pjthompson | Network

Title: Missing
Fandom: Babylon 5
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Garibaldi.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 300
Spoilers/Setting: Grey 17 is Missing.
Summary: Garibaldi usually loves mysteries, but he could have done without this one.
Content Notes: None needed.
Written For: Challenge 477: Amnesty 79, using Challenge 475: Mystery.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Babylon 5, or the characters. They belong to J. Michael Straczynski.
A/N: Triple drabble.

( Missing... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

calimac

Violin and piano recital at Herbst.

Geneva Lewis has a violin tone that's light and soft, but with a strong bite to it. It gives the effect of a small bird chirping, if the bird could chirp classical music. The sound was highly appropriate for the delicate, fragmentary Post Scriptum Sonata by Valentin Silvestrov, and impressively effective in the Romances by both Robert and Clara Schumann, and Mozart's K. 301 sonata.

Evren Ozel on piano matched her with lightness of touch. He has the softest and most pillowy of rolled chords.

You wouldn't think that the Franck Sonata would work well with this approach, but listen again: most of the first and third movements, and even part of the fourth, work well as light, delicate, and quiet. But both Lewis and Ozel could ramp up to strong and loud dynamics, just not exaggeratedly so, when Franck calls for it.

While I'm on music, a note on the recent death of Joel Krosnick, long-time cellist of the Julliard Quartet. They were among the groups whose records first taught me the string quartet repertoire. Already retired from there, he was at the Banff String Quartet Competition to teach student masterclasses in 2016, the first time I attended. I met him when he sat next to me for one of the competition concerts.

jhetley

Air temperature 44 F, wind west about 5 mph, cloudy. Squirrels still gnawing away at the acorns paving our front yard. Hope the oak isn't as bountiful next fall -- that area is going to be dangerous when the mowers start to run. Projectiles.

vass

Books
Very little progress.

Crafts
Dyed a 36x45cm piece of white 14 count aida cloth purple, for Secret Reasons. And now I know that I can get a reasonable result doing that with a large storage box and hot water, winging the quantity of Rit dye. Shenanigans may result.

Food
My parents' Christmas present to me, a new frying pan, just made it to me today. I haven't test-driven it yet, but it looks nice. And like it should heat up easier than the cast iron one my stove can't really handle, much as I love it.

Weather
Finally cooling down. Good.

Other
One of the Discord servers I'm in had a PowerPoint night. I didn't present, but I contributed a very unserious set of slides for someone else to present sight unseen. This was a heap of fun, and I recommend this form of grownup show and tell to other nerds. I am already working on my next such document.

In a different Discord, a discussion of linguistics prompted me to make a series of noises which in turn made Dorian give me a very funny look. If you would like to provoke yourself to make a series of noises that will make your cats give you funny looks, here is the chart.

vass

What if, when you went to a nonprofit/charity/etc website because you want to donate money to them, you could add ?nomarketing on the end of the link, and it would bring up a barebones version of their donation page that would JUST LET YOU MAKE A SINGLE DONATION.

It would not sign you up to their newsletter.
It would not give them permission to contact you.
It would not ask you to share their link on social media.
It would not ask you how you found them.
It would not show you a thank you letter written in the first person by a composite version of one of their clients.
It would not show you tragic and distressing photographs or descriptions of the horrible things happening to the people you HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO GIVE MONEY TO HELP.
There would not be any animated banners or carousels.
There would be no popups.
Required fields on the form would only be information they genuinely cannot accept your money without, and they would have checked both the law on what information they actually need and their assumptions about names and titles (e.g. not everyone has a first name, not everyone has a last name, not everyone's name is short, some names have spaces or apostrophes or hyphens, not everyone belongs to one of the four genders Mr, Mrs, Miss, and Dr.)
It would not give you a menu with three choices: make your one-off donation a monthly amount, make your one-off donation a monthly amount but more money, or (deselected and in a duller colour) "keep your one-off donation" before letting you donate.
Or after you donate.
Or both.

I understand they have a job to do, but do they understand how aversive this experience is? It is the biggest thing about charitable giving that I dread, when I have enough to give. "Hi, I'd like to give you some mon-" "CAN YOU GIVE US MORE? CAN YOU GIVE IT EVERY MONTH? KIDS ARE DYING, VASS, ANIMALS ARE DYING, THE PLANET IS DYING, MOREMOREMOREMORE CAN WE TEXT YOU, CAN WE CALL YOU UP AND TELL YOU ABOUT THE DYING KIDS CAN YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO GIVE US MONEY TOO-"

If they made it less stressful, I would not have to psych myself up to do this. And by definition this is how they are treating people who already want to help them.

rydra_wong

https://whatthetrans.com/compilation-of-protests-against-the-supreme-court/

mizkit

( Read more... )

oursin

Happy birthday,

damnmagpie!

conuly

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this

*******

Link

conuly

Watch on YouTube

conuly

Clicky!

Also, I meant to say re: the utilities that you are all the best and I absolutely love you :)

(Still need to call National Grid and still don't wanna.)

girlgenius_main_feed

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250423

The Girl Genius comic for Wednesday, April 23, 2025 has been posted.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20250423

torachan

1. I had another work from home day. I'm about halfway caught up with my email and fully caught up with teams. Tomorrow I've got a couple meetings, so I've got to go in to the office, but I might work from home again on Thursday to finally catch up on everything.

2. When Carla was out today she stopped at Uncle Tetsu's, a Japanese cheesecake chain. They have a sakura cheesecake right now and we had some after dinner tonight and it was sooooooo good. I normally prefer New York style cheesecake to the Japanese fluffier style, but this was really good consistency and the sakura flavor was amazing.

3. I finished playing The Plucky Squire. Overall it's a pretty fun game, but it is not just a straight action adventure game. There are a bunch of (frankly not that fun) mini games for the boss fights and stuff where you have to play other styles of games and that is not what I signed up for. Like for one character's boss battles you play a Mike Tyson style boxing game, for another it's a rhythm game, and for the third it's a Puzzle Bobble type. Then there are some stealth sequences where you have to sneak past enemies who can kill you instantly if they sense you, and if they sense you there is no way to run to escape, even if you're close to a place you could get away. You're just instantly dead. And the final battle is a space shooter type. The good thing is that if you die in a boss battle you can sometimes restart partway through, not all the way at the beginning, and the stealth sequences have multiple checkpoints and you'll respawn there rather than back at the beginning. But I would still have preferred not to have that "variety" in my action adventure game. Still is a fun game, though. But if you suck at those types of games it might ruin it for you.

4. I finished editing all my Disney Japan pics, so hopefully I can get the last day's posts written up later this week.

5. Jasper is just so handsome.

torachan

When I last left off, we had just checked out the big gift shop at the Fantasy Springs hotel and were exploring the land while waiting for our return time for the Peter Pan ride.

( More DisneySea adventures! )

yuuago

As mentioned previously, after watching the film, I decided to check out Conclave by Robert Harris.

There are a few differences between the novel and the film, but mostly they're minor changes (Lawrence = Lomeli in the novel, Benitez is Filipino in the novel rather than Mexican, etc). I do seem to recall that the turtle scene wasn't in the book; I'm kind of surprised that they added that for the movie, but it was a lovely character moment and Benitez looks kind of like a romance film protagonist in that scene, so I'm certainly not complaining.

Some of the scenes were more effective in the movie than the novel, I think. But that could be due to acting and directorial choices and so on. The one that comes to mind is the saying grace scene after Benitez is introduced to everyone - in the novel, Benitez just says the whole thing, and that's that. But in the film, he pauses after saying the usual spiel, and everyone thinks he's finished and starts to sit down - but then he continues, thanking the Sisters and reminding the others of the impoverished etc, and the effect is very striking.

There are some differences between the novel and the film that I did find interesting, even if the change doesn't affect the overall plot.

( Continued, spoilers )

Overall, I wouldn't say that the novel is a must-read if you liked the film, but I enjoyed it a lot and I think that if you wanted more after watching the movie, it's a good direction to go. Plus you get more into Lomeli's (Lawrence)'s head, etc. On the reverse, I don't think I would actually recommend it without seeing the film first, because the film really is rather good and there are a few things that I thought it did better. (Though I might be biased.)

chibifukurou posting in

spring_renewal

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

cyberiad_queen posting in

100words

Title: 'тоска'
Fandom: Original Poetry
Rating: G

( тоска )

marycatelli posting in

girlgenius_lair

That sounds fun

cornerofmadness

In learning that I'm severely anemic and might need a transfusion (we were talking about hepatitis C and transfusions in micro) he offered me a pint of his blood if we were a match (we are) Hopefully I can avoid the transfusion but that was touching and I appreciate it and I wish all of us could have empathy like that.

I forgot to say yesterday that I was very sad to see Pope Francis passing. I grew up Catholic. He was the first Pope I actually liked. I thought he was a very good man. But since I waited a day I can add how much of a shit stain Marjorie Taylor Greene is as she's been vocally celebrating an 'evil man's' passing. People like her make me hope there IS an afterlife... I just hope that the church doesn't swing back ultraconservative again. Regardless, RIP Pope Francis, we're poorer for your loss.

Rocket is home. He looks good except his face is swollen. I think they were pulling a lot of ticks off him (so much for that 30$ tick medicine) He's already insisting on going out so good wishes for him everyone.

So fannish 50 I had something else in mind, can't remember what it is and now I'm doing this because I had planned to do this last week and forgot. Every so often I like to share the newish stuff I find on YouTube in way of fan creations. look at some of this cool stuff. Fandom is really embracing the music and animation side of things. Prior to this all we had was AMVs (which are lovely too) but I haven't see this level of music since the filk music from the 80s.

I'm in love with this and jealous too but then again I'm not an artist so no one is going to dub my art but I love it.

Watch on YouTube

Axel is a fan voice actor known for doing Arackniss and someone did some more music for him.

Watch on YouTube

Oh geez has a lot of music

Watch on YouTube

And it's a part of this, over an hour of fan music for The Owl House

Watch on YouTube

I might have shared this before but this Gravity Falls/Hazbin Hotel mash up is delightful

Watch on YouTube

And I'm pretty sure this was shared but it popped back up and I love it.

Watch on YouTube