(no subject)

Sep. 20th, 2025 08:58 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly


The camera angles work really hard to make the dogs look vicious and dangerous, but they can't fool me! Those are some happy, friendly puppers!

Saturday 20 September 1662

Sep. 20th, 2025 11:00 pm
[syndicated profile] pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Up betimes and to my office, where I found my brother Tom, who tells me that his mistress’s mother has wrote a letter to Mr. Lull of her full satisfaction about Tom, of which I was glad, and do think the business will take. All this morning we sat at the office, Sir J. Minnes and I. And so dined at home, and among my workmen all the afternoon, and in the evening Tom brought Mr. Lull to me, a friend of his mistress, a serious man, with whom I spoke, and he gives me a good account of her and of their satisfaction in Tom, all which pleases me well. We walked a good while in the garden together, and did give him a glass of wine at my office, and so parted.

So to write letters by the post and news of this to my father concerning Tom, and so home to supper and to my lodgings and to bed.

To-night my barber sent me his man to trim me, who did live in King Street in Westminster lately, and tells me that three or four that I knew in that street, tradesmen, are lately fallen mad, and some of them dead, and the others continue mad. They live all within a door or two one of another.

Read the annotations

The Marvels

Sep. 21st, 2025 12:49 am
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
I haven't got the Disney channel so I haven't seen... so much MCU stuff by now, but, I decided to keep going with the DVDs I do have and watched
The Marvels.

That was fun :-)
... but Captain Marvel was *good*, and this was fun, so it wasn't quite the same game?

I was thinking though, if you have One Character in the title, you can follow a tight emotional arc and stick with something simple like Get Back Up.
But when you have three you have to sort of match up the Theme and then plait them together?
And that is Harder.

But the movie did that, and successfully I felt, just sometimes it took a break from being a plait and hung little flags on it and that seemed... a very stylised choice? Read more... )

So I did a quick google for a fact and I saw a lot of people saying The Marvels was rewritten, saying it should have been rewritten more, saying it should be more like Captain Marvel. And I am not saying that. It was doing an interesting thing when it was trying to fit the three of them together. I'm not quite sure it 100% worked, but it was a better thing to try to do than to just sequel one of them. Like the point was they needed each other's perspectives. It was a good try at a good point.

I am however unsure it was the best possible version of itself.

That I will still have a think about.
numb3r_5ev3n: 7 from Matrix Online (Default)
[personal profile] numb3r_5ev3n
The thing I want to get across to MAGA right now, more than anything else, is that they are creating a future that they themselves will not want to live in once it gets here. They think it will be wonderful, they think it will be everything they wanted, they think they will be blissful once they have made us shut up and disappear...but once we are gone, once their outrage addiction finally starts to fizzle out and and all they have left is burnout, the only ones who will be left to tear apart will be each other. And they're already doing it. The September 10th shooter is a Groyper, after all. It's already started.

MAGA acted like being politely asked to refer to people by their preferred pronouns, or to please wear a mask in the grocery store, or people suggesting they get a vaccine during the pandemic was tyranny - because they've never actually lived in tyranny. They've never actually lived under a regime that actively represses free speech and personal freedoms. They want to claim that "cancel culture" is no different. But at this rate, they're about to find out just how bad government restriction of free speech is by comparison.

They wanted to compare the threat of "being cancelled" to persecution for "thought crimes" ala the novel 1984, but they're about to find out how much worse actual government persecution for "thought crimes" is about to get under Trump. They're going to find out how much worse it will be than the censure or personal judgement from their liberal acquaintances or family members, or random strangers on the internet.

They think "the libs" will be the only people affected, and they're about to find out how wrong they are about that.

It's like the MAGAs who go to Russia, thinking it's right wing paradise - only to find that all of their speech and activities are monitored 24/7, and oops, Dad just got conscripted! That's the reality that they're creating for themselves over here. They think living under authoritarianism will be awesome, until they're down in it and realizing that it sucks, and they're begging for someone from the civilized world to please come extract them.

It's being sold to them by the same pack of grifters who learned 24 years ago that if you keep the outrage burning, and keep the fear of the Other stoked to appropriate levels, these folks will gladly turn their brains off and buy anything the grifters want to sell them. But there will come a point that the outrage stops doing it for them, and then all that will be left will be misery. And by then they will have willingly ceded away any power that the Constitution granted them to do anything to save themselves. Yes, even their precious Second Amendment. (What, you don't think they'll willingly hand their guns over to "Daddy Trump," when we already watched them willingly bend over for "Daddy Bush" and the Patriot Act?)

People who have studied the authoritarian playbook can see this coming a mile away.

There will be no one to "come extract them" by that point. They'll just be stuck in the Authoritarian Hell they created for themselves.
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
[personal profile] full_metal_ox posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling
Pairings/Characters: M/M; Song Lan | Song Zichen/Xiao Zingchen; Song Lan | Song Zichen, Xiao Xingchen
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 3,632 words
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, determinedly Taiwanese cuisine, Food Porn because the author inexplicably omitted that tag, racist microaggression (a character recounts getting renamed by his exchange host family.)
Creator Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Taiwan, Street food, chinese diaspora feelings and food as love language, SongXiao Feast
Creator Links: (AO3) [archiveofourown.org profile] Irrelevancy; (Tumblr) [tumblr.com profile] touchmycoat
Theme: Food & Cooking, Cultural Differences, Fluff, Identity, Modern AU, Slice of Life

Summary: Flirting and cultural reclamation via Taiwanese street food. Songxiao modern meet-cute.

Author’s Notes:
For the #songxiaofeast on twitter, thanks for organizing the event~!!!! There's so much great art in the hashtag *~* love me some food love....

Chinese glossary at end lolol, and is this all a shameless marketing ploy for Taiwan night markets? yes.

…The menu (a twitter thread w pictures)
(Unfortunately no longer accessible—FMO.)

大腸包小腸 (dà cháng bāo xiǎo cháng): "little sausage wrapped around a big sausage" lol
蚵仔煎 (ó-à-tsiān): oyster pancake. I'm using the Taiwanese romanization here because it better captures that Hokkien pronunciation. Ningxia Night Market seriously has the best ones.
臭豆腐 (chò dò fǔ): stinky tofu!! I think it smells delicious; don't be like SL eat it normally without that crazy amount of sauce nkfsjdfds
肉圓麵線 (bà wán miàn xiàn): meatball & rice noodles. Two separate things but they're typically sold together. Meatball is always pronounced in Hokkien and sometimes rice noodle is too (mǐ suǎ)
豆花 (dòu huā): tofu pudding. It's not too sweet and it's sooooo refreshing to have on a hot taiwan evening with ice!
雞蛋糕 (jī dàn gāo): egg cake! They're seriously very good but a hit-or-miss from street vendors lmfao.

Drop a comment~! Happy feastings!!!!!!!


Reccer’s Notes: Taiwanese bartender Song Zichen, taking both pity on and a fancy to diasporic American tourist Xiao Xingchen, proceeds to initiate him into the ways of local street food (as both a welcome into his heritage and a courtship overture.) This fic, stuffed with delicious Unresolved Sexual Tension, serves as a reminder that the Sinosphere is a very big and diverse place, and brought an outpouring of nostalgic yearning for the Taste Of Home from diasporic commenters.

(And Ningxia Night Market needs to hire Irrelevancy as a publicist, dammit; I was fervently wishing my neighborhood had something like that up the alley!)

Fanwork links: Comfort Food / 有可能的夜晚 (AO3-locked.)

Alcazaba in Málaga, Spain

Sep. 20th, 2025 02:00 pm
[syndicated profile] atlas_obscura_feed

The Alcazaba, seen from Calle Mundo Nuevo.

"Alcazaba" is the Spanish rendering of "the citadel" in Arabic, which is why Málaga's Alcazaba is one of many in Spain. Like most, the monumental structure in Málaga is the product of many centuries of addition, modification, embellishment, and destruction.

Although historical texts mention earlier fortresses in its current location, the Alcazaba as we know it was primarily built in the 11th century and then significantly improved in the 13th and 14th centuries by a series of small Moorish kingdoms, or "taifas," that controlled Málaga after the fall of the powerful caliphate based in Córdoba.

When the city fell to the troops of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1487 after a siege of over three months, it became the residence of the crown's local military governor. As the centuries passed, the Alcazaba's importance as an administrative center diminished, and it served a variety of functions, including as an artillery outpost and prison. Its condition deteriorated significantly following an earthquake in 1680 and a French naval bombardment in 1693. By the end of the 18th century, it had been occupied by the townsfolk, becoming a marginal and picturesque residential neighborhood. It remained that way, partially hidden by the houses of local residents, until 1931, when it was declared a national monument.

The Alcazaba's rehabilitation was initially directed by the same architect responsible for restoring the Alhambra in Granada, Leopoldo Torres Balbás. He took a historicist approach, seeking to restore the structure's appearance as faithfully as possible during the time of the Moors. When construction teams undertook the removal of the neighborhood's houses, they were happy to discover that residents had often simply covered up or walled off the remains of arches and columns — cheaper than demolishing and removing them entirely — thereby preserving these features for posterity. What visitors explore today is the result of the restorations carried out from the 1930s to the 1960s, which combined the remains of the original structure with reconstructions informed by archaeological evidence and historical drawings.

A visit inside the Alcazaba's formidable walls reveals lush gardens and numerous fountains, harmoniously combining manmade and natural elements. The monument's highlights include the arched doorways of a series of original towers leading up into the fortress's residential interior, some of which incorporate columns from the ruins of the adjacent Roman theater. There's also the Patio de las Armas, a small plaza with a fountain and garden overlooking the port of Málaga, and the upper palace, featuring its own water-cooled interior courtyards, elegant arches, and numerous other intricately detailed decorative elements.

Ford Country…in Rural Essex?

Sep. 20th, 2025 12:43 pm
[syndicated profile] jstordaily_feed

Posted by Matthew Wills

Henry Ford’s failed attempt at setting up a rubber production facility in Brazil is now well-known thanks to Greg Grandin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fordlandia. Hardly known at all, however, is the English farming experiment he began in 1931.

As historian Kit Kowol explains, Ford tried to apply the “techniques of mass production, scientific management, and high wages” he had made famous in the auto industry to “serve the interests of agriculture and the rural community” in Essex.

In the midst of the Great Depression, this experimental farm was supposed to show how industrial American farming methods could be applied to England. Kowol calls the effort to “harmonize modern technology with traditional patterns of life” an “experiment in conservative modernity.” Ford and his allies in the Conservative Party were attempting to forge their sort of modern rural utopia amidst the global capitalist disaster, when “the English countryside was bursting with schemes to rural regeneration.”

The Ford scheme: stem the rural exodus, preserve traditional rural life, and introduce industrial farming with Ford-produced tractors and trucks. As with today’s megalomaniac billionaires, Ford had plenty of money to spend on his notions. (His anti-Jewish obsessions, for instance, made him Hitler’s favorite American.)

At heart a paternalistic small-town reactionary, Ford believed his workers should combine agricultural and industrial labor. This would lead, he thought, “to greater industrial and political stability. Workers who could grow their own food were less likely to engage in industrial agitation in periods of economic downturn.”

“Though he personally disliked agricultural work,” continues Kowol, the farm-raised Ford nonetheless saw it as a way of “making men more productive, efficient, and proud when they returned to the factory.”

The Ford factory at Dagenham was purposely located on the marshes east of London, away from the corruptions—and the working class tradition and organization—of the city. But the original garden allotments there for his workers proved to be a bust; as in Fordlandia, the land “was totally inappropriate for the task he had set for it.” In addition, it turned out that factory workers didn’t have the “necessary skills nor attitude for farming.” Not to mention the time.

Percival Perry, the Conservative party activist who headed Ford Motors Ltd. in England, suggested Ford test his “pet beliefs” about agricultural mechanization further afield. They settled on a dilapidated estate in Boreham, about thirty miles southwest of London. They named it Fordson Estate, after the Ford’s UK tractor brand. For a while, the press would call that part of Essex “Ford Country.”

More to Explore

John Frost and daughter listening to radio in their home. Tehama County, California

The People Who Thought Farmers Without Radios Were Rubes

In the 1920s, some people thought that the new invention of radio would make American farmers less "backward."

As it happened, Ford moved on to other crotchets, but Perry continued to rule over the farm.

“Able to manipulate his employer’s will and considerable resources, Perry engineered the farming venture as a means to demonstrate his own Conservative social and political philosophy,” Kowol writes. Perry wanted Fordson to show “how self-consciously enlightened industrialists [like himself] could use mechanization and other modern techniques to create a more productive, vibrant, and harmonious rural society.”

A “family wage” was supposed to maintain traditional family structure, so women weren’t accepted at the Fordson school for agricultural engineering. Workers were paid 25 percent over the county minimum and received a yearly bonus based on the profit made by the estate. The idea was to “remove the injustice of those who did most to increase the land’s value, namely the agricultural worker, receiving the slimmest financial reward.”

Worker contracts lasted a year, though many were fired before they were vested in the cooperatives. At harvest time, half of the labor force were “casuals,” typically Irish immigrants, who weren’t provided with housing, a situation which riled locals. Borehamites were also upset because they weren’t allowed to glean the farm’s unharvested produce, a traditional practice. So much for rural harmony.

During World War II, when the government guaranteed agricultural prices, Fordson boomed. As an avowed alternative-to-socialism, however, this was particularly ironic. The war also saw a piece of Fordson land turned into a US Army Air Force base. The Women’s Land Army, meanwhile, chucked both Ford’s and Perry’s gendered view of rural life out of the barn.

When Labour ushered in the end of Conservative rule after the end of the war, the Fordson experiment no longer made any sense. Ford died in 1947, marking an end to his funding. Perry and investors ended up buying the operation out. It would eventually be run by “precisely the kind of absentee owners that Perry had once actively sought to exclude.”


Support JSTOR Daily! Join our membership program on Patreon today.

The post Ford Country…in Rural Essex? appeared first on JSTOR Daily.

What I saw on the web on 2025.9.19

Sep. 20th, 2025 06:20 am
reblogarythm: (friday)
[personal profile] reblogarythm

  1. Yes you can hum while holding your nose
    by David R. MacIver
    https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/yes-you-can-hum-while-holding-your
    trying now to decide whether his nose-hold-humming isn't just a type of singing. but then, maybe nose-humming is just a type of singing too?
    via rss

  2. Down To The River To Pray
    by [traditional] performed by John Paul Jones
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKM3S5_Fxp8
    so that's how he ended up with a triple-necked mandolin!
    via lookign for some other stuff by him, and finding this as well

  3. The Things You Know, The Things You Trust
    by [personal profile] mrissa
    https://www.iftheresanyoneleft.com/stories/marissalingen
    excellent questions, even if the blue six-limbed folk don't show up
    via discord
goodbyebird: The Mandalorian: Mando is walking towards you. (Mandalorian babysitter of your dreams)
[personal profile] goodbyebird posting in [community profile] disneyplusshows
Marvel Stars Stand for Jimmy Kimmel: Pedro Pascal Defends Free Speech While Others Endorse Boycott

Pascal’s post came on the heels of other Marvel stars taking their support a step further by endorsing a boycott of the studio and its subsidiaries, including platforms that stream their work. Marisa Tomei, who played Aunt May opposite Tom Holland in the Spider-Man franchise (a Marvel property distributed by Sony, though she appears in Disney releases from the Avengers universe), reposted a call to “unsubscribe and boycott” platforms under the Walt Disney Company umbrella, including Marvel, ABC, ESPN, Fox Entertainment, Hulu, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Bamtech Media.

Tatiana Maslany, who starred in the title role of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, a Marvel series that debuted on Disney+, posted a behind-the-scenes photo of herself on set, urging her Instagram followers to “cancel your Disney+, Hulu, ESPN subscriptions!” Mark Ruffalo, who played the Hulk on the big screen, participated in a No Kings online event during which he weighed in. “My industry doesn’t really understand what’s happening right now, but what they do understand is our freedom of speech is being attacked.”


psa if you're going to delete your Disney+ account, cancel first. Deleting it doesn't cancel your subscription *shrug emoji*

Very Done with Gen AI this week

Sep. 19th, 2025 09:04 pm
muccamukk: Bill and Twevle wearing forced smiles of distress. (DW: happyhappyhappy)
[personal profile] muccamukk

Content notes for suicide, self harm and grooming, on this one. I'd seen reference to this story, but hadn't realised how bad it was.

(no subject)

Sep. 20th, 2025 03:57 am
beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
I am once again playing Wrath of the Righteous.
On Core, where the minimum requirement is to do everything you can do, every buff for you even for an easy fight.
I think I built the Knight Commander badly. I'm just shooting things with a crossbow because it turns out witch spells are mostly debuffs and I keep not throwing them. It is. Not good.
I know I could have built the others better.
It's kind of mostly working right now but.
if this grinds to a halt because I needed to make different choices many hours ago that is so frustrating.

Also I discovered that if you choose Demon even once in order to get an Achievement the neathers are completely screwed. They have no voice now. They're just killing stuff. And getting killed. So much.
Basically this Knight Commander is going to feel So Bad Forever. Lose temper once, watch intelligent beings apparently lose their minds. So so bad.

They chose Angel at Drezen but they have a lot to make up for.

Also I have played this game so often I am completely forgetting which bits I have done on this play through and which are still to do. Game journal is only thing keeping me in the right timeline. Time loop much?

I should sleep. Sleep is of the good.

2025 52 Card Project: Week 37: Gaming

Sep. 19th, 2025 07:06 pm
pegkerr: (Do what you will but I will hinder it if)
[personal profile] pegkerr
I have been steeped in everything science fiction and fantasy for decades, but there is one thing I've had no experience with whatsoever:

I have never tried Dungeons and Dragons gaming.

I'm not quite sure why. Heaven knows I have dozens of long-time friends who have been gaming for years, and I've heard peripheral conversations on the topic at many a science fiction convention. Even around my own dinner table, as Fiona has long enjoyed gaming.

So when I sent out my call for ideas for Year of Adventure things to do, one friend, [personal profile] lydamorehouse, hit upon the obvious: why not join her group for a gaming session?

I went over to Lyda's house to consult, and she walked me through the process of pulling together a character to play. I was pretty lucky with my rolls, and Lydra graciously set me up at Level Four. After an hour and a half of questions and answers, I had a new character, a ranger, with a respectable level of skills to test out.

And that's what I did last Saturday over Zoom: I was invited to join the troupe of motley characters by a rather glittery dragon and came upon the assembled company at a windmill, where they were regrouping after their last adventure. I had to follow Lyda's prompts and ask a lot of questions, but I had a general idea of what to do. I spent a fun three hours playing with the others. We stashed some magical pastries, examined a magical rune book in a Bag of Holding, and tangled with a vampire. I took out my bow and quiver, stuck a garlic roll onto the end of the arrow, and shot it into his chest. This gave me the satisfaction of staggering him a bit--although I didn't have much of a chance to savor my victory since he promptly turned me into a frog.

I got better eventually and exited, following a wolf. But the experience was deemed a success for all concerned (and apparently I didn't grossly offend anyone), so I was invited to return for the next session.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

Image description: Background, bottom layer: a Dungeons and Dragons character page. Overlaid over it: Center: an old-fashioned windmill building. Left: a darkly sinister male figure dressed in black, a wolf at his side. Right: a woman pulls back the string of bow loaded with an arrow aiming at the man, a bread roll (a garlic roll) affixed to the tip. At her feet: a frog. Upper half, semi-transparent: a screenshot of several people in Zoom conference. Hovering over the vanes of the windmill: a miniature dragon.

Gaming

37 Gaming

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Friday 19 September 1662

Sep. 19th, 2025 11:00 pm
[syndicated profile] pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

Up betimes and to my office, and at 9 o’clock, none of the rest going, I went alone to Deptford, and there went on where they left last night to pay Woolwich yard, and so at noon dined well, being chief at the table, and do not see but every body begins to give me as much respect and honour as any of the rest. After dinner to Pay again, and so till 9 at night, my great trouble being that I was forced to begin an ill practice of bringing down the wages of servants, for which people did curse me, which I do not love. At night, after I had eaten a cold pullet, I walked by brave moonshine, with three or four armed men to guard me, to Redriffe, it being a joy to my heart to think of the condition that I am now in, that people should of themselves provide this for me, unspoke to. I hear this walk is dangerous to walk alone by night, and much robbery committed here. So from thence by water home, and so to my lodgings to bed.

Read the annotations

[syndicated profile] atlas_obscura_feed

A perfect early fall day to grab some donuts at the Cider Mill.

The Franklin Cider Mill is an essential autumn pilgrimage for anyone passing through the Detroit suburbs. 

Located near Franklin, a quaint village in suburban Detroit whose 19th-century main street has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1969, the cider mill is one of the town’s main attractions during apple season, which runs from the end of August through the end of November. 

Franklin was first settled in the 1820s, thanks in part to the Erie Canal helping open up the Midwest. In 1837 Michigan became a state, and Colonel Peter VanEvery purchased a property on the banks of the Franklin River. In what was certainly a smart business move, he built a grist mill on the river, and all the farmers from the surrounding area came right to the mill to get their grain ground into flour. 

The mill was wheat-based until the early 1900s, when a flood damaged it and forced it to close. It was purchased in 1918 by Robert McKee and reopened as a cider mill, operating during the apple season. Since 1966 it has been owned and operated by the local Peltz family. 

The Franklin Cider Mill is an autumnal wonderland. The fresh-baked apple donuts and the cider itself are obviously main attractions, but there’s also a plentiful fall market open every day, with produce and gifts from the mill and across Michigan (including pumpkins and seasonal gourds) plus live music, face-painting, and hot dogs. 

The best part is the mill itself. Visitors can walk right inside the mill for a glimpse behind the scenes: Watch the massive waterwheel and the original 90-ton cider press work, and peek inside the kitchen to watch the cider getting bottled and the donuts being baked as well. Before the end of your visit, make sure to toss some breadcrumbs or donut bits to the very spoiled ducks that paddle up and down the water. 

Profile

flexagon: (Default)
flexagon

September 2025

S M T W T F S
 123456
78910111213
14 151617181920
21222324252627
282930    

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Sep. 21st, 2025 02:15 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios