Oddly Specific Museums

Aug. 1st, 2025 07:41 pm
highlyeccentric: An underground street (Rue Obscure, Villefranche), mostly dark. Bright light at the entrance and my silhouette departing (Rue Obscure)
[personal profile] highlyeccentric
Today, the internet decided to create a travel guide for Me, Personally, in the form of a mildly-viral thread about unique museums:

what is the most unique museum u have visited
for me possibly the ramen museum

[image or embed]

— darth™️ ([bsky.social profile] darthbluesky) August 1, 2025 at 2:38 PM


After some thought, the most unique museum I have visited is the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Tokyo. It's unique among oddly-specific museums because it *isn't* someone's collection of Stuff that got out of hand, it's a well-curated museum run by Japan Tobacco, the company which formed when the Japan Tobbaco and Salt Public Corporation privatised. That corporation controlled the import anad manufacture of both both products in Japan until the 80s, hence it makes perfect sense to have a museum on the history of both! They also have an exhibition space: when I visted, they had an exhibition about matchboxes.

Here are some notes on other oddly specific museums I have visited. I included the Shipwreck Museum (Freemantle, Western Australia) in my Bluesky thread, but on reflection, there are a fair number of Shipwreck Museums in the world which approach maritime history through that lens. It's unique in that it's specific to Freemantle, but I gather that many maritime museums are simiarly local.

- The Phallological Museum, Rekjiavik: goes without saying. I found the bull's pizzle particularly enlightening (being familiar with the Fallstaff insult "you bull's pizzle").
- The Musée d'Eroticisme in Paris: Bad, at least as of 2011. Racist in the "insulting anthropologists" way - groups artefects from ancient Europe with items from 19th c Pacific Island cultures as "primitive". Collection of premodern Japanese art is wildly more heterosexual than, statistically, one ought to expect. The section on 19th c Paris was also way Too Straight, and dismissive of primary sources which reported lesbian relationships between sex workers/dancers/etc.
- The Schwules Musem, Berlin: has no permanent collection so every time you visit you get two exhibits on specific aspects of German queer history. When K and I visted there was an exhibition on queer experiences of disability, which was cool in many ways and which I thought did an excellent job with a quiet little corner on Nazi eugenic programs; and there was a fascinating exhibit on the East Berlin squat the "Tuntenhaus" (home to high fag drag queens and trans femmes) in the context of radical squat culture of the 80s.
- The Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick: personally, I found this disappointing. Not enough museum too much shilling for Big Pencil.
- The Swiss Puppet Museum, Fribourg: why there is a Swiss Puppet Museum, and why it's in Fribourg, are unclear to me, but this was a fun little exhibition.
- The Nijntje (Miffy) Museum in Utrect is an absolute delight
- The Kattenkabinet in Amsterdam: a lovely 17th c house, bought up by a rich guy who has a madcap collection of cat art. There are cats roaming the rooms that you can pat.
- The Klingende Sammlung in Bern, which I like to translate as the "Noisemaking Collection". Wind and brass instruments. There's a downstairs with practical examples that they use for school groups - there weren't any the day K and I went, so the guy let us downstairs to try out Making Noises.
- Blundell's Cottage in Canberra. Every historic house is unique - this one I particularly love because I stumbled on it almost by accident, and because it's set up to exhibit / inform about working rural life in that area in the time before the creation of Canberra as a capital - and before Lake Burley-Griffin was created. There's photos in there of other farm cottages on the plain that became the lake.
- The Alpine Museum in Switzerland, which has some fun permanent exhibits - I particularly enjoyed a collection of donated objects relating to mountain sports, a collection of historic skis. When I visited they had a temporary exhibit on "Alpine trades" - heritage local trades and the schemes to encourage young people to train in them. There was an interactive bit where you could make roofing shingles. And they partner with other countries to put on exhibitions related to Mountain Stuff - I didn't see it but there was an exhibition about life in the North Korean mountains while I was living in Bern.
- The Gustave Moreau Museum in Paris. They have a bunch of his lesser-known or unfinished art - that's where I found My favourite St Sebastian. Also they have the room which, after his mother died, Gustave turned into a weird sort of memorial shrine for his dead best friend (also the model for his St Sebastian paintings).
- The Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent, ceramics gallery of. This is stretching the "unique" part because for the most part this is a solid Regional City Museum - I went there because they have some of the Staffordshire Hoard on display. But the ceramics gallery is truly unique - comprehensive in its narrow focus on the history of English pottery. They have a lovely medieval travel jug/mug shaped like an owl - the owl's head removes to become a cup. They have a giant fuck-off porcelain peacock. And a LOT of English from the peak industrial period, which makes sense given Stoke was, apparently, not so much a city as five factory towns in a trenchcoat.
- Musée des Troupes de Montagne, Grenoble. Turns out, there are specialist troops for Alpine combat!
and
- The Mechanical Toy Museum in Nara, Japan. There are many toy museums, and I have been to a few of them, but this one is unique. Instead of a large collection, they have one room with tatami mats, and a small collection of Edo period mechanical toys which operate using gravity and simple kenetic mechanics. The attendants don't speak English, but they give you a brochure and let you kneel on the tatami and gently play with the toys.

And while I'm here, let me note some of my Oddly Specific Museum wish-list )

I'm a little short on oddly specific Australian museum goals. I did find out from that thread that the Cyril Callister Museum in Beaufort, Victoria, celebrates the creator of Vegemite and his famous product. And apparently that fuck-off porcelain peacock has a twin, kept in the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum in Warnambool (also Victoria).

There's a Printing Museum in Penrith (NSW). I don't consider that unique, there's a printing museum in every third European city - but I should totally check the local one out regardless.

Please, tell me about more oddly specific museums, anywhere in the world.
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[personal profile] siderea
Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1879923.html


Americans, if you are not already onboard with the Epstein files scandal, I suggest you get onboard. Non-Americans, feel free to pitch in.

For about nine years now, our side – meaning everyone who thinks fascism is bad and has been voting accordingly – has been ardently wishing any of Trump's excesses would be regarded as a scandal that would take down his presidency, and been bewildered why that wasn't happening. Well, it is finally, finally happening, so get out of the bus and come push.

But before you do, there's some things you should know.



1.

Over on Pod Save America (2025 July 25, "EXPLOSIVE REVELATION in Trump’s Epstein Files Scandal") Dan Pfeifer had some things to say about how our side responds to the Epstein files which I think are incredibly important for us to all hear:
[3:15] [Jon Favreau:] Dan, how does this explosive revelation – that we all saw coming – change the nature of this almost 3-week old scandal?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] I would hope that this changes how everyone, ourselves included, talks and thinks about this scandal.

Because we've had a lot of fun about with this. We're going to have fun about it on this podcast, I hope. It is... There's something amusing about it.

But I feel like everyone has been treating this kind of from a perspective of...bemusement? Like, "Ah, look at these conspiracy pushing grifters who've been hoisted on their own petard!" right? Where the real crime here is hypocrisy and deception. Right? That they they say they released the Epstein files but they didn't do it. Trump's breaking a campaign promise, ha! Take that! The dog that caught the car, and all of that.

But I think we do really have to to take a step back, and I know this is going to sound like hyperbole, and I know it will, but I truly believe it: that this scandal, now with this revelation, this scandal, now, should be treated like Iran-Contra, Watergate, other major political scandals.

Because what we have here is the president of the United States, the attorney general, the intelligence community, the FBI director, and the Republican Congress, all part of a conspiracy to cover up information about the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

[Jon Favreau, profoundly missing Pfeiffer's point:] And lying about it, right?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] And he lied– he lied to the American people.  Whether– either by direct order or by implicit request, the intelligence community! We have intelligence professionals, like, the most– what's theoretically supposed to be the most, one of the most apolitical parts of the government, concocting a bullshit report we're going to talk about to try to distract people from the political fallout of this. You have the Republican Congress shutting down and going home, for a month because they are so afraid to vote on a measure that could shed light – once again – on the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

Like this really is a giant deal. Like, we need to know what is that hearsay Trump's worried about, in the files? What is in there? What do we not know about Trump's relationship? Like, what, what other steps have been taken to try to cover this up? Have there been efforts to alter or destroy the records? Right? What what other government officials have hid it? Who else has been lied to? Like, this is a big deal and it should be treated as a big deal, in my view.

[...]

[...] this is one of the clues that [5:44] you and I took as evidence that Trump knew his name, or at least suspected his name, was in the Epstein files, was he kept saying, "How are we going to know they're real? Maybe Comey and Biden and whoever else doctored them?" To put his name in there, right?

[...]

I mean the, the chain of events here is they were planning to release the files; they were on Pam Bondi's desk; they released that first tranche that had his name in it, that did not– that at that point they did not say We're not going to release more, because after that went out Pam Bondie said These are on my desk for review; she reviewed them, found something that she thought would be quite embarrassing to the president, and they changed their plan. And they've continued to believe that the massive amount of political fallout they've been getting now for almost 3 weeks is preferable to whatever they believe is in the files.
And:
[Jon Favreau:] How do you think Dems should [17:09] handle this issue over the next few months?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] I think our goal should be to keep the issue in the news as much as possible without putting too much spin on the ball. Right? I've seen other testing which shows that the most effective online posts are not Democrats talking about it. It is clips of Republicans or people who previously supported Trump – you know, podcasters, influencers – criticizing Trump for this. That's the most effective medium.

When we think about how we, like, if we are messaging– if you're an elected official and you're thinking about how to use your platforms, that's one way to do it. If we're thinking about it in the context of how all of us are messengers, and people in our lives, and you're sharing things in your group chat, the better thing to share is the clip of Andrew Schultz talking about this on Flagrant, than it is, you know, some Democrat ranting about this on MSNBC.  Or Pod Save America, or anywhere else, right? It's like the... Think about someone who is– who's motivations are not automatically questioned even in an issue on this one where they're, they're quite sincere.
Commentary follows, below.

Please try not to forget... [4,570 words] )

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some good things

Jul. 30th, 2025 11:22 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Sense Has Prevailed. (There has been an ongoing a Fabric Of The Building thing -- we live in a block with 12 other flats, every owner has a share of the freehold -- and today we had an actual meeting where we Voted and Agreed Next Steps. Via an hour or so of frequently-infuriating back and forth.)
  2. Which we celebrated by stopping at a pub on the way home and making them bring us dinner (and raspberry lemonade for me, and a beer for A) to our outside table in the sunshine, rather than slogging up the hill to bake a potato.
  3. Have made substantial progress on wrangling the post-event lost property paperwork. I have sent so many e-mails.
  4. Continuing to read one chapter at a time of Hyperbole and a Half with A. <3
  5. Many many exuberant and ridiculous flowers on the walk home.
  6. Lots of effusive praise for various bits of Admin: the LRP-related work (including some v high praise indeed for the current GOD management team, which includes yrs truly).
  7. Own bed and good sleep.
  8. Apricots. (Left over from grocery order over two weeks ago, but stored in the fridge and still Very Apricot, about which I am delighted).
  9. Helpful response means I am now unstuck on finishing up my current EYB indexing project. (... which is just as well because another stack of books may have just arrived...)
  10. Really enjoying the handful of combat trousers I got Oxfam to send me. POCKETS.

Oop North

Jul. 30th, 2025 09:01 pm
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[personal profile] wildeabandon
I've been Oop North for the last few days doing many things, most delightful, a couple less so. I have:

  • Seen Everybody's Talking About Jamie, including [personal profile] leonato being unreasonably hot as drag queen Laika Virgin
  • Been to the wedding of an old friend WINODW, and caught up with various Cambridge and ex-Cambridge folk
  • Travelled back from Keighley to York by bus, because the trains into and out of Leeds were completely fucked (one of the less delightful bits)
  • Had a lovely quiet Sunday with M, mostly reading whilst he pottered and packed to go away this week, interspersed with eating simple but tasty food, low key chatting, playing board games, and so on
  • Visited the mother of an ex-boyfriend who died last year, to share some of my memories of him (also not exactly a fun afternoon, but I think she found it helpful, so I'm glad I did it)
  • Stayed with my parents for another quiet day of low key and relaxing conversation
  • Discussed John 9 with Bible Club. We still haven't managed to find a theodicy that completely solves the problem of evil, but I'm sure if we keep coming back to it then we'll get there eventually.
  • Had someone shove a needle followed by a rather thick metal ring through my genitals three times in quick succession. (And yes, that definitely counts amongst the delightful parts of the trip. Getting my tongue done a few months ago has firmly reawakened the bug, and I may be in 'Pierce All The Things' (whilst being sensible about not getting more than three at once and giving my body time to heal between each set cos I'm a grown up now) mode for some time
  • Taken advantage of being in Manchester to visit [personal profile] cosmolinguist, [personal profile] angelofthenorth, [personal profile] diffrentcolours, and [personal profile] mother_bones


Now on the train home, which is of course running late, and looking forward to the sleep of someone who has been having altogether too much fun...
kaberett: (the lost thing)
[personal profile] kaberett

... this being the style I have already sacrificed one of to The Endless Woodchip. Attempt at loss the first occurred while putting up tent; attempt at loss the second occurred late on Saturday night, when I was rushing from A to B to provide a roll-mat to a player and lost a fight with the bunting we use to discourage people from walking into the tent in places we don't want them to.

It was dark. Nonetheless I spent several whole minutes searching before giving up and resolving to try again in daylight. Consequently I got up good and early to start hunting before the team started carting all of the Objects back out of the storage ISO (all of the in-character valuables get locked away overnight while the tent's unstaffed...) and... discovered it really wasn't going to need much hunting after all.

Read more... )

Tragically the brass hair stick I pulled out of "freecycle" before letting the players at the aged-out lost objects... wound up getting dropped in a known fairly well-defined location, and vanishing utterly into the ether, despite a good five people having a hunt for it. Ah well; maybe it'll show up next time, and maybe it won't, and either way I am likely to have future opportunities to Acquire More Hair Adornment.

vital functions

Jul. 27th, 2025 11:00 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh, The Book, with A, a chapter at a time.

Also a bit more of The Age of Seeds, but only a very little bit.

Writing. Fun migraine facts: I spent the weekend discovering that writing by hand at speed Just Does Not Work Well. "Stopping" for "stopper", "fascinate" for "fastener", and so on and so forth...

Listening. Songs and stories! Including, apparently, these people + friends.

Playing. Admin: the LRP.

Eating. I may have slightly subsisted primarily on lemon and sugar crêpes. The raspberry and lemon curd toasties remain a delight. Some blackberries from the hedges.

Exploring. Finally (consciously) observed the giant purple cockerel. The Navarr woods at night.

Growing. Actually managed to water the plants before setting off, go me.

Observing. A BAT IN THE MARQUEE. ALSO A GIANT DRAGONFLY. Also the swallows (I think). Stars.

Excursions

Jul. 28th, 2025 03:02 pm
liv: Table laid with teapot, scones and accoutrements (yum)
[personal profile] liv
This week P'tite Soeur organized a family trip to London. All four siblings and Dad, which is quite a feat of logistics even if we didn't manage to also include partners.

London )

Another thing I was able to do due to not being in Israel was to visit the community I'll be spending Yom Kippur with, the amazing Kehillat Kernow, a peripatetic community covering most of the Cornwall peninsula. (Yes, that's me in the news article at the top of their website, they are very prompt at reporting!) The long train journey was not as wonderful as I had hoped, because the trains were very very overcrowded in peak season, but at least I had a seat and got to enjoy the lovely views. And read a bunch of novels, which is definitely making my brain happier.

They invited me to dinner Friday evening, and had a very Liv conversation about dealing with racism in education and medicine, with the other guests having direct professional expertise, not just setting the world to rights. And put me up in a super nice hotel in a neo-gothic pile that used to be a convent, and were gracious enough to invite me to stay Saturday night as well so I even got a little bit of time in Truro, which is where they held this particular service. I walked along the river a bit, I found a teeny-tiny Pride festival in the town centre, but it was packing up by the time I had finished dinner at 7 pm, so I wasn't able to get dessert from one of the sparkly rainbow doughnut stands.

In between I lead a Shabbat service, with very enthusiastic participation from the community, and they even appreciated my somewhat political sermon about whether we can still be Zionists in this moment. Because it was the new moon of Av, I got to read from their super-exciting Historic scroll. Well, actually I chanted the verses about the creation of the sun and moon; it's still a big deal for me to do that in public. I'm pretty pleased with how all that went.

And now I'm back and I have another month of relatively uncrowded schedule. It's very nice.

Events of note

Jul. 26th, 2025 01:16 pm
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

I last updated about 4 weeks ago, in Portsmouth. That was a good mini break, and I'm really glad R and I decided to do it: fun activities and good company. The heatwave hitting most of the country that weekend was less bad in Portsmouth, but despite reapplying sunscreen we both got burned on the walk back from the pier at Southsea, and didn't realise until the long (made longer by speed restrictions) train journey home was nearly over. The trains had aircon, on comfortable rather than arctic setting, so the journey was fine but stepping out into the humid heat at Cambridge came as a shock.

I took a taxi home, staying just long enough to dump my suitcase and pick up my hockey kit, and cycled (in the heat, ugh) to the rink for a scrimmage marking the last Monday night Warbirds practice, before the rink timetable change in July. Got home again a bit after midnight, and then back to work and the rest of "life as usual" from Tuesday morning.

Life as usual continues to be: work, family, ice hockey. A little cricket (playing), a little football (watching), and a theatre trip that reminded me I should go to the theatre more often.

Family )

Ice hockey )

Cricket )

Football )

Theatre )

On the topic of both theatre and schedule, I have a livestream ticket to Phoebe Kemp's all trans/nb production of Twelfth Night (introduced by Ian McKellan); the livestream was last night but I have two weeks to watch the recording. My calendar says my best bets for time to watch it is this afternoon, or next Saturday afternoon. I'm going to try for this afternoon.

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[personal profile] siderea
I think this is important, and really insightful. Video and slightly excerpted transcript below.

Of note, Parkrose Permaculture is a crunchy secular leftist who is, herself, an ex-evangelical, and speaks with some personal authority about the world-view and culture.

2025 July 17: ParkrosePermaculture on YT: "MAGA mom apologizes for supporting Trump. Regrets her vote. How do we respond?" [9 min 43 sec]:



[0:00] Can we talk about that viral video of that young woman who got on here and was like, "Y'all, I'm really sorry that I voted for Trump. I'm really sorry that I was MAGA. I realize now that I was wrong"? This this video:

[0:12] [stitched video, white woman speaking to camera, with title "Official apology: I voted for Trump"]
I voted for Trump and I'm sorry. I am uneducated. I grew up in, um, public school system. I believed anything a teacher and a principal told me, and I didn't question it. And I walked in a straight line and I didn't use critical thinking skills, okay? I didn't read Project 2025, I have a disabled child, I'm a single mom of three. I believed what he said in his campaigns and I fucked up. And I'm sorry, okay?
I find the responses to that video on social media quite interesting, because on one hand you have folks who are like, I don't forgive you. And I understand that. People are angry. Trumpers did incredible damage to this country. Getting Trump and Elon Musk put in positions of power in the United States is killing millions of people, right? We know that just the cancellations to USAID are going to kill 14 million people according to a new piece out in the Lancet. Trump and Steven Miller are now freely enacting an ethnic cleansing in the United States. People have a right to be really, really angry about those things.

[1:21] I've also seen a lot of other creators who have my complexion [i.e. white -- S.] and most of them are women, who have said, "It's okay, girlfriend. We all make mistakes. We all have been hoodwinkedked in the past. Yeah, people in America are very much indoctrinated. And we forgive you. We forgive you."

[1:38] And I guess I, I disagree fundamentally with both of those takes. And here's why.

We need to give Trumpers a place to land as they are deconstructing. Maybe the Epstein files [...] [2:14] And so everybody's going to have– everybody who ends up walking away from MAGA is going to have the beginning of that journey. [...] Not everybody starts from the same baseline. I guarantee you for folks watching that woman, if you wanted to judge her, then you probably didn't start with the same level of intense indoctrination, you're probably not from the same kind of subculture that she's from. And you didn't start from the same place that she's starting at. Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And you've got to give her space to take that step.

[3:02] So, I, I do want to give her all of the praise for getting online with her real face and doing something that's very hard to do. She was willing to swallow her pride in a culture where we very much center the self and we're not good at taking responsibility. We are not good at eating crow. We're not good at facing the music, right? She did that. [...] She deserves all the praise for that. I don't want to in any way minimize the work, the risk that she undertook in being willing to own it and being willing to say, "I was deeply wrong." Again, especially because we live in a culture where people taking accountability is not something that we are particularly good at or used to.

[4:04] And so I very much appreciate the other creators who are saying, "Come over here with us," – Right? – "I'll be a safe landing spot for you. It is never too late to admit that you were wrong."

But I also think when we're looking at MAGA, who has caused tremendous, tremendous harm in this country, right? They have contributed to the rise of fascism. They have supported the takeover of this nation by a fascist dictator. I understand a lot of them were ignorant. They chose to be willfully ignorant. I understand a lot of them come from a background where they are taught to deny their own intuition, to subvert their own will, to listen to and unconditionally obey what an authority figure is telling them. I know that so many of these folks go to churches that are telling them that Donald Trump is God's anointed, that he has God's favor, that he is doing the Lord's work. I understand the heaviness, the intense pressure, the hard sell of the subcultures that these folks belong to, and I understand the strength of character that it takes in that context to admit that you were wrong and say, "I shouldn't have done this, and I'm sorry."

[5:11] But I would encourage all of those mostly white women creators who are telling this young woman, "It's okay, girl. We forgive you. Everybody makes mistakes": this was not a mistake. And it doesn't really matter that there were extenduating circumstances and indoctrination. Doesn't matter that somebody caused great harm without understanding the full depth and breadth of the trauma and the suffering they would inflict by supporting this regime.

I know I have brought it up many times since the election and it continues to be one of the most relevant books when we are discussing people leaving MAGA, when we are discussing people deconstructing from Trumperism, when we are discussing how it is that we fold these folks back into society, and that book is called The Sunflower by Simon Visenthal. It is an incredibly important and relevant book in these times.

The subtitle of the book is "On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness." It is a book about a young Nazi soldier who is dying and he wants to be forgiven the sins that he committed in the Holocaust. But he is asking forgiveness of somebody who is not his victim. And the question that is being posed to all kinds of faith leaders and philosophers in this book is who has the right to extend forgiveness, and what does it mean to extend forgiveness and what does it mean to ask for forgiveness?

[6:35] And I know I've said this in other videos and I just I think it's so important to continue to reiterate it when we're looking at ex-Maga. I appreciate their apology. I appreciate their contrition. I appreciate that they have realized how much harm they've caused and that they want people to know they no longer support the things that they once voted for. Really important.

But at the same time, if we are not the injured party, do we have a right to forgive? And also, there's so much more to earning forgiveness, working to be forgiven, than just saying, "I'm sorry."

[7:12] I know in evangelical Christian culture it's like if somebody says "I'm sorry", it's like, "oh, we forgive you! That's what Jesus would do!" Other religions don't view it that way. But also I personally think if somebody is truly truly sorry for what they've done, they need to work to repair the harm that they've inflicted.

If somebody voted for Donald Trump and they now realize that they were wrong, [if] they now are asking you to forgive them, they need to demonstrate changed behavior. They need to now go volunteer for a Democratic campaign in the midterms. They need to commit to evangelizing on behalf of democracy and against the fascist regime of Donald Trump to all of the people in their subculture, in their community, all of the MAGA that they know. They need to go actively work for immigrants rights. They need to contribute financially to organizations like the ACLU, to progressive Democrats in the midterms, to organizations that are engaged in mutual aid for all of the people who are suffering because of what MAGA has done.

[8:27] It takes a measure of risk to get on the internet and say, "I'm so sorry. I regret my vote for Donald Trump." Yeah. And we want to acknowledge that they have taken that risk. We want to acknowledge the work that is done. We want to acknowledge how hard it is to take that first step on that journey. Absolutely true. But at the same time, they need to put their money where their mouth is.

They need to work to repair the harm that they have done. They need to work now. They need to sacrifice now. They need to demonstrate changed behavior because at the end of the day, words are cheap. People are suffering and dying. Now, if you truly understand the ramifications of what you have supported and what you have done, you must work to fix it.

[9:10] So, to that young woman and any other person who has left MAGA, who has taken that first step on your deconstruction journey: I applaud you. That's wonderful, that's wonderful. If your conscience is eating you up? If you have loads of regrets? The best way you can work to find peace in your heart, to find peace with the people you have harmed, is to get to work – fixing it. Because there's so much work for everybody to do. Join the resistance. Yep, come join the party. Yeah, we'll take you. We are a safe landing spot. We have lots of work for you to do here.

Not too many sharks

Jul. 21st, 2025 10:49 am
liv: alternating calligraphed and modern letters (letters)
[personal profile] liv posting in [community profile] livredor
So what happened is that I semi-broke my Ubuntu install, and I tried to fix it without too much crying at my more technically competent partners. In process I expanded my knowledge and confidence, but ended up not being completely able to fix it on my own.

what happened and what I learned )

So I now understand what grub is, how to get to a terminal from a screen of death, and have some notion of the difference between dpkg and apt (though I am almost certainly not competent to actually drive them without help). And I now have a lovely well-behaved laptop running Ubuntu 24.04 with working sound and no sharks.

vital functions

Jul. 20th, 2025 11:24 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Wells, Lister, Tufte, Brosh, McMillan-Webster )

... I also technically started reading a little bit of Descartes, and more around Descartes, for the pain project -- but really not very much as yet.

Playing. A round of Hanabi with A & houseguest! We were playing with very different House Norms which led to some hilarious miscommunication, but A Good Time Was Had.

A good time was also had following the toddler around a playground, including some time On A Swing where we worked out How Legs Do. :)

Cooking. Several Questionable loaves of bread (mostly "too much liquid, ergo puddle"). Three more recipes from East, none of which were particularly interesting to us. (Piccalilli spiced rice; Sodha's variant on egg fried rice; a tempeh-and-pak-choi Situation.)

And Ribiselkuchen! I have been very very happily eating Appropriately Seasonal Ribiselkuchen.

Eating. A made us waffles for breakfast this morning. I had them with SLICED STRAWBERRIES and SLICED APRICOT and MAPLE SYRUP and also LEMON JUICE and VANILLA SUGAR and I was very happy about all of this.

Making & mending. It is Event Prep Week. There are so many potions.

Growing. ... I got some more supports in for my beans? I have just about managed to break even on the sugar snap peas this year (should NOT have eaten the handful I did...) and might yet manage to do a little better than that, with luck.

Squash starting to produce female flowers (yes I was late starting them). More soft fruit (which desperately needs processing; I will be sad if I wind up needing to just compost the jostaberries that have been sat in the fridge for ...a while, now). Many many tomatoes, none of which were actually ripe yet last time I actually made it to the plot...

Observing. Peacock butterfly at the plot! Tawny owl (audio only)! Bats (ditto)! The Teenage Magpie Persists!

Also a variety of awkward teenage waterfowl in Barking Park, along with a squirrel who was most unimpressed when our attempts to feed it mostly involved accidentally handing it an empty half-peanut-shell. It made it very clear (well before any of us had independently noticed The Issue) that it understood we were willing to feed it but that we were doing a terrible job at this and Should Try Harder. I was delighted.

September 2024

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