conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
(or ever) but I also don't want to not do it, so here we are I guess?

In order to make this a normal post, let me say that my Robert Moses counter is incrementing up again. It has now been 0 hours since the last time somebody brought up Robert Moses, but it's my fault for reading an article about walkable cities and then scrolling to the comments.

********


Read more... )

Satellite photo mysteries pending

Mar. 4th, 2026 05:37 pm
light_of_summer: (Earth)
[personal profile] light_of_summer

So, I've been doing online volunteering for MapSwipe since mid-January of this year. I'm really enjoying it.

But I do have some questions about what I see in some of the satellite photos that are involved, and I haven't yet figured out where and how to appropriately ask my questions, which are mostly matters of my own curiosity that aren't relevant for the volunteering.

Here's one of the mysteries, which I'm posting here mostly for my future reference:

All three of the following satellite photos are of sections of the South American country of Columbia. The one on the left is clearly of forested terrain. But what kind of landscape am I seeing in the one in the middle, which looks almost scaly, and the one on the right, which looks almost like a mosaic?

Are all three the same kind of forest, just with the light source coming from different angles? Or what?

satellite photo from MapSwipe of a section of forest in Columbia satellite photo from MapSwipe of a mostly-green piece of Columbian landscape that looks almost scaly satellite photo from MapSwipe of a mostly-green piece of Columbian landscape that looks almost like a mosaic

Click any of the thumbnails for a higher-resolution view.

(no subject)

Mar. 4th, 2026 05:50 pm
twistedchick: watercolor painting of coffee cup on wood table (Default)
[personal profile] twistedchick
This has been a less easy day.

It's the 35th anniversary of my mom's death.

It still hurts, all of it.

At least, I'm not reliving the whole thing, just dealing with emotional splashback this year.

She died in hospital, during an ice storm, and I was not informed of it until after I'd come up there, so I traveled expecting to see her when she'd passed before I'd gotten the phone call.

And that ties into even nastier family crap that I'm not even going to mention except to say it happened and was absolutely shitty.

So I am sticking to the more cheerful reruns of shows to watch, plus Colbert, and the sillier novels. They don't dig me out, but they keep me from going deeper into the Marianas Trench.

(no subject)

Mar. 4th, 2026 05:22 pm
galadhir: a blue octopus sits in a golden armchair reading a black backed novel (Default)
[personal profile] galadhir

Thanks for the prayers, folks! Elizabeth is back in the UK safe and sound :)

What month is it, anyway?

Mar. 4th, 2026 10:37 am
lydamorehouse: (Default)
[personal profile] lydamorehouse
 Apologies for the long silence.

I've mostly just been keeping on keeping on, as they say. I'm still regularly going to my mutual aid place, the Food Communists. Their work continues apace, although Monday was fairly quiet, as such things go. By yesterday, the pace had picked back up, but they're closing today and tomorrow due to renovations at the church they work out of. So I have two days completely off! What will I even do with all that time? She asks, looking around at housework she's ignored for almost two months.

I'm still doing the school patrol (M-W) and mosque watching too. Although, at the mosque we have switched to evenings (and every day of the week) during Ramadan at the request of the imam. I have not been standing outside every single night of the week, however. I signed up to be the point person on Fridays and Saturdays, but am otherwise trying to let other people fill the slots. We are getting some help from neighborhoods outside of our own, so it's looking a little less sparse than the last time I reported, by all accounts. 

I'm noticing some cautious hope during the school patrol, too. More moms are willing to bring their very little (pre-school aged) ones with them when they come to meet elder siblings at the bus stop. Very heartening. It does feel like the cloud is lifting finally.

I'm starting to be able to write a little bit again, which is lovely. [personal profile] naomikritzer and I started working on something together that has lit a fire under me. We'll see what, if anything comes of that, but it's been nice to feel inspired again. Hopefully, that will bleed into the Boy. net sequel (and it should. I tend to be like that. Writing anywhere seems to mean writing everywhere. I am, apparently, polyamorous in my wirting style--I have more to give than to just one project!)

We woke up today to dense fog. Shawn was actually telling me that she hoped it would last all day, because she really wants to go for a walk in it s she can pretend we live on heather-strewn moors.

How've you been?

I guess it is Wednesday? I have nothing of note to mention in terms of things I've read. I've been listening to an extremely boring podcast about the Roman Empire--it's exactly my speed right now, but it's run by a university and I have notice a distinct lack of salacious factoids about what the Romans got up to... ah, well. It helps me get to sleep and that's really what I am using it for.

What about you? Listening to or reading anything fun?

Another dad update

Mar. 4th, 2026 04:58 pm
cimorene: A shaggy little long-haired bunny looking curiously up into the camera (bunny)
[personal profile] cimorene
They thought they had solved Dad's hallucinations but it was a false alarm.

The sequence of events so far is:

  • He starts hallucinating mildly, images of animals etc

  • The visual hallucinations escalate steadily and include audio - first talking to absent people, then thinking he is in a variety of different places, finally briefly not recognizing my mom, though he did a minute later

  • A new antibiotic is discontinued

  • They find a UTI, but all mental symptoms stop, so they think the cause was the discontinued antibiotics

  • He starts hallucinating again, more mildly, before the medical team has had a chance to agree to release him from the hospital

  • He briefly recovers almost completely, but then gets worse again



It seems his medical team is dealing with a mystery again. 😔

Reading Wednesday

Mar. 4th, 2026 07:08 am
sabotabby: (books!)
[personal profile] sabotabby
 It feels very strange and unpleasant to be making my regular book post under the circumstances. Nevertheless.

Just finished: A Drop Of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett. This was so much fun, and I'm hooked on the series. It's mostly a lighthearted absolutely nightmare fuel cosmic horror murder mystery, but as the afterword says, it's also kind of a commentary on fantasy's obsession with kings and nobles and what this means for our present political circumstances. Which is to say. Kings. Not a great idea. I disagree with Bennett re: what ASOIaF was trying to do but the book is a great example of how you can smuggle interesting politics in a rip-roaring narrative.

Currently reading: Lullabies For Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill. I love everything she writes and meant to read her most well-known work ages ago but it ended up near the bottom of my physical TBR stack and I'm only now getting to it. This is the story of Baby, a little girl in Montreal whose father is a possibly-schizophrenic heroin addict. Does that sound depressing? Because it is. It's also very much a dark comedy, like it's genuinely fucking hilarious the more searingly awful Baby's life gets. Sometimes I just want fiction to fuck me up, and this does.

in my thug era

Mar. 4th, 2026 08:24 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

This is possibly my favourite photo yet of me playing ice hockey:

Photo from an ice hockey game illustrating non-checking doesn't mean non-contact

  1. In women's hockey I am big
  2. We play non-checking, that doesn't mean non-contact. I am entirely legally shoving that attacking player away from the net.
  3. See how far the goalie is from the net? My linemate and I cleared the puck on that occasion. The visiting team scored 20 goals on us (ouch), but not that one.

fth

Mar. 3rd, 2026 05:42 pm
verity: buffy embraces the mid 90s shades (Default)
[personal profile] verity
*ghostly voice drifts down from the rafters* if you like my fic... I am doing FTH this year... and you can bid on it here: https://fth2026offerings.dreamwidth.org/129917.html 

I'm offering 2ha & MXTX, but if you're interested in other fandoms I've written in 2019-present, feel free to message me before bidding and I'll see what I can do.

MinoanMiss

Mar. 4th, 2026 10:54 am
mific: (Orange mandala)
[personal profile] mific
I'm feeling punched in the gut by the terrible news about [personal profile] minoanmiss (Rubynye on AO3). I've disabled replies as I just want to remember her for now.

She loved life and tried so hard, and she'd been through so much.

I made this for her years ago, as she loved Crete and the Minoans, hence her username. Putting it here to remember her.

bull-leaping scene with Cretan pillars and arena, two lithe bull-dancers and a large black bull.

3/2/2026 Tilden Nature Area

Mar. 3rd, 2026 10:41 am
mrkinch: Erik holding fieldglasses in "Russia" (bins)
[personal profile] mrkinch
Spring is springing. Again there were multiple Townsend's Warblers as well as multiple singing Orange-crowned Warblers, several Allan's Hummingbirds, and Lesser Golfinches no longer in great, noisy flocks as they pair off to nest. Even so, we still had Hermit Thrushes, a Varied Thrush in the same place as last week, and U spotted a Fox Sparrow, which this year is pretty exciting. My best bird was another Pacific Wren along the boardwalk. Unfortunately it did not appear for us as we walked back but a few Golden-crowned Sparrows did. They were foraging in the road with a California Towhee and a Song Sparrow when a Cooper's Hawk began kekking. Everyone vanished at once and some Bushtits were giving alarm calls, but the Sparrows came out again fairly quickly. The list: )

No Wilson's Warblers. They've been reported just over the ridge, so maybe next week.
cimorene: Grayscale image of Jean Hagen as Lina Lamont in Rococo dress and powdered wig pushing away a would-be kidnapper with a horrified expression (do not want)
[personal profile] cimorene
Cats when Wax is working from home:

6.30 Sipuli wakes Wax up demanding breakfast and refuses to let her sleep
7.00 Wax feeds the cats breakfast and Sipuli doesn't finish hers before going back to sleep
9.30 Wax gets up and eats. Sipuli doesn't even come out of her blanket tent.
10.30 I wake up and Tristana follows me to brush my teeth and then goes back to bed while I'm moisturizing my face.
11.00 Sipuli emerges from her tent to lick leftover yogurt from Wax's breakfast bowl and wants some kisses and hugs. She hangs out with me for 5-10 minutes but goes back to the tent before I can even finish my breakfast.
11.30 Tristana wakes up and comes downstairs to yell at me until Wax calls her from upstairs. She sits in Wax's lap for a little while or (more often) goes back to bed.
16.30 Sipuli wakes up and comes out of the tent to get cuddled for 10-30 minutes, then gets sleepy and goes back in the tent.
17.00 Tristana wakes up and comes downstairs and starts yelling incessantly for attention. This wakes Sipuli who also comes out and wants attention.
18.00 Wax finishes work and comes downstairs.
19.00 Cats get dinner.

Cats when Wax has to go into the office:

6.30 Sipuli starts breakfast campaign.
7.00 Cat breakfast.
8.30 Wax gets up and eats breakfast, ignored by Sipuli.
10.30 I wake up and Tristana goes back to bed while I'm moisturizing.
11.00 Sipuli cleans Wax's bowl and wants cuddles.
11.10 Tristana comes downstairs and starts yowling for me to pay attention to her. This eventually wakes Sipuli and they both complain constantly or intermittently every time I'm in the other half of the house until sometime in the afternoon when they finally both fall asleep, presumably from exhaustion.
17.30 Both cats wake up and start dinner campaign, usually while I'm trying to prepare our dinner.
18.45 Wax arrives.
19.00 Cat dinner and then our dinner.

(no subject)

Mar. 3rd, 2026 09:29 am
galadhir: (Totoro)
[personal profile] galadhir

On very bad news: my belly dance teacher, Elizabeth, popped over to the Middle East to get some dancing in during the half term holiday, and she is now trapped there thanks to the war. We suggested she find the embassy and let them know she's there but that's all we've heard, so none of us know what's happening beyond that. Some prayers for her safety would not come amiss if anyone reading this has a prayer list :(

On slightly better news, DH and I are having a heat pump put in, to run our central heating, instead of the gas boiler we previously had. And when I say 'we're having a heat pump put in' I mean right now. One engineer is outside drilling something. One is putting sticky back plastic over our carpets to protect them, prior to checking which radiators need to be replaced.

(Apparently we need larger radiators because the water coming from the heat pump will be at a lower temperature than that coming from a boiler, so we'll need a larger surface area of radiator to provide equivalent heating.)

We were keen to get a heat pump because we are with an electricity provider who get all their electricity from renewables (mostly wind farms around here.) That way, once we swap our gas hob for an electric one, we will be freed from fossil fuel use except for the cars. (They're on the plan too, but second hand electric cars are not yet as available as we need, and who can afford a new car?)

I'm very impressed with our electricity people so far (Octopus Electric.) They said they'd be here by 8am and they were here at 8.10am. (In contrast to the scaffolding people who said they'd be here yesterday and never turned up at all.)

They're putting protectors on our carpeting where they intend to walk. They say it will take them three days to install the heat pump system, but we'll only have one day without heating. And they have given us three fan heaters to keep us warm on that one day, and told us we can keep them afterward.

It'll be hard to go back to a system where you have to heat up the hot water tank in order to have hot water, (rather than the current system where the boiler heats the water on demand.) But we're doing our bit for the planet, so that will have to be the consolation :)

cimorene: A very small cat peeking wide-eyed from behind the edge of a blanket (peek)
[personal profile] cimorene
The doctor team found a uti and adjusted the antibiotics he was on from his last visit, and he has been his normal self since waking up Monday (yesterday evening for me when I was notified). He should get to go home soon!

Japp has been uncaged all the time for a couple of days and is enjoying spending more time in his favorite spot next to a radiator under the sewing table by the west window. He seems normal and pretty active, although he still naps most of the time (as he should since he's 102 years old). We're thinking we should try to provide a bit more enrichment and interact with him more often, although he doesn't really want human interaction very much 😂. His reaction to being approached is frequently to thump and go hide, even though most of the time we talk to him it's just to give him treats! So his personality is unchanged. 😂 We do think he might be somewhat senile now. He shows some signs of forgetting what he was doing in the middle or getting confused about which way to go in his familiar space (Rowan was doing this too in the last couple years). But he always finds his way again, so far.

With cat divorce and Wax now leaving the house this means that one cat is alone the whole time she's gone. The cats like to nap almost the whole day, but they both also wake up a couple of times a day. When Wax was upstairs working Tristana often chose to ignore her in favor of sleeping in bed alone, but now she's started yowling her little complaints every day. 🫩 Sipuli naps a bit more than her in the morning but is fully capable of waking up and complaining any time I'm out in the other part of the house.

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dragonlady7

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