![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
[embodiment] ... ha
Nov. 18th, 2025 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberett"Ugh," I thought, "why am I feeling weirdly migrainey? My Next Phase Of The Menstrual Cycle is very much not due for like another week? I've been weirdly super regular basically since it reasserted itself post-surgery?"
... TURNS OUT that I had lost track of time a bit and I'm not a solid week early at all, it's a whole two days. This Means Some Things:
- ... still super regular by my pre-surgical standards,
- I will not be at the worst stage of my cycle during Significant Travel next week, and LAST BUT VERY MUCH NOT LEAST
- the migraine is still in fact very clearly associated with hormonal changes even when I'm not expecting them, take THAT Headache Is The Second Most Common Form Of Psychosomatic Pain ~statistics~ (and ongoing anxiety).
Duck Soup and Duolingo
Nov. 17th, 2025 11:31 pmtcpipWith about a dozen attendees, there was one moment where I realised I had more guests than chairs, and I was concerned whether I had made enough food (my guests would disagree). Despite my errors in calculation, the company and conversation were absolutely superb, scintillating even, probably because I have mostly followed Seneca's advice for selecting friends (albeit unconsciously) for most of my life. Special thanks are due to Anthony L., for producing the Catonese duck soup (he is both Cantonese and really knows how to cook), whereas he American Roast Duck Song (not a soup) is derived from the famous Youtube song; I'll probably make my own video in the near future of this recipe. Maybe I can find a friendly musician to add a tune to it. In any case, the sufficient variety has led me to put up a series of recipes and photos to honour this day.
In other international news that is not duck-related, I have completed the skill tree for Duolingo Spanish, just as the final section's units increased from 34 to 180 units, which is frankly a bit much. Still, it must be said that Spanish is a language in which Duolingo does a pretty good job, partially because of the geographical proximity and the number of learners, ergo the corporate effort. According to their CEFR values, completing the course puts on in the high B2 category, which is possibly true on the written level but also requires a great deal of spoken exposure to the experience, which hopefully I will be getting in a few weeks with my inaugural grand tour of South America.
vital functions
Nov. 16th, 2025 10:36 pmkaberett... has done so many things and is Going To Bed and will fill in this placeholder Tomorrow.
Reading. ( Descartes, Gouldercourt et al., Clifford )
Forgotten Fruits (Christopher Stocks) got auto-returned to the library for a second time while I was still, like, a third of the way into it. I am going to try to take the DNF with grace this time, but the Completionist Itch is still there...
Writing. Grumpy e-mails to HMPO. Grumpy e-mails to uk.bookshop.org (on the plus side, the book I bought from them now has a shiny wee DRM-free tag! on the downside, I can download it in neither of the browsers I've tried so far.) Mental drafting of context-setting on movement and sleep, which really need to get out of my head and onto the page.
Playing. Inkulinati! We have Completed All Three Journeys. In the second stage we achieved an absolutely bullshit strategy that made things astonishingly easy; the third stage (with SEAL) was much harder work.
Little bit more I Love Hue.
Cooking. Two things of particular note, of which the first was ridiculous parsnip risotto with thyme pesto from The Modern Vegetarian, extremely good, would very happily eat again but I'm more dubious about the prospect of cooking it again, though I will concede it would probably go faster now I know what I'm doing.
Item the second was THE MEDLAR STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING. I am not entirely convinced I can actually detect the, you know, medlar, but it is very tasty.
Elsewise I have two batches of medlar jelly on the go (first batch did not set properly, BAH, I have not made enough jam recently, so I'm going to need to redecant and reboil that before I move on to the spiced) and some ridiculous quince sorbet that needs forcing through the sieve before churning.
And I have still not touched the apples.
Eating. Saturday lunch at Holtwhites Bakery :)
Exploring. Stupid little walk on Sunday revealed unto us, among other things: a pair of cyclamen in a bit of the verge outside our house we don't normally walk past; a discarded fork; a local bush of Purple Metallic Berries; a secret holly hedge.
Growing. SEEDS arrived. Jalapeños (at least at home) turning red.
This one's on me, I admit it.
Nov. 16th, 2025 11:28 amlannamichaelsFree Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd) has now joined Breakfast In America (Supertramp) in the storied annals of: *actually pays attention to the lyrics for the first time* this song's about WHAT?
"Lanna, what did you think Free Bird was about?"
IDK, SOMEONE WHO LIKES TRAVELING!
Babel, Sensurround now
Nov. 16th, 2025 04:49 amviridian5Anyway.
During one update, Edge begged me to let its Copilot AI adapt a photo of mine into a cartoon or anime image or whatever, and I was curious, so I gave it a shot. I am mystified by some of the choices the Copilot AI made.
This is a favorite photo of mine, of me and a lot of people I never met before waiting in line for a Sisters of Mercy show in Philadelphia in the mid 1990s. The guy with his head on my shoulder? Never met him before or talked to him again after, but he was a cool dude. They were a fun group of folks, though we were all dying in the summer sun and heat. Then the venue turned out to be even hotter inside and I spent the whole show heatsick and with a massive headache, sometimes lying on the concrete floor to try to get cool.
Here is the photo. ( photo )
Here is the Copilot "anime" version. ( AI edition )
It completely changed the lighting, turning what was bright, stark white to golden. Changed some of the poses and hairstyles. Completely disregarded all of the goth makeup choices. Removed one guy's sunglasses. Flattened the image more. Didn't even try to recapture the Siouxsie Sioux image on one shirt (and what did it do to its sleeves?).
[food] medlar jelly recipe
Nov. 15th, 2025 11:30 pmkaberettIrritatingly, the medlar jelly recipe I used last time I made the stuff, over at the RHS, is no longer extant (web.archive.org link!). Herewith my own readily findable copy of the thing, plus my notes on what I'm actually doing this time around.
(For amusement: I apparently first found the medlar sticky toffee pudding recipe in 2023...)
( Notes )
Alas, dryer
Nov. 15th, 2025 02:37 pmazurelunaticSince the dryer had been leaving unsightly rust streaks on all the lights, I have not been subtle in my campaign for a new one.
Delivery is scheduled for today, of a dryer with a steam cycle but without wifi.
[pain] today in Descartes: green is the best colour because it is most like an octave
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:45 pmkaberett... Nor shall I say what objects of vision must be agreeable or disagreeable to it; for from what I have already said about the other senses, it is easy to grasp that light that is too strong will injure the eyes and moderate light must refresh them; and that, amongst the colours, green, which consistss in the most moderate action (which by analogy one can speak of as the ratio 1:2), is like the octave among musical consonances, or like bread among the foods that one eats, that is, it is the most universally agreeable.40
40 What the basis of this remark is is unclear, and although various writers have made suggestions about the relations between colours and sounds, the attempt to quantify green on a par with an octave certainly cannot be sustained. It is worth noting that Descartes will later advice Elizabeth to rid her mind of sad thoughts by reflecting on the greenness of a wood (Descartes to Elizabeth, May/June 1645, AT iv. 220).
(trans. and footnote courtesy of Stephen Gaukroger.)
boost: Adam Engst Learns Seven Agentic Web Browsers Can't Count
Nov. 14th, 2025 03:57 pmjesse_the_kfrom someone who's a realist-for-now yet also wants to believe.
Adam Engst on Can Agentic Web Browsers Count?
tl;dr No, given a readily available data set on a webpage, they can't.
The sweetest and scariest part was his sympathy for Copilot's very anxious inner monologue as it tried to come up with answers while working to a deadline that nobody had created.
When it comes to system prompts, the anxious tone of Copilot’s internal responses suggests a “ship now, apologize later, if you’re caught” system prompt that, if reflected in a real-world workplace, would be problematic. Obviously, AIs don’t have feelings that can be hurt and won’t complain to HR, but such a culture tends to encourage people to cut corners and make poor decisions that compromise quality and customer service. If Copilot is any indication, the same is true for AIs.
multiple sclerosis and now lupus
Nov. 14th, 2025 11:26 amthistleingreySee also the paper in Translational Medicine (paywalled).
Notes from The Westing Game Podcast Fic
Nov. 13th, 2025 07:35 pmlannamichaels- -the book does not take place in a specific year but it takes place on specific days of the week corresponding to days of the month: November 15th is explicitly a Saturday.
The book was published in 1978. November 15th was not a Saturday in 1978. In previous fics, I've just set it in 1978 anyway, because who cares. And I did that here but it's bothering me that, especially when I need to reference things on a specific date, the day/week doesn't match up.
So I opened Excel to find what year(s) in the 1970s had a date/weekday correspondance. And it's only 1975.
The moon phases don't match up to 1975 but the moon phases are not something that is going to bother me; me specifically having the start of the game happen in the middle of the week instead of Sunday, that bothers me.
And still I dithered because I'd made myself a reference table with the heirs's birth years based on their ages in canon and then how old they'd be in 2007, when the fic is set, and I'd used that throughout the fic, and if I changed it to 1975, I'd have to change all of that. aldkfa;ldkfja;lkdjsfalks
But I'm going to do it anyway, and not only because I was like "okay wait, when you change everything and actually save the excel file this time instead of just copying the table with | into scrivener, make sure you have Crow's birthyear right because her birthday is Nov 15, so her age given in her bio will not be the year she turns during canon" and it turns out I'd had it wrong in the reference table anyway.
So now I need to change every single year that is mentioned at any point in the fic but at least it won't bother me anymore, the day of the week problems. - THEY UPDATED THE BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK
All right. So. Rosalie, Flora Baumbach's daughter. She is referred to as a "Mongoloid" child in the book. She is referred to as that in both physical copies of the book I have.
But also I got the ebook out from the library to have on my phone too while doing this because why the hell not, and! it turns out! that the line that was originally "She had a retarded daughter, Rosalie, a Mongoloid child", now it just says "She had a disabled child, Rosalie"! (I give them only half a point in cutting "retarded" since they keep "retarded" in the discussion between Theo and Mrs. Baumbach about Chris)
Now, yes, I am fine with them removing both those terms BUT BUT BUT now since they just went with "disabled", now you have to rely on context clues and physical description of Rosalie to know that she had Down's!
It's an incredibly minor characterization detail, but I think it's a VERY IMPORTANT minor characterization detail in how Mrs. Baumbach relates to 1) Chris, and 2) Turtle, that Rosalie had Down's. And now it's "idek, figure it out from the clues we'll pepper in". JUST SAY SHE HAD DOWN'S SYNDROME. IT'S IMPORTANT. - And great, from a canon review/consistency stage, now I have to worry what else was changed in the book. (I haven't spotted any other changes but I did spot a typo: Sam Westing is called "Sara Westing" at one point. THAT WOULD BE A VERY DIFFERENT BOOK. DON'T GET ME WRONG, I WOULD READ THAT BOOK. BUT THAT IS NOT THIS BOOK.)
- It was not until this day (or, uh, yesterday? Two days ago? Some point in recent history) that I realized that... maybe Flora Baumbach is Jewish? Jake Wexler is textually. But... was I supposed to get the impression that Flora Baumbauch, nee Miller, is Jewish? Because the character never did that for me at any point at any time in the decades I have been rereading this book, but some of her various backstory details... uh, is she Jewish and I just never noticed?
- Also Denton Deere seems to have massively changed medical specialties during the book but you know what, that's unimportant.
- I appreciate that the book tells me that Turtle did not change her name upon marriage. I had to make an executive decision that Alice is just Deere, she is not hyphenated, even though she'd be in peak generational and peak socio-economical to be Wexler-Deere. But I made it just Deere for narrative reasons.
Why do I keep stumbling into fandoms where I have to make decisions about the last name of canonical children of the characters. Why.
Also I had to decide if Angela changed her name but at least that's not a load-bearing decision. She's an orthopedic surgeon. She's probably Dr. Wexler at work! But did she otherwise change it? Did she hyphenate? There's a good chance she hyphenated.
Dr. Deere is her husband, Dr. Wexler is her father... Angela, what did you do. (I have it as Dr. Deere right now and will likely keep it that way, on the theory that Grace pushed her hard to change her name and Angela went along with it.)