sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post

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sugarspiceandcursewords replied to your post “Sooooo, ahhhh NGL that looks real shitty, so. I’m going to make a…”

Midwesterner here. The afternoon did not suck as much as expected (my office said hell no and closed at 1 pm just in case) but the snow ain’t gonna stop for a few more hours, so we’re not planning on going anywhere tomorrow. May the odds be ever in your favor.

Oh, good luck to you too! I think I had you confused with someone Texan, in my mind, though now that I think on it, I suppose I knew you were Midwestern. (Huh, I Internet-know a lot of Texans. I guess it’s a big state.)

Today was horrifyingly violent. Not just the wind, it bucketed rain here. And there were sirens all early-afternoon at work. We nearly witnessed one accident at the intersection just outside; interestingly, the damaged cars both pulled into the parking lot of the dentist’s office next door, and the EMTs took someone on a gurney/backboard into the dentist’s office??? I assume because it was the most convenient thing to do in the wind/rain?? IDK, it was intense. 

Anyway. The wind has been crazy since last night; circa 10pm I was sitting on the kitchen floor in my underwear hand-feeding my cat cheese with a pill in it, as I do nowadays, and the wind violently rattled the kitchen door as though someone were about to come through it. 

The cat recoiled violently, and I leapt to my feet yelling “WHAT THE FUCK”, so Dude came running in from the living room thinking something terrible had happened to me. (And we have had two home intruders through that kitchen door, both people who thought we were a different house; we’re better at locking the door now.) Fortunately, the cat is cheese-motivated enough that she did not flee far, and came right back to eat the cheese again.

It really sounded like someone was trying to get in. But the door wasn’t locked; if someone had really been trying to get in, they would have just come in, so. I figured out pretty much right away that it was the wind.

I left work at just before 3, even though it wasn’t yet freezing, because I’d finished what I had to do and I just wasn’t going to start anything new. 

Dude didn’t come home until his normal time. At like, 5:30, expecting him home any time, I went out and scraped the slush off the driveway with a shovel. I don’t know if that helped. He didn’t turn up, so I went in and took a shower, and he still didn’t turn up, so I went and sat in the bedroom and got dressed and looked at my phone, starting and deleting texts to him because if he was driving in bad snow I didn’t want to distract him.

After a while I wandered out into the kitchen and he said “hey what’s up” from the couch in the living room and scared the everloving fuck out of me. He’d been home since I was in the shower and just… hadn’t said anything… so I’d been worrying about him for nearly 45 minutes at that point and he’d been there the whole time. I was annoyed, but what can you do? I guess I should have checked more thoroughly. I’d assumed he’d poke his head in the bathroom if he arrived while I was showering– I would, if it had been me! But anyway. 

It’s real nasty out now, but it wasn’t horrible during the evening commute. 

We don’t have to leave the house for a couple of days, so. That’s a nice luxury to have, I find.

Oh the other crazy weather– both my sister, 300 miles away, and my coworker, in South Buffalo, posted Instagram photos/video of terrifying ice dams backing up the creeks by their houses. TERRIFYING. Cazenovia Creek, in South Buffalo, was flooding basements and threatening schools. The Quacken Kill was– it’s hard to say, there’s no news stories because the ice dam broke (sister reported via the family group text that huge relic chunks of ice were up on the patio of the local BBQ joint across the street, but the creek was flowing all right), but from the photos she posted, it was at least five feet above its normal flood stage. If the ice was on the lawn at the BBQ joint that’s a solid ten feet. Nobody’s house would be flooded, though, the banks are crazy steep there. 

But I follow the local branch of the National Weather Service on Twitter, and the Buffalo one retweets all kinds of other state ones, so I saw scary bulletins about flooded roads and such all across New York State on my Twitter feed today. Scary!

We’re breaking all kinds of weather records. What exciting times we live in. Sigh.
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I’m peering out my windows at this weather and

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I’m peering out my windows at this weather and feeling pretty lucky that I don’t have to go anywhere. Also that I just got to spend 8hrs between flannel sheets with a snuggly cat and a lovely dude whose metabolism is so slow that he can actually pull heat out of both me and the cat to thermoregulate, meaning it’s not too warm under the those blankets. Hope y'all are getting your recommended daily snuggle allowances. It’s the best way I’ve found to get through all this. (Well, that and booze.) (Kidding, jeez.)
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tfw you’re wearing glasses and they’re

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tfw you’re wearing glasses and they’re dirty

and every garment you’re wearing is of fabric totally unsuited to cleaning lenses

and there’s nothing within reach in any direction you can use to clean your lenses

so maybe you’ll just Die of this, it’s perfectly possible
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meadowslark: If you want to follow agricultural politics, this...

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meadowslark:

If you want to follow agricultural politics, this Tumblog is a good start. Thank you, followers. But who are we kidding? I try to post one item daily out of hundreds of possibilities. But to really follow agricultural politics in the U.S. you should follow Politico’s Morning Agriculture newsletter. Here is a sampling of stories I thought of some importance from today’s (1/12/18) edition: 

 TRUMP SAYS ‘NO RUSH’ FOR NAFTA WITHDRAWAL: Trump said he recognized that Mexico could be hamstrung from negotiating a new NAFTA deal before that nation’s presidential election to be held on July 1. “I’m leaving it a little flexible because they have an election coming up,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal. “I understand a lot of things are hard to negotiate prior to an election.“He did not write off the possibility of a withdrawal, but Trump said he would rather be able to negotiate a new deal. "We’ve made a lot of headway,” he said. “We’re moving along nicely.” His words could offer some breathing room in the tense negotiations as the sixth round of NAFTA talks is less than two weeks away.Negotiators from the U.S., Mexico and Canada have said that they want to wrap up talks at the end of March, in order to avoid having the 24-year-old trade deal become a political weapon either in Mexico’s elections or the U.S. congressional midterm elections in November.Mexico’s presidential front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his left-leaning Morena political party have repeatedly called for the negotiations to be held off until after the election. Current Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s approval ratings are at record lows: Less than 20 percent of Mexicans trust his administration. However, a López Obrador win could cause a whole host of problems for Trump on issues like border security, immigration and trade, as Pro’s Sabrina Rodriguez recently wrote.NAFTA could help fund the border wall: While Mexico has repeatedly shot down Trump’s demands that they pay for the border wall, Trump said Mexico could do so through a new NAFTA. “We make a good deal on NAFTA, and, say, I’m going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going toward the wall,” Trump told The Journal on Thursday. “Guess what? Mexico’s paying.” ….Earlier this week, Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland made her own trade-focused trip to Capitol Hill, meeting with nine lawmakers ….. On Twitter, she thanked Roberts for his “continued commitment to #agriculture trade between #CanUS and farmers in both our countries." 

FISHERMEN AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS SEE VICTORY IN PESTICIDES OPINION: The EPA has been given one year to better protect salmon and their habitat now that the National Marine Fisheries Services issued a biological opinion concluding that three widely used agricultural pesticides were harming dozens of species - as well as the marine life up the food chain.

A rundown of the fight: Environmentalists and salmon fishermen have been demanding for years that the federal government take action to limit three pesticides: chlorpyrifos, malathion and diazinon. Under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, any federal agency has to consult with either Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Services, depending on the type of species. The environmental group EarthJustice has had an ongoing suit since 2001 on the salmon issue.

………….

While progress appeared to be made during the Obama administration, in March 2017, EPA officials denied a petition from environmentalists calling for a ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos, bucking the Obama administration’s findings that the chemical poses health risks. "It’s taken far longer than we ever envisioned when we started this,” said Goldman…..

And now, a word from the salmon: Over the years, the salmon populations have drastically declined. Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of thePacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, says that salmon runs are 20 percent of less of what they were 50 years ago. “It’s a major health problem, too. It’s very simple. It doesn’t make sense putting poison in our rivers,” said Spain. “We’re exposing the public and we’re exposing other species that need that river for other lives.”

What comes next? It’s unclear whether the EPA is likely to enforce this opinion in a deregulatory era promised by President Donald Trump and supported by Administrator Scott Pruitt. ….

FDA TO MAKE MOVES ON NUTRITION POLICY IN 2018: When Trump took office, few (no one?) predicted that his FDA would make nutrition policy a top priority. But indeed the agency on Thursday made its intentions official by releasing a policy roadmap for 2018.FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told POLITICO in November that the agency was working on a “broader policy initiative” on nutrition, and the document unveiled by FDA Thursday sheds more light on those plans. It highlights for the first time that nutrition will be among FDA’s top areas of focus this year.

Nutrition education campaign on the horizon: Several specific actions that are expected to be part of the larger “Nutrition Action Plan,” including more guidance on menu labeling; information on Nutrition Facts labeling rules; and plans for a new public education campaign of both new labeling regulations.

Sodium still on the to-do list: FDA’s work on sodium reduction - something that caused considerable controversy during the Obama administration - will continue to be part of the agency’s work on nutrition. The document lists “advancing guidance on dietary sodium reduction” as an action it plans to take. Pros, find the full story from Pro Ag’s Helena Bottemiller Evich here.

WHAT DEMOCRATS NEED TO REACH RURAL AMERICA: If Democrats want to win more support in rural counties, the party needs to become a bit less elitist, suggests a new report from a PAC started by Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat that represents a rural district that Trump won handily.The document, first reported by POLITICO Magazine senior staff writer Michael Kruse, is based on interviews with more than 70 Democratic residents and was distributed to top Dems on Capitol Hill.

Rural Ds by the numbers: In 2009, the report notes, Democrats held 57 percent of the heartland’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Now: 39 percent. In 2008, Barack Obama won seven of the eight heartland states. In 2012, he won six. In 2016, Trump won six. There are 737 counties in the Midwest - Trump won all but 63 of them. (emphasis added)

A rural D raising cattle: The magazine piece profiles Terry Goodin, who serves as superintendent of his local school district, raises cattle, and is the last Indiana Democrat to represent an entirely rural area. In the report, Goodin says the Democratic Party is “lazy,” “out of touch with mainstream America,” relying on “too much identity politics” where “winners and losers are picked by their labels.” Read more in the magazine piece here.
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gonna go see the 11:15 showing of The Shape Of Water at the little theater by my house (not the big.

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gonna go see the 11:15 showing of The Shape Of Water at the little theater by my house (not the big glorious antique one down the street, the other little one) and i’m suddenly beset by a mad desire to dress up for it, but I don’t know what one wears to go see a movie about a fish man and a mute lady. 

uh also it’s 10 degrees out so the answer is Farm Boots And Jeans With Longjohns, but. Anyway. It was an impulse.
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Well! I saw The Shape Of Water, and I have to admit it was really refreshing to be watching a movie.

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Well! I saw The Shape Of Water, and I have to admit it was really refreshing to be watching a movie not for the fandom of it, and not because of any particular buzz about the actors or whatever, but rather because I’d heard it was a good story. Because, well– it was. It was captivating and sucked me all the way in and I had a great time.

I was glad to have spoiled myself with the trigger warnings. (Someone lovely posted a rundown of the upsetting shit that happens in this movie, because there’s some really brutal stuff.) I was prepared, so it wasn’t so awful. I actually covered my eyes and didn’t watch two particularly gross things, because I’d been warned they’d happen and figured out it was gonna be now, so I’m super glad about that.

spoilery, I suppose, review:

Octavia Spencer was wonderful. She’s so wonderful. She needs to be the heroine in a movie, God, does she. Her voice is so good, her presence is so good, her face is so good, you just– she was great, and I was so stunned and delighted when she Saved The Day.

I really enjoyed Sally Hawkins’ face and hands. Her physicality overall was great, her high-heeled shoes and the way she walked and her little dances and all, but I loved her hands. Something about them– maybe it was because she spoke in sign so you saw them more, but you don’t usually focus so much on a person’s hands, in a film. She also pressed them against glass a lot, I suppose that gave more of a view of them, but I just found them so expressive. I love people’s hands. She was so self-possessed a character, and– I guess, too, her having her big shouting-screaming emotional monologue silently, where she was begging Giles for help, banging her hands together, banging her chest with her hand, hitting him, hitting the wall– it was so powerful, in a way I’d never thought of, to have her so silent.

I also loved how it wasn’t entirely certain whether some things were real or imaginary. I’m still not sure whether she spoke with her mouth or not, at one point. And of course, the ending, how it’s framed as Giles the narrator taking back over, and so you don’t really know whether that’s what actually happened, or whether it’s a made-up story.

The villain of the story, Strickland, Michael Shannon, the “monster”– well, he was flawless. Disturbing and terrifying and extremely, extremely realistic.

My only real disappointment is that I wanted so badly for Dmitri to escape. I thought they’d showed him with the butter knife, like he knew they were going to do him violence and he was going to protect himself, I thought that indicated that he was going to have a plan and escape. I was disappointed that he didn’t. I wanted him to make it.

The scenery, dude points out, was also pretty great– the streetscapes, the interiors, all of it. Grody institutional tile, all in teal, same color as the car– same color as the cleaners’ uniforms– I loved how everything was run-down and antique but actually was contemporary to the era, which I’m not explaining well, but loved.

A lot of it was filmed in Toronto, actually! David Hewlett must have been delighted. It was good to see him, de-McKayified. He’s quite slim, it’s interesting to see him.

I could’ve done without Strickland’s butt, and with more of the monster sex, to be honest! But I guess it’s just as well that was left sort of sweet and fade-to-black, in strict opposition to the gross on-camera slightly icky and monstrous Normie Villain Sex. He was so awful. He was so perfectly awful. I bet I could make you squeak a little. Ugh.

His final words were great though. “Fuck. You are a god.” So resigned.

All in all– enchanting and enthralling, which I haven’t really had as a moviegoing experience in quite some time!!

I might recommend it to my sister, who lives in Baltimore… but I’ll definitely tell her not to take her kids.
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oh one more tiny note on The Shape of Water, which is apropos of absolutely nothing but is...

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oh one more tiny note on The Shape of Water, which is apropos of absolutely nothing but is fascinating (to me!) nonetheless:

I was talking about the ASL coaches etc i noticed in the credits, and what that meant, and so on, and Dude said, oh, there was a Russian dialect coach too, I noticed him. Know what? He was Latvian.

Oh? How do you know that? I asked.

Because he had a Russian last name with an S tacked on the end, he said. That’s how you know. Anybody who’s been in Latvia long enough gets an S stuck on the end because your name has to conform to Latvian naming conventions (s for man, a for woman) in order to function grammatically. (Onetime Sabres hockey coach Ted Nolan was famously called Teds Nolans for his entire tenure coaching the Latvian national team.) 

This dialect coach’s name was clearly a Russian name, ended in -ov or something, but with an s tacked on. -ovs. So. Latvian.

Huh, I said.

Oh and his first name had a J in it, which I know isn’t a Russian thing, dude added. So, there’s no doubt: he was certainly a Latvian.

I just looked him up, and, well. There’s no more info than that, but sure enough, his name conforms to Latvian naming conventions and has a j in it. Genadijs Dolganovs on IMDB, not much there, but… Oh, I Googled him, and

Yup! Genadijs Dolganovs. Native of Riga, Latvia, resident of– surprise– Toronto. Where the movie was mostly filmed. Actor, director. Dialect coach. 

Apropos of absolutely nothing, there’s a little lesson for you, which I suppose illustrates the importance of #ownvoices stuff– nobody would ever have noticed that guy’s name except a Latvian-descended kid who felt cut off from his roots and studied it and never did anything with it but by God, he notices it wherever it is. It’s hard to convey how much resonance something will have in a case like that. And it’s why it’s so hard sometimes to get representation right. 

And there’s a whole story in that, somewhere: this background crew guy, born in Latvia under the Soviets, with a work history there and then a relocation to Toronto around the millennium… yes, he probably has quite a good handle on the various accents and dialects of Russian. 
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obstinaterixatrix: obstinaterixatrix: basically every

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obstinaterixatrix:

obstinaterixatrix:

basically every tlj defense post I’ve seen focuses on old fans being nostalgic. these posts fail to address any sincere criticism of the writing in the movie itself, namely that the entire resistance subplot amounts to: trust authority no matter what, even when it looks like it’s working against your best interests.

if the person in charge insults you and demeans you at every opportunity, if the person in charge does literally nothing to earn your trust - and actually goes out of their way to sabotage it by being needlessly cryptic instead of saying ‘yes, I do have a plan, trust me’ for at least AN ATTEMPT at reassurance - just put your life in their hands because they’re in charge and hope is like the sun or whatever. like come on, it’s not about hope. it’s about leadership.

people can make the argument that, maybe holdo doesn’t want to take the time to actually connect with the people she’s leading, because either they trust her, or they don’t. that’s still pretty garbage leadership. you know what would be better leadership? listening to concerns, and actually responding to them without dismissing them entirely.

this is such an incongruous payoff for a series that supposedly revolves around taking down space fascism, a series that should probably take a harder stance against legitimizing leadership that’s uncomfortably close to authoritarian. and maybe that’s a reoccuring problem in star wars writing, I wouldn’t know because I’m not familiar with the series.

holdo has a great design, an incredible moment with leia, and by far the coolest scene in the entire movie. if there was a payoff that was about how communication and trust is important - in both directions, not just a one-way bias in favor of leadership - the resistance subplot could’ve been a lot more meaningful.

look, different strokes for different folks, but this is - imo - a pretty big flaw, and you can like the movie without dismissing all criticism as ‘people being mad for no reason’ or whatever.

look guys. authority that refuses to listen is bad. authority that makes no attempt to communicate or explain literally anything is bad. authority that goes out of its way to insult, demean, & dismiss subordinates is bad. authority that hides compassion under layers of aloof contempt is bad. authority that likes troublemakers, actually, is bad and uncomfortable if that authority spends the entire time insulting, demeaning, & dismissing that ‘troublemaker’.

poe’s character arc is packaged as him needing to realize that sometimes, the most heroic thing isn’t flashy cool shit. this isn’t conveyed well in the film because 1) the emphasis on holdo’s plan isn’t that it’s heroic, it’s that people are shocked it even exists in the first place, and 2) the most heroic thing holdo did was THE flashiest, coolest shit in the movie.
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ineptshieldmaid reblogged your post and added: Wait does that explain the...

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ineptshieldmaid reblogged your post and added:

Wait does that explain the double s in Deniss Vasiljevs’ name? Like, Latvian Denis has an extra s because grammar?The cognate Russian name is, I believe, usually transcribed Denis (as opposed to English Dennis).

We’re contemplating that. There’s no grammatical reason for the second s at the end of his first name. 

It is likely, however, that he is ethnically Russian, as his name has the same ev-of Russian-style ending, and his hometown is close to Russia. 

Dude is pointing out that he’s no expert in anything– which I suppose ties back to my earlier thought about #ownvoices. Because no, he’s not an expert, and so he might tell me things that aren’t quite correct, because it’s one more remove– and that’s sometimes the problem when you have a beta reader or sensitivity reader– I’ve felt weird about it, at least, because you’re then saying This Is Okay Because X Person Said So, when– it’s not a mistake X would have made, on their own, but they might not necessarily know enough to advise you about it, and– anyway.

I have too many thoughts on this and don’t know enough and can’t figure out how to express it properly. 

In short, huh, we dunno why that kid has an extra S. He only needs one for grammar purposes. 

(There’s a fascinating story of a notable current Latvian tennis star, whose name is a mistake– not exactly, but her parents moved to Latvia, didn’t totally understand the naming conventions, and gave her an official name that wasn’t the name they really wanted to call her, and in fact did call her, and she’s gone by it for her whole life. So– she goes professionally by her legal name, but it’s not her name. And it would have been fine for her parents to name her the desired name legally, but they didn’t understand and weren’t sure.) 
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