Panels needing panelists

May. 20th, 2025 10:40 am
boxofdelights: (Default)
[personal profile] boxofdelights posting in [community profile] wiscon
These #WisCon panels still need panelists:

We've lost some people and are looking for panelists on the below:

May 23 Fri7:00-7:45pm | Breathe the Pressure: Burnout and Recovery for Creatives

May 24 Sat10:00-10:45am | Pathways to Publishing

May 24 Sat4:00-4:45pm | Small Press Publishing

Please email Panels@WisCon.sf3.org if you are able to participate!
jesse_the_k: My black mutt totally blissed out, on her back, paws folded (BELLA on back)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

On day one, she was beautiful, and brave, and ready to cuddle. She was underweight, so her sleek black-and-brown body just fills an oval bed. Staring right at the camera with hope and trepidation, her stuffed alligator rests in front.

Click for pic )

Today was her last day.

Euthanasia, generally described )

The Friday Five on a Saturday

May. 17th, 2025 07:27 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila
  1. You're holding a dinner party and can invite three famous people from the past or present; who would they be?

    I never understood the appeal of this. I hardly get to see my friends and family. I would rather invite them to dinner than a group of people I don't know. That just sounds exhausting.

  2. You have the opportunity to question someone about something you've always wanted to know and receive a truthful answer; what would your question be?

    No no no. In my experience, if someone is holding back on telling you a truth, it's because it is not going to make you feel happy. I'll pass.

  3. If you could change one thing in your life, what would it be?

    My workload. See answer to Q1.

  4. If you could save other people's lives by completing an act that would lead to your own death, would you do it?

    As ever, answers depend on the context. If we are talking about an overstuffed inflatable raft full of vulnerable children floundering in the English Channel, then unequivocally yes. If we are talking about an autocratic dictator and his henchmen, then absolutely not.

  5. Would you commit murder if you knew that you could get away with it?

    No.
altamira16: A sailboat on the water at dawn or dusk (Default)
[personal profile] altamira16
The title of this book is a Great Gatsby reference.

After the prologue, the book starts with a shark attack on a teenager. After she sees a doctor, she continues to have symptoms, but her parents brush her off as things get more serious. Wynn-Williams uses this point as her origin story for why she persisted through mess.

She worked at the United Nations and saw how powerful Facebook could be, and there were some thorny international policy implications so she pitched people at Facebook on creating a job for her. Early on, she would take Mark Zuckerberg to events with heads of state, and no one cared. No one wanted to meet him. Mark was also uncomfortable with the idea of dealing with world leaders.

Wynn-Williams drags Sheryl Sandberg and Lean In for the entire book. People discuss the part about Sandberg asking people to go to bed with her on a private plane because that sounds prurient, but the whole story about Sheryl Sandberg just not really caring about women or their issues comes up repeatedly. The staff that works for Sandberg just does not get much sleep.

I think the book explains Zuckerberg's supervillain story arc well. She was not close enough to him to see it happen at first; but the road he is going down can be seen as Zuckerberg grapples the influence of Facebook in the 2016 election. The more interested governments become in Facebook, the less interested Zuckerberg seems to be in what world leaders have to say.

I felt like the most important chapters of the book were Chapter 44 that had to do with Facebook allowing companies to advertise to kids 13-17 when they were in an emotionally vulnerable state and Chapter 45 that had to do with the genocide in Myanmar.

There were also some juicy bits about how Facebook was trying to mislead Congress about various issues. She highlights a piece in the book where Marco Rubio was asking some good questions.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book because it tells us a lot about the type of morally vacuous people in tech leadership at the moment.
jesse_the_k: Two bookcases stuffed full leaning into each other (bookoverflow)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

Someday I may again add to the cornucopia of excellent reading reports available here on Dreamwidth. In a previous life, enjoying these posts would also add to my teetering TBR pile. Now I get vicarious thrills from how folks’ reading made them feel. In particular:

[personal profile] chestnut_pod
https://chestnut-pod.dreamwidth.org/?tag=books+are+the+meaning+of+life&skip=30

[personal profile] dhampyresa
https://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/tag/reading+wednesday

[personal profile] rivkat doesn’t tag and does post many, many great reviews
https://rivkat.dreamwidth.org

[personal profile] runpunkrun
https://runpunkrun.dreamwidth.org/tag/book+report

Any recent DW entry with the tag "books" https://www.dreamwidth.org/latest?tag=books

Self-rec: mostly reviews, but also about the mechanics of reading https://jesse-the-k.dreamwidth.org/tag/reading

Reading-focused communities
[community profile] readingtogether
[community profile] booknook

Let me know whose reading reviews you enjoy....

CaCo3 & Talky Dreams

May. 14th, 2025 01:12 pm
jesse_the_k: Pill Headed Stick Person (pill head)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

Calcium Carbonate

Is everywhere in my life! It’s always underneath since Wisconsin was a seabed for billions of years. It’s usually under my wheels when I’m traveling because I like to stay on the sidewalks. It makes my toothpaste gritty to help clean my teeth. It’s a pretty yellow stone in my jewelry (aka aragonite or calcite). For better tea I filter it out of my hard water, then I take three capsules a day (with magnesium) to help my bones stay strong.

My Subconscious Was On It

I slept poorly last night—waking up every 90 minutes, and diving back in to the same dream: it was Saturday, I had to make up my seven pillboxes, and there wasn’t a drug in the house. Of course I forgot to take my bedtime meds.

Tiny Drawers

May. 14th, 2025 01:27 am
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
I now have an 8x8 case of tiny drawers. It arrived Monday. Some drawers are labeled, some are not. Labels include:


Read more... )

The effort has taken most of my day, organized several drawers, and made my desk completely incoherent. Good times.

Lounging

May. 12th, 2025 07:53 pm
azurelunatic: California poppies, with a bright blue sky and the sun. (sunny)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
I'm not sure if I actually shared the Saga of the Three Infusion Recliners, so: an infusion center was upgrading, and had three chairs that they needed to get rid of. Preferably quickly. Preferably for free. So their admin made a Craigslist post. I managed to fit two into my Toaster simultaneously, then came back for the third once I'd unloaded them at home.

One is out front, and is the perfect spot for Lounging. Which I have been doing a lot of during this whole knee crisis. The position is perfect for not putting stress on my knee in a way that staying in bed isn't.

I now have various Implements (bought, scrounged, repurposed) to make the Lounge go better/more smoothly.

List )

What happens is I tend to refill my water bottle, prepare snack and drink, then put those out. Those tend to require more dexterity. Then I haul out the bag and unpack what I need. I put the chair in lounge mode. (On bad days sometimes I have a hard time getting out of it, if pain has decided to borrow all my strength.) Often enough I will set an audiobook going while I play clicky-games, or work on whatever craft. Or I'll read an ebook. Or chat with [personal profile] norabombay, since Lounge Time tends to overlap with Phone Time.

Currently my reading lineup is:
Celia Lake's magical romance/mysteries
An audiobook just for myself: Downbelow Station (2/2)
Bird pun humorous mystery series in audiobook (bedtime Please Don't Be Awake All Night distracting noise, rotating through the series about 1.5 times per year): currently on Lord of the Wings
Penric: saving this for with Belovedest
Audiobook of Murder with Peacocks, with [personal profile] alexseanchai so the weird radio noises in my bluetooth-to-car setup aren't as much Nope (first book in the bird pun mystery series)
Something suitably free on my e-reader

Occasionally I will hop inside, to refresh my iced drink and the ice cup, avail myself of the facilities, and maybe re-ice the spray jar.

Eventually, when the black-eyed juncos start trilling continuously, I start thinking about going back in. (Guess who just got the Merlin app specifically to identify the heralds of twilight)

I am working on getting to know the local crows. The other day one sat on the top of the Big Umbrella. I got a selfie. I'd long ago decided on my carefully species neutral greeting to them: "Hello, corvids!" -- there are both crows and ravens in the area, though more crows. Probably some Rrows and Cravens too.

Knee!

May. 12th, 2025 01:15 pm
azurelunatic: A metallic blue and black horizontal-handled cane with an elastic loop at the bottom of the webbing wrist strap. (cane)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
Tuesday I had an appointment with a physician assistant about my left knee. I'm apparently screamish about the details when I'm in that much pain, so I asked to skip a lot of the explanations I would have otherwise found fascinating.

I got an injection )

PA Fox warned me not to overdo things on the lidocaine, but the steroid should be taking effect over this past week. And it has! It's down to a normal sort of ow, and I don't have to use a cane to go from bed to the bathroom. I've still been lounging outside quite a bit (the only position that didn't hurt previously) but for pleasure, not from necessity.

Edit: And then I managed to stumble within the last half hour and it hurts badly again. I was lucky to have a cane nearby. We'll see what it does over the course of the afternoon.

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