vignettes
Nov. 23rd, 2025 11:55 amrough 🧗♂️
Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.
Benefits by Zoë Fairbairns
Nov. 23rd, 2025 09:19 am
Mother's Benefits become the means by which British governments provide British women with the same benevolent management Britain once provided to India, Ireland, and Africa.
Benefits by Zoë Fairbairns
Done Since 2025-11-16
Nov. 23rd, 2025 01:08 pmI had a lot of trouble getting things done this week. That may have been due in part to having gone out of the house three times (for a doctor's appointment, labs, and picking up drugs at the pharmacy). Each of which burns up two or three hours, and I seem to have trouble switching gears after that. Or maybe I'm just lazy.
Thursday I let the cats out of my room, which may have been a mistake. Picking Bronx up afterward and trying to carry him upstairs to put him back was definitely a mistake, and a firm reminder to keep one hand on the banister every damned time. Fortunately, I got away with it -- this time.
I've started using compression socks; they seem to help somewhat with the edema, but it's still there and doesn't seem much improved in the morning after not wearing the socks at night. Well, I have another appointment this coming Friday.
Linkies: Record Numbers of Younger Women Want to Leave the U.S. -- if you're surprised, you may be reading the wrong blog. Also, Satellite images reveal the fastest Antarctic glacier retreat ever. On the other hand, it seems that A Poem Is All You Need to Jailbreak a chatbot.
And on the gripping hand, here's a filk adjacent cat video: Bohemian Catsody.
Well, this is a new solution to the sandwich conundrum...
Nov. 24th, 2025 02:51 am(Taken from the comments here.)
( Read more... )
I had the most amazing idea the other night
Nov. 19th, 2025 03:09 pm(It turns out I'm not the only person with this idea, which just shows how brilliant it is!)
( Read more... )
So...
Nov. 22nd, 2025 11:40 pmIt finally happened
Nov. 22nd, 2025 06:27 pmI've talked on here many times before about "hunger nausea," one of the possible hunger signals my body gives me, usually when the need to eat is urgent or semi-urgent. Which, as you can imagine, is super annoying because it kind of kills any appetite I might have. But at least I have always taken care of it before it got to the point of actual vomiting. Until today. (At least, I don't recall it ever happening before.)
See, I had a small breakfast, then went out to the library and then the grocery store for a few things, then went home. By the time I got home, I was experiencing hunger nausea. My appetite was killed. I looked around for something to try to eat anyway, and didn't find anything I could manage to get down. The only thing I could get in my stomach was Diet Dr. Pepper. I drank the whole 20 ounce bottle and then made the mistake of sitting down to write. When I hyper-focus on anything, my body could literally be doing anything at all short of the kind of gas-like pain of IBS diarrhea, and I won't be aware of it at all.
So, naturally, when I got up to pee or something (I honestly don't remember why I got up), the hyper-focus broke, everything came rushing back, and because I had already been hunger nauseous before writing, and it had been like an hour or more, I got hit with such an intense hunger nausea that I ran to the bathroom and puked up all that soda, or at least I think I did given the color and volume of the puke.
Thankfully, I felt much better after this. I have always been worried that if I puked while hunger nauseous that the nausea would just intensify from the stomach being even emptier than usual. But nope. I felt better. Had some real, sugared lemonade and some chicken, and I'm feeling even better.
Bleh, I hate my body sometimes. But in my absent-mindedness, I ignored a clear signal from my body while being aware of it, and set myself up for a much worse situation. So I hate my brain right now too.
Books Received, November 15 to November 21, 2025
Nov. 22nd, 2025 09:13 am
Three books new to me. All are fantasies, two are series.
Books Received, November 15 to November 21, 2025
Which of these upcoming books look interesting?
Mother of Death and Dawn by Carissa Broadbent (March 2026)
4 (9.3%)
Tides of Fortune by Lauryn Hamilton Murray (June 2026)
1 (2.3%)
Everybody’s Perfect by Jo Walton (June 2026)
32 (74.4%)
Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)
Cats!
31 (72.1%)
magic here and there
Nov. 21st, 2025 11:59 pmAnd indeed some other characters need an interest or they will seem flat. Maybe I can give two of them the same interest.
If I ever found myself in possession of a vast fortune
Nov. 21st, 2025 10:56 pmMost mags struggle with handling submissions but I had a moment of insight: all I need to do is tell writers to send me _good_ stories. Their crap, they can submit elsewhere. Bang! Workload down by 99%.
Orange
Nov. 21st, 2025 12:55 pmThis is available in five volumes, and also in two omnibus editions (the second included a backstory which I didn't get into), but it reads as one story.
It opens with Naho receiving a letter. It says it's from her future self, that a new boy will arrive in class and sit beside her, and she must not ask him to walk home, because he's no longer with them in the future.
Not knowing what to believe, she joins with her friends in asking
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The Door on the Sea (The Raven and the Eagle, volume 1) by Caskey Russell
Nov. 21st, 2025 09:10 am
A young scholar and his diverse companions are dispatched on an intelligence-gathering mission deep into enemy territory.
The Door on the Sea (The Raven and the Eagle, volume 1) by Caskey Russell
Slow cooker experiment.
Nov. 21st, 2025 12:37 amThoughts:
1. A bit bland, but edible. Kind of became a chunky mush, but I kinda like the texture, sort of like chunky mashed potatoes. Not enough cream of mushroom soup; a big can might work better. Could use some other seasonings, too. Maybe chopped garlic, not sure what else.
2. I can say this for it, too: it was hearty. One medium bowl of that and a banana had me full.
3. I think if I make it again, I'll use beef broth instead of water. Probably more rice and/or lentils as well. Maybe use larger veggie chunks.
4. Could definitely use some fresh mushrooms, but I didn't have any. I was just tossing together things I had that sounded like they'd go together okay. (Carrots could be a good addition, too.)
5. Cheese. For sure I will try it with cheese later if I make it again. (Probably not the whole batch, though.) Which, since it turned out as well as it did with such little seasoning, maybe with much more seasoning it'll be amazing?
6. Cooking the hamburger in a skillet first might help the texture.
I also tried frying some into patties with taco seasoning added and an egg binder. Did not work out so well; patties fell apart too easily. Ironically, I think the egg was to blame; it made them too wet, they lost some of their stickiness. But big enough chunks fried up well enough that yeah, it was an improvement. Couldn't finish it because again, it is very hearty.
Verdict: It may be a bit bland but it's still edible. Might be worth trying again, with some modifications.
Interesting new conlang.
Nov. 20th, 2025 11:20 pmThe rules so far:
1. Nouns start with N (sometimes)
2. Adjectives with B
3. Verbs with T
4. Plural words have the prefix Ka
5. Addition of prefix Ko makes possessive.
6. Addition of prefix Ka is a stronger form of possession, mostly related to Identity and things that are part of you that cannot or should not be removed. (body parts, souls, but also names)
7. Very basic ideas have simple words (kinda, sorta; the definitions of 'basic' here are not standard) and more complex words are made by sticking those together like Legos. (Something I do a lot with these conlangs.)
8. While English uses SVO word order (Subject Verb Object, like in "Sam ate apples.") this language, which has no name so far, uses OVS: Object Verb Subject. So "Sam ate apples" becomes "Apples ate Sam." I have done this before, too.
9. So far the adverb aspect is a bit weird, because some word parts that would be adverbs in English are, well, just part of the word. IE, you don't say "I move toward you," you say "(you) ("move" base word + "toward" modifier") (I)." In the actual language, that is nek tazee nak'az. Though this example is not great because I don't like the logic of the word for "toward," which is that it means "intentional inward movement." It doesn't quite fit the meaning of "toward." I mean it's great for if you're talking about something moving toward yourself, but... oooh. Multiple words for toward, depending on directionality and who or what is moving towards who/what!
It's even weirder, given how many different words they have for movement already. (See "C" in the list below.)
10. Oh yeah. For some reason, I've decided there aren't any capital letters. Yet.
Things I've figured out so far:
A. If I did it / can do it right, you can tell at a glance if a word is an adjective, verb, or (sometimes) a noun depending on the letter a word starts with. Nouns are trickier because nouns so far tend to be descriptive, apart from some very basic ones. Like the word for "sound" basically means "inherent movement of air." ("Inherent movement" means that, by definition, whatever you're talking about has movement of some kind as an inherent part of its identity, like planets, the sun, rivers, and sound.) So it's a noun made from a noun and a verb. And the verb part comes before the noun.
Taking things a step further, their word for "word" is basically "sound of/from the mind." The word for "name" is the same, but with the appropriate possessive prefix, changing the meaning to "my sound-from-the-mind." Or broken down even further, "my 'inherent movement of the air, from the mind.'" (Their word for name, for now, is thus ka'taymum. [kaa tame uhm] The apostophes are just there to make the meaning and pronunciation easier to parse.)
B. There are two different words for 'flesh,' differentiating animal flesh from plant flesh. This culture also thinks of themselves as intelligent, ensouled animals, therefore they use the word for "animal flesh" when talking about their own bodies. Their word for "person," nams'oom, means "animal flesh with soul." In-universe because they assume all animals have minds, but really I just thought namsum'oom sounded weird and clunky. I kinda want them to have something in their language that shows they think all animals have souls and minds, while still differentiating their own kind of soul or mind slightly due to complexity or something, but I haven't worked out how to do that yet.
C. They have different word parts for movement differentiating inherent movement, intentional movement, accidental movement, and intentional movement that is malicious. Not really sure what this says about them, but it says something.
D. Their language's pronouns are: I. Combined "I/me," II. Combined "they/them," III. Combined "we/our," IV. A singular "you" and V. A plural "you." | To make a pronoun possessive, add the appropriate prefix ("temporary possessive" or "identity-inherent possessive." See rules list at the top.) This is just "so far."
EDIT: Changing the logic of the word for sound to something else. Not sure what yet. I like the idea of it meaning "intentional movement of mind," but there are other ways of interpreting that, like "any action you do intentionally" and/or "telekinesis."
Also having Thoughts about words that describe size. With words for wide, narrow, long, short, big, and small... do I even need words like fat, skinny, thin, and scrawny? Are these not just synonyms for the others I already have? Are there any good reasons to include words like them? Can a fat person not just be described as 'wide'? A skinny person as 'narrow'? I mean I guess "fat" as it means the stuff in your body would be an important distinction to make, I guess, if only for its use as something in your diet. Hmm... it's just, I'm trying to determine how many size descriptors a language really needs, and not just translating things willy nilly.
After all, I'm building potential word parts by this metric:
measurements: (vowel)+B
pronouns: (vowel)+K
elements: (vowel)+M
flesh: (vowel)+MS
directions: (vowel)+T OR (vowel)+z
movements: T+(vowel)
Nouns: N+(?)
Adjectives: B+(?)
Work in progress of course. But between that and cutting out C, Q, and probably X, that leaves 18 consonants to use with various vowel combos for the (vowel)+(consonant) thing. Only vowel sounds so far are A, E, I, O, U (uh), and OO. (ish) And 8 x 6 is 108. Since I've got 17 consonants for (consonant)+(vowel), plus Ka and Ko, that's 102 words/word parts. 102 + 108 = 210 possible non-compound words. Add S to the ends of the vowel+consonant pairs, and that's another 108 words, for a total of 318 non-compound words. I mean... I guess Toki Pona only has like 137 words in total, but still...
And that's before any kind of testing to see if some words are too hard to say or sound too similar to another word.
