megwrites | Reading

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/06/25/trans-westminster-lobby-ehrc/

The organizers are estimating circa 900 people showed up, putting it on a par with the biggest LGBTQ+ lobbies ever (against Section 28).

Outstanding work from the Trans+ Solidarity Alliance, who also organized the legal briefing for MPs in May:

https://www.attitude.co.uk/news/trans-legal-experts-warn-supreme-court-ruling-could-be-breaching-human-rights-in-parliamentary-briefing-483801/

You can support them and get the "Maybe I'm trans?" badges or just support them without badges:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/maybe-im-trans
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/solidarity-projects-campaigns-fund

spiralsheep

Aurora Australis readalong 10 / 10, Bathybia by Douglas Mawson, post for comment, reaction, discussion, fanworks, links, and whatever obliquely related matters your heart desires. You can join the readalong at any time or skip sections or go back to earlier posts. It's all good. :-)

Text of the dream fantasy Bathybia by Douglas Mawson:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/Bathybia

Readalong intro and reaction post links:
https://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/662515.html

( Links, vocabulary, quotes, and brief commentary ) Hurrah! We have read through the Antarctic winter, under the light of the Aurora Australis, with only members of the Nimrod expedition and our even smaller band of voyaging biblionauts for company. Champagne all round!

torachan

1. I am taking the day off tomorrow for my birthday! (I do have to go in to work on Friday, and it's going to be a busy day, but at least I have a mini break.)

2. Molly!

spiralsheep

Please note that when Yvette Cooper claims Palestine Action have committed "violence" she actually means vandalism to property not violence against people. Violence is harm to a person or people, e.g. genocide or supporting genocide is "violence". One of Cooper's fellow Labour Party MPs, Apsana Begum, said: "Proscribing Palestine Action as 'terrorists' while continuing to send arms to a state that is committing the gravest of crimes against humanity in Gaza is not just unjustifiable, it is chilling. The ongoing crackdown on the right to protest is a threat to us all." NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade demonstrated the UK government increased licences to export military equipment to Israel after a "temporary arms suspension" was falsely announced in September 2024.

Link to the following article at Sky news:

Palestine Action supporters defiant as group faces ban

By Jason Farrell, Monday 23 June 2025 20:57, UK

What's happening to Palestine Action?
Palestine Action faces being proscribed as a terror group after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged two military aircraft.

"If they brand Palestine Action a terrorist group then - oh my goodness - I'm one of them too," said Eleanor, a mother from Rotherhithe, south London. "Whether I do something or not - I'm a terrorist," she said. Eleanor had come to support the group at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. She had just heard a statement from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who said Palestine Action will be banned following "a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action".

It means not just the core members, but anyone coming out to support them in protests such as this one would be committing an offence punishable of up to 14 years in prison.

Eleanor said she started supporting the group after the previous home secretary Suella Braverman dubbed the pro-Palestinian protests hate marches. Eleanor added that this latest move by the government won't stop her supporting Palestine Action, but she worries what would happen to her children if she was prosecuted.

There are other, legal, pro-Palestinian groups that people can support, but those at Monday's rally believe their group was the one having the biggest impact. "They are scared of us," said another protester, Frieda. "Now they will make our lives hell and I don't know how anyone in this country can stand for that."

She was carrying a banner that read "Free Political Prisoners" and said several of her friends had been arrested for activities related to Palestine Action (PA). She added: "We won't be intimidated by this, and we will come out in bigger numbers now."

( Full text of article for archiving purposes. )

Current Location: Not in clink - contrary to popular rumour

torachan

1. Had a good day at work today. No meetings, so I was able to get stuff done. Tomorrow should be the same.

2. In April we had our annual open enrollment for insurance at work and the company switched dental insurance. When I got the new insurance info and checked on their website, it didn't show my current dentist as an option, so I assumed I would have to find a new one. I don't currently have any outstanding dental work that needs to be done, so I wasn't worried about it and figured I'd find a new dentist eventually but I did have a scheduled cleaning coming up this week, so I planned to call the dentist on Monday to let them know I needed to cancel, but they actually called me instead, to confirm the appointment, and when I talked to them they said they do take the new insurance, so I won't have to change dentists after all. The appointment is tomorrow, so I guess I'll find out for sure then if they really do take it or not, but since it's just a cleaning, even if it turns out they don't, I won't be out a ton of money.

3. Today was the first round magic key presale for Oogie Boogie Bash tickets. First round is only for the highest tier keyholders (which includes us), and the general magic key presale is tomorrow, and then they go on sale to everyone on Thursday. Anyway, since today was only Inspire keyholders, it was very easy to get tickets. I'm really glad they started offering that as a perk, and it actually makes it easier for everyone because that's fewer people trying all at once on Thursday. We're not going on Halloween, but rather the Sunday before.

4. I haven't had much chance to catch up on my Bluesky feed tonight but I glanced at it quickly and it seems there's good news out of today's elections in New York. (And maybe other places, too? Like I said, not much time to read thoroughly.) So happy for any bit of good news politics-wise.

5. Tuxie just chilling on these random boards the neighbors left in our planter after repairing their fence a few months back.

chomiji

I've now read all the finalist novels for the 2025 Hugo Awards. The trouble is, I read some of these books when they first came out last year. Still. I'm happy to share my impressions if people are interested.

Poll #33287 cho's Hugo Novels 2025 Write-Up

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

View Respondents

Which of the 2025 finalists are you most interested in having me write up?

View Answers

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
8 (61.5%)

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
2 (15.4%)

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky
3 (23.1%)

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
4 (30.8%)

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher
3 (23.1%)

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
4 (30.8%)

Current Mood: curious

spiralsheep

Rana Temporaria*

Beloved little frog,
how many varied words
will your long tongue tell
as it reaches from there to here?

Beloved little frog,
what diversity of speech
can fit in your generous mouth
extending from ear to ear -
from your ear to mine?

Oh, beloved little frog,
if I kiss you as you are,
and love you in your own skin,
will you tell us all a story?

- by spiralsheep

(* Temporary Frog, aka the Common European Frog)

torachan

1. I did not get all my work tasks done today because there were so many and so much other stuff kept popping up, but I got the ones that had the highest priority done, and both tomorrow and Wednesday are pretty much free days with no meetings, so I should have plenty of time to work on all these little tasks.

2. The new store is set to open in just about one month and unlike the store that opened in December, I have not had to do any of the hiring except for a handful of interviews a couple months ago. The total staff is less than it was for the last new store but still, I am very relieved and impressed that the management team for this one has been able to do it all themselves and I haven't had to spend all day every day doing interviews.

3. Ollie is such a cutie guy.

spiralsheep

I feel as if I haven't been inflicting enough questionable moments from history on y'all recently so... to the art mobile!

One of my favourite aspects of art is that even if one broadly shares many cultural influences with an artist it remains possible to be completely mystified by wth they were thinking when they painted THAT... ?! Anyway, meet Dosso (nickname for Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri) whose patrons, male and female, liked him to paint cryptic allegories, i.e. even if you know the stories that inspired them you won't necessarily be able to decipher the message... if there is a message and the artist wasn't just messing with viewers... or drunk... or whatevz. All links to wikimedia, obv.

An allegory of Fortune, 1530-ish, in which a naked woman with only one sandal blows a giant bubble and a gravity defying gold cloth out of her... self, apparently, while staring at a handful of scratch-cards being waved by a man with slightly more dignified drapery.

An allegory of Music, 1522-ish, in which a partially naked woman (two sandals tho) stares at another naked woman's breasts, while a guy with the worst mankini in recorded history is distracted from retuning stringed instruments WITH A HAMMER by an angry arsonist toddler.

1535-ish, Hercules playing with a desk toy while a woman with her naked breasts in a fruit bowl stares at a goat... or possibly the head of the woman next to her who is sporting a marginally more fancy hat. IDK. Post your own explanation in comments plz. P.S. Beware of the baby magpie cos its got a knife... and some... I want to guess cheese? Cute dog tho.

( Don't go yet... I have four more.... )

Seven seems like enough bogglement for one day, or one bogglement for every day of the next week and then if you're good I might share a few portraits from my collection of unlikely nuns.

torachan

1. We had a nice time at Disneyland this morning. The weather's definitely trending summerish but thankfully not too hot yet.

2. Alexander's hasn't been feeling well for the past few weeks so he hasn't been over for his usual Sunday dinner and hangout, but he was able to make it over tonight. It was good to see him again!

3. Look at these sweeties!

torachan

Set the alarm and got up early this morning so we could get down there when the parks opened as it was supposed to be a pretty warm and sunny day.

( Read more... )

torachan

1. Finished another puzzle today.

2. Finally got Carla's Switch 2 set up on the TV so now we can play Mario Kart World together. It's gonna take me a minute to get used to the split screen view, though.

3. Chloe is curious.

torachan

Currently Reading
A Botanist's Guide to Rituals and Revenge
74%. I have liked the other books in this series and this one is not putting me off the whole thing but it is definitely not a favorite. The whole plot revolves around this guy blackmailing the MC and threatening her family, and the only reason he can do so is because they don't know who he really is and has insinuated himself into their home as he grandfather's doctor. If she would just tell them the truth then he might still threaten her and her family, but he wouldn't be able to sneak around in their home. But she's too embarrassed to tell them that she's being blackmailed and determined to fix things herself. It's really, really frustrating to read.

The Mystery of Locked Rooms
9%. Middle grade book about a group of friends who love escape rooms. When the MC's mom gets an eviction notice, the MC and her friends decide to explore an old abandoned fun house that's said to hold a hidden treasure. Just started it but seems good so far.

Horrorstör
27%.

Riding the Rails
No progress.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
57%.

Recently Finished
Break in Case of Emergency
This was less about the MC's relationship with her estranged father and much more about her suicidal tendencies than I'd realized from the blurb. I did like it, though.

The Fourth Girl
I didn't end up enjoying this as much as I'd anticipated from the premise. There were too many unanswered questions at the end. One of the characters even says something like "I guess there are some things we'll never know" and I'm fine with the characters not knowing, but as the reader, I want to know! Especially when the book uses multiple outsider POVs to reveal stuff the main characters are unaware of, but then still leaves a bunch of questions.

Bokura no Hentai vol. 7-10
This really was a great series. I'm surprised I'd never heard of it before but I'm glad I stumbled across it.

raivotar posting in

style_system

hi again! i think how i can make my layout fonts looks like here -> sarliina.livejournal.com

codes: https://pastebin.com/zygPhnxZ

torachan

1. Finally after all week feeling like each day should be Friday, it's really Friday!

2. Today actually wasn't too bad at work and wasn't a long day. Though I didn't end up getting to everything I wanted to get done, so I had to push a lot of things till Monday. They're not urgent things, so it's fine, but I feel like Monday is going to end up with a lot of things, especially since I have a meeting in the afternoon. But so far I have nothing scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday, so hopefully one or the other can be a catch up day if I need it.

3. This is an irresistible spot for cats. A canvas bag on top of a plastic bin, which is itself on top of a pile of other bags, on top of a blanket, on top of a chest. Plus it's got a nice view of the sidewalk!

torachan

This is the third year they've had an official Pride Nite at Disneyland. With only two dates each year, it's on a smaller scale than most of the other events, but still a lot of fun and I just love being there at the park when almost everyone (even many of the cast members working that night) is queer.

( Read more... )

queen_ypolita

I went to listen to the Reading Festival Chorus perform Elgar's Dream of Gerontius tonight. I'm not sure if I'd gone it if had been just them, but they were joined by Johanneskantorei and a youth choir from Düsseldorf (Reading is twinned with Düsseldorf) and Britain Sinfonietta, so I was curious, and the location was convenient. So I booked a ticket. And it was worth hearing, although it seemed to me the ratio of performers to audience was probably at least 2 to 1, if not more. It probably wasn't the best evening for a concert: today has been rather sweltering again and the venue doesn't come with any other method of controlling the temperature apart from opening the doors. It wasn't uncomfortably hot but not still not great.

rachelmanija

While on a commercial expedition, an unexpected accident causes Mai, an engineer, and Juna, an HR person, to crash-land on a pitch-black planet called Shroud. They can't get out of their escape pod because the air is corrosive and unbreathable, and they can't call for help. Their only hope is to use the pod's walker system to trek all the way across the planet... which turns out to be absolutely teeming with extremely weird life, none of which can see, all of which communicates via electromagnetic signals, most of which constructs exoskeletons for itself with organic materials, and some of which is extremely large.

As readers, we learn very early on that at least some of the life on Shroud is intelligent. But Juna and Mai don't know that, the intelligent Shroud beings don't know that humans are intelligent, and human and Shroud life is so different that it makes perfect sense that they can't tell. As Juna and Mai make their probably-doomed expedition across Shroud, they're accompanied by curious Shroud beings, frequently attacked by other Shroud creatures, face some of the most daunting terrain imaginable, and slowly begin to learn the truth about Shroud. But even if they succeed in rescuing themselves, the predatory capitalist company that sent them on their expedition on the first place is determined to strip Shroud for materials, and doesn't care if its indigenous life is intelligent or not.

This is possibly the best first contact novel I've ever read. It's the flip side of Alien Clay, which was 70% depressing capitalist dystopia and 30% cool aliens. Shroud is 10% depressing capitalist dystopia and 90% cool aliens - or rather, 90% cool aliens and humans interacting with cool aliens. It's a marvelous alien travelogue, it has so many jaw-dropping moments, and it's very thematically unified and neatly plotted. The climax is absolutely killer.

The characterization is sketchy but sufficient. The ending is a little abrupt, but you can easily extrapolate what happens from there, and it's VERY satisfying. As far as I know this is a standalone, but I would certainly enjoy a sequel if Tchaikovsky decided to write one.

My absolute favorite moment, which was something you can only do in science fiction, is a great big spoiler. ( Read more... )

torachan

1. They announced the amounts for our biannual bonus and the pre-tax amount is a little higher than last time. Not sure what the take-home amount will be, but I'll find out next Friday. (The day after my birthday, so that's a nice present.)

2. For some reason this week has felt so long. Like every day I've felt like it must be Friday. Even Monday! And now tomorrow is finally Friday! I'm excited about that. Taking next Thursday off for the aforementioned birthday, so it will be a short week, too. (And then the week after that I get that Friday off for 4th of July, so two short weeks in a row!)

3. Tuxie looks so contented.

jesse_the_k

I always enjoy the wide variety of postcards which appear regularly from fflo. Tuesday, fflo posted about the "Best Wrong Answers" to LearnedLeague. These are a series of punchline-worthy responses to Jeopardy!-style questions. For example:

In photography, the overall brightness of an image is determined by the "exposure triangle" of aperture, shutter speed, and a third factor which is a measure of the sensitivity of the camera's sensor (or the film) to light. This third factor is known as what?

REMEMBERING TO TAKE THE LENS CAP OFF

Even though I got online before the WWW, I’d never heard of LearnedLeague, which is a very dedicated group of trivia fiends. Here’s what I found:

Like any tight-knit community, there’s a ton of jargon. Participants are called LLamas (the double L matching Learned League). Membership is by invite only, though there is some public content at
LearnedLeague.com

Some of the world-readable "Best Worst Answer" tallies follow the URL pattern

https://learnedleague.com/hist/awards/100.php

Where 100 references the season—I had some fun plugging in random numbers.

From season 97:

A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), and Many Waters (1986) continue the story first told by author Madeleine L'Engle in what 1962 novel?

3 REASONS TO HAVE HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE

Public, unofficial Learned League groups on Reddit and Facebook. More fun to be had from grazing the #BestWrongAnswers tag on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/bestwronganswers

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a library of souls

reading

Reading

Looks like the mass lobby got NUMBERS \o/

Aurora Australis readalong 10 / 10, Bathybia

Daily Happiness

In which our heroine heard somebody say, "Shut Elbit down!"

Daily Happiness

Hugo Novels Write-Up Poll

In which there is a love poem for a temporary frog

Daily Happiness

In which there are Dosso Dossi and the allegorical paintings of doom

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #43 (6/22/25)

Daily Happiness

Weekly Reading

(no subject)

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #42 (6/18/25) Pride Nite

Music tonight

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Daily Happiness

infinite punchlines from LearnedLeague's Best Worst Answers

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