• Zendaya smirking in Challengers. Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios
    movie reviews

    Movie Review: Challengers (2024) ***

    2024-05-09 /

    Even Luca Guadagigno can’t make me want to watch a sports movie. My reaction to Challengers says a lot more about me and my personal tastes than it says about the movie itself: Just like a terrible, dreadful movie can push all my buttons so I love it (like Repo! The Genetic Opera), a great movie can push all my “ugh” buttons in a way that leaves me cold.

    I like women. I get really bored with men. The rising female tennis star is one of the three leads in this movie; unfortunately, the movie isn’t quite as interested in Tashi as it is in Tashi’s sports-related ambitions and make-two-boys-kiss ambitions.

    The boys really want to kiss, but they need an excuse. Tashi wants them to take tennis and boy-kissing more seriously and mashes them together until that happens. I know! It sounds great. Evidently, based on others’ reviews, most people think this is absolutely great.

    The sports aesthetic and sheer amount of gay male-gaze testosterone sweating off the screen just made me want it to end.

    (Aside from when Zendaya is in her underwear.)

    I got real Machiavellian asexual vibes from Tashi, which is theoretically cool, but again — all the sports and testosterone. The way she manipulates should be cool! But it’s all about men! Making men do things. I just don’t care that much. The men are very sexual. There are dongs. There’s so many rippling abdominals. So many men sweating in locker rooms and saunas while having boy drama. It’s just…nothing I’m interested in.

    But boy, can I respect it. Luca Guadagigno is still a really good director. Although I wasn’t convinced by the chemistry of Art and Patrick initially, the story made up for it. And I do enjoy the *idea* of everything that’s happening. But when something is so much about male desire, exerted in all the wrong directions (according to Tashi), I just cannot get into it.

    Something about the sweaty pulsing score by Trent Reznor et al, which sounds like it should play in a gays-only gym, made this feel soapier. I caught myself thinking about May December again. May December was more overtly soapier and trashier though, whereas Challengers is glossy enough to be a Gatorade ad (sans Gatorade).

    I totally see why so many people like it; I thought it was fine and also wanted it to stop. This one just call to me the way that Luca Guadagigno’s sapphic answer to Call Me By Your Name did. (Yes, I’m talking about Suspiria.) (In Guadagigno movies, twinks sweat for each other; sapphics gush blood. I know which I prefer more clearly than ever.)

    (image credit: Amazon MGM Studios)

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  • sara reads the feed

    A publishing update and springtime weather, among other things

    2024-05-09 /

    The weather is doing that Nevada Springtime Thing where it’s vacillating between hot and cold. This is so rough on me. I’m alive when it’s hot and I’m dead when it’s cold. When it gets hot then warm, my body registers it as cold. Fifty degrees feels totally different depending on whether I’m on the way up or down. Fifty degrees isn’t cold! Unless it was seventy degrees a couple days ago.

    I’ve been getting out to walk irregularly, at weird times. Today was the first time I did my regular-ish morning walk like a normal warm day. I think it’s only going to get warmer from here, but you really never know with Nevada.

    ~

    I’m trying out a new mass email provider. Being able to contact readers about new books is essential, and mailing lists tend to be the backbone of publishing, no matter how old-timey it feels. I mean, emails? BookTok is all anyone has wanted to talk about for a while. Maybe looping people into Patreon. But just straight emails?

    It works for a lot of people quite reliably. It has always *kinda* worked for me. I don’t know if the issue has been writing my emails badly, or my domain being disliked by providers, or if the emails I have just aren’t great quality. I made most of my sell-through on books starting in with freebies. Freebie readers tend to have totally different patterns than those who will buy books at full price.

    My new email provider doesn’t seem to have improved anything over my last ones (deliverability, open/click rate), but at least I have one again. I lost the old guy because I didn’t send any emails in way too long. Getting things back together has been…not fabulous.

    Anyway, I’ve had no pleasant surprises with this release, but it’s still a release. I’m still always grateful that any number of people read my books at all. Period. It doesn’t feel real?

    I’m doing all the stuff I can control, that I’m also willing to do. I’m not going back on Patreon or learning Kickstarter any time soon. I seem to have lost the hunger that used to motivate me to do insane backflips to pull something resembling success out my butt. That’s probably for the best. Learning to temper my rather extreme personality kinda means learning not to care about anything so much.

    ~

    Onto reading the news.

    ~

    Readers Take Denver (a publishing conference for readers) was such a disaster that it hit mainstream-ish news. Here’s the NYPost calling it the Fyre Festival of Books.

    I didn’t pay a lot of attention like this because I’m the hermit kind of author, not the conference kind of author, but enormous anger radiated through the spaces to which I am still tangential.

    ~

    The outlook for Tiktok in the USA isn’t good. Our government wants to ban it if the owner doesn’t sell to Americans. ByteDance is suing (The Guardian), but time will tell if that’s effective.

    In the meantime, Substack is trying to coax creators over. (Engadget) You know, Substack? With the Nazis? (The Atlantic)

    Nowhere is perfect. But I wish we’d have a resurgence in creatives simply self-hosting content. Discoverability is a challenge, but…isn’t it always?

    ~

    Various states are arresting student protesting against the attack on Palestine. Quite a few of the students have accepted this. (NPR)

    Cornell University doctoral student Momodou Taal was suspended for participating in a pro-Palestinian encampment.

    “The school has deemed that my activity or my participation on campus is a threat somehow,” Taal said.

    Taal was never arrested, but his involvement with a pro-Palestinian team negotiating with Cornell University administrators got him suspended, he said.

    He is now in a fairly unique position.Taal is a British student, and a suspension could lead to him losing his international student visa.

    “Fundamentally, I risked all that I’ve risked so far for what I believe is a just cause, and that’s the Palestinian cause,” Taal said.

    Some teachers are getting arrested along with their students. At that point, it’s turning into a class for everyone involved. (DMagazine)

    This isn’t going to be the first generation of students with activist arrest records.

    But arrests aren’t even required. An encampment developed on Trinity College, (The Guardian) and the college committed to divesting from Israel. The protesters dispersed peacefully. There are other ways to do this.

    ~

    Quanta Magazine talks about intelligence in insects. I also recently linked an article about plants having some kind of intelligence. (NPR)

    I’ve always thought there’s likely more consciousness/intelligence in the living world than we’re willing to accept. My assumption is that this is for practical purposes. We’re empathetic, social creatures. If we really believed that everything had some kind of mind — maybe a soul — like we do, would we be able to end those lives as easily? on the scale required to support human civilizations? Is dismissiveness about coping?

    I don’t think it’s all about the empathy, though. Colonial cultures and religions just want to think that they are above other things, and that they have a right — nay, the divine obligation — to destroy things that are lesser. That’s probably why the idea of insect and plant intelligence won’t ever get more than fringe traction.

    Maybe if science keeps pulling out cool discoveries, like the fact whales seem to have a phonetic language (Smithsonian Mag), attitudes will shift somewhat.

    ~

    I feel like I’m always reading about cool archaeological finds in random UK places. (The Guardian) All I get to dig out of my garden is stray cat shit. I’m not jealous, you are.

    ~

    Are you sane? Oops, I misspelled that. Are you a sriracha fan? We’re looking forward to a shortage thanks to climate change. (WaPo) Or a “severe drought.” Depends on how you read it.

    ~

    There’s an upcoming movie called “Humanist Vampire Seeks Suicidal Person.” The title alone has my attention, but there are more details at The Film Stage.

    ~

    Roblox continues intensifying its ad efforts — here with a Netflix team up. (Engadget) Nonetheless, their stock has fallen some twenty percent lately. (Quartz)

    Meanwhile, users like my kids are getting increasingly annoyed and disinterested. But maybe Roblox doesn’t care about my kids anyway. They’re starting to age out of Roblox (at thirteen and nine), and games for kids do have a limited lifespan. Maybe Roblox is betting they can catch the next generation of toddlers before they learn to care about being inundated with ads. According to the Quartz ad, daily active users have increased 17% regardless.

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  • writing

    It’s only slightly harrowing to revisit the past

    2024-05-07 /

    First of all, please just let me say the important thing: I have published a new book.

    Fated for Firelizards is a paranormal romance where a gal ends up with a dragon. It’s mostly fun. It’s consciously didactic and radically eco-punk. I fear I’m not putting my best foot forward coming back with something that is so goofy, but hey! I like goofy. I am a goofy person. It’s a fair representation of my interests, just like my doorstopper gothic fantasy literature and my avant garde horror.

    Links are here, assuming my websites haven’t exploded from an unfamiliar volume of traffic.

    Yay! New book!

    I rewarded myself by buying a foot bath massager thingy. I’ve been doing a lot of walks out in ye olde Nevada desert, and I do most work at a standing desk, so my dogs are barking. My feet are tired too.

     

    What was the last book I published?

    That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m honestly not sure.

    I think it was either one of the Mr. Poe novels, or it was Shatter Cage’s last book, Rise of Heroes. It definitely happened *after* the beginning of the pandemic. But that’s now four years ago. It’s been a while.

    I tried to finish the last Lincoln Marshall book, but I’m still only about 1/3 of the way through. That one is difficult. It’s not my favorite series I’ve written, and I was going through weird stuff when I worked on it. Going back brings up a lot of Feelings. A lot of them aren’t great. Plus, it’s a really complex series drawing on many aspects of the Descentverse, which kinda flushed from my brain circa 2020. So I didn’t publish that one.

    What did I publish last? Has it really been three years since I put out an entire novel?

     

    It’s not like I’ve been lazing around.

    I had a book fail on submission to traditional publishing houses in 2021. Nobody wanted “You’ve Got Nudes,” a small-town romance take on “You’ve Got Mail.” There were a few reasons. For one, having a disabled sex worker as the hero wasn’t a popular idea. For another, there were other You’ve Got Mail takes that were more mainstream, so the market was kinda saturated.

    I wrote a book over 300,000 words long, too. I haven’t finished editing it.

    And I wrote about 50,000 words of a horror novel.

    Plus several other small projects.

    Perhaps more time-consuming is the fact I spent the year 2022 in college. I thought it was time to get my degree. Then I remembered I’m really bad at school, and I took a step back in early 2023 to figure out why the hell I can’t grow up and just do it. A whole year of working time! Gone. I really enjoyed it. The cellular biology class was outstanding, and I especially have made use of my art class. But I didn’t finish a degree.

    (I’m surely not the only person who feels like it would have been easier and more rewarding to set fire to money rather than fail college.)

    The second half of 2023, I spent crocheting and writing movie reviews. Plus that’s when I started on my interactive novel, Fated for Firelizards.

    And this year, I got sober-sober. That’s an accomplishment I’m especially proud of.

     

    The industry has changed and so have I.

    I’ve kept tabs on the industry, more or less, while I’ve been not-publishing. It’s not been a good few years.

    When I left, a lot of unethical practices had well taken hold in the market; the influx of AI-generated everything has only meant more Stuff produced that I can’t compete with.

    Surely if I had continued steadily writing my urban fantasy, I would have been fine. But trying to catch back up after seeing such seismic shifts leaves me a little lost.

    Nowadays, tons of authors launch on Kickstarter instead. Plus, things like BookFunnel have become major players for distributing books to readers. These require wholly different workflows/skills compared to what I used to do.

    The websites involved in publishing have changed a bit, my skills are rusty, and I have to talk myself through a lot of panicky bad feelings that come up whenever I approach the thing. I have a lotta business-related trauma that feels too private to discuss…anywhere, really.

    Just publishing Fated for Firelizards has been riddled with technical issues, major and minor. I don’t even know how to reach most of my readers at this point. Stuff has changed so much. Emails have expired. Rules around mass emails have changed. Social media visibility is hard as ever.

    And I don’t even have another book queued up to go after this one. I used to just pop ’em out, one after another.

     

    Well, I’m here. I might as well do it anyway.

    I always thought I’d get back to publishing novels — not just movie reviews, shitposts, and fanfic — so here I am.

    I’ve got more in the pipeline, albeit slowly.

    It’s weird to be here. But I am here.

    So I guess I’m doing it again.

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  • sara reads the feed

    Work ethic, social media fossils, and teens who are smarter than me

    2024-05-06 /

    Today I hit publish on my first book of 2024, and my first book since 2022 (or 2021? it’s been a while).

    It’s all very familiar to me. I did it so many times during the “growth phase” of my career, which spanned seven years or so. The amount of times I did it waned for a couple years, then dropped off entirely.

    I began publishing in 2011.

    There have been a lot of updates and improvements to general infrastructure since the last time I did it. The process is easier and more streamlined than ever.

    Now I need to turn to the next book I’ll be publishing.

    More about this later.

    ~

    If I allow myself to spend time relaxing, having fun, hanging out with family, and (especially important) babying myself when I’m sick, then I have so much less time to work.

    I used to work so much. It’s hard to reconcile how little time I spent on not-work things in the past.

    The only way I can get multiple books out in a single year is by making significant cutbacks on other things I’ve come to enjoy.

    I used to say that I had a blue collar work ethic, but I really, really don’t have that anymore. I’d just…rather sit around with my kids, playing games, watching John Oliver. Does it matter what I’d rather do? I didn’t used to think so.

    I’d also like to get more activism in my time. But the question is…where? How? When? How do people manage to do it all? Does anyone manage to do it all?

    ~

    One of my favorite drums to beat is “humans aren’t special/unique relative to other life forms.” In my ongoing adventures of reading what I want to believe into news articles, here we have a case for plants as somewhat intelligent life forms. (NPR)

    It’s true that they communicate, react to stimulus, and behave in some ways like more complex animal life. I think it’s worth asking what, if any, impact this idea has on the way we treat plants.

    Selfishly, I don’t want it to mean anything because I’m not always good at keeping houseplants alive. I’ve got enough Catholic guilt.

    ~

    My offspring remarked upon ads for makeup brand E.L.F. on Roblox (pronouncing it “elf,” like the fantasy creatures). Roblox is working on increasing its value generally. They’re going to be integrating video ads for users over thirteen-years-old. (Variety)

    This is the part of the business model where something that used to be awesome gets suckier and more annoying.

    ~

    Two extremely cool teenagers have cracked more proofs for the Pythagorean Theorem. (The Guardian) Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson have added to our understanding of 2000-year-old maths.

    What did you accomplish this week? I managed to stop wicked terrible heartburn. Once. Yep.

    ~

    Remember when there were contaminated eye drops? Somehow the superbug has reached dogs. The weird part is that not all the dogs infected actually used eye drops. There are a lot of questions here. (Ars Technica) I think we need Dr. House.

    ~

    Jack Dorsey has left the board of the Millennial retirement home social media. Instead, he wants to go suck some of Elon’s musk. He calls TSFKA Twitter “freedom tech,” and it mostly occurs to me how little the word “freedom” has meant throughout my life.

    ~

    Chicago’s Field Museum is displaying a super important, super cool fossil. (Smithsonian Mag) Archaeopteryx shows signs of feathers in its surrounding slab, providing supporting evidence for evolution.

    I recently encountered modern-day Archaeopteryx in the form of extremely angry Canadian geese. The whole “fight or flight” response in these geese appears to be entirely “fight.” We gave them space, hoping they would wander elsewhere, but instead they stood their ground and hissed at us. Monsters! Dinosaur monsters!

    ~

    Chris Pine shows deference for “Princess Diaries 2,” (Variety) which is responsible for his career as an actor. He was overdrawn on his bank account when they offered him $65,000 to be the love interest for Princess Mia.

    Thanks to this, we have now had many adorable movies featuring Chris Pine, who seems generally chill and cool and always willing to do genre work (especially in support of women).

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  • sara reads the feed

    Snakes are smart, Space News, and a nerd fight

    2024-05-05 /

    I’m trying to be more organized about my work time — that is to say, I want to work similar “business hours” to my spouse (Monday – Friday) and take the weekends off as much as possible.

    I completely burned out a few years back, and then 2020 threw me for a big loop. The mess of mental health I’ve been wading through means I went months at a time without doing organized work. I did plenty of things. Drawing, crocheting, even writing — but not with the pressure of finishing anything. And I could go whole days doing nothing at all.

    Now I am sober-sober, I want to organize my time and make use of my healing brain.

    It’s hard taking weekends off. I *want* to take them off, mind. I have learned the benefits of wasting time on video games quite well. But I just don’t feel good mentally. Unless I manage to leave the house to do stuff (which isn’t always possible), boredom rats eat away at my mood. I still don’t have the energy (or desire) to spend all weekend cleaning, though my house needs it. My body is too sore to always go out on long walks, too.

    I don’t know how I’m going to handle this in the long term, but right now I’m doing some Egregious stuff on weekends to keep the boredom rats at bay.

    So here we are with another SRF. I didn’t have lots of recent news I wanted to share, so I went back into my link archives to some older posts from the last few months.

    ~

    ChatGPT takes 15x the electricity of a traditional web search. (Quartz) Depending on complexity of the query, every 5-50 prompts is the equivalent of pouring a 16oz bottle of water out on the ground. Some experts say it’s higher than that on average for all generative AI technology. (Bluesky)

    Considering this technology is being put in Windows to run constantly, and it looks like Apple will be doing something similar, we’re looking at a ridiculous drain on ecological resources.

    No joke…I had a nightmare after I read these statistics. It was the style of a Star Trek episode. We were a civilization the Federation found after we were already gone, wiped out by our use of technology destroying our own planet. It’s an extremely typical Star Trek plot, actually. No coincidence it reminds me of our situation. We’ve been rushing toward “futuretech” for a while, looking at profits before stopping to ask questions about safety, and Star Trek has been trying to reflect that back toward ourselves for generations.

    ~

    Smithsonian Mag says snakes passed a modified self-awareness test, using scent rather than mirrors as we do with other life. This study is “suggesting snakes are more cognitively complex” than we previously thought. I’ve got some real sci-fi/fantasy hippie ideas about consciousness, self-awareness, and animals (which is to say, I think that we’re all not so different), so this just reinforces what I already want to believe.

    Speaking of snakes, we might find that robots built like snakes are the best way to explore other worlds. (Ars Technica)

    ~

    We recently lost Chance Perdomo to a motorcycle accident. Gen V will not be recasting his character as they begin production on season 2. (Variety)

    This is the right move, though I expect it demands a full rewrite of whatever they planned for season 2 and onward. His character was integral to the show — second main character after Marie.

    Although shows in the Boysverse don’t shy from death, these are stylized, edgy comic book shows. It’s hard to imagine how they’ll handle the loss of someone real. I’m sure it will be respectful; I just can’t guess.

    ~

    Director Jane Schroenbaum describes filmmaking as “angry sex between art and commerce,” (Variety) which is such a great quote. I kinda think successful publishing demands the same.

    ~

    I don’t always post Space News on here, but I always tag the articles to share with my space-focused kiddo. It seems worth doing a quick roundup of recent articles.

    Ars Technica talks about SpaceX refueling starships in low Earth orbit. I’ve been repeatedly reassured that SpaceX has very little to do with Elon Musk, and we can trust them more than any other commercial space providers, but the very idea of such complex operations associated with them makes me nervous.

    Issues with the heat shield, among others, need to be addressed before the crewed Artemis 2 mission is ready. (Quartz) The uncrewed Artemis I tests failed spectacularly. Apparently the safety report wasn’t very helpful, though. (Ars Technica) Artemis 3 is a completely different issue. We’re counting eggs before we hatched Artemis 2 and hoping we can use it to have Starship and Orion dock in low Earth orbit (Ars Technica). I do love the ambition, honestly.

    We have a Mars rover in a great spot to search for alien life. (The Conversation via Quartz) Perseverance is collecting samples, and we hope to figure out how to go get them soon.

    ~

    I don’t think a lot about national parks in America. I’m a computer nerd. I like going outdoors sometimes, but when I say sometimes, I mean I did it several times a few summers ago, and then about once or twice a year on average otherwise. I’ve heard about how our large uninhabited parks are special to America. It didn’t occur to me that many of the parks we cherish were not uninhabited starting out, and what America did to make them the way they are. (Collectors Weekly)

    This is a substantial, interesting read.

    Today, the foundational myth of America’s National Parks revolves around the heroic preservation of “pristine wilderness,” places supposedly devoid of human inhabitants that were saved in an unaltered state for future generations. This is obviously a falsehood: Places like Yosemite were already home to thriving communities that had long cherished—and changed—the environment around them. […]

    Though the National Park Service prevented wholesale industrialization, they still packaged the wilderness for consumption, creating a scenic, pre-historical fantasy surrounded by roads and tourist accommodations, all designed to mask the violence inherent to these parks’ creation. More than a century later, the United States has done little to acknowledge the government-led genocide of native populations, as well as the continued hardships they face because of the many bad-faith treaties enacted by the U.S. government. This story is an elemental part of our National Park system, the great outdoor museum of the American landscape, but the myth continues to outweigh the truth. How did the National Park Service evict Yosemite’s indigenous communities and erase their history, and can it come to terms with this troubling legacy today?

    ~

    Discover Magazine shares details of Bronze Age Must Farm, once placed on platforms over an English river.

    The wooden community only lasted about a year before burning down. But apparently it was a lush, pleasant year. We know this because the remains sunk into the mud, which then preserved the details. The University of Cambridge has recovered tons of artifacts. It’s all really cool to look at.

    ~

    I don’t sit well with labels generally. One of my favorite things to say is, “Humans invent taxonomy. Humans were made by nature, which knows nothing about taxonomy.”

    Well, turns out that humans don’t know *that* much about taxonomy, either. We don’t have a single unified taxonomy that encompasses all life on earth. Undark talks about a fight within the scientific community about rectifying this.

    Garnett and Christidis proposed tidying things by creating a universal set of rules for classifying all life on Earth and assigning governance to a single organization: the International Union of Biological Sciences, a nonprofit comprising international science associations.

    The notion of imposed authority enraged taxonomists, a fastidious bunch who even Garnett concedes are the opposite of anarchists. In the most prominent rebuttal, 184 people from the global taxonomy community warned in the journal PLOS Biology that the proposed bureaucracy was not only unnecessary and counterproductive, but also a threat to scientific freedom. Such governance would result in “science losing its soul,” wrote a smaller group of Brazilian and French scientists in another journal, raising the specter of Joseph Stalin and his political rejection of established science in the early 20th century.

    It sounds like a real nerd fight. I love nerd fights.

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  • bluesky,  facebook

    April’s social media rambling

    2024-05-04 /

    Posted 4/6/24. Facebook.

    I was playing with my formerly feral cat. She jumped up on the back of my chair and bit the back of my neck.

    Isn’t that how cats kill prey? Did my cat just…kill me?

    ~

    i’ve been lucky to read 2-3 books this year that i actually loved (i really struggle to find stuff that suits me) and everything i’ve read in between those books has really helped emphasize to me why i liked those 2-3

    it’s always a personal taste thing, of course; there’s nothing actually wrong with the other books. i have narrow tastes/desires in books the last few years. i have to cast a wide net (or get recs from similarly aligned friends) in order to find a couple that stick to my ribs.

    this year i’ve loved

    BOY PARTS
    THE BELL JAR (yes, my first read)
    MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION

    (i was REALLY in the mood for a book without a plot, so the lattermost item scratched the itch extremely well)

    i didn’t love it, but i did end up liking NIGHTBITCH. the more i reflect back on it, the fonder i feel. i’m like “heh.” i love messy authentic flawed things, and that’s kinda the whole point of nightbitch. and all the books i haven’t liked at all make nightbitch stick out more, yk?

    i dnf’d The Rabbit Hutch, but i might take a swing at it again later. the dialogue felt too stylized for me at the moment. i like the format enough that it might be worthwhile when i’m in a different head space.

    i do not mention books where i’m like “pah!” and forcefully close them, so these are all compliments from the bottom of a deep pit of literary anhedonia.

    loves/likes from previous years:

    SPINNING SILVER, Naomi Novik
    THE KILLING MOON, NK Jemisin
    A LONG TIME DEAD, Samara Breger
    THE SALT GROWS HEAVY, Cassandra Khaw
    THE WORM OUROBOROUS, ER Eddison
    BITTERBURN, Ann Aguirre
    PARABLE OF THE SOWER, Octavia E Butler
    UNDER THE PENDULUM SKY, Jeanette Ng
    GARDENS OF THE MOON, Stephen Erikson
    THE NOTEBOOK, Agota Kristof

    i really like genre fiction written as literature, and i was hoping that moving into contemporary literature might give me more options for reading. plus i never used to read anything that isn’t sff. so i am trying to reach out a bit and generally pleased so far.

    anyway, i post this in case someone on my flist has similar tastes and can recommend me something i’d like. i’m very fond of genre-as-literary, mythic and historically influenced stuff, big world building, devastating emotions, broad vocabulary, and mostly woman authors.

    any recs??

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    something about the title screen music for katamari damacy reloaded is so ominous

    na…na na na na na na na na na na na na na na

    Posted 4/7/24. Facebook.

    i described the basic conceit of Hannibal to my 13yo, with the whole passionate death-spiral between Hannibal and Will Graham, and they said “So it’s basically Doofenschmirtz and Perry the Platypus from Phineas & Ferb?” and my entire life is changed

    Posted 4/9/24. Facebook.

    I actually finished writing a book today. It’s wild, I haven’t finished a book in a year. I’ve been doing a zillion other things.

    This is Fated for Firelizards, the interactive novel I’ve been serializing on itch.io. I’m gonna finish posting it on itch and then edit a single-track novel version (Author’s Cut), so I’ll let y’all know when the Author’s Cut ebook is out. It’s NOT a Descentverse book, but kind of a fun silly thing. I think folks will enjoy it anyway.

    ~

    The other day, my eldest came to wake up Spouse and me. They were down at the side of the bed. It looked right to have their adorable face at that level. I was petting their hair and sweet-talking them, which they tolerated like a champ.

    Then they stood up…and up…and up…

    And I remembered this is a 13-year-old human who is at least six feet tall, and increasingly lanky, and I just turned into the Crypt Keeper then blew away into dust.

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    my vacuum-insulated cup is so bananas. i made hot hot coffee this morning and didn’t touch it, and it’s STILL HOT??? i know this is new to nobody but myself lol

    it’s like friggin magic

    ~

    I have been watching ghost photos/videos with my kid and it’s the brightest part of the day, and I’m still never sleeping again

    ~

    hear me out: rootbeer float except it’s chocolate fudge ice cream in iced coffee

    Posted on 4/10/24. Bluesky.

    after watching x-men 97 i will never feel joy again

    Thank god for the comic book revolving door of death or else my whOLE WEEK would be ruined

    Posted 4/11/24. Facebook.

    Amazing how one minute I’ll be like “omg I’m the artist of all time” and then the next minute I’m like “MY ARTS IS THE WORST, I AM GARBAGE, THROW ME IN THE COMPOST PILE”

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    Nothing reminds me how long it’s been since restarting my computer as effectively as Adobe products, which will basically just fart all over my monitors until I reboot

    Posted 4/12/24. Facebook.

    I’m so committed to trolling my 13yo. They’re VERY pleased to be taller than me, even when I stand on my toes…so I ordered platform heel Crocs. Yep. I’m going to wear 6-inch Crocs around the house and pat them on the head.

    ~

    I am “subscription to insoles for hip pain” years old.

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    I just did a sinus nasal rinse and I think my brain came out, the pain, the burning

    Posted on 4/13/24. Bluesky.

    If you haven’t watched Scavenger’s Reign you’re living a hollow half-life, a shadow of humanity, unaware of the greatest adult animated show ever made

    Posted on 4/14/24. Bluesky.

    hoping that this analgesic will make my body feel less like shattered death, pray for me

    ~

    From now on, I am only sexting with cuneiform.

    Posted 4/15/24. Bluesky.

    playing frostpunk

    me + peasants: yay! we escaped the lords!
    the lords: “hey can we move in with you?”
    the game: WHAT A QUANDARY
    me: lol die in a storm, lords
    the game: …you must surely feel conflicted
    me: WE DO NOT

    the lords: yOu ToOk OuR EnGiNe
    me: frozen dead lords say what
    the lords: …what?
    the game: WHAT A QUANDARY!

    ~

    one of my friends is sending me screenshots from fallout 4, so i thought i’d grab it and try it

    it’s so buggy (STILL) that i had to go do some modding to even make it wanna run. oh bethesda. <3 now i'm into mods and it's making me wanna go back to skyrim again lol ~ Downloaded a zillion mods, now to see if it’s any worse at launching than vanilla

    Posted 4/16/24. Facebook.

    I wish Facebook would let me hide posts but not, like…take it personally. I believe if you hide posts at all, the algorithm says “oooh this is a Bad Post somehow” and will ding the visibility of the individual or the post (depending on the overall metrics). I need a “it’s nothing personal, but don’t show me this one again” button for when it keeps bringing up someone’s really personal post 10x over three days. Like, that wasn’t any of my business the first time I saw it, but that person has every right to post it, and I just think it’s weird Facebook keeps reminding me that xyz person is having family drama with xyz family member I don’t even know!

    ~

    My favorite gain from going fully sober and quitting cannabis? My singing voice is back, baby! Sometimes I start singing and startle myself with how full my range has become. I got so used to singing in a limited range because lower or higher octaves were so strained, and switching registers made things goOOoooOO crackLYEEYY.

    Basically I had to sing like the episode of Friends where Phoebe had a cold, but I’m back to being a wee lil songbird.

    The dreams are also rad. You’re not supposed to dream on cannabis (which is one reason people with PTSD love it), but I had dreams every night; they were just always a very specific kind of travel dream. Airplanes, cruise ships, trains. Very weird. But now I have a full spectrum of vivid dreams that are so wonderfully weird, I look forward to them every night. I can control them to a small degree. I usually dream about whatever I was doing right before bed. I was playing Fallout 4 last night, so I got Fallout dreams!

    I really miss the act of smoking. I have a lot of really fond memories of sitting outside in nice weather and smoking up a bowl. It’s hard to explain what a sensory pleasure that is, top to bottom: breaking up nuggets (the colors, the smell, the texture), grinding them finely, scooping it into a bowl, patting it down, using the lighter to toast the edge, that first inhale of creamy white smoke…

    But I figure it’s like a breakup from a romantic relationship. Of course I miss the nice things about her. I loved holding hands with her, and the smoothness of her neck, and the smell of her hair. I can’t have those things in isolation from all the things that motivated the breakup. That isn’t how life works. So I miss the smoking, and I say, “Thank you for the memories,” and then don’t do it.

    ~

    Posted 4/16/24. Bluesky.

    when i’m trying to talk myself into doing something, i call myself “self-bae” in my head

    “come on, self-bae, you don’t even need to do that much”
    “i know it’s hard, self-bae <3 you can do it" i know it is dorky but i used to be *really* hard on myself, so it's very healing to refer to myself like i'm my own girlfriend? my loved one? just soothing and reassuring myself ~ We dnf’d the fallout show on episode 2 on account of boredom ~

    Posted 4/17/24. Bluesky.

    Truly impressed and horrified by how many times my AirPods have enjoyed trips through the washing machine in my pocket

    ~

    extremely bothered seeing how people talk about their teenaged and older kids on the internet. like, you realize you made those things, right? you know they still can’t read your mind? you know communication is hard and growing is hard and nobody magically figures things out, right?

    i have some acquaintances who are not invested in having ongoing relationships with their adult kids, and i just hope they’re not unpleasantly surprised when those kids aren’t interested in having ongoing relationships with them either.

    recently my sibling told me that not everybody likes their kids, especially as they get older, and it has haunted me. i wonder if that intergenerational divide is normal? if part of growing *demands* friction? am i going to wake up one day and be sick of my teenager’s shit?

    ~

    i just love john leguizamo and dulce sloan on The Daily Show. i could watch the two of them every night forever. they’re so fucking out of pocket, it’s hilarious

    leguizamo acting like biden wants him “but we’re both married men, it would be wrong *saucy gaze*”

    ~

    playing games <<<<< playing games so heavily modded they're unrecognizable i enjoy adult mods for games, but i have to laugh at so many of the "sexy" outfits added. like people just cut random holes out and nothing looks remotely wearable (or even sexy!) and i'm like, girl, tuck your nipple into the strap, you're defying physics ~ no more agonizing over my letterboxd top 4. it changes weekly now. all movies are my favorite movies. chaos reigns.

    Posted 4/18/24. Facebook.

    Pulling together the “author’s cut” of my interactive novel is harder than I anticipated. I wrote *so* much material that only exists in one story track or another (meaning I have to go all over the file to see what I can possibly add), and a *lot* of text varies based upon reader choices. It’s one long personality test of a book, so…it’s a mess!

    Also, the chapters read differently without the page breaks/questions/illustrations. Once it’s just text, I see so many things I want to smooth and fill out. It’s a bigger editing job than anticipated!

    Fun project, though. Anything with dragons is fun.

    Posted 4/19/24. Facebook.

    Y’all, I had such a violent nightmare last night that I woke my spouse screaming his name in my sleep. Wtf? He thought something was wrong and got up to look for problems before realizing I was still asleep.

    I couldn’t wake up, it was dreadful. There was a demon possessing my house. I couldn’t shut the doors to keep it out of my bedroom. It kept appearing as my beloved late cat, Annie, in really disturbing gory ways. I have the St Benedict’s prayer memorized (crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux, etcetera) but all the prayer and salt in my dreams wouldn’t keep the demon out.

    This morning my spouse asked if he should wake me from dreams where I’m obviously distressed and the answer is OMG YES PLEASE DO.

    Weirdly, I fell asleep in a great mood. Nothing is wrong! I had a beautiful nighttime walk with my family under a very bright moon. I was so chipper. But not my subconscious, apparently.

    Posted 4/20/24. Facebook.

    I gauged up my ears today from 2g to 0g. I thought it wouldn’t be too bad because they used to be this size, but OWCH. It’s harder to do it to oneself, bc ow.

    Posted 4/21/24. Bluesky.

    i was really trying to get into fallout 4, but i’m just not clicking with it. i couldn’t click with fnv either. i guess fallout shelter is the only fallout i want, lol.

    i’m putting skyrim back on my computer. it’s still kinda my perfect game. which is weird! it’s the same engine as fo4!

    ~

    i have napped twice today and i slept a lot last night and i think i could just sleep all of sunday, literally

    i feel really good tbh, i walked a bunch yesterday in the sun and i think my body just wants to recharge

    i walked in the evening & thought i wouldn’t need sunblock. i was wrong. i’m slightly toasty. i have found that i get sun sickness really easily; i didn’t get sun sickness yesterday, but i was probably close. if i’d been out an hour earlier, i’d be dead today. instead i’m just deliciously exhausted.

    i’m not sure if sun sickness is a real thing tbh. i THINK i heard of it somewhere…it’s like where you burn, and your body has an immune response like you’re sick. i don’t have to be very burned to get some crazy flare. i really get very sick the day after even mild sunburns.

    oh well, webmd calls it sun poisoning (for whatever that’s worth). after sun, i get fever+chills, nausea, exhaustion, aches, dizziness, serious dehydration. did i mention i’m basically some swooning Victorian lady who faints over everything? like a walking ghost.

    (i do have two documented autoimmune conditions and god knows what else so this is pretty normal for me, tbh)

    (i am a delicate hothouse flower)

    OH i bet it’s also related to stretching my ears yesterday. i gauged up from 2g to 0g. i always have this weird shock response to piercings and tattoos. my poor body must have no idea what’s going on, stretching out my lobes (IT HURT) and then frolicking in the sun. “ahhh I’m dying”

    ~

    my head aches even checking in on publishing world drama. this is why i now randomly publish stupid shit for an audience of me, myself, and i.

    This isn’t about RTD, but rather gossiping authors and essays about authors who should go fuck themselves and etc.

    omg just go write your friggin books and chill out.

    There are extremes of “authors must always get along rainbows daisies” and “authors I disagree with should all jump off a bridge, and I disagree with everyone”

    JUST GO WRITE YOUR BOOKS

    Posted 4/22/24. Bluesky.

    there is SUCH a difference between walking two miles when it’s mild and walking two miles when Nevada is doing its whole sunny hot thing

    it was only like 80f but i’m still whooped. gonna be a heck of a summer when we get over 90-100f

    i can still walk outside when it’s that hot, but i start wetting down light scarves (almost like veils) and covering myself in them, and then also taking an umbrella as portable shade. not bad when it’s also windy. wish i had a stillsuit.

    Posted 4/23/24. Facebook.

    It’s incredible how I can wake up and chug a half gallon of water like it’s nothing. What happens to me overnight? Do I completely desiccate??

    I genuinely don’t eat that much salt, and i have an eye on my blood sugar so i can say i’m not diabetic

    i’m just a Thirsty Betch

    ~

    i told my kids to avoid internet content that seems specifically designed to make them angry (or feel other negative emotions) and it’s helped them a lot, so i am now sharing that advice with you

    click away from outrage, you’ll feel better.

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    It’s really incredible my husband is still married to me when I will text him live updates from the toilet, and half the time he asks what I’m doing and I’m like “…modding skyrim”

    Posted on 4/24/24. Bluesky.

    But why is Dev Patel SO ATTRACTIVE

    Posted on 4/25/24. Bluesky.

    It’s maddening how many people wanna shove AI down our throats when all datasets rely on theft. So it’s like saying, “I have no choice but to steal to promote my books 🤷🏻‍♀️ don’t blame meeee”

    Just makes me realize how many people happily talk their way into ethical voids and truly do not mind being class traitors if it means they feel likelier to profit off exploitation rather than being exploited themselves

    (Spoiler: it won’t protect you, it’ll eat you too)

    And omfg it’s not that hard to learn how to Art, it’s completely natural to humans.

    And you’re not entitled to others’ nonconsenting labor if you don’t feel like doing that learning.

    Omg I really can’t talk about this I just go into constant outrage feedback loops it’s bad for my blood pressure

    Posted 4/26/24. Facebook.

    Yesterday I saw a trio of ravens mobbing a young hawk. The hawk was so small, I thought it was a dove at first. But doves don’t soar like that. I made out the ventral patterns when it came low enough. It was a hawk, just a baby, probably not long out of the nest.

    First there was one raven chasing it, making big heavy flaps with those big black wings. Amazing how fast they can move. The little hawk couldn’t seem to flap enough to get away from it. However lighter the hawk was, the raven was clever, and it seemed to know where the hawk planned to fly next. The raven kept cutting it off.

    Then came the other two, circling around to flank the hawk. You should have heard the noises. Sad, angry, fighting type noises. Squeaks and squawks.

    The aerial dogfighting was amazing to watch. They covered blocks of the neighborhood as the four of them swirled around, heading north until I couldn’t see them, then reappearing south of my position.

    Sometimes the hawk would fold its wings and suddenly plummet a hundred feet in midair, escaping the fog of shiny black feathers. But only ever for a moment. The ravens were too smart to lose it for long.

    I don’t know how the fight ended. It’s hard to imagine the hawk won. A bird that small can’t have too much energy, and the second it touched down somewhere, those ravens would have been all over it.

    There isn’t much room in the ecosystem for birds of prey. We already have quite a few, and they’re territorial. My house is part of a territory claimed by an older, larger hawk — one of the parents of the unlucky little guy. I guess this is one of the ways nature winnows down the numbers.

    I couldn’t cheer for anyone. I have a soft spot for hawks, but I admire these ravens specifically (they’re around a lot), and nature is just being nature. What a stark reminder of how unfair it all can be. Let’s hope the little guy found somewhere to hide and will move further afield, away from the ravens, away from the other hawks’ territories, and find a place his own.

    ~

    Granular edits on fiction are exhausting 😮‍💨

    I’m a big picture guy. I love working with plot-level edits. I have never been good at details, like copy editing and proofreading.

    But I am proofreading something now and my brain is like “no, please stop.” I’m taking breaks every chapter or so. I don’t know how anyone does this full time!

    Time to level up this skill tho ⬆️

    ~

    omg. just trucking along proofreading and discover i spelled a character’s name two different ways.

    in the same sentence.

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    I got to pet three (3) dogs on my walk today which is a pretty good level of dog petting, I’m satisfied

    Posted on 4/27/24. Bluesky.

    Bluey is an emotional assassin

    ~

    Watching dog agility competition and feeling irrationally offended when they criticize a dog’s performance

    HDU every dog is perfect

    Knock over poles? PERFECT
    Skip an obstacle? PERFECT
    Murder the judges? PERFECT

    Posted 4/28/24. Facebook.

    I really thought quitting weed would eliminate my daily nap, but…nope. Two hours+ every day. And it feels like being reborn every day. ❤

    Posted 4/29/24. Bluesky.

    We keep getting angry letters from the school because we keep our 9yo home when he’s sick and they don’t like all the absences 🙃

    His grades are excellent, he’s a gifted-and-talented kid, and he always gets sick FROM SCHOOL. What are we supposed to do here exactly?

    1) I am not dragging him to a doctor every time he’s got symptoms of a head cold. Thats how you spread sicknesses further.

    2) nobody masks in this unventilated-ass school.

    3) even if they don’t care about disease spread, he deserves to rest when he’s sick! I’m not sending a miserable dude out.

    I’d say they can suck my dick but I don’t want their snotty faces near any part of my body

    ~

    Finally finished the Fallout show. It did pick up after the first couple episodes. I got into a vibe once we got to Ghoul and Lucy’s Fetish Funtimes. Looking forward to all the great novel-length Ghoul/Lucy & Dogmeat between-season fanfic we’re gonna get – also hoping for Maximus/Dane.

    If God hates monsterfuckers then why do monsterfuckers keep winning

    The whole Fallout franchise just doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t like the cynicism, I think. The 1950s retrofuturistic nostalgia, while purposeful, also just doesn’t do anything for me. I generally dislike Americana. But the actors were excellent, the story coherent, the effects decent.

    Maybe we’ll get an Elder Scrolls tv show at some point????

    Posted 4/30/24. Facebook.

    I showed my 13yo a picture of their brother as a little baby. 13yo: “Revolting. That looks like a can of biscuits that didn’t pop all the way.”

    ~

    13yo Moonlight and I encountered Canadian geese with fluffy yellow babies on our walk today. Aww! Right?
    NO, the geese were ENRAGED. They hissed at us! We ran!
    We almost got killed by dinosaurs!!!!

    ~

    Posted on Bluesky.

    Bsky threw a 20-year-old sexworker in my discovery feed and the full-body NO THANK YOU I felt was staggering

    I’m like omg I’m almost twice your age!!! I could be your mum. I support your life choices but I do not want to see your life choices in the bath please

    ~

    i watched a scary ghosts movie with my 13yo and now there are so many weird sounds in my bedroom suite

    and my 13yo won’t even sleep over in my bed tonight to protect me :< the 9yo is sick and needs daddy so it's just gonna be me, the cat, and SPOOKY WEIRD NOISES IN MY BEDROOM SUITE absolutely should not watch spooky ghost movies before bed, i am too susceptible to spooky ghost stuff in a way that no other horror does to me but 13yo wanted it 🎶the things we do for love🎶 my cat is being weird and staring through the doorway

    Posted 5/1/24. Facebook.

    The variety in books I’ve written the last few years is pretty bananas.

    I’m almost done editing Fated for Firelizards, which is incredibly lightweight (albeit brazenly didactic). It’s written in language almost as casual as my posts on here, with lots of “like” and “ish” and “you know, whatever” sort of attitude. It’s mostly supposed to get you from one sezzy scene with the dragon to another. Fun fetish content with plot made secondary. I usually put a lot of care into plot, so I feel paranoid and weird about how lightweight this one is.

    But! I also am doing deep edits on Atop the Trees, Beneath the Mountains, which is plot-heavy, and then some. It aspires to be a proper fantasy doorstopper like Wheel of Time, although it’s more obscure and anarchistic like Dune. The world building is intense; sometimes the language is archaic. It’s very much a multigenerational gothic romance epic. And gay.

    And I am also trying to finish a weird horror novel called “Insomniac Cafe,” which is NOTHING LIKE EITHER OF THOSE PROJECTS. It’s like Friends vs Fallout (the tv shows) done in the style of internet horror, a la The Backrooms. It’s surreal with a labyrinthine narrative and…insects. I just added 500 words of Rachel Green trapped in a septic system. It’s *gross*. I am told reading it makes everyone feel like they need a shower in Borax.

    Oh, and there’s a really heartfelt small town romance called “You’ve Got Nudes” I never published. Which I’d like to do this year.

    I think what this says about me is that writing like a hundred urban fantasy novels based on the same style guide, with similar tones, in the same universe, made me snap and go completely crazy and now I can’t write the same thing twice.

    Posted 5/4/24. Facebook.

    It’s not too hard to avoid doing specific things to your kids. “I will not traumatize them like THIS,” you thought as a child. And then you didn’t do THAT THING.

    But you did other things instead. And your kids thought, “I will not traumatize my kids LIKE THIS.” They probably won’t. They will inflict their own bespoke traumas.

    More important than anything, I think, is being open to listening to your kids. You can’t be perfect. You can, however, accept your kids’ feelings, listen to them, and forge real relationships based on growing. You can remain supportive instead of becoming defensive. Accept your own flaws so your offspring have room to process their hurts with you. Cuz there will be hurts.

    This is just something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Just gotta keep working on it together, as a team, like my kids and I are allies, instead of in opposition to one another between generations.

    It can be really hard not to flinch away from your own wounds (because kids having complaints/criticisms feels like getting stabbed sometimes) but embracing it is how you heal. I think? I’m still figuring it out.

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    Murder buckets, Dr. Orangutan, and To All The Jays I’ve Smoked Before

    2024-05-04 /

    I have such an abusive relationship with my maidenhair fern. If any of my plants were to die forever, and I wouldn’t be even *slightly* sad, it is the maidenhair. Her name is Marion. She basically dies every 2-3 months when I water her a couple days late. Every time, I think, “This is it. This is the time she won’t come back from it.” And then she does.

    Anyway, she’s dead this morning. She’ll be back in a week. Fuck that plant. We’ve been doing this for like four years now.

    ~

    I finished editing Fated for Firelizards after a push on Friday, and I’m ready to get it off my plate. I want to do something else now. I’ve gotta work out email garbage, but then I’ll publish the ebook.

    I’m all-in on Insomniac Cafe until I’m done with that. It’s been mostly done but unfinished for years. This is the year where I complete things and harvest all my efforts, after all.

    Although I keep thinking “I really wanna go smoke a jay,” I can’t deny how much easier it is to get work done when I’m sober-sober. And getting sober-sober is a process of *weeks*. It’s not worth a jay. That was a crutch I felt I needed when I was dealing with a lot more traumatic shit, but the traumatic shit is processed and past, and I gotta do the rest of my life. Yanno?

    ~

    I’m not sure how I’ve watched Voyager all the way through twice in the last couple years, yet I’m still riveted on this, my third watch. I love it so much. Episodes with the most mundane concepts, like Paris getting framed for murder in “Ex Post Facto,” are executed so brilliantly that I just love them.

    I’m also rewatching Friends (at least the first season) because it’s much of the inspiration for Insomniac Cafe. I’ve finally gotten older than the Friends — quite a bit so, actually. They turn 30 on the show and I’m 36 now. But they’ve never really seemed younger than me, somehow. I think the 90s fashion and plastic surgery just made them keep coding older a while. Now I’m noticing the age gap more dramatically. They act in ways where I’m like, “Oh gosh, they’re young.” And now I am not — at least, not in the way they are.

    Sometimes the aging thing bothers me more than others. I think I’m okay where I am for the moment. More emotional breakdowns to come later, I’m sure. I’m like a constant ball of existential terror.

    ~

    Speaking of breakdowns, the NHS recognizes montelukast as a source of psychiatric problems, (The Guardian) especially in children. Montelukast has been a miracle medicine for me. And I’m not a stable human.

    I am usually quite depressed — in the sense that it’s hard to do some routines, I’m usually battling “low” thoughts, I sleep a ton, I don’t have a lot of energy — but on the whole, for me, I’m doing pretty well. So I don’t think montelukast has been a problem for me. Maybe it’s because I’m not a child. It’s still surprising to see how dramatic the adverse symptoms can be for others.

    ~

    How amazing. I’d heard before that orangutans are the most intelligent, human-like of primates, but we’ve now seen an orangutan using medicinal herbs to treat a wound. (AJE)

    Scientists saw the Sumatran orangutan named Rakus pluck and chew up leaves of a medicinal plant used by people throughout Southeast Asia to treat pain and inflammation. The adult male then used his fingers to apply the plant juices to an injury on the right cheek. Afterwards, he pressed the chewed plant to cover the open wound like a makeshift bandage.

    I will tell anyone who stops to listen that most primates shouldn’t be in zoos, but I especially mean this for orangutans. And this just kinda emphasizes to me that they’re sapient intelligences who should be left free to grow and develop naturally, with dignity, agency, and respect.

    Over time, I become more convinced that there is no real human exceptionalism; we’re just more complex and developed than most animals. But elephants mourn, crows use tools, and whales teach each other to attack yachts. There are cultures there. Intelligence. Consciousness.

    I have fairly pragmatic attitudes about human use of livestock but I really, really don’t think we respect animals the way we should.

    ~

    WaPo talks hammerhead worms. They pop up as a subject in my gardening groups a lot, and the consensus is generally that you should kill them. Not by cutting. That just helps them multiply.

    Ways to kill a hammerhead worm include:

    [Y]ou can kill the hammerhead flatworm by dropping it into a container and using one of these methods:

    Keeping the container in the direct sun for several hours.
    Sprinkling some table salt into the container.
    Squirting some hand sanitizer into the container.
    Placing the container in a freezer.
    Adding soapy water into the container.

    Apparently hammerhead worms aren’t *quite* as toxic as my gardening groups report, but try not to touch them too much. And no licking, ya weirdo.

    Squirmies and crawlies are also worthy of life and respect, but this is one of the areas where my feelings are pragmatic. Hammerhead worms are invasive in North America. They threaten native life. Drop them in a murder bucket and make it quick, please.

    In other agricultural news, the EPA is talking about banning acephate, a pesticide that was banned in the EU twenty years ago. (ProPublica) Yeah, let’s do that.

    ~

    I really enjoyed reading this article about Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron as an anti-comfort movie. Spoilers for the movie ahoy, so I won’t excerpt it, but the message resonates with me. I am still eagerly awaiting it on streaming.

    ~

    I’m done with Airbnb et al, but I do find the property decked out like the X-Men mansion (Variety) to be pretty charming. I’d spend so much time in the danger room.

    ~

    Lawyers, Guns, & Money talks about how white people always oppose protest movements.

    Regardless of the quality of the strategy or whether this is actually going to work or whatever, none of that matters much to the key point, which is that people oppose ALL forms of protest, no matter how peaceful or how not peaceful.

    I truly had no idea that supporting free speech — ESPECIALLY organized protests — was so broadly unpopular among white people (my demographic). That’s just not how I grew up! I grew up with such respect for demonstrations and consider it part of my civic duty.

    At first I thought, “Well my family of five is all in favor of protests, so we break the statistic.” Then I had the depressing thought, “That just means there’s three other families of five who all don’t support them.”

    ~

    Why are we still talking about Kristi Noem? (The Guardian) I find this confusing. South Dakota isn’t one of the more influential states in the United States, and I do expect certain rural behaviors from folks in SD — like seeing dogs in a functional way that means you can shoot them if they don’t meet your standards, however unreasonable. We have family who are “shoot the dog who misbehaved” kind of rural-leaning. It’s not uncommon, I’m afraid. Harping on the story isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.

    So I get that we sentimental dog lovers had to process the story about puppy Cricket for a while. But now we’re still covering Noem’s other errors and lies when she’s a state-level politician where few Americans live. I think it’s established she’s not going to be Trump’s VP pick. Giving her attention is just, well, giving her attention. It doesn’t seem to actually boost a Democratic position versus Republicans. It seems to just make polarization worse.

    Oh, maybe I just explained it for myself. Guess it could also be click-based.

    Comment

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