Love you to the moon and back

Apr. 11th, 2026 09:51 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

"As we prepare to go out of radio communication, we're still able to feel your love from Earth," pilot Victor Glover said. "And to all of you down there on Earth, and around Earth, we love you from the Moon."

Artemis is just so wildly different from previous moon missions. I love it.

I got that quote from this lovely piece on why we go to space.

NASA's budget is not the reason gas costs $6 a gallon, or why we don't have universal healthcare or pre-K. We don't have those because those in charge, and the people who voted for them, have chosen for us not to have those. It is a false binary that we even have to choose at all. The U.S. is the richest polity that has ever existed; there is more than enough money to go around to satisfy basic human services while still funding spaceflight. The people denying us those basic services would very much like for you to identify NASA as the culprit for its $24.4 billion budget, which represents 0.35 percent of all government spending, at the same time a pointless and purposeless war costs us a billion dollars a day, and the government seeks a $1.5 trillion defense budget.

KaBOOM!

Apr. 11th, 2026 01:36 pm
halfshellvenus: (Default)
[personal profile] halfshellvenus
We're in the third day of a string of thunderstorms that could last through tomorrow. This isn't really the time of year for them-- they're more of a winter or summer event. The last time I lived somewhere where this was common, I was in Illinois. And thunderstorms were the beginning of the tornado season. SO glad to be back out West again.

This weather means I'm back to biking in the garage again. I'm about to finish Run Away on Netflix (I swear, James Nesbitt is everywhere), and I've started re-watching Arrested Development as my "early" entertainment for the first 30 minutes or so. I bike for 85 minutes plus warm-down, so I need a LOT of distraction out there. I should return to Season 2 of Euphoria (Hulu) again, despite the commercials. There are a couple of things on Amazon that look worthy too, but the commercial breaks just about kill me, so I mainly watch stuff on Netflix. Season 3 of Night Agent is ready, so maybe that next?

On the plane ride back from San Diego, I watched the remake of Rebecca. Armie Hammer was as handsome as ever (one of the few blond men I find attractive), though not sufficiently brooding enough. Lily James was good, though, and Kristen Scott Thomas was bracingly chilly as Mrs. Danvers. You can see why Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series always has people in the book world employing armies of Mrs. Danvers clones as agents of ruthlessness. :O

I'm still trying to get caught up with my friends-list. There are so many new people that even when I get near the end, I refresh and more posts come up! But I hope everyone had a good Easter, and that those both near and far will be seeing an end to winter soon. It has boomeranged here for a bit, but better that than an early summer.

rosa_heartlily: (Default)
[personal profile] rosa_heartlily
This time last year I was wrangling meetings, using Copilot, hoping for pretty flowers, enjoying new skills in Forspoken, and pondering my relationship with CS Lewis.

Today I got scammed. That's all I'm going to say about it because the more I tell the story the more stupid I feel. Unsurprisingly, the bank are not going to refund me. I made the payments. I was not under duress. I was just stupid, despite all the professionals I've spoken to today trying to reassure me otherwise.

Apart from the money, I lost an entire day to the nonsense of trying to sort it out. There are two bright spots. Firstly, it didn't happen closer to pay day; I could have lost a lot more. Secondly, I've changed some of my passwords, which I probably wouldn't have done if I'd just put the phone down when the scammer called.

In my efforts to distract myself, I watched Emma whilst eating the chippy tea Son treated us to, and the boys watched Liverpool win at home. After tea, I finally got round to some Veilguard. I've recruited a powerful ally through persuasion, again. I don't fancy fighting her...

And now I'm finishing Robots of Death. Someone's interfering with the robots' programming. Sooo far-fetched...

 
ashelterofpages: (pretty_pixels109)
[personal profile] ashelterofpages
Haven't worked on any icons yet, but I'm still intending to. I think the plan for that is going to be to do it when I'm not house-sitting so I have the better screen to do it with. Right now I'm on a 17in screen, which is fine, but it's a portable one that isn't the best for playing with something like graphics.

I will say that since I had that mindset shift about what I want to try to do every day, I'm seeing some interesting results.

1. I get a lot of stuff done on certain days, but then the next day I do less. This doesn't bother me, though, because I'm still getting a lot of life stuff done. I don't feel so guilty and awful on those second days, and that's the kind of thing I was hoping to accomplish.

2. I'm able to catch up on things like beta reading with less difficulty. Reading any fiction has been kind of hard lately, but I'm having an easier time getting to things I need to give feedback of some kind on, so that's nice.

3. My writing is...not really happening right now. Not drafting, and also not editing. I'm not sure what to make of that, but we'll see. This whole thing is still barely started, so maybe I just need to give it more time before I can start integrating words back into my life.

4. However, I did post on Bluesky asking for prompts to write microfiction off. I love doing these things every couple of months, so I'm looking forward to playing with those prompts soon.

So, I've been house-sitting for S again, which I can't recall if I've said or not on here yet, but I'm going back to my house tomorrow, then coming back here again on Monday. This is because I need to pick up some clothes, meds, and maybe a few other things while also swapping some stuff out too. Which is fine. Right now this is my life, switching between the two houses until S finally moves upstate.

Book Review

Apr. 11th, 2026 04:14 pm
kenjari: (Default)
[personal profile] kenjari
The Court of the Air
Stephen Hunt

This fantasy steam punk novel was kind of a mess. It's set in a complicated world based on Victorian England. The two main characters, Molly and Oliver, are orphans who hold mysterious powers that make them the target of various assassins and other forces. They each end up on the run, encountering roguish allies and murderous adversaries as their world devolves into bloody conflict. There are factions trying to remake the world, resurrect eldritch gods, or both. There are people working to hold the darker outcomes at bay. There is a ton going on. Since Oliver and Molly are in the same place for almost none of the story and the connections between them were never really explained, The Court of the Air felt almost like two separate books badly welded together. The plot and the setting were overstuffed. The characters were a bit flat. A lot happened, but it all seemed kind of empty in the end.

(no subject)

Apr. 11th, 2026 03:17 pm
ribirdnerd: perched bird (Default)
[personal profile] ribirdnerd posting in [community profile] birdfeeding
Saturday

Another sunny day, with 2 nice days in a row things are starting to bloom and we can see buds on the trees.

Some Blue Jays, House sparrows and Common Grackles have been around so far.

Well, I got some nice shoes?

Apr. 11th, 2026 03:18 pm
missdiane: (Default)
[personal profile] missdiane
We headed into Brooklyn close to noon on Thursday (Lyft to train station, NJ Transit to NY Penn Station, subway to Brooklyn then walking several blocks to the hotel). We tried to stop for lunch at a chain called Sweetgreen but the pin on their map is in the completely wrong location so we crossed the street and tried to get something at the revamped fancy train hall but the food court had no place for us to sit so we gave up and ended up chilling for a few moments at a Zaro's bakery in old Penn Station before hopping the subway to Brooklyn. I had a small but tasty tuna salad sandwich (noting the food for future reference).

When we got to the hotel, since we were dragging suitcases and hadn't done the ol' city crawl in a long time, we were pretty tired and so we got into each of our rooms and crashed for a while. We tried to get adjoining rooms but that didn't happen. We were at least on the same floor and I did have a walk-in shower in my room. A few hours later we decided to walk several blocks to a modern Mexican restaurant that sounded good. The food was super tasty - I ordered a horchata, a lobster taco that's served cold and is a little spicy with some fresh onion and a bowl of pozole which I've always wanted to try that soup. Emily also ordered some fresh pico and chips to share.

I finished my fancy taco (it wasn't any bigger than any regular taco) but had just a few chips and pico and barely made a dent in the pozole and didn't finish my drink. I chalked it up to the Mounjaro finally making me full quickly. I was bummed that I had to waste the rest of the soup since it wouldn't have traveled well but at least we know that this place, while a little expensive, gives filling servings. It wasn't just the size of the meal...I screwed up, I screwed up BIG. While I do need to contact my doctor to graduate to the next dose up, it's still effective enough at slowing digestion and I had been avoiding things like broccoli, brussels sprouts and...ONION...since starting the drug. The tuna salad had raw onion, the taco had raw onion, the pico had raw onion. Oh hell.

And naturally the Tums I meant to bring didn't make it into my toiletry bag or my purse. I had to spend $4 for two Tums at the front desk and it still barely made a dent into the stomach woes. I didn't sleep much or well that night. The next morning I thought that it was down to a dull roar and had a little of the free breakfast (oatmeal with fixings since they had an awesome oatmeal bar and a side of a little scrambled egg for the protein), but through the day, I just kept getting waves of feeling hellish. We went into the city since I wanted to go to a shoe place I saw online to try on some flats. I liked the fit of them - they even have quarter sizes which I didn't know was even a thing! After doing a little more wandering in Manhattan, we were both tired and took the subway and the several block tromp back to the hotel in early afternoon. Since neither one of us were up for doing a sit down meal that night, we had stopped at a bougie grocery in Brooklyn on the walk back to get some things to eat at the hotel before the concert.

I had to spend another $4 for some more Tums since I was still in a good amount of gastro distress. I managed to keep things down, barely and laid down for a few hours to get things under control. I did eat the very simple sandwich I got at the grocery before we went for our several block walk to the concert venue.

It was a good enough concert, well kind of, but we ended up leaving early because we couldn't take how ungodly LOUD it was. Like rattling your seat loud even when he was doing what were ballads. Emily was getting a headache and that thumping didn't help my stomach any so we were only there and hour and a half.

I stopped at a Walgreens outside of the Barclays center and got extra Tums and water. It helped. Unfortunately someone was having a party at 1am in the breakfast area that Emily's room overhangs so she had to call the front desk to complain about the noise. We were both sore as hell the next morning so instead of dragging ourselves the several blocks, I called for a Lyft to take us to the subway. Thankfully we didn't have the energy to do more exploring in Manhattan since during the time we were hanging out in Penn Station for an hour waiting for the next NJ Transit train, some guy with a machete went on a rampage at Grand Central. Yikes.

It wasn't a terrible time but hopefully the next trip we go on has less misadventures. Hey, I did get over 12K steps in on Friday alone.

Pandemic Garden Club

Apr. 11th, 2026 12:03 pm
scrubjayspeaks: macro photograph of ladybug climbing a blade of grass (garden)
[personal profile] scrubjayspeaks
Welcome to the April edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!

Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.

As for myself...

Read more... )

Books and TTRPGs

Apr. 11th, 2026 02:36 pm
orangeblossomteas: (Default)
[personal profile] orangeblossomteas
I wanted to boost a couple links.

The Narratess Indie Book Sale is live from today to the 13th. There's a website listing all of the books that are on sale and multiple bundles on itch.io for books that are available through there. (I only linked one, but there's links to the other bundles on the website. There is one book that is available on itch.io but isn't in the bundles from what I could tell.)

There's also a TTRPGs for Trans Rights bundle on itch.io until the end of the month. There's over 500 TTRPGs in the bundle proper and if you fill out a form linked in the description, you also get some extras.

updating credit

Apr. 11th, 2026 11:23 am
calimac: (Default)
[personal profile] calimac
My new credit card came yesterday. This was slightly unexpected because the old one doesn't expire for two months. It was also noteworthy, because this is the card I use for all my online transactions, including recurring charges. That meant I had to go online and update them all, with the new expiration date and (where they stored it) the 3-digit thingie that supplements the card number for verification. (While the card number stays the same, the 3-digit thingie - I forget what it's called - changes with each reissue, but fortunately my new one is memorizable.)

And that proved a bit of a challenge. I don't keep a list of the recurring charges, but since they are recurring I can find them on my bill. First stop was my web and e-mail hosting service; that was pretty easy. The next one was unrelated to it, but I found it had somehow picked the change up from the web service.

After that, however, came a bunch where I was dashed if I could find the page to make a credit card change on. If I did eventually stumble on the page of links that included it, it was easily identifiable, but stumbling upon that page was a doozy. At one site I typed in a help search box "how do I update my credit card" and it instructed me to find the link on a particular page, but it didn't say how to find that page. Typing a query on how to find that page produced no useful results.

Then there was my gym membership, which I don't use any more. I was just going to let it run out with the credit card, but I decided to try to contact them online or by phone. Ha-ha, you can't do that, though the online instructions say you can. The phone number, which the online system assures you can reach membership services, asks for your member number, confirms this, and then says goodbye and hangs up. It says elsewhere you can visit your local club. Well, ha-ha, my local club has been closed - news to me, but I told you I didn't use it any more. My membership was only good there, so I doubt I can get anything done at some other outlet. Maybe I'll just let it run out with the credit card - assuming it hasn't picked up the update, but I don't have an online account there, so I can't check.

Agent from Above

Apr. 11th, 2026 07:51 pm
mekare: Yunlan smiling broadly (Guardian Yunlan smile)
[personal profile] mekare posting in [community profile] c_ent
man talking to a statue of 3rd prince


I've justed posted an extremely short review for this new Netflix show and thought I'd crosspost here.

TV

Since I’ve been travelling, I didn’t watch a lot. I did check out a new Taiwanese Netflix series though: Agent from Above. It’s about a Heavenly Agent (he's acting on behalf of the Third Heavenly Prince and gets missions via paper slips delivered by a bird) battling the forces of hell. Very entertaining, nicely shot and loveable characters. Strong found family tropes (humans and ghosts live together in an old “market” building.) The length was what actually made me check it out, it’s only 8 episodes long. I simply do not have the energy or time to invest in something long right now.
Someone on Tumblr compared its vibe to 2010s Canadian series and I can sort of understand what they mean.

Has anyone here watched it as well?

Challenge # 497: Ghost Town

Apr. 11th, 2026 06:33 pm
badly_knitted: (Drabble-Zone)
[personal profile] badly_knitted posting in [community profile] drabble_zone

This week's challenge is:


Ghost Town


Reminder of Rules

Entries should be 100, 200, or 300 words exactly, excluding titles and headers.
Please place the body of your entry behind a cut.
Tag with the appropriate Challenge, Fandom, Type, and Ratings tags. If a tag for your fandom doesn't exist, leave a request on the Tag Request post and I'll create the tags you need. You can request as many fandom tags as you want.
You don't need to use the challenge word or phrase in your drabble, though you can if you like.
Each challenge ends when the new challenge is posted, but if you're a few days late that's still fine.

NEW RULE: DOUBLE AND TRIPLE DRABBLES ARE ALSO ACCEPTED ;)

Have fun!




2612 / Fic - The Pitt

Apr. 11th, 2026 01:18 pm
siria: (the pitt - dr robby swag)
[personal profile] siria
Saw My Colours
The Pitt | ~1500 words | Duke, Gen | Episode fic for 2.14.

(Also on AO3)

Time was, Duke had a lot of firsts on Fourth of July weekends. )

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