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The travel ban's up. Schools are going back to remote learning. Nobody's going anywhere if they can help it. I'd figured this was coming, and it's nice that it's settling in. The snow's coming down steadily and I can faintly hear human voices - going from where the light's coming from, the people in the next building over are either hosting some friends or having a very loud party by themselves. Either way, it's warm human voices on a cold night.

Not a dark night, though. The clouds aren't letting that happen. It's one of the nicer parts of nighttime snow.

Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: nothing now

I take a lot of pictures of three classes of things:

Cats: This pictures are good on any camera, including my agéd single-lens SE.
Birds: These pics are shit on the aforementioned handheld phone.
Moss and lichens and bugs: These pics are fine on the phone, but could be much better.

My real constraint is my hands and arms. I can't hold my arms above my head, I can't hold a phone still very long, the non-ergonomic controls and shape of a phone are shit, I realistically can't carry a tripod on a hike, and I can't bear weight on my shoulders or the back of my neck for any length of time. (I recognize that this collection of constraints means my pictures will never be great, and that's okay.)

So, questions:

Are there any cameras that have particularly good ergonomics, are particularly light, or have a good reputation for accessibility?
I believe I could get a remote shutter trigger & a remote focus, so I could prop the camera somewhere and get a good pic from a less painful angle; do you know how to choose a hand-friendly one? (Not finger-fiddly, easy to attach & detach, easy to click buttons.)
On a modern camera, is it possible to get lenses good enough for bird pics that are not, you know, heavy? Last time I had an SLR I was taking pictures on film, so that tells you how out of date my knowledge is.
What's the lightest tripod that works well for people with shit fine motor control and no finger strength? I can sort by weight on hiking sites, but hikers put up with a lot of fiddly controls that I can't handle.

(I'm only looking for advice from your experience or from the experience of people you trust. Please don't GoogleKagiGoPT it for me!)

We have started posting auctions, which means that we have started sending emails with your auction link and the link to submit edits!

Please keep in mind:

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Your auctions may not all be posted on the same day. You'll get one email for each auction post - some email clients may put these in one thread together, so keep an eye out for that.
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Current Mood: amused

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heated rivalry

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starfleet academy

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fic,
fic:bts

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Current Mood: cheerful

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Trying to clear my calendar and hunker down for the next few days in light of the storm had me allowing myself a little bit of panic buying in the form of another bottle of olive oil. It's not on the same level as rescheduling an appointment because I know there's no point trying to get anywhere farther than two blocks, maximum, come Monday, but it helped a bit.

I'm also charging up my devices as something of an insurance policy and made sure to return all my outstanding library checkouts. Again, something that only helped a bit, and still helped. Mostly I'm now waiting for it to arrive so I can finally enjoy the snow. The build-up to it isn't nearly as enjoyable.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: nothing now

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Like many people these days, FTH is trying to detangle ourselves from Google. This won't be quick or easy for several reasons, but this year we've taken one step you'll need to be aware of as a creator or bidder: We've got a Proton email address that we'll be using for some FTH business.

We can't use it for everything, because a lot of our automation will currently only work with gmail. But be sure to add fandomtrumpshate AT proton.me to your email client's allowlist, and look for FTH emails coming from this address as well as our usual gmail!

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mod announcement

This post is about Erotica 4 Barbarians, a challenge to write smut in words of one syllable.

I neglected to include all the Marvel characters I could write, in part because I did not think it through, so -- Wade, I already mentioned, but also Steve, Nat, Bruce, Thor, Clint. (I just heard

minoanmiss cheer and punch the air.)

Anybody who wants a flashback to 2012 Avengers fandom, The Avengers Kink List Team Bonding Sessions: the files is a collaborative project that happened in my comments back in the day, in which we played with all kinds of Avengers pairings.

If anyone wants more in that vein, I will see what I can do to scrape off the rest of the MCU and chill in that headspace. In words of one syllable.

\o/

Current Mood: out there
Current Music: The last time I heard the Avengers theme was at a work training

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Title: One Foot In Front Of The Other
Fandom: The Long Walk
Music: One Foot In Front Of The Other by Walk The Moon
Characters/Pairing: Ray/Peter; ensemble
Summary: Taking this one step at a time.
Warnings: graphic violence

Here on AO3

Sometime around 1992 or 1993*, I visited my grandmother, who greeted me at the door with joy and a shimmy dance because she had just discovered a brand new band, such fun, I had to come in and hear her new CD right then. She was sure that these boys were going to go big, as their music was so delightful.

So I came in, dropped my bags, and we spent some time bopping around her townhouse to Fat Bottomed Girls, singing along about making the world go around.

I had to give you that for context for this. I bought my first Taylor Swift CD yesterday. Fun music to sing in the car. And I'm tickled to hear the lines that were used as fanfic titles for a while there.

*yes, that's the timeline. I was the one to break the news of Freddie Mercury's death but we did go to the local used CD store and build her collection that weekend.

Current Mood: amused

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family:dodie

Friday night dinner this week was still with family: out in Brooklyn. My parents weren't in town but my brothers were, so I went out to them since that was easiest for everyone. There and back was easy, thanks to not waiting long for a train to arrive and for finding one of the trains was running express that afternoon. The dinner itself went okay, and when my brother J., his wife E., and their daughter A. were around, I spent most of the time in the kitchen with my brother R. so his wife G. could spend time with J.'s family - I peeked out into the living room a couple times and they were all chatting and looking at something on someone's phone, and I thought it better not to intrude.

An amusing moment came partway through dinner. Weather came up, and I was the only one who expressed any pleasure at the idea of snow. I pointed out that this was the kind of weather we used to have, getting snow at the end of February. B., one of G.'s friends who'd come as well, said she'd grown up in the Midwest and was aware of that. At the time, I didn't think to point out I was talking pre-Industrial Revolution. It's probably just as well; later in the meal, she said she didn't want to feel like life was full of construction zones, that she'd had times of at least a couple things going smoothly, and I struggled to relate. A good person to talk to, and someone with a life fairly removed from mine.

Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: nothing now

I was backreading one of my tumblr tags looking for a joke, and I refound https://www.spidersge.org/ which is, I promise, not a rickroll.

This DW post has the Spiders Georg reference I was looking for. Since that posting, my friend's partner has gone into remission! Yay!

Current Mood: migraines georg lucas
Current Music: John Williams is not my friend until the painkiller and triptan kick in

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Current Mood: full

Uh, so, I have a weird Jew-y dilemna.

I volunteer with my neighborhood "snow brigade", which shovels for folks who need help. We're due to get some gross "wintry mix" and "icy sleet" overnight, although maybe not much accumulation.

The couple I got assigned to emailed to say — well, here: "Hopefully there will be NO snow on Friday night and Saturday since for religious reasons we are not able to shovel. If it's not much we can deal with it Saturday night."

I emailed back to say that I don't consider helping a neighbor in need to violate shomer Shabbat and I would be happy to come by and make sure their sidewalks and steps are clear.

They said, "It would be our sin to have another Jew do any work for us on Shabbos. We very much appreciate your kind thoughts to help us. But if we can't do it, you can't do it for us either."

Uhhhhhhhhhh. I am not sure how to respond to this. I don't think this is a sin! I try to observe Shabbat in the sense of resting and renewing myself, but very much not in a traditional way — like, spending a couple of hours mending and embroidering might be part of Shabbat for me because it fills my cup and I don't always get the chance to during the week! Going to the farmer's market and spending half my paycheck and cooking something elaborate on Saturday is a profoundly Shabbosdik thing for me! I don't want to tell them "your theology is wrong" and I don't want to upset them by doing something they have told me not to do (and would apparently feel guilty about????), but ... I can't just leave an elderly couple trapped in their house with icy sidewalks for a day!

*pinches bridge of nose*

I gotta get in touch with the snow brigade coordinator and tell her what's going on so she can try to find a substitute, I guess. I wish I hadn't made it so obvious I am also Jewish, just said something cheerful about being happy to shovel in the morning, but it truly did not occur to me that their observance would mean this. My bad. Ugh.

This is gonna be a real fun conversation with the snow brigade coordinator.

ETA: Snow brigade coordinator is going to check if there's someone I can swap with for future Saturdays, but since the blizzard has been delayed until Monday, when labor is allowed, we will deal with it if and when it becomes a problem next. What a ridiculous shenanigan.

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Heated Rivalry rec

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(no subject)

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New FTH Email Address!

Addendum to Erotica 4 Barbarians

New Vid: The Long Walk "One Foot In Front Of The Other"

showing up late, without Starbucks.

Out and back.

Silliness, Spiders Georg, and good news

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me and my big mouth

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January 2026