the ongoing adventures of a stoic action girl who's into Bridgerton, Avengers, Pacific Rim, Jupiter Ascending, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, a whole bunch of shows that I don't even watch, faith, feminism, female characters, storytelling and a host of odds and ends
I am a part of the Nicola/Penelope and Luke/Colin defense committee. I think they are going to do a FANTASTIC job and I will not stand any hate or be taking any questions at this time, thank you.
I’m sure Nicola and Luke will do amazing jobs (as Simone and Jonny did in Season Two). I just wish I trusted the writers to do amazing jobs with the storyline.
Also, I admit I was hoping for the framing of The Mystery Of Lady Whistledown to bookend what I’m thinking of as Bridgerton Main Arc: Daphne, Anthony, Benedict, and Colin & Eloise (their respective romances would cross arcs because of the friendship of Eloise & Pen {which I wouldn’t have kept rather than destroyed in S2}, and because of Lady Whistledown). Since we’re introduced to the Bridgerton world through the circular of Lady Whistledown, it would have satisfied the completionist in me to bookend the series with the discovery of Who Lady Whistledown Is (and the fallout) while Eloise is going off on her journey of self-discovery.
Ah well. I am not the writer of anything; also not beholden to streaming execs, actor contracts, or fan expectactions. It makes life a lot easier.
The latest book by the award-winning photographer Bernhard Edmaier presents his stunning vistas of water in awe-inspiring views of our planet. In this new volume, Edmaier looks at water—from both the air and the ground—as a source of life and one of the most important landscapeshaping forces on earth.
Plant a few each week, so you can harvest enough for the week, instead of all at once.
Ya'know what? They wanna be serious about this? I’ll drop some knowledge. Do this world a favor.
Shit people should have considered this a LONG time ago but you know what they say
The best time to do something you didn’t do yesterday, is today.
A few things:
Learn how to process all the food you’re growing. It does nobody any good if you get bushels of tomatoes and they all go bad because there was no time to organize getting your canning jars and lids and recipes set up. And you will need supplies for this. A lot of places will have cheap jars but I do recommend looking for the heavy Ball jars - American made and good strong jars that can last decades. If you can’t afford them, scour thrift stores or ask friends to give them as gifts. If you really can’t afford them, save jam jars and buy replacement lids. (Please do not reuse lids. That way botulism and sadness lies.) You will also probably need a deep freeze of some kind. I know my tiny freezer can barely cope with a normal size tub of ice cream, so the idea of blanching and freezing veg from your garden is out of reach for us. (Boo.)
I also think it bears mentioning that we do throw out a lot of edible food. I think the Cornersmith cookbooks are so valuable here—yes I will turn all those carrot ends and naff bits of various veg into pickles and sauerkraut, thank you! (I have the salads and pickles book and I love it.) This mitigation of food waste can be more achievable than growing your own food, especially for people who are time poor or have limited space or the wrong climate to grow.
Finally, if there’s a crop swap in your area, sign up! It’s a good place to get veg and fruit you’re not growing yourself. I have a friend who does these regularly and she always gets neat stuff and has neat stuff of her own to swap (hi @tielan!) and it just makes so much sense.
Happy growing, stay safe, and may your chickens always be healthy and lay beautiful eggs and may your compost heaps gently simmer with warmth and joy.
I’ve been seeing a lot of amazing posts lately thanking fanfic writers for that good, good content that we’re all disappearing into right now. And I love these posts, and FUCK YES, the healing power of art during these rough times, it can’t be said enough. But I feel like there’s something missing from these posts, and that’s the readers.
A lovely friend of mine recently shared something with the caveat that they “contribute basically nothing to fandom” and I was fucking floored. Like. This person has made playlists for fic, and shared art, and reached out to me to talk about my stories and other stories and like - that is the Work. They made me feel like my shitty writing was good enough to share, and that made me write more, and connected me with more people, and that sort of contribution doesn’t get acknowledged enough. I don’t write fiction because I have to, or for the likes or hits or whatever; I write it because I have a story I want to tell. On the days when my brain is cooperating, writing is a pleasure. On the days when my brain isn’t cooperating, comments from readers make my words feel meaningful anyway. This isn’t a one-way street, a producer/consumer situation. Or at least, it doesn’t feel like that to me. And my best writing has been done when people are holding me accountable, or are pushing me to do better and I’m so grateful for that. And so grateful for you.
So. To the readers who comment on every chapter. To the readers who leave thoughtful essays in the comments and the readers who leave 😭❤️😱 or keysmashes. To the readers who are inspired for the first time to make art or write something themselves. To the readers who leave kudos. To the readers too anxious to comment (I’ve been there, sat in a space where I had no idea how to express how a story made me feel) and the fandom ghosts who dip in and read and vanish.
To readers who like or reblog or share or rec or send messages or don’t do any of these things.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for building this community.
Russian looters stole 27 pieces of John Deere farm equipment, collectively valued at $5 million. But the John Deere dealership bricked the tractors over the Internet, using a built-in kill switch.
Yay, right?
No, because the same technology could be used by John Deere against any farmer. And it was built to be used against Americans, says Cory Doctorow.
We see the same kind of kills switch technology built into cars, iPhones, and even ventilators and medical implants from Medtronic.
Those kill switches will inevitably be used by criminals, because John Deere and other vendors have terrible infosec.
Cory:
Tech monopolists love kill-switches, and they exhibit heart-warming confidence in their own ability to prevent their abuse. That confidence is terribly misplaced. These can and will go wrong, with terrible consequences. It’s important not to get swept up in the industry’s self-serving cheerleading about these kill-switches working in ways we like, because of all the ways they can go wrong.
im singehandedly repairing jewish-goyische relations through my outreach with my facebook friends
I briefly forgot there were normal humans named Elijah and wondered why this person thought they were getting messages from Actual Prophet and Messiah-Herald Elijah the Tishbite.
….yeah me too.
Me three.
Imagine getting visions of someone else’s holy prophet and having to text your friends like “….what am I supposed to do with that?”
“hey he’s back did you study this”
Getting a message from a prophet telling you to do things and instead texting your friends “wtf is this?” is very, very Jewish.
A Vulcan named Stork works at the Terran adoption agency. Parents always request that he be the one to deliver their child to them.
It’s years before anyone explains it to him.
People keep gifting him robes with long white birds on them.
The fun thing is he would understand why people were getting him outfits with storks on them. That’s a word, it’s his name, straightforward. All the humans get him the same gag gift, but like, they’re putting effort in at least. This is a genuinely nice outfit. Stork will be a walking zero-effort pun sometimes, rather than waste a perfectly fine robe.
It’s fine. This is a readily comprehensible human illogic. Exactly the kind of thing he expected from moving to Earth.
Six years in he finds out about the stork bringing babies.
I mean, I’m pretty sure Lin is supposed to represent what Chihiro’s future might be like if she accepted her role in the bath house and didn’t try to maintain her own identity and values. She’s not a bad person, but she’s hedonistic to exactly the extent that the bath house culture allows her to be as an employee and has no ambition beyond the system of favors, bribes, and petty intimidation between low-level workers. She’s traded her individuality and opportunity to better herself for the security of predictable exploitation and she doesn’t seem to regret it.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Lin is the only other major character who looks human throughout the movie - I’m not certain she started out human, but I suspect she may have, and may have fully traded away her humanity. I do think it’s significant that she, unlike Chihiro and Haku, doesn’t reclaim her name at the end of the story.
She doesn’t want her independence or identity back. Her purpose is to eat and look pretty.
Alternate interpretation: I always thought Lin meant to be a comforting presence.
She’s the first bathhouse worker who is kind to Chihiro, helping her get her clothes and navigate her first work assignment and sneak food. One of the core themes of Spirited Away is finding your footing in a new and terrifying place, and Lin and Haku are key allies in Chihiro’s struggle to gain the skills and self-assurance she needs in order to thrive.
Lin’s human appearance helps us and Chihiro feel more sympathetic towards her . Her familiarity with the system of favors and bribes makes her appealing as a role model who can demystify Chihiro’s new environment for her. Unlike the more inhuman occupants of the bathhouse, Lin looks like someone Chihiro could become in the future, and that’s a good thing! She’s living proof that the bathhouse is not such a monstrous and scary place. Because Lin treats the bathhouse like home, Chihiro begins to see it as a home, too.
And once Chihiro starts to think of the bathhouse as her territory, she realizes that she has agency in this place as well. She uses its rules to her own advantage to free Haku and herself.
And that is the point of Chihiro’s journey in Spirited Away: it’s a metaphor for starting over in a new place and overcoming fear of the unfamiliar. After all, the frame story is Chihiro’s family moving to a new city. At the beginning of the movie, Chihiro is despondent, unhappy to be leaving her old friends behind. By the end, after making it through the spirit world, she’s taking a much more active role in helping her parents settle into their new home.
TLDR: Lin is there to be Chihiro’s friend.
These theories coexist really well, I think. Lin has accepted her place within this system, and that’s given her the confidence and experience to be a mentor for Chihiro. Because she knows the system, she can make things a little better for Chihiro.
Because Chihiro has a mentor and friend, she learns how to survive and even do well in the Bathhouse. It’s because of Lin that Chihiro is able to not accept her place within this system and instead fight back, and in the end to make things a little better for everyone.
There’s something there about community, and easing the path for those who come after you. Lin doesn’t regret her choices because they were the best choices she could make, and that’s okay. It’s not a tragedy. She got as far as she could get, and because she did, she’s there to help Chihiro get farther.
And isn’t that what we’re all here for, in the end? To go as far as we can, and then give a hand up to those coming after us? It’s never a tragedy when children can go farther than their mentors ever could. That’s a triumph.
