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write every day

Write Every Day: Day 29

"…if you have a fear of failure, you’re never going to learn how to cook. Cooking is one failure after another. That’s how you learn. You’ve got to have what the French call ‘Je m’en foutisme’, or ‘I don’t care what happens.’ The sky can fall, and omelettes can go all over the stove… If you’re not going to be ready to fail, you’re not going to learn."

– Julia Child

My day 29: I added 558 words to a WIP. And then the sun was out, so I went for a walk along a shared pedestrian/mountain biking trail through the trees. (Posting this a bit earlier because my sister's coming over for Fringe tonight. :-)

The tally
( Tally )

Day 27:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Day 28:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

china_shop,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

When you check in, please say what day(s) you’re checking in for. You can join in or take a break at any time; you’re always welcome back. And please let me know if I’ve missed you.

Current Mood: busy

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Today's Adventures

We went up to Champaign-Urbana today.

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Current Mood: busy

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Fungi

Before plants or animals, fungi conquered Earth’s surface

Fungi were Earth’s first ecosystem engineers, thriving long before plants ever took root.

Fungi’s evolutionary roots stretch far deeper than once believed — up to 1.4 billion years ago, long before plants or animals appeared. Using advanced molecular dating and gene transfer analysis, researchers reconstructed fungi’s ancient lineage, revealing they were crucial in shaping Earth’s first soils and ecosystems.

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Executive Function Theft

Via

beradan comes an article about the concept of Executive Function Theft:

When thinking about Executive Function Theft in the home or personal relationships, the outcome that cropped up was that of decision fatigue. Does one person in the relationship have to decide what is for dinner every single night, and also to arrange all of the logistics of acquiring the food, preparing it, cleaning up after dinner, deciding what can be saved for leftovers and what needs to go into a lunch box the next day? Is their decision-making ability wholly captured in those tasks while the other person is getting to relax or to plan a project?

Two different pieces of literature came to mind when I was considering EFT in the home. One was a quote from the excellent book Equal Partners by Kate Mangino:

“While his female partner continues to do housework for twenty, twenty-six, thirty-one more hours — he can devote this time to hobbies, relaxation, exercise, hanging out with friends, sleep, work and/or continued education. Essentially, he has the opportunity to do so much more with his life than she does.” — Kate Mangino, Equal Partners, Chapter 1

I felt this dovetailed nicely with a 2008 article from the University of Michigan:

“Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women, according to a University of Michigan study of a nationally representative sample of U.S. families.” (Press Release for the study)

If a woman is doing at least 7 more hours a week of housework –think of all of the decisions that are included in that, and all of the executive function needed for her to complete that housework. What is it that she must remember which needs to be cleaned or ordered or prepared and what is the outcome of her spending that much additional time on the minutiae of the relationship or family?

While reading I immediately thought, sounds a lot like glue work or emotional labor, just one more service people lower down on the totem pole are expected to provide. =(

Yep, the author mentions that later in the article:
I don’t think you can have a conversation about Executive Function Theft without also talking about the mental load and invisible labor and emotional labor. All of these concepts are connected.

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Promptober 2025 Days 18-19: Waking Nightmares and Cold Spots

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Duolingo alternatives

Found an article with suggestions and am noting for future checking-out. This isn't my personal recommendation, but if any of y'all have used these, feel free to comment.

* Drops ("Language Learning Games: Drops"). Mostly vocabulary rather than full sentences. Free accounts limited to 5min/day. Paid upgrade available. Company also has apps for specific languages incl Korean, Tagalog, and others

* Busuu. No time limits for free accounts, at least. Paid upgrades available.

* Memrise. Free plan is more vocab than full sentences. Grammar lessons require paid.

* Babbel. Exclusively paid r/th freemium. Mostly just European languages.

* LingoDeer. Has Asian and European languages - there is also a games app for Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Chinese and German. Mostly paid.

Tuesday, October 28 - Promotion Day

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rave: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst's remarkable reference work, The Elements of Typographic Style, provides a full semester of type history in less than 400 pages. It's not just the book's elegant design nor well-chosen exemplars that so thrilled me I read both the 2nd and 3rd edition, dropping more than 50 stickies along the way. The current edition, version 4.3, is out of print and still focuses exclusively on printed material.

Bringhurst is a poet and translator. That last vocation has brought him into regular contact with non-Latin alphabets, and the Elements of Typographic Style provides the best advice I've ever seen in English regarding how to set type with accents, diacritics, and other "analphabetic characters."

( context: why I care )

( Archived links )

I drafted this review a decade ago, and I still believe it, so it’s a proof of life post.

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October Link List

Very scattered, some references to U.S. Politics.

On the YouTubes (and a Podcast)

Schmowd3r: PI Investigates the Blake Lively "Situation" (3:42h).
Probably not a lot of new information on the Blake Lively piece if you've been following the case, but it's well laid out. The first section is largely about trying to detect bot campaigns, and he has some really interesting thoughts there. Also, he's an entertaining presenter, and am adding him to my subs.

LilShopofAli: Some of y’all still don’t understand desirability and it shows (1:40h).
This is a bit dated as it's about the topic du jour from a couple months ago, but I really like how Ali can take the discussion of the moment and expand it into a video about the wider cultural context. Very well done.

olurinatti: How “This Didn’t Age Well” Destroyed Media Literacy (0:42hr).
Great video about thought-terminating cliches and how they affect the way we talk about media.

ophie-dokie: censorship is coming for you next (& you're cheering it on) (1:02hr).
Can we stop running to cling ~~to mommy's apron~~ the state and demand stuff get cancelled? It's not going to end well.

Search Engine Podcast: A Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet (0:47hr, no transcript?).
If the medium is the message, and the medium is algorithmically-driven short-form video, what messages are we dealing with right now? Thoughts on Gen Z, and the world they're stuck in.

I Failed to Think of a Theme, and Failed, so Random Shit Posted in Order Bookmarked:
Kyrianna: Portraits.
Surrealist watercolour portraits of people with disabilities, manifesting symptoms of pain and restriction on their bodies. Really beautiful and affecting.

The Tyee: Unifor Undaunted as Amazon Ramps Up Its Anti-Union Fight.
"A union leader says newly certified workers are keen despite the company’s legal counteroffensive."

Tom's Guide: How to disable Copilot in Windows 11.
This was quite easy, and I wish I'd done it months ago.

TGEU: International Day of Action for Trans Depathologisation 2025.
I thought the demand list was really well laid out. These folks are doing such important work.

Spitfire News: Survivors deserve better storytelling.
A call to improve how journalists and content creators talk about violence and abuse. There's an open letter linked, and Kat also helped set up

survivorstoriesdeservebetter.

CBC: 'A healing event': Heiltsuk doctor performs rare delivery of Heiltsuk baby in own homelands.
An early labour in Bella Bella, B.C., where the hospital isn't equipped to deliver babies, had a happy ending.

The AV Club: Spotify stands by ICE recruitment ads despite artist backlash.
A growing number of artists have boycotted the service over its founder's investment in military AI.

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2025 Requests + How and Where to Post fics + Author Question Update

All Yuletide requests are now visible:
-at karanguni's app
-at the Yuletide 2025 collection on AO3
-in a spreadsheet
-in a text doc

Please check back later for pinch hitter prompts.

Enjoy!

Both the main Yuletide 2025 collection and the Yuletide Madness 2025 collection are open for posting works. Before posting your assignment, or posting a treat to either collection, please read the notes below.

( Posting, and to Which Collection )

Bonus!! Decoy questions/author questions

A few weeks ago, we made a post about the questions we send to recipients when authors need to clarify something about their recipients' preferences.

As a result of that poll, in a situation where an author has a fandom-specific question, we will now send questions for at least 3 fandoms in a person's requests, but will not generally make up extra/decoy questions for their full set of fandoms.

You suggested that curious authors could make up (some of) their own extra questions. While that could be helpful - if you want to - we ask you to keep the following things in mind.

Clear questions are the best questions. Several times in the past we've received extremely confusing questions and it turned out a participant thought they needed to disguise what they were asking from the mods. Please do not.

Avoid excessive detail, especially about plots you don't plan to write. Don't ask your recipient "Would you be interested in a story where they time-travel to meet five different generations of their ancestors, and also there are capybara zombies?" unless you are contemplating such a plot (and maybe not even then) - because you may make your recipient hopeful about something that won't arrive.

Avoid being disingenuous about things that are actually clear to you. Try to ask about points of reasonable ambiguity. If you ask your recipient things like "You said you don't want any mention of hospitals, but is it okay if a character has a headache?" you could stress them out by making them wonder if they need to re-write their DNWs, or by making them wonder if you have wildly misinterpreted other parts of their requests. Decoy questions require a little creativity… but not too much. Save most of your creativity for the actual writing.

And again - you are not obliged to provide decoy questions! If you need to ask your recipient something, all we need from you is: 1) what information you need, and 2) who you are. That's great! We can take care of the rest.

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actresses

15 Actresses Icons

[5] Daisy Ridley
[5] Ella Purnell
[5] Margot Robbie

Preview:

View all the icons here.

Current Mood: busy

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Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy and cool.

I haven't fed the birds yet, but we heard a great horned owl hoo-hooing out in our yard! :D That's awesome. I don't think we've had one since a few years back when an owl and several crows fought over the yard for the whole summer.

EDIT 10/28/25 -- I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, possibly goldfinches.

I put out water for the birds.

It's spitting rain.

Current Mood: busy

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Crafts

Unraveling the Drama Between Hank Green and the Knitting Community

Hank Green has been a knotty boy. One of the latest episodes of his YouTube show, SciShow, is all about knitting and how science is elevating the lowly craft to a place of actual importance. You know who finds that take distasteful? Knitters.

( Read more... )

I don't pray...

... but I'm sending all the good-luck thoughts I can to those in Jamaica.

Hurricane Melissa is now in the top five strongest storms ever in the Atlantic, with central pressure at 896mb and sustained winds over 180, with a record measured gust of 241mph.

This is basically an F-4 tornado many miles wide surrounded by F-3 tornado winds for a long, long ways. It will be dumping more than five FEET of rain on some parts of Jamaica over the next couple days.

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Five Random Things makes a Post

I don’t know how British Petroleum stays in business, they’re always the most expensive gas stations in the area. Gas in Lowell is well under $3.00 a gallon and has been for a while now. The local Gulf station was at $2.77 the last time I drove by. But when I was in Methuen on Saturday one BP station was at $3.33 and the other was at $3.69! Almost a dollar more than in Lowell!

*****

DiGiorno seems to have decided that they can save money by putting one less slice of pepperoni on their personal supreme pizzas. The last two I have bought have had only four pepperoni instead of the usual five slices. *sad face*

*****

I finally caved in and turned on the heat Saturday night. The house was down to 62 degrees, and we aren’t supposed to get temps above 60F at all this week. So I figured it was just going to get colder (we got down into the low 30s Saturday night). So time to turn the heat on.

*****

My sister was visiting my parents last week, and she sent me a bunch of pictures of my little brother Benne the Bengal cat. He’s so freaking cute. I just wish he was a little more cuddly with my parents. They both would love for him to be a lap cat. But he’s not. =(

*****

I had a fifth thing in mind when I was going to bed last night. Can I think of it this morning? No.
As you can see, not a whole lot post-worthy going on right now. Well, that’s not true, I have a couple of recent road trips and adventures to write up. But that’s going to have to wait until I have more time to write. =P Anywhoo, here’s a short post, as proof of life.

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Prunella Scales

Very sad to hear that Prunella Scales has died. A wonderful actress, but most of all Martin and I enjoyed her charming canal trip programmes with husband Timothy West. I'm downloading (on demand in the UK) some of her past canal trips to rewatch, including the Leeds & Liverpool canal and Venice.

Current Mood: calm

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Drawtober 2025 Prompt 28. Bridge of Stars

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write every day

Write Every Day: Day 28

You've got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself. You shouldn't feel safe. You should feel, "I don't know if I can write this." That's what I mean by dangerous, and I think that's a good thing to do. Sacrifice something safe.
– Stephen Sondheim

My day 28: Still taking it easy-ish. I spent writers' hour and some of the morning writing meta comments, so that's my writing for the day. And then I tried out some Youtube how-to-art videos for kids (results), and now I'm going to rest. Hoping to get some actual fic-writing in tomorrow. 🤞🤞

The tally
( Tally )

Day 26:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 27:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

china_shop,

cmk418,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

Current Mood: busy

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Science

Hidden 5-mile wide asteroid crater beneath the Atlantic revealed in stunning 3D

A massive crater hidden beneath the Atlantic seafloor has been confirmed as the result of an asteroid strike from 66 million years ago. The new 3D seismic data reveals astonishing details about the violent minutes following impact—towering tsunamis, liquefied rock, and shifting seabeds. Researchers call it a once-in-a-lifetime look at how oceanic impacts unfold.

Current Mood: busy

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Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, November 4, 2025

This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, November 4, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Fairies and Fey." I'll be soliciting ideas for fairies, seelie or unseelie sidhe, the Wild Hunt, elves, other types of fey, Radical Faeries, other queers, tricksters, contraries, rebels, adventurers, mentors, historians, explorers, magic users, partners, teachers, leaders, dark lords, superheroes, supervillains, teammates, fantasy species, activists, other unusual fantasy folk, doing magic, doing things backwards, causing mischief, breaking rules, caring for the land, exploring new territory, meeting new species, upsetting predictions, twisting tropes, flipping stereotypes, expecting the unexpected, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, adapting, improvising, troubleshooting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, testing boundaries, coming of age, coming out, running away from home, going off the rails, subverting fate, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, other fantastic activities, Underhill, faery rings, the forest primeval, underwater, underground, liminal zones, castles, ruins, dungeons, dragon lairs, schools, kitchens, campfires, libraries, apothecary shops, supervillain lairs, makerspaces, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other phantasmagoric settings, faerie magic, unusual magical systems, magical artifacts, enchanted musical instruments or weapons, quests, time periods other than medieval, governments other than monarchy, dragons, unicorns, enchantments, potions, reversals, contradictions, conundrums, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, fey time distortions, time travel, travel mishaps, the buck stops here, trial and error, polarity, weird food, secret ingredients, supplements that turn out to be metagenic, intercultural entanglements, asking for help and getting it, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Adventures of Aldornia and Zenobia is about live happy lesbians in a quirky fantasy world.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy about a blacksmith and a golem.

Dragonsilk is about trauma and recovery.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with a few really exotic characters.

Monster House is suburban fantasy with a diverse household, where the line between truth and fantasy isn't always clear.

The Ocracies features all the political systems other than monarchy.

The Odd Trio is about a family consisting of a dwarf, an elf, and a human.

P.I.E. is urban fantasy about paranormal investigations,

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. Eric the Elven King has interdimensional refugees. Officer Pink features centaurs and mystic shifters. Vybra of the Broken Angels specializes in fantasy sex and often dresses as a fairy.

Practical Magics is low fantasy with a prosaic focus.

Quixotic Ideas is contemporary fantasy where magic integrates with modern life in positive ways.

The Ursulan Cycle is genderbent King Arthur.

Or you can ask for something new.

Boost the signal to reveal a verse in any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )