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The jam that I spilled on the counters: beautifully set!

The jam I actually managed to get into the jars: SOUP

I am hoping that they'll continue to solidify as they continue to cool down overnight...

Reading. I have started both The River Has Roots (Amal el-Mohtar) and Weathering (Ruth Allen), which latter is by someone who has a PhD in geology and then went on to retrain as a therapist. I spotted the book Some Time Ago at the library; I wanted something to read on my phone; I ... have managed all of two pages. But so it goes!

Watching. Was it this week that I watched the Avatar Aang trailer? Maybe? I am sus but not so sus that we won't probably watch it.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac! We have met, and bid farewell, The Fathers! I think I managed to not actually sleep through any of it this time!

Cooking. It has been Too Warm. I think the most cooking I have done is boiling new potatoes for salad. We have eaten a lot of potato salad.

Eating. JOSTABERRIES. Mulberries! Ongoing British strawberries.

Broccoli fu yung worked out pretty well as Protein + Green for a short-notice takeaway dinner from somewhere I didn't pick.

The Cookies & Cream whey powder makes an... adequate hot chocolate, for my purposes. (A bought me a whizzy stick, by which I mean a handheld battery-powered milk frother With Travel Case.)

Growing. Some of the direct-sown squash have made it approximately to adulthood! I have my first Very Ripe poblano picked and I should really dry it some (and also work out if I actually want to do some incredibly inefficient smoking, one pepper at a time...)

I am informed, via the Internet, that Science has Concluded that lotion with 6% catnip essential oil compares favourably with 15% DEET as a mosquito repellent. (I have also been able to find a summary at the Graun.)

I no longer have any idea where on earth I encountered these Facts (apologies if you are the person I am forgetting!) but once I hit post here I am... probably going to go buy some catnip essential oil. (Free shipping from the place I am looking at gets me 100ml, so I am probably also willing to defray my costs by supplying decants...)

I have been having A Bit Of A Struggle since Friday with discovering all in one go that I Am Doing Everything!!! Wrong With Lifting, courtesy of Footage.

What is actually going on, of course, is that my proprioception remains shit but/and my interoception remains really very good, and the only actual difference between lifting and Pilates is that for the latter I have accepted that The Process involves me gamely trying to do a thing, and doing it wrong for quite a while in ways that aren't an injury risk but also aren't optimal, until finally the right muscles fire and I can go OH. OH THAT'S WHAT IT'S SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE. and merrily reproduce that sensation via interoception forever after.

With lifting I am set up to film myself and weirdly much less twitchy about looking at myself in video than I'd expected to be, and specifically I have abruptly become Set Up To Film Myself, and what this means is that I'm sidestepping the do-it-wrong-until-it-feels-right trial-and-error mapping of interoception to What My Body Is Actual Doing and instead... getting near-immediate feedback, by dint of watching video between sets and using that to identify Limbs Not In The Right Places (&c). I'm setting myself up to consider the trial-and-error a failure because I can immediately See It's Wrong even though I can't yet feel that it's wrong, with a sense that simply being able to see it's Wrong should mean I can now do it Right, and that's... not actually how this goes.

I am... working on hauling my brain around to considering this a tool to help me speed-run doing it right, rather than A Stick With Which To Beat Myself, and I'm sure it is good psychological practice but also, right now, oof.

... except that it really is kinda cool, when it does work, to have that immediate mapping of "oh so I need it to feel like THAT--" and just Fix Things; and I am also trying to remember that the interoception is a massive asset here, given that I could perfectly well have neither.

I'm glad I've got the day off of work today, as it's the start of my "weekend".

There has been a heat dome parked over Minnesota for most of this week. I checked the temperature a few times yesterday, and the website told me more than once that the air temp was 35C/96F with heat index 41C/107F. I wallowed in stickiness at my work desk downstairs while my little window a/c unit worked constantly to keep my bedroom upstairs cooled. The heat has led to wildfires around the state. In Minneapolis yesterday afternoon, the sky was beige. Pictures from locals are available at Reddit (1, 2, and 3), even from the Duluth harbor. People noted that our air quality rates as terrible, and some people ask about dizziness. I went to bed early last night, while there was still plenty of light in the beige sky, feeling something slightly different from being well.

I was going to write more about the gut pain that woke me early last night and the bloody toilet bowl afterward, but... it's probably alarming enough in short form like that. Thankfully the pain passed by the time I was finally done with the restroom. I'm still doing as well this morning as when I returned to sleep last night. My body is just at a similar "not 100%" alert score today, same as yesterday afternoon. Non-specific, just mildly unsettled about something. Looking at the beige sky outside my bedroom window this morning, this generalized unease could be my lungs noting the difference in air quality.

The broken-glass-in-gut pain last night felt exactly like the gluten response I got several years ago after foolishly eating a deep dish pepperoni pizza, trying to remember what good/gluttony/glutinous food tasted like after many years of avoiding it. Reviewing my diet from the last week, however, did not provide sufficient excuse to think it's gluten this time. Considering recent tales about Cyclospora infection spreading through the USA, I pondered recent lettuce that I've eaten. I'm not finding anything mentioning pain or blood, though, so I don't think it's that either. I'm waiting to see if my body tolerates food I eat today, before I make an appointment at the local clinic.

the England men's football semi-final, during a heatwave, is a terrible time to have a migraine that you refused to medicate until rather later on in proceedings than Might Have Been Wise.

nevertheless SOME GOOD THINGS:

• finished sorting through all the redcurrants, and also, fridges are Magic actually
• quantifiable Gym Progress, and also I am pretty sure the hair tie I found at the bike racks is the one I lost at the bike racks on my way out on Monday
• tinned pears and almond butter; strawberries
• temperatures finally starting to properly come down
• found the hairbrush that has been missing since last event! ... at the bottom of the backpack I apparently never fully unpacked.

1. Temperature increase in the flat as a whole (... ignoring the study...) today was under 2°C! We have established that ratchet straps will indeed hold the cover on the study windows to at least reduce solar gain while leaving them open for air flow purposes!
2. Achieved BLACKBERRIES for A. :)
3. Relocated my garlic chives, which are still alive!
4. I am continuing to get useful information out of the videos I took during yesterday's gym session. (Special interest continues interesting, at least to me.)
5. A got me a wee handheld battery-operated milk frother (the tiny whisk-onna-stick kind) with a Travel Case. Presents for Alex! ... that I have promptly used to make a protein shake for, specifically, A, who has discovered over the past half week or so that They Are A Friend and now wishes to join me in consuming Protein Slurry. Hence Gift. I am very amused.

I see that ICE is back to murdering people. That's to be expected, since they've resumed their gangbanger tactics throughout the USA. At least local authorities received some federal evidence regarding the murders here in Minnesota, where the attacks were concentrated previously.

Also, somebody helpfully defaced the Whipple building sign here in Minneapolis, in solidarity with the murder victim in Texas.

I trust that people are familiar enough with the routine by now that they'll entirely ignore the claims by the Feds about the justifiability of the new murder in Maine. They've lied about everything else, after all. They've lied immediately and wholeheartedly, as soon as the crimes happen.

Mostly unrelated (except where authoritarian unaccountability is concerned), this 4th release of UFO files is visually interesting. I'm so very tired of this slow change. Rip off that bandage. Get it over with already. Park those alien ships over cities around the globe for an hour, blasting the 5 tones from Close Encounters, so everyone can just acknowledge it and move on with our lives.

After far too many years, I have finally seen Superman Returns. And I have fic.

Title: Something You Find
Rating: G
Word Count: 630

Summary: Now that Jason's father is back in town, there's stuff Lois and Richard need to discuss.


( a long overdue conversation )

Reading. Bookwise: finished Polysecure (Jessica Fern), which I am continuing to chew on (and looking forward to getting to discuss it with my therapist); two pages of The Genius of Trees (Harriet Rix), which annoyed me sufficient that I have Put It Down Again, Thanks. Will I give it another chance? Maybe!

The cause of my ire: ( an excerpt... )

Two articles I have particularly enjoyed this week: An interactive introduction to the terrific experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt and, from Susanna Clarke, ‘I had been ill for 11 years. I felt like I was about to fall off the world’.

Listening. It has been an Admin: the LRP prep weekend, so we have listened to the next tranche of Hidden Almanac! I could have done without the audio for the District Court Judge debate, but otherwise I continue to enjoy myself.

Cooking. Experimented with incorporating silken tofu in the okonomiyaki (actually with pointed cabbage and carrot rather than broccoli and red cabbage, but same basic recipe) and it... wasn't terrible but it also wasn't a thing I will repeat, probably, absent a need to use up a silken tofu stockpile.

Making & mending. We have WINDOW COVERS. The bedroom experienced <1°C of solar gain over the course of the day!!! That is an Extremely Significant Reduction. I am provisionally declaring plywood + foiled bubblewrap + aluminium foil tape + ratchet straps A Success. (Would I still rather shutters? Yeah, for lots of reasons. Are they worth the sheer amount of hassle? Not at this point they're not.)

Growing. The poblano is really enjoying its corner of the patio; I think the sad small orchid is becoming a little less sad; I have harvested A Goodly Quantity of broad beans for sowing a much larger number of plants next year; the jostaberries are extremely tasty; I have achieved Yet More Raspberries, and I am pleased also with the artichokes. So. Have been managing things.

Observing. Horrid insomnia last night (I have a checklist; I did not run through my checklist; I was dehydrated!!!) did have the upside that I got to watch the adolescent foxes scrapping, instead of just hearing the Enthusiastic Yipping!

And! Several Jersey Tigers!

There was a meeting I was supposed to have organised, for Admin: the LRP purposes, soon after last event, in early June. I finally got around to querying people about their availability on Thursday; we had it late this afternoon; and the result is... several Significant and long-term process changes to experiment with, plus a couple of things we can actually get done now (despite the fact that next event is less than two weeks away) to hopefully make that run smoother? I was expecting this to be an exercise in frustration and I was definitely not expecting any changes to be possible for the event we are approximately 11 days out from, But Apparently??? So good job me for taking a very deep breath and Doing The Thing, and I will be adding this to my personal catalogue of instances in which Actually Everybody Does Not Wish I Would Just Shut Up And Go Away.

Today has also, unrelatedly, featured the Craft Project of Taping Foiled Bubble Wrap To Large Sheets Of Plywood. The plywood has some impressive tan lines from the ratchet straps over the past half-week; those are now hidden demurely beneath a layer of reflective insulation, because the appropriate foil tape A ordered showed up this afternoon. I was already Extremely Pleased with the plywood alone -- if we kept the bedroom door shut over the course of the day the bedroom stayed noticeably cooler than the rest of the flat, where Prior To Plywood it wound up definitively More Warm (it having a southwest facing window). Once we have some better actual data we will probably try to write up what we've done at least somewhat usefully, for all that it's not much use for windows that aren't ground floor.

Today in Social Anxiety: I approached a human and asked about filming myself in the gym, got the go ahead, proceeded to do so for deadlifts, spotted three things wrong myself, shared a video with some folk for a form check, and got some useful pointers and MANY contradictory opinions on what, exactly, my butt should be doing.

There were diagrams.

Also today I had the most comfortable experience lugging watering cans around of my life (not hanging off joints!!! it's a thing you can do when you have muscle!!! it turns out!!!), several plants are not dead, I didn't eat any more jostaberries but I really need to, and we had A Fantastic Time taking all the various sections of The Puzzle that we'd done and sliding them around the coffee table sadly. This was complicated by the fact that the coffee table is juuust wide enough for the thing to fit, with space at one end for the box to sit neatly once you're finished. Eventually we resorted to The Giant Puzzle-Doing Cardboard! There was Much Swearing, it is now sat happily on the table and I am grinning at it every time I look over, and yesterday she released another in the series.

Also: strawberries. That is all.

I took a few days off of work this week. Instead of catching up on much-needed chores outdoors (before the city writes me to complain) or indoors (because the gas company wants to replace my gas meter), I did nothing but lay in bed and listen to YouTube stories, mostly BL (boy love) stories but not always. It's amazing how much content is available for free these days. I listened to so many hours that my YouTube algorith was fundamentally changing its recommendations to me, and that detour needed to end. I created a new gmail account and Firefox browser profile, then I spent over an hour transferring my YouTube channel subscriptions from one account to the other. Hopefully my main account will return to science stories soon, without having to completely wipe my Google history first.

Click to read more about Omegaverse trends and see a biology chart...

During the last 2 weeks, I have learned far more about A/B/O (Alpha, Beta, Omega) literary customs than I ever intended. This Omegaverse terminology is rooted, I think, in stories that started out as werewolf tales, but they are tamed toward norms of our standard human society. How would modern humans behave, assuming we were all influenced by the assumed primal behaviors of wolves? Some stories include people shapeshifting to their internal wolf spirit, but most that I've encountered do not. Some stories include external wolf companions, but most do not. The videos I watch are those that try to imagine modern technological society with 2 major deviations from this current reality.

1. Humans regularly use pheromone-directed communication. This pheromone influence often results in cultural lower-class status for the smaller-build Omegas as the rest of society tries to prevent any possible misuse of Omega distress-pheromones as manipulation of others. Simultaneously, however, these societies fail to limit Alpha dominance-pheromones from the same boardrooms and government halls, assuming that ruthlessness is just good for operations. (Blech!)
   
   
2. Some humans include sufficient biological systems to provide either sperm or egg in a mating event. For Alphas, females may also be the insertive partner. For Omegas, males may also be the receptive partner.

In other words, while everyone has a primary sex, they may also have all of the biological plumbing to potentially support a secondary sex. Yes, that's as complicated and implausible as it sounds. There's even a human diagram around the 12:30 mark in this video. Homosexuality seems pretty tame in such a complex biological world, doesn't it? Further nuances of biology include things like "knots" (based on actual canine reproductive dynamics), heats/ruts (which remind me more of ferret female necessity), and "slick" (which is probably exactly what you're thinking it might be). The pregnancy options are summarized in the following chart, provided in a text article, titled "Alphas, Betas, Omegas: A Primer".

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics aka Omegaverse Pregnancy Options
36 Options	Impregnator
Impregnated	Alpha Female	Alpha Male	Beta Female	Beta Male	Omega Female	Omega Male
Alpha Female	maybe	yes	no	maybe	no	maybe
Alpha Male	no	no	no	no	no	no
Beta Female	maybe	yes	no	yes	no	maybe
Beta Male	no	no	no	no	no	no
Omega Female	yes	yes	no	yes	no	maybe
Omega Male	yes	yes	no	maybe	no	maybe

Personally, I find that chart/biology much too complicated, just to preserve the literary need for all submissive Omegas being able to bear children (pups) to all dominating Alphas. I think everyone should have all of the necessary biological equipment to serve either mating function, with some combinations better developed/serviceable than others.

One of my favorites stories, an hour long, is "[BL] The Alpha King's Guard Wolf Never Stops Insulting Everyone — And I Am the Only One Hearing Him". It's less about BL and more about a very memorable wolf character who has opinions (correct ones, naturally) about everyone and everything. The hilarity comes from the fact that his many opinions would be immensely awkward or socially damaging, if every other human could hear them. Instead, it's our main 2 characters who can hear him while they still have to navigate the social world... while the wolf keeps plotting to make them a mated pair. Yes, it's definitely one of my favorite Omegaverse stories.

Last week I got Influenced to acquire Specific Shoes For Lifting In as opposed to merrily carrying on in my DMs. They arrived on Tuesday! Which meant I had them for squats yesterday. The only difference I have noticed so far was how confused I was by? my standard set-up? suddenly being the wrong height? Suddenly the cups were too high for me to be confident I'd be comfortably able to rerack the bar once I'd got significant weight on it.

... they are barefoot shoes. they have minimal soles. I'm nearly three centimetres shorter!!!

Meanwhile today's hobby has been working out a bunch of protein numbers, in relation to both the She's A Beast protein mush and the offerings of The Organic Protein Company (my second order from them having also arrived... on Tuesday). The former on account of I'm making my own yoghurt rather than using Fage 2% and I wanted to work out how it compared to the numbers Johnston quotes, whereupon I was alarmed to find out that I cannot by any reasonable means match her asserted 36g (but can if I assume she forgot she'd already added the peanut butter to it...); the latter out of curiosity about how preciously precise I might want about serving size (answer: I am not tracking ANYTHING else closely enough to care about a gram or so of protein each way in my shakes, good grief).

( sorry about the horrid formatting, I'll fix it in the morning (maybe) )

People are creating stories with AI video that are just amazing. Most of them are still in development, and I find myself paying to join subscriptions to help fund their efforts. As I did with the game Star Citizen 13 years ago, I gladly donate money to something unfinished, just because I want to see where the creative urge leads them. Their intended product is exactly the kind of thing that piques my interest.

Click to see a list of recommended movies...

AI is allowing individuals to do what previously required small teams to do. AI is allowing small teams to do what previously required Hollywood-sized studios to do. Here are the best examples that I've encountered so far, in order of my own preference, most enjoyable at top.

1. Eldrin's Path is more compelling than I anticipated when I first started watching this BL story in a magic fantasy world. Their story playlist is growing to a respectable length of playtime already. The latest episode is painful to watch. I've had to pause and take a break during the stressful bit, each time I watch it. This one episode probably wouldn't make much sense if you haven't seen the whole story, to know both the characters and the divinely-created world in which they exist. I notice that the quality of each episode is increasing too. The creators (in Spain, not Brazil as I first thought) are getting better at their work.
2. Noctari is a full sci-fi / dark fantasy movie in development. There are only 3 episodes so far, but they are really quite well done. The smoothness is probably better than any of the other examples in this list. The team effort clearly helps the production process. The Black Eye Media studio is based in Sweden.
3. Magehold is a fantasy series with enough episodes to give a good sense of the "flavor" of the world and several interesting characters beyond the main group. The creator skips around the globe, but I think they're based in Japan at the moment? I'm not sure. I am sure, however, that I want to see more of this creative effort.
4. Emberfall is a fantasy dystopia series. It's set in some kind of steampunk apocalypse world. I've seen demonstrations of elemental magic, but I still don't know what exactly it can be used for besides fighting opponents. The series is new, so there are only 2 episodes at the moment.
5. Lost in the Stars by Ether Pulse is a sci-fi series with a sense of humor as well as danger. It maybe even will have a cross-species straight romance. It's a new series with only 2 episodes so far.
6. The Vine by Neural Fiction is another sci-fi series. After 3 episodes, I'm still not entirely sure what it's about. Some sort of biological-zombie apocalypse scenario combined with hostile AI menace. After 3 episodes, it's still introducing characters and factions. It looks promising.
7. Nexus Infinite by Everlight Storyworks is another post-apocalyptic sci-fi story. There's only 1 half-hour episode so far, but the amnesiac female main character seems interesting. She clearly will have some kind of redemption character arc. Instead of being photo-realistic, this AI creation is more like a drawn animation.
8. Forbidden Origin by Junior Movies makes this list mostly for its intention. The final quality is not as polished as the others, with editing errors and mistakes of visual and audio continuity. Everybody starts somewhere, though, and I'm content to ignore the flaws, so I can learn more about the anti-exploitation story. It's set in a high-fantasy world, based on the gods of Egypt, where the humans are all black-skinned Africans. It has no relation to the fantasy story of Wakanda, but it's something new. At the end of the second episode, it clearly has lessons directed at our Earth's timeline. I want to see where it goes.

And those are just the best of the lengthy projects. There are so many more movies where people are learning to use this new media. Zoot Zoots, for example, is trying a variety of scifi/fantasy stories. Other studios (like WAHEfilms and KimeraProductionVFX) were inspired by the 3I/Atlas flyby to create short stories about alien arrival. I'm neglecting the even more numerous shorts out there, such as this bizarre vagabond cat. I also enjoy this demon hunter complaining specifically about the YouTube algorithm. It's an interesting time for creative minds.

(by which I mean, A very bravely ventured back to B&Q again, this time DID get The Goods, aaaaaaaand then discovered that even cut down they didn't fit in the car so they still needed to be attached to the roof rack with ratchet straps--)

we have achieved PROOF that the windows CLOSE when they have ratchet straps slung around both TOP and BOTTOM

we have a house at 26.7°C and an outside world at 26.1°C and it's time to go to bed

[Gru's plan goes here]

-- but hey, maybe at least we'll manage to discourage it from getting significantly warmer in here? and maybe I'll wake up early enough to open the house up usefully while we're still below 20°C tomorrow morning?