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celli

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senmut posting in

100words

Title: The Right Way
Fandom: The Peanuts
Rating: General Audiences
Notes: inspired by a gif of Snoopy making an ice cream sundae.

The round-headed kid never did this quite right. You had to drizzle a little of the chocolate syrup into the dish, then scoop the ice cream into perfect spheres, and drop the first one in, press it a little, put the second on, and push it just a little to stay put.

It was best to make a little divot for the cherry to rest in, before drizzling the syrup over the ice cream. The cherry went in the divot then, before putting a spiral of whip cream all around.

Seriously, why did Snoopy have to do it for them?!

kevin_standlee

As I mentioned, I get another 3 AM wake-up call tomorrow due to needing to be at work on the Day Jobbe due to the person in India for whom I'm the backup being on PTO. Oh, well, I hope I can knock off work no later than Noon tomorrow. And on the bright side, it should be cooler at 3 AM and I can open the front door (we do have a screen door) and get more cross-ventilation through the house.

Not helping my rest was having to work late today, and also I was expecting a call that never came. I wish the people who were holding me in place had at least dropped me a note telling me that they didn't need me this afternoon after all.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Fernley, Nevada

mindstalk

I previously talked about different bidirectional two-lane streets in Berkeley/Albany. Gilman, which was narrow, and annoying and crossable; Marin, which was wide (parking, bike, wide travel, plus turn lanes), and a high-speed stream of death. Tonight I'll talk about Christian, also two-lanes, and even narrower than Gilman since there is parking on only one side[1]. It is objectively much more crossable than Marin, but has felt more annoying than Gilman, such that on my casual walks with no destination, I will often avoid crossing it. Why should this be the case? I don't know, but some ideas. ( Read more... )

starwatcher posting in

fandom_checkin

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, June 10, to midnight on Wednesday, June 11. (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #33238 Daily Check-in

Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 10

How are you doing?

I am OK.
6 (60.0%)

I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
4 (40.0%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans live with you?

I am living single.
4 (40.0%)

One other person.
3 (30.0%)

More than one other person.
3 (30.0%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

queenlua

Last migration season, I subscribed to this nifty newsletter by a PhD student at UCLA—an "Early Bird Arrival Forecast" that sends personalized emails based on your location, and tells you which birds are early/peaking/late migrants in your area. It's data that I probably could figure out via other sources, but I suspect the data backing his emails is superior, and his simple summary & targeted recommendations were very handy for me to get a sense of what I might see in the field—"ooh, warbling vireos are peaking this week; let's go find one!"

Anyway. I enjoyed his recommendations again this migration season, and also, ngl his final email of the season this year weirdly made me tear up a bit:

There are no birds forecast for this week or last week, so it's time to close down the Early Bird Forecast for your region. Very sad :(

Thank you so much for participating in the second season of the Early Bird Forecast! A few asks from me before you go:

[. . .]

2. Last year, I provided a link for people to donate to me personally (AKA to "buy me a coffee"). In light of recent realized and proposed cuts to government-funded science programs, this year I would like to steer people towards donating to nonprofits that do efficient and important conservation work at home and abroad. A few good charities in this mold are Birdlife International, The American Bird Conservancy, and The Nature Conservancy. If you would like to look for something more local, check out your city or region's Audubon chapter.

3. If donating is out of the question for you, consider contacting your representatives and let them know that you believe federally-funded science is worth supporting. The Early Bird Forecast is actually a by-product of a NASA-funded research fellowship I received in graduate school. If the current administration's proposed budget becomes law, funding for NASA-funded research like mine will decrease by over 50%. This science funding is cheap in the grand scheme of things – If you are the average taxpayer, you paid $0.0006 for my research (thank you!). Plus you get Early Bird Forecast for free, what a steal!

Happy Summer!

god knows a phd student could always use some spare change; incredibly classy of him to point towards Science As A Whole rn instead.

something something "he's not giving up & i'm not either" etc

troisoiseaux

Emily Burns' new adaptation of Frankenstein at the Shakespeare Theatre Company is phenomenal— I've been struggling to explain it in a way that a. doesn't undersell how well it works and b. isn't just the Jenny Slate Drunk History meme, but trust me, it's so good. It's a reimagining of Mary Shelley's original plot— the first half takes the events of Victor's return to Geneva and re-centers it on his foster sister/fiancée(!) Elizabeth, and on Justine, the servant framed for the murder of Victor's younger brother; the second half departs from the book entirely, but has more than a little of Mary and Percy Shelley's history in its DNA— with a distinctly contemporary voice, but it weaves in Mary Shelley's original text in ways that carry new meanings: ( ... ) The dynamic between Victor and Elizabeth is messed up in a way that makes for delicious theater— Victor is the worst, in an "abusive boyfriend learns therapy words" way that, I swear, you could feel the audience (which, at least where I was sitting, skewed towards younger women) mentally screaming for Elizabeth to throw the entire man out; this play leans into the Gothic faux-cest vibes with flashbacks to the pair of them sniping like siblings— and the main theme is one of parents and children, explored through three different plot threads: obviously, that of Victor Frankenstein's refusal to take responsibility for the creature he created, which hangs over most of the play as an unspoken but omnipresent rebuke; the undercurrent of grief (mutual), resentment (Victor's), and guilt (Elizabeth's) over the fact that Victor's mother died because she'd nursed Elizabeth when she was ill; and ( spoilers! )

Also saw The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical at the Signature Theater, having finally wised up to the fact that if a new musical is being produced in DC it's probably on its way to Broadway, so I might as well see it now. (Cheaper tickets! Potential bragging rights!) This is exactly what it says on the tin - a rock musical by Joe Iconis about writer Hunter S. Thompson, father of Gonzo journalism in the 1960s-70s - and certainly timely; to lean into the inevitable Hamilton comparisons, Hunter...'s Burr is Richard Nixon as a so-sleezy-it's-camp psychopomp haunting Thompson's final hours as he runs through his life story, and the parallels to, you know, that other guy are about as subtle as a bonk to the head. Very meta, overall: as it goes on, the other characters begin to confront Thompson over his version of events and demand to speak for themselves. There was a frequent use of puppets, including a peacock, a baby that could make a fight the man! fist and flip the bird, and a giant Nixon head. (Yes, in addition to the actor playing Nixon. It was a whole thing.) I enjoyed this a lot!! But the one downside of seeing a show so early in the pipeline is that I've had random snippets of lyrics and melodies floating around in my head for days and there's no cast recording to listen to. (ETA: There is an official trailer, though!)

magicrubbish posting in

nexticon

Squid Game

https://i.ibb.co/HLpfmc12/new-icon-7.png

Current Mood: numb

kaberett

Two things:

I keep (especially post-surgery, cotemporal with relearning how to walk) finding more small ways that how I've been doing my various physio exercises isn't quite right. This is a good thing! Isn't it fascinating to be learning more about embodiment and how my body works and how I can best deploy my various muscles!
Up until the hypermobility clinic, all the physio I was ever prescribed made me worse, not better.

It abruptly dawned on me, all at once, that the subtlety of the changes I'm making with adjusting how I'm shifting my weight around and so on and so forth? Are almost certainly not actually externally visible. Like, yes, people not understanding hypermobility and problems with it was also Definitely A Problem, but -- the part where I'm still, mm, not necessarily fixing things but certainly developing them, finding places where even with What The Hypermobility Clinic Told Me To Do I wasn't getting quite right... well, the hypermobility specialists clearly went "eh, good enough", and in terms of the effects on my ability to Things I think they were clearly demonstrably provable correct, but -- yeah, okay, sudden understanding of some of just how difficult it would have been to correct some of this stuff.

(I'm very sure that all my various epiphanies will turn out to be about things that still aren't quite right, that I can still refine further -- I'm having an extended phase of that with Pilates right now -- but this is a good thing, actually. It's really nice to have such clear evidence that I'm getting to know and understand myself better.)

musesfool

ugh how is it only tuesday???

*

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: This Tornado Loves You - Neko Case

wychwood

Survived the Week of Church (Tuesday night, Wednesday night, ten hours on Saturday), and am looking forward to a whole! week! off! work! next week - the expected project go-live date is Thursday that week, so I'm probably going to have to log on for a couple of hours to make updates to student-facing content that can't be done until live day, which is annoying, but I'll get the time back and I've made it clear that anything else launch-related will have to wait until I'm back on the Monday!

In the meantime, there's plenty of tasks that need to be done before we go live, and I'm only avoiding some of them... some tasks are just freakishly intimidating and I can never tell why; half of them only take ten minutes once you actually face them.

The buses took a long time to recover after COVID - there was a phase where it felt like I was waiting 25 minutes every time I caught a bus - but the last year or so things have been much more reliable. Of course, sometimes that doesn't work in my favour, like how my bus home from church reliably arrives three minutes too late for me to catch the bus that stops by my house instead of having to walk ten minutes home. But the other day I was waiting for a bus which was twelve minutes away when I got to the stop... five minutes later it was thirteen minutes away... seven minutes after that it was fourteen minutes away... after that I stopped checking, because I was a little bit afraid of what might happen, and walked home instead.

Mum's started chemo now, and is doing OK-ish. I'm going over to see them on Sunday for Fathers' Day, possibly along with my brother and his tribe, but we'll see. Ticking along!

mildred_of_midgard

Getting settled in Brazil is complicated! I mean, I have my own horror stories of bureaucracy being chaotic here, but I hear from my partner that it is so much worse there.

Here are some funny stories from the last week or so, around settling in and also the massive decluttering project I got left with. Context/inside jokes: "igneous" is our word for something we disapprove of; "furs and hairspray" are code for the amount of junk she left behind; Mari is her name; Rio de Janeiro is where she lives.

( Trying to order food in Brazil )

( Trying to get rid of stuff in Boston )

( Still trying to get rid of stuff )

( So much stuff )

( Kitchen sinks are hard )

( The lightbulb has to want to change )

( Does anything in this country work? )

On the plus side, the food is better in Brazil, and the pools are actually heated (the pool in our complex here nominally got heating last summer, but after all the hype, it was very ineffective heating that didn't make a bit of difference).

Hopefully things calm down soon! I have been having a heck of a time with donation pickups, and I don't have a car, but we'll get there. I'm glad I left myself 5 months to deal with this stuff; I would have had to pay a junker to remove everything! I've taken out upwards of 50 30-gallon bags of trash so far, and I've got upwards of 100 bags, boxes, and small furniture items to try to get picked up by charities. 2 pickups have happened, but I need at least 3 more. Then larger furniture items go to freecycle, then the junker can take the rest (mostly mattresses and broken electronics).

ETA: Oh, and once the amount of stuff is dramatically reduced some more, I need to do a lot of sweeping/vacuuming/dusting/wiping/mopping. I've already started, but it's hard with still 70-ish bags and boxes and furnitures lying around, plus a bunch of time-consuming decluttering logistics to deal with.

I'm mostly just letting the house get dirtier than I would like until I have time and space to clean. I was really looking forward to enjoying this house when it looked nice, without all the clutter and filth of living with two borderline hoarders, but at this point I'll just be happy to leave it in a good state when I move out. But at least I've started being able to do some intermittent cleaning.

I was similarly hoping to be able to focus on my fitness this summer and enjoy walking to all my favorite spots and maybe some new spots before I leave, but at this point I'll be happy if my knee allows a normal (for me) amount of walking, and maybe some fitness efforts when I arrive in LA. Oh, well!

scalziwhatever_feed

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/10/reigniting-my-love-for-phase-one-of-marvel/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56011

In recent years, I, like many others, have pretty much completely fallen off the Marvel bandwagon and stopped watching all the Disney+ shows, the spin-offs, even most of the theatrical releases like Madame Web and Brave New World. Whatever your reasoning is, whether it’s because there’s simply too much stuff to get through, because the original gang we all loved is long gone, or you’re just burnt out on superheroes, tons of other people are in the same boat as you.

For me, I’ve been wondering so much lately what it is for me. Why don’t I like Marvel anymore? When Marvel hit it big and came out with The Avengers in 2012, I was 13, and boy howdy did Marvel take over my teens. I was pretty damn obsessed. I had Tumblr posts and fan art saved on my iPhone 5, would talk about all the movies and superheroes with my friends, see every movie on opening day like my life depended on it, all that typically teen fan type stuff.

So what happened? Is it that I’m getting older, or did Marvel content just genuinely get worse and worse as the years went on? Is it some of column A and some of column B?

It was just about right after having seen Thunderbolts that I was really thinking about this question a lot, when a video came up in my recommended section on YouTube.

The video was called “The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase One,” and was part of a series called Detail Diatribe from Overly Sarcastic Productions. If you’re on the internet and also a nerd, you probably already know who Overly Sarcastic Productions is. While I had heard of them plenty and even seen a mythology video from them once or twice, I never really got into them.

But how could I resist a two-hour video essay over Phase One of Marvel, the phase that pretty much changed not just my life but society as a whole? So I took a chance on it, and immediately loved it. So much so that I started watching OSP’s other superhero videos, and now I’m here to recommend them to you.

They put out “The Lost Art of Marvel’s Phase One” about three weeks ago, and I would recommend starting with this one, like I did. In it, they talk about what made everyone fall in love with Marvel in the first place. Are we all just wearing rose colored glasses and remember them being better than they were? Especially for people like me who were younger when they came out, is our nostalgia blinding us into unearned fondness of these movies?

Watch on YouTube

While it is almost two hours long, I genuinely don’t feel like any part of this video essay drags or is boring, as they talk about so many different things and keep their points moving along consistently. They go over the characters specifically of course, like Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, even Hulk, but they also go over how well the creators did at weaving together the overarching narrative that comes together in The Avengers.

This video made me realize, you know what, fuck yeah I liked Marvel. Shit was good. Like genuinely good! There’s so much to love about Phase One, and so much to love about our original group of super pals! I’m not ashamed that I liked, and am still fond of, Phase One. I hope this video inspires some of that in you, too.

After loving this video so much, I of course had to watch another one of their Detail Diatribe videos called “Captain America The Winter Soldier is the Best MCU Movie” which came out only two weeks ago. Why? Because I have been saying that exact thing for years. But, they can explain it better than I can, so you should listen to their video over it:

Watch on YouTube

This one is also two hours long, but when you’ve been saying FOR YEARS that The Winter Soldier is the best Marvel movie, those two hours really fly by. This one is such an important analysis of not just Captain America as a character, but also Black Widow, and the relationship between these two throughout the film. It also talks about the importance of Hydra and how this movie is a damn good political thriller/espionage movie that I feel like we did not know Marvel was capable of at the time!

Moving away from Marvel, I just listened to their Detail Diatribe over Superman a couple days ago, and since Superman is my favorite superhero, I want to share it with y’all!

Watch on YouTube

Superman is my favorite and I’m sick and tired of people saying he’s boring! He’s not boring! Y’all don’t understand the art, and most importantly, heart, of Superman, and hopefully this video will make you see how awesome he is. And you guessed it, it’s almost two hours.

I have absolutely been loving these videos (and a couple others, such as their Doctor Strange one) and I hope you do, too.

My parents were being killjoys by saying that they didn’t understand why I’d spend two hours watching something like this, and that you can just say “The Winter Soldier is the best MCU movie” without needing to talk about it for two hours, but I wholeheartedly disagree! So I’ll keep watching my two-hour videos and keep recommending them to you. You’re welcome.

On a real note, though, if the idea of sitting there and watching a two-hour video is daunting or seems like too much, I’ll go ahead and tell you I didn’t actually watch a single second of any of these videos. I only listened to them. I listened to them in the shower, on my drive to the store, while I was folding clothes, etc.

You don’t have to sit perfectly still and have your eyes glued to the screen the entire time to watch these videos, y’know? You can still enjoy the points they’re making and think about the ideas they bring up without feeling like it’s a chore to sit there and watch two hours of PowerPoint slides.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy what OSP has to say about these characters and movies we’ve all loved at some point in our lives. I know I did!

Do you have a favorite superhero? Which Marvel movie is your favorite? What do you think of all the shows they’ve come out with? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!

-AMS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/06/10/reigniting-my-love-for-phase-one-of-marvel/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=56011

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-old-town-hall-bank-museum-and-exhibit-hall

The Old Town Hall Bank Museum And Exhibit Hall

On an otherwise modern street, a building that appears to be plucked straight from the early 1900s stands tall on Fisher Avenue in Poolesville, Maryland. The Old Town Hall and former National Bank of Poolesville comprise the Historic Medley District along with John Poole House and Seneca Schoolhouse.

The Old Town Hall Bank Museum and Exhibit Hall has a permanent Civil War exhibit that highlights Poolesville's role in the war, including local artifacts from that era found in the town, drawings and pictures of local conflicts, and exhibits on key individuals from Poolesville who were part of the war.

The building dates to 1907 and has been restored to its original appearance. In addition to the permanent exhibit, the museum presents cultural and educational programs on subjects such as African-American heritage, military tributes, art shows, bridal shows, photography contests, and explorations of local history.

This slice of living history exists thanks to Historic Medley District, Inc.—a preservation project started in 1974 by 27 residents of Montgomery County, Maryland who shared concerns about the neglect and disappearance of buildings and landmarks of historical significance. The members, which now number approximately 150, have taken collective action through a multi-pronged approach of hands-on restoration, testifying before government groups, and providing expertise and guidance to the owners of the properties.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-old-town-hall-bank-museum-and-exhibit-hall

maju

From inside looking out you'd think it's a perfect day: clear and sunny, but looks can be deceiving because it's much warmer out there than I like. No doubt many people are enjoying this weather though.

I've occasionally been buying frozen meals from the supermarket lately (instead of subscribing to a meal delivery service); I intersperse these with meals I've cooked myself from scratch just so that I don't have to cook so often. Most of them have been good (better than most of the meal delivery service meals) but one or two have been "nope, never again". I can't help wondering how nutritious these meals might be. They sound good according to their lists of ingredients (no unpronounceable chemicals) so I'm hoping for the best. A few days ago I bought a "family sized" meal which says it has three and a half servings, but I divided it into three servings and the servings weren't all that big. And why would you make three and a half servings anyway? Why not four, or just three?

liriaen

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

sovay

Under the circumstances, I had different weird dreams than I would have expected: writing a poem, watching some incredibly threadbare film noir with no waking equivalent, hearing a performance from a musical theater star ditto. I am beginning to think the pop culture of my dreams actually is the hell of a good video store next door, leavened in the last few nights by dreams of re-reading real-life authors currently in storage like P.C. Hodgell or Joan D. Vinge. I remain physically fried, news at nowhen. At least the rain seems to have kept off the neighborly leafblowing which perforated so much of yesterday. The news continues to feel like stupidly lethal cosplay, which I remember from the last round of this administration, which doesn't make me hate it less.

Current Music: The Lumineers, "Same Old Song"

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/der-mensch-bezwingt-den-kosmos-the-potsdam-mosaic

Soviet mosaics are perhaps not what one would expect to see in the city of palaces, yet this is one of its most famed public art pieces. The Potsdam mosaic was created in 1972 after the design of Fritz Eisel, who used it to decorate three sides of an otherwise boring socialist building.

The mosaics show different scientific achievements, such as the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and Aleksey Leonov’s spacewalk in 1965. It also pays tribute to the people who made it possible, showing several panels of scientists and workers in scientific settings. One panel in particular has been the source of much discussion, as it shows the Earth wrong (some people believe that this is due to a misunderstanding of Eisel, who wanted to show the planet from the perspective from the space ship, but others believe that it was done as a form of silent protest from the workers).

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/der-mensch-bezwingt-den-kosmos-the-potsdam-mosaic

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/de-tijdtrap

Most parking garages are purely functional spaces, but beneath Rotterdam Market Hall lies one with a unique twist—a history lesson of the city’s past.

Dig beneath an old city, and you’ll often find layers of discarded history. That’s what ‘de tijdtrap’ (or ‘The Stairs of Time’) tries to show. It’s a descent through the centuries.

The journey starts in 1273 with the oldest found items, and works its way up until current day.

The research also resulted in a cookbook that discussed food habits during this period.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/de-tijdtrap