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✭ 13 Batfamily
✭ 2 Percy Jackson crossovers
✭
I'm not sure why I went looking for PJO crossovers but I'm kind of glad I did?
Anyway, I took today and Thursday off and I'm looking forward to this 2 day work week. *g*
✭
- Music:Texarkana - REM
- Mood:
okay
previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.
Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
We're having to rebuild the search server again (Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
BUT -- don't reload from a save unless you actually die or otherwise hit a "game over."
This game is about failing, and it rewards you for playing forwards through failure. Some of the best moments in the game come from failed checks. There are always alternative routes and ways forwards. If you tried to savescum it, you would miss most of the game and all of the point. Embrace failure.
* You can just pick one of the Archetypes for a starter build, and leave messing around with custom character creation until you've seen the stats in action and understand how the system works. Don't stress about it. Or, if you want, you can throw yourself into custom character creation despite not having a clue how it works, and you will also have a fun time. Your initial build and your later choices about what you put points into will radically change your experience of the game, but you can't do it "wrong"; there are no optimal builds which are "better".
* Press tab to highlight objects you can interact with, or activate "detective mode" in the settings to do it automatically. Yes I know this is the sort of thing that is probably obvious to people who have played video games before.
* If your Health or Morale (displayed on the lower left of the screen) fall to zero, you have about 5 seconds to apply a healing item (if you have one) by clicking the cross above that stat.
This is the one timed element in the game, and also the one mechanic that some of us initially have trouble grasping.
With all the other mechanics in the game, you can not only learn them by flinging yourself in and floundering about, this is IMHO the best and most enjoyable way to learn them. No idea what the Thought Cabinet is or what Internalizing A Thought means? Try it and find out!
* Perhaps the most important tip of all:
If you feel you are flailing around and failing on most of the checks you try and you've just been informed you have acquired a Thought you can internalize in your Thought Cabinet and you have no clue what that means or maybe you just had a heart attack and died before you even got out of your hotel room or you had a nervous breakdown because a child insulted you and you have no idea what you're doing and it's been three days and you still haven't got the body down from the tree --
THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME "BADLY". THIS IS IN FACT THE UNIVERSAL DISCO ELYSIUM EXPERIENCE AND MEANS YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME CORRECTLY. WELL DONE.
So I watched season 4 of The Bear.
- Mood:
satisfied
- Music:The Mets losing again
( Spoilers could make an Iron Suit in a cave, but would need the cash to be brought to the cave first )
- Location:Sylt
- Mood:
pensive
Play Disco Elysium, everybody. Yes, even if you don't play video games.
(It was the first video game I ever played -- apart from having once(?) played Pac Man as a child, many many decades ago -- and it was a perfect choice.)
If you understand the principle of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, have a vague sense that "stats" and "levelling up" are things, and can grasp "click to go to a place/interact with an object," you are sufficiently equipped.
ETA: Okay, I will add in
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It's definitely not for everybody. I mean, for one thing, it gets pretty much all the trigger warnings for everything. Alcoholism and substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, discussions of sexual assault, gore (not visual, but some of the descriptions are very vivid), you name it. A number of characters are giant racists. (Towards fictional races/ethnicities, mind you, but it's still ugly.) Evil children will hurl homophobic slurs at you. That sort of thing. And whatever your politics, the game will try very hard to make you feel uncomfortable about them.
no good, very bad thing: for the first time ever, I carefully concealed my Star of David scrunchie to do an interview in case it became a distraction. I try hard not to self-censor, but ...
My brain: don't go chasing breaking balls, stick to the sliders and the fastballs you're used to
*facepalm*
*
- Music:Mets post game show
- Mood:
dorky
( You who are so good with words and at keeping things vague )
All in all: good, very good, though not great. But it’s the first film in a while where I absolutely want to have the soundtrack.
- Mood:
contemplative
- Location:On the train
https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/25/trans-westminster-lobby-ehrc/
The organizers are estimating circa 900 people showed up, putting it on a par with the biggest LGBTQ+ lobbies ever (against Section 28).
Outstanding work from the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, who also organized the legal briefing for MPs in May:
https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/trans-legal-experts-warn-supreme-court-ruling-could-be-breaching-human-rights-in-parliamentary-briefing-483801/
You can support them and get the "Maybe I'm trans?" badges or just support them without badges:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/maybe-im-trans
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/solidarity-projects-campaigns-fund
The organizers are estimating circa 900 people showed up, putting it on a par with the biggest LGBTQ+ lobbies ever (against Section 28).
Outstanding work from the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, who also organized the legal briefing for MPs in May:
https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/trans-legal-experts-warn-supreme-court-ruling-could-be-breaching-human-rights-in-parliamentary-briefing-483801/
You can support them and get the "Maybe I'm trans?" badges or just support them without badges:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/maybe-im-trans
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/solidarity-projects-campaigns-fund
*
- Mood:
nerdy
- Music:Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard - Paul Simon
*
- Music:Mets losing to Altanta sigh
- Mood:
hot
Lille Kolding has become the first knitting project for which I haven't minded a preponderance of variations upon 1x1 ribbing. The current section is part ribbing and part brioche; the latter is sort of ribbing with tuck stitches. Most likely, the project benefits from being knitted only amidst waiting (not daily).
The blanket project sat quietly in a bag from Dec 2024 till May 2025 while its boredom factor receded. It's become my main knitting at home. At 200+ g (close to half a pound), it's too bulky to be carried around on its 60" = 152 cm circular needle, and it's easier on my hands alongside notetaking for classes than most other yarn-centric options would be. I'd like to finish it while the weather is warm, so that it actually dries after its initial wash.
Shortly before the blanket project went on hold, I began and paused a different multi-hue project. It seems that my brain can keep only one colorful project in working memory at a time---and the blanket will be completed; the other project's yarn will be repurposed. It's a positive outcome, regardless: I began the now-repurposed thing because I'd thought that I couldn't knit blankets. It was to be scarf-sized.
In work news, after a while where I thought I might have to spend tonight baking cupcakes to bring to my board meeting tomorrow, I do not. Whew. I would have done it! But luckily someone else was like, "lol no, I'm buying a cake!" so whew. 😅 But this is the kind of last minute, half-assed nonsense our C suite does. If they had told me last week, I could have added a cake to our catering order, but nope! (Meanwhile, my boss: "Now I'm disappointed we don't get your cupcakes!" Me: "maybe next time I come to the office...")
*
- Music:Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon & Garfunkel
- Mood:
amused
Gregg Mitman, Empire of Rubber: Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia: Interesting story of imperialist ambition and forced labor in a place marked by previous American intervention; a little too focused on reminding the reader that the author knows that the views he’s explaining/quoting are super racist, but still informative.
Alexandra Edwards, Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom: ( fun read )
Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins: Wide-ranging argument that claims about prehistory are always distorted and distorting mirrors of the present, shaped by current obsessions. (Obligatory Beforeigners prompt: that show does a great job of sending up our expectations about people from the past.) This includes considering some groups more “primitive” than others, and seeing migrants as a “flood” of undifferentiated humanity. One really interesting example: Depictions of Neandertals used to show them as both brown and expressionless; then they got expressions at the same time they got whiteness, and their disappearance became warnings about white genocide from another set of African invaders.
J.C. Sharman, Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World: Challenges the common narratives of European military superiority in the early modern world (as opposed to by the 19th century, where there really was an advantage)—guns weren’t very good and the Europeans didn’t bring very many to their fights outside of Europe. Likewise, the supposed advantages of military drill were largely not present in the Europeans who did go outside Europe, often as privately funded ventures. Europeans dominated the seas, but Asian and African empires were powerful on land and basically didn’t care very much; Europeans often retreated or relied on allies who exploited them right back. An interesting read. More generally, argues that it’s often hard-to-impossible for leaders to figure out “what worked” in the context of state action; many states that lose wars and are otherwise dysfunctional nevertheless survive a really long time (see, e.g., the current US), while “good” choices are no guarantee of success. In Africa, many people believed in “bulletproofing” spells through the 20th century; when such spells failed, it was because (they said) of failures by the user, like inchastity, or the stronger magic of opponents. And our own beliefs about the sources of success are just as motivated.
Emily Tamkin, Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities: There are a lot of ways to be an American Jew. That’s really the book.
Roland Barthes, Mythologies (tr. Annette Lavers & Richard Howard): A bunch of close readings of various French cultural objects, from wrestling to a controversy over whether a young girl really wrote a book of poetry. Now the method is commonplace, but Barthes was a major reason why.
Robert Gerwarth, November 1918: The German Revolution: Mostly we think about how the Weimar Republic ended, but this book is about how it began and why leftists/democratic Germans thought there was some hope. Also a nice reminder that thinking about Germans as “rule-followers” is not all that helpful in explaining large historical events, since they did overthrow their governments and also engaged in plenty of extralegal violence.
Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York: Mostly about La Guardia, whose progressive commitments made him a Republican in the Tammany Hall era, and who allied with FDR to promote progressivism around the country. He led a NYC that generated a huge percentage of the country’s wealth but also had a solid middle class, and during the Great Depression used government funds to do big things (and small ones) in a way we haven’t really seen since.
Charan Ranganath, Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters: Accessible overview of what we know about memory, including the power of place, chunking information, and music and other mnemonics. Also, testing yourself is better than just rereading information—learning through mistakes is a more durable way of learning.
Cynthia Enloe, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War: War does things specifically to women, including the added unpaid labor to keep the home fires burning, while “even patriotic men won’t fight for nothing.” Women farmers who lack formal title to land are especially vulnerable. Women are often told that their concerns need to wait to defeat the bad guys—for example, Algerian women insurgents “internalized three mutually reinforcing gendered beliefs handed down by the male leaders: first, the solidarity that was necessary to defeat the French required unbroken discipline; second, protesting any intra-movement gender unfairness only bolstered the colonial oppressors and thus was a betrayal of the liberationist cause; third, women who willingly fulfilled their feminized assigned wartime gendered roles were laying the foundation for a post-colonial nation that would be authentically Algerian.” And, surprise, things didn’t get better in the post-colonial nation. Quoting Marie-Aimée Hélie-Lucas: “Defending women’s rights ‘now’ – this now being any historical moment – is always a betrayal of the people, of the revolution, of Islam, of national identity, of cultural roots . . .”
Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: American history retold from a Native perspective, where interactions with/fears of Indians led to many of the most consequential decisions, and Native lands were used to solve (and create) conflicts among white settlers.
Sophie Gilbert, Girl on Girl : How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves: ( Read more... )
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message: Short but not very worthwhile book about Coates navel-gazing and then traveling to Israel and seeing that Palestinians are subject to apartheid.
Thomas Hager, Electric City: The Lost History of Ford and Edison’s American Utopia: While he was being a Nazi, Ford was also trying to take over Muscle Shoals for a dam that would make electricity for another huge factory/town. This is the story of how he failed because a Senator didn’t want to privatize this public resource.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World: What is the role of records in imperialism? Under what circumstances do imperialists rely on records that purport to be about the colonized people, versus not needing to do so? Often their choices were based on inter-imperialist conflicts—sometimes the East India Company benefited from saying it was relying on Indian laws, and sometimes London wanted different things.
Thomas C. Schelling The Strategy of Conflict: Sometimes when you read a classic, it doesn’t offer much because its insights have been the building blocks for what came after. So too here—if you know any game theory, then very little here will be new (and there’s a lot of math) but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t vital. Also notable: we’ve come around again to deterring (or not) the Russians.
YouTube channel by a guy named Elliot Roberts whose reviews of all things Beatles as well as of musical biopics of other folk I can hearitly recommend for their enthusiasm (or scorn, cough, Bohemian Raphsody, cough), wit and charm - , or consuming media that is very much connected to Current Events. For example: about two weeks ago there was a fascinating event here in Munich where an Israeli author, Yishai Sarid, who is currently teaching Hebrew Literature at Munich University was introduced via both readings from several of his novels, many, though not all of which are translated into German, and via conversations. While the excerpts of already published novels (and the conversations around them) certainly were captivating, and led me to reading one of them, Limassol, which is a well written Le Carréan thriller in the Israel of 2009 (when it was published) context), the novel he talked about which I was most curious about hasn't been translated into German yet, though it has been translated into English: The Third Temple.
This was was originally published in 2015 and evidently has been translated into English in 2024, with an afterword by Yishai Saraid in which he basically says "people thought I was kidding or writing sci fi in 2015. I wish. I could see where this is going then, and now you can, too". If I tell you that a reviewer back in the day according to google described the novel as "if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child", you may guess what it's about. I will say that if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child, I wouild expect it to be a female rather than a male narrator, but yeah, other than this. ( A spoilery review ensues. )
Real Life (not mine, personally, mine is just very busy) in terms of global politics being a continued horrorshow, I find myself dealing with it in vastly different ways in terms of fandom - either reading/watching/listening to things (almost) entirely unconnected - for example, this This was was originally published in 2015 and evidently has been translated into English in 2024, with an afterword by Yishai Saraid in which he basically says "people thought I was kidding or writing sci fi in 2015. I wish. I could see where this is going then, and now you can, too". If I tell you that a reviewer back in the day according to google described the novel as "if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child", you may guess what it's about. I will say that if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child, I wouild expect it to be a female rather than a male narrator, but yeah, other than this. ( A spoilery review ensues. )
- Location:Munich
- Mood:
indescribable
I did nope out of the extra steps of making chicken parm, though. No need to put the oven on again - I did enough of that yesterday when I baked chocolate banana bread and then made bacon for lunch for several days during the week. I just need to get through Tuesday - our only in-person board meeting this year and gosh, I wish we had talked the CEO out of it since it's supposed to be 97°F on Tuesday, but we did not. Hopefully people show up! (if they don't, that can be the argument against doing it again, at least until we get a new CEO. Their poor showing last September let us convince everyone that we only needed to do it once this year.) And I am meeting Friend L for dinner afterwards, so that should be fun! Next week I have a 3-day work week and then 2 weeks after that, I'm off for a whole week for my birthday week, so really, it's just getting through Tuesday. *deep breaths*
I did not watch the Mets last night and they mashed, so I decided not to watch them again tonight (also ESPN is the worst), which seems like the right decision, since they are being soundly beaten, at least so far. Sigh. I know it's a long season, but couldn't they have saved some of those runs for tonight?
Sigh.
*
- Music:Sliver - Nirvana
- Mood:
anxious
*
- Mood:
morose
- Music:Second Hand News - Fleetwood Mac
( self-obsessed in the apocalypse )
Stephen King, Never Flinch:( Holly Gibney )
Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: ( piracy and magic )
Olivie Blake, Gifted and Talented: ( for fans of Succession )
Ai Jiang, A Palace Near the Wind: Natural Engines: ( marriage and conquest )
John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye: ( moon made of cheese )
M. L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven: ( white women's guilt )
Emily Tesh, The Incandescent: ( magic school administrator! )
Sarah Langan, Pam Kowolski Is a Monster!:
Stephen King, Never Flinch:( Holly Gibney )
Shannon Chakraborty, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi: ( piracy and magic )
Olivie Blake, Gifted and Talented: ( for fans of Succession )
Ai Jiang, A Palace Near the Wind: Natural Engines: ( marriage and conquest )
John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye: ( moon made of cheese )
M. L. Wang, Blood Over Bright Haven: ( white women's guilt )
Emily Tesh, The Incandescent: ( magic school administrator! )