I feel like I’m starting to get really good at Interiors??
Turns out picking out an absolutely zero-stakes self-indulgent project and deciding to draw the fuck outta it makes it easy to Get Good at Difficult Art Things, like ‘Backgrounds’ and 'Hands’ and 'Finishing Something, For Once’.
We visited the butterfly gardens at the Charleston Library, on June 19 although this is dated 20 because it's after midnight. They were filled with birds, although I didn't manage to catch any pictures of them.
We’ve been (not-so-patiently) waiting to share the news: Bear Cam is officiallylive for the summer!
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This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Thursday, June 19, to midnight on Friday, June 20 (8pm Eastern Time).
I got just over halfway through Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao before deciding that YA mecha is not my thing, even when it's a YA mecha AU of Chinese history. I think I'd rather read an actual historical novel or even nonfiction about Wu Zetian, who seems to have been an impressive-as-hell woman. (I will take recommendations!)
What I'm reading now:
Lamentation, the 6th Shardlake book by C. J. Sansom. (An actual historical novel! 😁)
What I recently finished watching:
S2 of Andor, which as I said, weirdly ironic to be watching as we grapple with our own ascendant Evil Empire. The pacing of this season was strange, big time-skips and characters that had seemed important in S1 (or in early episodes of S2) disappearing completely, or reappearing briefly only to be killed. I was expecting more about Mon Mothma's family, after all the screentime lavished on the wedding and her sort-of-blackmail situation. I was also expecting more of a resolution, though that's probably because I only vaguely remember Rogue One, so a lot of the breadcrumbs were, "wait, who was that again?" instead of, "aha!" for me. But I liked Kleya a whole lot, and also the snarky ex-Empire droid, and some of the spycraft bits were fun.
What I'm watching now:
We are giving American Primeval a try, despite it probably being on the violent/gory side for our tastes. We're two episodes in, and - I immediately recognized Shorty Bowlegs from the most recent season of Dark Winds! (Derek Hinkey, playing Red Feather.) Also, there is a local(ish) woman in it, Nanabah Grace from Cortez just down the road, who plays Kuttaambo'i. An article about her in the local newspaper was the way I first heard of this series, actually.
I'm enjoying the historical stuff; it's set during the Mormon War, which I actually researched a bit for my Yuletide fic, the premise of which was that the main reason that Deseret became an independent republic in the alt-history of Francis Spufford's Cahokia Jazz was that President Buchanan backed down in the face of united Mormons and natives, as both religion and respect for the tribes were stronger in that universe's US. I also like seeing the Old West, even though it was all filmed in New Mexico pretending to be Wyoming, although I'm getting a bit tired of the washed-out sepia filter.
What I recently finished playing:
Okay, not quite finished, but I have completed the last major quest in Mass Effect: Andromeda, so it's basically over. (I mean, the credits rolled! Therefore, it's over!) I know that Andromeda is considered ME's poor stepchild, but - I really enjoyed it. The "major threat to the world as we know it!!1!!one!" of the main trilogy is such a staple plotline of video games like this that I appreciated the "survive, explore, and (hopefully) thrive in a NEW UNIVERSE (and also defeat the major threat to the world as we know it)" plotline for its novelty. I thought the structure of quests opening new planets and objectives in a rough but not strict order worked well, and I really liked that most (maybe all?) decisions are not hugely critical, so you don't doom yourself to a bad ending by choosing X instead of Y. I did check the wiki a few times when I was nervous about things, but pretty much none of these decisions made any real difference, which meant I was free to actually role-play as "what WOULD (me as) Sara Ryder do?" and I find that much more relaxing.
I wasn't quite completionist - I didn't do all the fetch quest type quests, and I didn't do one vault (Elaaden, which I might go back and do), but I did pretty much everything else. I liked the glyph puzzles, and I hated the Architects, ugh. I played mostly as what in the main trilogy would be Infiltrator (combat + tech). I romanced Liam (after a fling with Peebee). It was fun!
What I'm playing next:
I think I will try some shorter games; I got Lorelei and the Laser Eyes a while back because a friend recommended it, and Skabma - Snowfall from a recent deal, because it looked pretty. I might try Baldur's Gate 3 again - I never managed to get into it and found it frustrating and annoying. Eventually I plan to get Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and also probably Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which I've heard good things about. (Or sell me on your favorite adventure game!)
Ta-da list: - cleaned a little - ran some errands, including buying the few pavers that I need to finish the little porch extension I've been working on - came home and cleaned a lot, finished the weekly cleaning and the rest of the monthly cleaning - put down the remaining pavers and cleaned two of the outside windows - took shower, went thud
The pavers are basically done now. It doesn't look very good, and it's very uneven, but it's doing what I want it to do, which is giving me a walkway to get to the hose. I don't care too much how it looks, but I do plan to even them out a little at a time since that could be a tripping hazard. (I'm not too worried about it because I'm the only one who will go out there, and only when I want to get the hose, but still.)
I am done now. I do not feel like cooking after all that, so I will likely get takeout for dinner even though I really don't feel like going back out, but for now I am going to reward myself for being productive and play Kathy Rain.
While collecting eggs a couple of weeks ago, this egg slipped out of my hands from 5 feet up above wood, wire, and cement. Quail eggs are VERY fragile when it comes to impacts, so this egg’s life flash before my eyes and time slowed down as I watched the world’s most ridiculous accidental cartoon egg drop.
It somehow missed every obstacle on the way down (3 shelves) in order to land upon the side of a milk jug I had dropped the day before. It bounced off of that to a couple feet away, and hit the side of a hay bale. It bounced off of that, and somehow landed on the open lip of an empty feed back laying on the floor that I had put down under the towers to prevent the cement from sinking heat from the space. The bag gently collapsed, and rolled the pristine egg to a stop back at my feet.
I stared at it in disbelief. I took it inside and candled it- not a crack in it. So I noted the pen I got it from (CER) and scribbled “dropped?” on it. I figured SURELY it would not develop after that kind of nonsense, but when I candled at lockdown, the little thing was ready to go.
So, I stuck the egg into its own hatching bag, and sure as shit, the little fucker hatched!
And as if the rest of the story is not weird enough, this is possibly the first coturnix chick in the world who didn’t immediately faceplant off of a human hand in the pursuit of the cold embrace of death. It just sat there, posing with the egg. Looking around like Hm so this is what being alive is… it’s alright I guess.
Speepy Rube
I picked him up and pet his head and he was just like oh okay, and laid down to take a lil nap.
Dept, vain adornment, sort of. Went to get my hair trimmed, as after several months since it was cropped it was getting a bit messy. I went back to the same place (not the one I used to go to in Bloomsbury, for Reasons including my favourite stylist doesn't seem to be there any longer) where the lady half of the operation does a very nice cut and it is not at all expensive.
I do wonder a bit though - it was entirely deserted except for me, and they wanted paying in cash. It may just be it was a quiet day and the cash card reader was broken. But one wonders if it's A FRONT for something, though pretty much every third business around there that's not an estate agent or a grocer's or fast food place of some ethnicity or other, this being a particularly multi-ethnic corner of Our Fair City, is a hairdresser's/barber's/beauty parlour.
***
Dept, this was RUDE: I don't care if he was young - ? primary school age - you do not do this on a London bus, infamy, infamy, etc. I was returning from the above appointment and the downstairs on the bus being rather chokka, went upstairs and scored the prime position, front seat, left-hand. And a stop or so later, little boy gets on and cheekily comes and sits next. Opposite - right hand - seat was empty and the whole top deck was by no means crowded.
Also he gave signs of being an incipient manspreader.
An Italian museum has contacted the police after two clumsy tourists almost wrecked a work of art while posing for photos. Video footage released by Palazzo Maffei in Verona showed the hapless pair photographing each other pretending to sit on a crystal-covered chair made by the artist Nicola Bolla – described by the museum as an “extremely fragile” work. The woman squats and does not seem to touch the work – called Van Gogh’s Chair and covered in Swarovski crystals – but the man is not so careful, sitting and then stumbling backwards as the seat buckles under his weight. The pair can then be seen fleeing the room in footage that went viral over the weekend.
Thank you so tremendously much to all of our hard working pinch hitters! All pinch hits are now claimed, with a due date of June 20th, 10pm EDT.
The collection should be on track to open at 10pm EDT on June 22nd, however, we'll keep you all posted after the current pinch hit deadline passes, as we still have 11 assignments due tomorrow night before the collection can safely open.
Let's all get our edits in and cheer on the pinch hitters!
I think most federal employees are currently at least somewhat surprised that we actually got Juneteenth off. I know I spent much of yesterday waiting for Trump to issue the order cancelling it at the last minute, just to be extra spiteful. But I even got out 59 minutes early yesterday. Which was in fact a little awkward, since I had my first session for the D&D group I've newly managed to join at 6/6:30 in the Board Room, so I ultimately spent an extra hour walking around Clarendon, buying a new pill container and dental floss, and trying not to get rained on too much, before eating at the pizza joint that's has once again become my go-to place for such evenings, and thankfully the rain finally stopped before I went to the Board Room from there. I wasn't sure going in whether I was going to retrieve my unused bard character or underused wild magic sorcerer character from my newly reaccessed D&D Beyond account, but the latter worked better with the campaign setting. I am now playing a version of Tara IsDrarren, a girl I originally created to come home from school and have an adventure in her native fishing village, that apparently never went home, and probably is not aware of her village's having been destroyed years ago. She doesn't even seem to be aware that the hareton she's currently traveling with (who survived said destruction) is also from that village. I've also made her about ten years older and currently thinking she wants to be a great hero, but I already suspect that dream's going to crash, and crash hard. So far, I'm actually liking the dynamic at our table. We've already had a bit more inter-character roleplay than my last in-person group went for. There hasn't been too much chaos yet, but I'm sure that's coming in time. Mine's not the only character at that table crafted to stir it.
Pinch hits are assignments in search of a creator! We have 2 pinch hits that are due on June 20th, 10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, one being necessary to open the collection.
This is the most recent pinch hit post. All others are now no longer being updated.
As if the fact that they were playing around with synthesizers in the early '80s wasn't proof enough that The Human League were big geeks, I fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole the other day and learned that their name came from a 1974 science fiction board game called Star Force: Alpha Centauri.
And, in a final bit of trivia, the design of Star Force: Alpha Centauri, Redmond A. Simonsen, is credited with inventing the term "game designer." (According to an obituary for Simonsen written by Greg Costikyan: "Before he did, we had no good term – game inventor, game author... but he put his finger on what we do.")
scifirenegade (scifirenegade) wrote2025-06-1909:14 am
Maurice de Vlaminck had questionable politics and questionable taste in art. (But we do agree in one thing: fuck Paul Gauguin.)
Vlaminck was the rare Fauve who took main inspiration from Van Gogh (okay, they all did, but the Gauguin influence was huge). And it shows. The colours, however, are more. More. MORE.
Genuine is like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but more. More. MORE. And just like Vlaminck, the predecessor is better in everything.
My first foray into ~ German expressionist film ~, over a decade ago, went like this: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem: How He Came into the World, Nosferatu, Orlacs Hände, Waxworks, Der Student von Prag. And some other films after that. Genuine being one of those, back when only an incomplete sub-50-minute restoration existed. Now that a longer, almost hour-and-a-half version exists (making the film near-complete now), it was time to go back to it.
Like Caligari, Genuine is detached from our world, the sets, makeup and wardrobe make sure of that. They are more abstract, however. And that's fine. Like Caligari, it has a framing device.
Genuine's (played by Fern Andra) wardrobe is the most interesting of all. Gaudy headpieces, dresses with big, geometric patterns with contrasting colours. Andra does acting in the way of interpretative dance, not quite the same yet not quite different from Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (hey, had to put my blorbo in somehow).
So the sets, the wardrobe and the acting make Genuine the character some otherworldy being, a powerful entity.
Plot is bleh. Style is the substance here, but comparing Genuine's style with its contemporaries, it falls short indeed. The whole package is one big step under Waxworks, which is also poor on plot, but looks incredible. It also features Ivan the Terrible having orgasms over people dying, which Genuine does not.
It's always nice seeing Hans Heinrich von Twardowski (Caligari, Spione, Casablanca). He's doing his best hetero acting here.
Ah, yes. Racism. So much racism. (They lynched a black man. Holy shit...)
This longer version simply adds more scenes for the framing device, and some context scenes for the story proper, which was nice. Didn't have to go "oh, so this is what we're doing now" as often as I did when I first watched it.
EDIT: Unrelated. Erdgeist available on the Digitaler Lesesaal of the Bundesarchiv.
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gallusrostromegalus_feed) wrote2025-06-20 01:08 am
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common_nature2025-06-20 04:03 am
