stdesjardins | Network

Read The Incandescent by Emily Tesh, a Deadly Magical Boarding School novel from a faculty perspective. Have seen this compared to Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London, but it mostly struck me as T. Kingfisher-ish, in the sense of being a fantasy novel (with a dash of romance) centered on a sensible, capable woman in her mid- to late thirties who is very good at her job/an expert in her professional field and a bit socially awkward outside of it: in this case, Dr. Sapphire "Saffy" Waldon, both administrator (director of, basically, magical security) and teacher at the posh English magical boarding school where she had been a student twenty years before. I definitely enjoyed the first three-fourths or so, but THEN ( things got GOOD good. )

Current Music: "BlackBoxWarrior - OKULTRA" - Will Wood

andrewducker

1. The existence of trans people is not an ideology: (tags:identity lgbt transgender uk law politics )
2. Microsoft tells people that Copilot is "for entertainment purposes only": (tags:ai law microsoft )

andrewducker

In the UK most people can claim Tax-free Childcare from the government. Which tops up your childcare payments by 25%, up to a quarterly limit of £500.

The process/website for dealing with it is, frankly, rubbish. And, in a moment of frustration, I've written up why:

Current process:

I look at the amount I have to pay to the provider
I do a calculation (based on that amount, how much top-up remains, etc)
I transfer money to them (using different details per child)
I wait two hours
I come back and check to see if the money has been transferred and topped up. If not, return to (4).
I tell them to transfer it to the provider
They pay it to the provider.

Proposed process:

once only - I give them my bank details and direct debit permissions. As I do with multiple other sites.
I Tell them to pay X to the provider.
They do the maths for how much of my money to transfer, and confirm that with me.
They transfer it, top it up, and pay it to the provider, letting me know if there was a problem.

This means I have to make 1 visit to 1 website, rather than multiple trips to two websites (them and the bank), I don't have to do any maths, and I don't have to check back in after two hours to see if the transfer has happened yet.

And then multiply up my monthly frustration across all of the hundreds of thousands of people using this every month.

Oh, and yes, I sent them a shorter version of this.

oursin

Happy birthday,

ephemera and

sidherian!

vamp_ress posting in

booknook

Again, managed four books this months. Throughout the month I've been working my way through "Lonesome Dove" (and I'm still not finished) and since this is such a chunk of a book it took up a lot of my time.

Twardoch, Szczepan: The King of Warsaw. Amazon Crossing. 2020.
On a technical and literary level this was excellent and very interesting. Twardoch does a lot with narration and POV here and I won't say more because it would be spoiler-y. But if you like this kind of stuff, think about picking up this book. Unfortunately, the plot wasn't my cuppa. It's set in Warsaw on the eve of WWII and follows Jakub, an enforcer to the city's mobster boss. And I'm sorry, but I don't like stories about the mafia. It just doesn't interest me thematically. I didn't mind so much that this novel is full of (gratuitious) violence and d***s being cut off. But the mafia angle was a hard no. (Also a lot about the friction between Poles and the Jewish population in Warsaw, as well as working class and socialist fights. This is taking place at a very interesting time in Poland. You can read this without knowing a lot about Poland, but you'll have an easier time if you have a basic idea of the time period. The German translation I read had a bit of historical context in the end - can't say anything about the English edition, though.)

Everett, Percival: Dr. No. Picador. 2023.
This wasn't an overly successful read either. This was my first book by Everett. His name was on my radar and I know everyone was in love with "James" and "The Trees", but "Dr. No" was the book that was available at my library. So that's the one I read. And well, I'm not sure that this is a story that needed to be published. It's a satire on every James Bond movie ever and in truth, "Austin Powers" is the safer bet if you want something like this. Because at least "Austin Powers" is funny. "Dr. No" had about one joke (Everett riffing on the titular "nothing") but he played that note for 300 pages. So while this was kind of funny and kind of interesting in the beginning, I couldn't wait for the last 100 pages to be over. And nothing I read here will stay in my mind (ha ha).

Forster, E. M.: Maurice. Penguin. 2005.
Amazing. This was breathtakingly beautiful from beginning to end. I read "A Room with a View" a few years ago and remember liking it fine. It was a good book but it was missing that one secret ingredient that elevates a novel to all-time favourite status. "Maurice", in contrast, has that ingredient and I already knew in chapter 1. And yes, this is the novel that was only published postumously because of its rather controversial nature. And I can understand this. I don't know how much of this is biographical in the strictest sense, but it's evident from the get-go that this is a very personal, even intimate novel. Forster really goes deep here without ever being navel-gazey - something autofiction nowadays never manages. He doesn't only look at his own (or, as the case may be, Maurice's) homosexuality but at British society as a whole. He makes some very scathing remarks towards society and England's class system. In short, I loved this book and have since then put everything else he's written on my TBR.

von Arnim, Elizabeth: The Enchanted April. Vintage Classics. 2015.
This started out so good. It's about extremely bored English wives who decide to get away from it all by renting an Italian villa. It read a bit like "Fried Green Tomatoes" in the beginning, like a story that wants to show how incredibly boring and useless and repetitive being a wife can feel when you don't have any agency. I expected it to turn into a story about female empowerment in which these women free themselves from their lives and husbands and do something totally different and fun. But then, once they're in the villa, and when the reader expects them to come to some sort epiphany in regards to their lives, von Arnim turns this around and it develops into chick lit. Suddenly, men are everywhere and the women realise that life is really boring without men. And then the book ends. I must say this left me totally non-plussed and I felt kind of cheated out of a good book. The authors language is beautiful - a bit flowery, but I found her prose engaging. But she stabbed her own plot in the back, IMO.

thewayne

Ah, sometimes life takes a good turn.

A District Judge ruled that construction on the White House Ballroom must stop, and that it can only continue if approved by Congress! The ruling is notable in the number of exclamation marks present. I do love this quote: ""The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!" Leon wrote."

The Rose Garden can be reconstructed, I have no idea if those were the original rose bushes that Mrs. Kennedy planted all those years ago. But rebuilding the East Wing? That will be one huge job. Of course, guaranteed The Felon will go whining to higher courts and ultimately to the SCOTUS, so we'll see if he gets his way.

His latest White House project is to tear out Tennessee (IIRC) flagstones on a walkway and replace them with black marble. No slip hazard there! It would be nice if he were forced to walk that every day next winter and during rain storms.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-halt-white-house-ballroom-construction-unless-congress-oks-it_n_69cc1df6e4b039d10fc770c5

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/31/nx-s1-5768446/judge-rules-white-house-ballroom-construction-must-halt-until-congress-oks-it

Another District Court ruled that The Felon violated the First Amendment when he ordered funding for NPR, PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be withdrawn which had already been approved by Congress. Again, it'll be appealed to infinity. If the funding should be reinstated, what happens with CPB? They've shut down, their people scattered to the winds. I suppose it can be resurrected, but a lot of institutional knowledge has been lost forever.

https://www.npr.org/2026/03/31/nx-s1-5768399/npr-pbs-trump-federal-funding

On March 2, a Federal Appeals Court rejected an appeal from the administration to delay refunding people and companies from the excessive tariff fees that they paid that were found unlawful by the Supreme Court in a ruling in February. The administration asked for 90 days to make plans to start the refunds and to appeal, the court said no. Theoretically they could appeal to the Supreme Court, but since they were the ones who found the tariffs unlawful in the first place, I would expect that they would refuse to hear the case.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-appeals-court-rejects-trump-tariff-refund-delay-supreme-court/

apod_feed

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260331.html

Titania's tortured terrain is a mix of canyons, cliffs, and craters.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap260331.html

thewayne

A very seminal science fiction series from the '90s was removed from Tubi and is now available on YouTube starting February 10 this year. They are releasing an episode a week from the beginning, encouraging people to view it at a leisurely pace just like when it originally aired.

With 110 episodes aired, it'll take two years to be fully released. I really enjoyed this show and might re-watch it. I don't know that I've seen the entire series, I think I've seen most of it. LOVE Walter Koenig's character!

The one thing that I wish the article mentioned was whether or not these are the remastered editions. I would expect they are, but who knows. I don't have time to be digging into YouTube right now.

And an interesting trivia fact about the show - which I've mentioned before within the last year - was that all of the space and battle effects were rendered on Amigas! I think that's pretty cool. Not the first use of CGI, but perhaps the first television use of CGI rendered on computers that could pretty much be bought by anyone!

https://cordcuttersnews.com/babylon-5-is-now-free-to-watch-on-youtube/

In sad news, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot, tentatively titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale, is currently dead. The rights are still held by Hulu, so there's always a possibility that they might get a shot at another pilot.

One of the main reasons for its failure to fly: the Hulu executive WAS NOT A FAN OF THE SHOW AND NEVER WATCHED IT. Also, it's possible that Hulu was expecting Sarah Michelle Geller to be the star of the remake and they didn't realize that it was to launch a new generation of scoobies with Buffy putting in occasional cameos. False expectations plus a hostile exec in charge = DOOOOOOM.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/buffy-reboot-dead-why-hulu-killed-sarah-michelle-gellar-chloe-zhao-series/ar-AA1YVIZX

In the good news department, Firefly is (theoretically) returning to our TVs again! Nathan Fillion's production company is producing an animated series: the first script is complete, they have the blessing of Disney (the rights holder), and the ENTIRE crew is on board with it! With one exception. The character Shephard Book will be there, but the actor has to be recast as the original actor, Ron Glass, passed away over a decade ago.

This series will be set between the end of the original and the Serenity movie.

Joss Whedon has no involvement in this production, nor did he have involvement in the Buffy relaunch.

As of the Parade's article writing, about two weeks ago, the series was being shopped around for a network home.

Shiny!

https://parade.com/news/firefly-coming-back-as-animated-series

kaffy_r

Music Meme, Day 25

A song in a different language

Oh, come on! Damn near every song I love lately is in a different language!

Takes deep breaths to calm down

I will take this as a challenge, however. Let's try to find something that isn't in Korean or Korean and English. I don't know if I can -

Oh. OK. I found one; I remembered it. And it's one I love.

"Waters of March" by Antonio Carlos Jobim (also known, although I didn't know this until today, as Tom Jobim) is a bossa nova favorite of mine, partly because of the simple yet sophisticated music and the very striking English words - a litany of good and bad things that come together in the end to be about "the joy in your heart" after all those good and sometimes very bad things.

Watch on YouTube

Here's Mr. Jobim performing the song himself.

Watch on YouTube

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Antonio Carlos Jobim "The Waters of March"

sorcyress

Today has been a mixed accomplishing things day. I was out sick from work yesterday (for brain bullshit reasons) so I had to do a little bit of catchup with myself. Which I.....mostly didn't do! But I did enough and it was entirely okay.

Part of why I didn't do more is because I got distracted playing phone games after school. Which is not great. But then Clayton saved me by stopping by my room at just the exact time I would have to leave in order to get home before therapy. I could've continued fucking around and done therapy from work, but then I wouldn't have had a nice conversation with my friend nor would I've been home in any kind of timely manner.

Therapy was fine. Not super organized, but Jenn did encourage me to not just do bullshit after the thing. I managed to start some knitting during the end of it, and that was good! that carried me into actually constructive not-video game time.

I did some good knitting! I started a new yarn in Alys's scarf, then immediately frogged it and tried again simultaneous with a second yarn. This was the correct solution because I did a good job of choosing contrasting colours and now this godawful weird yarn has made the most incredible moss-like pattern. I loooove it! I am very sad that I don't have more of the yarn to figure out something for realsies to make out of it. (yes yes, I should find a picture for this)

Knitting meant I was listening to music, and that meant I, uh, recorded the song I wrote a couple years ago and rewrote a bit for YTS. And I don't want to put my work on YouTube because fuck google. So it's on Bandcamp now. (This is not a professional or good track, but also it does not cost money, so cool).

ANYWAYS.

Then it was time to make dinner and I actually spent a fairly pleasant ninety minutes in the kitchen getting things done and listening to more music. Clean the stove, make some pasta, cook some broccoli, catch up on a *lot* of dishes. It was good and I'm glad to have done it! But man, I'm glad to be done with it.

Played a wee bit of Slay the Spire (which felt _good_, just doing a bit of one round) and now I'm busy watching Taskmaster with my favoured. It's going very well!

Tomorrow I'm going to hang out with Ruthie a bit (possibly with her toddler possibly without) and, uh. Ideally do some unpacking from last weekend and repacking for the next. And then also maybe some grading?

And that's me!

~Sor
MOOP!

questionable_content_feed

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5798

the plank at Cubetown is 400 meters long, sentient, and horny

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5798

shadaras

Hello, I exist, life's been busy and I've been tired.

1.
I read all of Witch Hat Atelier (up through ch94, for future!me's reference if I ever think to check), which means I have more than hit the point where it's like "oh! there's the part where this story is about trauma metaphors!". But also all the bits that make me cry are the bits about the kids talking about how much they've learned from their friends and how they can stay true to themselves and their dreams and how magic is for bringing joy and life to the world, so. The part of the Angsty White-Haired Man's life that's about him going "teaching is the most rewarding thing I ever could've done" is the part that interests me, not the "oh THAT'S how we're making visible the childhood trauma that defines you" part, y'know?

2.
Some more MOUSE (this fic does have a title, and eventually I will finish it)

[Rhei stands] next to Mouse, gazing at the city they’re moving away from. Its buildings are beautiful, it rises gracefully from the water, and it stands so proudly against the sky. Many of the rich and powerful of the city might have made ugly choices, and continue to make them, but the majority of its people are just that: people, doing their best in less than ideal circumstances.

And they look at Mouse, who made the bravest choice they could make, and who doesn’t seem to quite realise the enormity of what they have chosen and how rare it is to be able to do.

It is nothing like anything Rhei has ever done, a kind of choice Rhei doesn’t think they’ll ever need to make, and Mouse was willing to sacrifice their whole life for not a promise but a chance at something better.

Rhei can’t help but admire that.

3.
The weather is SO WEIRD this week? It's in the high 60s F every day EXCEPT Thursday, where it drops back down to MAYBE 40F at the highest, which is lower than the lows the rest of the week. It is also closer to NORMAL NEW ENGLAND EARLY SPRING than the high 60s F.

Today, at least, I have not had any headache from pressure changes! Which is nice, since yesterday I was grumbly about it and I have ever expectation that I'll be like "ughhhh" about it the rest of the week.

4.
Work is doing Bullshit, but when they tell us only the broad strokes of their plans for Bullshit and it mostly makes everyone go WTF, I will await further specifications about how exactly it'll manifest. (They want to go to short weeks. This is... them playing a game with what they're contracted for and how many hours they have available. I am very curious how many people are going to go "fine, lay me off then" instead.)

5.
I think it's very funny that I'm like "right, I should post, say hi, etc" on Trans Day of Visibility, a day that I keep forgetting that it is.

anyway hi I'm trans when I think it's useful to use that term, guess I'm visible today or something?

senmut

This Month in Fanfic Writing:
( Single fics )

New Original Works posted at

sylph_and_asp this month
( Original Works )

senmut

Words	Goal Per Day: 500	Full Count: 15,577	Average Count: 502
Steps	Goal Per Day: 8,000	Full Count: 279,182	Average Count: 9,006

Writing 0 days count: 16
Steps days under average count: 3

sabotabby

I'll likely not have time to post tomorrow morning, so here it is a few hours in advance.

Just finished: Always On by Helena Trooperman. This was quite fun, and in particular I liked how much attention she gives to the social and economic repercussions of the invention of new technology. What starts with a phone ultimately becomes, potentially, an existential threat to fossil fuel interests, and to everyone they directly and indirectly employ, and there are complications like fewer and less well-paying jobs in a green energy future. It also ends on a cliffhanger so...there's that.

Currently reading: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. It's Nebula season so watch me mainline as many books as possible in a month. This one's up first though because I was meaning to read it anyway. It begins with the journal of a Lutheran pastor being found inside a wall, and takes us back to 1912, when said pastor encountered a Blackfeet man named Good Stab who wants to do a confession. Also he's a vampire. This is slow, bloody dread of the sort Jones is famous for and it has quite a lot of Cormac McCarthy in it, with the Montana setting and the mass murders. Really good so far; it's going to be a tough one to top except I really did love Katabasis.

kiya

Visible

To learn young
That
To be seen
Is
To be hurt

To discover
That
To be seen
Wrong
Bleeds tears

To wish
That
To be seen
Were
Even real

To know
That
To be seen
Is
Never simple

To wonder
If
Being seen
Will
Work out
This time.

malada

I was gifted with an old Western Digital Netcenter. It has a built in hard drive for network attached storage and USB ports to attach an external drive and a printer It needed a new 12 power supply which I finally bought. Although there was originally both Mac and Windows software I could only find the software for Windows. The PDF looked like it was set up for Windows XP

And I've got a few WIndows XP systems. I downloaded the software on my Linux box then booted up my "Media Creation" XP machine. I had scored a lot of XP media creation software and set it up to do Old School digital media creation. I also downloaded a bunch of XP friendly programs on my Linux box and jeeped them to the XP machine via USB stick. But...hmmm... bad CMOS battery. Replaced it, booted it, tweaked the BIOS and used a USB stick to transfer the files. Now, you *really* shouldn't attach a XP machine to the Internet but I needed to go through my local network to set up the Netcenter. So I hooked it up and opened up Firefox just to check the network.

My internal speaker went "WEE-OOOH WEE-OOoH Your system has been hacked! Your system has been locked! Do not shut off your system! Call Microsoft how to fix this!" Firefox was completely locked up. The webpage had the same warnings and a phone number to call.

Eh, no. I've never seen it before but I sure heard of this scam. You call the number and they instruct you how to hook up to their servers then take over your system. They get your financial information and shake you down. So yeah, no... I shut down the system, disconnected the network cable and ripped Firefox out by the roots. I used Avast and CCleaner to cleanse the system. That took a little time. Then and only then did I install the software to set up the Netcenter.

No I will never attach a network cable to the system ever again.

So... I able to fuss with the permissions, clean out old files and set up file and printer sharing except... none of my systems couldn't see the printer. My Mac could see some of the folders but not all of them. My Linux box couldn't see anything. Neither does my housemate's Windows 11 machine. I think the firmware is just too old to work with modern operating systems.

It's long out of support. I'm going to open the thing up and rip out the hard drive and wipe it. The chassis will get recycled. I'm disappointed but it was a learning experience.

I'm getting to old for these kind of time wasting learning experiences.

Current Mood: nerdy

trobadora

It's 10 minutes to midnight on 31 March, and I just realised I haven't posted here all month!

Currently I'm writing like a fiend, and also, over at

sid_guardian, this year's 520 Day Reverse Exchange is under way. So excited to see everyone's requests coming in!

But to have some actual content here this month, let me very quickly share something I've been meaning to.

Every winter, I want lots and lots of hot drinks, and get tired of having the same drinks all the time. So I try out new recipes, and sometimes I even find something that's really good. (Last autumn, that was the peppermint hot chocolate.)

My latest discovery is a sort of low-cal chai latte sweetened with molasses - it comes out something like Indian Pudding in beverage form.

For two glasses:

1 teabag black tea
1 teabag classic yogi tea
some black pepper
some powdered ginger
1-2 cloves
250ml hot water

Pour hot water over the tea/spices. Let steep overnight in the fridge.

Pour half in each glass, add 120ml almond milk and 15ml sugar-free vanilla syrup each. Heat up in the microwave. (Or in a pot on the stove, that works too.)

Sweeten with a teaspoon of molasses each.

Delicious! :D

douqi posting in

baihe_media

Two baihe (or -adjacent) titles are available for pre-order as mainland print editions. The first is Fireworks in Winter (冬日花火, pinyin: dongri hua huo), Min Ran's hit contemporary tragic novella from last year. This has also been licensed for a Vietnamese translation.

Promotional art for Fireworks in Winter
Pre-orders for Fireworks in Winter can be made via the following bookshops:

The web version of the novel can be read here.

Also up for pre-order is Binary Stars (双轨星, pinyin: shuanggui xing), an anthology of baihe (or baihe-adjacent) short stories, themed around the idea of two people who are destined to orbit each other for life without ever fully meeting. Pre-orders can be made via the following bookshops:

(h/t

laine4466 for the title translations)

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stdesjardins

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Page Summary

troisoiseaux - Reading Wednesday
andrewducker - Interesting Links for 01-04-2026
andrewducker - Customer-unfriendly government processes (Tax-free Childcare edition)
oursin - (no subject)
vamp_ress in booknook - Reading Wrap-up 3/26
thewayne - Recent court decisions don't go The Felon's way!
apod_feed - (no subject)
thewayne - Babylon 5 is available on YouTube! And other science fiction TV news.
kaffy_r - Dept. of Memes
sorcyress - (no subject)
questionable_content_feed - Walking The Plank
shadaras - it's nice to have the windows open
senmut - March 2026 Round Up (46,510 words, 8 works)
senmut - Monthly Check In
sabotabby - Reading Wednesday (a bit early)
kiya - TDOV
malada - Wasting time with old hardware and software
dhampyresa - DNF?
trobadora - very quick sign of life, and a hot drink recipe
douqi in baihe_media - Two Baihe Pre-Orders Open

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