Birdfeeding

Oct. 25th, 2025 12:47 am
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People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

How much privacy are you willing to sacrifice for safety?

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Recipe: "Apple Pie Cookies"

Oct. 24th, 2025 11:52 pm
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I made these tonight. They turned out very well. :D

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Birdfeeding

Oct. 24th, 2025 02:06 pm
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Today is cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/24/25 -- I planted 15 purple and pink mixed tulips in the purple-and-white garden.










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Friday Five

Oct. 24th, 2025 01:04 am
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These questions come from [community profile] thefridayfive.

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ysabetwordsmith: A blue sheep holding a quill dreams of Dreamwidth (Dreamsheep)
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Today's theme is Jpop and Jrock from Japanese music.

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Affordable Housing

Oct. 23rd, 2025 09:18 pm
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This motel was transformed into colorful affordable housing. And it's named after a civil rights icon

Once a motel in the Reynoldstown neighborhood — built in the 1960s — the space was transformed into 56 modern studio apartments for individuals or families who were previously unhoused.

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Activism

Oct. 23rd, 2025 09:08 pm
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10 effective ways you can make change — in addition to attending a protest

In a nutshell: Nonviolent resistance is based on noncooperation with autocratic actions. It has proven more effective in toppling autocracies than violent, armed struggle.

But it requires more than street demonstrations
.

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Advice

Oct. 23rd, 2025 06:35 pm
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On mental health advice

What nobody tells you: Most mental health advice is just expensive ways to avoid hard conversations and difficult decisions.

You don't need another coping mechanism. You need to quit the job. Leave the relationship. Set the boundary. Therapy can't fix problems that require action
.

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Birdfeeding

Oct. 23rd, 2025 01:56 pm
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Today is mostly sunny and cool.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a small flock of sparrows and house finches.  Some of the sparrows were splashing in the red birdbath.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 10/23/25 -- I potted up some of the asparagus seeds from the Charleston Food Forest.

EDIT 10/23/25 -- I planted 10 'Colour Magic' tulips around the barrel garden, and still have 10 left.  These flowers change colors as they mature, often starting white or yellow with color at the edges which then spreads.

EDIT 10/23/25 -- I planted the rest of the 'Color Magic' tulips in the tulip bed.

EDIT 10/23/25 -- We went out for lunch.  I picked up a bag of 12 assorted Dutch irises and a bag of 12 mixed crocuses at Rural King, plus 4 bags of compost and manure to top the flowerbeds.  Then I got a bag of 15 purple and pink tulips, and a bag of 5 purple-and-white striped crocuses at Home Depot.

EDIT 10/23/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 10/23/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

silveradept: A dragon librarian, wearing a floral print shirt and pince-nez glasses, carrying a book in the left paw. Red and white. (Dragon Librarian)
[personal profile] silveradept
This week at my place of work has been instructive in the kinds of patience that you need to have with adolescents, and also an excellent example of how adolescent brains work, and how much they still seek connection with their peers even when, by themselves, they might recognize that a particular course of action is a bad idea.

First, however: For those of you who did not have the penis game as a part of your own adolescence, the penis game is essentially a form of chicken, where when it is your turn, the options available to you are to escalate the situation or to forfeit. Someone starts the game by saying the word "penis" as quietly as they would like. All the other participants (which can be pretty ad hoc) then have an opportunity to say the word "penis" louder than the first person. The game ends when nobody says the word "penis" louder than the last, or when the game is stopped by responsible adults who do not want young people saying "penis" loud enough to be heard. The collective goal of all the players is to say the word "penis" as loud as they can without getting into trouble with anyone else, even if the individual goal is to be the person who last said the word and didn't get in trouble for it.

Unsurprisingly, this is a favored game of young people who have penises and have been raised in a manspreading sort of culture. If you find people who are drawing penises on every available surface, they're probably also playing the penis game. The game is not segregated, however - those without penises can join in the game at any time and may end up being the person winning the game, simply because they'll be the last person to say it loudly without getting themselves or the group in trouble.

So, while I am at the help desk in my primary workplace, which was built as someone's homage to cathedrals and churches, with the attendant acoustic properties, loud and clearly from the teen area, I hear the word "penis!" As I am moving to handle the situation, I am thinking to myself, "Someone's playing the penis game. That's not a very smart decision in the library." By the time I get the space where I heard the word, I've got a bit ready to go about how playing the penis game sounds like fun for everyone involved, but it's a game that someone always loses. However, another co-worker has already been talking to them, and lets me know that this is the second strike assessed to this group for inappropriate language. So I have a message to deliver to our working staff when I get back to my spot, but before I can type up the report, once again, loud and clear, and possibly louder and clearer than the last one, the word "penis!" rings out again, and the teen librarian is immediately on the way, and I'm on my way to inform her that this is three, but by the time the staff converge, the group of teens has packed up and left.

What would possess young people to do something like this, in a space where they're definitely going to get caught and punished for it? To quote Agent Kay:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

Also, we have a significant amount of brain research into adolescents and have been able to get the idea that the adolescent brain, through the teenage years, is very focused on building social connections and alliances so that when they get out into the world as adults, they have backup and peer connections and other people who they can use to get work, crash space, income, romance, and all the rest of the things that adults have and they want. That brain research has provided us adults with a couple of useful things to keep in mind when working with teenagers:
  1. If you can, separate a teen from their peer group if you want to get them to change behavior. If you discipline a teen in front of the peer group, they may front and become deliberately difficult because they're more interested in saving face with their friends than in doing the thing that they would otherwise do if alone.

  2. A group of teenagers together is more prone to make worse decisions than those individual teens would by themselves. Because games of chicken like this are also ways of demonstrating both loyalty to the group and a willingness to keep the fun going or not be the person who wusses out. Sometimes being the kid who can articulate "hey, this isn't going well, we should stop" can get the stop that everyone wants, but sometimes it only gets you made fun of. So, y'know, the whole peer pressure thing is real, and it often can drive teens to do things that in the aftermath they know are foolish and wouldn't have done individually.

Knowing all this allows us to tailor our messaging to target the behaviors that are not acceptable in the space, but also to know that if the teens are playing the penis game, or throwing food at each other, or getting up to one of the myriad ways they make mischief, sometimes even unintentionally, odds are good that it only got this far because peer pressure, and if they take a cool-down day or a cool-down set of laps, they'll come back to the library with a better attempt at behaving like people who know how to exist in public places. Which they mostly do.

Working with people and child development was not a required course in my library concentration. I picked up a lot of it from taking a course from the School of Social Work, instead, figuring that having a solid grounding in child development and their environments would help me understand what I was doing in the library. It didn't give me "classroom management skills," which I was apparently supposed to have picked up along the way as well, despite my classroom everything supposedly being limited to times where teachers or librarians would be there. It didn't give me much about how to deal with the people that I was going to encounter, outside of reference interviews, and I didn't get anything about managing subordinates or other volunteers, either. Admittedly, I don't want to ever have to manage anyone, but I appreciated being able to level up my game for how to handle difficult situations and difficult people once I was out in the working world as a professional. Most of that training, though, came after my first manager had already come within an inch of getting me fired for not having all these skills I was assumed to have and for not being able to people well in ways that she expected me to. I won't be surprised if at some point, I officially end up getting upgraded to AuDHD if and when that becomes relevant and necessary, but even the more neurotypical people in my profession don't get a lot of training about managing people, both from the position of the supervisor and from the position of the supervised, when they're in library school. And so many of them definitely don't get anything at all that has to do with how children and teens develop, unless their specific remit is children or teens, and that can cause serious friction unless the people who do have the training share it with everyone else to make sure that they're all on the same page and consistent with what they're doing to do when teenagers in their library start playing the penis game.

(Yet more reasons for us to think hard about the state of education for GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) positions and what's actually needed and what has been held on to because it makes the people who work in GLAM feel learned and professional.)

Today's Smoothie

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:45 pm
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Note to self: do not put red grapes in a green smoothie. Red + green = brown. :/ It still tastes good, but it is not the beautiful jade-green that we usually get.

We use the Alan's Going Green Smoothie. We don't use the jalapeño or cashews. Sometimes we use a kiwi instead of a lime. Today we used a handful of pea shoots instead of spinach, so there's a pea flavor alongside the lime.

Photography

Oct. 22nd, 2025 05:53 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Córdoba -- Festival of the Patios

In addition to being listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Córdoba also appears on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list for its Festival of the Patios. Held each spring, the festival celebrates the tradition of decorating the patios or courtyards of the homes in the historic center of the city with flowers and other plants. During the Festival, these patios are open to the public, to show off the beauty of these spaces.

The pictures come from later in the season, not the festival itself, but are still beautiful.

Are you looking for a theme to make your small town stand out? Or a theme for a spring event that isn't Easter? Consider a patio festival! Celebrate the beauty of small gardens on patios, balconies, front porches, etc. Get your local florists and garden shops to join the fun with special displays or sales.  Throw in a plant / seed swap for houseplants, garden plants that are customarily divided or planted in spring, local landraces of flowers or vegetables, and so on.

Birdfeeding

Oct. 22nd, 2025 02:37 pm
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Today is mostly sunny, breezy, and cool.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

10/22/25 -- I installed the larger of the two wormstones beside the barrel garden. First I picked a spot, then I cleared the weeds. I dug into the ground a little so that the stone would lie closer to the surface. I had to move a few tulip bulbs that turned up there. Then I put the stone in place and pushed the soil back around the edges. \o/

10/22/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

10/22/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

10/22/25 -- I installed the second wormstone by the barrel garden.

10/22/25 -- I planted 10 'Flaming Beauties' tulips around the barrel garden. I still have 10 left. These are streaked tulips so they are yellow/red, purple/white, etc.

10/22/25 -- I planted the rest of the 'Flaming Beauties' in the tulip bed.

As it is almost suppertime, I am done for the night.

Mad Science

Oct. 22nd, 2025 12:27 am
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Scientists say dimming the sun could spark global chaos

Researchers warn that real-world solar geoengineering would be far more unpredictable and risky than models suggest.

Scientists are taking the once-radical concept of dimming the sun through stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) seriously, but a Columbia University team warns that reality is far messier than models suggest. Their study reveals how physical, geopolitical, and economic constraints could derail even the best-intentioned attempts to cool the planet. From unpredictable monsoon disruptions to material shortages and optical inefficiencies, every step introduces new risks.


WARNING: Do not practice mad science on whole planet!

Cuddle Party

Oct. 22nd, 2025 12:08 am
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Everyone needs contact comfort sometimes. Not everyone has ample opportunities for this in facetime. So here is a chance for a cuddle party in cyberspace. Virtual cuddling can help people feel better.

We have a
cuddle room that comes with fort cushions, fort frames, sheets for draping, and a weighted blanket. A nest full of colorful egg pillows sits in one corner. There is a basket of grooming brushes, hairbrushes, and styling combs. A bin holds textured pillows. There is a big basket of craft supplies along with art markers, coloring pages, and blank paper. The kitchen has a popcorn machine. Labels are available to mark dietary needs, recipe ingredients, and level of spiciness. Here is the bathroom, open to everyone. There is a lawn tent and an outdoor hot tub. Bathers should post a sign for nude or clothed activity. Come snuggle up!


Enjoy a feast for Halloween, Samhain, All Saints Day, Dia de los Muertos, or whatever you prefer...

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NaNoWriMo

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:50 pm
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Here's a list of NaNoWriMo replacements.  These are good options if you're fed up with the old NaNoWriMo.  However, plenty of people are still doing that, so if you have enjoyed it, you can just keep writing a novel in November.

Looking for other activities?  [community profile] goals_on_dw has lists of Writing and Art activities that include November options.

Today's Adventures

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:20 pm
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We went up to Champaign today.

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Birdfeeding

Oct. 21st, 2025 01:09 pm
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny and cool.

I fed the birds.  I've seen some sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds. 

Color Pooling

Oct. 21st, 2025 01:03 am
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When you craft with variegated yarn, it can cause color pooling. Some people dislike this, but planned pooling may be used to create fancy designs without switching yarn.  A friend tipped me to some websites for it.  If you'd like to play with the concept there are many online colourpooling generators/planning tools: https://magicneedles.in/blogs/guide-more/what-is-planned-pooling and https://mathgrrl.com/crochet-color-pooling/ are both great, and https://plannedpooling.com/ is the original.
ysabetwordsmith: (Schrodinger's Heroes)
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This poem is spillover from the June 4, 2024 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from [personal profile] dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "Public Places" square in my 6-1-24 card for the Pride Fest Bingo. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with [personal profile] fuzzyred and [personal profile] mama_kestrel. It is an alternate universe crossover of Polychrome Heroics and Schrodinger's Heroes.

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