Did my taxes. My Windows laptop is so old that I can't install the desktop version of TurboTax without updating my OS. So I filed using the online version. At the very last minute, because of course I do my taxes at the very last minute.
Then I popped back into my work email to exercise my tender offer. We've had people want to invest in the company, so rather than creating more shares, they let employees sell a small percentage of our vested shares. At this point, 1) we haven't gone IPO and 2) I don't trust Trump not to completely destroy not only the US but the World economy since he doesn't seem to have any kind of exit plan for his war against Iran. So I'm happy to take the money and run. It's not like I'm selling all of my shares. But again, very last minute, today was the deadline.
Now I can relax a little with those two things off my To Do list.
I had my one week eye appointment and it went well. I need to switch to three instead of four drops of the steroid eye drop and start another. So many eye drops!
I'm going to get a little more near vision in my right eye. Right now, I think it's just past fingertip length for it to be clear, which is a little awkward for things like cooking. I know it's not the permanent vision, but since my doctor suggested a little more near last appointment, it sounded good.
He said I'd lose some distance and might need glasses to drive at night, but that's fine. I'll trade some distance for some near. And I can have LASIK if needed. Hopefully not, but it's good to know!
Honestly, as a German I can not quite understand the obsession of the English speaking world with the question whether a word exists or not. If you have to express something for which there is no word, you have to make a new one, preferably by combining well-known words, and in the very same moment it starts to exist. Agree?
Deutsche Freunde, could you please create for me a word for the extreme depression I feel when I bend down to pick up a piece of litter and discover two more pieces of litter?
um = around
die Welt = world
die Umwelt = environment
ver = prefix to indicate something difficult or negative, a change that leads to deterioration or even destruction that is difficult to reverse or to undo, or a strong negative change of the mental state of a person
der Müll = garbage, trash, rubbish, litter
-ung = -ing
die Vermüllung = littering
ver- = see before
zweifeln = to doubt
-ung = see before
die Verzweiflung = despair, exasperation, desperation
die Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung = …
This is a german compound on the spot master class and I am LIVING
=the corner in which you retreat when you´re desperate because of your fear when being unable to form monster words
*eye twitch*
But what I want to see now is two germans arguing over the construction of one of these monster words.
@shiplocks-of-love I don’t think that will happen. The words make perfect sense. I think if German is your mother tongue you get a feeling for combining words, like a
Monsterwortbildungsgespür
Monster = monster
Wort = word
Bildung(s) = formation
Gespür = intuition
;-)
🤡
Sprachirrgartenbelustigungsbeitrag
die Sprache = language
• irren = to become lost (also: to err, to be mistaken; to wander, to stray)
• der Garten = garden
der Irrgarten = maze, knot garden
• be- = prefix with a variety of functions: ¹as part of a compound word, it denotes a processing or change of state; ²as part of a compound word, it denotes a touch; ³as part of a compound word, it denotes a more intensive preoccupation with or thematization of something; ⁴it forms from a noun an adjective with a pseudo-participle form because the corresponding verb does not exist; ⁵as a prefix, it forms a transitive verb from a previously intransitive verb; ⁶as a prefix of a verb, it shifts the focus and thus changes the sentence structure
• lustig = funny
• -ung = suffix turning an adjective/adverb into a noun
die Belustigung = amusement, entertainment, merriment
der Beitrag = contribution, article in a newspaper or magazine, posting on social media, input to a discussion
Bloody love this language <3<3<3
The thing is, since in German you have to decline/conjugate many words in relation to the noun they are refering to those monster words actually serve a purpose of making the language simpler.
A common example is a (as in any) red wine (ein roter Wein) as compaired to the compound a red wine (ein Rotwein). If rot is an adjective it has to be conjugated: der rote Wein - des roten Weins - die roten Weine - and many more. But it if rot is part of the noun you only have to decline Wein: der Rotwein - des Rotweins - die Rotweine.
So, die Verzweiflung über die Vermüllung der Umwelt is way longer than Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung and you would have to know three grammatical genders and the words’ respective declinations. Whereas for Umweltvermüllungsverzweiflung you only need to know that Verzweiflung is grammatically feminine (die) and its deklinations.
-s- // the glue that keeps german compound words together
repost // self explanatory
Doomscrollaufhellungsrepost // a repost to brighten up your doom scroll
You‘re Welcome!
The thing that I always want to point out to English speakers marvelling at German compounds is that we do this too! It’s a thing that Germanic languages are especially prone to!
It’s just conventional in English to keep writing spaces in between larger compounds, whereas in German it’s conventional to remove them. But they sound the same! Grammatically, they’re identical!
You could call it the…
English-German compound word space omission overadmiration fallacy
I rented Fantastic Four. I don't have many feelings about it. I like Pedro Pascal; I liked the last fight. I didn't feel attached to any of the characters.
I bought a couple of tomato plants. Too early, like last year, but the danger of frost is over and I didn't want to wait till everything is picked over. I kind of stupidly want blueberry plants.
My space key is getting stuck at random and it's annoying.
Poetry. The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me By Delmore Schwartz “the withness of the body”
The heavy bear who goes with me, A manifold honey to smear his face, Clumsy and lumbering here and there, The central ton of every place, The hungry beating brutish one In love with candy, anger, and sleep, Crazy factotum, dishevelling all, Climbs the building, kicks the football, Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.
Breathing at my side, that heavy animal, That heavy bear who sleeps with me, Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar, A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp, Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope Trembles and shows the darkness beneath. —The strutting show-off is terrified, Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants, Trembles to think that his quivering meat Must finally wince to nothing at all.
That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone, Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown, Stretches to embrace the very dear With whom I would walk without him near, Touches her grossly, although a word Would bare my heart and make me clear, Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed Dragging me with him in his mouthing care, Amid the hundred million of his kind, The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.
gnu MinoanMiss/Rubynye/Ny The memorial was so lovely. I cried a lot. I miss her so much.
books Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer. 2006. Imperialism is so gross.
The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles & Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer. 2013. These guys were such jackasses. I only knew about their Latin American horrors, not the rest of it.
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. 1934. My Wodehouse is all over the place and I didn't keep track of what I read when, so I'm rereading. This was cute and fast-paced.
The Jeeves Omnibus Vol. 1 by P.G. Wodehouse. Thank You, Jeeves: Really pissed off at Bertie's repeated "n-word minstrels", and the disaster blackface, augh, though Jeeves at least uses "negro." SIGH. I guess it was 1934, but GAH. The Code of the Woosters: a bit tedious. Needed more Dahlia. 1937. The Inimitable Jeeves: Needed more Jeeves and less gambling. 1923.
healthcrap Had an allergy shot Monday and I need one more to get back on maintenance after falling behind.
taxes I tried twice today to free-file my taxes, only to get to the end of the long long long process and have then say, no, this isn't free after all. So I paid a semi-random amount and got an extension. I think I got an extension. Did I get an extension? Now I need to double check. Gah.
Maine has passed a state-wide ban on new data centres over 20 megawatts until November 2027. [Maine State Legislature, PDF; The Hill]
There aren’t a lot of data centres in Maine — but developers really want them. The cities don’t, though. Local bans include a six-month ban in Bangor, which passed unanimously on Monday. The reason: [City of Bangor, PDF; Spectrum News]
the City of Bangor is suddenly experiencing increased development pressure from data centers.
In Lewiston, developers dropped a data centre redevelopment on the local council with just one month’s notice. The council released the details just six days before the vote in December — and the public was extremely happy. The council’s vote against was unanimous. [Bangor Daily News]
Moratorium bills are in progress in 12 other states. [Good Jobs First]
It’s not just in the US. Local councils in Australia have been calling for a moratorium. Same reasons — the data centres drain fresh water and power so you can’t build houses, and they provide hardly any jobs.
The New South Wales state government is holding an inquiry into data centres. And the submissions are not positive. [Crikey, paywalled]
What Is Write Every Day? A roving writing support community, with a bias toward encouraging a daily writing habit. It's a decentralized community, without moderators or a fixed home; hosting duties are passed around among members of the community. carenejeans hosted the first half of April; I'm hosting the second half, starting on the sixteenth. (By my time-zone: tomorrow.) zwei_hexenkeeps a list of who volunteered to host when.. No one is yet scheduled for May -- it could be you!
Housekeeping As host, I'll be publishing daily check-in posts, distributing encouragement in the comments, and keeping a tally of who checked in what day. I'm in Pacific Daylight Time (UTC -7), and plan to post the daily check-in during my evening. (About when this post went up.) I know my proposed posting time is very late for many people, so don't feel you have to wait for the new day's post -- just check in on the most recent post whenever is convenient for you. Whatever post you use, please include what day you're checking in for, so I can keep the tally straight.
I'll also be using a consistent tag for these check-in posts ("write every day") so feel free to block or follow that, depending on your interest.
If you have any questions, or wish to check-in ahead of tomorrow's post, the comments are open! Welcome!
After I finished The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, I idly looked for fanfiction. There are all of two fics: one is Una/Owen smut, and the other is not actually for The Everlasting but is a sort of fusion, Palamedes and Camilla from The Locked Tomb Series in a plot drawn from The Everlasting...
...and I really liked it! Camilla Everlasting by DullestProdigalSon, about 23K, lots of very short chapters. You do have to have read Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, as it's very firmly based in those books, but I thought the translation of the Everlasting plot to the Locked Tomb world was very cleverly done. (You don't need to have read The Everlasting. There's some reference to "The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex" but you probably don't need to have read that.) In this story, Palamedes is the scholar/necromancer from the future who is sent back in time to help the famous Camilla Hect become a Lyctor. What's really cool is that in this fic, Palamedes was not the necromancer of the original narrative, but essentially overwrote that narrative to be the story we read in the novels, which I thought was very in keeping with the way that Harrow the Ninth rewrites the story of Gideon the Ninth, and also echoes Cytherea's actions in the first book. The character voices and general tone and style felt super-true to the Locked Tomb, too - overall an enjoyable read!
And...that's about all. I'm currently eyeball-reading The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, and listening to Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor (book 4 of the Bobiverse).
What I'm currently watching:
We noped out of Fallout S2 after two episodes, and are now about midway through 1923, one of Taylor Sheridan's numerous Yellowstone prequels. I had not been really inclined to watch it, but B roped me in with Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, who I must admit are excellent here; however, the narrative strand dealing with the Indian boarding school is the most compelling (and horrifying) to me. (Living in Indian country now - Southern Ute land, near a college that is free for tribal members, who make up about half the student population, which incidentally was originally on the site of an Indian boarding school - I'm much more aware of this terrible part of our country's past.)
What I'm still playing:
I think I'm getting close to the climax of the second act (of three) of Ghost of Tsushima.
1) My partner injured yet another finger playing baseball last weekend and had to go to the emergency room. Luckily it was not broken, just dislocated. Since then we have gotten 3 phone calls from the hospital group asking for a survey response.
This is particularly irritating because this group has been buying up hospitals, clinics and medical practices in the area, and is currently the only emergency room in town and provider of certain services.
So what is the point of the survey? What choice to we have? How will any response actually do anything to improve care?
2) I've been warming to High Potential, and recently Keith Carradine guest starred. I knew I recognized him as soon as he appeared, but I couldn't place him. Instead I kept wondering why he made me think of Joel Kinnaman in For All Mankind. For sure they could play relatives.
3) I have not been reading any fic for the better part of a year now. Some months back I read about 4 or 5 that had probably been downloaded over a year earlier, but I haven't been doing offline reading for the first time in a very long time. And when it happened before it was because I didn't have access to material, whereas now I have dozens of commercial books and even more fic.
(I say "nothing" though this doesn't count the random drabble or ficlet someone recs.) ( Read more... )
4) The thing that really stood out to me about Amazon announcing they're discontinuing service to 2012 and earlier Kindles was to think that there's not many electronics that are still running after 15 years. ( Read more... )
5) The Pillowfort Anniversary festivities have ended and it was fun. Many (not even all!) of the activities could be summed up with the bingo card. ( Read more... )
I'd love to see someone else take this on in a few years' time.
I didn't really like Naomi Alderman's novel, Disobedience.
I found it kind of annoying. But it has stayed with me for some time, near the surface, too. Maybe I don't like it because it hits oddly close to home.
The characters bothered me. I believed in them; I just wanted to smack some sense into them. The books main character is an adult woman, travelling back to her childhood home in London after her father's death. Her father was the spiritual leader of an extremely conservative sect of orthodox Jews who live apart from the world as much as they can following very strict, very rigid, gender roles. She left home after her mother's death because she could not fit herself into the role of wife and mother which was the only option her father's teachings allowed here. But because she has come to the end of a not very good relationship, hit a set of promotion roadblocks at work, and wants a final chance to make peace with her childhood ghosts, she returns to London to sort out her father's things.
Her father's community is less than thrilled.
Two of her childhood friends now married to eachother, round out the set of major players in Disobedience. The two friends both once loved her, but have since come to terms with the desires their community forbids. By suppressing their true desires, and following the rules, they have both become respected members of the community.
If you know what it is to walk away from family members who disapprove of you, maybe you can understand why I found these three so frustrating. In spite of all they'd been put through by the prejudice of their family and their community, they still seek their approval, they still seek their love. I understand that, but I also know that there comes a point when one must simply walk away. I wanted them all to just walk away.
So Disobedience was a frustrating reading experience for me. It's also an excellent book, well-written with complex characters who address serious issues in an honest manner that does not produce neat endings. Disobedience is a book that has stayed with me a long time now.
Heat usually doesn’t define March, a month that still carries a hint of winter’s last breath. This year, it felt more like a preview of late spring, and sometimes even early summer.
Across the United States, temperatures didn’t just creep up. They jumped far beyond what anyone would expect for that time of year.
The numbers tell a blunt story. The average temperature for March hit 50.85 degrees Fahrenheit. That is 9.35 degrees higher than the 20th-century average.
It is not just a record for March. It is the largest jump above normal for any month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states.
Daytime highs pushed even further, running 11.4 degrees above average, nearly matching what people usually feel in April.
Ya THINK? It hit 89 fucking degrees here in central Illinois. REPEATEDLY. We're also in drought conditions. I've had to water things already planted so they don't die, in what should be the wettest time of year. >_< I really don't want this to be another year of eight months watering.
![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
questionable_content_feed
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brickhousewench
![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
DullestProdigalSon, about 23K, lots of very short chapters. You do have to have read Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth, as it's very firmly based in those books, but I thought the translation of the Everlasting plot to the Locked Tomb world was very cleverly done. (You don't need to have read The Everlasting. There's some reference to "The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex" but you probably don't need to have read that.) In this story, Palamedes is the scholar/necromancer from the future who is sent back in time to help the famous Camilla Hect become a Lyctor. What's really cool is that in this fic, Palamedes was not the necromancer of the original narrative, but essentially overwrote that narrative to be the story we read in the novels, which I thought was very in keeping with the way that Harrow the Ninth rewrites the story of Gideon the Ninth, and also echoes Cytherea's actions in the first book. The character voices and general tone and style felt super-true to the Locked Tomb, too - overall an enjoyable read!
