thisfinecrew | Member Posts

From Jamelle Bouie

>>one way to make sense of the position of the republicans on the supreme court is that they do not believe there is such a thing as a legitimate objection to the actions of a republican president, no matter how deranged, depraved, or anti-constitutional <<

spikedluv

I did a load of laundry, paid some bills online, placed an order online, did the usual amount of hand-washing dishes, ran a load in the dishwasher, and scooped kitty litter. I also hit a different Price Chopper than usual (closer to Mom’s) when her friend visited her to give me a couple hours to run errands in the afternoon.

I read fanfic and re-watched the current ep of Murderbot.

Temps started out at 79.9(F) (and already humid) and reached 99.1. It was SOOO hot.

Mom Update:

Mom slept most of the morning. ( more back here )

ysabetwordsmith

dialecticdreamer is hosting Feathering the Nest, which always has a theme of fluff and comfort. Leave prompts, get ficlets!

Current Mood: busy

sholio

Okay, the previous post has the non-spoilery intro to the series, so this is the one with all the spoilers. I finished book 3 this evening (of seven books so far), and I'm still having a terrific time.

( Spoilers )

dine

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

silver_chipmunk

Got up at a bit after 10:00 and str and had coffee. Then showered and washed my hair. I put in the curl stuff that Dani recommended, and I think it looks pretty good.

I called the insurance company about the cottage insurance. She said she would have to call the underwriters and ask, and would call me back. No one has called.

I went to

mashfanficchick's place, and we waited for Dani and John. The trip there was OK, the walking bits were very hot, but the bus and subways were nicely air conditioned.

Dani and John hit a lot of bad traffic and it was quite late when they got there. We went to the storage unit and put some of the stuff for them and stuff for

mashfanficchick's father in the car, then drove to Great Neck. We couldn't get everything because it was too hot to be moving all the stuff around.

We dropped zer father's stuff off and then ate dinner at a pizza place. Then we headed home. We made a stop at J Mart for some stuff too.

They took me home and helped me in with all my stuff that had been in the car, the duffle bag, my pillow, my jacket, and a bag of stuff, plus my two 12 packs of sugar free Vernors.

Then I got on the computer and Teamed the FWiB.

Tomorrow RK is taking me to my doctor's appointment, Then I'm taking him out to eat.

mashfanficchick is coming too.

Gratitude List:

1. The FWiB.

2. Air conditioning.

3. Clean hair nicely curled.

4. Friends.

5. The Kid texted.

6. Bed soon.

Current Mood: hot

conuly

It's gonna be one long, long, long day. Also hot. Long, hot, hard - and miserable.

Happy Mayoral Primaries, I guess? At least the poll site is airconditioned. (At least... I assume it is? Oh god what if it isn't.)

Oh, and I nearly forgot - the Arab/Israeli dove and rose mural has been painted over. Saw that on my way to CVS today.

*******************

( Read more... )

flamingsword

I got the I’m-not-judging-your-life-choices face from my cardiologist last week, and since then have been taking my meds every four hours like clockwork, as instructed. It has really helped with the anxiety and random periods of shakiness I’ve been getting, so I guess she knew what she was talking about. 😅

I want to have either a Crow Party or a Goblin Market, sometime in the fall. But I know like zero people here, so I am asking around about how to do that in a strange mid-sized city. I was advised by one of my sagely and wise friends to get to know local bartenders at music venues, as they will have a good idea of local players, and I am also thinking of asking local pagan artists if they are vending anywhere this fall that might be amenable to my having a small, possibly-kid-friendly time slot in their event.

Other ideas of how to accomplish this are also welcome in case I strike out with the few artists whose business cards I have from the Solstice event I went to.

mellowtigger

I haven't written much about SARS-CoV-2 this year. It's still out there, despite the television news not really mentioning much of anything any more. Today, I wanted to share some tidbits that are interesting or worrying, while simultaneously avoiding my Doom Bingo 2025 topics. I'm also avoiding a lot of old 2022 studies that showed persistent infection in the brain and various kinds of physical damage in the brain after infection. I tried to keep these links a lot more "fresh" and recent.

Click to see a little of the bad news in no particular order...

Long Covid is, of course, very real.
"1 in 5 COVID survivors still have symptoms 3 years after severe infection, analysis estimates"

A monoclonal antibody trial (double-blinded, placebo-controlled, and randomized) is expected to complete in a few more weeks. Early word on Reddit is that it produced no significant difference in any outcomes or biomarkers. That's disappointing. I hope to catch official results soon, though, since the researchers will be more accurate in their summary than armchair observers on the internet... like me.
https://clinicaltrials.ucsf.edu/trial/NCT05877508

The New York Times published this article about long-lasting effects of infection on the lungs, gut, brain, heart, and circulatory system. It doesn't mention viral persistence or damage to the immune system. The Wall Street Journal published this article about cognitive decline due to Covid. It's good that news sources this widely read are still writing about it.
"A Clearer Picture of Covid’s Lasting Effects on the Body" (free archive copy)
"Is Covid Rewriting the Rules of Aging? Brain Decline Alarms Doctors" (free archive copy)

And children? Yeah, they're humans too, so they're subject to consequences, just like the rest of us.
"First-Of-Its-Kind Study Reveals How Long COVID Looks Different In Young Children"
"Why Are So Many Children Getting Long COVID?" (Newsweek)
"Long COVID is Now the Number One Chronic Illness in Children" (The Gauntlet)

Researchers let the virus mutate repeatedly in a lab to see what would happen. What they found contradicts popular theory that it's just like a flu and will become commonplace and mild. Nope. " 'We gave the virus optimal conditions to keep developing and wanted to see whether it would eventually attenuate—basically weaken—over time. It didn’t,' Dr Foster said."
"The virus that won’t quit: new research reveals how SARS-CoV-2 evolves"

The good news? There is some.

Click to read the proverbial silver lining...

This pre-print makes some interesting claims. Researchers found damage to the brainstem and cerebellum that might explain a variety of Long Covid symptoms. Notably, "While viral genetic material was detectable, infected neurons were not observed." This observation gives hope that we can become infected and sometimes not develop persistence within the brain. It might be imported from other areas of the body instead, maybe tissue without immune privilege, so the ongoing infection could eventually be cured. Within the downloaded PDF of the full article, they suggest that the virus damages the immune system, resulting in auto-immune problems that affect these outcomes in the brain, although these details are well above my level of understanding.
"Brainstem Reduction and Deformation in the 4th Ventricle Cerebellar Peduncles in Long COVID Patients: Insights into Neuroinflammatory Sequelae and “Broken Bridge Syndrome”

This study offers another kind of hope. "Here we demonstrate extensive endothelial cell (EC) death in the microvasculature of COVID-19 organs. Notably, EC death was not associated with fibrin formation or platelet deposition, but was linked to microvascular red blood cell (RBC) haemolysis." As I interpret it, red blood cells are "jumping on a live grenade" to save you from circulatory system damage, and these kinds of clots might respond to new drugs that current blood thinning drugs don't help. That's good news too, despite the macabre horror of it.
"Ischaemic endothelial necroptosis induces haemolysis and COVID-19 angiopathy"

This study notes that "SARS-CoV-2 infection is known to cause changes in the T cell compartment, including differences in expression of receptors associated with exhaustion. While immune responses to infection and vaccination are not equivalent, in the eyes of the public, this concern of immune exhaustion after infection can carry over to vaccination." They found that repeat vaccination does not lead to T-cell exhaustion. That finding is good news. I've mentioned before that spike protein (whether virus or vaccine) carries its own dangers, but at least immune system reduction doesn't seem to result from vaccination, just infection.
"No evidence of immune exhaustion after repeated SARS-CoV-2 vaccination in vulnerable and healthy populations"

Sorry, that's a lot of information, even after I deleted half a dozen articles that I included on the first draft. :(

I still mask around other people. No matter how many times you've had COVID, it's better not to get it even one more time. Stay safe out there.

watersword

I tripped coming back from the garden after watering and skinned the hell out my left knee and twisted my right ankle, plus minor scrapes on my palms. Ow.

Hobbled home, rinsed everything off (because of course I had some dirt on me from wrestling the garden hose and whatnot), smeared on antibacterial ointment, iced both joints (not super successfully), taped bandaids to my knee, and ordered delivery of a bento box. Now I need to put on enough clothes to get downstairs to receive said delivery, and get back up the stairs to eat. Ow ow OW.

This was a perfectly pleasant heatwave until then! I got the window unit into my bedroom window yesterday, have been eating popsicles and drinking various flavored waters, and made summer rolls last night. I was going to make peanut noodles. But no. Did I mention OW?

hermionesviolin

I am skeptical about the utility of the Synod service project this year -- like, how effective is it necessarily to build a Banned Books Library in a church? (Last year's project -- putting together packs of menstrual hygiene products -- felt to me much more like we were doing something actually helpful.)

But am I gonna seed this service project by donating some banned books written by trans people? Probably.

(Speaking of supporting trans authors: The Transfeminine Review's Pride Month mutual aid drive)

There was a webinar this afternoon:

Join us to learn more about our General Synod service project this year focusing on creating Banned Book libraries in Kansas City and across our wider Church! We'll dive deeper into why banned book libraries matter, how to participate in this year's service project and how to create a banned book library in your congregation.

Synod this year is in Kansas City -- co-hosted by the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference and the Missouri Mid-South Conference (Missouri; Arkansas; and Memphis, Tennessee) -- and one of the panelists on the webinar (who's on the staff of the Missouri Mid-South Conference) said that Missouri is the #3 state in the country for the most banned books. I'm not sure where that stat comes from -- and if it means number of books banned or number of book bans (so, like, if Book A gets banned 10 times, does that count as 1 or 10), and if this is a cumulative total or for the last year or what -- but it does help suggest why this issue is so big for the Synod organizers. [Interestingly, I had just been on this banned book list from the project's toolkit, and Kansas is not on it at all. In fairness, it's a September 2023 article that says, "Reproduced here, the PEN list covers books that were banned or challenged during the first half of the 2022 school year—the most recent data available." So it's not the most comprehensive list. But still.]

On the subject of, "how effective is doing a Banned Book Library in your church?" excerpts from the chat during the webinar: ( Read more... )

lauradi7dw

Yesterday some ringers (and children) went to the beach after service ringing. I am not a big fan of hanging out in the blazing sun (I like shade) but wanted the company. I took a hand towel and planned to wade, not swim. I think the others were concerned about me being left behind when they kept walking out out out to where the water got deeper, and maybe colder? MW said "just go in" (in my regular clothes). I said it would take me two hours to get home, and if I did that my underwear would be wet (and my skirt, and t-shirt, but that might not be as annoying). She offered me a ride. I said no thank you, and left. As it happened, I had astounding T connections and got from Revere to Somerville in an hour. Then I had a memory about being in an ocean with clothes on. I went for a walk along the beach with my parents after supper. I don't remember my sister being there, so was I three? Or I just don't remember? They may have thought I was just wading a bit in the edge, but I went all the way in, at least up to my waist. In my memory from the 1950s (maybe), I was wearing a blue skirt, and it got soaked. They were fine with it. I can't call them up and say thank you for not being annoyed.

I was not at the protest of the Iran bombing, although I wasn't far from the spot
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-06-22/boston-reacts-to-us-strikes-on-iran-with-protest-confusion-and-dread

Believe that I am opposed. I saw a concert on the 13th by the group Constantinople, with some of the lyrics written by Omar Khayyam.
https://bemf.org/2025-festival/festival-concerts/constantinople/
That was before the bombing, but things were bad enough that I was having sad thoughts of listening to the Persian language while the decendant of Persia was under threat.

hannah

Putting myself to bed several hours early tonight to aim for enough sleep to be functional and present tomorrow. I'm going to pull out as many stops as possible to try to be asleep before 10PM. A long cold shower, a farmer's market tonic, everything I can manage.

Possibly even the AC for a little while.

It's made most of the afternoon and evening into a waiting game where I know I can't commit to much, and it's made it difficult to focus on small things - more than usual, at least. Most of my Wednesday plans are cooking and planning out the Andor panel discussion topics, and that's at least a little more pleasant to look forward to.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: nothing now

ysabetwordsmith

Americans share their hopes for the country on 'wish walls' nationwide. The responses are surprisingly unifying

On July 4, 2026, the United States of America will celebrate its 250th birthday. To prepare for the big celebration, museums across the country are inviting the public to answer the question: “What’s your wish for America’s future?”

In a project designed by 26-year-old artist Katie Costa and developed by Made By Us, a nonprofit that promotes civic engagement among Gen-Z, thousands are responding.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

New cheese packaging decomposes in 300 days, not 1,000 years: 'The solution was in the cheese itself'

As an alternative to single-use plastic wrapping, Ogilvy Colombia and Nestlé Central America have created “Self-Packing Cheese.”

The new biodegradable film is designed to decompose within 300 days of disposal — in stark contrast to the estimated 1,000 years it takes for standard plastic to break down.

And it’s entirely made from cheese waste and whey.

Now that's brilliant! Admittedly, we tend to buy block cheese or shredded cheese rather than slices, but lots of people prefer slices.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Photos: Barnyard Picture
Birdfeeding
Book Bans
Philosophical Questions: Harm
Today's Adventures
Books
Birdfeeding
Photos: Charleston Food Forest
Photos: Coles County Community Garden
Recipe: "Pretzel Bread Savory Bread Pudding with Ham"
Birdfeeding
Heat
Photos: Charleston Library Butterfly Gardens
Follow Friday 6-20-25: Highlander
Today's Adventures
Recipe: "Chicken Stir-Fry with Mushrooms and Swiss Chard"
Birdfeeding
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Cuddle Party

"Philosophical Questions: Looks" has 36 comments. "Not a Destination, But a Process" has 141 comments. "The Democratic Armada of the Caribbean" has 91 comments.

summerofthe69 is now open! You can see the calendar here and the current theme is "Theme for June 16th throuth 30th: Forced 69."

"In the Heart of the Hidden Garden" belongs to the Antimatter and Stalwart Stan thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It needs $66 to be fully funded. Lawrence shows Stan the Iron Courtyard garden.

The weather has been sweltering here and is predicted to remain so for the rest of the week. The weekend currently predicts rain, though. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, several mourning doves, a male cardinal, a catbird, a skunk, a fox squirrel, and at least 1 probably 2 bats. Zucchini has flower buds. Currently blooming: dandelions, pansies, violas, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, wild strawberries, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, impatiens, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, red coreopsis, anise hyssop, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, Asiatic lilies, cucumber, astilbe, daylilies, snowball bush, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory. The first 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato ripened. Blackberries and tomatoes have fruit showing color. Wild strawberries, mulberries, and black raspberries are ripe.

Current Mood: busy

conuly

Taken from

archersangel

ysabetwordsmith

Today is partly sunny and sweltering.

I fed the birds, including a refill of the thistle feeder. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/23/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden.

I've seen a gray catbird.

EDIT 6/23/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

Fireflies are coming out.

EDIT 6/23/25 -- I watered the new picnic table plants and the septic garden.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

conuly

Above me, the branches toss toward and away from each other
the way privacy does with what ends up
showing, despite ourselves, of
who we are, inside.

Then they’re branches again—hickory, I think.

—It’s not too late, then.

******

Link

conuly

Can't wait to hear the exaggerated anger at how dare they retaliate....

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Never Give Up, Never Surrender

Links and Positive Action for the next Four Years

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Succinct, re: SCOTUS

The Day in Spikedluv (Monday, June 23)

Feathering the Nest

Dungeon Crawler Carl books 1-3

I'll be in good company in hell

Heat wave day

So not looking forward to tomorrow

Things and stuff, stuff and things.

remember SARS-CoV-2?

lolsob

UCC General Synod - Banned Books

ocean, regrets

Winding down.

Communication

Solutions

Monday Update 6-23-25

Types of medications known to cause heat intolerance

Birdfeeding

Of the Shining Underlife by Carl Phillips

Well, at least Iran is limiting themselves to legitimate military targets

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June 2025

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