hannah | Reading

I picked up my bicycle yesterday!

On

ringthebells's wise advice, I had them show me how to lube the chain and pump up the tires. (not that I own chain oil or a pump, but in principle I am prepared!) They installed a locking kickstand (fancy!) and threw in a rear-view mirror, which they mounted on the left handlebar and which I didn't think I'd have the spare attention to look into for days, as I concentrated on figuring out how to ride a bike again after fifty years, but I was certainly glad to have it. I wobble-rode around the local parking lot a bit to get the hang of it and then headed home! I felt secure enough to ride it on some of the deserted residential streets, but got off and walked it whenever there was traffic or I just felt insecure. (Every now and then I have to swerve a bit to keep my balance, which is not a thing to do if there are cars around.)

And today I rode and walked it into downtown again, to a community festival going on this weekend that provides a secure bike valet service. And I already feel more secure and stable (which is not to say that I'm not still occasionally wobbling, or jumping off in a hurry, and definitely am still walking it whenever anyone or anything else might be moving anywhere near me) -- and checking the mirror is already almost second nature! I think forty years of driving a car helps with that. I have the theory of how to shift pretty well down, too; this bike has three gears in front and five in back, which feels like massive overkill for my needs, and all the riding I've done so far has been on the level, but I've tried changing gears a few times just to get used to how to do it.

I traded my bike for a claim check and wandered around the community festival; and then I wandered through the big main-street commercial festival that's also going on; and then a friend texted me to find out if I was nearby and I connected with them and we wandered back through the community festival so they could check their bike as well, and then through the weekly farmers&crafters market, and then through the National Indigenous Peoples Day festival -- there was a lot going on in my city today! And then we went back and reclaimed our bikes and said goodbye and I biked-and-walked home, and now I'm exhausted from four hours in the midday sun but I still have a bunch of stuff to do before I leave tomorrow morning for eight days, oof. (Vacation with my in-laws. I do like my in-laws, but still -- oof.)

But it feels ~~slightly scary and also~~ good to be back on a bike after all this time! And my goodness but that is faster than walking. A very different kind of muscular effort, as well.

petra

seascribble recommended a brilliant Murderbot series, shamoosh's sandbox environment, in which ART and Murderbot have all the Romantic feelings about each other. I got partway through it, flailing at the author and Sea the whole time, till I ran into:

My code didn’t literally hide me from ART’s sensors, not the way I edited myself out of security footage and erased my trail in lesser systems. ART was too complicated and too powerful for that to work for long. Instead I’d gotten my drones to emit basically white noise for all of ART’s sensors. It knew where I was because that was obvious, but everything else was just junk data, erratic nonsense. It didn’t need to be convincing, it just needed to not be—whatever I was feeling/doing at the time. My code had worked perfectly. Maybe too perfectly.

And then I started singing Jonathan Coulton's Shop Vac song (animated text video | lyrics).

Sea: There’s a vid there

Petra Lemaitre: I -- ack.
I'm not sure I WANT that song vidded for any fandom

Sea: It’s so catchy. It’s giving Obikin au

Petra Lemaitre: oh nooooo

Sea: Or honestly for the Anakin/padmé shippers who aren’t delusional
It’s very apt.

Petra Lemaitre: wails It's such a good awful song and now I have lightsabers = shop vac in my head
Padmé is watching the TV (democracy dying to thunderous applause)

Sea: RIPPPPP
I think it would also be a fun Perrin and Mon Mothma vid but you’d have to cut out a verse I think because of limited footage

And Sea suggested that, in lieu of the zillion brand names Star Wars can't be arsed to invent, we can ~~steal~~ borrow with permission the off-brands around us. Canada has its Aggressively Generic Stuff. Iran has its StarBox. Look around you: what a world of wonders!

Current Mood: inspired
Current Music: You can cry and I probably won't hear you

theladyscribe

This is a re-post with edits of my bluesky thread about the greatest Hong Kong movie I have seen to date, Into the Fire (1989), AKA Fire Street, AKA 烈火街頭, directed by Lo Kin and produced by the great Sammo Hung. It is extremely obscure, so see below for links, including the only version of it I've been able to find online (sadly dubbed in Mandarin rather than the original Cantonese).

MyDramaList | LetterBoxd | IMDb | YouTube

( Original Bluesky thread below the cut! )

***

If this interests you at all, I highly encourage you to check out the version on YouTube! Word on the street is that it might also be available on the high seas, but I haven't been able to independently verify that. This movie is on my rarepairs list, and I've got it flagged as a potential nominee for Yuletide. It's truly got everything one could ever want in a tiny fandom: a central slash ship, potential for a M/M/F threesome, the above-mentioned fake-out make-out and handcuffed together scenarios, a desperate us-against-the-world dynamic, and endless potential for hurt/comfort.

dine

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settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: sleepy

snickfic

Masters of Horror: Cigarette Burns. In John Carpenter's episode of the horror anthology series, a guy (Norman Reedus) who finds rare movie prints is hired to find one that may no longer exist after horrific violence broke out on the night it was shown. I love stories about haunted media, and the haunted media parts of this were solid. Unlike Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made, this mostly resisted the temptation of actually showing us the cursed movie, but the effects as our guy gets closer to finding it are satisfyingly disturbing. It even gets pretty gory towards the end, which I was not expecting.

That said, it's weirdly paced and very talky, and the main character should have been played by someone older, because Norman Reedus with his baby face absolutely cannot sell this role. Also, IMO it really mishandled the reveal ( spoilers )

--

Sator (2021). A man lives in a cabin in the woods while trying to discover what happened to his mother, who may have been taken by a demon that she and her mother both claimed to hear messages from. This movie doesn't have much dialogue, is very poorly lit, and relies heavily on the viewer being able to recognize and distinguish faces to distinguish what's happening, which I'm pretty bad at, so overall I understood only the broadest strokes of this movie. I think I would really like the movie that I think it was trying to be, a story of an inherited gift/curse and how it affects and has affected different members of the family, but I need a bit more than this movie could give me.

In particular,
( spoilery questions )

I will say the spooky woodsy vibes were very good, and despite being objectively pretty slow, I was engaged the whole time. Also, the actress playing the grandma with dementia was fantastic. Loved her.

Overall I don't recommend this one, but if you watch it, I would love to know what you think happens in it.

hannah

With Escapade panels going live this Solstice, it gives me room to plan about planning - I've made sure I don't have anything scheduled for this coming Wednesday, for example, so I expect that's when most of it's going to be happening. I'm hosting the Andor panel, so I'll start going through a few Tumblr and Dreamwidth accounts for meta posts, collecting conversation starters, and ask for help making slides if need be.

Much as I'm not looking forward to Tuesday, I'm very much looking forward to Tuesday night and having survived it. Hopefully it'll only be a long day in terms of hours.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: nothing now

musesfool

ugh the Mets are killing me. I had to turn it off.

*

Current Mood: morose
Current Music: Second Hand News - Fleetwood Mac

kingstoken

Guys I have to share this Granada's Holmes/Watson vid I came across, its is such gentle, lovely encapsulation between Brett's Holmes and Hardwicke's Watson. It really shows how comfortable they are around each other.

Watch on YouTube

rivkat

Sarah Langan, Pam Kowolski Is a Monster!: ( 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! )

rachelmanija

While on a commercial expedition, an unexpected accident causes Mai, an engineer, and Juna, an HR person, to crash-land on a pitch-black planet called Shroud. They can't get out of their escape pod because the air is corrosive and unbreathable, and they can't call for help. Their only hope is to use the pod's walker system to trek all the way across the planet... which turns out to be absolutely teeming with extremely weird life, none of which can see, all of which communicates via electromagnetic signals, most of which constructs exoskeletons for itself with organic materials, and some of which is extremely large.

As readers, we learn very early on that at least some of the life on Shroud is intelligent. But Juna and Mai don't know that, the intelligent Shroud beings don't know that humans are intelligent, and human and Shroud life is so different that it makes perfect sense that they can't tell. As Juna and Mai make their probably-doomed expedition across Shroud, they're accompanied by curious Shroud beings, frequently attacked by other Shroud creatures, face some of the most daunting terrain imaginable, and slowly begin to learn the truth about Shroud. But even if they succeed in rescuing themselves, the predatory capitalist company that sent them on their expedition on the first place is determined to strip Shroud for materials, and doesn't care if its indigenous life is intelligent or not.

This is possibly the best first contact novel I've ever read. It's the flip side of Alien Clay, which was 70% depressing capitalist dystopia and 30% cool aliens. Shroud is 10% depressing capitalist dystopia and 90% cool aliens - or rather, 90% cool aliens and humans interacting with cool aliens. It's a marvelous alien travelogue, it has so many jaw-dropping moments, and it's very thematically unified and neatly plotted. The climax is absolutely killer.

The characterization is sketchy but sufficient. The ending is a little abrupt, but you can easily extrapolate what happens from there, and it's VERY satisfying. As far as I know this is a standalone, but I would certainly enjoy a sequel if Tchaikovsky decided to write one.

My absolute favorite moment, which was something you can only do in science fiction, is a great big spoiler. ( Read more... )

conuly

Now, I've already told you about the alleys (no alleys in Manhattan) and right on red (none of that either), and now it's time for - garbage.

Since the 1990s it's been the law that residential garbage in NYC has to have the recyclables sorted out. And since this year we also have to separate out the compost, though weirdly they only pick that up once a week, I've complained about this. It's completely backwards.

Anyway, as I said, it's been the law since the 90s that you can't put your cans and bottles in with your regular trash. Do people always follow that law? Oh, heck no. But if you don't and the city catches you at it they'll give you a $300 ticket, and if you don't pay they put a lien on the house. So even if you don't care, your landlord might, and if they care and perhaps only have one tenant at that location you can bet they won't just eat the cost.

And if your protagonist is even minimally conscientious she'll at least glance around for a recycle bin before tossing her water bottle in with the regular trash.

(As a reference here, our terrible neighbors, who have had sanitation and once the fire department called on them multiple times due to the trash they pile up in their yard, still separate out the bottles and cans from the regular trash. Though in their case they may somewhat optimistically believe they'll get around to redeeming them one of these days, honestly, who knows how they think.)

This rant is courtesy of Elsbeth, which Jenn has been watching. Sure, Elsbeth is a snoop and the best way to dispose of several bushels worth of murderous apple pulp was probably to flush it, but all the same - it's weird that such a generally responsible character goes straightaway to throw out her water bottle in the general trash in somebody's house without at least checking that there's no recycle bin.

settiai

For the record, it's definitely possible to get a sunburn in less than ten minutes. As the top of my buzzed head can confirm.

I walked to a nearby shopping center yesterday to run some errands, which is something like a 7-8 minute walk away, and I didn't think anything of it despite it being miserably hot because of the humidity. At least, not until last night, when I realized that I had a noticeable sunburn on my head from that walk.

Oops?

Current Mood: frustrated

seekingferret

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

There has to be a word for the literary technique where you have a section of the book that doesn't work- it's boring, or unsatisfying, or implausible, or mis-paced- but its presence makes a later part of the book land harder. Part IV of Some Desperate Glory doesn't work for me- it asks you to suddenly find empathy for characters it hasn't invested time in developing, it rushes to the action scene and then works through the action scene in a way that is inconsistent with the rest of the book. But then you get back to the characters you care about in Part V and everything is amplified and hits so fucking hard, because of Part IV. It's an incredible ending and a really neat structural achievement.

scrubjayspeaks

“I thought fairy rings were supposed to grow where tree stumps were rotting,” he said, gazing out over the field, “or spots where something dead and buried was decaying.” She looked up from where she had been closely examining a rough line of fruiting bodies, then she guided him over to one edge that gave a better view. She swept her arm out to indicate a long, one might say draconic, curve as of a tail joining a vast body, picked out in assorted mushrooms, and grimly said, “Yes, exactly.”

---

LL#1267

used_songs

I just spent an hour resetting a bunch of passwords. I didn't do them all, but I did all of the email account ones, my bank, apple, etc. The big ones.Which, ugh, now revisiting the Forbes article, I guess I need to do the FB ones as well. YMMV but it's probably a good idea to change your passwords if you haven't already done so.

tielan

I kind of want to request more options for Just Married. But I don't have the time or energy to write a letter. This weekend is non-stop. Tonight I opted out of a movie I kind of wanted to see (Mickey 17 if you were wondering) because I'm just THAT TIRED and wanted time out.

--

I have no idea if these are valid, or behind paywalls or what. They're just articles I've been collecting for a bit.

( various links and whatnot )

--

I mean, I'm happy, but also tired... And I don't really have time to write (or do anything) right now. Partly work, but partly also my life, and partly also *gestures at the world* You know.

--

Have I mentioned that I've managed to grow broccoli in the garden? It's kind of AMAZING.

I don't have a more recent pic of the 'broccoli bed' (the one with the netting on it) where the broccoli are larger-sized. I'll try to take one tomorrow morning.

tsuki_no_bara

hello my flist! my roommate has officially (if not entirely) moved out! by which i mean she left a lot of stuff in the kitchen, i think mostly food, and there's still some stuff in her bedroom and she seems to have left her coats but by and large she's out. she's coming back this weekend to clean (not sure what she expects to clean since i'll still be packing and my shit will be everywhere) and get the rest of her stuff but i now have space! so i can finish packing! so exciting! last weekend my sister and i measured my new place so i even know where everything is going to go. and i can bring my dining room table which is kind of a relief. i'm getting rid of two smaller bookcases - i listed them on facebook marketplace and they went like *that* - theoretically the woman who claimed them will come get them tomorrow - but everything else will fit. i really didn't want to get rid of my dining room table.

today because it was like 90º and we had the day off for juneteenth my sister and i went to ikea while my roommate moved out. we didn't get anything but i looked at new bookcases and coffee tables and my sister looked at armoires and i should have made her wait while i looked at lamps - there's no overhead light in either the living room or my bedroom in the new place - but part of me wants to move in first and then see what i need and where it will fit. ikea was CROWDED. which. well. it was exceptionally hot and a lot of people no doubt had the day off and what else are you going to do when it's brutally hot besides go where there's a/c? right? besides, ikea. :D

and then we went back to her house and had salad for dinner (god bless whole foods and their prepared foods department) and watched the first mission: impossible because last weekend after the measuring we went out for dinner and saw mission: impossible - the final reckoning which went on a bit too long in places but was overall a really good ride. it probably helps to have seen the previous mission: impossibles but i've seen maybe half of them and could still follow along. if it's your thing and you've seen dead reckoning part one i highly recommend it.

and then sunday and the rest of this week i packed around my roommate's shit and sorted kitchen stuff and tried to imagine what it will be like to not have to wait ten minutes for someone to get out of the bathroom when you desperately need to pee. yesterday was the monthly support staff lunch at work and there was hardly anyone there! it's been quiet all week altho to be fair it's the summer and summer is generally quiet.

last wednesday was the admin retreat which is really half a day of professional development (the most useful speakers were the two folks from campus police because they had actual information rather than the kind of vague info we got from the time management guy) (it's important to know who to call in an emergency) and half a day of social stuff. the theme this year was carnival - like carnival side shows like you get with the circus - so the social stuff this year was carnival games and bingo and general hanging out at the boat house. one of the admins a dressed up as a fortune teller and told us our fortunes and mine was that i would see a cute dog. and as we were walking back to the building i saw two - count 'em - cute dogs. this is a future i can totally get behind.

and the weekend before that (so like almost two weeks ago) was family graduations - cousins j&m's twins graduated from high school and while we missed the actual graduation (it was moved inside on account of rain and they didn't have enough seats for all the extended family) we went to the party and then cousin r of j&r got her phd and we went to that party. both parties on saturday! the twins first and then cousin r (whose party was going to be outside but did i mention the rain? torrential. so she moved it inside) and my mom even came up for all the celebrations. my sister had a brunch on sunday for cousins from the other side of the fam and that was fun too and then monday mom went home and my life was consumed with moving again.

and now it's HOT. i finally took the flannel duvet cover off my bed last night. it is the MIDDLE of JUNE. wtf.

in totally other news scientists have actually created the world's smallest violin. no word on whether or not it plays my heart bleeds for you.

was there something else i wanted to tell all you lovely people? i don't remember! us politics are a shitshow and we will not be rehashing them right now and serenity was on tv half an hour ago and i still really like it. resident alien is back and i still really like that. (speaking of things alan tudyk has been in. :D ) and i finally finished the rewatch of andor s1 and am on to s2! i've only seen the first ep tho so don't tell me what happens.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: free guy

conuly

"Square children's book with hex code 03fcdf for the covers"

Why. Just. Why...? Seriously, who thinks that a hex code is a better description than the name of the color in English?

(This time, I wasn't paraphrasing. I usually do, but....)

*****************

( Read more... )

dine

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hannah

June 2025

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Esse Est Percipi

Reading

apparently it's just like riding a bike!

Vids that will never be: It's loud with the shopvac on

Fandom Promo Post: Into the Fire (1989)

it is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them

Pyra Cantha D&D: Summary for 6/20 Game

horror movies and things

Daylight hours.

i know there's nothing to say

Vid Rec: Quiet

Fiction

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

It's time for some NYC-picking!

/o\

(no subject)

Lake Lewisia #1267

Password hell

ponderings

i am a leaf on the wind!

WTF even is this?

youth is a wonderful thing. what a crime to waste it on children

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June 2025

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