asakiyume | Network

Just found out I've been waitlisted for the Anacortes Arts Festival. This after having been there--and selling extremely well--every year since 2013. I guess they really do have blind jurying, because there's no way the organization would want to pass up the 10% commission I make them.

Honestly, I was beginning to wonder whether it was time to pull back from some of my more stressful shows. Maybe they've made the decision for me?

Time will tell.

shadaras

today I have been a lump due to WEATHER but since I haven't gotten to responding to comments on my last post about work bullshit, have an update re: work bullshit!

Tuesday they say "hey, we're going on short weeks!" and are like "I guess you can take a layoff if you don't wanna do that" and people are mostly just like "UH!!!"

Wednesday I am informed that I'll be going with one of the journeymen to another job starting probably next Wednesday. (Also one of the journeymen is like "yeah, I called [company I worked for before this] and they said they'd take me back") (Also we learn that a select few people would be staying on full weeks anyway!)

Today we are all informed, not even by the bosses, that they will not be doing short weeks after all. So. You know. Super cool of them, definitely didn't shoot themselves in the feet re crew morale and general good-will.

It's all very, "you're doing a shit job of communicating and are gonna lose people because of this", because I don't think the journeyman I'll be going to that job with wants to come back. I don't blame him; we're at the stage of the job where a lot of the work is "figure out what got missed/didn't happen because we didn't have the necessary pieces at the time", which means a lot of working around shit that's now in our way, etc etc. Plus this whole debacle about work hours.

wtfjht_feed

Posted by Matt Kiser

https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2026/04/02/day-1899/

Day 1899

Today in one sentence: Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general; in a 19-minute address, Trump tried to sell the U.S.-Israeli war to the nation five weeks after starting it, saying the campaign was “nearing completion,” but also that the U.S. would hit Iran “extremely hard” for another two to three weeks; the U.S. struck a major bridge in Iran a day after Trump threatened to bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages”; Trump said it was “not possible” for the federal government to fund child care, Medicaid, and Medicare because “we’re fighting wars”; Trump will sign an order to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees who’ve missed pay during the record-long partial shutdown; and an appeals court threw out the nine-year prison sentence of the former Colorado county clerk who tampered with her county’s voting equipment while trying to prove false claims about the 2020 election.

1/ Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general, abruptly ending a 14-month tenure derailed by Bondi’s mishandling of the Epstein files and failure to win cases against Trump’s perceived political enemies. Trump called Bondi “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend,” saying “We love Pam.” Bondi had claimed an Epstein “client list” was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” but the Justice Department later said the list didn’t exist. The House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, had already subpoenaed Bondi and still expects her to testify. Blanche, a former Trump defense lawyer, said Bondi led the department with “strength and conviction” and promised to keep “doing everything in our power to keep America safe.” (Reuters / Associated Press / NPR / Politico / New York Times / NBC News / CNN / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal / Washington Post / Axios)

The Justice Department said Trump doesn’t have to comply the 1978 Presidential Records Act, claiming that the post-Watergate law requiring presidents to preserve official records and turn them over to the National Archives is unconstitutional. The law clarifies that presidential records belong to the government, not the president. (CBS News / NBC News)
Trump privately asked advisers whether he should replace Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The White House said Trump still has confidence in Gabbard, while Trump said she was “a little bit different” and “softer” than him on Iran, but still “available to serve.” (The Guardian / Reuters)

2/ In a 19-minute address, Trump tried to sell the U.S.-Israeli war to the nation five weeks into it, saying the campaign was “nearing completion,” but also that the U.S. would hit Iran “extremely hard” for another two to three weeks to “bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong.” He called the war a success, said U.S. forces had delivered “swift, decisive, overwhelming victories,” and claimed “never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks,” even as Iran continued firing missiles and drones across the region. But he offered no clear path to end the war and dismissed the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping route through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, as a problem for others while insisting that it would “open up naturally.” (New York Times / Washington Post / Wall Street Journal / CBS News / NPR / ABC News / NBC News / Bloomberg / Semafor / Axios / Politico)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forced out Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, ending his term about a year early. The Pentagon said George would retire immediately, but didn’t explain the move. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s vice chief and Hegseth’s former military aide, is expected to take over in an acting role. George, a career infantry officer nominated by Biden and confirmed in 2023, would normally have remained in the job until 2027. The move came days after Hegseth publicly overruled the Army and blocked the punishment of a helicopter crew that flew by Kid Rock’s house. (Washington Post / Politico / Associated Press / Bloomberg)

3/ The U.S. struck a major bridge in Iran a day after Trump threatened to bomb the country “back to the Stone Ages.” Trump celebrated the strike and warned that “much more” would follow unless Iran made a deal. The attack expanded the war to infrastructure that Iran claimed was civilian, but U.S. officials, without evidence, described as a military supply route. It’s unclear whether the bridge was open to civilian traffic or used by Iran’s military at the time. (Axios / The Guardian / New York Times)

4/ Trump said it was “not possible” for the federal government to fund child care, Medicaid, and Medicare because “we’re fighting wars” and “we have to take care of one thing: military protection,” adding that the U.S. “can’t take care of day care” and that states “should pay for it too.” Trump suggested states “have to raise their taxes” to cover the costs and that maybe the federal government “could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up” for it. He added that he told Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought: “Don’t send any money for day care, because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people.” The White House later said Trump was referring to fraud in those programs, despite his earlier promises to protect Medicare and make child care more affordable. (NBC News / New York Times / Washington Post / New Republic / The Hill)

5/ Trump will sign an order to pay all Department of Homeland Security employees who’ve missed pay during the record-long partial shutdown. The move comes as Republican leaders have settled on a two-step plan to first pass a Senate bill to reopen most of DHS, and then later use reconciliation to fund ICE and Border Patrol separately. The House, however, hasn’t acted on the Senate-passed bill as conservatives oppose funding DHS without ICE and Border Patrol. It’s not clear how the administration would pay all DHS workers, though White House guidance suggested it could draw on existing funds, as it did for TSA employees last week. (Associated Press / CBS News / ABC News / Wall Street Journal / New York Times / Reuters / CNBC / Semafor)

6/ An appeals court threw out the nine-year prison sentence of the former Colorado county clerk who tampered with her county’s voting equipment while trying to prove false claims about the 2020 election. Tina Peters’ conviction still stands and the judges ordered her to be resentenced, saying the trial court improperly considered her protected speech when imposing the sentence. The panel also rejected Trump’s attempt to pardon her, saying a president’s clemency power doesn’t apply to state crimes. Peters will remain in prison for now while the case returns to the trial court where a judge will decide her new sentence. (Colorado Sun / Associated Press / New York Times / Washington Post / NBC News)

📌 Previously on WTFJHT – Oct. 3, 2024: Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting machines under her control during the 2020 election.
📌 Previously on WTFJHT – Aug. 21, 2025: Trump demanded that Colorado release Peters from prison.

The 2026 midterms are in 215 days; the 2028 presidential election is in 950 days.

Today last year: Day 1534: "Trump has chosen to blow up the system."
Two years ago today: Day 1169: "This happens in war."
Five years ago today: Day 73: "Low risk."
Six years ago today: Day 1169: "Here we go again."
Seven years ago today: Day 803: "Incompetent or corrupt."
Eight years ago today: Day 438: DACA is dead.
9 years ago today: Day 73: Incited violence.

Support today’s essential newsletter and resist the daily shock and awe: Become a member

Subscribe: Get the Daily Update in your inbox for free

https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2026/04/02/day-1899/

loganberrybunny

Public

To Stourbridge today to see the dental hygienist, which isn't my favourite activity. At least if you need a filling at the dentist, you get an anaesthetic! :P Still, it wasn't too bad and it's done now until next time. Later, I went to the nearby Old White Horse, a pub I'd never actually been to before despite walking past it a zillion times, for coffee. It was peaceful and relaxed in the middle of a weekday, and the coffee was cheaper than in Costa or Coffee #1 as well! Not much going on beyond everyday boring things later in the day, although I did manage to have a brief walk on the edge of town, which was nice.

Current Mood: tired

sholio

Apparently Warner Brothers decided that they are not, in fact, putting B5 on Youtube, and pulled it a few episodes in.

https://cordcuttersnews.com/warner-bros-discovery-removes-babylon-5-from-youtube-after-brief-free-run/

I discovered this because I was curious how many episodes they were up to, and found the old links were dead. So I was curious what was up with that, and did a bit of googling. Evidently the messaging on this was basically terrible; they just yanked it without warning.

It looks like it's permanently off Tubi, despite having not gone ahead with the Youtube plan, but the article says that it is streaming free with ads on Roku's website, which I checked and it does seem to be true. FOR NOW. (They also have the movies, which I still haven't seen other than "In the Beginning." I don't think Tubi had those.)

swan_tower

The Kickstarter is up and running for Lady Trent’s Field Journal: A Dragon Coloring Book! . . . and it funded in three hours flat, heeeeeeee.

cover art for Lady Trent's Field Journal: A Dragon Coloring Book, showing partially colored-in line art of a dragon swooping down upon a herd of stampeding antelope

cover art for Lady Trent's Field Journal: A Dragon Coloring Book, showing partially colored-in line art of a dragon swooping down upon a herd of stampeding antelope

Granted, the goal this time around is literally an order of magnitude smaller than it was for the pattern deck, so I had every expectation that it wouldn't take all that long. But three hours? It literally happened while I was asleep (since I followed the same pattern as last time, i.e. pull the trigger and then immediately go to bed -- with my phone in another room, so I wouldn't be tempted to check on progress in the middle of the night). As of me posting this, we're almost at double the goal, which is excellent! We've already achieved one stretch goal, which is me hand-lettering the captions that will label the art; the second, which unlocks at $5000, is to upgrade the paper stock for the coloring books. There are more beyond that, too!

I'm really delighted to be doing this. People genuinely have been asking for years if I would ever write some of Isabella's scientific work, and while I couldn't quite make it go to do an entire article or book's worth of that, this coloring book gives me the chance to drop in snippets of that, while also exploring some fun corners of zoology. So check it out, and let's see how many stretch goals we can unlock!

(By the way, I consider this part of my twentieth anniversary celebration. It just seemed . . . inadvisable . . . to launch it on the actual anniversary, lest people think the Kickstarter is a joke!)

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/CSz8n2)

lucymonster

Disclaimer: I am trying to meet these books on their own terms, but it's hard. Intellectually I accept that Sartre and Camus were brilliant philosophers who contributed valuable things to modern thought; the trouble is that in the decades since their breakthroughs, existentialism has been so widely and enthusiastically embraced by teenage edgelords that engaging with it makes me feel like it's the early 2000s and I'm in the off-topic chatroom of a Marilyn Manson fan forum ranting about how my stupid sheeple parents keep making me clean my room even though objectively nothing matters. It's a cultural baggage that I just can't shake, sorry.

But anyway,

troisoiseaux posted about reading The Stranger a while ago, and it reminded me of the time I read both Nausea and The Stranger for a high school lit studies class and ended up at war with the teacher over which was the better novel. I thought Roquentin was a visionary and had no patience for Mersault's bullshit; my teacher scoffed and implied very strongly (I don't remember his exact words, just my own indignation) that I was a silly little girl who had been falsely taken in by Sartre and lacked the maturity to appreciate Camus.

troisoiseaux's review brought all that petty adolescent resentment flooding back as if it were yesterday, but I realised that for all the heat of my grudge I couldn't actually remember any of the details of either book. So I decided to reread them both and see how my teenage opinions hold up to a more mature review. Conclusion: The Stranger is still dumb as shit! Fuck you and your smug Camus fanboying, Adrian!

Okay, actually, no. My opinion is more nuanced than that. (Maybe not much more nuanced, since, as I already mentioned, I really do not vibe with the existentialist worldview.) Both Nausea and The Stranger are short, stream-of-consciousness first person French novels about a dysfunctional man coming to understand that life is meaningless, written within a few years of each other during the interwar/WW2 period.

( More thoughts )

disneydream06

Ding Dong, Another Witch of Washington Bites the Dust...

You can't help but wonder if things in the Regime are starting to unravel.
Two Witches are dead and supposedly a third was criticised, by The Felon, directly to her face.

Pam Bondi Fired as Attorney General Over Persistent Epstein Files Backlash

Deputy AG Todd Blanche will serve as the acting attorney general until a permanent replacement is chosen, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, April 2

By Meredith Kile

https://people.com/pam-bondi-fired-attorney-general-11772383?hid=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&did=22833686-20260402&utm_source=ppl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ppl-news-alert_newsletter&utm_content=040226&lctg=7f1109a25d2362f31854399df255b82ba78f015e&lr_input=758ad690760192cf49795c3f52223721cac5324e3e862e41c5d4db73a4d43f32&campaign=17538372

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34626

AO3 Update

We're excited to announce that we're exiting open beta! We've come a long way from when we announced and launched AO3 open beta in 2009.

At launch, there were just 347 AO3 accounts and 6,598 works. While we started growing very quickly, we were originally much more limited in what we could do.

Did you know that AO3 invitations were originally sent out manually by individual AO3 volunteers? During our initial rapid growth, we were still only sending out about 1200 invitations per day, and eventually tapered off to 50 per day. Today, we send around 6,000 invitations every 12 hours. Our old news posts also include fun stats about what AO3's user base and works looked like in 2009, which you can compare to the stats post we recently shared in January to see how far we've come.

What's Changed Since Then

Since 2009, AO3 has grown and changed a lot. We've introduced many features over the years through the efforts of our volunteers and coding contributors, as well as the contractors we've been able to hire thanks to generous donations from our users. While there are a lot of additions we're proud of, some of our favorites include:

Our tag system and tag wrangling
Orphaning, which allows creators to disconnect works from their account or delete their account while leaving their works online
Downloads that provide offline access to fanworks in AZW3, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, or HTML format
Privacy settings for works that let creators restrict access to registered AO3 users and control who can leave comments
Chapter-by-Chapter and Entire Work modes for multi-chapter works

Looking at where we are now in 2026, we recently celebrated 10 million registered users and 17 million fanworks! We're grateful for all the fans that have accompanied us all this time—all of our accomplishments are thanks to you!

Some recent improvements we've made include adding new options to bookmark and collections filtering and updating all of the buttons at the bottom of the forms for posting, previewing, or editing a work to make them more user-friendly.

What's Next for AO3 and How You Can Help

As the AO3 software has been stable for a long time, the change is mostly cosmetic and does not indicate that everything is finalized or perfectly working. Exiting beta doesn't mean we'll stop continuing to improve AO3—our volunteer coders and community contributors will still be working to add to and improve AO3 every day. For one, it’s likely you’ll continue to see references to us being in beta for a while as we update our documentation.

If you'd like to see what issues are being worked on, check out our project on Jira. This is a public list of all the bugs and features that are on the to-do list for our coders.

If you're familiar with coding and would like to contribute your time, we welcome contributions from anyone! Take a look at our Contributing Guidelines and other documentation on GitHub. All contributors are credited in our release notes.

If you're interested in helping AO3 but don't have any coding ability, consider volunteering for one of the other teams that work on AO3 or contributing to AO3 in some other way.

If you have a feature request or bug to report, please contact AO3 Support. Support handles communication between users and the various teams involved with AO3. The Support team helps to resolve technical problems experienced by users and passes on users' feedback to the relevant committees.

For all the fans who were part of our beta journey from 2009 until today, here's a badge for you, as a small thank you for your support! You're welcome to display this badge on social media, your AO3 profile, or any other website of your choosing. For example, if you want to display the badge in your AO3 profile, add this HTML tag: <img src="https://media.archiveofourown.org/news/ao3-updates/2026-04-leaving-beta/badge-english.png" alt="Circular badge with the words 'I was here for beta' with an AO3 logo"> into the "About Me" section in your profile. If you’d like more information on how to embed images, refer to our Posting and Editing FAQ or our guide on how to format HTML on AO3!

We are deeply appreciative and grateful for all the support we've gotten from fans since we were founded, so let us be the first to say: Welcome to Post-Beta AO3!

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/34626

rolanni

Kin Right by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, the 28th novel set in their Liaden Universe®, has been submitted. Final weight +/- 141,000 words, including a brief intro, the book itself, and the cast of characters.

Kin Right is the direct sequel to Salvage Right and a sort-of sequel to Diviner's Bow, since Shan is crossing storylines.

Baen believes this title will be published in Spring 2027.

Now I need to put away the laundry.

I'll say goodnight, now, I think. It's been a long day and I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to be in a vertical position.

Everybody stay safe.

redbird

I was going to have my teeth cleaned next week, but the dentist's office called yesterday to tell me that the hygienist wouldn't be in that day, and asked me to reschedule either for today, with the next available after that being in June. So, I went over to Watertown this afternoon.

Before cleaning my teeth, the hygienist took a full set of X-rays, because it had been a couple of years. The dentist looked at them, and said that there are no cavities, but some of my old fillings are no longer doing their jobs. So, he wants to do two crowns (at least). This will involve some drilling, apparently, but no root canals. I have an appointment in two weeks to do the work on at least one tooth, possibly both, depending on how I'm feeling after the first. To my surprise, my current dental insurance is covering 100% of the cost.

Also, after a complicated office maybe-move and name change, that dentist is consistently seeing very few patients at a time: there's often nobody [else] in the waiting room while I'm there, which is reassuring given that I can't wear a mask while having dental work.

I stopped on the way home at Lizzy's and got a quart of ice cream. It's a few degrees above freezing and overcast/drizzly, so I didn't want to be outside eating ice cream, but that also meant I could leave the insulated bag home.

shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

musesfool

I made my appointment to return my old modem and router for 2:15 pm today before I decided to take today off, because 2:15 put it right in the middle of my lunch hour. However, having taken the day off, 2:15 became the worst possible time to do it. But it's done! Not without a slight misadventure. I put the address in for a Lyft and doublechecked the confirmation text and was like, okay, 74-10 Austin Street. But when we arrived at 74-10 Austin Street, it was a residential building. And I'm like, I know it's just up the block there and the guy is like, but this is the address you requested. So I get out and start walking and I'm like, I know it's here, I've been here before, where the fuck is it??? So I recheck my phone and the address is...71-40. I would have sworn on a stack of bibles everything said 74-10, but it did not. Brain, why are you like this???

Anyway, the equipment return was quick and smooth, and Shake Shack was 2 doors down, so I had Shake Shack for lunch and it was all good.

Here's today's poem:

Five passages between uncertain territories

1
The wind has got trapped in the chimney;
its plaintive howls crash, slash and rumble
all the way to the backbone and back again.
Walrus angels ride their ancient motorbikes
on the Wall of Death.

2
I burrow deep into heretic soil, lie quietly
close to roots and corms, listen to the sounds
of critters in the field, beasties by the roadside:
their adventure songs of rescue, revelation,
revival and sunrise.

3
Because you travel the undiscovered country,
carrying the black flag, mallet and stake,
I offer you heartware – I stay tuned in all right;
but you know I don't trust you any farther
than to the rim of the map.

4
I lost my little mittens and my hands are cold.
All around, purple pearls and snailshells lie
scattered like random pebbles; I pick them up
gingerly, clovefully. I count them three times,
then once more for luck.

5
Cloaked in furs and feathers I shall sojourn
in abandoned observatories, hurdy-gurdy
power stations, mills by mystic lakesides,
stitching tales of hope and hardship, breaking
every bone in the book.

--Jane Røken

***

Current Mood: confused

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sham-shui-po-public-dispensary

Dispensary facade

Aptly located on Yee Kuk Street, meaning 'street of a medical institute', the two storey Sham Shui Po Public Dispensary building is one of Hong Kong's few remaining art deco-style buildings.

After an influx of immigrants from mainland China settled in Sham Shui Po during the early 20th century, the district's previous clinic was deemed inadequate. Funding for a new facility was raised by a wealthy local businessman, with the dispensary building opening in 1936. It continued as Sham Shui Po's medical center until 2002, when it was converted to serve exclusively as a methadone clinic.

The building still retains many of its original art deco features, such as its decorative motifs, ornamental ironwork grilles and covered walkway. Also visible on the grade 2 listed building's exterior are the verandah's bamboo-shaped ceramic balusters, and the facility's Chinese name inscribed on the parapet, giving the building a tinge of east meets west.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sham-shui-po-public-dispensary

mellowtigger

Last night, I sat down in front of the tv to watch the afternoon news. Near the end of the local news and before the beginning of the national news, the feed switched to cover the Artemis II launch by NASA. I started watching about 7 minutes before ignition. I watched that historic event as it happened, humans once again heading to the moon. Well, more precisely it's going around the moon before returning to Earth.

How did I not know beforehand? I like astronomy. I usually keep up with astronomy sites. I would have rearranged my scheduled to be sure I was at my television during the launch. At the beginning of the news coverage, though, I felt like I had switched to some alternate universe and was seeing their different sequence of historical events. I think maybe I saw something about it many months ago, but I noticed exactly zero news articles recently that would remind me of it happening yesterday.

I'm just tired. Still.

stonepicnicking_okapi

This is a short piece of it which my spiritual guru quoted in a talk I watched recently.

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798 by William Wordsworth

...And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

signoftea posting in

common_nature

It's getting warmer, the days are getting longer, and the scent of spring is coming in through the open window. Bird activity is very high. Some days, my birding app detects up to 25 different species within 20 minutes. Some of them are migratory birds, on the way back to where they came from in the winter. The others, about to start breeding, make as much noise as they can.

Today, as I was watering my balcony flowers, I looked down at the lawn because I saw some movement there. Two wood pigeons were wandering around, and between them, a hedgehog! I've never seen one in the open in broad daylight before. They're mostly nocturnal, as far as I know.

I googled "hedgehog active during the day" and found out that this could be a sign that the hedgehog is injured or malnourished. It did look a bit thin, as far as I could see from two storeys above, but not weak or distressed. It was walking around purposefully and seemed to be eating something, probably earthworms. In the information I found online, it said hedgehogs are often thin in the spring, because they're recovering from hibernation. It doesn't have to be a reason for concern. So I guess it doesn't need help right now.

When I checked again a few minutes later, both the hedgehog and the pigeons had disappeared.

I'm going to keep an eye out for the little hedgehog in the coming days. If I see it again and it looks like it needs help, I might take it to the vet, or to a rescue center.

stonepicnicking_okapi

I did not post music on Monday or a word on Wednesday so I am making up for it today.

The words is...epistrophy.

Also known as epistrophe or occasionally antistrophe is a figure of speech in which a word or expression is repeated at the end of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences, often for rhetorical or poetic effect (such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: "…government of the people, by the people, for the people").

And I found it because I look up 'this day in jazz' before I visit jazz man every morning and yesterday the entry was: Trumpeter/bandleader Cootie Williams is the first to record a Thelonious Monk composition, Epistrophy, 1942.

Here's Monk doing it in Paris in 1969.

Watch on YouTube

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wptf-am-radio-building

You may have thought the WSQK Building featured in the last season of “Stranger Things” was located somewhere in Indiana, but you’d be wrong.

The real-life inspiration, called WPTF, is located in Cary, North Carolina.

Cary is just one town away from the Duffer Brothers' hometown of Durham, NC.

The WPTF building, built as an AM Radio transmitting station in the 1930s, is still in operation today.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wptf-am-radio-building

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-guiana-space-centre

In the 1960s French scientists had a problem. Algeria had just won its independence and was not very interested in continuing to host France’s fledgling spaceport, leaving them without a launchpad. They needed a site without earthquakes or hurricanes, close to the equator to take advantage of the slingshot effect (using the earth’s rotation for extra energy), and close to an ocean they could launch over to minimise the chance of debris falling on population centres.

They found their match in the territory of French Guiana, on the north coast of South America and only 5 degrees latitude north of the equator. On April 9, 1968, they launched their first rocket, Véronique, inaugurating a facility that would go on to launch over 300 rockets in total, including those containing research probes to various planets and the James Webb space telescope.

The spaceport houses over a dozen complexes across 660 square km between the towns of Kourou and Sinnamary, French Guiana, and employs 1,400 permanent employees. It currently launches two types of rockets: the Vega-C and the Ariana 6. It’s possible to see rocket launches from Cayenne, though the best views are from one of the hills just outside of Kourou.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-guiana-space-centre

Profile

asakiyume

March 2026

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Page Summary

offcntr - Huh
shadaras - (no subject)
wtfjht_feed - Day 1899: “We can’t take care of day care. We’re fighting wars.”
loganberrybunny - Stourbridge
sholio - Well, that didn't last long
swan_tower - Live now: Lady Trent's Field Journal!
lucymonster - Nausea by Sartre & The Stranger by Camus
disneydream06 - In The News.....
ao3_news_feed - AO3 is Exiting Open Beta!
rolanni - And THAT'S off my desk
redbird - unexpected dental visit
shipperslist - The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles
musesfool - I burrow deep into heretic soil
atlas_obscura_places_feed - Sham Shui Po Public Dispensary in Hong Kong
mellowtigger - I didn't know
stonepicnicking_okapi - Poet's Corner: excerpt from Tintern Abbey by Wordsworth
signoftea in common_nature - Nature diary
stonepicnicking_okapi - Words & Music
atlas_obscura_places_feed - WPTF AM Radio Building in Cary, North Carolina
atlas_obscura_places_feed - The Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana

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Page generated Apr. 2nd, 2026 11:30 pm

Asakiyume mita

Network

Huh

(no subject)

Day 1899: “We can’t take care of day care. We’re fighting wars.”

Stourbridge

Well, that didn't last long

Live now: Lady Trent's Field Journal!

Nausea by Sartre & The Stranger by Camus

In The News.....

AO3 is Exiting Open Beta!

What's Changed Since Then

What's Next for AO3 and How You Can Help

And THAT'S off my desk

unexpected dental visit

The Magpie Lord by K.J. Charles

I burrow deep into heretic soil

Sham Shui Po Public Dispensary in Hong Kong

I didn't know

Poet's Corner: excerpt from Tintern Abbey by Wordsworth

Nature diary

Words & Music

WPTF AM Radio Building in Cary, North Carolina

The Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana

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March 2026

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