Just One Thing (29 November 2025)

Nov. 29th, 2025 01:37 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila posting in [community profile] awesomeers
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

Courses - November 2025

Nov. 29th, 2025 10:28 am
smallhobbit: (Default)
[personal profile] smallhobbit
FutureLearn

Discover Contemporary Chinese: A Taster Course (Chinese Plus)

Following on from the OpenLearn basic Chinese course, I thought I'd look at this one.  I had hoped it would be a good introduction, but it was well over my head, concentrating on the main courses which the taster was promoting, without providing any assistance.  Even if I'd had some basic Chinese I doubt this would have persuaded me to take a further, paid, course with them.


OpenLearn

Getting Started with German 2 and Getting Started with German 3
Continuing with my aim to at least understand something of German when we're there.  Some of the sections were interesting and helpful, others were not within my general interests, so probably irrelevant, since I'm unlikely to want to know the German for something I don't talk about in English.

Introduction to Planetary Protection
I found this very interesting, although why astronomy appeals to me I have no idea.  It covered all sorts of areas: avoiding bringing potential contamination back from other planets and similar bodies, together with not contaminating planets our spacecraft visit.  In addition there was the clear thought that what we learn from these planets etc should be knowledge available for all and not simply exploited by the powerful.

The Gut Microbiome: Balancing the Body
The importance of what we consume and how it's important to maintain a good balance in our gut microbiome.  Apart from the general biology (which begins to go over my head), there's the effect that other areas can have, including genetics and ageing.  I need to tweak my diet, I think.

Open House

Nov. 29th, 2025 07:53 am
poliphilo: (Default)
[personal profile] poliphilo
 A bunch of creatives got together in 2008 to celebrate the opening of the Towner Gallery by forming an organisation called Eastbourne Artists. It's still going strong- and promotes (among other things) a twice yearly Open House event- with artists throwing open their houses, galleries, workshops etc to visitors. Earlier this year we discovered in informal conversation that a whole lot of us Quakers were practising arts and crafts on the sly and decided to join in and fill the Meeting House with our stuff and open it on the day. 

And the day has come. We were down at the Meeting House yesterday afternoon, making it look as much like an art gallery as we could- and today I- and several others- will be curating the result.

One thing we really want to show off is the wall hanging we commissioned from the women's art collective- Studio 11 +. We gave them the room to work in for free and they gave us the completed work- a sweet deal. I love it when there's mutual gifting and no money changes hands. The work- called Into the Light: The Quaker Way- was completed and installed a week or two back. 

IMG_8636.jpeg

I'm showing five of my watercolours. I'd like to have shown some of my AI work- if only because it's more recent- but I'd rather not get into the debate about whether it's art or not.....
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
The new dryer is just fine, except the top is ever so slightly slanted in a way that makes it a bad place to set your dryer balls.

Have I mentioned that especially after Colonoscopy Week I've had more trouble than usual walking? I've been using my cane inside the house for the first time in quite a while, and I'm limited in how much I can carry without (more) pain. It sucks. Belovedest has set up the short ramp against the shortest outside stairs, and while going up it is Bad, going up the stairs without it is Worse. (Both outside doors have stairs.)

I wasn't available to assist with any of the Thanksgiving cooking. Belovedest did it themselves! Including: turkey, the epic tray of dressing, biscuits from the mix, and instant potatoes made the way that erases the taste of Box. (There was also salad available, but there's quite a bit of vegetable in the sausage-cornbread dressing.)

Today we had some roof inspectors. The inspection's free; the quote for fixing things up is *sigh* very much not free.
shadowkat: (Default)
[personal profile] shadowkat
Somewhat accomplished? I managed to get laundry done, switched out my torn padded bed pad, for the new less padded but not torn one. The torn had to be thrown out - it's not salvageable, unfortunately. I loved it - but can't find a similar one. Took out the recyclables. Washed the linens - it was mainly just the linens. Only two loads. So not that expensive.

Played more Mahjong. I lied when I said I don't like games? I do, but it depends on the game, and who I'm playing with. I can play that one for hours. Except it lies when it says it doesn't have ads - it does. Worse, to get out of the ad, I often have to offload and reload the game.

I also managed to schedule my flu shot for tomorrow. (I don't get the side-effects outside of a sore arm - I think I have a VERY strong immune system? But I'm doing it on Saturday morning, just in case.) Other goal is to clean out foyer closet and put up my Xmas lights in the window (if I can find them, I may need to get new ones), and the little Xmas tree with its lights, and take away the Thanksgiving decorations. Sent off Xmas list to family members, waiting on theirs.

Apparently sisterinlaw and niece's Thanksgivings included a Nantucket Pie. It's basically a fruit upside down cake with cranberries. I don't like cake and I like it even less now that I require substitutions, so I'm glad I had my pecan and pumpkin choices.

Watching Dancing with the Stars - which has some excellent dancing this season. Read more... )

Dinner was left-overs. Breakfast was fried eggs over spinach leaves, lemon, and grits. I combined Breakfast and Lunch.

Angel S1 Re-Watch - Episode 2 - Are You Now or Have You Ever Been

I remember being less than thrilled with this episode the first two times I saw it. But now, I see a lot of interesting things in it that I'd not seen before. Weirdly, I find I appreciate it more without the echo of others in the background or my desire to compare it against Buffy. The two shows are very different series, with different goals and aims. Distance helps, I think?

cut for length )

Question a Day Mememage - November

Catching up on the Mememage - I'm dreadfully behind.

24. Do you have throw pillows/cushions around the house?

Yes. Although apartment.

25. Is lunch a snack, a light meal, or your main meal of the day?

Snack or light meal - I'm not a lunch person. I even skip it sometimes on weekends.

26. On National Cake Day – what is your favourite cake?

Flourless Chocolate Cake - which is technically the only cake I have any longer.

Or

Angel food, but I haven't found much in the Gluten Free versions. It's hard to find. I like it because it is light, and can serve it without icing. Also butter mochi cake, which is kind of similar.

27. Have you ever slept in socks at night?

Yes, and I always end up kicking them off in the middle of the night. So I don't.

28. November is part of World Vegan Month – have you tried any vegan food this month?

Yes. My chocolate chip cookies that I get from Insominac Cookies are vegan.

Not a small repair [projects, sewing]

Nov. 28th, 2025 08:30 pm
rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
My Buy Nothing Day activity: working on mending my wool Nebraska Sandhills Randonneurs jersey, which I now notice has moth damage in addition to the wear and tear just repaired. Sigh. Most likely I need to do a very thorough round of wool management.

My wool cycling jerseys all seem to wear out in the armpits first, so this repair will be an experiment to learn if extra reinforcement will work and be sufficiently comfortable. I have only completed 1 of 2 armpits so far on this jersey, and I have a second jersey in the queue now.

Buy Nothing Day activity: mending a wool cycling jersey

While it will not have the same appearance as it did originally, there is no mistaking the point that time has been invested in maintaining this jersey instead of throwing it “away” (wherever that is). I have seen a number of similar sorts of repairs on wool garments in museums.

But along with that I also remember reading about how many of the old, tired wool mittens of yore would eventually just get shredded up into wool felt. There will come a point where that will be the most appropriate outcome, but I am hoping for at least a few more years before then.

Thanksgiving dinner

Nov. 28th, 2025 09:06 pm
[personal profile] cosmolinguist

A little while ago [personal profile] angelofthenorth had offered to cook a thanksgiving dinner with some of my usual recipes.

Fuck thanksgiving as a concept, obviously, but an excuse for a fancy meal is always welcome.

So I found the handwritten notes-to-self that constitute my versions of pumpkin pie and scalloped corn, and she made those tonight with a delicious veggie haggis, roast new potatoes, turnips, carrots and parsnips, and what would've been mashed swede except we didn't mash it.

I helped, doing chores like chopping the pumpkin and washing dishes. It was fun. At one point when I was drying a mixing bowl and about to put it away, she said "we make a good team!" That was nice to hear!

Everything was delicious. It's so annoying that I stull have a headache that has come and gone all day, because I have no spoons to say more.

kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Spotted in today's book, with just as much of a medical theme as you might reasonably expect:

... biopsy-
chosocial...

Book Review: The Director

Nov. 28th, 2025 03:13 pm
osprey_archer: (art)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
Most of the time when I read book reviews in The Atlantic, I think “Mmmm, glad someone else read this so I don’t have to.” But when I read their review of Daniel Kehlmann’s The Director, I was like “I need this in my eyeballs NOW.”

The Director (translated from German by Ross Benjamin) is a novelized biography of G. W. Pabst, one of the most important directors in the post-World War I German film scene, most famous today for discovering Greta Garbo and Louise Brooks. (Diary of a Lost Girl with Louise Brooks is the one floating in my vague “I’d like to see that one day” mental cloud.)

After Hitler rose to power, Pabst left Germany and looked for work in Hollywood. He struggled to find work in America, returned to Europe not long before the outbreak of war, and ended up making films in Nazi Germany.

These are the basic outlines of Pabst’s life, and they’re a matter of historical record. From here on out, I’m going to be referring specifically to the Pabst of the book, who clearly has some points of divergence with the real Pabst. For instance: book!Pabst has a son of military age, who is clearly standing in for the experience of the Average German Youth, while the real Pabst’s baby son was born during the war.

Now clearly the central question of the book is, how do you go from hating a regime so much that you flee to another country to uneasily collaborating with it? Part of the answer being that Pabst, in his own mind, is not collaborating: he’s not making propaganda films, he’s making non-political films! And he just happens to be making them in, okay, Nazi Germany, but does making art under an evil regime necessarily make that art evil?

And, okay, yes, technically his films are funded by the Nazi film ministry because that’s the sole source of funding in Nazi Germany. But what if you’re taking the funds from the Nazi film ministry and making a film like Paracelsus, which has what might be taken as an anti-Nazi message…? The whole sequence where a madman starts dancing, and everyone else starts dancing in time with him……?

But, I mean. Is that an anti-Nazi message, or is that just Pabst fans trying to come up with a justification for why “made films for Nazi Germany” is not quite as bad as it looks?

And then you have Pabst’s next film, his lost Molander, based on a book by a Nazi party hack named Karrasch. (There’s a hilari-terrifying scene where Pabst’s wife finds herself in a book club entirely devoted to Karrasch, who sounds like Nazi Nicholas Sparks). The subject matter is foisted on Pabst, but he digs beneath the surface of the story till he can make the script his own, then heads to Prague to film it.

The city is being continually bombed, and the Soviets are getting closer every day. Pabst’s assistant Franz comments, “Don’t you find it strange, Pabst, that we’re making a movie like this in the middle of the apocalypse?”

“Times are always strange,” Pabst tells him. “Art is always out of place. Always unnecessary when it’s made. And later, when you look back, it’s the only thing that matters.”

They’re supposed to get a battalion of soldiers for extras, but the battalion is called away to the front right before they film. So - Pabst turns to the local concentration camp.

I should say that this is not a spoiler - we learn it in the first chapter - and also that Pabst’s concentration camp extras, specifically, are historical speculation. There really were directors who used concentration camp inmates as extras (famously Leni Riefenstahl), but there’s no evidence if Pabst used them in Molander, as the film really was lost. But that’s what everyone was doing to make up labor shortages. It’s plausible.

And Pabst tells his assistant, “All this madness, Franz, this diabolical madness, gives us the chance to make a great film. Without us, everything would be the same, no one would be saved, no one would be better off. And the film wouldn’t exist.”

Only in the end, the film is lost. So it doesn’t exist, after all.

Picture Diary 110

Nov. 28th, 2025 07:15 pm
poliphilo: (Default)
[personal profile] poliphilo
 Picture Diary 110

1. Fishermen


A6XsJKKaLIMJDVKni1Sr--0--omscq.jpeg

2. Come, join the dance

fJBodrr6vI6bgiuAf7Em--0--h5zaz.jpeg

3. Come, join the dance

vYN6jKiaQUBUh8I7y2h3--0--2w064.jpeg

4. Dorian Gray

xh2NwYNy4i5OvQSbfeSC--0--lighd.jpeg

5. If the sun fell to Earth

7aXEN7oHq6AgcTLULzaX--0--ycyzg.jpeg

6. Red and Blue

a6ImdpwdDXxz8ws3K6pm--0--w4hso.jpeg

Check-In Post - Nov 28th 2025

Nov. 28th, 2025 07:11 pm
badly_knitted: (Get Knitted)
[personal profile] badly_knitted posting in [community profile] get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


This Week's Question (courtesy of [personal profile] ysabetwordsmith): When learning a new art or craft, do you prefer level-grinding the basics, skipping ahead to the cool techniques, or a mix of both?


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!



friday

Nov. 28th, 2025 01:59 pm
summersgate: (Default)
[personal profile] summersgate
I had a very sleepless night last night. I went to bed around 10 and then was awake from 11 pm onward and I STILL haven't slept yet (1:30 pm). It feels weird. Though it is getting close to my usual naptime so maybe I will finally be able to sleep a bit. There are 2 things that I misplaced or lost or maybe never had in the first place, and I couldn't sleep for torturing myself with wondering where in the world they could be. Early in the night I worked on a puzzle for a while and finished it, watched some netflix and then finally I went into my studio room and shut the door so I wouldn't wake Dave and ransacked the closet. I went through stacks of books, tons of yarn, craft stuff and stuff that I used to use when I was in business. Didn't find either thing I was looking for. It bugs me so much. 

DSC_0395.jpg
I think I've figured out what I want to put on the back of the mirrors. I'll just put this standard thing on all of them, and if I feel really moved to put a name or title on special ones I can add that too.  I'm going to try and see if I can work some magic with these words hiding on the back. Whenever someone looks in the mirror at themselves the mirror will direct good thoughts back at them.

During the night last night about 3 inches of snow fell. A snow carpet.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
I already blogged about yesterday morning. In the afternoon, I cooked up a storm. First, I made a big batch of a creamy tomato-lentil slow cooker soup from the NYT. I didn't have any cream, but we somehow have a whole bunch of cans of coconut milk, so I can report that the soup is pretty good with coconut milk as a substitute. One of the reasons for making the soup was to use up some of the last of this year's garden tomatoes that S brought in to finish ripening. Done. I like the concept of a tomato soup with added protein for rib-sticking power.

Then I finished cooking the ingredients and assembled the Portobello Wellington, and got the Madeira Sauce underway. With those items well in hand, I got to work on some more pumpkin-apple-pecan pie filling. Yum. I mean, just look at it!

Pumpkin-apple-pecan pie

(Never mind the dirty dishwater underneath it!) In between cooking tasks, I finally got started on a mending project that has been in the mending pile for at least a year: dealing with sleeve wear on an older bicycling jersey.

An ambitious repair

From the looks of it, this is just going to be a common wear point for me with wool bicycling jerseys. If this mending experiment is a success, I'll be very pleased. Wool cycling jerseys aren't cheap and I'd much rather keep the ones I have going than have to go shop for more. I have another wool cycling jersey that will be in the repair queue once this one is done.

At around this time, I started to get suspicious that I hadn't seen much of Martha all day. She does seem like the sort of cat who might arbitrarily decide to go curl up somewhere quiet and dark for several hours, but this seemed like longer than usual. Shaking a cat treat bag quickly summoned George, but no Martha. Also unusual. Hmm.

I went around the house and checked all the most logical hiding spots. In doing so, I found several other items I'd lost track of, but still, no Martha.

It was getting close to time to head to a friend's for Thanksgiving. I messaged my friend to say I might be delayed by the hunt for a loose cat.

Shaking the treat bag outdoors failed to summon Martha, either. It was starting to seem like I might be searching for a missing cat for much of Thanksgiving evening.

It occurred to me that one of the more distinct noises the cats associate with me is the opening and closing of the garage door, as I get my bike out to go to work in the morning, and put my bike away when I get home in the evening. I didn't ride my bike yesterday, but with that thought in mind I went ahead and cycled the garage door.

A minute or two later, there was Martha, at the back door. She knows the noise means it's almost suppertime. Whew.

That meant that friends and I could enjoy our vegetarian Thanksgiving feast without added worry.

Vegetarian Thanksgiving feast with friends

Here's Martha, later that evening.

Contrite cat?

I don't think she feels even an ounce of remorse. I'm pretty sure that she escaped off the front porch in the morning when I had the dim-witted idea of opening up the porch door for better ventilation while erging. It was only a few moments later that it occurred to me that the cats could escape if I did that, but clearly Martha had wasted no time.

I had a different sort of misadventure this morning. In the midst of a workout to accumulate more rowing meters, I had the thought that it might be a good idea to lubricate the rowing erg's chain. I had a small bottle of chain oil for that very purpose nearby, so while I was in between pieces, I started to apply the oil.

I failed to pay close attention to some ominous plastic cracking noises until it was far too late, and the bottle's brittle plastic shattered in my hand.

Mineral oil EVERYWHERE!!
Rowing ergometer chain oil mishap

THAT was a hassle to clean up, let me tell you.

Other than that, so far today has consisted of going to work to water ants and collect up some student writing to grade. There's some potential for heavy snowfall this afternoon, so I decided I'd rather come home and grade at home than gamble with having to deal with a snowy commute later in the day.

Writing - November 2025

Nov. 28th, 2025 05:54 pm
smallhobbit: (writing)
[personal profile] smallhobbit
Another poor month, only 6,700 words, bringing my yearly total to just over 110k, so hopefully I will still reach the 120k.

A lot of what I've written has been drabbles, so time to word ratio is poor.  This includes my [community profile] allbingo Fairy Tales entry, with The Death of Sir Roderick (Sherlock Holmes), a casefic in 9 drabbles.

Nothing more to share this month - there's a couple of ficlets written but not as yet posted to AO3 - they'll be up next month.

And I've just sent my Yuletide fic off to beta.

So, rather like my word count for the month, this is short and sweet!

savanna

Nov. 28th, 2025 09:07 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
savanna or savannah (suh-VAN-uh) - n., a tropical or subtropical grassland with scattered trees.


grassland with scattered trees
Thanks, WikiMedia!

These occur where the rainfall is seasonal, so that the plants need to be drought resistant -- this causes the trees to be far enough apart that the canopy doesn't touch, allowing grasses to cover the ground. The earlier form was zavana, from Spanish zavana, which in turn had the earlier form çavana, from Taíno zabana.


And because I have an excess word, a bonus: tobacco (tuh-BAK-oh), any of several plants of genus Nicotiana of the nightshade family, especially N. tabacum, cultivated for its leaves which are prepared for use in smoking or chewing or as snuff. From Spanish tabaco, which has an iffy etymology, as it could be from an Arawakan or Carib language, but one Spanish chronicler recorded Taíno tabago, meaning either a tube for smoking tabacco or a roll of tabacco leaves i.e. a cigar; if this is correct, the consonant shift was probably influenced by atabaca/altabaca, a Mediterranean plant with aromatic leaves widely used in traditional medicine, named from Arabic al-ṭubbāq.


And that wraps up this theme of words from the Caribbean language Taíno. That's the late group of words from indigenous languages of the Americas that I have, but I'm not quite done with this series -- but first a week of random lexicography.

---L.

I miss my clothes

Nov. 28th, 2025 07:53 am
susandennis: (Default)
[personal profile] susandennis
Before I moved in here, I tossed (donated or just tossed) about half or more of all my shit. It was wonderful to purge all that stuff. I have never regretted any of it EXCEPT. I also purged about half my clothes. And I picked the wrong half. I really miss all the clothes I made for myself. I sometimes fantasize about buying a sewing machine and making some more. But there is no place here to do it without upending my house which I don't want to do and I have plenty of clothes. I don't need more. And 14 other very good reasons not to. So I just miss the ones that got away.

Yesterday was fine. I worked on the puzzle for a bit so saw some people in passing but mostly stayed in here and enjoyed a quiet day watching the latest season of Slow Horses.

I have bought a couple of Black Friday things - plenty - and don't need more so today will likely be a lot like yesterday which is fine and dandy.

I do have one tech project to do. I need to move a hub that controls all my switches. I think I can do it with shit I have on hand which means I can do it today and without buying anything else. It should be easy with a minimum off 'SHIT!' and 'fuck'. Or not.

But, first, I think I'll go swim some laps.

20251128_075317-COLLAGE
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
[personal profile] elainegrey

ecosystem, data mining experiment

For those of you have a work holiday, i hope you are enjoying the respite. For those of you gathering with family, i hope your relationships find nourishment and you find joy.

 Read more... )

Friday Word: Pluperfect

Nov. 28th, 2025 07:11 am
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr posting in [community profile] 1word1day
Pluperfect - noun or adjective.

There's never a shortage of new words to learn and yesterday I learned about pluperfect.

We've all seen pluperfect in action, usually in past perfect and wordy sentences like "It was already noon, but we had finished lunch because we were hungry." "Had" is usually the clue a sentence is past perfect.

However, it can also be used to mean "more than perfect", such as "Grandma's turkey was pluperfect--crispy golden skin and always moist."

And, lastly, ancient languages often had a pluperfect form, which Wikipedia details nicely.

emotional support fiber

Nov. 28th, 2025 07:43 am
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
woven cloth

Maybe 2.5x the length of the futon! The weft is various handspun yarns. :3 It has hideous Baby's First Floor Loom Attempt nature but fortunately, both Joe and the catten are very forgiving. Now I get to rewarp the loom... /o\



Morning's handspun single. :3
Page generated Nov. 29th, 2025 03:34 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios