A friend did this questionnaire under lock, and it ... seems ... memeable. Props also to jesse_the_k's recent post on being a volunteer English language partner and to the thoughtful replies thereto, which have stirred some thoughts for me as well.

- Adults responsible for your care actively helped facilitate your early learning. (Reading at bedtime, playing educational games, going to child-friendly museums...)
( Read more... )

I am very tired. I took tomorrow off and we're closed on Monday, so I have a 4-day weekend and I am looking forward to not having to deal with several varieties of annoying co-worker (e.g., one who expects me to show up and take minutes at a meeting I was never even invited to [it's tomorrow, though, so my boss informed them I would be on vacation and someone else would have to do it]; one who insists I fill out paperwork I have already filled out and submitted - they went silent when I emailed the signed form back with the email from the day I sent it and then the invoice got paid so I guess I can't complain too much; one who feels the need to do everything by phone when email would suffice, etc.).

I've got some fun cooking plans - hopefully I get some sausage tomorrow and can make that pasta dish, but I have also been struck with the idea of making calzones, so I might do that (on Monday if not tomorrow, maybe). I took some pork ribs out of the freezer and plan to do char siu on Saturday and char siu bao on Sunday, and I might also take a crack at making some doughnuts. Depends on how much I feel like deep frying I guess. Maybe I'll make cranberry curd and fill them with that. Who can say? It might just end up being raspberry jam or pastry cream. All of it sounds good to me.

*

Because there was good word of mouth from various friends and trusty reviewers, I decided to give the latest Star Trek show a go, have now marathoned the six episodes released so far, and can report that word of mouth was correct: this latest installment, which is set in the 31rd century last seen in Star Trek: Discovery, shows none of the weaknesses of the third season of ST: SNW and is actually really good. Mind you, watching the first three episodes I thought, okay, they're good, not not groundbreaking, and some of the reactions made me expect more, but then came episodes 3 - 6 . building on the previous ones and fleshing out more characters, and I went "wow!" myself. And also "awwwww" at certain points. More beneath the spoiler cut.


The reason why I wasn't wowed by the first three in the way I was by the later three is that they included some clichés I never much cared for, such as a Marine, err, Starfleet instructor yelling "give me 100 pushups" . And the only school/school prank war I enjoyed fictionally was Das fliegende Klassenzimmer by Erich Kästner, plus I thought, really, do we need more mean Vulcans. These nitpicks aside (and the prank war did have its plusses as well), the first three episodes do a solid job in introducing the premise, the setting, and some of the main characters. They also showed versatality in format: the pilot episode has more action while the second episode is a classic ST ethical dilemma with lots of debate type of episode (and not the last one of the first six), and the third episode while having some serious character stuff mainly goes for broad comedy. Which is all fine, and confidence-building, but with episode 4, the show simply becomes more than that as we get our first hardcore (previously supporting) character episode which simultanously is an ethical dilemma episode and adds to the overall Star Trek lore because it tells us how the Klingons fared post Burn, something Disco did not. Now after a quiet spotlight on supporting character episode I expected the next to revert back to ensemble or main character format, but no! We got another " (different) supporting character in the spotlight" episode - which also doubled as an unabashed love declaration to one Benjamin Sisko in particular and DS9 in general. Which was great, because while other more recent ST shows did include some nods to DS9, it never got as much love as TOS and TNG did from the new kids on the block. Until now. And it was especially lovely to see because it did nostalgia right instead of going ST: Picard season 3, sigh, or follow ST:STNW's increasing tendency to become ST: TOS in its cast. Instead, it did a Star Trek: Prodigy. By which I mean: The love for the "old" characters as strong and great - but it was used in service of character fleshing out and growth of the new characters of the new show. Complimenting them, instead of replacing them. Homage, instead of a rerun. It was great. And then episode 6 went for a taut space thriller while also using what we learned so far about the characters and sharpening the profile of who seems to be the season's main villain. (And it took me until this episode to finally recall where I had heard the voice before. It was John Adams, I mean Paul Giametti!)

One more general observation: As a Discovery fan, I was delighted to see Admiral Vance again in most of the episodes, being his calm and responsible self, ditto for Jett Reno snarkng and being dead-pan as ever, and a bit surprised that Mary Wiseman has yet to make an appearance because I thought she was supposed to be a regular. Speaking of Discovery, its last two seasons feature a supporting guest star, Laira Rillak, who has both Bajoran and Cardassian heritage, and I thought that was great and that by the 31st Centuy, there ought to be a lot more "hybrids" of spacefaring nations with centuries of interaction . Starfleet Academy thought so, too, and we got indeed not just another hybrid in the regular cast but also several others popping up. And I really like the sheer number of middle-aged women we get in addition to the kids. Oh, and evidently the return to Discovery territory also meant the return to featured queer relationships. Excellent.

( Now onto more spoilery territory with comments on the individiual characters and their development so far. )

In conclusion: it's a really good first season so far! May it continue to be!

Still haven't seen Heated Rivalry but I glanced at one of the books in a bookstore last night, and realised that I had the characters backwards! Based on pictures, I'd assumed that the dark-haired one was Ilya Rozanov and the ginger one was Shane Hollander. I'd figured that Rozanov was part Kazakh (or could well have been part Korean, like Viktor Tsoi) – but the guy who actually turns out to be playing Rozanov doesn't look Slavic to me at all. I can only see him as having a severe case of American Canadian Actor Face. This has been an interesting collision of racial assumptions.

Back in August of 2025, we announced a temporary block on account creation for users under the age of 18 from the state of Tennessee, due to the court in Netchoice's challenge to the law (which we're a part of!) refusing to prevent the law from being enforced while the lawsuit plays out. Today, I am sad to announce that we've had to add South Carolina to that list. When creating an account, you will now be asked if you're a resident of Tennessee or South Carolina. If you are, and your birthdate shows you're under 18, you won't be able to create an account.

We're very sorry to have to do this, and especially on such short notice. The reason for it: on Friday, South Carolina governor Henry McMaster signed the South Carolina Age-Appropriate Design Code Act into law, with an effective date of immediately. The law is so incredibly poorly written it took us several days to even figure out what the hell South Carolina wants us to do and whether or not we're covered by it. We're still not entirely 100% sure about the former, but in regards to the latter, we're pretty sure the fact we use Google Analytics on some site pages (for OS/platform/browser capability analysis) means we will be covered by the law. Thankfully, the law does not mandate a specific form of age verification, unlike many of the other state laws we're fighting, so we're likewise pretty sure that just stopping people under 18 from creating an account will be enough to comply without performing intrusive and privacy-invasive third-party age verification. We think. Maybe. (It's a really, really badly written law. I don't know whether they intended to write it in a way that means officers of the company can potentially be sentenced to jail time for violating it, but that's certainly one possible way to read it.)

Netchoice filed their lawsuit against SC over the law as I was working on making this change and writing this news post -- so recently it's not even showing up in RECAP yet for me to link y'all to! -- but here's the complaint as filed in the lawsuit, Netchoice v Wilson. Please note that I didn't even have to write the declaration yet (although I will be): we are cited in the complaint itself with a link to our August news post as evidence of why these laws burden small websites and create legal uncertainty that causes a chilling effect on speech. \o/

In fact, that's the victory: in December, the judge ruled in favor of Netchoice in Netchoice v Murrill, the lawsuit over Louisiana's age-verification law Act 456, finding (once again) that requiring age verification to access social media is unconstitutional. Judge deGravelles' ruling was not simply a preliminary injunction: this was a final, dispositive ruling stating clearly and unambiguously "Louisiana Revised Statutes §§51:1751–1754 violate the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution", as well as awarding Netchoice their costs and attorney's fees for bringing the lawsuit. We didn't provide a declaration in that one, because Act 456, may it rot in hell, had a total registered user threshold we don't meet. That didn't stop Netchoice's lawyers from pointing out that we were forced to block service to Mississippi and restrict registration in Tennessee (pointing, again, to that news post), and Judge deGravelles found our example so compelling that we are cited twice in his ruling, thus marking the first time we've helped to get one of these laws enjoined or overturned just by existing. I think that's a new career high point for me.

I need to find an afternoon to sit down and write an update for dw_advocacy highlighting everything that's going on (and what stage the lawsuits are in), because folks who know there's Some Shenanigans afoot in their state keep asking us whether we're going to have to put any restrictions on their states. I'll repeat my promise to you all: we will fight every state attempt to impose mandatory age verification and deanonymization on our users as hard as we possibly can, and we will keep actions like this to the clear cases where there's no doubt that we have to take action in order to prevent liability.

In cases like SC, where the law takes immediate effect, or like TN and MS, where the district court declines to issue a temporary injunction or the district court issues a temporary injunction and the appellate court overturns it, we may need to take some steps to limit our potential liability: when that happens, we'll tell you what we're doing as fast as we possibly can. (Sometimes it takes a little while for us to figure out the exact implications of a newly passed law or run the risk assessment on a law that the courts declined to enjoin. Netchoice's lawyers are excellent, but they're Netchoice's lawyers, not ours: we have to figure out our obligations ourselves. I am so very thankful that even though we are poor in money, we are very rich in friends, and we have a wide range of people we can go to for help.)

In cases where Netchoice filed the lawsuit before the law's effective date, there's a pending motion for a preliminary injunction, the court hasn't ruled on the motion yet, and we're specifically named in the motion for preliminary injunction as a Netchoice member the law would apply to, we generally evaluate that the risk is low enough we can wait and see what the judge decides. (Right now, for instance, that's Netchoice v Jones, formerly Netchoice v Miyares, mentioned in our December news post: the judge has not yet ruled on the motion for preliminary injunction.) If the judge grants the injunction, we won't need to do anything, because the state will be prevented from enforcing the law. If the judge doesn't grant the injunction, we'll figure out what we need to do then, and we'll let you know as soon as we know.

I know it's frustrating for people to not know what's going to happen! Believe me, it's just as frustrating for us: you would not believe how much of my time is taken up by tracking all of this. I keep trying to find time to update dw_advocacy so people know the status of all the various lawsuits (and what actions we've taken in response), but every time I think I might have a second, something else happens like this SC law and I have to scramble to figure out what we need to do. We will continue to update dw_news whenever we do have to take an action that restricts any of our users, though, as soon as something happens that may make us have to take an action, and we will give you as much warning as we possibly can. It is absolutely ridiculous that we still have to have this fight, but we're going to keep fighting it for as long as we have to and as hard as we need to.

I look forward to the day we can lift the restrictions on Mississippi, Tennessee, and now South Carolina, and I apologize again to our users (and to the people who temporarily aren't able to become our users) from those states.

I expect you've all seen this?

Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month
Discord will soon require age verification to access adult content

Just, UGH.

I am really torn about this one. On the one hand, all the downsides I assumed when first hearing about this and when watching the trailer turned out not to be the case. On the other hand, something I hadn't expected did happen - two somethings, actually - and both to my favourite character from the original, and I'm still massively annoyed about this.

What I thought/feared: because The Night Manager had been such a success, they'd simply go for the (unnecessary) repeat sequel formula, with Jonathan Pine motivated by personal loss and vengeance (again), and the two new characters, arms dealer Teddy Santos, as a Richard Roper copy, and the sole woman focused on in the trailer, Roxana, in the role of beautiful girlfriend of the villain falling in love with our hero. This turned out not to be the case, though the first episode seemed to indicate it would be, with just enough differences to make it entertaining. Then more episodes happened, and I sat up and thought: Oh. Oh. That....is actually a really clever twist on the formula. Or several. But also, come episode 3, the first of the two things happened. And, well, I can't talk about this without spoilers....

( Spoilers think that if the original version was more optimistic than Le Carré's novel, this sequel decided to go all in with the cynism (though not nihilism) )

Title: You've Got Time
Fandom: Dolores Claiborne
Music: You've Got Time by Regina Spektor
Characters: Dolores, Selena, Vera, ensemble
Summary: Everything looks different the second time around
Warnings: mind the tags on AO3

Vid is here on AO3

Video #1 Title: MONSTER!
Fandom: The Summer Hikaru Died (2025 Anime)
Genre(s): Character Study, Relationship Study, POV, Angst, Horror, M/M
Song/Artist: Monster by colby! and Shaya Zamora
Software(s): Vegas Pro 14
Characters/Pairings: Yoshiki / Hikaru
Summary: "I can't seem to let you go." (Yoshiki's POV)

Video for: pi (Rhea)
Stream/Download/Notes: Archive of our Own | Tumblr (only streaming vid)


Video #2 Title: Fame is a Gun
Fandom: The Ugly Stepsister (2025 Movie)
Genre(s): Character Study, Relationship Study, POV, Angst, Horror
Song/Artist: Fame is a Gun by Addison Rae
Software(s): Vegas Pro 14
Characters/Pairings: Elvira, Agnus, Prince Julian
Summary: "I got a taste of the glamorous life."

Video for: aguntoaknifefight 
Stream/Download/Notes: Archive of our Own | Tumblr (only streaming vid)

Per my last post, I intended to make two specific dishes for dinner this weekend (panko-crusted pork chops and pasta with sausage and cabbage), and my groceries were ordered with that in mind. Three guesses as to what did not arrive with my order, and the first two don't count. (Spoiler: it was the sausage and the pork chops.)

Sigh.

I gave up on today and just ordered pizza, and I think tomorrow I will pivot to mac and cheese because I have all the ingredients for that without having to do a second grocery delivery.

This afternoon, I baked an apple-cranberry crumble since I had 2 apples I hadn't eaten yet and all those cranberries hanging around. Instead of walnuts, I used pecans and instead of raisins I used chocolate chips, and I used maple sugar over the fruit instead of regular, and it smells fantastic. I can't wait to cut into it. I might need to make some whipped cream to eat with it.

The wind is whipping around like crazy and it's supposed to be super extra cold tomorrow, so I hope everyone is safe and warm, wherever you are.

*

1. What did you want to be when you were a kid?

A kid. Really.

2. What is your proudest accomplishment so far?

I've lived long enough that surely there could be more than one? Perhaps it's knowing when not to respond directly to this question, which invites humblebrags.

3. What is your dream job?

Something lower stress than my previous jobs.

4. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I've always found this question (common in certain kinds of interview) to say more about the asker than the answerer. It's bullshit. Ten years before I passed my PhD quals, I had no idea I would apply to grad schools. Ten years before I was part of a team that published an award-winning scholarly bestseller, I had no idea I would work as libstaff. Those were good things to do, but I didn't plan for them.

5. What does it take to make you happy?

Accidental inversions or juxtapositions, and bits of space for contemplation. When I'm very busy, it's harder to notice anything---a thing I noticed after I began protecting time during grad school to take walks and look at random plants.

I knew Prue Leith left GBBO, but I just learned that Nigella Lawson is replacing her for this year's show! I am intrigued! (Note: I still haven't watched the most recent series - I usually save it for my summer vacation.)

I am also considering if I want to try to bake something new this weekend, or just more orange cranberry scones, so my giant bag of cranberries in the freezer slowly gets smaller. I do have plans to try a new pasta recipe and maybe some panko-crusted pork chops, but I hadn't really thought about a baking project. I will have to think on it now.

In work news, some of the stuff I was concerned about yesterday got done, finally, so I feel so much better. I still have to write my stupid review of Assistant J though. I've been putting it off but I can't put it off any longer. Ugh. Such a stupid process.

*

I could talk about how exhausting work is, not for any big thing but just because a regular project of mine has taken about twice as long as usual for a variety of reasons, but I am very close to it being done. I mean, will there be changes? Yes, but just getting it all down and confirmed will be a huge weight off my shoulders. Also, there's other stuff that makes me tired, but that is above my pay grade, even if I've got the new CEO calling me to talk it over(!!!).

In other news, I knew Panarin was going, and though I'm not thrilled about the return (I dislike Drury a lot as GM, but it is what it is while Dolan is in charge), I'm glad he's not in Florida. I don't want him in the east at all, so I can avoid seeing him on another team. (It helped with Kreider, too.)

Anyway, what I really want to talk about is the new episode of The Muppet Show that aired tonight. If you are a fan of the original, without spoilers let me say I recommend watching it. Hopefully it does well enough that they make more, because I thought it was 100% in the spirit of the original, unlike some of the more recent projects they've done.

( spoilers )

So that definitely lifted my spirits and I hope you give it a watch and it lifts yours!

*

Hi all!

I'm doing some minor operational work tonight. It should be transparent, but there's always a chance that something goes wrong. The main thing I'm touching is testing a replacement for Apache2 (our web server software) in one area of the site.

Thank you!

A few weeks ago, I began modifying a slipover/vest/sleeveless pullover pattern. Despite modification, the first try had too loose a neckline and narrow over-the-shoulder segments, and its stitches were a bit uneven. I nixed it when there was enough of it to put my head through. The pattern has strict raglan increases resulting in a 45-deg line on the back. I've tilted it to about 30 deg, which has led to revising the front and over-the-shoulder segments as well.

For the second try, I went down a needle size (from 3.5 mm to 3.25 mm needles), and I knitted enough of the body segment to try on the WIP with minimal armholes, 2 cm below joining them. The armholes were good. The rest was still not right, but closer: the yoke area was too snug for a second layer, especially across the semi-raglan line on the upper back. This is meant to go over a T-shirt.

With the third try, heh, I've kept the needle size but cast on for the upper back with a shorter circular cable, 16" = 41 cm instead of 40" = 102 cm. My hands are clumsier with the shorter circ, which has kept the semi-raglan increases a bit looser. :) I've also lengthened the back yoke a bit, which lets me subtract some of the short rows that my second try had added over the shoulders. So far, this version is only an upper back. It's about to start consuming the second try's yarn.

So, like, I've been knitting the same almost two skeins of yarn for the past month, and it's fine. There's also a few cm of hat, mostly brim.

Meanwhile, I'm still browsing for hood patterns. Avely looks interesting as a way of splitting head fit and depth from the shawl-ends.