chebe | Network

A little idle talk of this and that
Star Wars/AtLA; Obi-Wan, Iroh, Aang, ensemble; g; 4,050 words
On his way to Tatooine with Luke, Obi-Wan makes an unexpected stop for tea in Ba Sing Se.

Title from "A Little Gossip" from Man of LaMancha. Also, thanks to everyone who had suggestions about tea.

Read it at AO3.

( a little gossip, a little chat / a little idle talk of this and that )

~*~

Feedback is adored.

~*~

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Dancing Queen - ABBA

nanila

Poll #21430 Chatham House Rules

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 27

If I say "Chatham House rules", you say

But of course.
20 (74.1%)

Er, gesundheit?
7 (25.9%)

( What are they? )

Crossposts: https://nanila.livejournal.com/1264989.html

jenett

Good morning!

Topic of the week
Places you've enjoyed going (near where you live, longer travel, everything in between.)

What I've been up to
I am running around getting ready for a quick and weirdly timed work trip (flying very early Saturday morning, getting back very late Monday night, the actual work stuff is Saturday evening through noonish Monday).

So I'm posting this and then going to the laundromat, as one does.

( Reminders and tips for making this post flow better )
( House rules )

firecat

"DEATH TO MINIMALISM" by Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs.

This article proposes "Minimalism is the aesthetic language of gentrification." I like the overall points the article is making—that clutter has character, and that minimalism everywhere would be dull, and that there's an increasing trend toward minimalism and sameness, which isn't good.

But, at the risk of revealing that I have the soul of a gentrifier, I have such different reactions to some of the rooms and buildings that the article is calling out as examples of deadly minimalism. Take this before-and-after photo of an Oakland Victorian, originally from a tweet by SF Gate, which likes the new version better. Robinson likes the old version better. I agree that the old version has more personality, and I'm sad that they tore it down. The new version, though, doesn't look like a corpse to me, but like a canvas ready to be personalized.

Robinson contrasts some "boring-ass" windows on the side of a gray building with the inside of the Nasir-ol-molk ("Pink") Mosque. Leaving aside that these are hardly similar things, I don't think the gray windows are boring-ass. They come in several different shapes and are positioned in different configurations, and some of them have green frames. Compared to what's on the outside of most skyscrapers it's quite varied. I would love to spend hours looking at the mosque and its windows, but I wouldn't want to live there. I would get overwhelmed.

Then we are presented with four bathrooms. (Three of the images are links.) The author complains that one of them is all white and there's no door on the walk-in shower. I agree that the shower would be better with a door. He likes the other three bathrooms better because they have flowers and clawfoot tubs and "Who doesn't like flowers?" I see them like this: 1 accessible bathroom, which has a wall that could be painted if you felt like it. 3 bathrooms with clawfoot tubs where, the minute I tried to get out of the tub on the slippery floor, I would break my neck.

firecat

reedsy.com/discovery/blog/best-sci-fi-books: the 100 best sci-fi books of all time

I have no idea who wrote this or what their criteria were. reedsy seems to be involved in helping authors hook up with editors and designers and might eventually head toward being a publishing house. But Nisi Shawl says it's a good list, writing "the list starts out fairly male and white and then there comes a flowering of color and gender diversity." It contains some interesting bits of trivia.

( Read more... )

niqaeli

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

helloladies posting in

ladybusiness

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. For more links and commentary you can follow us on Twitter, Tumblr. You can also support us on Patreon.

( Read more... )

silversandbea

This morning there was a chance mention on twitter about the history of textiles with science and engineering:

Another interesting paper/talk would be the history of wool through the lens of materials science and engineering. (How do you shear a sheep before metallurgy made shears possible? - you don't. You pluck the damn thing.)
— Auntie Julie (@StrangeAttract5) February 21, 2019

( Then my mind was blown, so I did some research )

Elsewhere, the Rivers of London discussion is still happening on FanFare. We're on Broken Homes now.

emceeaich

"Continuous Integration" or CI is a relatively new idea in making software. You set up tooling that lets you run automated tests on new code as it's added in.

At Mozilla, we have Treeherder to run the thousands of tests written over the years as new code lands in Firefox.

TravisCI was another CI tool. Like Treeherder, it is open source. It was built by a private company that offered it as a free, and premium service. Some of my friends worked there and said it was a great, supportive team. Lots of projects used TravisCI to help assure quality code.

Unfortunately, TravisCI was funded by venture capital, and capital wanted its rents, so the company was sold to a private equity firm.

This morning, the new owners fired the senior staff, and will run the company into the ground to extract all the value.

I despise capitalism and neoliberal logic.

jen_fuqua posting in

findthatbook

Hello, I am trying to figure out what book this is that I remember. It's a historical romance- maybe by Cassie Edwards? And there are spoilers for the story in my description, just a warning.

The main plot centers around a Native American (chief, I believe), his two wives, and a white woman that he wishes to make his third wife. In regards to his two wives, both are Native American and one of them is pregnant and -spoiler alert- it is revealed after she is murdered that the baby was not her husband's but actually a child conceived with a close friend of his. The man she had the affair with lets it slip while holding her dead body and babbling about it right in front of her husband. The other wife was vicious to the pregnant wife, getting banished after she cut off the pregnant wife's braids, and I believe that she wound up prisoner to some evil white guy that wanted the white woman. As for the white woman, she was not happy about the Native American already having two wives and wanting to make her the third, though the Native American conceded to her wishes enough to start work on a separate home for her so she wouldn't have to share with his other wives. She did try being nice to the pregnant wife, though the pregnant wife pouted and sulked about her husband's plan to marry the white woman. At the end of the book, the white woman is the only wife and the Native American man agreed not to marry anyone else.

If anyone knows what book this is, please let me know ; ; I have been trying to find it for months with little success.

Current Mood: anxious

staranise

jesse_the_k posted: Markdown Simplifies Formatting Your DW Posts

Markdown is a minimal way to format your text. The goal is to use "natural" formats, similar to email. Software that understands Markdown translates it to HTML. Markdown is much easier--and more forgiving--than HTML. This post has the markdown you'll use the most.

jesse_the_k posted: Easier Dreamwidth Posts with Markdown: the sequel

This sequel covers the rest of Dreamwidth’s Markdown support.
Paragraphs and line breaks
Blockquotes
Headings
Reference links
Images
Ignoring Markdown commands

jesse_the_k

Read Markdown Simplifies Formatting Your DW Posts for an introduction and the formats you'll use daily.

This sequel covers the rest of Dreamwidth’s Markdown support. ( 1100 words )

nanila

My friends, allow me to illustrate for you how posh my village is.

The bloke and I went out to the theatre tonight to watch some live comedy (Rob Newman; yes yes we are so Radio 4 and also old). We got there a bit early so I could have a glass of wine - my turn for the booze as I'm driving home from the rugby tomorrow night - and it was very quiet.

As we sat enjoying our drinks, a lad entered and uncovered the keyboard on the piano. He started playing, badly. Two of his friends followed. One of them pushed him out of the way and started playing, reasonably well. A few more friends trickled in, teasing him, as he continued to play, much to our amusement.

The theatre manager came over and politely asked to see their tickets to the show, which, being under the age of 35 (and that's me being generous; most of the audience were at least a decade older), they did not have. They left without a fuss.

And that, my friends, is an illustration of a Night Out interrupted by the Yoot in My Town. #cryingwithlaughter

Crossposts: https://nanila.livejournal.com/1264437.html

yukonsally posting in

unclutter

Not much stuff movement for me this week so far. Both things I offered to friends on fb were claimed and have been delivered. Spouse and children cleaned up main parts of the house, including our landing zone in the kitchen. That cleared counter lasted about an hour. We're getting better!

musesfool

This meme was going around the old flist last month and I did it and then forgot to post it, so...here it is:

List the summaries of your own top 10 stories by kudos:

( 10 stories, alike in dignity...wait )

No surprises here - all Avengers, 8 Steve/Bucky, 1 Clint/Darcy (fake Christmas boyfriend!), and 1 Darcy + team fic (the one with the crayons). The latter two were both written when LJ/DW was still a primary fannish hub, and both got recced around then, which accounts in part for their kudos counts. And obviously, Steve/Bucky became a juggernaut pairing, but a few of these were written prior to that and then got swept up in the post-TWS wave.

I think we all know how much I hate writing summaries. They are the worst. I have in fact occasionally just gone "the one where..." which I think is a perfectly fine formulation (and also how I tend to think of not just my own stories, but other people's as well). I also do like an "In which" summary, usually when hijinks ensue. But mostly I just pick a quote from the story that I feel represents the story in some way. I know that method doesn't work for a lot of readers, but it's the one that works for me as a writer, so...*hands* (I will say that "It's like the oblivious leading the clueless." is both one of my favorite lines I've ever written and one of my fave summaries, because it exactly encapsulates what is happening in the story.)

As a reader, the summary is one element that helps me choose what to read, along with the tags and, of course, the characters and pairing and fandom and author, and sometimes a good one will overcome my qualms, or a bad one will keep me from clicking, but really it is only one element.

***

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: All Apologies (live) - Nirvana

otw_staff posting in

otw_news

Banner by caitie of an OTW-themed guest access lanyard

Most fanwork fests don't involve collaboration from Day 1, but this month's guests talk about one that does: pod_together. KLB and Paraka discuss what it's about and also why a last minute code push at AO3 made for a memorable day. Read more at https://goo.gl/FDa3vy

staranise

My brother just lost his job, so now we're all even more stressed than before. Fluffy animal pics appreciated.

ivy

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: confused

marycatelli posting in

book_love

Ghost in the Throne by Jonathan Moeller

Ghost Exile book 7. Spoilers ahead for the earlier works.

( Read more... )

astolat

Here is the teenager story, because the other TFP one decided it was NOT finished after all. :P

The Parent Trap (17924 words) by astolat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Transformers: Prime
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Megatron/Optimus Prime
Characters: Megatron, Optimus Prime, Arcee, Ratchet, Original Cybertronian Character(s)
Additional Tags: Teenagers, Cybertronian Parenting, Sparklings
Series: Part 16 of Transformers works
Summary:

“Oh my God, are you saying that Megatron had Optimus’s baby?” Miko shrieked piercingly.

Crossposts: https://astolat.livejournal.com/321189.html

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chebe

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fic: A little idle talk of this and that (Star Wars/AtLA; Obi-Wan, Iroh, Aang; gen)

Friday's Unscientific Poll: Chatham House Rules

Salon post: February 22

De gustibus disputandum est

Firecat can't resist a book list

thursday lyra's armpits are sore

Sidetracks - February 21, 2019

Rooing the Day

TravisCI and Stealing from the Commons

Book Help

Signal Boost: jesse_the_k gives Markdown advice

Easier Dreamwidth Posts with Markdown: the sequel

Ah, My Town

mid-week check-in

what else could i write

OTW Guest Post: pod_together

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[Book Reviews] "Trumptaí Dumptaí" agus "Cúpla Focal"

Ghost in the Throne

Transformers Prime: The Parent Trap (Megatron/Optimus)

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