memoirsverse | Reading

TRANSFORM Your Garden To A FIREFLY Habitat!

* Avoid pesticides and other agrochemicals.

* Protect from light pollution.

* Plant native species.

* Leave some tall grass.

* Provide moisture.

* Leaf litter and woodpiles also offer cover.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

They Say Growing Fruit Trees From Seed is a "Bad Idea." They're Wrong! Here's why.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

We crossed 25 watermelon varieties and got this!

These are landrace watermelons grown in a food forest permaculture. David the Good is one of the few people other than myself who seems to grow what I would consider laissez-faire permaculture, which turns the yard into a messy but productive jungle. :D

Remember that when you're growing landraces or even open-pollinated crops that you save, your plants will adapt to what you do. If you don't want to weed or water, then select for plants that can beat the competition. I throw garlic chives and other alliums all over the place. Comfrey can take care of itself. The vegetables are still in pots to minimize weeds, but I'm hoping to get a sunflower landrace going eventually because I am having crap luck with commercial ones. I get a few that bloom but not many. I'm getting a few volunteers, though, so I'm encouraging that.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

The Deadly Cascade Volcanoes Are Waking Up! Is A Mega Eruption Coming?

The Cascade Range, stretching from Northern California to British Columbia, is home to some of the most dangerous volcanoes in North America. Towering over cities like Seattle and Portland, these volcanoes sit silently now—but silence, in geology, is never a guarantee of safety. In 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted with the force of hundreds of atomic bombs, flattening forests, choking skies, and shocking a nation. That was just one volcano. There are over a dozen more. And recently, subtle signs—swarms of earthquakes, shifting ground, whispers of gas from hidden vents—have begun to stir beneath their surface. Could this be a sign of what is to come? Are the Cascade volcanoes waking up? Let’s find out!

Well, that's alarming -- especially in context of the Cascadian Subduction Zone with its ability to cause earthquakes and tsunamis.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today's theme is Homestuck.

100quadrantedships -- Because We Don't Have Enough Of Quadrants
Quadrants, homestuck, shipping.
[Somewhat active with last post in May.]

addme_fandom -- addme fandom
Find friends who share your fannish obsessions.
[Active with one post in July.]

unconventionalcourtship -- Unconventional Courtship
Brooding Strangers! Secret Pregnancies! Enigmatic Rakes! All those tropes (or conventions, if you will) you love to hate (until you discover their secret, tragic backstory and fall head over heels for them) are here, ready to be used for humour and awesomeness in a new fic about your favourite star-crossed lovers. 'Unconventional Courtship' is a panfandom challenge that aims to produce fics longer than 1,000 words based on a Mills & Boon/Harlequin novel summary.
[Active with multiple posts in July.]

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Sunshine Challenge 5: Carnival Barker

Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show (or any other of your choice - game, comic, anything else)! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.

Creative prompt: Write a fic or original story about a character reluctantly doing something they are hesitant about.

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Folks have mentioned an interest in questions and conversations that make them think. So I've decided to offer more of those. This batch features hobbies.

Makeup art is a hobby that spans branches such as facepainting, bodypainting, cosplay, special effects, theatrical makeup, drag, kink, otherkin, gyaru, boudoir, glamour, and more. It all depends on what you want to make up yourself or a playmate as.

On Dreamwidth, consider communities like

daily_gyaru,

edgoreyanfashion,

justcreate,

sw_costumes, and

thefreaksclub.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

dialecticdreamer

Targeting the Wrong Person
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1470
[Saturday, 5 August, 2017, 7 a.m.]

:: Alphonse Durante is a lot of things, but his favorite is that he is a relentless reporter of facts. Part of the Unfair Trades arc in Mercedes, within the Polychrome Heroics universe. ::

Targeting the Wrong Person
by Alfonso Durante

Yesterday evening, a Surrey driver was targeted by persons unknown, but with very clear intent. Their temporary housing for quake refugees was vandalized so severely that the city inspectors expressed concern that the units in the same row would also need to be evacuated until the damage is repaired. A few questions led to more information about the words scrawled on the walls, which tied to the Surrey which had been stolen in the same incident.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: anxious

ysabetwordsmith

The Thunder of Bison Finally Returns to the Osage Prairie

60 million American bison, commonly known as buffalo, once thundered across the prairies of North America — until 1889, when they were almost driven to extinction.

These mighty giants terraformed the land, diversified prairie ecosystems, and sustained many native tribes across the continent. Now, tribes and conservationists join forces to bring the species back from the brink, finally returning the American bison to their native grasslands.

The Osage Nation in Oklahoma, with help from allies at the Nature Conservancy and the Bronx Zoo, are reviving their cultural and spiritual connection to buffalo by rebuilding a herd that once shared their land. By reigniting traditional land management practices like prescribed fire, the Osage support the herd as it continues to grow, which in turn, restores natural balance that helps the entire prairie ecosystem thrive.

As a keystone species, buffalo restore prairie habitat to health. They also help restore the tribal nations who depended upon them.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Cognitive collapse and the nuclear codes: When leaders lose control

A shocking study reveals that many leaders of nuclear-armed nations—including US presidents and Israeli prime ministers—were afflicted by serious health problems while in office, sometimes with their conditions hidden from the public. From dementia and depression to addiction and chronic diseases, these impairments may have affected their decision-making during pivotal global crises.

Hardly a surprise. Sanity isn't often a requirement of leadership. Venereal transmission only requires falling out of the right vagina; election only requires being popular.

Have you ever wondered how you'd handle the gold-madness of Thror? Consider that in this context. And then compare the effects of a dragon to those of a bomb.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These dogs are trained to sniff out an invasive insect—and they're shockingly good at it

Virginia Tech researchers discovered that everyday dogs can be trained to effectively sniff out destructive agricultural pests.

Dogs trained by everyday pet owners are proving to be surprisingly powerful allies in the fight against the invasive spotted lanternfly. In a groundbreaking study, citizen scientists taught their dogs to sniff out the pests’ hard-to-spot egg masses with impressive accuracy. The initiative not only taps into the huge community of recreational scent-detection dog enthusiasts, but also opens a promising new front in protecting agriculture. And it doesn’t stop there—these canine teams are now sniffing out vineyard diseases too, hinting at a whole new future of four-legged fieldwork.

If you feel helpless against environmental threats, here's one thing you can do about it, if you're a dog lover. Dogs excel at finding things -- pretty much anything with a scent can be made interesting to a dog if you attach a reward to it.

Also, when it comes to invasive species? Never underestimate humanity's ability to destroy things.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is mostly sunny, humid, and hot. It rained copiously yesterday.

The internet serviceman came out today and installed some new equipment, which will hopefully fix the problems we've been having. We went outside to look at that. The antenna is now atop the bathroom roof, much higher and pointing south instead of east, so we have a better signal already.

My partner Doug had already started bushwhacking a path to the east edge of the yard, where the old antenna pointed. We still want to finish that for the sake of edge access. It didn't get mowed last year. We expected it to be full of weeds. We did not expect it to be full of 10-12' high hackberry and walnut saplings that obviously show multiple years of growth. :/ I strongly suspect that they waded into that position. I told them very firmly to move it or lose it, because we are serious about restoring that path.

I have not yet fed the birds. I have seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove at the feeders. A cardinal was trying to get through the living room window, so I had to shut my office door to block the false flyway between the south living room window and the north office window.

I fed the birds.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I planted 2 wild senna, one under the contorta willow and one under the apricot tree. The ones in the wildflower garden are blooming. :D I sowed seeds of apricot, white peach, and cherry plum. The latter look like beach plums to me -- they're smaller than apricots -- and we got a whole carton of them. It will be interesting to see if they sprout.

I've been hearing thunder.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I refilled the birdfeeders.

EDIT 7/17/25 -- I potted up 3 apples fallen from the birdgift tree.

I've heard a red-winged blackbird and a house wren, but didn't see them.

Cicadas are singing. Fireflies are coming out.

.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Since some people persist in denying the existence of the Anthropocene, I've been keeping an eye out for hard evidence, especially geologic evidence.

A Mysterious New Rock Is Forming on Earth

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

vass

Books
Read Cliff Jerrison's short story 'Question 3', which is (as the author himself writes), "an ongoing mood".

Finished Freya Marske's A Power Unbound. Quoting my own reply to

sovay in a comment on an earlier post, after finishing the trilogy: "it tries to do some interesting things with the nature of power and privilege, with reference to land ownership, aristocracy, cultural heritage, but I'm not sure how well it stuck the landing. I get the feeling the author was wrestling a bit with the politics of the system she'd set up, the implications of those politics, and the fact that she had to wrap up an Edwardian period fantasy romance trilogy with a happy ending."

The ending I got was fine for a romance novel, which is what this is. But I wanted more exploration of what the denouement really changed for everyone, and what I wanted would have been incompatible with that romance novel ending.

Started reading R.A. MacAvoy's The Lens of the World. I'm about 3% through and found it a lot rapier than I was expecting, although considering that it was published in 1990 I should have braced myself.

Comics
Tense about current events in Dumbing of Age and Questionable Content, for different reasons. Re QC, what I haven't seen mentioned yet in text is that the worst Anh's father can do to her is not simply cut off her allowance. [after the cut, spoilers and also psychiatric abuse triggers]

( more )

Fandom
Beta-read the latest chapter of

Drel_Murn's 'Wheel and turn'. First time I've betaed in a while.

Games
Unlocked Ascension 5 for all four Slay the Spire characters. The last of them was the Silent, tonight, with a lot of luck, Donu and Deca, and Corpse Explosion my belorpse explosion.

Tech
Finally got a secondhand laptop to replace the one which died. I've been spending a lot of time trying to get it in a condition in which I'll be comfortable using it.

Unfortunately, I made the decision that I'd try switching to Wayland, which necessitated exploring a lot of different utilities, and... yeah.

The most ridiculous shark I encountered, however, was not a Wayland problem but rather a font installation problem. In that when I installed font-awesome (a font package that is mainly symbols, often used for decorative purposes, e.g. pseudo-icons in one's status bar) none of the few fonts I had thus far installed had configured themselves as a default font family. font-awesome... did.

So all of a sudden my app launcher, my terminal windows, and some websites (including the Arch wiki) were displaying in font-awesome.

Some features font-awesome has:
- ligatures which convert the string "OSI" to the Open Source Initiative logo, "windows" to the Windows logo, and of course "at" to an @.

Some features font-awesome does not have:
- visible colons, virgules, or periods
Did I mention this was happening in my terminal?

The solution was just to install another font that considers itself a default font family (e.g. DejaVu) and clear the font cache. I managed to find a post by someone on Reddit who had the same problem, same font, same window manager, in a different operating system (Void.)

Links

UK signal boost: this post by kaberett about PIP/UC reform (the House of Lords is debating it next Tuesday)

Five Lego walkers versus seven different obstacles. They are all very good robots and doing their best.

New Ann Leckie book on the way! Set in the Radch!

Nature
Saw a red fox crossing the road last week.

Current Music: CN Lester, 'Joan of Arc'

ysabetwordsmith

Wait...The Worst Possible US Disaster Just Got EVEN WORSE?!? (Cascadia Megaquake)

Every once in a while, I see a more realistic extrapolation of the dangers in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, compared to the usual drastic underestimations. This video looks at some chain-reaction problems such as wildfires and chemical spills that can cause secondary waves of casualties.

You can read my thread about the Big One, but bear in mind that Terramagne-America has much better disaster preparedness than here, and local-America's scenario would be much worse.

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

The Hardest Problem Evolution Ever Solved

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These are the setting and content notes for "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

These are the notes for "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful."

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

This poem came out of the July 15, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired and sponsored by

bairnsidhe and

siliconshaman. It also fills the "Cool Water" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Kraken thread of the Polychrome Heroics series. It follows "But an Empty Shell" ($280) -- which, oops, hasn't been sponsored and posted yet.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

How Dinosaur Extinction Gave Us Fruit

I found this video entertaining for its discussion of r-strategy vs. k-strategy reproduction in plants. Interestingly, during the time of large sauropods, they broke up the forests so much that most plants preferred to make many small seeds rather than fewer large seeds. They had to capitalize on the disturbances to find a place and sprout. In other words, most or all of the plants in those forest behaved like weeds, which are designed to cover disturbed ground as fast as possible.

Later on, after the sauropods died out, the forest canopy became closed rather than open, the forest floor darker. The animals were much smaller, and well suited to distributing seeds. So plants began making larger fruit to bribe the animals to carry their seeds around.

An interesting fork appears before us now, as humans have wiped out almost all large animals. Normally this would lead to dense dark forests, and thus, more and larger fruits. But humans are more disruptive than even the sauropods. We are creating conditions that favor the weed strategy again. Except for the bit where we really love large, sweet fruits and will go farther than any other species to propagate plants that we like. That makes it rather a toss-up how plants will respond.

Current Mood: busy

Profile

memoirsverse

October 2019

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

Style Credit

Base style: Crossroads by branchandroot
Theme: Andúnë by nornoriel

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 18th, 2025 12:13 pm

Memoirs of a Tourist

Reading

Fireflies

Fruit Trees

Permaculture

Volcanoes

Follow Friday 7-18-25: Homestuck

Sunshine Challenge 5: Carnival Barker

Hobbies: Makeup Art

Targeting the Wrong Person (part 1 of 1, complete)

Conservation

Safety

Invasive Species

Birdfeeding

Anthropocene

Things

Earthquakes

Evolution

Setting and content notes for "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful"

Character notes for "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful"

Poem: "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful"

Paleontology

Profile

October 2019

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags