ethaisa

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Academia: Staying Afloat

You are the right person to do what you do, know what you know, study what you’re going to study. You do it.

You are a lifeboat.

You are not the passenger being rescued from a shipwreck. You are the rescuer. Your skills, your knowledge, your experience reside in you. You have pulled them from the cold ocean where cruel and careless captains have set them adrift.

You are a lifeboat.

( Read more... )

Art pieces double as carbon-free air conditioning, inspired by ancient civilizations

Researchers at Virginia Tech have developed a 3D-printed evaporative cooling system made of hollow clay columns that can cool the surrounding air by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

The columns are filled with water and sand, and when warm air passes through the porous clay exterior, water stored in the sand columns evaporates, which in turn, cools the air that passes through.

( Read more... )

Friday:

• Mary Rose, worth the admission fee all by itself, thoroughly absorbing exhibition of the many many objects found within the wreck, and amazing to see the preserved timbers themselves from lots of different angles.
• lunch
• dockyard boat tour, including a good look at the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier currently in dock (I cannot look at aircraft carriers without Danger Zone playing in my head)
• HMS Victory, audioguide version with dramatic retelling of the battle of Trafalgar. Very absorbing, impressive amount of the ship available to visit even while restoration is ongoing, very tiring.
• back to hotel and flop for a little
• walk, ferry, bus to Gosport ice rink, disco skate, bus, ferry and walk back to hotel; ice is rather worse than Cambridge, but ferry+bus beats 2x Cambridge buses any time

Saturday:

• sauna and swim for me
• walk to the dockyard, waterbus to the Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower
• lunch
• walk ~2 miles to Submarine Museum
• walk through of HMS Alliance, also a look around HMS Holland 1 (the first ever Royal Navy submarine)
• my body in full rebellion against "museum walking" by this point, we took the waterbus back to the main dockyard, got cold drinks, and got back on the dockyard boat tour - different guide, different focus, well worth it
• little wander around Gunwharf Quays and a little shopping in the outlet stores; having forgotten to bring my ereader, I resorted to buying a newspaper and we sat quietly ignoring each other in a curry gastropub for a while. Eventually we ordered some curry, which was really rather good, and then toddled back to the hotel
• I decided I'd had enough moving for the day, so now I'm lying on the hotel bed with Glastonbury on the TV, life is good

Tomorrow I think we'll do a couple of brief museum things at the historic dockyard, and then perhaps go for a wander through Southsea. I'm going to watch England v Jamaica tomorrow afternoon (I think R has less than zero interest in football, women's or otherwise) and we've a reservation in the Spinnaker Tower for sunset cocktails tomorrow evening.

physical issues

My leg muscles, especially the ones that stabilise hips, knees and ankles, have been giving me some grief since I went clubbing after the Kodiaks won playoffs at end of May. I'm reasonably sure it's muscular fatigue and not joint/ligament damage. Rest helps, but so does gentle movement: if I sit still too long everything has seized up a bit when I stand up, but loosens up again as I start moving. Skating and hockey are fine once I'm warmed up. Yoga and general stretching seem to help, as do hot baths and sauna. Steady walking is a lot better for me than the stop-start of museum walking, as the last two days have made clear. I love museums but right now the spirit is willing and the flesh has Had Enough.

Today I rewatched the first episode of Mawdryn Undead, the one where we first meet Turlough, and he steals the Brigadier's car
and I noticed something even funnier about Turlough wearing a school uniform while he travels

the students aren't even wearing the same stuff.
It's not a uniform.
They're wearing suits with all the same tie and hat, but the suits can be grey brown blue black.

He just wears black.



I went back to watching 11 when I realised between the Slow and the picture quality I just don't have the patience for the classic stuff when it is this hot.


I still think it's a great intro for a character. Start with someone who doesn't want to be on the planet to the point he reckons he wouldn't mind the car crash killing him. Make him make a deal with Evil to Murder the main character. Show he can't get rid of it now he's said it.
Tea time family viewing at its best.

Today is mostly sunny and sweltering.  It rained off and on yesterday and last night.

I fed the birds.  I've seen several house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/28/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.











.
 

I hosted book group last Sunday and I'm only just feeling recovered today. We read How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community, by Mia Birdsong, which is a very timely book about weaving the web of connections that we all need to survive the current omnidisaster. Eight people showed up at my house!

I made broccoli & tofu with peanut sauce, a tomato-lentil dish, spiced nuts (sweet and not sweet), and served salad, bread, cheese and crackers. My friend Karen made mojitos.

I also had door prizes: a stack of books. Six of them went home with someone.

( pics )

No, not the Supreme Court (also terrifying), but personal stuff. Short version: we unexpectedly have a new cat, and she narrowly avoided getting poisoned yesterday. Don't worry, she is totally fine!! But I can't say the same for my mental health after that experience.

Beneath the cut, the story of how she came to live with us, yesterday's frightening near miss, and some cute pictures.

( Read more... )

----> This icon is an actual picture of me watching Kidnapped live two years ago. Yes, Geneviève, darling, isn't that exactly how it feels <333



I rewatched the finale! Yesterday evening, when I was very tired, and proceeded to be very silly about it for several hours. I could try to say some sensible things about how much I feel for Cheyenne and how great Jack and Nicholas are and I think there might have been something else that happened that I thought was pretty good, but honestly, my main feeling is just: what a beautiful ending, I love it so much.

And I was thinking: why have I got so attached to Geneviève, then? Is it just because she's really cute and Charlotte Gainsbourgh's manner is so endearing? Well, that's part of it, but I think the real appeal of her character is just here: the big dramatic ending she gets isn't about relationship drama or even explicitly about whether her job is safe after all, it's her being just utterly, joyfully happy about the madness and beauty of art. One of the bits of this show that doesn't greatly work for me is the element of embarrassment-based humour, when Geneviève goes to pieces in meetings with Cléa or those interviews where she has to defend Crispin—but I say 'doesn't work', if that's all it was intended to be then it didn't work, but it's not all it is—those scenes just make me like Geneviève more, that she does badly in situations where she's forced to be false. And, you know, she doesn't have Jack's polished suavity, but she is good at her job! She's good enough at the 'corporate caving' bits to manage, and she understands the true bits perfectly. She made this happen (whatever this is).

(I should hope her job is safe, though, now. And perhaps Cléa would be amenable to the suggestion that Cheyenne staying in New York might open up more opportunities for other, newer ballerinas here in Paris...?)

Meanwhile, that silly Tobias/Gabin ficlet is now my second most kudosed fic of all time, which just goes to show what a new, active fandom can do. I'll write another one and see how that does.

Someone else has nominated it for raremaleslashex, so I didn't have to; I've used up about half my slots so far on obscure old book fandoms (and NTS Kidnapped). I've paused in the middle of my ballet history book to read the short unfinished novel Nottingham Lace by E. M. Forster, which had the well-timed effect of reminding me that The Longest Journey exists and I love it more than anything, so I made sure to include that too. And that's two ships I'll struggle to say anything coherent about in my sign-up, but I'm sure I'll manage something.

Three books new to me, all fantasy (Although the Stross is an edge case), and only one is clearly part of a series.

Books Received, June 21 — June 27

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:
<b>Highlight for spoilers!</b> *<span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Write your spoilery text here.</span>* or <details> <summary>Write a non-spoilery summary of what's hidden under the arrow here.</summary> Write your spoilery text here. </details>

Title: At the Railway Station
Fandom: Miss Marple
Rating: G

1. Map Projection Transitions - see which one upsets you the least!

(tags:maps visualisation viaMyBrotherMike )

2. How 'Sex Matters' is shaping UK policy on trans rights

(tags:UK bigotry government LGBT transgender )

3. Israeli soldiers say they are ordered to shoot at unarmed Gazans seeking aid

(tags:Israel genocide gaza Palestine )

4. Plans to help benefits recipients into work 'a mess', say DWP officials

(tags:jobs UK government )

When I am Emperor anyone selling bowls, plates, etc will have to certify whether you can microwave food in them without them getting hotter than the food.

Is microwave transparency really too much to ask?

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!