It’s been something like nine weeks since I became sober-sober (rather than California sober) and I’m starting to feel pretty normal. It comes and goes, but I think I feel normal more often than I don’t.

I’m progressing on one of my outstanding publishing projects, Fated for Firelizards. I’d hoped to get back to publishing chapters at the end of February, but now it’s looking more like April. I’m getting there, though. Theoretically I could publish a chapter this week, but I’m not confident I’d have the next chapters in time for all the remaining weeks, so I’m just waiting until it’s done-done to get back to publishing.

Making any progress at a time when my kids are around me *constantly* is impressive on two fronts. I can only work on a porny project when I’m away from them, for one. Being able to mark out time for myself is difficult but I’m doing it little bits at a time. It’s also impressive because normally unpredictable schedules wreck me, and my little guy has been sick.

I think I’m probably going to get back to Atop the Trees after this and try to put out a finished project, if only to get it off my plate for a while. I still wanna do a sequel. I don’t really care about the publishing status of the first one anymore.

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The first dude in the UK is going to prison for sending unsolicited dick pics to people, including a 15yo girl. (WaPo) Gotta say, if all the guys who sent unsolicited dicks to me when I was underage (and everyone underage I knew) were going to jail, jails would be stuffed full of guys with ugly dicks.

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Nations meant to be supporting Ukraine are still importing Russian titanium for aerospace uses. (WaPo)

Roughly 15,000 tons of titanium worth $370 million were exported by VSMPO in 2022, the vast majority of it sent to Western nations that supported Ukraine, according to the export database, with Germany, France, the United States and Britain topping the list. VSMPO, which essentially is a monopoly in Russia, then exported at least $345 million in titanium in 2023, according to more-limited data for that year seen by The Post. […]

In a statement, Boeing said it now “sources titanium predominantly in the U.S.”

Major suppliers for Boeing have continued purchasing Russian titanium, however.

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The Yurok will be managing 125 acres of their land alongside the National Park Service. (The Guardian) That is a small portion of the land that was taken from the Yurok by American colonizers in the 1800s, but it’s an unprecedented return of land management. We will not see more of this if the American election changes presidential leadership this year.

Reparative efforts remain so important. As one example of ongoing difficulties, there is a rapid rise in congenital syphilis connected to poor prenatal care available to Native nations. (NPR) It’s hitting other populations too, but not as dramatically.

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Anime classic The End of Evangelion has returned to theaters. Here’s an interesting read on what differentiates it from other mech suit stories. (Gretchen Felker-Martin on Patreon)

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Morels are one of the most coveted edible mushrooms found in gourmet foods. An outbreak of sickness (with two deaths) in Montana was connected to eating sushi rolls with morels in them. (Ars Technica) Some of the symptoms sound like what happens when you just eat raw mushrooms. The chitin isn’t digestible by humans. Simply eating raw mushies in volume can cause diarrhea and vomiting like that. But that doesn’t sound like the only factor at hand here. They’re having a hard time figuring out exactly what happened.

I was kinda surprise the morels were sourced from China. I don’t know much about the mushroom economy, but I know that American foragers often sell directly to restaurants too. America has a hard time scaling our consumption to what we can actually produce, and this doesn’t exclude mushrooms, I guess.

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Washington Post has an article about former President Trump’s relationship with age-related mental issues. He’s been quite scared of it since his father got Alzheimer’s. Now he’s using it like a political cudgel against Biden.

Trump’s father’s condition also drove a wedge into his family, which fell into years of lawsuits that alleged in part that Donald Trump sought to take advantage of his father’s dementia to wrest control of the family estate — litigation that introduced reams of medical records detailing Fred Trump Sr.’s condition.

[…]

Trump arranged for a lawyer to write an amendment called a codicil giving him control over the estate and to protect his inheritance from creditors. He then had two of his father’s most trusted associates deliver it to Fred Trump Sr. as if it were a formality. But Trump’s mother, Mary MacLeod Trump, forbade Trump’s father from signing it immediately. Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, later said in a deposition that her father didn’t like how the effort to change the will was being done “behind his back.”

I’m not surprised to hear of his attempts at elder abuse. This man has always been deeply screwed up, loveless, without loyalty. It feels like a bit of a coda to that phase of his life to try weaponizing it against his opponent.

This article seems likely published because Trump’s father’s condition was heritable, and cognitive function remains a major issue in the election.

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BookRiot shares ten urban fantasy series to read. I don’t know about “fresh” exactly (it’s advertising InCryptid and The Hollows, which are two quite old series) but there’s some recs in there that look good!

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Lawyers, Guns, & Money notes that perception of crime is high as ever, while actual crime rates are low as ever.

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He’s not unproblematic, but Ewan McGregor has a good point about the function of intimacy coordinators. (Variety) It’s not just about an actor’s comfort and safety. In the case of McGregor and his wife performing together, he points out that it helps with the comfort of the entire crew. There’s a lotta people impacted by filming s

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The American federal government is trying to ban menthol in nicotine products. The tobacco industry is responding by making a simulated menthol that feels the same to consumers while skirting the law’s letter. (NPR) Bans like these have a real, marked effect on consumption of nicotine. My citation on this is totally apocryphal though. I know that flavor bans and federal laws limiting how nicotine is distributed was a major influence on how quickly I quit smoking myself. I have heard from others that it impacts them too. When you consider this industry makes all its money off addiction, it’s hard to see their efforts as anything but preying upon addicts (though addicts feel well-served by efforts to keep their fav flavors in stock).

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The Justice Department is going after Apple for their walled garden. (Engadget) I will need to be convinced this is a good idea. I like my Apple products specifically for the walled garden. You pay a premium in part because you will have a very predictable experience with the hardware and software. The versatility of other platforms has, in my experience, meant instability, vulnerability, and loads of headaches.

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Musk’s TSFKA Twitter banned accounts that named Stonetoss (Ars Technica), a notorious Neo-Nazi comic artist. It seems like Stonetoss is reluctant for everyone to know that he is Hans Kristian Graebener from Spring, Texas. Not just a Neo-Nazi, but one who doesn’t want to actually have his face and name beside his hateful works. No surprise Flanmunk was on his side. “Freedom of speech for me, not for thee” or however it goes.

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Talk about guts: A filmmaker in Russia released a very successful adaptation of The Master and Margarita, which is a criticism of authoritarianism. Putin doesn’t seem to like it very much. (Vanity Fair) Art persists.

I’m starting to feel a bit better (finally!). I’ve been writing almost every day (albeit not much) and taking care to move more. Seeing how my blood pressure spiked after quitting cannabis has motivated me to make my heart stronger. I’m walking more, trying to do yoga stretches, and just generally avoiding hours-long sessions in my cozy rocking chair.

Thing is, I’m not sure my life will change dramatically if I’m feeling better. The world is different these days, and I am too. Every time I go out to do something I’m shocked by the prices. It just doesn’t seem reasonable, anywhere, for anything. But there isn’t a ton you can do in my area if you aren’t outdoorsy and don’t want to spend money. I guess I will go back to the library? Actually, the library sounds really good.

Alas, my little Sunshine is sick, and I have both spring and summer breaks approaching. My time is not mine right now.

I’m okay with that too. My kids will be 10 and 14 this year, and it occurs to me that I just don’t have much time left with my kids as kids. With an end to This Phase in sight, I feel very comfortable deciding to mostly focus on being with them when they want me.

Our home is still a really fun place to be since the pandemic anyway. We have no shortage of plants, puzzles, books, games, pets, and virtual reality. There’s family in ~2mi walking distance. We didn’t really choose to hunker down in 2020, but at this point, hunkering down has become so pleasant.

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Traffic on Egregious has ticked up a wee bit. If I get actual traffic outside my bubble, the site is getting flushed down the toilet. I always threatened this with my Twitter account and it remained obscure. I now apply this rule here.

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Psyche connects that tingle-down-the-spine feeling with alleviating depression symptoms, but notes it can only help so much because not everyone gets it. I realized I don’t get that feeling anymore…not in any dramatic noticeable way. I wonder why.

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Engadget: YouTube lays out new rules for ‘realistic’ AI-generated videos. I really don’t think this is because they care about integrity, but because they want to keep AI content out of data sets for training AI.

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Private capital successfully ransacked JoAnn’s (NPR), which (as a crocheter) I know to be doing just fine. As the article itself says, most stores have positive cashflow. They’re squeezing more value out of it by going bankrupt and keeping the stores open. Normal American nonsense.

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Ars Technica: The US government seems serious about developing a lunar economy. I used to love this kind of idea. Now that I’m old and jaded, I mostly see this as ransacking a treasure that belongs to the whole world. One of my most persistent fears has become someone/some entity changing the Moon in a way that we can see from Earth.

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Al Jazeera reports on a new study about Havana Syndrome, which continues to suggest no brain damage in the sufferers. I am so curious what Havana Syndrome is. Theories abound, but so far, we mostly know the symptoms are real and sucky and we can’t find an origin.

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Anne Hathaway’s movie with Nicholas Galitzine is getting audiences all riled up. (Variety) It looks kinda terrible in the way I might enjoy. I might have to watch it peeking through my fingers if the cringe is too strong. I mean, it’s Harry Styles fanfic!

Nicholas Galitzine is one of my favorite younger actors working right now. His choices are so interesting, and he’s always fun to watch. Although now I say that, I looked up his age…he’s twenty-nine. I guess he’s one of those guys who just tends to play younger, since I keep seeing him in Young Guy roles.

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Apologies for the paywalled site, but Kacey Musgraves is around my age (mid-30s) and has also quit smoking weed. (The Cut) It’s always funny to me how closely I track to general trends in the population. I’m often so disconnected from everyone and everything, you’d think I’d be on my own trajectory. Nope. Maybe quitting weed for a while is just a mid-30s thing.

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EmptyWheel talks about all the ways Ireland has been changing, in ways that sound mostly for the better. I love hearing about a diverse and radical Ireland.

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NPR’s Goats and Soda section (?!) has a genuinely interesting article about how Coca-Cola made itself feel “local” to Africa.

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I don’t really follow Doctor Who, but I love Ncuti Gatwa every time I see him. So I will share the info that his first season of Doctor Who will premiere in May. (TSFKA Tor dot com)

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My tick-hating kids will be delighted to hear that humans are getting an anti-tick pill (Ars Technica), much like the tick pill for pet critters.

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Maybe Zuckerberg hasn’t had his fill of making countries dance to his song? Meta is killing its misinformation analysis tool in mid-August, just in time for the American presidential election. (Ars Technica)

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Book Riot shares eleven memoirs by trans and nonbinary authors.