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The Final Prize is Soup turned out to be awesome last week. The horror mostly happens off-screen, so I'm not struggling with it at all. Actually enjoying the atmosphere and mystery a lot. Excited to continue playing it!
🕹️ The Final Prize is Soup: https://4noki.itch.io/the-final-prize-is-soup
🧛♀️ Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyaG3CA7oJ4
⏰ Time: 9 AM PDT, 12 PM EDT, 4 PM UTC -
I'm going to play The Final Prize is Soup for the seasonal spooks. It's a survival-horror yuri visual novel about participating to a life game of some sort in order to not die. Sounds rather dire, but it should be tame enough for me to handle.
🕹️ The Final Prize is Soup: https://4noki.itch.io/the-final-prize-is-soup
🧛♀️ Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdemW8u8W0g
⏰ Time: 9 AM PDT, 12 PM EDT, 4 PM UTC -
“Far out. Far fuckin’ out.” Then mayhem.
I gotta tell ya man, had a few years of things always going sideways and bad damn luck.
They say trauma takes many forms, and can have severe impacts on your life. You’ve got your acute trauma, like assault, serious illness or injury, losing a loved one, that sort of thing. Chronic trauma which is repeated events over time like abuse, domestic violence, neglect, and even religious trauma. Then there’s what they call complex trauma which is a combination of the above, swirling around into a nasty trauma soup which nobody wants.
I’m writing this in… what day is it? Midway through 2024. Well we had some shared trauma there didn’t we? Seems like a certain pandemic did a number on us all. Whatever trauma can be had from elections (and their aftermath) is another shared bit if it hit ya that hard.
Then we have some economic fallout – our lives have been changed. So there’s some ingredients we all have in that pot.
This old duder can throw into that pot a fairly abrupt change in relationship status. Loss of job. Moving. And… well I can go on but honestly I’m skirting around the point here, suffice it to say, we all are packing some amount of trauma. Well all got our own complex trauma soup.
I don’t know about your coping mechanisms, but I’ve adapted by always questioning good news, always trying to guess how someone or something is going to screw me over, and fearing the worst result. If I have low enough expectations, I’m rarely disappointed.
I didn’t really realize how cynically and negatively that strategy has impacted me. Sure, a bit depressed, man. A bit suspicious of others’ motives and keeping new people at arm’s length.
Despite my coping mechanisms, I did manage to land a pretty sweet gig. Not as strenuous as being a roadie for Metallica on the Speed of Sound tour, but it sure pays better than being an author of the Port Huron Statement (first draft, of course).
Well, this new job has given me the opposite; at nearly every turn the reasonable or best result has happened despite my cynicism and fear. I’m treated well, and in return I’ve worked hard.
We really gotta take all that to heart and let go a little bit and stop expecting the worst. So much of a joyful moment is lost when one questions that moment.
That’s all I have for now. Hope it helps ya work through something, get out of a rut, or maybe just give ya a chuckle. I think writing it helped me out a bit.
Take ‘er easy dude.
https://www.adudeistblog.com/2024/07/27/weve-recovered-your-automobile/
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It is No Spend January on the homestead.
This means-- aside from the obvious of not spending money-- that it is time to get creative with what we have in the freezers and pantries.
There is very minimal spending allowed, and it is really only if necessary for fresh produce. This is fine.
I made a batch of potato and onion soup that I have been eating through, as well as having eaten a small piece of the family's pot roast last night. Tonight, they had sausage and potatoes.
While looking through what we have, I decided to make butter with the heavy cream we had leftover from another project... which lead to the next plan of making a crusty Italian bread tomorrow that can be eaten with the soup, dipped in oil, or slathered in butter.
Not one to be known to take on an appropriate amount of projects simultaneously... homemade beef jerky is also on the menu for tomorrow. I figure the jerky is a good protein packed snack that will last for a bit, and even longer if I vacuum-pack it.
Wish me luck!
#cooking #baking #homemadebread #homemadefood #beefjerky #homemadejerky #homemadebeefjerky #homemadebutter #getcreative #nospendjanuary #gardemanger #keeperofthefood #keeperofthepantry #garmo #homestead #homesteading #pantryparty #pantryraid #selfreliant #selfsufficient #fediverse #federated
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Configuring #GuixSystem reminds me of configuring #Emacs, and not only because of the lisp parenthesis soup*.
The similarity goes deeper than the configuration syntax. They both make me constantly question whether I should pin down and declare every last bit of configuration explicitly, or only customize what I need and implicitly use the defaults for everything else. Sometimes I find it very difficult to resolve this tension. But I will try to remain pragmatic and only customize what I need. I need a working system more than a perfect system. And I want to spend more time using said system than configuring it (even though it is pretty fun to run reconfigure commands and see new things right away! it's good to use small hardware that makes these reconfigure operations long and noisy, otherwise I could play with this all night...).
*: Said with all due respect! I actually find this notation convenient when indented/formatted nicely, which Emacs does very well of course.
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My Vision,
When we all live with and show true compassion, respect and love towards one another, we bring dignity to humanity and we as a society can truly prosper.
Creative Visionary Philip A. Swiderski Jr, Is A passionately creative Bi-Polar social outcast, who’s goal in life is to inspire others to overcome what ever is holding them back. My mental issues foster my creativity. They allow me to see the world with an open mind. I have compassion towards others, because I know first hand. How hard life can be.
2nd Shot Photography is about 2nd chances and using my #Passion of photography to #Create a life for myself, while developing a #Vision to #Help others.
2nd Shot Photography is more than #Photography, it is about Focusing on the shot, the name 2nd Shot Photography came to be out of desire to have a second shot, although sometimes we need a 3rd, 4th, 5th, ect, My goal behind this is to provide a moment of rest for those that are broken, suffering, struggling and otherwise displaced in life, Compassion is to actively remove the burdens of another and give them a moment to rest, to provide them with the help they need to get back on their feet, a Second Shot, if you will, so thats the name, the short story behind it, and what I am working on creating with it, you can support at any time, and sharing is caring, stay tuned to see what develops.
Current Needs And Hope To Do: From Hunger to Hope: A Disabled Man’s Plea for Help Imagine the bite of hunger replaced by hope. One click can make it real. As a disabled man living in poverty with bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADD/ADHD, and severe anxiety, I’m no stranger to hunger and hardship. My reality is a constant battle for basic needs, a fight I wage every day. My Story I’m on SSDI, which means I live on a fixed income of $12,000 a year. I don’t have access to healthcare, transportation, or a support system. I struggle to complete daily tasks, and my mental health is declining due to lack of care. I’m constantly worried about what to eat, where to sleep, and how to make ends meet. But There’s Hope Your kindness can rewrite the script. With just a click, you can transform the clatter of an empty cupboard into the melody of hope ringing in my belly. A single donation becomes a shield against hunger, a warm coat against the biting wind, and a bus ticket towards a future brimming with possibilities.
How Your Donation Helps Here’s how your small act of compassion becomes a giant leap towards stability: A Full Plate: Your gift fills my fridge with nourishing food, fueling my body and mind to battle the storm of bipolar disorder. Warmth Against the Chill: Your generosity drapes me in comfort, shielding me from the harshness of the world and allowing me to focus on healing. Mobility, Not Isolation: Your contribution puts me behind the wheel of opportunity, connecting me to crucial appointments and empowering me to manage my health. Stability, Not Despair: Your kindness becomes the cornerstone of a safe haven, a sanctuary where I can dream and rebuild my life, brick by brick. My Vision I want to build a forever home, a place where I can live without worrying about my basic needs. I dream of creating a creative studio, a tranquil RV camping ground, and a community center. I want to restore an old farm house and turn it into a bed and breakfast. I want to create an organic farm, to never go hungry again, I want to be able to set up as many tiny homes as possible on my property, that will be open to those in need of respite and compassion, a place for those that have been battling a losing fight, so that they can rest and find their footing in life, I want to live a life with purpose and dignity.
The Benefits of Supporting Me By donating to my cause, you’ll not only be helping me achieve my vision, but also contributing to a larger impact: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty: Your support will help me break free from the cycle of poverty and create a sustainable life. Promoting Mental Health Awareness: By sharing my story, you’ll be helping to raise awareness about mental health and the challenges faced by people with disabilities and living in poverty. Empowering Creativity: Your donation will enable me to pursue my creative passions and bring joy to others through my art. Building a Community: Together, we can create a community that values inclusivity, compassion, and support for people with disabilities, and those living in poverty.
How You Can Help I need your help to make my vision a reality. Here are some ways you can help: Donate: Any amount will help, whether it’s $1.50 or $10,000. Your contribution will go towards food, housing, and hiring a qualified advocate to help me navigate the system. Share: Please share my story with your friends and family. I need to reach as many people as possible to make my vision a reality. Support: If you have any skills or expertise that can help me, please reach out. I need advocates, social workers, and professionals who can guide me through this process.
Let’s Rewrite My Story Together Please, share my story. Spread the ripple of possibility. And when you’re ready, join me in this fight with a donation, no matter how small. Together, we can turn hunger into hope, cold into warmth, and isolation into community. Be a Hero in My Story Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Thank you for considering my plea for help. I know that together, we can make a difference.
A home one can own, is a home in one can grow, Security, Sustainability, and Stability are keys to healing past traumas and having a prosperous future, A home one can own, ends poverty, and always offers refuge and the opportunity to provide self sufficiency, Owning my own forever home, will allow me so much more than struggling just to barley exist.
So you maybe wondering how exactly I would use $5million if I was to receive it all at once and today, well let me break it down a little for you, of course it starts with actually receiving enough to cover taxes on $5million and processing fees, anyways your wanting info,
I have a plan of spending $2million on purchasing property, hopefully it is between 100-200acres and would have an old farm house on it that is actually still liveable, and of course an old barn, along with the purchase I am hoping to stay within this price range as a total where I would also build my forever home, a small but efficient home and I would like to of course fully furnish my forever home,
So now I have $3million left, I plan on spending $1million on refurbishing the old farm house and converting it into an bed and breakfast, and renovating the old barn and turning into a bit of a community center, with full laundry and bath facilities, a semi commercial kitchen with a full time coffee cafe, that will offer soup and sandwiches,
Now I have $2million left, in which $500k to set up my small organic farm, and cover all the odds and ends I have yet to deal with, leaving me with around $1.5million which I will use to live off of for the rest of my life, which roughly works out to $37k a year for the next 40 years, allowing me to cover taxes, utilities and all the other life costs.
My hopes are that the bed and breakfast will generate enough money each season to help supplement property maintenance taxes, the community center I hope to sell enough coffee, soups and salads to help fund the farm until it can somewhat sustain its self, along with providing meals and facilities to those in need.
Now of course I am very aware of market changes, and cost of goods, and labor ect and know that things may all have to happen in a slower and out of order pace to truly do what I want, but eventually I hope to be able to add a campground that too will bring in revenue that will help the day to day costs of everything, nothing is really for profit, but for maintenance and slowly growing, in where I also hope to set up several small tiny homes, to offer to those in need of compassionate respite,
I have spent many years thinking and planing and I am confident had some said right now Philip here $5million, go do what you want with it, I can make it both a blessing to me, and for others for years to come. I have chosen Northern Vermont or Maine as my destination of choice, as 4 seasons really fit into the whole artist approach I plan on employing through out my endeavor, along with hopefully the property I select will have a healthy stand of maple trees on, in which I would love to harvest small batch maple syrup from to add to my supplies, and well there is so much more, but spilling the beans sometimes is both overwhelming and self defeating so exactly how all this will happen and work as far as the public is currently concerned is going to remain a bit of a mystery,
Now all I need your support to get this rolling, and as a disabled man living in poverty, and suffering and struggling every single day, there is a very real sense of urgency for your support begin rolling in right now so please share this with everyone in your circle and please support now,
Thank You
Philip A. Swiderski Jr,
$5-10-15 It All Helps, via #cashapp at $woctxphotog or via #paypal at paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=…
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While deciding where to have #lunch after a 3-hour exam, I suddenly remembered that the university #cafeteria has a #buffet, and since the time is still within the hot meal period, I tried it out. The #food is good, nothing special. Since I pay for each entry ($14.89 for lunch), I opted to eat as much as reasonable (well, #BingeEating after exam is understandable...), but ultimately couldn't handle more than 2 main plates (pictured), 2 drinks (coffee & root beer) and a soup (chicken noodles)...
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‘Not What You’d Expect in a Democracy.’ How #Britain Is Waging War Against #ClimateProtesters
By Yasmeen Serhan/London
December 16, 2022"As the #ClimateCrisis worsens, and as the international efforts to mitigate its effects continue to fall short, activists like #CameronFord have become more daring. Over the past year and a half, the 32-year-old British carpenter has blocked highways by gluing himself to roads and chained himself to an oil tanker.
"Like most #environmental campaigners, Ford never wanted to do anything that could land him in jail. 'I was hoping to emigrate to Canada one day,' he says from his home in Cambridge. But Ford changed his mind about the need for bolder activism after attending a talk hosted by the climate group #InsulateBritain last summer. 'It made sense to make that stand earlier, whilst there was still a chance that we could actually mitigate the worst of it, rather than once it’s too late,' he says.
"Ford is hardly alone in that view. Other British protesters like him have gone so far as to tunnel under major infrastructure projects, throw soup at famous works of art, and scale a 190-food bridge—all in a desperate bid to draw the public’s attention to the looming climate catastrophe.
"But their democratic right to protest is now at risk as the British government declares war on tactics that it regards as disruptive and, ideally, illegal. Draft legislation that the House of Commons approved in October [2022] would pose unprecedented restrictions on the right to #protest in #England and #Wales."'When [#ClimateCollapse] is what we face, I believe the only thing that would curtail us is the death penalty,' says Ford, 'because the alternative to us not standing up is death.'"
https://time.com/6241372/uk-public-order-bill-climate-protests/
#GreatBritain #Fascism #ClimateAction #ClimateActivism #ACAB #WaterIsLife #Oligarchy
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‘Not What You’d Expect in a Democracy.’ How #Britain Is Waging War Against #ClimateProtesters
By Yasmeen Serhan/London
December 16, 2022"As the #ClimateCrisis worsens, and as the international efforts to mitigate its effects continue to fall short, activists like #CameronFord have become more daring. Over the past year and a half, the 32-year-old British carpenter has blocked highways by gluing himself to roads and chained himself to an oil tanker.
"Like most #environmental campaigners, Ford never wanted to do anything that could land him in jail. 'I was hoping to emigrate to Canada one day,' he says from his home in Cambridge. But Ford changed his mind about the need for bolder activism after attending a talk hosted by the climate group #InsulateBritain last summer. 'It made sense to make that stand earlier, whilst there was still a chance that we could actually mitigate the worst of it, rather than once it’s too late,' he says.
"Ford is hardly alone in that view. Other British protesters like him have gone so far as to tunnel under major infrastructure projects, throw soup at famous works of art, and scale a 190-food bridge—all in a desperate bid to draw the public’s attention to the looming climate catastrophe.
"But their democratic right to protest is now at risk as the British government declares war on tactics that it regards as disruptive and, ideally, illegal. Draft legislation that the House of Commons approved in October [2022] would pose unprecedented restrictions on the right to #protest in #England and #Wales."'When [#ClimateCollapse] is what we face, I believe the only thing that would curtail us is the death penalty,' says Ford, 'because the alternative to us not standing up is death.'"
https://time.com/6241372/uk-public-order-bill-climate-protests/
#GreatBritain #Fascism #ClimateAction #ClimateActivism #ACAB #WaterIsLife #Oligarchy
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‘Not What You’d Expect in a Democracy.’ How #Britain Is Waging War Against #ClimateProtesters
By Yasmeen Serhan/London
December 16, 2022"As the #ClimateCrisis worsens, and as the international efforts to mitigate its effects continue to fall short, activists like #CameronFord have become more daring. Over the past year and a half, the 32-year-old British carpenter has blocked highways by gluing himself to roads and chained himself to an oil tanker.
"Like most #environmental campaigners, Ford never wanted to do anything that could land him in jail. 'I was hoping to emigrate to Canada one day,' he says from his home in Cambridge. But Ford changed his mind about the need for bolder activism after attending a talk hosted by the climate group #InsulateBritain last summer. 'It made sense to make that stand earlier, whilst there was still a chance that we could actually mitigate the worst of it, rather than once it’s too late,' he says.
"Ford is hardly alone in that view. Other British protesters like him have gone so far as to tunnel under major infrastructure projects, throw soup at famous works of art, and scale a 190-food bridge—all in a desperate bid to draw the public’s attention to the looming climate catastrophe.
"But their democratic right to protest is now at risk as the British government declares war on tactics that it regards as disruptive and, ideally, illegal. Draft legislation that the House of Commons approved in October [2022] would pose unprecedented restrictions on the right to #protest in #England and #Wales."'When [#ClimateCollapse] is what we face, I believe the only thing that would curtail us is the death penalty,' says Ford, 'because the alternative to us not standing up is death.'"
https://time.com/6241372/uk-public-order-bill-climate-protests/
#GreatBritain #Fascism #ClimateAction #ClimateActivism #ACAB #WaterIsLife #Oligarchy
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Whispers of Fate review
The Story
The drama is technically xuanhuan with some wuxia-ish elements thrown in: it’s both genre-bending and experimental. At its core, it revolved around Tang Lici (Luo Yunxi) and Liu Yan (Alen Fang), two characters with a complicated history involving a misunderstanding over what Liu Yan thought Tang Lici did to someone they both loved. Due to this, Liu Yan decided to kill hordes of people just to frame Tang Lici for revenge.
However, the CDrama also covered an expansive world where immortal beings were trying to manipulate and control humans for their own purposes. Tang Lici and Liu Yan’s conflict was just a side effect of this.
What I Liked
I was intrigued by Luo Yunxi and Fang Yilun’s characters, Tang Lici and Liu Yan, and I definitely liked the twisted dynamic between the two. I appreciated the philosophical concepts that the drama wove through the story (when I wasn’t distracted by the shiny headgear). I just felt that its best qualities were fogged up by the frippery and fluff.
The martial arts and special effects were dazzling. I get what people mean by Luo Yunxi looking really good when executing the martial arts moves. It was enjoyable to watch, though I’m more of a Cao Jun real-life martial arts moves kind of person. Still, it was very pleasing to watch.
The experimentation was fun. I also liked that it was trying to be out-of-the-box, genre-wise. It was both wuxia-ish and xuanhuan-ish. I love this kind of creativity, and that’s partly why I started watching.
It was just a pity that I had to go through … a lot to get to the parts I enjoyed.
What I Didn’t Like
The Costumes
I was actually looking forward to Whispers of Fate despite my deep reservations about the styling. It reminded me too much of Till the End of the Moon, and I was majorly turned off by the styling there.Unfortunately, as predicted, the styling and character designs were off-putting to me.
I cringed each time Liu Yan appeared with his over-the-top costume.
You see, I have an easily distracted brain. Instead of focusing on what Liu Yan was saying, my brain – which has the attention span of a toddler – was immediately fixated on the bazillion baubles shining and twinkling in his hair. And then my brain went down a rabbit hole of wondering how Liu Yan put those baubles in his hair every day.
Then, I realized I hadn’t been listening, but then another character appeared with lots of blinky-winky things on his robes and my brain was again mesmerized by the baubles.
So, okay, this is probably a me problem, but seriously, Alen Fang and Luo Yunxi are gorgeous so they really don’t need to overdo things with them, ya know? I’m not sure why the production team thought it was a good idea, but perhaps it was all to bank on the Till the End of the Moon signature look… my theory anyway.
Purple Filming
You know the term “purple prose,” when writing is (to quote Google): “excessively elaborate, ornate, or flowery”? Generally considered bad writing.
Well, the storytelling, directing, and filming style of Whispers of Fate is what I call Purple Filming.
Characters posed after pausing for a few minutes to make a profound (presumably) statement. There were many slow-motion shots where the camera lovingly lingered on the chiseled contours of our hero’s face.
This was far more apparent in the first two episodes, by the way. The show seemed to tone it down by the fifth episode, except during battles, where you could be sure they would Strike A Pose.
The Acting Quality Was Not Great
And it didn’t help that some characters overacted or couldn’t act. Sigh. The less said the better (lest their fandoms come after me), but at least Luo Yunxi performed decently, though I wished Fang Yilun wasn’t so over-the-top with the moustache-twirling evilness. (I really don’t think he can do villain roles very well.)The Core of the Story Was… Annoying
One of the tactics I use when I’m lukewarm about a drama is to spoil myself. Yup! I did that with Feud and ended up thoroughly enjoying it… only because I realized that beyond the abysmally slow start, there was a story I could root for.
I thought I could do the same for Whispers of Fate, but the more I found out about the story, the more I was like… are you for real?
Essentially, it’s the tale of two besties who had a falling out, and who should be locked in a room so they can finally talk it out.
Yes, I’m sure the “why” would be revealed eventually, but for those not in love with circles of miscommunication, it could be an excruciating wait for clarity.
Bloated Storytelling
I feel like I shouldn’t over-explain this, but the show took too long to get to the point. I was also mystified by why some characters were even there – I didn’t know what our female characters’ roles were, for one. There were also a few side characters who popped in when our hero was doing the mystery-solving bits, whom I promptly forgot about once they exited.
The Fandom Interactions Disgusted Me
The social media discourse around this drama (especially on Chinese platforms) was awful. Fans attacked anyone who dared to say anything negative about the drama. The comments had a curiously single narrative: If you don’t appreciate Whispers, it’s because you can only watch brainless stuff – aka, you’re too stupid to appreciate it. (Did they huddle together to come up with this excuse?)
Even fans of the drama complained about being silenced for saying anything negative, noting that they couldn’t even comment that the dubbing seemed off as it didn’t sync with the actors’ lips.
As a person who loved What a Wonderful World and Three-Body, I think I have a solid 🧠 in my noggin’. My taste is just different. However, the behaviour of the fandom was so bad that I’ve placed Luo Yunxi dramas in the “do not watch” category to spare myself from reading their interactions ever again. Petty? Yes. But I’d like to spare myself the mental pain.
However, not all Chinese fans are that unhinged. There were some who actually loved the drama and were less fandom-driven, who gave their honest thoughts, such as in this post below:
“Are we starting with the senseless angst trope? Shui Long Yin, you’d better hang in there!
Finished watching 31 episodes of the main story + 34 episode previews, and I’m a bit disappointed.
I don’t understand why the director made Tang Lici under the Bronze Tree look so miserable and so full of stares that it made me uncomfortable. This scene should have been about evoking empathy, not emphasizing shattered beauty.
Thinking about it, Tang Lici is always miserable. His throat has been cut, he’s been stabbed (more than once), he’s coughed up blood countless times, and this time he’s literally skewered like a kebab. He’s basically the ‘Final Destination’ of the Chinese entertainment industry.
I’ve held back my opinions on this, but today I just can’t. On one side, you have Tang Lici being brutally tortured and unable to wake up, while on the other, Liu Yan is completely unharmed and wreaking havoc on Haoyun Mountain.
Every time Tang Lici and Liu Yan go head-to-head, only Tang Lici gets hurt. Liu Yan is the perfect Heavenly Body; he’s never weakened or damaged, always has his full combat power, and can freeze Shao Yanping in a second or break the protective mountain formation of the Central Plains Sword Assembly with a single song.
I can understand that Tang Lici’s self-healing is affected by the heart crystal, but you can’t emphasize that he’s the closest to a perfect Saint Body while constantly showing his broken body! Isn’t that a contradiction?
A character like Liu Yan, who’s completely insane, makes me feel he’s used too many Gu insects and they’ve eaten his brain. He admires Zhou Fang so much, has he never woken up in the middle of the night and remembered Zhou Fang’s teachings?
This character has started to feel like a plot device. For the sake of the story, Liu Yan needs to be a complete psycho. But this so-called ‘perfect’ Heavenly Body, Tang Lici, is nearly killed by this psycho.
In the 34th episode preview, Gui Mudan is going to turn against the others, and I’m worried about how the plot will unfold from here.
After all this buildup—philosophical debates, subtle foreshadowing, and such a complex world setting—to have it all boil down to a single verse of Yin and Yang wanting to be resurrected… if that’s the case, I can only describe it as anticlimactic.
Such a simple motive can’t support the massive buildup that came before.
The writers love leaving suspense and planting foreshadowing; intricate plots are a good thing. But don’t overcorrect and turn it into just showing off skills. Any narrative technique must serve the story itself. Being obsessed with ‘plot twists’ but forgetting the story’s origin and ending, where the form surpasses the content, is ultimately not worth it.”
Source: http://xhslink.com/o/46GGH437C2WI felt validated when the reviewer said how the complex plots, culture, and philosophical debates were just garnishing for a weak plot.
Unlike most international viewers, I’m not impressed by these things. I could see how the drama tried waaaay too hard to be profound. A good story doesn’t need all these philosophical debates and cultural bling-bling to be truly deep. Look at A Moment But Forever, whose style is very simple and whose culture is reflected in the actions of the characters, not in long-winded debates about fate.
So, I wasn’t imagining things – my review was spot on! I felt like a genius for having concluded this by episode 8.
At the end of the day, the directors leaned too much on fanservice: making Luo Yunxi look like a “fragile, tragic, broken” character because that’s what his hardcore fans love.
Whispers of Fate is the ultimate hurt/comfort fiction, and most dramas don’t go there like this one did.
Why I Dropped the Drama
All I know is after watching 8-9 episodes, I just couldn’t get into it. The main culprits: I was unable to appreciate the aesthetic and the acting – it was too over-the-top for me.
But the main killer was the ineffective storytelling, and how the drama dragged out the miscommunication between our main characters for so long.
I’m also really not into (okay, I dislike) the tragic, fragile, misunderstood hero who is inches from dying trope. I was okay with Li Lianhua from Mysterious Lotus Casebook, but that was generally a solid wuxia and they didn’t dig into the trope so intensely like this drama does.
I kept up with the drama by reading recaps on xiaohongshu (Chinese social media) until the end. All I can say is that I was right – it’s not a show I could enjoy. A lot of people do, however. But not for me, and my time is too precious.
It’s a pity because reading the plot points of later episodes, the world does sound interesting.
It’s just that the thought of having to slog through this drama’s convoluted storytelling exhausted me.
Some dramas I enjoy like a yummy dessert; some are kinda like soup where you need to hunt for the good bits and fork out the unpleasant bits. I am just not the target audience.
But Maybe You May Like It
There are folks like me who are turned off by the purple filming and the plot revolving around miscommunication, but there are also people swearing up and down that it’s the most profound thing they’ve watched.
I’ve come to conclude: different strokes for different folks.
I think those who appreciate this drama love the emotional intensity it gives them. They get to experience the emotional highs and lows of the characters, and this drama excels at that.
The viewers who don’t, tend to appreciate structure and technical details more and are only swayed by the emotional intensity if this is supported by the writing and characterisation. I belong to this group.
Anyway, despite my sharp words about this drama, I truly wanted to enjoy it. I really did see potential in the story between Liu Yan and Tang Lici. But you can’t disguise a weak story with a convoluted storyline, over-the-top Chinese styling, and call it profound.
Final verdict: Dropped
I found it an overperformative attempt at telling a grand fantasy opus, but it felt flat.
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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Comfort Foods and Why (+ Recipes)
Hi everyone! I hope you’re all well. Today is Wednesday, and it’s time for the next post in the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge hosted by Long and Short Reviews. If you want to join in the challenge, you can find the topics for 2025 here, and if you’d like to read other people’s responses to this week’s topic, you can find them here.
Favourite Comfort Foods and Why (+ Recipes)
Now that I’m starting to eat like a human being again, I’m starting to eat some of the foods I loved growing up. One of my favourite foods is my Nanna’s split pea soup (which, confusingly, is prepared with yellow lentils).
It’s a hearty and filling soup, which takes me right back to my childhood whenever I eat it. My Nanna would mostly make this in the winter or whenever we asked.
Yellow Split Pea Soup
Recipe:
2 cups yellow lentils
2 cups of chopped onion
2 cups of chopped carrot
8 cups of stock (my Nanna used chicken— I use vegetarian-friendly chicken stock—I know, it sounds like an oxymoron).
1/4 of a turnip or swede chopped into small chunks.
A pinch of salt.Method:
Cook everything all together in one large pan. Cover and bring up to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables and lentils are tender. For me, it takes about 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours.When the vegetables and lentils are tender, blitz everything with an immersion blender and serve.
Another of our favourite comfort recipes is a simple cheese pasta. It’s pretty easy, and everyone on the planet probably has their own version, but I’ll share it anyway.
Cheesy Pasta
Recipe:
1 bag of pasta (of your choice, though we use either penne or Conchiglie)
1 mountain of cheese (of your choice, but cheddar is delicious)
some milk
1 tsp of mustard (I suppose you could use any, but we use English, giving it a bit of sharpness).Method:
This recipe is super easy and, for the most part, involves instinct and guesswork.
Cook the pasta to your preference (I like al dente, but my husband likes it super cooked – either way, it’s delicious).Scoop out a few tbs of pasta water and leave to one side. Drain your pasta and return to the pan.
Add in your mountain of cheese (this is the guesswork because it depends on your personal tastes).
Stir in the cheese along with the pasta water you saved.
Add the milk splash by splash until the cheese and pasta are at the consistency and texture you like.
Add the tsp of mustard, stir again and serve.
Sometimes, we serve this with salad, and sometimes, we add tomatoes (we’ve even been known to add tuna if we’re feeling reckless!).
Anyway, that’s it for post 13. I’m intrigued to discover some of your favourite comfort foods and recipes.
As always, thanks so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it.
Until next time,
George
© 2025 GLT
#challenge #comfortFood #lentil #pasta #recipes #splitPea #Wednesday #WednesdayWeeklyBloggingChallenge
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Looking Ahead: My Intentions For 2026
About this time last year, I jotted down some intentions for 2025, ‘a few ideas of the things that I really want to do over the coming twelve months’. I did quite well with these: I resurrected a few old cameras, like the Kodak 1A and 3A folding cameras, and the Vest Pocket Kodak; I finally got to use the medium format half-frame beastie that’s the Bencini Koroll 2; and I actually used my only 127 film in the Purma Special on a 127 Day this year. I also tumbled down the rabbit hole that was the Rapid film system, which led to some great fun with colour emulsions, redscaling, and even trying some EBS photography, or exposing both sides of the emulsion, and of course I added a load more weird and wonderful cameras to my collection.
The only part of my ‘intentions’ for 2025 that I didn’t really get anywhere with was glitching; taking a perfectly good photograph in digital format and altering the data contained in it to produce a corrupted image. As a reminder, images can be glitched in a number of ways: with a Hex Editor, to alter details of individual pixels in an image; processing a digital photograph in a program not intended for editing image files; or using a script in a programming language to corrupt the file. This is known as databending, but there is also circuit bending, which either takes an image and corrupts it using a specially made image processor, or using a camera where the hardware within the camera has been physically altered so that the image saved to the card is corrupted.
A corrupted 3D image, taken with the Fujifilm W3 Real 3d stereo digital camera. The file has been databent by processing the file in the audio editing program Audacity.I already have one circuit bent camera, and also a couple of cameras with failing sensors that produce lovely glitchy images, but I’ve also recently obtained an old Digital8 video camera that I hope will allow me to use a circuit bent device called the Mismatcher Petite to corrupt digital images and videos. This year, I also picked up a scanner, the Epson Perfection v750 Pro flatbed scanner, and a little micro computer to use it with. Onto this computer I’ve loaded some of the programs and applications that I hope will aid me with databending and glitching.
The Mismatcher Petite, an image modification device the I’ll use in conjunction with the Sony Digital8 camera below.I’ve not forgotten film, of course, and although I’m not really in a position to soup and develop my own films, perhaps I can ‘glitch’ some instant film, or deliberately introduce light leaks to exposed 35mm and medium format film, for instance. Of course, there will always be new (to me) cameras to play with, and if last year is anything to go by, not all of these are light tight, and I have several rolls of expired film to use. With glitching, be it digital or film, you never quite know what result you’ll get, and that for me is what will make the coming year so exciting.
A digital image taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and a homemade Deakinizer (a wide-angle effect lens held reversed over the lens). The image has been databent by processing the image in the audio editor, Audacity.If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.
#Adapters #AgfaRapid #Cassette #CircuitBending #Databending #Experimental #Expired #Glitch #Inspiration #Intentions #LoFi #Motivation #Rapid #VintageCamera
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🚴♂️ Ah yes, because we all need to stream cat videos while dodging traffic on our bikes. 📱 Clearly, the pinnacle of innovation is turning your handlebars into a Netflix hub. 🎥 What’s next, Bluetooth-enabled training wheels? 🙄 Google, you’ve done it again—this time with a side of copyright law soup for good measure. 🍜
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8n-bu2kKnc #bikeinnovation #streamingcatvideos #Googlecopyright #trafficdodging #handlebarsNetflix #HackerNews #ngated -
ROLLING STONES DATA – CONFIRMED: JAGGER RE-RECORDED ‘SCARLET’ IN BRAZIL IN 1976
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‘Scarlet’ re-recorded by Mick Jagger in Brazil in 1976
*Click for MORE STONES NEWS
Brazilian site Pop Fantasma has confirmed yesterday that the song ‘Scarlet’ Mick recorded when visiting Rio de Janeiro in 1976 with Brazilian musicians is indeed the same one from 1974. Up to then, it was rumoured it could have been a completely different song, although under the same title. Eventually, the 1976 take of ‘Scarlet’ remains completely unreleased.‘SCARLET’, BY THE ROLLING STONES’: “OH YEAH, I KNOW THAT SONG”
(By Leandro Souto Maior)
The Rolling Stones’ “new” song was also recorded in Brazil with a group of musicians that included local musicians Dadi and Antonio Adolfo, but it was never officially released.
When Cor do Som’s bassist Dadi listened to ‘Scarlet’, the “new” Stones song originally recorded in 1974 along Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin on guitar, he found it very reminiscent of something he had heard before. More over, he thought it was very familiar with something he had played in. That’s because in January 1976, when Mick was in Brazil, he recorded the very same song with a bunch of local musicians, which included him.
On his book Os Rolling Stones no Brasil, author Nélio Rodrigues details that Mick was taken to the 16-track Polygram recording studio in the Barra de Tijuca area, west side of Rio de Janeiro. Once there, he did a recording session with musicians Dadi (bass, who just left the Novos Baianos, at the time a member of Jorge Ben’s band), Antonio Adolfo (piano), Paulo Braga (drums), Luiz Cláudio (guitar), Neném (cuíca), Marçal (tamborim), Lula (surdo), Risadinha (tambourine) and Canegal (ganzá) The did a few jam sessions, stopping at 10 pm.
The song was named ‘Scarlet’ and, according to the bassist, it’s the same song the Stones will include in the expanded release of the Goats Head Soup album, to be released soon, with guest Jimmy Page on guitar. Only that the take with the Brazilians musicians remains under seven keys, still unreleased. Dadi, Paulo Braga and Antonio Adolfo listened to (actually, listened again) the new song and shared some nice and bizarre memories of that day with POP FANTASMA.IS IT THE SAME ‘SCARLET’?
DADI: “It’s the same song we recorded in 1976. Mick Jagger took the tape, he still keeps it at his home studio. Mick always does that: wherever he goes, he gets hold of some local musicians to record something. Our session took place at Polygram Studios in Rio. Keith Richards has already recorded it with Jimmy page in 1974, and then we taped it during the summer, in January 1976”ANTONIO ADOLFO: “When Pop Fantasma contacted me and told me about it, I looked for ‘Scarlet’, and it sounded good. Strangely, their recording seems to lack the piano. It might have been the same one we recorded in 1976. I haven´t heard it ever since. I remember it was on a Saturday afternoon”
PAULO BRAGA: “I didn’t know the Stones are releasing the song now. I then played it, and actually I can’t remember if it’s the same one we did with Mick in 1976”
‘WE ARE BETTER THAN THEM’
PAULO BRAGA: “In those days I used to do a lot of recording, day after day. When Polygram contacted me and said I had to do a session with Mick Jagger… See, at the time I liked Genesis, Yes, or Jethro Tull. I played with Wagner Tiso, Nivaldo Ornellas and Milton Nascimento. I also listened to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. We used to consider the Stones ‘old styled’. We used to say that ‘we were better than them’, meaning we played much better than the Stones. So, that Rolling Stones drummer, couldn’t play at all!”ANTONIO ADOLFO: “Mick Jagger was in Brazil and he contacted Polygram, which represented he Stones here (that was up to 1973, actually) And they scheduled a recording session and then they called people who they thought could do the job”
MICK JAGGER, A NICE GUY
DADI: “Mick was playing guitar and singing right in front of me. A very nice guy, far from a primma donna. He helped to load the equipment, he asked me to play some musical phrases during the recording, so I did, and he just said, ‘Great, man!’ And for me, as a Stones’ fan since I was 13, it something unforgettable”ANTONIO ADOLFO: “Once we finished recording, we talked to him for about an hour. We left the studio and went up to a hall in the building with a staircase that was connected to other floor. That’s when Mick Jagger surprised me, I thought he would play the rock star. But he was really sweet, a soft and dear kind of guy” scarlet re-recorded
PAULO BRAGA: “I remember Mick was really polite. He was even trying to get through to me. Only that I didn’t let him, I didn’t pay much attention to him, I really wasn’t into the Rolling Stones. We tend to me more prejudiced when we are young. He asked me to play in some sort of style, but I wasn’t respecting him much. He said Charlie Watts was the best drummer in the world, and I remember laughing at that. I asked him if he knew Jack DeJohnette, Elvin Jones… But he replied by saying that was a different thing, so for the Stones Charlie Watts was the best one. I then remember he got a guitar and started playing it, and he was really good at it, with some beautiful singing”
ANTONIO ADOLFO: “In those days I used to listen to lots of rock music. I lived for a while in the USA and Europe, between 1972 and 1974. I would listen to the Stones a lot, or go see them. I’m extremely curious to listen to that version of ‘Scarlet’ with the Brazilian musicians, it would be great if they also put it out” scarlet re-recorded
STOP IT, MICK!
PAULO BRAGA: “I just wanted to finish that recording right away, I only thought I had to record with Agnaldo Timóteo. I hope they also release our version, who knows, maybe we get something extra from that recording, right?” scarlet re-recordedcopyright
copyright
Copyright © Rolling Stones Data
All information on this website is copyright of Rolling Stones Data. All content by Marcelo Sonaglioni.
All setlists and ticket stubs taken from the The Complete Works of the Rolling Stones website.
When using information from this site (online or printed) please refer to its source detailing the website address (also don't forget to quote authors and sources, like this very page does) Thank you.#1976 #AntonioAdolfo #Brazil #Canegal #Dadi #GoatsHeadSoup #LeandroSoutoMaior #LuizCláudio #Lula #Marçal #MickJagger #Movies #NelioRodrigues #Neném #PauloBraga #Polygram #PopFantasma #RioDeJaneiro #Risadinha #RollingStones #Scarlet
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Sia’s Big Adventure
James’s work schedule is Sunday through Thursday. After running some errands in the morning, he opened the run door to let the chickens wander their own little garden. It has cooled off to more seasonable weather, and James didn’t have the sliding glass deck door open, but the chicken alarm was so loud he still heard it.
He hurried out to the chicken garden to see Ethel standing near the garden shed calling out in a panic. Mrs. Dashwood was on top of the compost pile sounding her alarm. James didn’t see what had spooked them, so for safety, he scooped up first Ethel, then Mrs. Dashwood, put them in the run and closed the door.
Sia–Free the Animal!Then he looked around for Sia. She was nowhere to be found. He looked in our main garden. He looked in the neighbor’s yard. He went out the gate into the alley, calling Sia! Sia! Not along our alley fence nor across the alley. James was panicking himself by this point.
He walked down the alley, calling and looking in yards, and finally, across the alley and nearly four houses away, there’s Sia, standing in a little grassy patch by a garage and looking a bit confused and lost.
In spite of her white bouffant impairing her vision, she is a fast and wily chicken who is hard to catch. James approached slowly, talking to her quietly. When he bent down to scoop her up, she tried to make a run for it. James cut off her escape and because she wasn’t familiar with where she was, she didn’t know where to swerve, so James was able to catch her.
He held her tight against his chest and could feel her pounding heart. She struggled, but James kept up the soothing talk while he just stood holding her. She quieted, and James carried her back home. He deposited her in the run where Ethel and Mrs. Dashwood were still fretting. With the flock back together again, they could all calm down.
Given the unknown reason for their panic, Sia’s escape and the upset it caused the other two, all three of them got to spend the remainder of the day in the run to keep them calm and safe. Saturday they were back out in their garden as if nothing had happened.
It probably won’t be much longer before they will be able to come into the main garden. We had a frost warning Monday night. James and I covered the tomatoes and peppers, but the frost didn’t happen for which I am glad. There are still quite a few green tomatoes, green cayenne peppers, and green chili peppers that need to get ripe. But we’ve seen the last of our truly warm days and now temperatures are mostly around 60F/15C – 70F/21C, not exactly encouraging for ripening the tomatoes and peppers.
I’m still picking pod beans. I also still get a small handful of green beans most days. The collards are loving the cooler weather, and I’ve got some snap peas and a few garden peas from my late summer planting.
I’ve not picked any carrots from the garden, waiting for James to tell me he is ready to make carrot top pesto since the greens don’t last in the fridge. Well today is the day. And oh my goodness did there turn out to be a lot of carrots in the garden!
I knew there were heaps of beautiful greens, but that doesn’t always translate to big carrots. In fact I’ve not had luck with growing anything but stumpy carrots not much thicker than a pencil. This made me decide to plant scarlet nantes carrots, which are generally shorter. I also had some leftover purple carrot seeds from last year. These are a longer carrot and last year I got one tiny one.
I’m not certain what was different this year. Maybe it’s because I sowed them in early May instead of late April. Maybe I was better at keeping the sprouts watered. I know I was definitely better at thinning them—thinned them twice and probably should have done a bit more. For the first time ever I got actual honest to goodness full-sized carrots! To be sure, the spots I didn’t thin quite enough had the usual small carrots, but overall they did so well I am giddy. As I pulled them out I hummed a happy tune.
Now James is in the kitchen making carrot-ginger soup and carrot top pesto. We’ll freeze the pesto and eat that later. The soup we will enjoy for dinner tomorrow night and as leftovers. I baked a multigrain sourdough loaf today that will go along with the soup quite nicely.
Soup season is here! Earlier in the week we had miso-tofu soup. Carrot-ginger soup this week. Next week it will probably be apple-sweet potato. Pretty soon we’ll be able to start digging up sunchokes and they will make it into all sorts of dishes, but especially soup.
I had been planning on talking about some fantastic books I’ve read recently, but my day is running out so I will give you some online reading instead.
If you think the law and legal writing is boring, y’all are in for a surprise. Legal briefs and court opinions can be extremely dull, but there are plenty that make for compelling reading. One of them that had been filed with the court but not yet published was obtained by the press and wowza! The case, American Association of University Professors, et. al. v. Marco Rubio, et. al., is about whether non-citizens lawfully in the United States have the same freedom of speech first amendment rights as U.S. citizens. The judge, D.J. Young, ruled yes they do.
That’s not the most remarkable part, however. Starting on page 147, yes, it’s a really long decision, with Judge Young’s conclusion and his argument for determining a remedy, things really get going. We leave behind all the technical legalities and launch into a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump and his administration. Winding down, he quotes Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address as the Governor of California in 1967 talking about how freedom is a fragile thing. And then Judge Young concludes:
I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.
Is he correct?
Judge Young clearly has integrity and courage unlike Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who quit teaching his class at George Washington Law because the Dobbs ruling overturning legal abortion generated some “unpleasantness” from his students. You can read a snarky take on it at Above the Law, “Justice That Said Abortion is Unconstitutional Fails to Carry Semester to Term.”
In the meantime, Trump hosted a round table to talk about Antifa, a nonexistent “terrorist” group. Apparently Antifa has infiltrated the entire country and wants to destroy the American people and their way of life, whatever that means. There is no such organization or network called Antifa. But apparently being anti-fascist is unAmerican these days.
We are going backwards in time to the McCarthy era, only instead of Communists, the government has it in for trans people (but have you noticed it’s only trans women? They never mention trans men) and anti-fascists and is allegedly even developing secret watchlists.
Groovy.
No doubt, in spite of Antifa’s nonexistence, there will be a great made up fantasy created and many people will fall for it. We will have people reporting on their neighbors before we know it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The Conversation published a good article, “The science of defiance: A psychology researcher explains why people comply—and how to resist.”
Defiance, it turns out, is all about choosing to act in line with your values. It can be as simple as saying no when pressured to do otherwise. Complying stems from a very human behavior of not wanting the other person to think you don’t trust them and the discomfort you get if you say no. The article suggests we can build our defiance muscles and provides a framework for action for difficult situations. They conclude that defiance takes practice, that “each act of consent, compliance or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies.”
Have courage my friends! Take care of each other. And just say no.
Better Together feat. Jack Johnson | Playing For Change | Song Around The World
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuTIFsvlmAM
#Antifa #beans #carrots #ClarenceThomas #defiance #Ethel #freedomOfSpeech #JudgeYoung #McCarthyEra #MrsDashwood #peppers #Sia #soup #tomatoes
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#TimeTravelingGhost Part 52: EP 5: Jurassic Era — Rabbits
#Wss366 #MastoPrompt #TimeTravelAuthors 10/25. Saturday excerpt (Word: back)
“That shouldn’t be here,” Emily said, staring at the carving I had discovered.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. “But there it is.”
“Humans haven’t evolved yet.”
“There are sentient rabbits and who knows what else that science hasn’t revealed.”
She shivered and nodded. “The rock is foreign too. I didn’t see any volcanic activity.”
“Is that what you think is unnatural here?” I moved to toe the carving, but thought better of it. “It’s positively Lovecraftian!”
Emily looked blank, so I amended my statement to: “Nightmarish and occult, hinting at secrets and things that are better left unknown.”
“Sounds like the Nazis. And on a different subject, there is a ridge with limestone caves that way.” She pointed to the jungle. “There are some rough trails we can use, but be careful; there are big dinosaurs on them.”
I superstitiously covered the cursed stone #back up. I felt it would cause less harm that way.
She pointed at the stream. “Follow that for a hundred feet and you'll find a trail, oh, ‘Girl of the #Limberlost.’ I’ll fly overhead and warn you of any major dangers. Take care and keep your eyes peeled, or you’ll be in the soup.”
For a second, I thought she meant I’d fall into the murky river. I smiled as I deciphered it. It was my turn to be blindsided by period slang. The reference to “The Girl of the Limberlost” especially threw me. But, as a #Johnny-come-lately, shouldn’t I have had an advantage here?
"Roger that," I replied. That was from the '40s, wasn’t it?
“That’s solid. Let’s get this show on the road,” she responded, beginning to drift up.
Note 1: Girl of the Limberlost:
Note 2: Free to read at: -
Open request to the users of Mastodon: if you use an acronym, please spell it out the first time you use it in each post. You know what the acronym means, but Mastodon is huge and there are people all over the world who may be reading your post. Telling us that some alphabet soup did something means nothing if it just comes out as alphabet soup!
It's standard practice in journalism and writing to fully write out the words of an acronym the first time it's used. Please think of your readers.
Thanks!
#Mastodon #acronym #ACriminalRegimentOfNastyYoungMen #grammar #usage #courtesy
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Ah, the weekend beginneth.
I have ingredients to make lentil soup and yoghurt, which I'm super happy about (will probably eat those separately, especially since I'm going to make vanilla flavoured yoghurt). My mood has been low lately, so I'm trying to boost my poor depleted microbiome...
Tomorrow is the usual shopping day with Dad and then mostly at home, since I've got a fair bit of freelance stuff to catch up on, plus the endless PhD edits. I know they will end eventually but I've done the easy-to-do bits and now there's the actually-changing-stuff bits. More effort required = more procrastination. Pretty sure there's a direct correlation between those. Maybe I'll procrastinate by seeing if anyone has written a paper on that.
Tonight I'm putting aside some time to write emails to two friends plus I need to organise a catchup with another friend next week. I said this week wasn't great because I was busy but it occurs to me that next week could well be busier, but also... that is a recurring theme so I am just going to make a date and fit it in because otherwise there is no time for excellent friend chats (and good chats are life, aren't they?)
Ended the workweek on a high by booking a week of holidays in September. I'm planning to travel to Perth and see my favourite Perthlings, plus the Terracotta Warriors, hooray!
#work #today #weekend #plans #freelancing #food #ThingsILove
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New entrepreneurs: if you want to be good at sales, research your prospects before you ever contact them. SO MANY sales people, usually younger but always inexperienced, send me a LinkedIn DM and ask me a question that’s plainly answered in my bio. If only they would bother to read my bio…!
It used to irritate me, but now I realize that they’re trying – they just don’t know any better. So, I’m telling you.
“Spray and pray” doesn’t work. Do this instead:
1) Research your potential prospects. Your contact list should consist only of people who need your product or service. Example: someone who sells cybersecurity training courses tried to contact me today. If they had taken the time to read my bio, they’d see I’m a bit beyond the entry-level stuff they’re peddling to people who are trying to begin a career in cybersecurity.
2) Push the indirect approach far away. Don’t use it. Don’t touch it. Don’t even think about it. Much better: “This is the product or service that I have to offer. Are you interested?” The indirect approach is great in speeches, books, and movies. When you use it in sales, it makes you appear deceptive. Maybe you don’t mean to be deceptive. Maybe you’re just new to sales. Be proud of your product or service – it’s all you’ve got to sell. So get it out there, first thing.
3) DO NOT keep pestering a disinterested prospect. Example: “Did you get my last message?” Yes, they did, and you know it. Email systems and LinkedIn DMs are both very reliable. The prospect didn’t reply because they’re not interested. Your unsolicited message doesn’t create a social obligation for them to reply. The prospect owes you nothing.
4) If you’re running out of targeted prospects and feel like returning to the “spray and pray” method, either one of two things is happening.
THE FIRST POSSIBILITY is that your target market is too small. Some products simply aren’t viable. A very niche product or service can only be sold at a very high price, because there are so few customers. If you’re selling a low-cost niche product and can’t make enough sales, the person who hired you is using/abusing you. Get out now.
THE SECOND POSSIBILITY is that you need to stop, think, and get creative. There may be an adequate number of qualified prospects out there, and you’re new enough that you haven’t developed the skills to find them. “Spray and pray” isn’t an effective substitute. You’ll sell a lot more by targeting qualified prospects than you ever will be blasting everyone who comes up in a keyword search. “Spray and pray” is for selling canned soup on TV – not for the high-caliber product or service that you’re offering. Be resourceful and figure out how to find those good prospects. -
Mastery-focused players of run-based games (e.g. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, Wordle, Slay the Spire) want to compare their skills to other players.
How can they do this when it is impossible to know their exact probabilities of winning, and only observe their results?
Furthermore, we want the early attempts to not matter (they were still learning the game -- as in Go, it is best to lose the first 100 games as quickly as possible,
experimenting with various strategies), and also, we want playing more times to never drop the score (so, after getting a good score, they can still play their
favorite game without caring).Here are some options:
* Block Winrate(\(n\)): Play \(n\) times, count the number of wins. Play n times, count the number of wins. And so on. The score is the number of wins in the best block.
* Rolling Winrate(\(n\)): Similar to Block Winrate, but any consesuctive sequence of \(n\) runs is considered.
* Streak_1(\(n\)): The longest streak of wins, capped with \(n\). After winning a streak of \(n\) games, we have proven ourselves, so what is the point to play anymore?*
* Streak_2(\(n\)): The greatest total length of two consecutive streaks, in other words, like the above, but one loss can be ignored.
OK, then, so it seems we should not only compare the players, but rather, compare the *methods* for comparing the players instead? (1/3)
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#Goldilocks and Three Grim Fates
#Mythpunk #Horror
#Wss366 #Mastoprompt #ScribesAndMakers 11/22“...But I did not shoot the #deputy…” Bob Marley’s wail trailed off as our car stalled.
“I told you to get the car checked,” Rebecca said.
“I did. The mechanic said it was in A1 shape, just some minor gremlins in the electrical system.”
From the back, Claire added, "Or a plot to get two lovely ladies alone on a lonely country road." I could picture her shaking her golden, sausage-curls as she said it, a sly grin on her face.
“Cute,” I replied. I could always count on my daughter to say something clever. But she was right; it was a lonely road. Trees hemmed us in, and large fluffy flakes drifted down between them.
To our left was a yellow steel gate with a “No Trespassing” sign. Beyond, the occasional moon #illuminated a rustic cabin. Weeds poked through the snow casting shadows like claws. The only welcoming thing in the scene was a path where someone had trampled the snow, leading to the building.
“I know it says no trespassing, but I’m going to see if someone is home,” I said, opening the car door.
A blast of arctic air met me, smelling of an upcoming storm. I shivered and pulled my coat tighter.
My girlfriend and her daughter joined me. The younger one explained, “No way we’re letting you leave us. Everyone knows ‘Jack the Gripper’ preys on beauties left alone in stalled cars.”
“It’s ‘Jack the Ripper,’” Rebecca corrected.
“Nya ayh, it’s ‘Jack the Gripper.’ He’s from the game ‘Seven Maidens House.’”
It was too cold for this debate, so I walked over to the gate, which was fortunately unlocked.
The snow on the path crunched underfoot, leaving footprints. The dark, empty windows of the cabin didn’t encourage me. Still, a phone line running to it tempted me onward.
Silence met the door’s rattle when I knocked. I knocked louder, thinking perhaps the owner was asleep. This was also met with silence.
“That's weird,” I heard Rebecca say. “Three mailboxes.”
“This one is too big. And this one is too dented. But this one is just right!”
“Don’t say #cursed things,” Rebecca reprimanded Claire.
“I’m going to see if it’s unlocked,” I called over my shoulder, interrupting their squabbling.
To my surprise, the door opened easily, and flicking a switch produced a warm electric light.The building’s interior was cozy. Three rocking chairs stood in front of a fireplace with wood stacked next to it. A handleless hatchet rested against the pile. To one side, there was a wood stove with more wood. A single frying pan rested on it. In the center of the room was a table with a cheery, red-checkered tablecloth, three place settings, and a mystery soup can. I guessed the door in the back led to a bedroom.
The room's most surprising feature was a ceiling-high bookshelf crammed with leather-bound books. They weren't the collector's type with gold trim and fancy titles, but old volumes weathered by time.
(1/4)
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Reading Time: 3 minutes
Every year the Moléson tourism board and related teams provide people with the oppotunity to do the Face, and the Pillar by night. I have wanted to experience this multiple times in the past but because either of work, or weather, I had to cancel the plan to experience this.
The idea is simple. Sunset is at 20:25. People start climbing the VF from 1900 onwards with the option of doing the "easy" Pillar or the hard "Face". As I did The Face a few weeks ago in daylight I did The Pillar instead. My decision was based on two things. The first is that I had organised to go with a group, and I felt a sense of responsibility to help those with less experience should they require it.
Some Thoughts
Two thoughts I had during this climb is that it's like caving, rather than diving. When you look up you can see people making their way up both faces simultaneously. You can hear cow bells in the fields below as well as the sound of crickets. Every so often you notice plenty of small spiders. The legs are thin and the bodies are not big. If I'm indoors I would hate to put my hands so close to spiders but on a VF it doesn't bother me. I thought that I may see bats but noticed none. Either they don't have enough insects around there or they have no caves or caverns within which to sleep. It's possible that they're active between midnight and 4 am as indicated by a sign near the Areuse river.
Fear and Physicality
When you're climbing by night the landscape is different. You can see far, due to city lights and car lights. You get a sense of height but not as you would if you were doing this climb during daylight. In daylight you would see everything. At night you see as far as your light will reach, or other groups ahead and behind you.
At one point I heard one person in another group say "don't look down" and this felt odd to me. I always look down. With rock climbing, and especially when abseiling down I learned that if you don't look down constantly, when it comes time to descend you will be surprised by how high you are, and feel fear. By constantly looking down the change is gradual.It also implies that people doing this VF are afraid of heights.
Logistics
The illuminated event is well organised. You can book via a web form up until 1400 the same day, or you can see if you can get a ticket on the spot. They check off your name from the list. They get emergency contact info, check that you have all the required gear, and snacks. They also provide you with a ticket for soup at the end of the VF in the restaurant.
One of the best aspects, in my opinion is that they have a team at the start of the VF routes, to log you in and then three individuals at various points along the route to check that everyone is okay. In case of an emergency they are ready to abseil down in case of bad weather, or use the helicopter in case of good weather. If you push beyond your limits then people are there to support you.
A Howling Wind At the Top
One of the key features of this specific climb is that there was a very strong wind. At moments there were gusts strong enough to require you to fight back to remain upright, both on the VF but also when walking from the end of the VF to the télécabine. That wind made it cold, which is why people didn't stop and wait at the summit, but chose, instead, to head for the télécabine, and the restaurant below.
And Finally
It's an interesting experience that is worth doing. By the end of it I was exhausted so I'm happy that I did not do a hike that morning. It's when I finished that I felt exhausted, and barely able to stay awake. I don't remember being this tired after a daytime vf. I am rarely so tired after a daytime VF.
https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/the-illuminated-moleson-via-ferrata/
#gruyère #molÃSon #night #nocturnal #specialEvent #viaFerrata #yearly
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Reading Time: 3 minutes
Every year the Moléson tourism board and related teams provide people with the oppotunity to do the Face, and the Pillar by night. I have wanted to experience this multiple times in the past but because either of work, or weather, I had to cancel the plan to experience this.
The idea is simple. Sunset is at 20:25. People start climbing the VF from 1900 onwards with the option of doing the "easy" Pillar or the hard "Face". As I did The Face a few weeks ago in daylight I did The Pillar instead. My decision was based on two things. The first is that I had organised to go with a group, and I felt a sense of responsibility to help those with less experience should they require it.
Some Thoughts
Two thoughts I had during this climb is that it's like caving, rather than diving. When you look up you can see people making their way up both faces simultaneously. You can hear cow bells in the fields below as well as the sound of crickets. Every so often you notice plenty of small spiders. The legs are thin and the bodies are not big. If I'm indoors I would hate to put my hands so close to spiders but on a VF it doesn't bother me. I thought that I may see bats but noticed none. Either they don't have enough insects around there or they have no caves or caverns within which to sleep. It's possible that they're active between midnight and 4 am as indicated by a sign near the Areuse river.
Fear and Physicality
When you're climbing by night the landscape is different. You can see far, due to city lights and car lights. You get a sense of height but not as you would if you were doing this climb during daylight. In daylight you would see everything. At night you see as far as your light will reach, or other groups ahead and behind you.
At one point I heard one person in another group say "don't look down" and this felt odd to me. I always look down. With rock climbing, and especially when abseiling down I learned that if you don't look down constantly, when it comes time to descend you will be surprised by how high you are, and feel fear. By constantly looking down the change is gradual.It also implies that people doing this VF are afraid of heights.
Logistics
The illuminated event is well organised. You can book via a web form up until 1400 the same day, or you can see if you can get a ticket on the spot. They check off your name from the list. They get emergency contact info, check that you have all the required gear, and snacks. They also provide you with a ticket for soup at the end of the VF in the restaurant.
One of the best aspects, in my opinion is that they have a team at the start of the VF routes, to log you in and then three individuals at various points along the route to check that everyone is okay. In case of an emergency they are ready to abseil down in case of bad weather, or use the helicopter in case of good weather. If you push beyond your limits then people are there to support you.
A Howling Wind At the Top
One of the key features of this specific climb is that there was a very strong wind. At moments there were gusts strong enough to require you to fight back to remain upright, both on the VF but also when walking from the end of the VF to the télécabine. That wind made it cold, which is why people didn't stop and wait at the summit, but chose, instead, to head for the télécabine, and the restaurant below.
And Finally
It's an interesting experience that is worth doing. By the end of it I was exhausted so I'm happy that I did not do a hike that morning. It's when I finished that I felt exhausted, and barely able to stay awake. I don't remember being this tired after a daytime vf. I am rarely so tired after a daytime VF.
https://www.main-vision.com/richard/blog/the-illuminated-moleson-via-ferrata/
#gruyère #molÃSon #night #nocturnal #specialEvent #viaFerrata #yearly
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Looking Ahead: My Intentions For 2026
About this time last year, I jotted down some intentions for 2025, ‘a few ideas of the things that I really want to do over the coming twelve months’. I did quite well with these: I resurrected a few old cameras, like the Kodak 1A and 3A folding cameras, and the Vest Pocket Kodak; I finally got to use the medium format half-frame beastie that’s the Bencini Koroll 2; and I actually used my only 127 film in the Purma Special on a 127 Day this year. I also tumbled down the rabbit hole that was the Rapid film system, which led to some great fun with colour emulsions, redscaling, and even trying some EBS photography, or exposing both sides of the emulsion, and of course I added a load more weird and wonderful cameras to my collection.
The only part of my ‘intentions’ for 2025 that I didn’t really get anywhere with was glitching; taking a perfectly good photograph in digital format and altering the data contained in it to produce a corrupted image. As a reminder, images can be glitched in a number of ways: with a Hex Editor, to alter details of individual pixels in an image; processing a digital photograph in a program not intended for editing image files; or using a script in a programming language to corrupt the file. This is known as databending, but there is also circuit bending, which either takes an image and corrupts it using a specially made image processor, or using a camera where the hardware within the camera has been physically altered so that the image saved to the card is corrupted.
A corrupted 3D image, taken with the Fujifilm W3 Real 3d stereo digital camera. The file has been databent by processing the file in the audio editing program Audacity.I already have one circuit bent camera, and also a couple of cameras with failing sensors that produce lovely glitchy images, but I’ve also recently obtained an old Digital8 video camera that I hope will allow me to use a circuit bent device called the Mismatcher Petite to corrupt digital images and videos. This year, I also picked up a scanner, the Epson Perfection v750 Pro flatbed scanner, and a little micro computer to use it with. Onto this computer I’ve loaded some of the programs and applications that I hope will aid me with databending and glitching.
The Mismatcher Petite, an image modification device the I’ll use in conjunction with the Sony Digital8 camera below.I’ve not forgotten film, of course, and although I’m not really in a position to soup and develop my own films, perhaps I can ‘glitch’ some instant film, or deliberately introduce light leaks to exposed 35mm and medium format film, for instance. Of course, there will always be new (to me) cameras to play with, and if last year is anything to go by, not all of these are light tight, and I have several rolls of expired film to use. With glitching, be it digital or film, you never quite know what result you’ll get, and that for me is what will make the coming year so exciting.
A digital image taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and a homemade Deakinizer (a wide-angle effect lens held reversed over the lens). The image has been databent by processing the image in the audio editor, Audacity.If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.
#Adapters #AgfaRapid #Cassette #CircuitBending #Databending #Experimental #Expired #Glitch #Inspiration #Intentions #LoFi #Motivation #Rapid #VintageCamera
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Looking Ahead: My Intentions For 2026
About this time last year, I jotted down some intentions for 2025, ‘a few ideas of the things that I really want to do over the coming twelve months’. I did quite well with these: I resurrected a few old cameras, like the Kodak 1A and 3A folding cameras, and the Vest Pocket Kodak; I finally got to use the medium format half-frame beastie that’s the Bencini Koroll 2; and I actually used my only 127 film in the Purma Special on a 127 Day this year. I also tumbled down the rabbit hole that was the Rapid film system, which led to some great fun with colour emulsions, redscaling, and even trying some EBS photography, or exposing both sides of the emulsion, and of course I added a load more weird and wonderful cameras to my collection.
The only part of my ‘intentions’ for 2025 that I didn’t really get anywhere with was glitching; taking a perfectly good photograph in digital format and altering the data contained in it to produce a corrupted image. As a reminder, images can be glitched in a number of ways: with a Hex Editor, to alter details of individual pixels in an image; processing a digital photograph in a program not intended for editing image files; or using a script in a programming language to corrupt the file. This is known as databending, but there is also circuit bending, which either takes an image and corrupts it using a specially made image processor, or using a camera where the hardware within the camera has been physically altered so that the image saved to the card is corrupted.
A corrupted 3D image, taken with the Fujifilm W3 Real 3d stereo digital camera. The file has been databent by processing the file in the audio editing program Audacity.I already have one circuit bent camera, and also a couple of cameras with failing sensors that produce lovely glitchy images, but I’ve also recently obtained an old Digital8 video camera that I hope will allow me to use a circuit bent device called the Mismatcher Petite to corrupt digital images and videos. This year, I also picked up a scanner, the Epson Perfection v750 Pro flatbed scanner, and a little micro computer to use it with. Onto this computer I’ve loaded some of the programs and applications that I hope will aid me with databending and glitching.
The Mismatcher Petite, an image modification device the I’ll use in conjunction with the Sony Digital8 camera below.I’ve not forgotten film, of course, and although I’m not really in a position to soup and develop my own films, perhaps I can ‘glitch’ some instant film, or deliberately introduce light leaks to exposed 35mm and medium format film, for instance. Of course, there will always be new (to me) cameras to play with, and if last year is anything to go by, not all of these are light tight, and I have several rolls of expired film to use. With glitching, be it digital or film, you never quite know what result you’ll get, and that for me is what will make the coming year so exciting.
A digital image taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and a homemade Deakinizer (a wide-angle effect lens held reversed over the lens). The image has been databent by processing the image in the audio editor, Audacity.If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.
#Adapters #AgfaRapid #Cassette #CircuitBending #Databending #Experimental #Expired #Glitch #Inspiration #Intentions #LoFi #Motivation #Rapid #VintageCamera
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Looking Ahead: My Intentions For 2026
About this time last year, I jotted down some intentions for 2025, ‘a few ideas of the things that I really want to do over the coming twelve months’. I did quite well with these: I resurrected a few old cameras, like the Kodak 1A and 3A folding cameras, and the Vest Pocket Kodak; I finally got to use the medium format half-frame beastie that’s the Bencini Koroll 2; and I actually used my only 127 film in the Purma Special on a 127 Day this year. I also tumbled down the rabbit hole that was the Rapid film system, which led to some great fun with colour emulsions, redscaling, and even trying some EBS photography, or exposing both sides of the emulsion, and of course I added a load more weird and wonderful cameras to my collection.
The only part of my ‘intentions’ for 2025 that I didn’t really get anywhere with was glitching; taking a perfectly good photograph in digital format and altering the data contained in it to produce a corrupted image. As a reminder, images can be glitched in a number of ways: with a Hex Editor, to alter details of individual pixels in an image; processing a digital photograph in a program not intended for editing image files; or using a script in a programming language to corrupt the file. This is known as databending, but there is also circuit bending, which either takes an image and corrupts it using a specially made image processor, or using a camera where the hardware within the camera has been physically altered so that the image saved to the card is corrupted.
A corrupted 3D image, taken with the Fujifilm W3 Real 3d stereo digital camera. The file has been databent by processing the file in the audio editing program Audacity.I already have one circuit bent camera, and also a couple of cameras with failing sensors that produce lovely glitchy images, but I’ve also recently obtained an old Digital8 video camera that I hope will allow me to use a circuit bent device called the Mismatcher Petite to corrupt digital images and videos. This year, I also picked up a scanner, the Epson Perfection v750 Pro flatbed scanner, and a little micro computer to use it with. Onto this computer I’ve loaded some of the programs and applications that I hope will aid me with databending and glitching.
The Mismatcher Petite, an image modification device the I’ll use in conjunction with the Sony Digital8 camera below.I’ve not forgotten film, of course, and although I’m not really in a position to soup and develop my own films, perhaps I can ‘glitch’ some instant film, or deliberately introduce light leaks to exposed 35mm and medium format film, for instance. Of course, there will always be new (to me) cameras to play with, and if last year is anything to go by, not all of these are light tight, and I have several rolls of expired film to use. With glitching, be it digital or film, you never quite know what result you’ll get, and that for me is what will make the coming year so exciting.
A digital image taken with an Olympus Pen E-PL1 and a homemade Deakinizer (a wide-angle effect lens held reversed over the lens). The image has been databent by processing the image in the audio editor, Audacity.If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.
#Adapters #AgfaRapid #Cassette #CircuitBending #Databending #Experimental #Expired #Glitch #Inspiration #Intentions #LoFi #Motivation #Rapid #VintageCamera
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#BBT So there are two video chats that Sheldon and Amy have in Season 9, Episode 13 that I love because of the way that Amy handles Sheldon, explaining to him in only that Amy way how he messed up and he just somehow listens to her unlike his friends. Here goes...
Amy: "Hi Sheldon."
Sheldon: "Hello."
Amy: "Are you feeling any better?"
Sheldon: "Physically yes, but I'm upset because everyone's mad at me for no good reason."
Amy: "Why don't you tell me what happened and in a gentle loving way, I'll explain to you why you're wrong."
Sheldon: "Well you know how, when you're sick, you're allowed to be cranky and say whatever you want and other people's feelings don't matter?"
Amy: "Fwooh, gentel and loving, this is gonna be tricky."
"Sheldon: "I had a hundred and one fever! If that's not a time to verbily abuse my loved ones then when is?"
Amy: "Sheldon, when you're sick you can be...unbearable. That's why your friends have been known to...work late or...sneak out to the movies or...stay at a Neurobiology conference three days after its ended."
Sheldon: "You stayed in Michigan all week to avoid being around me?"
Amy: "Nooo no not just that, I mean...Detroit is beautiful when it's sleeting!
Sheldon: You know...I'm not the only one who's unpleasant when they're sick. Wh-when Penny got Food Poisoning, she threw up so loudly I could barely hear the Television!
Amy: Oooo I just heard something might be Hail might be gunfire either way I'm gonna go take pictures bye!Second Call:
Amy: "Hi Sheldon, what's new?"
Sheldon: "Our friends are jerks and I'm mad at all of them."
Amy: "I said what's new, but sure."
Sheldon: "Can you believe they planned a trip to Las Vegas and didn't invite me?"
Amy: "Did you refuse to apologize and act like they were stupid for being mad?"
Sheldon: *long pause* "Y'know, I liked it better when there was still a little mystery left in our relationship."
Amy: "Everyone tried to take care of you and you were nothing but mean to them."
Sheldon: "I can't believe you're not on my side! I was on your side when someone stole your car radio!"
Amy: "Who else's side could you have been on?"
Sheldon: "I don't know, a music-loving hobo with a heart of gold?"
Amy: "Sheldon, I understand that you're upset because you feel left out but I don't know why we're even talking about this. Just apologize to them."
Sheldon: "Fine, if that's what it takes to go on their dumb trip."
Amy: "Maybe you could try apologizing because you actually feel bad. It's called Empathy; it's something you could work on."
Sheldon: "I have Empathy...Watch! Leonard made me soup and I was mean to him." *exaggerated frown*
Amy: "Great, now try it as if this isn't your first day as a person."
Sheldon: "Fine...Leonard made me soup and I was mean to him. Hey! I felte a little something! Let me try again. Leonard made me soup and I was mean to him...I was mean to him. He must have felt terrible! Now I feel terrible! Neat!"
Amy: "Glad I could help."
Sheldon: "Now let me see you feel bad for lying and staying longer in Detroit than you needed to."
Amy: "I feel so so bad."
Sheldon: "Hey we're both great at this!" -
#BBT So there are two video chats that Sheldon and Amy have in Season 9, Episode 13 that I love because of the way that Amy handles Sheldon, explaining to him in only that Amy way how he messed up and he just somehow listens to her unlike his friends. Here goes...
Amy: "Hi Sheldon."
Sheldon: "Hello."
Amy: "Are you feeling any better?"
Sheldon: "Physically yes, but I'm upset because everyone's mad at me for no good reason."
Amy: "Why don't you tell me what happened and in a gentle loving way, I'll explain to you why you're wrong."
Sheldon: "Well you know how, when you're sick, you're allowed to be cranky and say whatever you want and other people's feelings don't matter?"
Amy: "Fwooh, gentel and loving, this is gonna be tricky."
"Sheldon: "I had a hundred and one fever! If that's not a time to verbily abuse my loved ones then when is?"
Amy: "Sheldon, when you're sick you can be...unbearable. That's why your friends have been known to...work late or...sneak out to the movies or...stay at a Neurobiology conference three days after its ended."
Sheldon: "You stayed in Michigan all week to avoid being around me?"
Amy: "Nooo no not just that, I mean...Detroit is beautiful when it's sleeting!
Sheldon: You know...I'm not the only one who's unpleasant when they're sick. Wh-when Penny got Food Poisoning, she threw up so loudly I could barely hear the Television!
Amy: Oooo I just heard something might be Hail might be gunfire either way I'm gonna go take pictures bye!Second Call:
Amy: "Hi Sheldon, what's new?"
Sheldon: "Our friends are jerks and I'm mad at all of them."
Amy: "I said what's new, but sure."
Sheldon: "Can you believe they planned a trip to Las Vegas and didn't invite me?"
Amy: "Did you refuse to apologize and act like they were stupid for being mad?"
Sheldon: *long pause* "Y'know, I liked it better when there was still a little mystery left in our relationship."
Amy: "Everyone tried to take care of you and you were nothing but mean to them."
Sheldon: "I can't believe you're not on my side! I was on your side when someone stole your car radio!"
Amy: "Who else's side could you have been on?"
Sheldon: "I don't know, a music-loving hobo with a heart of gold?"
Amy: "Sheldon, I understand that you're upset because you feel left out but I don't know why we're even talking about this. Just apologize to them."
Sheldon: "Fine, if that's what it takes to go on their dumb trip."
Amy: "Maybe you could try apologizing because you actually feel bad. It's called Empathy; it's something you could work on."
Sheldon: "I have Empathy...Watch! Leonard made me soup and I was mean to him." *exaggerated frown*
Amy: "Great, now try it as if this isn't your first day as a person."
Sheldon: "Fine...Leonard made me soup and I was mean to him. Hey! I felte a little something! Let me try again. Leonard made me soup and I was mean to him...I was mean to him. He must have felt terrible! Now I feel terrible! Neat!"
Amy: "Glad I could help."
Sheldon: "Now let me see you feel bad for lying and staying longer in Detroit than you needed to."
Amy: "I feel so so bad."
Sheldon: "Hey we're both great at this!" -
The thread about the “Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh”; what the poor of Canongate ate in 1901
In 1901, the Public Health Committee of the Town Council of Edinburgh paid £50 to commission a then remarkable and pioneering bit of research: they asked three doctors to go out into the working classes and poor of the city and find out what they actually ate. This study took place in the city’s Canongate and followed the food purchased and eaten over a week by 15 families, totalling 94 mouths. It meticulously catalogued everything that was consumed and discarded in great detail and then analysed it for its equivalent nutritional contents in a laboratory.
Group of Women and Children in the Canongate, 1901. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesThe authors were Dr. Diarmid Noël Paton, a pioneer in physiology and its links with nutrition; Dr. James Craufurd Dunlop, a paediatrician, pioneer of combined medical and social research and later Superintendent of Statistics, then Registrar General, of the Registry Office for Scotland and; Dr. Elsie Maud Inglis, one of the first female doctors in Scotland; a specialist and pioneer of the medical care – and medical education – of women; a leading suffragist and later founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in WW1.
“A Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh” was published the following year (1902). It runs to 104 pages, but I have read it and summarised some of its key findings so that you don’t have to. So lets go find out what people in the city ate 120 years ago
Cover of “A Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in Edinburgh Carried Out Under the Auspices of the Town Council of the City of Edinburgh”The 15 subject families were categorised into 3 classes:
- A. Workmen’s families with irregular wages under 20s (20 Shillings or £1, approximately £98 in 2023) per week
- B. Families with regular wages from 20-23s per week
- C. Families with men in “good” trades and regular wages from 28-40s per week.
There were 15 adult men, 17 adult women and 62 children in the study. Two of the test households were notable for having no man in the house – as a result these were by far and away the financially worst off of the group. The average income of households in the stufy was just under 25s (£1 5/-) a week, about £122 in 2023.
Breakdown of the test subjects, giving occupation (for the man of the house), study class, the numbers of adults and children and the weekly incomes.The make-up of each household was corrected for age and sex of occupants to turn it into a standardised equivalent number of adult men, based on the understanding at the time of the relative dietary requirements of men, women and children of different ages. For instance an adult woman counted as 0.8x an adult man for the purposes of calorie requirements. The weekly spend on food was counted to the nearest farthing (¼d, d being 1 old penny, with 12d to the shilling and 240d to the £). The average spend on food was 15s 9¼d per week (£77.35 in 2023 money), or 79% of household income. Per “equivalent man”, each house spent on average 6¾d per day on food (~£2.74 in 2023).
Standardised equivalent “Number of Men” per test household and weekly expenditures on food
One of the few “advantages” in life that the poor had was just how cheap accommodation was (even if it was in a slum condition) in Edinburgh in 1901. Per household it averaged 37¼d per week, or about £61 per month in 2023. Some families made half or all their rent by their Co-op dividends alone – a measure of both just how cheap the rent was and also how important the Co-ops were to their members.
Women “getting the messages” talking outside a grocers shop at 2 High Street in the Canongate in 1901. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesWe come now to what our subjects ate. Let’s just say that their diets were monotonous. 35% by weight of what people ate was bread, a whopping 494g per “man” per day. 80% of everything eaten was one of only 6 food types – bread, potatoes, milk, sugar, beef and veg (mainly cabbage and onion, some carrots and turnips, although the study noted that many of the women didn’t seem to know about any other vegetables than potatoes). For reference, in 2013-15, the average Scottish person consumed just 80g bread (84% less), 64g of potatoes, 22g of beef per day. But milk was almost the same at 201g.
The 6 most important foodstuffs in the 1901 Canongate diet, with total and relative mass and calorific consumption for the study.People ate quite so much bread because it was cheap: that 35% of bread by weight gave them 41% of their daily calories but cost only 19% of their daily food budget. You can read more about the Scottish working class’s love affair with the Plain Loaf in this thread. In contrast, the beef consumed gave just 6% of daily calories but was 23% of expenditure. Clearly this was a luxury foodstuff relative to the others, and it was eaten for the protein content – and mainly by the man of the house. The authors pointed out an anomaly in that the traditional Scottish meat of mutton was largely lacking in the diet, even though it was cheaper and offered more protein per unit cost than beef.
People got about 11% of their daily calories from butter, jam, “syrup” (canned golden syrup or treacle) and cheese, eaten on slices of bread as a piece (an open sandwich, they weren’t closed back then!). Cheese consumption in 1901 was almost identical to Scotland’s 2013-15 average. Unsurprisingly, oatmeal was important in the diet, eaten as porridge – giving 6% of daily calories for 2.5% of expenditure. Eggs were commonly eaten, although they were relatively expensive they offered a reasonable amount of protein. The amounts of suet, dripping, sausages and offal are notably low. Small amounts of pulses and barley were eaten (in soups and broths).
All the major foodstuff consumed in the study, averaged for both total weight and total calorific intake per dayThe subjects ate almost no fruit, except small amounts of raisins and currants in the slightly better off households or in jam. It was potatoes that stopped them getting scurvy. Some teabreads were eaten (a sweetened bread, with dried fruit in it, usually spread with butter), almost nothing was spent on biscuits or sweets. Seasonally they probably did get access some fruit, when there was a glut of cheap apples etc., but it is not recorded. Confections may have been eaten on special occasions.
A woman holds her baby inside a house in the Canongate, 1908. Notice that despite the circumstances of the neighbourhood, the woman, her child and the house are all well kept, with an effort to make the place homely and comfortable; slum did not necessarily mean squalor. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesMealtimes were not coordinated or regular, the report called this the old Canongate style. The man usually kept a schedule aligned to his work, with the largest meal in the evening. Children fitted theirs around schooling with lunch the primary meal, topped up with endless bread to keep them full, if not nourished. The women had to fit in between both It has been noted that much of the meat consumption was by the man of the house; in many of the homes, the children and woman made do mainly with porridge, potatoes, broths and soup topped up with and their endless pieces. One house recorded spending 6d a week on lemonade as a luxury, otherwise children drank milk (fresh, canned or buttermilk) but also lots of tea, coffee (from essence) and cocoa. Women seemed to drink a lot of cocoa – they probably needed the sugar content to keep constantly on the go with heavy domestic labour.
Fish, although it was easily accessible from the fishing fleets of Granton, Newhaven and Fisherrow, and long part of the diet of the Scottish lower classes, was not popular or valued. While it was relatively cheap, it was not felt to be a valuable source of daily calories for the money and it was most prevalent with the poorest households. Dried and smoked fish were particularly lowly thought of and very little was consumed.
In many households the women had either part time or “piece work” (usually cleaning, “charladying” and also making bags) to make ends meet. Although they earned much less than men, in many of the households this was the only regular income on account of irregular wages for the man. The two households with no men in them paint a revealing and sorry tale of life for working class women at that time. In the first, a mother (51) and daughter (15) exist on just 8s 4d per week (£41 in 2023). The daughter made a few shillings selling papers, the rest came from a Benevolent Fund as the son/brother was away in the army in the Anglo–Boer War. They existed largely on white fish (3.3kg per week, gotten cheap through the kindness of neighbours), bread (3.3kg/wk), potatoes (3.4kg), cabbage (2kg) and buttermilk (1.1kg), plus 850g sugar and 880g oatmeal.
The other house with no man resident was described as being that of a “poor, small old woman who lived alone, chiefly occupied in sewing“. She was unable to do other work, was “very weak” and her husband was in the lunatic asylum. Her income was unknown, but she spent only 14¼d per week (!) on food (£5.80 in 2023). When standardised, that’s just over 1/3 of average expenditure on food of all the other study subjects. This pittance bought her a meagre diet, per week, of 840g milk, 840g bread (about 1 modern loaf), 310g beef, 300g dried peas, 300g leeks and carrots, 200g barley and 90g butter, and almost nothing else. This was the equivalent of 1123 calories per “equivalent man” day, less than 1/2 of the average of 2900 per day of all the study subjects. The paper noted that 1527 calories per day was the garrison’s emergency diet at the end of the 4 month Siege of Ladysmith from 1899-1900.
This 2,900 per man per day calorific intake measured for Edinburgh in the study was compared to averages for the working classes of other countries. It was:
- 4,170cal in Germany
- 4,080cal in Sweden
- 3,061cal in Russia
- 4,415cal in the US
The working poor of the slums fared better than those in the poorhouses, who in Scotland at that time got 2,380 calories per day, but worse than in the country’s prisons were it was 3,315 calories per day (or 3,717 on hard labour) and in pauper lunatic asylums where 3,435 per day was provided. The Seamen’s Federation at that time had recently secured a diet for men at sea of 4,526 calories per day. This was the sort of intake needed to live comfortably and healthily for a man (or woman) indulging in heavy physical labour.
I do want to keep this thread focussed on food, and I could go on, and on, and on into ever more detail from the study, but this isn’t really the best place for that, so I’ll look at a few more things before wrapping up. Firstly, lets look at relative costs for some foodstuffs when the report was published compared to now. I’ve worked out an approximate inflated cost of the staple food prices to compare and contrast with typical May 2023 UK grocery prices. The differences speak for themselves.
Comparative costs of the same food items in 1902 and 2023, corrected for inflationSecondly – apart from rent and food, what else was money spent on? An obvious thing was coal, required for all domestic heating, cooking and hot water. Many got it cheap through their churches or social groups, who had schemes to buy it in bulk and disburse it at a heavily discounted rate to their members. In winter, consumption of coal averaged about 1.5 bags per house per week, costing 1s 9d (about £34 a month in 2023). Some houses had a gas light and paid for that, but the use and cost was small – about £5 per month in 2023 equivalent. Other houses purchased lamp oil. After coal (and sometimes before it), the next biggest expendisture was on subscriptions to societies. Most households paid a few shillings per week towards such societies; these were either to cover sickness or funeral costs, clothing clubs, or even children’s holiday clubs for a week at the sea or in the country for them. The other main noted expenditure was “soap, black lead, etc.”, i.e. household cleaning products, about half a shilling a week (£2.45 in 2023) per household.
Most of the men smoked (women at this time mainly did not); about half a shilling again per week in pipe tobacco. Some were teetotallers, others drank. In only one family was it noted the woman drank and it was implied that both parents in this household were alcoholics. No costs were given for money spent on drink.
Canongate menfolk outside a pub, 1901. Youngers were one of the two dominant names in Edinburgh brewing alongside McEwans. By an unknown photographer from “The Life History of a Slum Child”, from the collection of Edinburgh City LibrariesIn most families the entire wage was turned over by the husband to his wife to manage, with 2s or 3s a week reserved by him for his tobacco, papers and drink. This was most prevalent were wages were reliable and regular. Where the man’s work was irregular, the pattern was different. His wife often had little idea what was in his wage packet from one week to the next. He often turned over just enough for the food and rent but little else, reserving the excess in better weeks for his vices. Very few of the families had enough to keep anything by for a “rainy day” and lived week to week. It was noted some lived day-to-day, buying items of food as and when they were needed throughout the day. This meant they often paid a premium compared to a weekly bulk buy, a problem just as common now for those on limited incomes as then.
I will finish off with two last points. Firstly, the study probably would have failed without Elsie Inglis’ involvement; it was her and her female medical students who convinced reluctant families – usually the housewife – to allow them to intrude on their lives. Misses G. Miller, H. Bell, Isabel Simson, May Simson, Pringle, Cunningham, Robertson, H. Maclaren and Colly and Mrs Shaw Maclaren were the students credited with gathering the actual study data from each family (down to collecting every discarded bit of potato peel to be weighed)
Elsie Inglis, from Dr. Elsie Inglis by Lady Frances Balfour. CC-by-SA 4.0 Wellcome Collection.And secondly, one little snippet of insight into the life of these families that really gave a lump to my throat when I read it. It came from family number 14, the mason’s labourer, his wife and their 9 children, who lived in a tiny 2 room house, “clean but bare-looking“. The report goes on, “the eldest girl died of consumption [TB] last year. They still keep little frames and bits of fancy-work she was doing. They gave her a grand funeral that cost £10 13s. Black suits had to be bought for the father and eldest boy“. This family had very little, yet they spent everything and more than they had and could afford to give their daughter a decent and dignified send off – over 10 weeks wages – and on account of paying off their debts could no longer pay into their own funeral society. I feet this really hit home how unpredictable life was for people 120 years ago, people living exactly where my own family was living at the time and in exactly the same circumstances. And it brings home a real sense of human dignity to the lives of people in bitter and crushing circumstances, at the bottom of the pile. Their next eldest daughter, 17 but only 4ft 10in tall, now looked after the house and 8 other children when her mother went out to work to make paper bags for 8s a week. Such were the realities of life in the Canongate at the end of the Victorian age and dawn of the 20th century.
Here’s the link to “A study of the diet of the labouring classes in Edinburgh” on Archive dot org for you to read and think about for yourself. I’ve only scratched the surface of it, and there are many other stories and insights contained within it’s yellowing pages.
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