Saturday, September 6th, 2025 08:44 am


Five books new to me, at least four of which are mystery (not sure about the El-Mohtar) and three instalments in series.

Books Received, August 30 — September 5


Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14


Books Received, August 30 — September 5

View Answers

Lies Weeping by Glen Cook (November 2025)
4 (28.6%)

Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (March 2026)
8 (57.1%)

The River and the Star By Gabriela Romero Lacruz (October 2025)
3 (21.4%)

The Bookshop Below by Georgia Summers (November 2025)
6 (42.9%)

The Burning Queen by Aparna Verma (November 2025)
4 (28.6%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
10 (71.4%)

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 02:06 pm
The weekly chat posts are intended for just that, chatting among each other. What are you currently watching? Reading? What actor/idol are you currently following? What are you looking forward to? Are you busy writing, creating art? Or did you have no time at all for anything, and are bemoaning that fact?

Whatever it is, talk to us about it here. Tell us what you liked or didn't like, and if you want to talk about spoilery things, please hide them under either of these codes:
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Saturday, September 6th, 2025 05:10 am
At this point, because life is too short, I block on sight people I see recommending anything by/to do with the serial racist TERF harasser Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Zen Cho's summary), who now writes as "Maria Ying" (with someone else)? (WinterFox, Requires Hate, whatever the hell other pseudonyms and/or monikers). There's a chance current readers/recommenders/etc. have no idea and just haven't heard, but like I said, life is too short, so why give any more time of day than "nope, blocking" to someone running around reccing a harasser?

(I was in her targeting crosshairs but fortunately only in a glancing fashion, unlike people I know whom she harassed in pretty awful ways, in an ongoing pattern of behavior.)
Saturday, September 6th, 2025 09:45 am
 Ah, the roar of the chain saw, the bang, bang, bang of the nail gun!

The conversion of our garage into something more like a bedsit proceeds slowly. Over the past two days a couple of skylights have gone in. Damian says the electrician will be sorting out the wiring on Monday.

We are training ourselves to say "annexe" not "garage".

Here's a picture of the interior as it was yesterday. The timber uprights will support the walls that will divide the bathroom and utility room from the living space and one another.....

P.S. Can you spot the cat?

There's always a cat......

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Saturday, September 6th, 2025 01:10 am

Navigation: Rules/General Info | AO3 Collection | Posting Guidelines | Medium Rulesets | Google Forms (Defaulting, Extensions, Assignment Summary Requests) | Mod Contact: ficinaboxmod@gmail.com OR Screened Mod Contact Post

Assignments are out! Thank you very much for your patience. Please refer to this part of the rules for an in-depth refresher on assignment minimums and expectations, but the short of it is: 10k of complete fic (or equivalent opt-in) is due on October 19 at 10:00 EDT (countdown). Email us immediately if you cannot create anything your recip has requested.

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Friday, September 5th, 2025 02:49 pm

Yesterday I started watching Kpopped, the new song competition show that blends K-pop and Western artists. I watched the first two episodes last night, and I'm really enjoying it. I think the format is really great — everyone has fun because the stakes are so low. Each episode follows the same format:

  1. A K-pop group is split in half.
  2. Each half of the group works with a Western artist to create and perform a "K-popified" version of one of that artist's songs.
  3. The in-studio audience votes on the winning group.
  4. Immediately after the winning group is announced, the two halves of the K-pop group are reunited to perform one of the group's songs along with the Western artists.

There are no penalties for losing, no prizes for winning. Just performance and comradery between musicians.

The two episodes I've watched so far are:

  1. Half of Billlie performs "Savage" with Megan Thee Stallion, the other half performs "Lady Marmalade" with Patti LaBelle.
  2. Both halves of Itzy perform with Emma Bunton and Mel B from the Spice Girls. One group performs "Wannabe" and the other performs "Be As One."

A recurring theme is the Western artists having trouble learning the K-pop choreography. (Except for Patti LaBelle — out of respect for her age, they had her stay still and everyone danced around her.)

Friday, September 5th, 2025 07:31 pm
Eric and took a one-day road trip to New Ulm this past weekend, a little Year of Adventure event. We ate lunch at a friendly bistro, Lola's and then spent an absorbing hour touring the childhood home of Wanda Gág, the owner of Millions of Cats. The two docents seemed absolutely delighted to have visitors and almost talked our ears off about the Gág family.

There were a couple of other stops, to poke around an antique store or two, and to take pictures at the statue of Hermann the Cheruscan ("Hermann the German"), the statue of Wanda Gág in front of the public library, and the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame. A very pleasant getaway.

Image Description: A Victorian Queen Anne home, overlaid with a black and white picture of a young woman holding an easel and paintbrush. Left: A guitar in the shape of the Prince Love symbol, made of musical instruments (the instrument's neck is a keyboard). Right: an iron lamppost. Center: the statue of Herman the German, sword raised, overlaid with a statue of Wanda Gág reading to a cat. Right corner: a black cat with an arched back. Upper right: logo for Lola Bistro.

New Ulm

35 New Ulm

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.
Friday, September 5th, 2025 08:37 pm
IMG_20250905_120737846_HDR.jpg
I was taking a walk to the creek this morning when I came across the black snake. Little Red and Muffy came up to investigate too. I'll bet anything that this is the same snake that is leaving its skin in my shed.

IMG_20250905_122151444_HDR.jpg
Sitting by the creek with Rainy on my lap. I wanted to get a selfie to show how dark my new glasses get in the sun. I'm glad they aren't real dark. This is good.

IMG_20250905_193750567.jpg
I took this photo before I left the mosaic shed for the night. 13 more to go that need stained glass glued onto them. I did 4 today. That stack in the back is the finished ones. I figure if I can do around 3 a day I'll have 5 more days of work before I leave for Florida on the 14th. I want to have the gluing part done before I go. I can do the grouting when I get back.
Friday, September 5th, 2025 03:50 pm
Yesterday I was making some phone calls to round up judges for my next ETS event. I called Lisa F.  During the conversation I managed to talk her into taking a lesson.  Actually we managed to schedule two lessons, one of which was this morning. 
Lisa has a nice, quiet sorrel gelding.  She described him as being very gentle, but hard to get moving and also as being uncomfortable leaving his herd.  I told her we would be starting with ground work. 
Lisa's mom joined us, mostly sitting off to the side, but watching and listening. We started by talking about how horses see the world.  It is really hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that in a herd, the dominant animal is the one keeping all the rest of the horses safe, so horses are much happier if you establish the fact that you are the alpha horse.  The trick is to do this without violence.  Lisa's horse started by standing too close to me and trying to nibble me for treats.  A few sharp raps to his nose persuaded him he really didn't want to do that.  It was harder to get Lisa to break the habit of petting him when he did so, but she worked on it throughout the lesson. We moved on to asking the horse to move his hind end away, to back away from us and to move his front feet away.   We stood and talked and corrected him when he stepped forward into our space  and when he dropped his head to graze.  No grazing while working unless explicit permission is given.  We talked about cues using body posture and gestures.  In the beginning it is appropriate to use a stick called a carrot stick, to extend your arm, but as the horse begins to understand and move appropriately a hand gesture can be substituted. Over the lesson the horse got more responsive and less sleepy. 
I was so happy to be teaching and Lisa (and her mom) were thrilled with the info.  At the very end the mom got up and approached the horse who immediately swung his head over to demand treats.  I pointed this out and she did an appropriate correction.  It was a great demonstration of the fact that each individual is treated differently.  (i.e. the mom was treated as another herd member, with whom the horse had a relationship with - just because one human is dominant doesn't mean they all are.) The horse is a nice fellow and I think they will make good progress with him.  We have the second lesson in a couple of weeks.  
Saturday, September 6th, 2025 07:55 am
部首
口 part 25
售, to sell; 唯, only; 唱, to sing pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=30

语法
拿起来 vs 拿上来
https://www.chineseboost.com/grammar/na2qilai-na2shanglai/

词汇
优点,优势, advantage pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-3-word-list/

Guardian:
你应该知道这是你唯一的机会了, you should know this is your only chance now
你看那个短头发的是不是占优势啊, do you think that short-haired guy has the advantage?

Me:
我非常爱听他唱歌。
拿起来那张纸给我。
Friday, September 5th, 2025 03:05 pm
Two days ago (Wed)  I went down to the Cow Corrals to clean up.  Gaah, what a mess. Dried cow manure absolutely everywhere, mostly in small chunks. Also some leaves.  Cody held the cows in the corrals for several days this summer and didn't clean anything up. Thankfully it was all really dry, but it took all day; on a day it reached 97F; to finish. The oaks are starting to loose their leaves as fall begins, so there will be more cleanup to do, but leaves are easy. 
While I cleaned I dragged the horse panels back into place.  The "horse panels" are lightweight panels that I use to divide the corrals up into sections  Cody always moves them around when the cows use the corrals.  There was baling string everywhere.  It was used by all kinds of people to tie things together, hang hay bags from the panels an who knows what else.  I ruthlessly cut it down.
As I was finishing the next to last corral (actually an alley) I untied more string plus a rope and stepped back from the alley fence. A big gust of wind hit the panels and knocked them to the ground, hitting my wrist in a very painful way.  I had thought the panels were pinned to the post, and even looked to confirm this.  The loop on the post was there, and the pin was there, but unfortunately the pin only went between two panels and did not include the loop to the post.
Yesterday Donald and I went back to the corrals. I repaired a couple of the chains that hold the gates closed. Those chains have brass snaps at the end which occasionally get broken. With the repairs done I began attaching more loops to posts so the panels would never fall again. We walked the heavy, heavy 20 ft panel back up so I could measure, tied it in place temporarily so I could be very precise. It was fussy work as the  loops on the post in the center had to end up exactly in the right place.  I didn't set the posts for the corrals, and whomever did wasn't very careful, so the posts going around the inside of the alley corner aren't quite in the right places. Happily I was able to make it all work.  In a couple of places this meant using the hammer to bend the loop slightly.  
While I was fiddling with the fences, Donald was pulling star thistle out of the side of the arena. He got quite a lot done before we got hot and tired and headed home for a nap. 
In the evening we went back down to the Corrals.  I installed two new water hoses, dropped two last pins into the alley fence and removed the last bits of stray baling string.  Donald went off to pet the tiny kittens at the Red Barn.  The barn cat  had 7 kittens who are still quite tiny, they just opened their eyes. They are all some form of grey tabby.  Sadly the light in the barn is so dim the pictures didn't turn out. 
Paul and Anna pulled it right after 7pm after a long hot haul from the Sacramento area.  They stayed the night, had a leisurely morning and left for Eureka this morning to attend a weekend endurance ride.  They were so happy that the evening was cool; it was a perfect early fall evening with crickets singing and an almost full moon.

Saturday, September 6th, 2025 09:28 am
Hi! 12 wishlists are now live and ready for gifts on [community profile] guardian_wishlist! :D :D :D Come and check them out!

Wishlists are tagged for fandoms and media. Previous years' tags are labelled with their respective years, so check the plain fandom and media tags at the bottom for this year's wishlists.

We've also put together a spreadsheet for your convenience, and we'll be updating it as more wishlists go live.

All gifts must be posted in or linked in comments. Gift comments can be anonymous or signed in. Comments are screened until reveals. The AO3 collection is also open for posting.

And remember, sign-ups are open until 15 September. The sooner you sign up, the more time people have to make fills for your prompts!

Come and join in! The more, the merrier!

Rules/FAQ/schedule | Sign-up post | AO3 collection | Fandom and media tags | Spreadsheet | Promo text and graphics
Friday, September 5th, 2025 04:53 pm
There was a weather advisory for strong gusty winds today but, nothing daunted, I braved the chronic wind tunnel down by Formerly Honest Ed's and found them nothing to speak of. Had sushi and sussed out calendars at Midoco: nothing to speak of either but still early days for them. Will probably, eventually, go the AGO and see what they have but not today thanks. The mugginess of September is death on elbows and I would rather not go out more than I have to. The linden is shedding, again, and I half-thought about sweeping it up, but it can wait too.

Still, I did need to shop at Fiesta before the late Friday and weekend crowds get in, so off I trotted again, observing the piles of cloud that herald err whatever it is the gusty winds were supposed to blow in.  I thought it was a cold front but south westerly winds do not herald cold fronts around here. Rather splendid in their summer! Hasui fashion nonetheless. Got enough salad to get me through the weekend (Ontario organic because the other organic is American) and pricey walnuts for my cholesterol ('packed for this Canadian company' but hailing from who knows where), paid, headed for door, and realized why the cashier had been exclaiming It just came from nowhere!! 'It' being a wall of water cloudbursting from, well, nowhere. So much for your 5% PoP, weather channel. And stopped as suddenly as it started and the sun came out to set everything steaming. But shall not be shovelling up seedlings today.

I can't Britpick because not Brit, but things still bother me. Alright, so Charles Lennox likes coffee in the morning. Coffee has been in England since the 17th century and I just came across Elizabeth Bennett pouring it out while another young lady pours the tea. But when a Victorian couple are going out to friends for an evening,  not even to dinner as far as I can tell, would their hosts ask them to bring wine? Somehow it just strikes me as unlikely.
Friday, September 5th, 2025 01:23 pm
Manoeuvres Under Fire (2013 words) by sanguinity
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Jacobite Trilogy | The Flight of the Heron Series - D. K. Broster
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant/Keith Windham, Alison Grant/Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron/Alison Grant
Characters: Alison Grant, Keith Windham, Ewen Cameron
Additional Tags: Emotional Repression, Angst, Affection, Midnight Confessions, Polyamory
Summary:

Alison's husband's new lover is all irony, deflection, and formality. She likes him well enough, but she also finds his reserve frustrating — and apparently so does he.



Because I've been on a Keith and Alison kick lately. (At least judging by my wip folder.)

For [personal profile] tgarnsl, because we both have an obsession with Keith being feral cat who never properly learned affection as a kitten.
Friday, September 5th, 2025 01:47 pm

I'm currently reading Dragons of the Autumn Twilight[^1] by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and it's given me a question about riding pegasi. I had always pictured pegasus riders as sitting behind the wings, probably leaning forward and holding on the bases of the wings. But in chapter 12, when the characters have to ride pegasi, Weis and Hickman explicitly describe them as "sitting in front of the powerful wings." This seems to make sense, because it would put the riders in front of the flapping of the wings (and the powerful gusts of wind that the wings would create), but at the same time it seems problematic from a point of view of equine anatomy, because it doesn't seem like there would be room for a rider to be in front of the wings. And as I write this post, I find myself wondering if there's really something here, or if I've just been struck by an oddly chosen word that the authors wrote and then never looked back at.[^2]

When you think about humanoids riding on pegasi, where do you imagine them relative to the wings?

[^1] I missed reading the Dragonlance books back when they were new, but I was recently able to grab a huge mob of them as ebooks from Humble Bundle and I'm enjoying them. It's brutally obvious (at least in the first book, which this is) that they're the result of someone recording their D&D campaign as a novel, but they're still fun to read. [^2] It doesn't help matters that the pegasi use magical/psychic powers to put the characters to sleep as soon as they take off, in order to keep them from freaking out during the course of the ride.[^3] [^3] Which then opens up the question of how unconscious humanoids stay on the pegasi's backs. Do the pegasi have magic for that as well?

Tags:
Friday, September 5th, 2025 06:31 pm

I stayed in London last night, an extremely good idea after a ten-hour work day full of travel, the last thing I wanted was almost three more hours' travel to get home.

So I worked from the London office (gosh I sound like a wanker saying things like this) for most of today -- my manager suggested yesterday that I sleep in or leave early but I couldn't do much of either because of long-planned engagement with campaigners where I'd have really been letting my team down if I wasn't around.

So when I booked this train ticket I calculated that if I left right as that meeting finished this afternoon I'd be able to get the last train before afternoon peak time (which rendered my ticket unusable) would start.

And I would've been right but of course the meeting overran. Campaigners!

I got to Euston like six minutes before my train, so I didn't have time to go ask for passenger assistance. But since they have display screens I can actually read now, I could try to run and get the train myself.

Platform 3. So far so good. I rushed there, fishing out my work phone as I did because I have an e-ticket.

I have an e-ticket because I've had problems collecting paper tickets from the inaccessible machine or the office that's staffed for two hours early in the morning...except when it's not.

Neither paper tickets nor e-tickets are actually accessible.

Normally this is better (although I couldn't charge my phone today because Apple chargers suck and also my work laptop sucks but whatever).

But the app logged me out!

It never logs me out! It was fine yesterday! There was no warning or anything.

I was at the ticket barrier freaking out, shaking so I couldn't type my email address or password.

Even when I did finally manage it, it demanded a code sent to the email address. Which Outlook hid from me (all the other many many emails I get from this benighted institution go to the Focused inbox but for some reason these went to Other, which I don't get notifications of and which are more difficult to locate. Especially when you're freaking out because your train is visible and you can't get to it yet.)

I had to ask for another code and then I had to pay attention to which was the newer one so I didn't use the older one. This website has been known to lock me out for twenty minutes when I got my password wrong twice, so I was terrified of that happening too.

I copied the code and pasted it accordingly. Only at this point did I remember that my work phone doesn't let me paste anything. Because it lets me copy things as normal, oh yeah, no problem there. But when I try to paste them, my phone instead spits out a sentence something like "Your organisation does not allow data to be copied" or something like that. It tells you off. For expecting that you might ever want to copy something even when you have logged in with the same account to Teams and Outlook and Word and SharePoint... Surely no one ever needs to copy things right? Especially not a blind person who now has to memorize a string of random numbers...

My session timed out.

I had to start over again from the beginning. The shaky typing of my email address, the concentration it took to make sure my password was right when it's just showing up as a row of black dots... Getting a new email and knowing at least to check the Other inbox for it now. Trying to paste the six digits because my panicky brain had already forgotten that I couldn't. I had to do that three times before I got it to work.

I was almost in tears by that point.

I had also gone from hoping that the staff member standing just the other side of the ticket gates would help me, to worrying that he was seeing me about to cry or scream or more obviously have a panic attack, to wondering how Euston finds its staff because they really are an extraordinarily unhelpful bunch. I tried to imagine being as physically close as he was to any living being in such obvious distress as I was and just not reacting in any way.

When I finally got logged in and could access the lovely magical QR code, I tried to line up my phone and the scanner -- which is ridiculously hard to do, two smooth featureless panes of glass, and I find it ridiculously difficult not to accidentally touch any part of my phone screen in the process of trying to hold the phone there because if I do it'll select something, close the app, do something to ensure that the QR code isn't available for the scanner...

Turns out I was trying to use the outbound part of the ticket and not the return part.

This whole time the staff member stayed so exactly on the other side of the ticket barrier from me that when it finally opened for me I almost had to shove him out of the way.

Nothing but empty space in either direction and he still didn't move.

I can't help but think he didn't expect me to actually get through and get on my fucking train. I know that kind of stuff sounds paranoid but, it's not like it'd be the first time someone was waiting to laugh at a disabled person being prevented from doing something ordinary that everyone else is managing to do.

But: fuck that guy and fuck the app and fuck Microsoft and Apple because despite them all I did get my train and now I'm happily back home.

Friday, September 5th, 2025 11:02 am
Book Cover: The Doxies Penalty, book cover with an old-fashioned red-marbled ledger in the center.

I AM EXCITED.

I know, I'm not around here much; life and distractions and stuff. But I have a bit of news.

This month I'm reissuing the first three Sarah Tolerance mysteries: Point of Honour, Petty Treason,, and The Sleeping Partner. That's the lead-up to the publication in October of The Doxies Penalty, the fourth in the series!

All four books will be available as e-books and print books. The link for ordering ebooks is available here: https://books2read.com/ap/8pAJyv/Madeleine-E-Robins.

I will have the link for ordering the print books shortly.

And I've started the fifth-and-final installment of the Sarah Tolerance mysteries. Of course, having started writing before I knew what was what, I find I need to do a good deal of research. When will this book be done? Answer unclear, but it should take much less time than it's taken me to finish number 4.
Friday, September 5th, 2025 05:10 pm
My New Worlds patrons having voted for a set of military topics this month, we're taking a look at the logistical side of warfare! Not to the depth that an officer or military historian would study it, of course, but we can at least manage a top-level overview of how worldbuilding factors shape the way armies get fed. Comment over there!

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/aUYkJO)