kass | Network

I think I'm getting more into the swing of things with "winter hibernation". Early in the winter I felt annoyed that the cold was keeping me from doing things outdoors but now I'm welcoming time where I don't need to go out. Take it day by day, hour by hour. Yesterday it was cold in the morning and I didn't go hiking but by afternoon things looked better - sunny and most the snow on the ground was melted. We took the dogs down to the creek and over to look at the lake. Some pics:( Read more... )

This morning the snow is back. We got about 2 inches during the night. Though it's supposed to go up into the mid 40s later with sun so we'll probably have another day like yesterday where it'll be pleasant in the afternoon.

I dreamed dreams last night that had images of death and loss in them - someone who was preparing to sleep for a hundred years in a wooden box, people getting into a car and going away and me not knowing if they would ever come back, a sheet of mushroom mycelium that I was transferring into a box as if it was a birthday cake. Anyway that all sounds depressing but when I woke up I was determined more than ever to LIVE. This is the only chance I'm going to get in this one body so I need to make the most of it. There will be a time to give up, yes, and that's alright too, but that time is not yet.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

William Dean Howells’ My Mark Twain, which is half reminiscences of Howells’ friendship with Mark Twain and half a collection of reviews Howells’ wrote of Twain’s various books. The first half would make an amazing buddy comedy: Mark Twain the eccentric humorist as the comic and Howells as straight man, going on adventures like “visiting Gorky in his hotel room to help him raise money for the Revolution, only to end up embroiled in Publicity when Gorky got kicked out of the hotel the next day for checking in with a woman not his wife.”

The second half unfortunately made me want to read some Mark Twain. I say “unfortunately” because historically I have struggled with Mark Twain, having attempted and failed to finish The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, AND Joan of Arc. But maybe if I try something aside from Twain’s historical romances…? His essays, his autobiographical travel books….? And I’ve always felt a sneaking suspicion that I really ought to read Tom Sawyer.

Gerald Durrell’s Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories, which I thought was more uneven than most of Durrell’s work. A couple of stories struck me as mean-spirited (particularly “Ludwig”), but I really liked “The Jury” and “Miss Booth-Wycherly’s Clothes.” I believe these are both fiction dressed up as memoir, but if anyone was going to run into a former professional hangman who was now a drunk in the jungles of South America, it would be Gerald Durrell.

What I’m Reading Now

After long cogitation, I’ve decided that it’s time to reread Katherine Patterson’s Jacob Have I Loved. As a child I found the narrator unbearably whiny about her perfect sister, but I’ve long harbored the suspicion that I might see something more or at least different in it as an adult. So far, I’ve been appreciating the strong sense of place and time, both in the lyrical landscape descriptions and the clear picture of the community on Rass Island at the beginning of World War II, and noticing that Louise does indeed have some endearing qualities: for instance, she loves to use long words, but often pronounces them wrong, as she’s only ever seen them written.

…I was not however wrong to remember that Louise spends a LOT of time whining about her sister Caroline, enviously recounting that every time they suffered a childhood illness, Caroline nearly DIED, thus making herself the center of attention YET AGAIN. So we’ll see how I feel about this in the end.

What I Plan to Read Next

Fascinated/appalled to discover that American Girl is releasing a novel about grown-up Samantha: Fiona Davis’s Samantha: The Next Chapter. Opposed to the whole endeavor on the grounds that everyone ought to be free to imagine Samantha’s future as they wish, whether it’s marriage to Eddie Ryland or rabble-rousing as a lesbian suffragette. However, I may nonetheless prove unable to resist reading the book.

bluedreaming

No more blank link previews (for public posts) 😊 Code Tour: 2024-12-01 to 2026-02-25

(I actually saw this on the GitHub push tracker journal thing a bit ago but didn’t actually test it, though I assume it worked already at that point.)

🐘 🦋

sabotabby

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. This continues to be really fun. I wish there was more Ana, but her more distant presence in this is balanced by just how weird and gross the worldbuilding is. All magic in this world is drawn from the blood of leviathans, giant eldritch horrors that live in the sea and during the wet season, come on shore to try to kill everyone, and the murder plot revolves much more around the technicalities of this than the first book did. I'm here for weird body horror and squishy stuff so this works for me.

I am a wee bit confused over Din's motivations; he wants to join the Legion, which is the division of the military that blows up leviathans, rather than investigating crimes with Ana, which is a fairly major switch from the first book. But he can't do it because he's deep in debt to an insurer who covered his now-dead father's medical bills, and the job is so dangerous that the insurer would never be able to collect. Which, do not get me wrong, is a cool motivation! But it does seem like a break from the way his character is initially presented, and so far the only reason for the switch seems to be that he hooked up with a soldier at the end of the first book.

Anyway I just got to the part where he goes inside the Shroud, which is a giant cyst in the water where they extract leviathan blood, inhabited by augurs, who are altered to be incredibly good at working with vast amounts of data but go insane after three years and can only communicate by tapping. It's super cool.

andrewducker

1. Manchester Women's Institute to fold after members quit over new transgender ban: (tags:women transgender LGBT UK OhForFucksSake bigotry )
2. Israeli ExecuƟons of Palestinian Aid Workers and Efforts to Conceal Evidence: (tags:israel gaza murder )

marcicat

It's... office Wednesday, I guess? This month has been kind of weird for office days, but that's the plan, unless the plan changes. Again.

Which means ::drum roll:: it's time to take my old laptop to IT and get my new one! (It took some dedicated effort, but I managed to figure out which of the mess of cords under my desk belonged to the laptop AND I remembered to put it in my bag!)

(I'm definitely not planning to tell IT that it's been working fine ever since they told me they couldn't fix it. Some things should just stay between me and the internet.)

hikyoekizine posting in

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oursin

Happy birthday,

brigid,

choirwoman,

tigerflower and

toft!

rest_of_world_rss_feed

Posted by Indranil Ghosh

https://restofworld.org/2026/elon-musk-dubai-boring-company-robotaxi-regulation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds

No city is betting bigger on electric and autonomous transport than Dubai. At the World Governments Summit earlier this month, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority signed agreements with three U.S....

https://restofworld.org/2026/elon-musk-dubai-boring-company-robotaxi-regulation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feeds

silveradept posting in

dw_dev

Oh, hi, everybody! It's been a little bit since we did a code tour, hasn't it? But never fear, we're here to walk you through the changes that have happened since the last time we took a tour through the code changes in Dreamwidth.

Let's dive in, shall we?

( Your code tour, with some attempts at arrangement by topic. )

There we go! Another year's worth of code commits, issues resolved, and attempts to make Dreamwidth a greater and cooler place to be. And to have it continue working into the future.

(We should do these more often, but volunteers and, well…*gestures broadly around*. So it may be a while before someone has the spoons to do this again, but we're always trying to be more consistent about it.)

Here are the totals for this code tour:

104 total issues resolved.
Contributors in this code tour:

Copilot,

alierak,

cmho, [Bad username or site: dependabot[bot] @ github.com],

jjbarr,

kareila,

l1n,

momijizukamori,

pauamma,

sirilyan,

zorkian

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Daft Punk - Touch It

rogueslayer452

++ I only vaguely follow the Olympics, as in only the sport events I'm interested in. For the winter Olympics it's figure skating. Because of this, I kinda got myself caught up with the sensation of Alysa Liu and her truly inspiring story and the outcome of her winning gold simply by just being herself, returning back to the sport after two years of retirement and doing so on her own terms, and having passion for what she loves and having fun. For all the technical and professional elements of the sports competition, the pure joy and confidence in what she was doing is what most of all take away when watching programs like that. Her performances, her general attitude about life, as well as her kindness, support and excitement towards her fellow competitors, it was quite infectious and it's great to see something this positive and uplifting come out of the Olympics.

++ An official music video was released by the cast of A/B/O Desire for "Master of Desire", the drama's theme song. I literally was all chin!hands watching it! (✿◠‿◠) The video itself is visually stunning, and just seeing them all together for this and with them paired off with their respective couples just made me so happy, specifically that of Gao Tu/Shen Wenlang. Anything with them, please, I need more little itty bitty crumbs of those two!

++ Girls Like Girls is an upcoming film by Hayley Kiyoko, adapted from a book she had wrote that is titled and based off of her iconic 2015 song/music video of the same name. I wasn't aware that she had written a novel nor that this film was in the works at all, but that makes this discovery so much more amazing for me. I do remember back when the video music was released that people were saying that it could be its own story in itself, so, whether or not this was taken into account at the time, I like that Hayley wanted to take a step further with her own creation.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: MS MR - Twenty Seven

melroseee posting in

fandom_icons

[15] robby/abbot icons

See the rest here.

andrewducker

Sophia spent a chunk of Monday evening writing up her half term week without having to. Her handwriting is already better than mine.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

dine

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sonofgodzilla

I worry that with a lot of these Team 8 entries, we are simply reiterating the same facts over and over again, but I really want to treat the stories of each of these girls as special and individual, so I don't care. If I have to repeat myself, I have to repeat myself, and with that said, Yaguchi Moka passed AKB48's Team 8 auditions and joined the group alongside Abe Mei, Okabe Rin, Okubora Chinatsu, Nagano Serika, Fujimura Natsuki, Onishi Momoka, Kuranoo Narumi, Shitao Miu, Cho Kurena, Hamamatsu Riona, Fukuchi Rena, Honda Hitomi, Yokomichi Yuri, the other Yokoyama Yui, Yoshino Miyu, Oda Erina, Oguri Yui, Yoshikawa Nanase, Hayasaka Tsumugi, and Hirose Natsuki, debuting in the SKE48 theatre performance of PARTY ga Hajumaru yo in 2014. Already highly thought of, Moka appeared with her peers in the opening number, Skirt, Hirari, and also Hoshi no Ondo alongside Nanase and Natsuki.

With the release of 47 no Suteki na Machi e on the B side of Kokoro no Placard in 2015, Team 8, with Moka amongst them, set out on tour, performing in a number of prefectures, not least of all her home ground of Miyazaki. Throughout this period, Moka and Team 8 were propping up the B sides of almost every AKB release, joining Tsumugi by making it as far Teacher Teacher before her graduation. I had stepped back at this point in time, but I can't help but wonder what these days must have been like for newer fans at the time, especially those brought in by the nationwide tour. It must have felt like there were two AKBs at this time, the "underground idols" doing all the hard work touring and actually being "idols you can meet," and, in contrast, AKB the institution, what remained of the Kami 7 and the golden age. This conflict can be seen in the results of the general election, for which Moka failed to rank each year of her time in the group right up until her final year when, like any sensible person, she chose not to participate.

From the age of three, Moka had been studying ballet, and whilst idols represent a very different kind of dance, I think it's obvious that, unspoken, she was part of the changing trend in the idol industry and AKB itself that saw the group pivot towards a more complex focus on dance than previous generations. Being an idol often implies having a number of talents, yet dance has become so integral to the identity of the medium, partly following the explosion of the Hallyu Wave, that I cannot fault management for wanting to make use of the inordinate number of trained girls that came of age and turned up at auditions during these years.

In 2017, as with other members of Team 8, Moka was afforded a concurrent position, joining fellow Team 8 member Yokoyama Yui over in Team K. Unlike Yoko-chan, however, Moka did not stay. Lasting almost a year, her graduation arrived in November 2018, this self-described flirty girl desperate to lessen the divide between fans and members finally heading out into adulthood and leaving her former teammates behind.

Like Nanase, like many members of Team 8, Moka isn't the kind of girl that gets invited back for reunions and anniversary, but also like those former teammates of hers, Yaguchi Moka was one of the girls who brought AKB48 shouting and dancing into where it is now, a place where anniversaries and reunions can be celebrated.

Moka!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Nunslaughter - She Lives by Night

minoanmiss

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Current Mood: creative

starandrea

♥ zines for

beagoldfish: started

♥ video for RPM: started, kind of, in that I figured out how to do it probably

♥ winter sowing: finished! all 22 containers are out and covered with snow thanks to the blizzard so it's an authentic experience for them

also I finished Liu Cixin's To Hold Up The Sky anthology, thank goodness because the last story was particularly positive and relatable, but it did make me laugh that he says he's often asked, "what makes it Chinese science fiction?" and literally after the first story I was like, "have you read it."

spookykingdomstarlight posting in

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hannah

Between the train being a while and the train being delayed, I arrived just in time to be fashionably late: I walked into the party just as the guest of honor was being introduced. The woman of the hour, a newly published author, a friend of the people whose library I was hired to organize who decided to invite me to the book party as a parting gift. I was the last person to arrive and comfortably below the average age of the guests, and even recognized a handful of people from overlapping social Jewish circles. I felt nervous about being there until the man who was introducing the author talked about how her memoir was both nostalgic and sad, not a combination that comes up - and I waved my hand to get his attention, because I knew exactly what to say.

I quoted Anya Von Bremzen to say the phrase she used for that sensation was poisoned Madeline.

When I say the host, author, and room were suitably pleased and impressed at the phrase, that also says a lot about the rest of the guests at the party.

What's even better is that my interjection wasn't my high point of the party. As much fun as it was to be invited to that kind of thing, as deeply as I enjoyed putting some goat cheese inside dates for an amazing snack, I mostly attended to network. I knew my clients, I knew who their friends would be, and I worked that as much as I could. I introduced myself and said, "I'm the librarian." I explained how I'd come to be at the party. I hobbed, I nobbed, I was suitably impressive. I said, "My card," and handed over a business card. I commented to one of the hosts that if all that came out of it was being able to say I'd said "My card" it was worth the evening. It was an amazing feeling to do that. So very grown up.

I wore one of my nicer dresses, and it definitely helped me feel like I belonged there. After a while, the feeling simply settled in. I chatted about fiction, about the philosophy of library science and the psychology of letting go of books, about cakes and baking, about public transportation. I said cabs were the luxury of the people and that they were union. I joked about wanting to show off my party trick but since the party was over, too bad. I nibbled and had some wine, and took some grapes home at the hosts' insistence, though they didn't have to try very hard. I took a bike back instead of using the subway or walking, and it was the best way to come down from the elevated state. Not all the way down, though - it'll be with me for a while longer, and I'm doing what I can to savor it for as long as it lasts.

Current Mood: touched
Current Music: nothing now

southernmedicine

I'm pretty worried about Blair.

She gets migraines from time to time; bad enough, and frequently enough, that she has a prescription medication for migraine medicine. Lately, though, she has been getting them almost every day, and that is... not good, and not normal. She's completely taken out by the migraine and then completely taken out in a different way by the medicine she has to take to treat it.

She's going to try to work with her doctor to figure out what's happening and what to do about it, and in the meantime, she's going to take a week-long leave of absence from school and work. What I'm worried most about is the knowledge that she has (has had, for a few years now) a small brain tumor. So far as they know it's benign and she's been on prolactin to shrink it (which is working). Still.

Worried.

On a completely different note, does anyone here use the Finch app? Let me know if you do, so we can be friends!

Current Mood: worried

the madding crowd

wednesday

Wednesday Reading Meme

😊🧑‍💻🌐

Reading Wednesday

Interesting Links for 25-02-2026

workaday Wednesday

Hikyō eki 秘境駅 | A JJK Zine | Applications Open

(no subject)

Dubai taps U.S. startups to go over, under, and around its traffic

Code Tour: 2024-12-01 to 2026-02-25

Saw your face, heard your name.

the pitt; robby/abbot season 2 icons

Photo cross-post

some day I'm going to eye roll myself into another dimension

AKC Courtneyyyyyy Culture Festival #211: Yaguchi Moka

Mandarinquats

robin asked if it's too early to coordinate matching dog sweatshirts for this year's races (no)

MDZS/CQL Read/Watchalong

Party time.

(no subject)

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February 2026

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