[ SECRET POST #6758 ]
Jul. 7th, 2025 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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⌈ Secret Post #6758 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.

( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 24 secrets from Secret Submission Post #965.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
(no subject)
Jul. 7th, 2025 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Bee Food Flowers
Jul. 7th, 2025 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Botanists from the University of Copenhagen and the UK set out to find the best flower combinations for bees and hoverflies.
Danish and Welsh botanists sifted through 400 studies, field-tested seed mixes, and uncovered a lineup of native and exotic blooms that both thrill human eyes and lure bees and hoverflies in droves, offering ready-made recipes for transforming lawns, parks, and patios into vibrant pollinator hotspots.
Below are the plants recommended for European and United Kingdom uses...
( Read more... )
Bee Food Flowers
Jul. 7th, 2025 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Botanists from the University of Copenhagen and the UK set out to find the best flower combinations for bees and hoverflies.
Danish and Welsh botanists sifted through 400 studies, field-tested seed mixes, and uncovered a lineup of native and exotic blooms that both thrill human eyes and lure bees and hoverflies in droves, offering ready-made recipes for transforming lawns, parks, and patios into vibrant pollinator hotspots.
Below are the plants recommended for European and United Kingdom uses...
( Read more... )
next year all our troubles will be miles away
Jul. 7th, 2025 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Beast got my bug, and took a Covid test today. It was positive.
*
I sneaked, masked, into Sainsburys and bought twenty Covid tests by mistake. I meant to buy four, and was not surprised enough that the boxes were rather large.
*
I found ( dead animals, gross )
*
Our large freezer seems to have the spent the night warming up. Beast spotted this at some point this morning (it was at room temperature) and Took Steps, and it is cooling down again. But my lunchtime chocolate covered mint ice cream onna stick had to be eaten with a spoon. Chocolate casing: still good; contents: very soft indeed.
*
In better news (phew!), our new printer arrived today. It is mighty, and has a scanner on top like a lookout tower. It prints—in colour, which the elderly laser printer has not done for ages, since we didn't want to replace the cartridges.
*
We tried to help our Boy yesterday with prepping for his job interview tomorrow. Good luck, Boy! It mas been a very long time since he interviewed for anything, as he has made minimal but steady progress for over a decade with his current employer, and is more interested in being comfortable than successful.
*
I continue to be entertained by Bridgerton. I don't mind the dazzling colours of the costumes, for I am partial to bright colours and a good bit of glitter, too, but I growl at the sight of a long, white, modern wedding gown with train and veil. Give the poor bride something a bit nicer than last year's net curtains, please! I like the multicoloured cast—although I believe Regency England was somewhat more mixed than our media have generally made it out to be, it's nice to see a world where nobody is remarking upon it (well, not quite nobody, but it's generally just *there*). And everybody is ridiculously good-looking, of course. I don't think the Duke of Hastings has an equal yet, but there are competitors.
*
I planted those four fuchsias at long last, and pulled out the self-seeded currant that was growing in my hostas-and-fuchsias bed. And what appeared to be a baby silver birch, which I have transplanted in the hope that something pretty may result. It'll probably turn out to be something quite different, if indeed it survives at all.
Monday Update 7-7-25
Jul. 7th, 2025 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Poem: "An Interest in the Affairs of Your Government"
Poem: "Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness"
Poem: "Always Surprised by Consequences"
Poem: "No Such Thing as Finished"
Geology
Birdfeeding
Today's Smoothie
Early Humans
Birdfeeding
Philosophical Questions: Government
Fireworks
Writing About Fireworks
Birdfeeding
Follow Friday 7-4-25: Historical Fiction
Blazing the Trail: Celebrating Indigenous Fire Stewardship
Birdfeeding
Climate Change
Birdfeeding
Problem-Solving
Hard Things
"Philosophical Questions: Looks" has 41 comments. "Not a Destination, But a Process" has 146 comments. "The Democratic Armada of the Caribbean" has 95 comments.
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* Sunshine Revival Challenge 1: Light
Poem: "The Pleasure of Escaping the Responsibility"
* Sunshine Revival Challenge 2: Tunnel of Love
Poem: "Legs of Grass, Feet of Flowers"
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"In the Heart of the Hidden Garden" is now complete! Lawrence shows Stan more of his favorite places.
The weather has been variable here. It rained yesterday and last night. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a pair of mourning doves, a male cardinal, a gray catbird, a fox squirrel, a skunk, and at least 1 probably 2 bats. 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, anise hyssop, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, Asiatic lilies, cucumber, snowball bush, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, narrow-leaf mountain mint, black-eyed Susan, yellow coneflower, wild bergamot, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant. Daylilies are done blooming. Cucumbers, tomatillo, and pepper have green fruit. The first 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato ripened and some other tomatoes are showing color. Wild strawberries, mulberries, peas, and blackberries are ripe. Black raspberries are done.
Birdfeeding
Jul. 7th, 2025 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a male cardinal, and at least one mourning dove.
I put out water for the birds.
EDIT 7/7/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.
.
Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022) & Pyramid 1
Jul. 7th, 2025 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Everything you need for your own GURPS 4E tabletop roleplaying campaign.
Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022)

Volume 3 (Nov 2008 - Dec 2018) of Pyramid, the Steve Jackson Games magazine for tabletop roleplaying gamers. Sixty issues and more!
Bundle of Holding: Pyramid 1
New Unmatchables!
Jul. 7th, 2025 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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This new set have until 2pm EDT on the 8th of July to get back to me, so it is possible assignments won't go out until tomorrow.
Five Dangerously Impatient Heirs and Successors
Jul. 7th, 2025 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Why wait around for the throne or the cash when murder can deliver it immediately?
Five Dangerously Impatient Heirs and Successors
Beginning on clearing up some open tabs, etc
Jul. 7th, 2025 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Reading this, I'm very much reminded of certain sff stories I read - late 60s/early 70s - that were either directly influenced by this research or via the population panic works that riffed off it: review of Lee Alan Dugatkin. Dr. Calhoun's Mousery: The Strange Tale of a Celebrated Scientist, a Rodent Dystopia, and the Future of Humanity. Does this ping reminiscence in anyone else? (I was reading a lot of v misc anthologies etc in early 70s before I found my real niche tastes).
***
What Is a 'Lavender Marriage,' Exactly? Feel that there is a longer and (guess what) Moar Complicated history around using conventional marriage to protect less conventional unions, but maybe it's a start towards interrogating the complexities of 'conventional marriages'.
***
Sardonic larffter at this: 'I'm being paid to fix issues caused by AI'
***
Not quite what one anticipates from a clergyman's wife? The undercover vagrant who exposed workhouse life - a bit beyond vicarage/manse teaparties, Mothers' Meetings or running the Sunday School!
***
Changes in wedding practice: The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure: Wedding Days:
After the Reformation, Anglican canon law required that marriages took place in the morning, during divine service, in the parish of either the bride or groom – three features which typically elude modern weddings, which usually take place in the afternoon, in a special ceremony, and are far less likely (even if a religious wedding) to take place within a couple’s home parish. The centrality of divine service is the starkest difference, as it ensured that, unlike in modern weddings, marriages were public events at which the whole congregation ought to be present. They might even have occurred alongside other weddings or church ceremonies such as baptisms. A study of London weddings in the late 1570s found that, unsurprisingly given the canonical requirements, Sunday was the most popular days for weddings, accounting for c.44 percent of marriages taking place in Southwark and Bishopsgate. (By contrast, Sunday accounted for just 5.9 percent of marriages in 2022).
***
Dorothy Allison Authored a New Kind of Queer Lit (or brought new perspectives into the literature of class?) I should dig out my copies of her works.
Clarke Award Finalists 2004
Jul. 7th, 2025 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
16 (59.3%)
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
3 (11.1%)
Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
10 (37.0%)
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
3 (11.1%)
Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
2 (7.4%)
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
11 (40.7%)
Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.
Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Review: Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control
Jul. 7th, 2025 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Authors: Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis
Genre: non-fiction
As a consequence of realising that hey, interlibrary loans exist and are actually pretty cheap, I've been reading a book called Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control by Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis.
The book is a survey of the history of censorship of literature mainly in the UK and the US, presented through case studies of individual censored works, though many of the chapters discuss censorship of similar books more broadly. The oldest case is the censorship of the early English translations of the Bible; the newest the censorship of Chicanx literature in Arizona in the 2010s.
The book takes a broad view of censorship. It doesn't just deal with censorship by the state, but also other forms of censorship, such as self-censorship and the chilling effect that censorship exerts on the literary landscape as a whole.
I'm not going to talk about it in any great detail. It's really well-written -- very accessible to a lay reader, without feeling like it's been dumbed-down -- so go read it if the topic interests you.
( Some thoughts on censorship of literature based on this book )
Review: Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control
Jul. 7th, 2025 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Title: Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control
Authors: Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis
Genre: non-fiction
As a consequence of realising that hey, interlibrary loans exist and are actually pretty cheap, I've been reading a book called Censored: A Literary History of Subversion and Control by Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis.
The book is a survey of the history of censorship of literature mainly in the UK and the US, presented through case studies of individual censored works, though many of the chapters discuss censorship of similar books more broadly. The oldest case is the censorship of the early English translations of the Bible; the newest the censorship of Chicanx literature in Arizona in the 2010s.
The book takes a broad view of censorship. It doesn't just deal with censorship by the state, but also other forms of censorship, such as self-censorship and the chilling effect that censorship exerts on the literary landscape as a whole.
I'm not going to talk about it in any great detail. It's really well-written -- very accessible to a lay reader, without feeling like it's been dumbed-down -- so go read it if the topic interests you.
( Some thoughts on censorship of literature based on this book )
No One Was More Surprised Than Me
Jul. 7th, 2025 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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And uh, on Friday I opened my prompt file and stuck its associated playlists on and umm, wrote like 600 words of a fic. I’ve been picking away at it over the weekend and, while it’s not my best work I don’t think it’s terrible. (One of my re-watches the other month was Ocean’s Eight and apparently I had a bunch of Daphne Kluger feelings lurking. The original prompt for this fic was Casual by Chappel Roan but it kinda drifted.) So yeah, first finished fic in almost exactly two years, go me.
Someone You Couldn’t Lose (1341 words) by Glinda
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Ocean's 8 (2018)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Daphne Kluger/Lou Miller, Daphne Kluger/Debbie Ocean, Daphne Kluger/Lou Miller/Debbie Ocean
Characters: Daphne Kluger, Lou Miller (Ocean's), Debbie Ocean
Additional Tags: Friendship, Friends With Benefits, Planning Adventures, Less casual than anyone wants to admit, Thirty-something problems
Summary:
The thing no one tells you, is that it’s kinda hard to make new friends in your 30s. (Daphne Kluger would far rather plan a heist.)
Bleach fic
Jul. 7th, 2025 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Bleach (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Abarai Renji/Kuchiki Rukia
Characters: Abarai Renji, Kuchiki Rukia, Ayasegawa Yumichika
Additional Tags: Piercings
Summary:
Rukia and Renji have a moment over an ear piercing. Yumichika is also there.