Jew, so I don't know if he's technically "white") race-baiting and putting on political blackface (sorry to use that term) for shit that has nothing to do with race like proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote, like they do on things like math and school vouchers. Saying things like that to me is a sign you've lost a debate. I personally think DEI is the real Jim Crow 2.0 since it actually has to do with race and is institutionalized racism.

Image

Also, Stephen A. Smith (and he's pretty much the sanest of the possible 2028 Democrat presidential candidates) and Bill Maher calling out that shit in the above article. Polls actually show even a majority of registered Democrats and nonwhites support photo ID to vote, and Georgian blacks reported having zero problems voting in the last election. Polls have also shown a majority of registered Democrats actually also oppose things like male athletes in women's sports (and that's like letting adults who think they're children into little league), but of course 0% of elected Democrats do. I blame Big Pharma money since they profit from the transgender movement.

They're also talking about getting rid of voting machines entirely and going back to old Senate rules where filibustering senators actually have to speak, which is good since I'm sure they wouldn't want to do that for shit like banning men from women's sports (and the Democrats blocked that last year, and they seem in general to have a huge biological woman issue). And the company Dominion that provides most of America's voting machines is Canadian but has ties to the Chinese, and in 2020 tons of votes for Trump were deleted or switched to Biden. They were also used in Venezuela's elections where Maduro was elected illegitimately, which probably explains the recent regime decapitation. Elon actually saved the 2024 election from being way too rigged by disabling foreign systems trying to interfere. Senators Trent Lott and Tom Daschle actually predicted a major cyberattack in their book Crisis Point back in 2016 (
here's my review), so the interference in 2020 was probably it.

All states also need to clean up their voting rolls since Wisconsin, for instance, has 7 million registered voters but only 4 million adults living there, which is huge voter fraud waiting to happen.
FairVote, which supports ranked voting and proportional representation in elections, bitched because the new SAVE act removes ranked voting from federal elections (though the states that do have it don't really have a lot of independent party representation, which I attribute to the lamestream media pretending third party candidates don't freaking exist), and while I do agree those two need to be things, they can be put back in later, and all election standards at the federal level need to be uniform, which to be is common freaking sense. Paper ballots, one-day voting, one-day vote counting. The only reason you would oppose all that is if you wanted to rig elections, and it's weird the opposition to all those come from a party that whines that every election they lost this millennium was stolen.

Image-3

I know opponents also bitch about "voter suppression"--and autistic supremacist groups like ASAN (which I call Ass-AN) beat that drum--but I'm autistic and I've had zero problems voting since I registered to vote in 2002. Only the votes of those trying to rig elections are "suppressed," so shut the hell up.



A story from The MAHA Report about schizophrenics losing their diagnoses after changing their diets, with The New York Times sucking as a publication as usual.

Again, most of the lamestream media in America is brought to us by Pfizer™, and everyone from activists, doctors, journalists, politicians, and scientists all tend to agree with their sponsors.

all these guys tend to agree with their sponsors by llamascout dkqgdj9 375w 2x

Though another big thing driving media bias is journalists in general being fallible, opinionated humans channeling their grudges into the public record. I do that myself. Video game journalism is every bit as bad as political journalism.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Thanks to [personal profile] fuzzyred, the series Peculiar Obligations now has its own landing page.  This series features Quakers and organized crime, particularly with pirate allies.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
These 773,000-year-old fossils may reveal our shared human ancestor

Exceptionally well-dated fossils from Morocco capture a moment nearly 800,000 years ago, right at a major turning point in Earth’s magnetic history.

Fossils from a Moroccan cave have been dated with remarkable accuracy to about 773,000 years ago, thanks to a magnetic signature locked into the surrounding sediments. The hominin remains show a blend of ancient and more modern features, placing them near a pivotal branching point in human evolution. These individuals likely represent an African population close to the last common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, and Denisovans
.
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ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
Today is sunny and cold.  Much of the snow has melted.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 2/7/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I refilled the hopper feeder.

I've seen a female cardinal.

EDIT 2/7/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

There were two cardinals in the forest garden, but it was hard to tell colors at dusk.

I am done for the night.
 
neonvincent: For general posts about politics not covered by other icons (Uncle V wants you)
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smitsp: (Default)
Even though I'm not a mom, I'm a member of the Purpose Driven Mom Club. I discovered Cara Harvey through Ultimate Bundles' 2022 Goal Getters Summit, and how Cara taught goal setting and time blocking finally made it make sense to me.

I have been trying to get my shit together since the pandemic. I thought staying at home/working from home during that era (2020-2023 for me) would've helped me. But no.

So last May, I upgraded my APDM membership to yearly, so I could get access to Office Hours where I could Voxer one of the APDM coaches throughout the weekend (but no later than 11:59 p.m. Monday nights), and then get responses that Tuesday.

I'm not consistent Voxering with the coach because of major life flare-ups, but when I do, I blow up her Voxer. I'm a chatty person when it comes to talking about goals and life and stuff, but I feel like I treat her Voxer like my own personal blog. Like she needs to know things for context to help me when I come to her with struggles, but she doesn't need to know ALL the things.

I've been itching to get back to Dreamwidth and really make it my home for the past couple months now. I started writing some posts -- a re-intro would probably be really helpful -- but need to finish them sometime. (Writing outside of my reporter job has been very difficult for me.) But why wait for a re-intro that may never come? I'm just going to dust this thing off and start using it to track what I do on the weekends and when I work from home during the week. I'll have a dedicated place where I can look back at what I've done, and maybe I won't blow up Courtney's Voxer so much. It'd be win-win.

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