Question thread #148

Feb. 9th, 2026 08:59 pm
pauamma: Cartooney crab wearing hot pink and acid green facemask holding drink with straw (Default)
[personal profile] pauamma posting in [site community profile] dw_dev
It's time for another question thread!

The rules:

- You may ask any dev-related question you have in a comment. (It doesn't even need to be about Dreamwidth, although if it involves a language/library/framework/database Dreamwidth doesn't use, you will probably get answers pointing that out and suggesting a better place to ask.)
- You may also answer any question, using the guidelines given in To Answer, Or Not To Answer and in this comment thread.

Volunteer social thread #161

Feb. 9th, 2026 08:54 pm
pauamma: Cartooney crab wearing hot pink and acid green facemask holding drink with straw (Default)
[personal profile] pauamma posting in [site community profile] dw_volunteers
Ramadhan starts in about 1 week for me.

How's everyone doing?

good things

Feb. 9th, 2026 02:49 pm
watersword: Keira Knightley applying lipstick and looking in a mirror, with the words "a work in progress" nearby (Keira Knightley: lipstick)
[personal profile] watersword
  1. I have wonderful friends who validate me when I'm having a hard time.
  2. Farmer's market pesto in the freezer in the middle of winter.
  3. My team won a prestigious award at work and I got to read the nomination and it says really lovely things about the work we do.
  4. I already had the book Humankind: a hopeful history out from the library and after encountering Too Many Informations about the Epstein files, I started reading it and it is exactly what I need right now (although I would very much like to know what e.g. Maimonides' thoughts are on Bregman's argument, as well as wisdom traditions from India and China; maybe we'll get there).
  5. The public library is giving out free seeds which means it WILL be spring someday.
kayla_allen: Logo created for 2005 Worldcon and sometimes used for World Science Fiction Society business (WSFS Logo)
[personal profile] kayla_allen
On Sunday morning, the 2025 WSFS Business Meeting Chair, Jesi Lipp, sent the WSFS Marketing Committee the minutes of the 2025 WSFS Business Meeting. A few hours later, I, on behalf of the committee, posted the minutes and updated the WSFS Rules page.

The Minutes are very long — 239 pages, including all of the appendices and committee reports. Even I, the biggest parliamentary nerd you're apt to ever meet, find my eyes glazing over, and I frankly skipped over much of it.

Also updated is the Business Passed On, which is what last year's meeting gave first passage and what will be up for ratification this year in Anaheim. Even this is ten pages long.

If you're curious about this, you might want to go look now, because it might take you a while to grind through it all in time for this year's meeting.
regshoe: Photo of a red cricket ball amongst grass, with text 'All honour to the sporting rabbit' (Sporting rabbit)
[personal profile] regshoe
Right then, here we go :D

The Closest of All (5960 words) by regshoe
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's - Talbot Baines Reed
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Oliver Greenfield/Horace Wraysford
Characters: Stephen Greenfield, Horace Wraysford, Oliver Greenfield
Additional Tags: POV Outsider, 5+1 Things, Siblings
Summary:

Oliver, Wraysford and Stephen, over months and years.

(Or, five times Stephen was oblivious and one time he wasn't.)

verushka70: Modified publicity still puts Fraser and RayK closer together in a slashy moment. (DS slash)
[personal profile] verushka70

I posted this on Tumblr but I figured I would post it here too. Because it bears repeating, especially in times like these.

EXACTLY. He gets it. Scott maybe wasn't clocking Shane/Ilya, but François Arnaud clocked the incestuous sibling relationship between homophobia and misogyny.

(From François Arnaud's interview in Out.)

a woman clothed by the sun

Feb. 9th, 2026 10:55 am
lirazel: A still of Heloise, Sophie, and Marianne from Portrait of a Lady on Fire ([film] feminist utopia)
[personal profile] lirazel
Y'all, I cannot stop thinking about The Testament of Ann Lee, which I saw last Thursday at our incredible local indie theater. I think it’s going to end up being one of my favorite films.

A movie about a religious figure that presents someone with true faith without winking at the audience all, “you know how dumb it is to believe this”??? When was the last time I saw that? Neither I nor the filmmakers believe what Ann Lee believed, obviously, but there’s no doubt she believed it, and the film respects that. It’s honestly a hagiography in a way that you usually only see historically for Catholic saints? But it’s such an inspired way to approach this story? So stylized and gorgeous? But also sincere?

A film about a woman who finds her meaning and satisfaction in her spirituality and religious vocation? Whose main relationship is with her understanding of God? Yes please!!! (Her second most important relationship is with her brother, which was equally moving.) When she sings, "I hunger and thirst for true righteousness," I believe her. That's what she wants! Not a romance, not a family, not standing in society, not money or power or anything else. (Though she does end up having a certain amount of power and I think she really loves having it. People contain multitudes!) I can't remember seeing a mystic portrayed onscreen like this before? (I am the opposite of a mystic, but I have always been very fascinated by mystics, especially women mystics, so I dug this.)

Amanda Seyfried is mind-blowing. Casting of all time. It’s rare that I see a performance and I think, “No one else could have ever possibly played this role.” I often think, “No one else could have ever played this role like this,” but I almost never think, “No one else could have played it period.” But I feel that way about her. Her face, her voice (her voice!!!), her range! Goodness gracious. I’m in awe.

THE MUSIC and the dancing! Using the original Shaker hymns but updating them with really unexpected production was a genius move, and the choreography really felt like a kind of religious rapture. I know that the Shakers’ dancing didn’t look like that, but it I am positive that it felt like that. I have had the soundtrack on repeat since I walked out of the theater. Fuck me UP, Daniel Blumberg! I will have to seek out more of his music because it was really genius.

The film was also visually gorgeous, especially when it leaned into the Shaker aesthetic in the last third (it also made me want to go back to Shakertown, which I haven't visited since high school). I know that aesthetic had not really emerged during Ann Lee’s life, so it was technically historically inaccurate, but it does not matter because that kind of beauty found through extreme simplicity and order was absolutely the manifestation of Ann Lee’s teachings, so it was entirely appropriate to have it onscreen. Choosing the spirit of history over the letter.

I really loved how much of the script was direct quotes from the first-hand Shaker accounts from the early 19th century. And the places where it diverged from historical fact all made sense.

The speculation on why Ann Lee might have insisted on celibacy seems to have been drawn from Nardi Reeder Campion (as, again, is some of the language of the script), and I think it was entirely appropriate. I personally like to think that Ann Lee was just so asexual that she started a religion about it, but yeah, the trauma thesis is a strong one.

I just kind of can't get over how perfectly tailored this film was to my interests and priorities? Ann Lee's life was difficult and painful in many ways, so it's not an easy film to watch. But I was swept away by it I want to rewatch it again and again. I wish I could see it in the theater again, but it's already left here, alas.

This is how you make an unconventional, artsy period piece. I’m enraptured.

I know other people did not react to this movie in the way I did--there are people who hated it, people who have a lot of complaints about it--but f you like: stories about unconventional historical women, religious faith treated seriously but not at all polemically, unorthodox approaches to the musical genre, beautiful but slightly unnerving music and dance, films that lean into their own weirdness without being weighed down by it…you should watch this movie. Preferably in a theater, but if you can’t swing that, any other way.

If you do see it, come back and tell me what you thought. Even if it doesn't work for you, I would love to read your thoughts about why because I know I can trust y'all to be thoughtful!
oursin: C19th engraving of a hedgehog's skeleton (skeletal hedgehog)
[personal profile] oursin

Too busy trying to extend their lifespans to, you know, actually Have A Life?

The troubling rise of longevity fixation syndrome: ‘I was crushed by the pressure I put on myself’

One is actually surprised that this guy does in fact go for an evening out in a restaurant with his husband, even if he does exhaustively research it first and pre-order (and then melt down when it comes to him RONG):

He painstakingly monitored what he ate (sometimes only organic, sometimes raw or unprocessed; calories painstakingly counted), his exercise regime (twice a day, seven days a week), and tracked every bodily function from his heart rate to his blood pressure, body fat and sleep “schedule”. He even monitored his glucose levels repeatedly throughout the day. “I was living by those numbers,” he says.

One wonders if there is any place for Ye Conjugalz with hubby or is that losing Precious Bodily Fluids and all the other ills once ascribed to sexual indulgence.

And, indeed, tempted to say, it just feels like living for ever....

With a side of, austere regimes have been followed by religious devotees for centuries but that was for life everlasting in the next, not this, right?

But, honestly, surely it is possible to lead a healthy life which is not actually purgatorial - see also this Why has food become another joyless way to self-optimise?. Thinking back to the delicious healthy nosh at Grayshott of beloved nostalgic memories - along with the lovely treatments etc.

Okay, there are some dietary things I do because I do not particularly have to think about them, but that is because I made certain decisions back when, and e.g. I have my nice tasty home-made muesli of a morning with its healthy oats and linseed and nuts and it is an established pattern but it is a pleasure to eat.

Milepost 164 (NCIS)

Feb. 8th, 2026 07:34 pm
[syndicated profile] polyrecsdaily_feed
Milepost 164 (NCIS):

Milepost 164, by TwoWeevils. shrift: “Note to self: Next time Gibbs wants a volunteer to go on a nice country drive, keep your hands in your pockets, DiNozzo.”

sovay: (Rotwang)
[personal profile] sovay
I am feeling non-stop terrible. I took a couple of pictures in the snow-fallen sunshine this afternoon.

And be the roots that make the tree. )

[personal profile] spatch sent me a 1957 study of walking directions to Scollay Square. Researcher's notes can be unnecessarily period-typical, but the respondents themselves are wonderful. "You're a regular question-box, aren't you?" It turns out to be part of the basis for a seminal work of urban planning and perception. I like the first draft of the public image of Boston, including its conclusion that it is a deficit to the city not to be thought of as defined by the harbor as much as the river.
verushka70: Kowalski puts his hands to his head (Default)
[personal profile] verushka70
So I posted this little fanon/canon analysis on Tumblr, and thought I'd post it here, too [SPOILERS for Heated Rivalry TV series/the novel Game Changer]:

"No, no, no, wait, wait, wait - hear me out. Fraser is Scott Hunter and Kowalski is Kip. I swear Fraser/Kowalski has the same, or some very similar, relationship dynamic(s) as Scott Hunter/Kip Grady:
a list of bullet point similarities )
Scott Hunter/Kip Grady has captured my fannish heart, eclipsing the main Heated Rivalry pairing of Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov. I get that they're both angsty pairings due to the closeted nature of both relationships - but, imo, Scott/Kip is much angstier because of their very different levels of closeted-ness/fear of being outed (Kip is out, and has been for years, so he doesn't have that fear at all - whereas Scott is terrified), and the negative way it impacts their relationship: being with Scott effectively shoves Kip back into the closet, as Kip points out in the novel, and also isolates him from his friends and family (except bff Elena) because he's forced to lie to everyone in order to keep Scott's secret. So, so angsty.

And the Heated Rivalry soundtrack is fucking fantastic - it's all I've been listening to for fucking weeks, and I'm happy as a clam about it, Yay!
:-)

(no subject)

Feb. 8th, 2026 09:10 pm
skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (Default)
[personal profile] skygiants
By sheer coincidence, I ended up reading Alix Harrow's The Everlasting almost immediately after The Isle in the Silver Sea. Both books are ringing changes on the same big themes -- the narratives of nationalism, fate and tragedy, Spenser and Malory, depressed lady knights and evil girlbosses -- and from what I had previously read of both Harrow and Suri's work I was tbh quite surprised to find myself liking The Everlasting a bit better.

The premise of The Everlasting: it's more or less the second-world equivalent of the 1920s and we have just had a Big War. Our protagonist Owen has a radical pacifist alcoholic father that he doesn't respect, a war medal that he didn't really earn, a academic career that doesn't seem to be going places, and a face that makes it pretty obvious that at least one parent came from The Other Side. However, his messy relationship with the war has not in any way altered his ardent passion for the greatest figure of his country's nationalist mythology, the knight Una Everlasting, who fought at the side of the nation's founding queen a thousand years ago and died tragically to bring the country stability.

Then he finds a book that purports to be the True History of Una Everlasting, and gets summoned to a secret meeting with the country's minister of war, an evil girlboss who immediately sends him back in time to experience and document Una Everlasting's Last Quest first hand. He gets to write the nationalist myth himself! What fun!

Alas, it turns out that the great knight Una Everlasting is violent, brutal, and extremely burned out about all the people she's killed as part of the bloody process of nation-forging: at this point the citizens think of her as a butcher and she's inclined to agree. Nonetheless, fanboy Owen convinces her to take on this one last quest for the sake of her honor & kingdom & legacy &cetera, with the promise of peace at the end of it, knowing full well that the end of the quest will in fact mean her death.

This is the first section of the book and tbh I enjoyed it enormously. Owen is writing the narrative in first person and his voice is used to great effect: he's a twisted-up and self-contradictory character who shows the problems of nationalism much better as a guy who's genuinely trying to convince himself that he believes in it than he would if he started out already enlightened. I love his embarrassing radical pacifist dad and his judgmental thesis advisor, and, as heterosexualities go, I am absolutely not immune to the allure of large violent depressed woman/weaselly little worm man whom she could easily break in two who is obsessed with her but also fundamentally betraying her. If the book had ended at the end of its first section, I think it would have been a phenomenal standalone novella.

However, the book does keep going. I continued to have a good time, more or less, but the more it went on the more I felt that it had sort of overplayed its hand. Alix Harrow is extremely a Power of Fiction author in ways that didn't fully work for me in the other book of hers I read; I do appreciate that this book is the Power of Fiction [derogatory] but I still think that perhaps she is giving fiction a little too much power ... For the length of ninety pages I was willing to role with the importance of The Great Nationalist Myth, but the longer it went on and the deeper and more recursive it got with its timeloops the more I was like 'wait .... we only have one founding myth? changing the myth really directly and immediately impacts the future in predictable and manipulable ways and is in fact the only thing that does so? Hmm. Well."

Also I enjoyed the evil girlboss right up until it was revealed that every evil girlboss in the country's whole thousand-year-old history had been the very self-same evil girlboss and no other woman had ever done anything. You are telling me you have built up a whole thing about this country's founding myth of the Queen And Her Lady Knight from scratch and that didn't change the country's relationship to gender at all? NO other woman was ever inspired to do anything with that? I am not sure that's as feminist as you think it is ...

Anyway, I do think this book and The Island In the Silver Sea form a sort of spiritual duology and I'm glad to have read them back to back: for such similar books they have really interestingly different flaws and virtues.

no. no, thank you.

Feb. 8th, 2026 09:50 pm
watersword: A smiling woman giving thumbs-up and the words "I've made a huge mistake" (The Good Place: huge mistake)
[personal profile] watersword

Another 4 inches of snow? And high winds? And "arctic chill"? I cannot.

I am trying the applesauce loaf again, this time with some chunks of "Gold Rush" apples in the batter and making sure not to use lumpy brown sugar. Fingers crossed.

Amtrak's 2FA system is garbage and I may have to contend with Julie, my nemesis (Amtrak's phone customer "service" bot) to get to New York to see Dessa in March (and sneak out of a conference early); my splurge on Restaurant Week was kind of a waste of money (pasta oversalted, rosé weirdly bland); I am sick of all my clothes, no doubt because I have been wearing all of them at the same time for the past month, and the idea of acquiring different clothes is the epitome of exchanging money for bads and disservices.

THIS IS THE BAD PLACE.

Treatless Spreadsheet

Feb. 8th, 2026 08:35 pm
candyheartsex: pink and white flowers (Default)
[personal profile] candyheartsex
The treatless spreadsheet is now available! This includes all non-defaulting participants who have fewer than two gifts.

The spreadsheet will be updated at least once a day, including during the anon period, to keep it current and remove names as we all work on our treating!

Any pinch hitters who are not signed up for the exchange can also add requests to the pinch hitter prompt post, and I will add them to the treatless spreadsheet as well.

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