Why WRMI’s 9395 kHz Isn’t What It Used To Be
Apr. 5th, 2026 04:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soemand( Glossary: MUF, D-layer, WRMI )
Monopoly 2026 - Mod Note
Apr. 5th, 2026 08:38 pmprisca posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fandom_empireNew countdown: HERE.
Moving to Linux: The Ugly
Apr. 5th, 2026 11:16 amarlieI'm posting it a bit late, and may have forgotten some of the things I intended to include two weeks ago.
- Canonical has (a) decided to use snaps for key components of their linux distribution (Ubuntu, Kubuntu etc.). As the developer of the snap packaging system it's also decided to make snaps forcibly update themselves. Firefox arrives as a snap, and has new versions approximately every two weeks.
This blew up on me a week and a half ago. I posted https://arlie.dreamwidth.org/532599.html at that time, so I'll omit farther detail here. - Mozilla has gone all in on Chatbot support. This is quite controversial among Firefox users, some of whom have flamed Mozilla up down and sideways on their forums.
I'm rather disgusted myself. I encounter enough human-written lies, damn lies, and confabulations; I don't need an extra serving of confabulations ("hallucinations") from my web browser.
Checking out alternative web browsers is on my backburner, but I don't expect to find anything substantially better. Chromium has Google cooties all over it, giving me a serious feeling of caveat emptor.
( Read more... )
Ship Sunday: Lavender/Parvati
Apr. 5th, 2026 06:00 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
fanlore_tumblr_feed
ALTWelcome to Ship Sunday! We travel into the spellbinding world of Harry Potter to look at the sapphic ship - Lavender Brown/Parvati Patil. Lavender and Parvati are canonically best friends and share a dorm with the popular main character, Hermione Granger.
The “Harry Potter” series depicts these two as close friends, seen bonding over their Divination course. Although a noncanonical romantic relationship, there are still over 700 fics hosted on AO3 tagging them as a pair, making it an uncommon pairing within the fandom but a relatively common femslash pairing. Moreso, this pairing is considered a fanon POC pairing. Lavender was played by two separate Black actresses, leading to the headcanon that she is Black. Parvati has multiple implicit nods to her being of Indian descent including her dress at the Yule Ball that has led fans to this headcanon.
Depending on the source material, this ship can also be considered “Doomed Yuri” - a term often used to refer a tragic love story between two women in media that inevitably results in the relationship failing. In this case, Lavender/Parvati both in an act of bravery fight in Dumbledore’s Army to get rid of Voldemort in the final battle of the series in the end. The fate of Lavender within the seventh book being unstated and her depicted as deceased within the movies leaves this pairing sometimes placed in a fic with major character death.
What is your favourite Pavender fanwork? Add them to their Fanlore page!
Fanlore does not support or condone the views expressed by J.K. Rowling. We wish only to highlight the transformative nature of fandom and the creativity of fans.
——
We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!
Culinary
Apr. 5th, 2026 07:12 pmoursinThis week's bread: a loaf of Marriages's Moulsham Strong Malted Seeded Bread Flour, turned out nicely.
Friday night supper: penne with Romano peppers chopped and sizzled in oil oil with chopped chorizo de navarra.
Saturday breakfast rolls: Tassajarra method, 50:50% strong white/wholemeal spelt flour, Rayner's Barley Malt Extract, dried blueberries, turned particularly well.
Today's lunch: lemon sole fillets, which I cooked more or less thus, only with juice of half a lime which worked a lot better for making a paste; served with Ruby Gem potatoes roasted in goosefat (was going to do in beef dripping but it was way past its BBF), Bellaverde sweetstem broccoli garlic-roasted with chopped baby peppers (left over from last week) (other half of the lime squeezed over at the end), and spinach cooked according to Dharamjit Singh's recipe in Indian Cookery.
pretty stream of thought here
Apr. 5th, 2026 11:15 amnansliceI've finished a Chris/Leon fic, I just need to go back over it and make sure there aren't too many egregious grammar issues. I don't care about, like, purposefully fucking around with grammar (I love commas and semicolons) but I don't want a simple typo to ruin the vibes, you know?
Aaahhh, okay. I have less than an hour until my shift starts. I'd better start getting ready. ;o; I have Wed-Fri off next week due to WEDDING ANNIVERSARY and I'm just trying to make it until then.
OH ALSO I GOT BIT BY A DOG YESTERDAY. Immediate bruising, a little blood, and swelling, but today it seems to have calmed down.
(no subject)
Apr. 5th, 2026 02:07 pmdewline- Happy Easter
- Happy Passover
- Happy First Contact Day
🎵 A legendary jail phone rap
Apr. 5th, 2026 05:00 pmmarshallprojectemail_feed
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Word Rescue (1992)
Apr. 5th, 2026 01:31 pmpauraqueFirst up is Word Rescue, a platformer designed to drill kids on reading basic words. The deep lore of the game is that the Gruzzles, these evil little monster guys, can't read, and they don't want anyone else to read either, so they have stolen all the words from our books and you have to, you might say, rescue them. You do this by jumping into question mark blocks which turn into words, and then finding the picture that matches that word elsewhere in the level. When you've matched them all, you get the key to the next level.
I'm gonna be honest with you guys: ( This game is actually kind of hard. [cut for length] )
You can buy the full version of Word Rescue on Steam for $4.99 USD. You can also still download the free shareware episode from the website of the developer Redwood Games, which delivers a dose of nostalgia in itself as it appears not to have been updated since 2006. (I enjoyed the indignant rant about Windows Vista breaking backwards DOS compatibility.)
But note that Redwood's site claims Word Rescue was "the first game ever made in which you got to pick whether to play as a girl or a boy," which is a bald-faced lie. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Moraff's World (1991), Ultima VI (1990), and who could forget Fred/Fiona Fixit of the great Night Shift (1990)? So it's up to you whether you want to do business with such a mendacious organization.
Light and Bright Mix
Apr. 5th, 2026 02:19 pmsoemand“Light Mix” now has a companion side, built from the Admiral’s gentle nudge for friendlier, at‑home listening. Side B leans warm, bright, and easy—perfect for cooking, puttering, or just letting the afternoon drift by. A softer spin, same sunny spirit. C-90 tape length.
| Side A — Light Mix | Side B — The Bright Side |
|---|---|
| Wouldn’t It Be Nice — 02:25 | Be My Baby (The Ronettes) — 02:40 |
| Mamma Mia — 03:32 | Breakaway (Jackie DeShannon) — 02:16 |
| Walk Like an Egyptian — 03:24 | Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show (Neil Diamond) — 03:29 |
| Love Me Do — 02:22 | Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel) — 02:54 |
| Cruel Summer — 03:35 | California Girls (The Beach Boys) — 02:47 |
| It’s Been Done — 03:00 | Cherry, Cherry (Neil Diamond) — 02:42 |
| God Only Knows — 02:52 | Breakout (Swing Out Sister) — 03:48 |
| Thank You for Being a Friend — 04:42 | Rio (Duran Duran) — 04:44 |
| You Might Think — 03:04 | Be With You (The Bangles) — 03:02 |
| Good Vibrations — 03:36 | Call Me (Blondie) — 03:32 |
| Take a Chance on Me — 04:05 | Come Together (The Beatles) — 04:18 |
| Manic Monday — 03:03 | Cloud Nine (George Harrison) — 03:16 |
| Beautiful Day (U2) — 04:08 |
2026.04.05
Apr. 5th, 2026 12:01 pmlsandersonImmigration agents have spread into rural western Wisconsin, taking dozens of people from towns in more politically conservative areas
Rachel Leingang with photographs by Stephen Garcia
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/05/trump-deportation-rural-towns-wisconsin
US health officials appear to shy away from anti-vaccine talk ahead of midterms
Elections seem top-of-mind for the Maha movement as key polling indicates anti-vaccine views are a liability
Melody Schreiber
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/05/health-officials-anti-vaccine-views-midterms ( Read more... )
Holiday greetings!
Apr. 5th, 2026 11:12 ambrithistorianHappy Easter to those of you who celebrate and Happy Sunday to those of you who don't!
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this on here before, but not in a long time, so some of you might not have been around to see it. Since I was young (I remember being in my tweens and having this idea), I've mentally divided both Easter and Christmas into two separate holidays:
- Jesus Easter vs Rabbit Easter
- Jesus Christmas vs Santa Christmas
I was aware of the historical origins of both holidays, and how the non-Jesus versions grew out of the Jesus versions, but I was also aware of how some people (myself among them) celebrated the non-Jesus version almost exclusively. (I also later became aware of how some varieties of Christians celebrated the Jesus versions exclusively.)
So, anyway, if you celebrate Easter, of either variety, Happy Easter. And if not, Happy Sunday. And to everyone, enjoy the wide variety of seasonal candies in the stories (while laying a pox on the increasing efficiency of capitalism, which means that each year there is less and less of that candy available at a discount on the day after Easter).
This or that meme
Apr. 5th, 2026 04:57 pmdolorosa_12svgurl.( Behind the cut )
If you want a clean version of the questions without any answers, you can copy the code here:
Analysis of prosodic timing in reading
Apr. 5th, 2026 02:33 pmlanguagelog_feedThis post documents one small step in a larger plan for improved evaluation of prosody in reading. It compares word-level timing in a large number of recordings, from the Speech Accent Archive at GMU, of 3038 people reading the 69-word "Please call Stella" passage. 661 of these people are native speakers of English, with accents from all over the anglophone world, while the remaining 2377 readers have native languages from Afrikaans to Zulu. The reading and speaking level of those non-native readers varies a lot, and many of them have problems in decoding or pronunciation that affect their timing.
Automated analysis of such problems should be useful in foreign-language teaching. And similar analyses might help in early reading instruction for students in anglophone classrooms, whatever their native language.
Let's start with a quick comparison of word-level timing in the 661 native English speakers; the 85 native French speakers; the 99 native Korean speakers; and the 82 native russian speakers.
I calculated word-level time points for those 927 speakers, using a forced-alignment system originally developed many years ago with Jiahong Yuan — a summary of the technology and a few of its application can be found here (open-access version). Here's the output for speaker english1 — note that the segment ID sp means "silent pause".
The key conclusions:
- Time between word onsets gives a good picture of phrase structure, despite the many other effects on timing;
- Individual non-native readers, aside from being overall a bit slower, usually show lengthened inter-word intervals in unexpected places, due to decoding or pronunciation problems.
A crucial point: "time between word onsets" means that any inter-word silent pauses added to the duration of the pre-pausal word. Here's the beginning of the reading by speaker english1, with the inter-word-onset duration for "Stella" indicated in red. (As usual, click on the image for a larger version.)
This merges pre-pausal lengthening with silent pauses (if any), and results in word-level duration measures that geneally reflect the prosodic phrasing. The plot below shows the sequence of 69 median inter-word-onset times for all 661 native English speakers with labels on the 10 largest local peaks:
Please call Stella.
Ask her to bring these things with her from the store:
Six spoons of fresh snow peas,
five thick slabs of blue cheese,
and maybe a snack for her brother Bob.
We also need a small plastic snake
and a big toy frog for the kids.
She can scoop these things into three red bags,
and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.
The local maximum on Wednesday mainly reflects the fact that it's a long word, though it's also at the edge of a phrase. And the final word station is shorter in this measure because there's no following onset to establish the pause duration:
The overall median durations for the French, Korean, and Russian native speakers are similar:
As we expect, the non-native speakers are overall somewhat slower, as shown below in the quantile plot of all inter-word intervals:
However, when we look at the patterns for individual speakers, we see something different. Here's a plots showing the inter-word pattern for speaker russian1, compared to the median pattern for native English speakers:
As you can see, there are some unexpected local maxima, corresponding to places where the speaker's flow is interrupted by reading or pronunciation difficulties. Here's the same thing for speaker russian2, where the unexpected pauses are in different places:
And speaker russian3, who is more fluent than the other two:
It's helpful to compare the first three native English speakers (english1, english2, english3), whose differences are concentrated at the phrase-boundary pauses:
Here are speakers french1, french2, and french3:, who also introduce the problem of false starts, repetitions, and filled pauses (about which more later):
And speakers korean1, korean2, korean3:
This is only a small first step, but it suggests fruitful continuations. In particular, the recent flowering of natural-sounding TTS ("text to speech") technology means that we can calculate a plausible reference pattern for an arbitrary input text, without the need to record human speakers.
Tolkien Society awards
Apr. 5th, 2026 08:11 amcalimacJam Dish?
Apr. 5th, 2026 11:09 amsoemand
I’m old enough to remember when scallop shells—like the little jam dish in the photo—pulled double duty as ashtrays in diners and backwoods cabins. A single half shell would sit on the table, overflowing with cigarette butts, a lone smoke balanced on the edge as if it had claimed the spot. It wasn’t pretty, but it was part of the landscape: coffee rings, bacon grease, and the low murmur of conversations drifting through the haze. Funny how one humble shell can summon an entire era, long after the last ember faded.
(morning writing, f&f, health, garden, cats)
Apr. 5th, 2026 08:56 amelainegreyIt's been a couple social weekends in a row, in March, and i've come tumbling down to a sick weekend. Spring Equinox i have observed by trying to get dirt moved before the 80+degree days get too entrenched. I am feeling a little guilt today for not being more connected to my community of family in the ritual greetings at holidays.
The weekend of the 20th, my niece was in a play and the next day we had a big family meal with my nephew who was heading back to college. There were some Christine porcupine moments but we got through. The next weekend i needed to get plants in the ground and so took off work early to make progress. All Saturday was given over to more social things: my brother and father came to the No Kings protest with my sister and I, then that evening my sister's family, my brother, and Christine and i went to see Hail Mary. Christine went home (and my brother-in-law wanted to go but missed that ride) and the rest of us had a late dinner.
Then there was more digging on Sunday, Monday evening, and Tuesday evening. The raised beds are almost full as i get 50 cubic feet of soil from old compost piles and the moldered pile of wood chips that has languished in the drive for a couple of years, rich with worm castings and mycelium. I'm layering in some clay , hopefully making a good home for these plants.
Wednesday was the Artemis II launch, and then Thursday and Friday i was out of it with a head cold. Yesterday, too.
I planted the Thomasville citrangequat on Monday along with three different shrubby native mints - wild rosemaries or calamints: Clinopodium coccineum 'Amber Blush', Clinopodium georgianum 'Desi Arnez', and Conradina canescens 'Gray Mound'. I've a Clinopodium arkansanum from last year that has overwintered happily, but it's a low growing form - not a shrub. These plants aren't commonly used for landscaping, but are not attractive to deer and do have flushes of flowers like rosemary and savories. I am terrified i will kill them all because they are all sandy soil, sand hills, beach, limestone natives, but i have read they (like so many mints) adapt fine just fine. So i sprang for them and they are in the 10x10 bed between the drive and the garden plot, with the northwest corner anchored by an old apple tree.
This year was the second spring, i think, since planting that bed with the first wave of plants. The waves of cold have confused some of the daffodils and narcissus, but it's greening up nicely. The Vernonia gigantea, a type of ironweed, a tall fall blooming member of the Asteraceae with purple flowers, worries me that it hasn't survived or isn't thriving. It dies back in the winter, so i just trust it takes a while to send back shoots. (But the droughty year past makes me worry it hasn't rooted itself well enough.) The "Sunburst" St Johns wort -- a woody shrub -- was pruned by the deer last year, but i think it was to its benefit. I'm hoping the shrubby mints survive and help give some winter structure to the area.
Two more plant orders are out there, being queued for delivery. One is for the companions for the citrangequat: a yuzu and two pineapple guavas. They probably should be planted further apart, and the chestnut is rowing so fast this might not be a sunny spot soon. Worry worry and second guess. The other order has much more highly bread and hybridized plants: two colorful yarrows and "Homestead purple" verbena as ground cover for the 10x10 bed (admittedly when yarrow blooms it is taller), a hummingbird mint, "Morello" also for the 10x10 bed. Then two monarda with very similar colors, but different bloom times, for ... well, i am not quite sure at the moment.
Work continues OK at the moment. An intense two weeks digging into some details.
Bruno and Marlowe continue to slowly come to terms with each other. Bruno is clear that he gets to sit with me in the living area in the morning while Marlowe is outside or escorted to a sleeping Christine. The doors separating them are open more often, even overnight. There are hissy fits, and Bruno still flits like a silent shadow to safety, but a future where we aren't negotiating seems possible.